Sarah Palin Says She Has Authority Over Senate

And she said this as an answer to a question from a second grader. Its absolutely false. She may want to have authority over the senate if she was Vice President but it is not correct.

Really scary that she thinks the VP would have that type of power..

McCain asks Russia's U.N. envoy for money

• http://mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/FullArticle/CPOL/npoliticsNews_uUSTRE49J8A120081020

If he can't accept private donations, why is he soliciting for donations? Even if it was a mistake, that is still asking for a donation...

If There Is A Real America, Then What Do You Call The Rest Of Us?

Tonight Keith Olbermann did a great Special Comment on the recent McCain Campaign talk about there being two America's. A real America and now I guess a liberal scum not Sarah Palin approved America?

Here is a transcript. Worth the read.

(Senator McCain,) I disagree with you on virtually every major point of policy and practice.

And yet I do not think you "anti-America."

I would not hesitate to join you in time of crisis in defense of this country.

Fortunately you did not echo this chorus of base hatred. But neither have you repudiated it. What is "pro-America", Senator?

I have frequently insisted I would never turn the platform of the Special Comment into a regular feature. But as these last two weeks of this extraordinary, and extraordinarily disturbing, presidential campaign project out in front of us, I fear I may have to temporarily amend that presumption. I hope it will be otherwise, but I suspect this will be the first of nightly pieces, most shorter than this... until further notice.

And thus a Special Comment tonight about the last five days of the divisive, ugly, paranoid bleatings of this Presidential race, culminating in the sliming of Colin Powell for his endorsement of Senator Obama.

There was once a very prominent sports writer named Dick Young whose work, with ever-increasing frequency, became peppered with references to "my America."

"I can't believe this is happening in My America"... --

"we do not tolerate these people in My America" --

"this man does not belong in my America".

His America gradually revealed itself.

Insular.

Isolationist.

Backwards-looking.

Mindlessly flag-waving.

Racist.

No second chances. A million rules, but only for the other guy. Dick Young died in 1987, but he has been re-born in the presidential campaign as it has unfolded since last Thursday night.

In that time, Governor Sarah Palin, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer, and Rush Limbaugh, have revealed that there is a measurable portion of this country that is not interested in that which the vast majority view as democracy or equality or opportunity. They want only... control -- and they want the rest of us, symbolically, perhaps physically... out.

Governor Palin:

"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington D.C.," you told a fund-raiser in North Carolina last Thursday, to kick off this orgy of condescending elitism.

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

Governor, your prejudice is overwhelming. It is not just "pockets" of this country that are "pro-America" Governor.

America... is "pro-America."

And the "Real America" of yours, Governor, is where people at your rallies shout threats of violence, against other Americans, and you say nothing about them or to them. What you are seeing is not patriotism, Governor. What has surrounded you since your nomination, has been the echoing shout of mob rule. Indeed, that shout has echoed to Minnesota, where the next day an unstable Congresswoman named Michele Bachmann added to the ugly cry.
"I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America, or anti-America. I think people would love to see an expose' like that."

For nearly two years, Ms. Bachmann, who made her first political bones by keeping the movie "Aladdin" from being shown at a Minnesota Charter School because she thought it promoted paganism and witchcraft, has had a seat in the government of this nation, a seat from which she has spewed the most implausible, hateful, narrow-minded garbage imaginable.

Well, Congresswoman, you have gotten that "expose'" you wanted, have you not?

Though not perhaps in the way you imagined. Since giving voice to your remarkable delusion that there are members of Congress who are "anti-America," and the extraordinary tap-dance of sleaze and innuendo about Senator Obama which followed...

...the challenger for your house Seat, Elwyn Tinklenberg, has been inundated by donations --

700 thousand dollars in the three days after you spoke. Because the America you perceive, Congresswoman -- with its goblins and ghosts and vast unseen hordes of traitors and fellow travelers and Senators who won't ban "Aladdin" -- exists only in your head, and in the heads of the others who must rationalize the failures in their own lives and of their own policies as somebody else's fault -- as a conspiracy to deny them an America of exclusionism and religious orthodoxy and prejudice, about which they must accuse, and murmur, and shout threats, and cleave the nation into pro-America and anti-America."

And back it comes to the McCain campaign.

And Senator McCain's talking head, Ms. Pfotenhauer, who on this very network Saturday, and seemingly without the slightest idea that dismissive prejudice dripped from every word, analyzed the race in Virginia.

"I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into northern Virginia," she said.

"But the rest of the state, 'real Virginia,' if you will, I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain's message."

Again, a toxic message... The parts of the country that agree with Nancy Pfotenhauer... are real -- the others, not.

Ms. Pfotenhauer, why not go the distance on this one? It was Senator McCain's own brother who called that part of Virginia nearest Washington "communist country." Cut to the chase, Madam. No matter the intended comic hyperbole of Joe McCain... This is the point -- isn't it?

Leave out the real meaning of "Communism," Madam -- Joe McCain reduced it to a buzz-word; it has no more true definition right now than does "Socialism," or the phrase "a man who sees America like you and I see America." It's about us... and them. The pro-... and the anti.

Never mind, Madam, that the bi-secting of this country you would happily inspire, means taking a tiny crack in a dam and not repairing it but burrowing into it. It is not enough that Senator McCain and Senator Obama might differ.

One must be real and the other false.

One must be pro-America and the other anti.

Go back and -- as your boss Rick Davis said today -- "re-think," Mr. McCain's insistence not to drag the sorry bones of Jeremiah Wright into this campaign.

