Obama money from abroad could total $3.3 million
Oct 7, 9:13 PM (ET)
Most of those contributors did identify themselves as living abroad in foreign cities. Under federal law, foreign citizens cannot make political contributions, but U.S. citizens living abroad can.
The Republican National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Monday asking for an investigation of Obama’s foreign contributions, among other things.
The FEC on Monday provided The Associated Press with a spread sheet of potential overseas donors that did not include contributors who left their state designation blank. As a result, the list was incomplete.
The $3.3 million total does not include donors who have given less than $200 and whose contributions do not have to be itemized. Some of that money could also have come from overseas. About half of Obama’s $455 million in contributions so far are unitemized. The campaign does not identify those donors.
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, speaking to reporters en route to Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, noted that anyone can donate to the campaign through the Internet. “We monitor these things as best we can,” he said.
Republican John McCain’s campaign lists all his donors, even those who give less than $200, on his Web site.
The Obama campaign has begun to request passport numbers from donors to verify their citizenship.
Asked why the Obama campaign doesn’t do the same and open its database to the public, Axelrod said the campaign returns improper contributions.
“Obviously we’ve got a huge database of contributors,” he said. “It’s valuable to our campaign… We’re probably more forthcoming about disclosure than anyone.”
Independent watchdog groups, however, have asked the campaign to provide more information about its fundraisers and to at least provide information about small donors by zip code or country from where they donate.
Tell the Truth About Obama in Missouri, Go to Jail
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
September 26, 2008
In Missouri, if you “lie” about Barack Obama the cops may arrest you. “The effort appeared to be part of a move by the Obama campaign to block advertisements to which it objects. The campaign also sent ‘threatening’ letters to several news agencies in Pennsylvania and Ohio demanding they stop airing ads exposing Obama’s gun stance, according to the National Rifle Association,” writes WorldNetDaily, never mind Obama is a gun-grabber who claims to support the Second Amendment.
Obama told ABC he supports the D.C. handgun ban. His campaign told the Chicago Tribune “Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.” Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation, probably the largest private funder of anti-gun and pro-ban groups and research in the country. In addition, Obama voted for a bill that would “expand the definition of armor piercing ammunition” and “support[ed] banning the sale of ammunition for assault weapons,” including 223 and .308 caliber bullets, the most common rifle ammunition. He supported the Illinois Firearms Owners Identification (FOID) Card, mandatory for residents when they buy any firearm in the state. (For more information on Obama’s assault on the Second Amendment, see Analysis: Fact-Checkers Fall Short in Criticizing NRA’s Anti-Obama Ads.)
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In other words, if you cite Obama’s voting record or his publicly stated opinions and this rubs his “truth squads” wrong, they will sic the cops on you. “We want to keep this campaign focused on issues,” Jennifer Joyce, a Missouri prosecutor, told told KMOV (see video). “We don’t want people to get distracted. Missourians don’t want to be distracted by the divisive character attacks,” that is to say she does not want the sheep distracted by the truth — Obama is a gun-grabber who pretends to respect the Second Amendment. In addition to Joyce’s warming, Obama lawyer Robert Bauer threatened Missouri television and radio station managers that he would rat them out to the Federal Communication Commission if they dared tell the truth.
This is precisely how political campaigns are run in despotic third world countries and dictatorships that pretend to be democracies. In Bolivia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Burma, Georgia, Haiti — there is no shortage of recent examples — the opposition is routinely arrested, even killed, but we are supposedly above such tactics here in America. Instead, we just fix the voting machines and nix thousands of voters from the rolls.
It appears all of this has changed under Obama. Isn’t this the sort of behavior Hitler’s goons engaged in before he swept into power and killed millions of people, beginning with his political opponents? Isn’t this the sort of thing Stalin and Mao did, eventually graduating to mass murder and genocide? Didn’t East Germany’s Stasi encourage people to turn in their neighbors, even their family and friends, for holding the wrong political opinions?
Of course, Obama is no Stalin and his opponents are not showing up dead on the side of the road. But with this effort to silence the critics through coordinated police action we can see such fascism in a germination stage. Remember, Hitler’s brownshirts started out by intimidating communists, anarchists, and Social Democrats and then graduated to beatings, murder, and finally death camps.
Pelosi: The US election nightmare scenario
University of Virginia
The odds are that the victor of the American presidential election on 4 November will secure a clean-cut victory in the electoral college – an absolute majority of 270 votes or more.
But that isn’t a guaranteed result.
The closer the election gets – and right now the polls have it very tight indeed – the greater the chance that a tie of 269 to 269 will occur.
Nancy Pelosi: The next president of the United States?
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There are dozens of ways for the College to tie, given the 51 moving parts: the 50 states (each state assigned a number of electoral votes equal to the total of its House and Senate delegation) and the District of Columbia, assigned three electoral votes by constitutional amendment.
