Month: September 2008

Jessica Hagy nails it:

A reader writes:

Compare your private factual question of the McCain campaign about Trig’s birth to the blog and cable news coverage of the rumor that Michelle Obama had used a racial epithet and that there was video of it.  I think the differences are stark.

The "whitey" video was debated everywhere. But this? You’re a crackpot to even ask a question in private. And you are likely to be the target of a Howard Kurtz hit-job, instigated by the McCain campaign, if you do.

Marc reports:

My colleague Nora McAvalnah tells me that sources close to Senate Democratic leadership now fear that McCain’s true motivation for calling off his campaign and coming back to DC is simply to cast a "no" vote against the bailout, despite his private statements to the contrary. And it’s a smart maneuver: nothing says "maverick," like voting against Bush and standing with the American public, who remain very wary of the proposal.

Some Venetians appeal to American voters:

Michael Isikoff reports:

Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, has remained the treasurer and a corporate director of his lobbying firm this year, despite repeated statements by campaign officials that he had ended his relationship with the firm in 2006, according to corporate records.

There has never been a political campaign that lies as compulsively as as indisputably as this one. What’s amazing about the lies is that they are all demonstrably lies. Usually, politicians lie in generalities or hyperbole or some shufty rhetoric. But Palin and McCain say things that are factually not true, and when the truth is pointed out, they refuse to acknowledge it, repeat the lies and then demonize anyone who asked the question.

The McCain campaign is now shying and plunging like a distracted animal.

A defense.

More pathos, though. When asked if she still supports Ted Stevens, she said:

"Ted Stevens’ trial started a couple of days ago. We’ll see where that goes."

Man, this is excruciating.

McCain looks battered, of course, as anyone would be under this kind of pressure. But in his speech yesterday, he did not look very well to me. Can we simply get the full medical records of all four candidates on the table? Why is it outrageous to ask for such a thing? McCain is 72 with four cancer bouts, Biden has had an aneurysm, Obama should be about transparency and Palin … well, transparency is always best, right? As she herself recently said,

"When you run for office, your life is an open book."

Can we please open all these candidates’ books before Americans are asked to vote? This is pretty basic stuff. America is on the verge of a very very grueling few years. Americans have the right to know if their potential presidents and vice presidents have the health records to endure the trial.

Unlke Howie Kurtz, I don’t believe in revealing the contents of confidential emails between reporters and campaigns, but it is worth saying for the record that back in July, I received an email from Michael Goldfarb in his capacity as a representative of the McCain campaign. In it he asked me to clarify McCain’s position on gay parenting. I was glad to do so promptly, and you can see the resulting post here.

I do not think it violates anyone’s privacy or ethics to reprint the last sentence in Goldfarb’s email to me:

If you ever need anything from the campaign going forward, feel free to drop me a line.

My mistake was believing him.

The Mark Mazzetti piece this morning moves the ball forward by getting closer and closer to who authorized the torture techniques used at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib (as depicted n the photos) and everywhere else in the Bush-Cheney war on terror. The newly critical information is that AEI’s and Berkeley’s John Yoo gave an oral okay for torture to be used before the torture memos were written. So Yoo’s war crimes now go back way into the beginning of the process, long before abu Ghraib. These people were intent on torture from Day One, and Yoo gave the oral permission.

Next up: Condi Rice was in on all of this:

“I recall being told that U.S. military personnel were subjected in training to certain physical and psychological interrogation techniques and that these techniques had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm,” Ms. Rice, now secretary of state, wrote in response to one question. Still, Ms. Rice wrote that she asked Mr. Ashcroft personally to review the program and “advise N.S.C. principals whether the program was lawful.”

That’s classic Rice: no real independence, passive absorption of the decisions of Bush and Cheney, only seeking to cover her posterior. And Rice had previously denied she was in on any of it.

The other key principals discussing how to torture prisoners in 2002: Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and, of course, the vice-president for torture himself, Dick Cheney.