And whatever you do, Ms. Pfotenhauer, allow no one enough time to think... about the widening crack in the dam.

And now all of this comes together to attack Colin Powell. "Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race," writes Rush Limbaugh...

the grand wizard of this school of reactionary non-thought. "OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with." It is not conceivable that Powell might reject McCain for the politics of hate and character assassination, or just for policy. In the closed, sweaty world of the blind allegiances of Limbaugh -- one of "us" who endorses one of "them," must be doing so for some other blind allegiance, like the color of skin. The answer to this primordial muck, must be addressed to one man only.

Senator McCain -- where are you?

I disagree with you on virtually every major point of policy and practice.

And yet I do not think you "anti-America."

I would not hesitate to join you in time of crisis in defense of this country. Fortunately you did not echo this chorus of base hatred. But neither have you repudiated it.

What is "pro-America", Senator?

Is it pro-America to call a man a racist because he endorses a different candidate?

Senator, you have based your campaign on many premises, but the foremost (and the most nearly admirable) of all of them, have been the pitches about "reaching across the aisle," and putting, as your ubiquitous banners reed, "country first." So when Colin Powell endorses your opponent, you say nothing as your supporters and proxies paint him in this "Anti-America" frame and place him in Governor Palin's un-real America.

Senator McCain -- did not General Powell just "reach across the aisle?"

Did he not, in his own mind at least, "put country first?"

Is it not your responsibility, Senator, to, if not applaud, then at least quiet those in your half of our fractured political equation?

Is it not your responsibility, Senator, to say "enough" to Republican smears without end?

Is it not your responsibility, Senator, to insist that, win or lose, you will not be party to a campaign that devolves into hatred and prejudice and divisiveness?

And Senator McCain, if it is not your responsibility... whose is it?

Keith Olbermann

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Sarah Palin Makes Appearance On The 700 Club

Enough said...

Plumbers should be supporting the Obama tax plan

• http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/avantgo/2008289850_opin21krugman.html

Words of wisdom...

Plumbers should be supporting the Obama tax plan

By Paul Krugman

Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery. By exploiting America's divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand.

The party of plutocrats was repackaged as the party of the "silent majority," the regular guys — white guys, it went without saying — who didn't like the social changes taking place.It was a winning formula. And the great thing was that the new packaging didn't require any change in the product's actual contents — in fact, the GOP was able to keep winning elections even as its actual policies became more pro-plutocrat, and less favorable to working Americans, than ever.

John McCain's strategy, in this final stretch, is based on the belief that the old formula still has life in it.Thus we have Sarah Palin expressing her joy at visiting the "pro-America" parts of the country — yep, we're all traitors here in central New Jersey.

Meanwhile we've got McCain making Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber — who had confronted Barack Obama on the campaign trail, alleging that the Democratic candidate would raise his taxes — the centerpiece of his attack on Obama's economic proposals.And when it turned out that the right's new icon has a few issues, like not being licensed and comparing Obama to Sammy Davis Jr., conservatives played victim: See how much those snooty elitists hate the common man? But what's really happening to the plumbers of Ohio, and to working Americans in general?

First of all, they aren't making a lot of money. You may recall that in one of the early Democratic debates Charles Gibson of ABC suggested that $200,000 a year was a middle-class income. Tell that to Ohio plumbers: According to the May 2007 occupational earnings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income of "plumbers, pipe fitters and steamfitters" in Ohio was $47,930.Second, their real incomes have stagnated or fallen, even in supposedly good years.

The Bush administration assured us that the economy was booming in 2007 — but the average Ohio plumber's income in that 2007 report was only 15.5 percent higher than in the 2000 report, not enough to keep up with the 17.7 percent rise in consumer prices in the Midwest.
As Ohio plumbers went, so went the nation: Median household income, adjusted for inflation, was lower in 2007 than it had been in 2000.

Third, Ohio plumbers have been having growing trouble getting health insurance, especially if, like many craftsmen, they work for small firms. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2007 only 45 percent of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits, down from 57 percent in 2000.And bear in mind that all these data pertain to 2007 — which was as good as it got in recent years. Now that the "Bush boom," such as it was, is over, we can see that it achieved a dismal distinction: For the first time on record, an economic expansion failed to raise most Americans' incomes above their previous peak.

Since then, of course, things have gone rapidly downhill, as millions of working Americans have lost their jobs and their homes. And all indicators suggest that things will get much worse in the months and years ahead.

So what does all this say about the candidates? Who's really standing up for Ohio's plumbers?

McCain claims that Obama's policies would lead to economic disaster. But President Bush's policies have already led to disaster — and whatever he may say, McCain proposes continuing Bush's policies in all essential respects, and he shares Bush's anti-government, anti-regulation philosophy.What about the claim, based on Joe the Plumber's complaint, that ordinary working Americans would face higher taxes under Obama?

Well, Obama proposes raising rates on only the top two income tax brackets — and the second-highest bracket for a head of household starts at an income, after deductions, of $182,400 a year.Maybe there are plumbers out there who earn that much, or who would end up suffering from Obama's proposed modest increases in taxes on dividends and capital gains — America is a big country, and there's probably a high-income plumber with a huge stock market portfolio out there somewhere. But the typical plumber would pay lower, not higher taxes under an Obama administration, and would have a much better chance of getting health insurance.

I don't want to suggest that everyone would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Joe the plumber would almost certainly be better off, but Richie the hedge-fund manager would take a serious hit.But that's the point. Whatever today's GOP is, it isn't the party of working Americans.

Paul Krugman

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry