Sarah Palin unleashed by John McCain for attacks on Barack Obama - US elections

Sarah Palin was deployed by John McCain as his election "attack dog" at the weekend as the race for the White House entered its final month.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
UK Telegraph

Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of 'palling around with terrorists who would target their own country' Photo: AFP / GETTY Mr. McCain's aides had kept Mrs Palin, 44, under wraps as much as possible, beginning to fear she might become a liability. But fresh from an assured performance in the vice-presidential debate, and with Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, surging ahead in the opinion polls, Mr McCain threw caution to the wind and ordered that Mrs Palin, 44, attack his White House rival repeatedly and ferociously.

Let off the leash on Saturday, Mrs Palin accused Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country" in a reference to him once being a member of a Chicago community group with William Ayers. The former member of the Weather Underground was last active in the domestic terrorist group during the presidential candidate's childhood.

She added: "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."
The Obama campaign responded that Mrs Palin's attack was "gutter politics" and other supporters suggested that the McCain campaign was merely trying to distract voters from the economy, on which Mr Obama is deemed to be more competent.

However, more worrying for Mr McCain is that her first pitbull-like assault on Mr Obama appeared yesterday to have backfired spectacularly as Democrats queued up to dish electoral dirt on Mr McCain.

They believe that John Kerry lost to George W. Bush in 2004 because he did not respond strongly enough to Republican attacks. But they do not intend to stand idly by this time.

Paul Begala, a leading Democratic strategist, said that Mr McCain had been on the board of a group for ultra-conservatives that was once condemned by the Anti-Defamation League as being a forum "for extremists, racists and anti-Semites".

"Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain's record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face," said Mr Begala.

The Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel warned there was plenty of ammunition to launch against Mr McCain if the race soured further.

"If we are going to go down this road, you know, Barack Obama at eight years old somehow responsible for Bill Ayers. At 58, John McCain was associating with Charles Keating." Keating, a lawyer and banker, was jailed for his role in a savings and loan scandal in the 1980s.

Mrs Palin joked at the Republican convention that the difference between a hockey mom - a title she proudly proclaims - and a pitbull was just "lipstick".

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The Real McCain

I received this message from the son of a very dear friend of mine who has been doing everything they can to find out the truth and help others find the truth regarding McCain. They are good people who love their country and like me and so many of us, are trying desperately to uncover the lies the McCain campaign just keeps rolling out.

The Real McCain 2 reached an astonishing 4 million views last week, just as the McCain campaign was trotting out lie after lie at the Republican National Convention. Coincidence? We don't think so. To us, this unprecedented number suggests that the public is desperately seeking the truth about John McCain -- a truth the corporate press still isn't providing. We're hearing reports of a lot of hand-wringing from people who are scared and don't know what to do.

So we came up with a way to put that nervous energy to good use! Join the McCain Truth Squad and a couple of times a week we will send you McCain videos for you to forward on with a personal note to your friends, colleagues and family members. Join the McCain Truth Squad: http://www.blogger.com/

To get you started, below are five videos that present the Real McCain: an elitist out of touch with hard-working Americans; a double talker who supports a costly war in Iraq but won't support our veterans. Forward this email on. This is the McCain everyone should know.

1. The Real McCain 2: Watch as McCain's YouTube problem became his nightmare in the video that received over 4 million views. http://www.blogger.com/

2. Less Jobs. More Wars: What is this 'Iraq war' charge on my bill? http://www.blogger.com/

3. John McCain vs. John McCain: Tell McCain to get off the Double Talk Express. http://www.blogger.com/

4. McCain's Spiritual Guide: The video that caused McCain to renounce Rev. Rod Parsley's bigoted endorsement. http://www.blogger.com/

5. Why Won't McCain Sign the GI Bill? Presenting the most blatant hypocrisy of the McCain campaign. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK_9sI7hzAc

Imagine how differently people would regard McCain if they saw all five of these videos and learned the truth. That's why we want you to forward this e-mail to everyone and anyone with a personal note at the top from you. Why send these videos individually when you can send them all at once? Also, get them on all the blogs and traditional news sites you can. Make sure you're doing everything you can to educate the public about the Real McCain.

