Rachel Maddow: John McCain's Bad Week

Thank John McCain

Megyn Kelly and Bill O'reilly on Anonymous

Republicans: It's patriotic for middle class parents to send their kids to die in Iraq but It's not patriotic for the wealthy to pay a little extra tt

Biden links tax on wealthy to patriotism

First Dude Todd Palin refuses to testify despite subpoena

But he and Sarah have nothing to hide. I promise.
Yahoo!
The governor’s husband, however, refuses to answer questions to a panel that he believes is politically motivated, according to campaign officials for Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Palin.
“The objections boil down to the fact that the legislative council investigation is no longer a legitimate investigation because it has been subjected to complete partisanship,” campaign spokesman Ed O’Callaghan said.
Todd Palin could be found in contempt of the legislature for failing to comply, but the whole body would have to be in session to do so, and it is not scheduled to reconvene until January.
Josh makes a great point:
Who would you expect to announce that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin won’t cooperate with the Alaska Legislature’s probe into whether she abused the power of her office in Trooper-Gate?
Not Palin herself. Nor the spokesperson for the Governor’s Office. Nor the lawyer the state is paying to represent her in her official capacity in the case. Instead, that announcement was made today by a spokesperson for John McCain’s presidential campaign.
Just keep that in mind as this case unfolds.

Wall Streets troubles may soon be over. Government planning to transfer all bad & toxic debt from the bank's balance sheet over to the taxpayers. All

New bailout planned


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The federal government, in what will be its most far-reaching attempt yet to contain the financial crisis, is poised to establish a program to let banks get rid of mortgage-related assets that have been hard to value and harder to trade.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the framework of the plan on Friday morning. "The federal government must implement a program to remove these illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy," said Paulson.
Many details of the plan remained unclear, but Paulson acknowledged the government would take on "hundreds of billions of dollars" in obligations.
Paulson and other officials expect to work through the weekend with congressional leaders to finalize details.
"We hope to move very quickly - time is of the essence," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., late Thursday night.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he believes legislation could be acted on next week.
On Friday morning, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who is the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, told CNN that the latest plan from Treasury could cost $500 billion. If so, combined with all the other monies committed by the Federal Reserve and Treasury in the form of loans and investments, that brings the headline figure on their attempts to stem the credit crisis to $1.3 trillion. But that doesn't mean that's the cost to taxpayers. (Here's why.)
The announcement on Thursday is the latest stunning turn in an extraordinary six days that have rocked Wall Street. A widening banking crisis has toppled two major firms - Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch - and prompted an $85 billion government loan to stem the sudden collapse of insurance giant American International Group.
Meanwhile, mainstay financial institutions are scrambling to raise cash or find merger partners - because of a freeze-up in lending and sinking investor confidence stemming from a collapse of the home mortgage market.
Talk of plan energizes markets
International and U.S. stock markets soared following news of the large government program on Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning, U.S. stocks were close to 3% higher.
The Treasury has been talking about the concept of an agency to take on bad debts of financial institutions "for several months," a source with knowledge of discussions on the issue told CNN.
There's precedent for the federal government taking on troubled assets from the private sector. In the 1930s, the Home Owners Loan Corp. was set up to issue bonds to refinance borrowers. Then during the S&L crisis Congress set up the Resolution Trust Corp. to sell assets of failed banks.
One way the agency under discussion could work is by setting up bulk auctions to buy mortgage assets from financial institutions. The auctions would be for set dollar amount purchases. Companies that want to offload the hard-to-sell assets from their balance sheets bid to sell to the government at a huge discount. The company willing to sell at the lowest price wins.
The government would then be able to sell the assets back into the market when it wanted.
According to policy research firm the Stanford Group, such a setup would allow the government to refinance borrowers in the loans owned by the government, thereby lowering the risk of their defaulting and eventually boosting the price of the mortgage security in which those loans are packaged.
The agency and auction facility is one that House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd have supported.
Jaret Seiberg, a financial services analyst at the Stanford Group, said he believes there is bipartisan support for allowing the Bush administration to take short-term action to "get us through the immediate crisis."
The expectation is that whatever program is decided on would only last through the presidential inauguration. "You don't want a program that will last for several years because that would limit what the next administration could do," Seiberg said.
Candidates to weigh in
On Friday, both presidential nominees are expected to detail their own plans to address the crisis.
Not everyone supports the idea that the government should buy up assets that the market currently can't value and isn't trading.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on Thursday proposed his own plan that would involve the government providing a cash infusion to financial institutions in exchange for stock in the companies and let the institutions offload their mortgage investments.
Banking consultant Bert Ely is skeptical about the government getting involved at all. If the government chooses to "prop up the institutions or allows the institutions to offload asset onto a government entity, who's going to take the losses? It's financial insanity. The markets have to clear. Our fundamental problem: an oversupply of housing."