However, most of the ties are nonsensical, since most states have an established tilt to one party or the other. California will not go Republican, and Texas will not vote for the Democrat.
Yet take a look at the current electoral college map, which is based both on historical trends and this month’s polls:
The totally safe and likely states for Obama have 200 electoral votes. For McCain, the similar total is 174.
Leaning to Obama at present are Iowa, New Mexico, and Wisconsin, bringing the Democrat to 222. McCain has a slight edge for now in Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina, which would push him up to 227.
That leaves in the toss-up category seven states with a total of 89 votes: Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
How it might happen
Given the results in 2000 and 2004, when Michigan and Pennsylvania voted Democratic, it is not unreasonable to assign them to Obama, bringing him to 260, just 10 votes short of the White House. While Obama has a real chance to win in Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia, all three states have tended to vote Republican in many or most election years.
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 So what happens if a tie occurs? In two words, a mess  |
If McCain wins them, while Obama carries two small toss-up states, where recent surveys have given him a tiny edge, Nevada and New Hampshire, the 269-269 tie results.
Alternatively, let’s suppose McCain manages to carry New Hampshire – a Kerry state in 2004, but one that has given McCain key primary victories in 2000 and 2008. In this case, if McCain also wins Nevada, and Obama wins Colorado (while our other assumptions remain the same) we again end up with the 269-269 result.
If you mix and match states on the map, in fact, you will quickly see that it relatively easy to produce a tie in the electoral college. So what happens if one occurs? In two words: a mess.
Under the constitution, the election for president is thrown into the US House of Representatives, while the Senate picks the next vice-president (the Senate’s presiding officer).
The ‘unit rule’
But while the Senate simply requires a majority of its 100 members to select the vice- president, the House must vote by states, with each state delegation having a single vote, and a majority of the states (at least 26 of 50) required to agree on the winner.
Thomas Jefferson: The unit rule was fairer in 1800 than it is today
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This is called “the unit rule”. The founding fathers centred the idea on the fact that the nation was a confederation of states rather than a pure democracy of individual voters. Just as the electoral college is state-based, the House selection of the president in the case of deadlock revolves around the states.
The unit rule has been employed twice in US history, in the long-ago elections of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson emerged as president, and 1824, when John Quincy Adams was elected.
Both elections were controversial, but not mainly because of the unit rule. Two centuries ago, the unit rule was less undemocratic since population disparities among the handful of states were smaller, and Americans were much more accepting of elite control and a lack of popular sovereignty.
The United States of 2008 has very different values.
Think about what House selection of a president would mean today. Gargantuan California would have the same single House vote in choosing the new president as sparsely populated Wyoming, even though California has about 70 times its population. The votes of the mega-states of Florida, New York, and Texas could be cancelled out by the tiny populations of Montana, Rhode Island, and South Dakota.
Furthermore, large state delegations could internally deadlock via tie votes. Some large states might be deprived even of their single vote for the presidency. Tens of millions of people could be disenfranchised in this fashion.
Equal pigs
Meanwhile, all the small states with single House members will certainly be counted. The smaller the House delegation, the more likely the state’s House members will be able to reach agreement or at least finish their tally. All pigs would be equal, but in this odd Orwellian case, the tiny pigs would be more equal than the huge ones.
How could a president elected in this fashion govern effectively?
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The turmoil would be an international embarrassment, at the very least |
If the public reaction to the Supreme Court’s Bush v Gore decision in 2000 was bitter, one can scarcely imagine the outrage that would greet a modern application of the unit rule. By the way, well over 90% of the American people are unaware of this constitutional provision.
So if a 269-to-269 tie occurs, what is the likely outcome?
On the surface, one would think Barack Obama would be likely to capture the Presidency – and that would be my early bet. Already, Democrats control a majority of 27 states’ House delegations, and the party is expected to pick up additional seats this November – perhaps pushing a couple of other state delegations their way.
But it may not be so straightforward.
The new Congress would take up the matter quickly in early January, but would have to produce a result by Inauguration Day (20 January).
Suppose some large state delegations reach an impasse? Suppose some of the more conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats decide to break with their party and vote the way their districts or states did, presumably for John McCain?
The turmoil would be an international embarrassment, at the very least. If a stalemate results, the constitution provides that the vice-president-elect would become acting president until the gridlock is broken. Presumably, that would be Joe Biden since Democrats are expected to have a comfortable majority in the new Senate.
However, what if the Senate gets tied up in parliamentary knots? It’s been known to happen.
Then America is likely to get its first female President, at least until the deadlock is broken. No, she won’t be named Hillary Clinton, nor will the acting chief be Sarah Palin. Next-in-line will be the Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Professor Larry J Sabato is director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and the author of A More Perfect Constitution.