Yours,
Robert Greenwald and the Brave New team

Ignorance Must Equal Bliss in Our Country Today

I have been so totally frustrated by everything I have read the past week and then today the results of the NBC Poll that shows McCain in a dead heat with Obama, that nothing I have tried to write down is readable -- even to me. So I'm going to fall back on one of my favorite Op-Ed Columnists, Bob Herbert. I've quoted him before, as those of you who have read my posts in the past know, but tonight I'm depending on his column for today to say what I seem to be unable to say -- at least in any language that you could understand or not be offended by.

September 9, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Hold Your Heads Up
By BOB HERBERT

Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?

Troglodytes on the right are no respecters of reality. They say the most absurd things and hardly anyone calls them on it. Evolution? Don’t you believe it. Global warming? A figment of the liberal imagination.

Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.

So there was Hillary Clinton, of all people, sponsoring legislation to ban flag-burning; and Barack Obama, who once opposed the death penalty, morphing into someone who not only supports it, but supports it in cases that don’t even involve a homicide.

Anyway, the Republicans were back at it last week at their convention. Mitt Romney wasn’t content to insist that he personally knows that “liberals don’t have a clue.” He complained loudly that the federal government right now is too liberal.

“We need change, all right,” he said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.”

Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.

There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.

Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.

The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.

“In the procedural motions that preceded final passage,” wrote historian Jean Edward Smith in his biography, “FDR,” “House Republicans voted almost unanimously against Social Security. But when the final up-or-down vote came on April 19 [1935], fewer than half were prepared to go on record against.”

Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.

When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.”
Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”

Scary.

Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.

Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).

Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.

It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned.

Self-hatred is a terrible thing. Just ask that arch-conservative Clarence Thomas.

Liberals need to get over it.

Thank you, Mr. Herbert! For reminding me, for reminding all of us.

The Requirements of Liberty

I am a great admirer of several of the New York Times Op-Ed Columnists and not the least of these is Bob Herbert. I find great wisdom in what he has to say and today was no exception.

Democrats everywhere are really busy mouthing about Sarah Palin and much of it is justified, but as Herbert said today, “Palin is the latest GOP distraction. She’s meant to shift attention away from the real issue of this campaign – the awful state of the nation after eight years of Republican rule. The Republicans are brilliant at distractions. Willie Horton was a distraction. The chatter about gays, guns and God has been a long-running distraction. And we all remember the Swift-boat campaign.”

There are much bigger issues that the Republicans don’t want you dwelling on these days, issues such as schools having to cut costs, and this as 50 million children are getting ready to return to classes all across our country. The crippling increases in the price of food and fuel, not to mention the economic downturn.

These are the things that Democrats should be focusing on and not, to quote, Herbert, the “bash Ms. Palin bandwagon”. And Obama and Biden have kept their comments about her quite mild and that’s fine. “But the great issues of this campaign loom like giant redwoods over the pathetic weeds of politics as usual and the myriad distractions that have turned one presidential election after another into a national embarrassment.”

Seventy- two years ago, in his renomination speech at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, Franklin D. Roosevelt rose above the boiler-plate rhetoric of political speeches and spoke of his generation’s “rendezvous with destiny>”

He warned of the perils to the nation of economic inequality, “Liberty,” he said, “requires the opportunity to make a living, a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.”

Those words certainly resonate today with the very meaning of America, a meaning that is so much deeper than what our politics have become, “We are fighting,” he told his audience, “to save a great and precious form of government, for ourselves and for the world.”

Let us hope that we all can remember those words as this election moves ahead. Let us move beyond the petty and disgusting efforts that the Republicans have become so adept at in attempting to destroy their opponents by whatever means. Hopefully by so doing we can move ahead in securing the dream that Roosevelt laid out for this country seventy-two years ago.