John McMaverickypants doesn't want you to have the health care he's had his entire adult life. And he doesn't want Iraq veterans to have that same health care.
Don't you think we're entitled to know what our tax dollars have been providing him?
From the great folks at Brave New Films:
John McCain has not yet released his medical records to the public. McCain is 72 years old, and has been diagnosed with invasive melanoma. In May of this year, a small group of selected reporters were allowed to review 1,173 pages of McCain's medical records that covered only the last eight years, and were allowed only three hours to do so. John McCain's health is an issue of profound importance. We call on John McCain to issue a full, public disclosure of all of his medical records, available for the media and members of the general public to review.
When even Karl Rove says you've lied, you're a liar:
WALLACE: What does McCain do that goes a step too far?
ROVE: McCain has gone, in some of his ads, similarly gone one step too far in sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100% truth test. [Fox News Sunday, 9/14/08]
'As a step toward underworld environmental awareness, henceforth all commode paper in Outer Hades will be recycled from the vast supply of discarded copies of An Inconvenient Book - The Management'
Some Palin supporters will dislike this commercial, others won't give a damn:
I find her actions horrid, hateful. But the ones who won't care are Palin's Christianist Dominionst end-times evangelical brethern and sistern(sic), who are firmly caught up in the Biblical idea that we (humans) are stewards of the earth.
But rather than what the word "steward" actually means, many of them believe that, since the end times are near, instead we can plunder, pillage, devastate the earth and most of its inhabitants for our own pleasure and needs.
Even when its manifestly stupid and short-sighted. Drill, Baby, Drill, indeed.
Normally I would say, let's not waste time on Sarah Palin. Her main claim to fame is as a skirt for McCain to hide behind, and to use dog-whistle language to excite the Rabid right in this country.
But then stuff like this happens during the Charlie Gibson interview:
"I would never presume to know God's will or use God's words".
Right. Because that's a sin. Except that people, pastors and congregants, in evangelical churches do it all the time.
I heard the leader of one of the largest evangelical churches, based in Costa Mesa, CA, say to his flock, in re: the Second Coming (paraphrasing):
Now, we're admonished to not try and predict when Jesus will return. And I won't. But my reading and study of the Bible leads me to conclude that I have a pretty good idea when it will happen.
Hubris, I guess, when you can listen to what the boss says and still try and spin it your way.
GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?
PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.
GIBSON: Exact words.
PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.
But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.
That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.
GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln's words, but you went on and said, "There is a plan and it is God's plan."
PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That, in my world view, is a grand -- the grand plan.
GIBSON: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?
PALIN: I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer.
Let me explain this in simple terms: SHE LIED!!!! She believes what she said in the church video.
I guaran-damn-tee someone got on Teh Google™ immediately after hearing the quote from the church video, probably typed every combination of "God", "war", "will", "plan" , to see what they could find. And they found the Lincoln quote:
Oops.
It appears that the Lincoln quote is apocryphal. In other words, while I can find the quote everywhere, I can find no solid scholarly reference to it anywhere. It appears to be either made-up, or unsubstantiated. Joe Garofoli at SFGate.com has this:
OK, so which Abe quote is it?
Abe, in his second Inaugural address said:"Neither [side] anticipated that the cause of the conflict [i.e., slavery] might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.
In any case, it seems to be a wonderful phrase that supports the Christian Right's world view, that everything they decide is God's Work is, indeed, God's Work.
I suppose we should bow down and worship even unto them, for they are Holy and know stuff that we don't.
Better yet, we should tell them to leave us the Hell alone.
Blakeman is the public face of the McCain campaign. He can't even say his lying talking points with a straight face, or keep up with his lying answers.
Now he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won't abet its spread by linking to it, but here's the McClatchy fact check.
Air strikes were called between 1am and 2am after Afghan and coalition soldiers were ambushed while on a patrol targeting a known Taliban commander in Herat, the US military said.
"Insurgents engaged the soldiers from multiple points . . . using small-arms and [rocket-propelled grenades]," it said.
But Afghans and the UN said
Afghan officials said Thursday that a deadly U.S.-led special forces raid on a remote western village last week was based on misleading information provided by a rival clan.
It was the latest twist in a tangled debate over what happened. U.N. officials say the raid killed up to 90 civilians, most of them children.
A Pentagon inquiry has found that a controversial US airstrike in Afghanistan resulted in only five civilians deaths, not the 90 deaths reported by Afghan and UN officials.
For awhile it was a he said/she said with the US gov't playing the role of 'I didn't hit her and if I did she had it coming' and the Afghan civilians and the UN saying "92 were killed, including as many as 60 children."
And now we have camera phone stills and video of the aftermath of this massacre:
As the doctor walks between rows of bodies, people lift funeral shrouds to reveal the faces of children and babies, some with severe head injuries.
Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,” shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.”
The grainy video eight-minute footage, seen exclusively by The Times, is the most compelling evidence to emerge of what may be the biggest loss of civilian life during the Afghanistan war.
These are the images that have forced the Pentagon into a rare U-turn. Until yesterday the US military had insisted that only seven civilians were killed in Nawabad on the night of August 21. [...] The villagers’ accounts have been supported by separate investigations conducted by the UN, by Afghanistan’s leading human rights organisation and by an Afghan government delegation. Two Afghan army officers involved in the operation have been dismissed.
The Pentagon’s original investigation concluded last week that US forces used close air support after coming under heavy fire during a mission to seize a Taleban commander named Mullah Sadiq. They allege that he died in the operation.
The US military said that its findings were corroborated by an independent journalist embedded with the US force. He was named as the Fox News correspondent Oliver North, who came to prominence in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, when he was an army colonel.
Sources close to one of the investigations said that a video film was shot by Afghan officials the morning after the attack. It corroborates the doctor’s footage but has not been made public.
In a statement released on Saturday, the commander of Nato forces, General David McKiernan, appeared to back away from previous US accounts. He said: “Following the recent operation in Azizabad, Shindand district, we realise there is a large discrepancy between the number of civilian casualties reported by soldiers and local villagers.
Yeah, it's not lying, it's not a war crime, it just a discrepancy.
A discrepancy that just happens to happen over and over and over.
Maybe it's just me, but I think a discrepancy is when your checkbook is off by a few cents from your bank balance. It's a war crime when you massacre 60 children and 32+ of their elders.
CHICAGO -- Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.
The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.
"For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the church," ADF attorney Erik Stanley said. "It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It's not for the government to mandate the role of church in society."
Yet an opposing collection of Christian and Jewish clergy will petition the IRS today to stop the protest before it starts, calling the ADF's "Pulpit Initiative" an assault on the rule of law and the separation of church and state.
I always find it interesting when some parties dabble in mixing religion and government...It often makes for spectacular results.
Oh, and that "long and thorough process"? Yeah, not so much:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview with the head of Sen. John McCain's vice presidential vetting team until last Wednesday in Arizona, the day before McCain asked her to be his running mate, and she did not disclose the fact that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant until that meeting, two knowledgeable McCain officials acknowledged Tuesday.
Well, no wonder the McSame camp is so defensive, they gambled on a wild card and have to scramble to explain why their completely unqualified pick is qualified to be a "a heartbeat away" from the presidency.
And the best they could come up with about her 'executive experience' is: 1) She's the Governor of the largest state in the union! OK, but there are 670,000 people in Alaska, the whole state doesn't even rank, population wise, in the top 15 cities of the US. Not to mention she's only had the job for less than 2 years.