Obama, McCain Share Iraq “Strategy”
Matthew B. Stannard
San Francisco Chronicle
September 22, 2008
A year ago, the Iraq war was a sure bet to dominate the 2008 presidential campaign.
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Gen. David Petraeus, admitting frustration at the war’s slow progress, predicted that the size of the U.S. force in Iraq would remain largely unchanged for the foreseeable future. American troops were dying at a rate of two or three a day. And one-third of voters said in a Gallup poll that Iraq would be the determining issue in who they’d vote for in November.
Against that backdrop, the two future presidential nominees couldn’t have been further apart. Sen. Barack Obama was calling for an immediate troop withdrawal; Sen. John McCain was warning that a date for withdrawal would be “a date for surrender.”
What a difference a year makes.
Today, Iraq is quieter, a turn that most experts attribute to the increase in troop strength and a renunciation of violence by U.S.-paid Sunni militias and rogue Shiite groups. Just eight American troops were killed in action in Iraq in July, the lowest level since the war began, and just 12 were killed in August.
Obama: Fully invested in your misery
Bruce Walker
American Thinker
September 22, 2008
Obama seems happier these days. It is almost as if the disembodied spirit of his mentor, Saul Alinsky, is watching and smiling. Americans are suffering. Losses in the stock market, panic in the financial market, pain at the gas pump and in the grocery — all these miseries of average Americans are a delicious narcotic to socialists like Barack Obama.
What was the historic maxim of the Left? “The worse, the better.” Alinsky said that if there was an afterlife, “I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.” This is the man whose mind guides Obama’s thoughts.
Americans ought to ponder that before electing a man who thrives politically — the sphere of his life that really matter to him — on the unhappiness, helplessness, and hopelessness of his fellow citizens. When his voice promises “hope,” as it so often does, we should recall that what he is promising is communal “hope.” Our experiences, our lives, our souls, to Obama, belong to society. We cannot have hope by ourselves. We can only have hope as part of a vast mass of humanity.
The “change” he promises is also collective change, enforced by the rod of government. Hope and change, in a free world, are the private possessions of motivated individuals. Political leaders bring benefits like honest government, national security, sensible and moderate programs to accomplish the broad purposes of the Constitution, and blind justice. But in a free world, in a free country, politicians do not complete our personal dreams or our private hopes.
It takes much to separate Americans from ownership of their lives. The means of rendering people from their lives is misery. Let the mortgage giants collapse. Let refineries and oil exploration stop. Let food prices spike. Let individual lives drown in worries and in troubles created by the state. Then make those individuals turn to the state for release from pain. Long ago, the formula was written: “The worse, the better.”
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Existence ordered by free hearts and minds is chaos to the Left. We cannot find happiness in our own, unorganized and unregulated pursuits. We cannot have meaningful lives separate from the dogma of the Party and, as Obama put in it the closed doors of San Francisco elites, “clinging to our religion.”
No, it is not our religion which we must cling to. It is his religion, the religion of collectivism, the faith in the coercive power of the state, that must become our passionate system of belief. But men do not chain themselves willingly. There must be a pressure cooker, an artificial creation of unbearable forces, before men place manacles on their wrists and feet and smile. Men must be made to believe inwardly what the Left whispers quietly: The worse, the better.
Do not doubt that Barack Obama is just as thrilled with the panic in our economic markets as Adolph Hitler was seventy-five years ago in Germany by the heartbreak of the German middle class. Obama is a much more humane, sane, and placid man than Hitler, but the basic principle of all radical Leftists — Hitler or Obama — is identical. A happy society is a society that does not need them. A desperate society, alone, will grant them the power they crave, and “The worse, the better” is the unstated goal of men who want power above all else.
It is not coincidence that the rhetoric of Obama is so blank that almost anyone could put almost any wish within the womb of his words. Barack Obama does not intend to really say anything. He seeks, instead, to promise vague emotional fulfillment to unhappy people. He whispers undefined action which will make the dreariness of life go away. He needs your sadness to grant his dreams. If Americans are doing well, Barack Obama cannot do well. He grasps at every level the grim truth of the Left: The worse, the better.
So what do we think will happen if we choose a man so fixed upon our wretchedness? Do we assume that he will solve our problems? When, if ever, has that happened in human history? True saviors are men like Churchill, who do not promise hope but rather blood, toil, sweat, and tears. True saviors are men like Washington, who told his countrymen as often as he could that they did not need him. True saviors are men like Reagan, who did not make his fame or fortune in politics, but entered politics to liberate us all. None of those great men ever relished a single pain of their countrymen.