Incredible Documentary Footage of Mass Arrest in St. Paul

Video and article HERE

This morning Senator McCain gave a speech in which his big solution to this worldwide economic crisis was to blame me for it.

At a rally in Coral Gables, Obama responds to McCain's shots:
This morning Senator McCain gave a speech in which his big solution to this worldwide economic crisis was to blame me for it.This is a guy who's spent nearly three decades in Washington, and after spending the entire campaign saying I haven't been in Washington long enough, he apparently now is willing to assign me responsibility for all of Washington's failures.Now, I think it's a pretty clear that Senator McCain is a little panicked right now. At this point he seems to be willing to say anything or do anything or change any position or violate any principal to try and win this election, and I've got to say it's kind of sad to see. That's not the politics we need.It's also been disappointing to see my opponent's reaction to this economic crisis. His first reaction on Monday was to stand up and repeat the line he's said over and over again throughout this campaign -- 'the fundamentals of the economy are strong' -- the comment was so out of touch that even George Bush's White House couldn't agree with it.
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Obama: If you believe that, I've got a bridge in Alaska to sell you

Obama tries out a few new lines in Colorado, Carrie Budoff Brown reports:
"But now suddenly, John McCain says he is about change, too. He even started using some of my lines. Suddenly he says he wants 'to turn the page.' He had an ad today that he started running that he and Gov. Palin would bring the change that we need. He had this in an advertisement. Sound familiar? Let me tell you something, instead of borrowing my lines he needs to borrow our ideas," Obama said.
He followed up with a dig at lobbyists, saying "if you think those lobbyists are working day and night for John McCain just to put themselves out of business, well, then, I've got a bridge to sell you up in Alaska."

YouTube Censors Documentary on Palin's Churches

Watch it HERE

Fox's Megyn Kelly Grills Tucker Bounds On False Tax Claims

Whitehouse Criticizes Drilling Advocates

Photoshopped Mcain

Sarah Palin: Maverick to Nowhere

Obama To McCain: "Senator -- What Economy Are You Talking About?"

In a speech today in Colorado, Barack Obama is seizing on today's financial news -- and McCain's claim today that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong" -- to further paint McCain as out of touch and clueless about the economic realities facing many Americans.

After saying McCain doesn't comprehend the economic distress many are facing, Obama will say (according to advance excepts):

Why else would he say that we've made great progress economically under George Bush? Why else would he say that the economy isn't something he understands as well as he should? Why else would he say, today, of all days - just a few hours ago - that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong?
Senator - what economy are you talking about?

What's more fundamental than the ability to find a job that pays the bills and can raise a family? What's more fundamental than knowing that your life savings is secure, and that you can retire with dignity? What's more fundamental than knowing that you'll have a roof over your head at the end of the day? What's more fundamental than that?


More excerpts after the jump.


This morning we woke up to some very serious and troubling news from Wall Street.
The situation with Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions is the latest in a wave of crises that are generating enormous uncertainty about the future of our financial markets. This turmoil is a major threat to our economy and its ability to create good-paying jobs and help working Americans pay their bills, save for their future, and make their mortgage payments.

Today offers more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren't minding the store. For eight years, we've had policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans. The result is the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.

I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for these problems. But I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to. It's the same philosophy we've had for the last eight years - one that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. It's a philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise; one that says we should just stick our heads in the sand and ignore economic problems until they spiral into crises.

Well now, instead of prosperity trickling down, the pain has trickled up - from the struggles of hardworking Americans on Main Street to the largest firms of Wall Street.

This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy. For years, I have called for modernizing the rules of the road to suit a 21st century market - rules that would protect American investors and consumers. And I've called for policies that grow our economy and our middle-class together.

[...]

It's not that I think John McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of most Americans. I just think doesn't know. He doesn't get what's happening between the mountain in Sedona where he lives and the corridors of Washington where he works. Why else would he say that we've made great progress economically under George Bush? Why else would he say that the economy isn't something he understands as well as he should? Why else would he say, today, of all days - just a few hours ago - that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong?

Senator - what economy are you talking about?

What's more fundamental than the ability to find a job that pays the bills and can raise a family? What's more fundamental than knowing that your life savings is secure, and that you can retire with dignity? What's more fundamental than knowing that you'll have a roof over your head at the end of the day? What's more fundamental than that?