The hungry Left always imagines that the end, truly, justifies the means. It holds (it thinks) the key to secular heaven and the suffering of ordinary people feeds the bonfires of its march to power. History is the lesson book of man. We do not have to guess about what happens when the people, without hope, give power to those who thrive on suffering. “The worse, the better” always leads to things much worse than the causes that made men barter their rights for promises.
The Truth about Sarah Palin
Compiled by Debbie Niwa
9-21-8
– Governor Palin did not sign Alaska’s SB 202 to prohibit state funding and implementation of the federal Real ID Act. The bill was allowed to become law (without Palin’s signature) and went into effect 8/26/06.
– As a candidate for governor, Palin’s response to the question “What role does state government have, if any, in addressing global warming and climate change?” was: “We need to analyze the potential economic costs, needs and opportunities associated with climate change. Let’s be cautious in how we react – to make sure we don’t overreact. The Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission is supposed to assess the situation and issue a report on March 1, 2007. This is a good start.” (Anchorage Daily News, 10/22/06)
– “On September 14, 2007, Governor Sarah Palin signed Administrative Order No. 238, officially forming the Alaska Climate Change Sub-Cabinet. The Sub-Cabinet is charged with preparing and implementing an Alaska Climate Change Strategy. This will be a transparent document which deals with state policies for anticipated climate change. …” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
– As Alaska’s Governor, Palin is a delegate to PNWER (Pacific NorthWest Economic Region). PNWER is a public-private partnership including elected officials and private sector representatives from Alaska, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Canada (Alberta, Yukon, British Columbia) “PNWER is an international collaboration on economic structures” (AK Rep. Coghill). Among it’s many areas of focus, PNWER works to “advance CANAMEX” — a “seamless” continental intermodal trade and transportation corridor (a main artery in what has been referred to in the past as the NAFTA Superhighway system).
PNWER is also involved with the WA-BC Enhanced Driver’s License for Washington State and British Columbia. The license “will be accepted by Department of Homeland Security at any land or sea port in North America including Mexico.”
(NOTE: Enhanced/Secure Driver’s License initiatives and REAL ID are basically the same: a national ID with the holder’s information (including biometric) in an international data information-sharing system).
– Gov. Palin signed two state proclamations that support U.N. agendas: Alaska Model United Nation Days and Environmental Education Week (a lead-in to the U.N.’s “Earth Day.”) (NOTE: If you don’t understand the implications, please take the time to find out how U.N. agendas are negatively impacting the United States and other nations).
— In Sarah Palin’s “Education in Alaska” (pdf attached), she proposes what are essentially the SAME OLD reforms that have existed in federal law — e.g., “Goals 2000,” “School-to-Work,” “Improving America’s Schools,”"No Child Left Behind,” “Workforce Investment Act,” etc. — that have led to declining academic quality in U.S. public education. (NOTE: Read Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt’s book “the deliberate dumbing down of america . . . A Chronological Paper Trail” if you want to learn about what has been taking place with the U.S. educational system. Download free pdf of Charlotte’s book — go to:
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com
– Palin as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska: According to Michael Rollins (The Oregonian, 9/5/08): “Most of Palin’s terms consisted of fairly routine, small-scale projects for public works improvements with one notable exception, a $15 million multi-sports complex. Citizens must have wanted it bad. The net bonded indebtedness of $926 per citizen jumped to $3,381. The March 2002 vote to raise the sales tax .5 percent to 2.5 percent to pay for the complex had a 12.4 percent turnout. Of 4,231 registered voters, 306 voted yes and 287 voted no. Palin’s hometown paper the Frontiersman …[published a] story on an eminent domain problem that has stretched into this year.”
(NOTE: Eminent domain was used to seize the private land chosen for the sports complex. Construction began before all the legal issues were finalized over the property title. Bottom line: “years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget.” (Wall St. Journal, 9/6/08)
– Did not find verification of Palin’s NRA membership or when she joined. To date, NRA has not come out with an endorsement for Palin. [9/9/08 UPDATE: Someone has alerted me to a NRA-ILA article that states Palin "is a NRA Life Member" . Still haven't located info about when she joined.]
– Palin is a member of Feminist for Life (FFL). Length and degree of Palin’s involvement: ?. Outside of Palin’s connection, the history of this pro-life feminist group makes for interesting, reading, Snipits: FFL was founded in 1972 (Ohio) by two former NOW members who felt “abortion violated feminist principles” FFL actively pushed for E.R.A. ratification; the international body has consultative status with the U.N. Economic and Social Council and supports the U.N. Millennium Development goals; FFL of New Zealand split away (with a name change) from the FFL of America as consequence of the New Zealand group changing “from a secular liberal organization to a Christian conservative organization, reflecting the changing views of its founder Connie Purdue (1912-2000). It now focuses solely on fetal life, in contrast to FFL’s pro-woman, pro-life approach.” (FFL History)
– Governor Palin is a member of the National Governors Association (NGA). She chairs the NGA’s Natural Resources Committee. (NOTE: The NGA’s policy positions — on education, health, workforce, environment, security, etc — are similar to congressionally legislated initiatives as well as recommendations from appointed members of commissions and task forces.)
There is a lot more.
My conclusion about Sarah Palin and her policies is that she is not so different from many elected and appointed U.S. leaders who are leading us down the wrong path.
I close with these thoughts by Bob Harris:
“We have to stop believing stuff just because we like the way believing stuff makes us feel. Feelings are not truth. [...] Our future is fragile. …So asking questions — especially uncomfortable ones — is part of our healthy process of figuring out how to react. Gaining information so you can make informed decisions is a patriotic act. … Knowledge is power. Ignorance is not a virtue. [...] Our ability to discuss and dissent and grow from the exchange is precisely what makes America a free country worth protecting.” (“America’s war on terrorism: How we got in this mess, how we can get out,” Cleveland Free Times, 10/24-30/2001)
Top Contributors in 2008 Presidential Election Cycle
These tables list the top donors to these candidates in the 2008 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organization’s PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals’ immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.
John McCain
Merrill Lynch $298,413
Citigroup Inc. $269,251
Morgan Stanley $233,272
Goldman Sachs $208,395
JP Morgan Chase & Co. $179,975
Barack Obama
Goldman Sachs $691,930
University of California $611,207
Citigroup Inc. $448,599
JP Morgan Chase & Co. $442,919
Harvard University $435,769
Source: OpenSecrets.org Center for Rensponsive Politics
Hillary Clinton’s rich friend Lady de Rothschild ambushes Barack Obama
FLASHBACK:
Sarah Baxter
London Times
August 17, 2008
At the Democratic national convention next week, Lynn Forester, Lady de Rothschild, one of Britain’s most influential political hostesses, will be contemplating treachery. She poured her heart and money into Hillary Clinton’s campaign and she is thinking of voting for John McCain, the Republican candidate, for president.
She is not impressed by Barack Obama and doubts he will reach the White House. “My loyalty is to the Democrats winning. Barack Obama is going to have a serious problem getting elected, for good reason,” she said in an interview.
“The party needs to face the fact that without Hillary Clinton on the ticket, the Democrats will probably lose.”
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Rothschild, 54, is a New York businesswoman and top fundraiser for Clinton who married into the British banking dynasty.
The billionaire Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, 22 years her senior and former chairman of the family firm, NM Rothschild, will be with her in Denver when Obama is crowned the victor. She regards the presumptive Democratic nominee, 47, as something of a usurper.
The Rothschilds spent the night of their wedding dinner in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House when Bill Clinton was president, so her loyalty to Hillary is understandable. However, the passionate distrust of Obama shared by many Clinton supporters is turning into a headache for the Democrats.
Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, was tasked by the Obama campaign this summer with soothing ruffled feelings and helping Hillary loyalists to get over their sense of loss. It has been a demanding assignment.
“There is a sense of entitlement that almost seems to be inbred,” Panetta said. “They are convinced Hillary is the one who should be assuming the mantle and it’s tough to crack that.”
Rothschild is the founder of Together4Us, a group formed to “honour” Clinton and the nearly 18m voters who supported her in the primaries. Among its demands were a state-by-state roll-call of votes – a final show of muscle by the vanquished Clinton – and a prime speaking slot for her.
McCain-Palin: “Bridge to Hell”
Larry Chin
Global Research
September 17, 2008
As the slime of the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign engulfs the world like a tidal wave of sewage, the calculating political manipulators behind the Republican ticket, and their end game, have received scant attention. If recent polls are to be believed, the election (if it is not already stolen) may already be over.
The Turd Blossom’s son
The McCain-Palin dirty tricks campaign is the work of Republican operative Steve Schmidt.
Schmidt is a protégé of Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove. He has elevated several of the most toxic individuals on earth to positions of global power. He is also a counselor to Dick Cheney. It was Schmidt who successfully spearheaded the lobbying efforts behind the confirmations of Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. And it was Schmidt’s manipulation of image, celebrity and popular disgust that installed actor and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger as the do-nothing governor of California.
The Rove filth playbook — media manipulations, intimidation, lurid character attack techniques, corruption, falsification and lying, cynical appeals to the most foul aspects of the American psyche — is something that Schmidt has clearly mastered, and it is being enthusiastically applied to McCain-Palin as part of a long-term extremist agenda.
As described in Paul Alexander’s Machiavelli’s Shadow: “The Rove scorched earth approach to political campaigns is a reflection of a willingness to perform whatever ruthless, unethical acts necessary to transform America into a fascist regime.
“Once he [George W. Bush] reached the White House, as part of his effort to achieve a permanent Republican majority, he would put into place a plan that included a corruption of the state and federal governing systems that bordered on the diabolical, a scheme that went so far to create a sort of government within a government to carry out its actions. But in order to achieve what he wanted he had to win elections, and to win elections, in true Machiavellian style, he would do or say whatever he had to, no matter who got damaged in the process, no matter how badly.”
Alexander quotes longtime Texas Republican strategist Mark Sanders: “[Rove] immediately started putting together a plan for what was essentially the Third Reich of the Republican majority in this country. That was absolutely his plan, a Republican majority domination not just of the US House, the US Senate and the presidency, but also state legislatures across the country. This was not just a pie-in-the-sky dream that Karl had. He wanted to see the Republican Party rule for the next 30 to 40 years.”
Rove’s choreography of George W. Bush’s political career proved that it was possible to elevate a mentally ill and willfully stupid criminal to world power, and, along the way, harness the ignorance of the American masses with a completely manufactured image, appeals to fear, appeals to right-wing evangelical fanatics (via cultural and moral “wedge issues”), and other rude distractions from reality, and from the issues.
To the Rove formula, Schmidt adds insidious new elements that tap even further into the lowest aspects of the modern American mass psyche: the “politics of personality.” The stuff of Hollywood tabloids and gossip rags, and lowbrow reality television programs.
Schmidt secured the governorship of California for Schwarzenegger by projecting the unqualified actor’s Hollywood action hero persona, along with a manufactured aura of being a maverick outsider fighting against an establishment.
McCain-Palin is an Arnold Schwarzenegger sequel, with extreme violence, and a murderous female assassin, as its star.
Sarah Palin: irritant
Far from being the desperate, hasty, unvetted “hail Mary” on the part of John McCain, the selection of Sarah Palin, “Caribou Barbie,” the self-described “pit bull in lipstick” is a diabolical master play on the part of Schmidt and the right wing.
The Palin element has revitalized a dead McCain campaign, while creating anxiety and confusion across Obama-Biden and the Democratic Party. By design, Palin, not McCain, is essentially the head of the ticket, its star, its attack poodle.
She is crass and vindictive, psychotic, willfully stupid, criminal, crass, zealously loyal to more powerful masters, a world-class narcissist, an egomaniac, and a vengeful hatemonger — a female George W. Bush and a perfect Republican tool.
The vast wasteland of her mind, combined with a mean, sadistic and crazed fanaticism (see The Palin theocracy and Sarah Palin’s Ties to the Christian Right) appeals to the right-wing base. But her appeal goes beyond that.
No one better represents, and appeals to, the demise of mainstream American society than Palin. Nobody better embodies the ignorance, stupidity, self-importance, and brash emptiness that appeals to the widest swath of today’s American wasteland.
Palin’s mental illness and crass stupidity were clearly exposed in her ABC interview with Charles Gibson. Palin recited, in robotic fashion, the propaganda talking points she was told to repeat ad nauseum (by Schmidt). Asked by Gibson if nuclear war with Russia was a possibility with a McCain-Palin administration, she happily replied “Perhaps so!”
A nuclear holocaust and all-out world war. Just like that.
She is clearly unqualified, and deeply and openly corrupt. Her activities in Alaska are brimming with scandal, abuses of power, and vicious vendettas. She is a secessionist and a wild-eyed Creationist, who three times asked city librarian Mary Ellen Emmons if she was okay with censoring books, even sending her a letter (later rescinded) that she was going to be fired.
None of this matters, by Steve Schmidt’s calculations. He knows that the America the McCain-Palin machine needs to wrap up doesn’t read, doesn’t know about the world, and doesn’t care about her qualifications; only her “maverick,” “pit bull” image — and her measurements. (There is no question that sex appeal is a factor.) The qualifications of George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t matter, either.
Sarah Palin is someone out of a bad reality television program, a living lampoon. And she’s “hot” — she will get the vote of untold numbers of men, who do not give a damn on this basis alone.
Palin is honey to all of them: the “Wal-Mart” drones, the right-wing Christian Dominionist fringe, the gun-toting white trash survivalists, the militant Hillary Clinton “PUMAs,” the right-wing thugs.
The Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu, another favorite of Rove (and therefore Schmidt), delighted in the use of irritants to confuse, harass and sow disorder among adversaries.
Palin is an irritant, brought in to pester, aggravate, annoy, the victims of her crass, shrill attacks.
Palin’s gender has been used as both a weapon of mass destruction, and as a defensive shield. She can attack Obama and the Democrats, but she has been protected from any sort of counterattack, thanks to the deer-in-headlights mentality of her opponents, as well as a free pass from the media. It doesn’t matter, in the Schmidt-Rove calculation, that Palin is an insult to women, and also an insult to women who identify with Hillary Clinton. All that matters is it’s working.
Palin is not only being used as a distraction. There is “strategery” involved. She has turned an easy and orderly Obama conclusion into a race against the clock. As an unknown, a complete mystery when her out-of-left field selection was announced, the Democrats have been racing against the political clock to gather enough information to even come up with a counter-strategy. So far, there is no evidence of one.
It is not clear at this point if the more mature neocon manipulators behind the larger John McCain machine (Henry Kissinger, William Kristol, Iran-Contra figure Robert McFarlane, Brent Scowcroft, George Shultz, etc.) approve of Palin, or the prospect of having to stage-manage another George W. Bush, should McCain secure the White House and die or become incapacitated before his term ends. But Palin in any office, on any level, is nightmarish.
If there is a rational plan behind the Palin selection, it is the one put forth by Mike Ruppert, author of Crossing the Rubicon. It involves the central question, oil: “The selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be John McCain’s running mate is terrifying. It would be good news if McCain were just out of his mind or desperate. Remember Dan Quayle? Quayle was also a lightweight. But in Quayle’s case there was little to suggest what his influence in Indiana could do for the Bush I administration.
“In Palin’s case what she can do for a McCain administration is all too obvious. She can help turn Alaska into one giant oil field quickly and without any concern for the environment. She can redefine the term ‘fast track.’ She knows the state and can wheel and deal in the places that will most quickly open up protected areas for drilling. Damn the torpedoes … That realization was instantaneous for me. Then came the second epiphany. McCain is acting as if the election is irrelevant and it just may be. The Republicans did steal the last two didn’t they?
“Is this one already so far in the bag that McCain doesn’t care what she does to his national ticket?”
Sarah Palin will be the next president of the United States. If not in the next few years, then at the next opportunity. The world will have Steve Schmidt’s manipulations to thank for it.
The McCain “war hero” lie
John McCain’s tepid presidential effort was falling apart under the management of the (equally unsavory) strategist Charles Black, and appeared doomed in the wake of the Democrat’s euphoric convention.
In recent weeks, going into the successful Republican convention, Schmidt and Co. has united the fractured Republicans (with Palin), while orchestrating a massive Roveian tidal wave of the most transparently outrageous swift boating gutter attacks against Obama and fear-mongering, and sharpening, simplifying, and dumbing down the McCain image to its most basic:
McCain=War Hero and prisoner of war. McCain=Maverick.
Other pithy campaign themes include “Drill, baby, drill,” and regurgitated “war on terror/9-11” slogans.
Both of McCain’s false character labels have served as one-word talking points on the campaign trail, to be repeated endlessly like a blunt instrument on the collective skull of the American population. It is also being used as protective shield, with McCain crying, “You can’t attack me because I was a POW” to all forms of criticism and inquiry.
Schmidt’s stage and media management has successfully silenced discussions about the darkness of McCain: his temperament (irrationality, penchant for rage, bizarre outbursts, etc.), his corruption, and his criminal connections.
Douglas Valentine, a foremost authority on war history, and the author of The Phoenix Program, wrote the most incisive and thorough analysis of John McCain in the following piece:
John McCain: War Hero or North Vietnam’s Go-To Collaborator?
In this thoughtful and on-target expose, Valentine demolishes the “war hero” myth, while exposing the McCain psychology.
Valentine points out the following:
1. McCain is the scion of a family of military elites. His career has been one of privilege.
2. McCain is no war hero, he is a war criminal, who bombed “gooks” on some 22 Navy bombing missions, boasting about himself, and the killing, without remorse, according to a psychologist who interviewed McCain in 1970.
3. McCain was likely a willing collaborator, who quickly and routinely (over three years) offered up specific classified information to his captors. This specific information resulted in key military defeats for the US, and untold American deaths. Two of McCain’s fellow POWs, Ted Guy and Gordon “Swede” Larson have long expressed doubts that McCain was tortured.
4. McCain was a “professional psywar stooge,” who collaborated in psychological warfare offensives aimed at American servicemen.
5. McCain has persistently lied about his experience, to political advantage across his subsequent civilian career. Meanwhile, his detractors, including fellow POWs who knew him, and other Vietnam veterans critical of his posturing, have been ignored, but not discredited. If there is a man who deserves to be legitimately “swift-boated,” it is McCain.
According to Valentine, “This is the lesson of McCain’s experience as a POW: a true politician, a hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain’s campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him and in return, he danced to their tune.”
Valentine credits strategist Mark Salter for creating the original McCain myth, “casting him as a modern Teddy Roosevelt, ‘the war hero turned domestic reformer.’ In large, the Salter strategy has worked. The American media accepts McCain’s war hero myth as gospel and, in so doing, bolsters the ‘straight talk’ image so essential in politics.” Further, Valentine notes, “it’s not the collaboration that makes John McCain unfit for office; it’s the fact that he has managed to rewrite his collaboration into political capital. ‘He’s a war hero, respect him, or die.’ . . . In his current presidential campaign, he’s cozying up to the hate-mongering Christian right he once criticized. He’s reversed positions on so many issues that his Democratic rivals have assembled his contrasting statements into ‘The Great McCain Versus McCain Debates’ . . . This essential dishonesty, this lie of the soul, is a sign of a larger lack of character . . .
“McCain is not some principled leader, not a maverick cowboy fighting the powerful. He’s a sycophant. He believes in nothing but power and will do anything to attain it. He explodes in anger when challenged because, when a criticism hits too close to home, it goes straight to his deep-seated shame.”
McCain’s political career is full of skeletons, and continuous corruption. Among them, McCain was a member of the infamous Keating Five, a member of Congress who received bribes for covering up the savings and loan scandal, and blocking investigations. The S&L Scandal, a CIA/Mafia operation connected to the Bush faction, looted $2 billion in taxpayer money. McCain was also an Iran-Contra liar, one of Oliver North’s most passionate defenders. An airplaine used by McCain and his lobbyist was used to fly the Saudi royal family out of the US, after 9/11.
There is strong evidence that the conflict in Georgia and South Ossetia was set up by provocateurs, lobbyists working for McCain, sent in by McCain, and the Bush-Cheney administration. Routed Georgian forces were caught crying for McCain’s help.
Steve Schmidt and the rest of the McCain apparatus will make sure that none of this factual history becomes campaign fodder.
Deer in the headlights
Flushed with euphoria from their successful Denver convention, Obama-Biden and the Democrats were promptly kicked repeatedly in the private parts by the McCain-Palin-Schmidt machine and the corporate media that the right wing almost fully controls.
While the swift boating has gone largely unanswered, Obama-Biden have refused to respond to the attacks, while also refusing to criticize the “great American war hero McCain and his great service,” and refusing to go after Palin.
At the same time, Steve Schmidt has stolen, literally ripped, the Obama “change” theme from under Obama-Biden’s feet. Nobody except Obama’s people care that they stole it.
Everything important about McCain and Palin are off the table, just as the impeachment of Bush-Cheney has been kept off the table by the spineless Dem leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid. Joe Biden, presumed to be the feisty fighter on the Obama ticket, has been silent and invisible. He has already promised to be nice to Palin.
At a recent appearance, Obama tried to laugh off the swift boating, saying to the audience, “they must really think you’re that stupid.” What Obama doesn’t seem to grasp is what Schmidt/Rove does: the election will be decided by the genuinely stupid. The people who have no interest in polite, long-winded, rational discussions of nuanced policy.
The playbook that successfully stole the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections has not changed. (The 2006 contest was ceded to the Democrats; Bush-Cheney bet that the Dems would not successfully challenge them on any major issue, and have won that bet.) Schmidt understands that the Democratic faction still hasn’t learned to win either the rhetorical fight, or prevent the entire charade from being stolen electronically (Republican companies still control elections), and through intimidation, theft of voting rolls, and purges.
Also, in what appears to be another calculated Republican trick, just in time for the election, the Bush-Cheney administration has stolen Obama’s thunder by redeploying forces from Iraq to Afghanistan (as suggested for months by Obama), ramping up the “war on terrorism” in Pakistan (as suggested by Obama). Obama who has now proclaimed that Bush’s Iraq “surge” was “successful beyond his wildest dreams.”
Does Obama-Biden have anything left to talk about, with just two months left?
Past the brink of madness
Should the right-wing successfully secure White House power for the mentally ill, warmongering John McCain, and the demented, willfully stupid, fanatical Sarah Palin, humanity will face a horror even worse than Bush-Cheney.
For all of its brutality and vileness, Bush-Cheney was, at its core, a criminal apparatus charged with a campaign of pillage that it carried out like a team of mafia assassins.
By contrast, McCain and Palin are two irrational individuals with deranged, pathological psyches, backed by a massive and rapidly growing fanatical theocracy with visions of murderous world destruction.
It is not clear at this time if the more seasoned, rational elites have control of this machine, or if a fanatical Rove/Schmidt theocratic faction within the neocon faction is truly on the verge of an unprecendented coup.
It is even less clear if its counterweight, the establishment neoliberal faction behind Obama, with its more obvious Wall Street backing, will even get a sniff at the White House, or survive another stolen election. The battle between the two corporate war factions will pave the way towards a certain horror.
With the world facing an energy crisis, world war over resources, an economic system on the verge of collapse, and other unprecedented catastrophes, is the American empire about to be handed over to typical fist-in-velvet glove neoliberals, or even more openly fascist regime in the eleventh hour, to complete the war and homeland militarization started with Bush-Cheney?
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