The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great - that promise that America is the place where you can make it if you try - a promise that is the only reason that we are standing here today.

"Honor" Ad

MTV Cuts Down Rainforest for Reality TV Show

After the Viacom-owned network finished filming their new treasure-hunt themed “Real World/Road Rules Challenge” on a remote, uninhabited island in the Republic of Panama, locals returned to find their beach tattered and abused.
The television show, which premieres on September 17th, took over the neighboring, inhabited island in militant style by hiring the local police to prevent residents from accessing a public beach. As it turned out, according to local witnesses, MTV had cleared a small patch of rainforest to build a tiki-hut structure near the beach, developed an access road through the forest, and installed generators and lighting on the beach.
reddit_url="http://sustainablog.org/2008/09/14/mtv-cuts-down-rainforest-for-reality-tv-show/";reddit_title="MTV Cuts Down Rainforest for Reality TV Show";
Since the beach was guarded by armed officers, the locals only heard rumors of the destruction until they were able to go back to the beach after filming had finished. “I have seen the aftermath of a tornado and this was almost as bad,” read the account, written by Jmaher and Michael Drake. “A large plot of rainforest had been cleared, a pristine Caribbean beach had been trashed, and the creators had simply packed up and left. A family of what appeared to be ‘squatters’ had already moved into one of the buildings left behind.”
At the time of the writing, MTV had not yet announced the premiere of the television show. The authors deduced that the network had been behind the commotion after finding papers with MTV’s logo among other garbage littering small village’s the streets. The nearby uninhabited island (which the show’s contestants ravaged for hidden treasure) had not been visited by the writers, so we’ll have to watch the show to see how that island fared. All this comes after MTV’s recent efforts to encourage teens to go green.
“Perhaps I have been unjustified in my criticism and, if so, I will offer my apologies whenever it becomes obvious that I have been unfair,” the lengthy piece reads, nearing conclusion. “In the meanwhile I will continue to show my irritation for what I perceive Mtv to have done to a beautiful area of rainforest and beach.”
A trailer for the upcoming television show can be found here.

A great clip from Real Time with Bill Maher between John Fund, Janine Garafelo and salmon Rushdie.

“Obama Waffles” featuring a racist cartoon of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) on the box front

Palin Lied About Visiting Iraq As Well

cannot quite keep count at this point of the bald-faced lies that the McCain-Palin campaign has been telling to a pliant, pathetic, useless excuse for an American press corps. But here's the latest. We were all told by the McCain-Palin campaign that Sarah Palin had visited Iraq earlier this year:

Following her selection last month as John McCain's running mate, aides said Palin had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. During that trip she was said to have visited a "military outpost" inside Iraq. The campaign has since repeated that Palin's foreign travel included an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.
This was another simple lie. Not a distortion, a lie. But, as we know, the McCain-Palin campaign tells massive lies and when called on them, first try a dodge, rather than the truth. And so when asked to give more details about her trip to Iraq, we were first told:

Asked to clarify where she traveled in Iraq, Palin's spokeswoman, Maria Comella, confirmed that "She visited a military outpost on the other side of the Kuwait-Iraq border."
So not far into Iraq, but definitely Iraq, right? Wrong, according to "Lieutenant Colonel Dave Osborn, commander of the 3d Battalion, 207th Infantry of the Alaska National Guard, who was in charge of the 570 local troops serving in Kuwait and Iraq."

Here's the truth:

On the second day of the trip, he said, Palin was flown to the border crossing, about 100 miles north of Camp Buehring, where she spent the morning meeting with troops and presiding over a ceremony in which an Alaska National Guard soldier extended his enlistment. But she did not venture into Iraq, Osborn said. "You have to have permission to go into a lot of areas, and [the crossing] is where her permissions were," he said. Palin did not stay the night in Iraq, and spent the rest of the second day at Camp Virginia and Ali Al Salem Air Base, Osborn said.
Her alleged visit to Ireland was also, it turns out, a refueling stop. She didn't leave the plane. I swear to you I'm not making any of this up.

Barack Obama in Dover, NH

McCain-Palin Crowd-Size Estimates Not Backed by Officials

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Senator John McCain has drawn some of the biggest crowds of his presidential campaign since adding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to his ticket on Aug. 29. Now officials say they can't substantiate the figures McCain's aides are claiming.
McCain aide Kimmie Lipscomb told reporters on Sept. 10 that an outdoor rally in Fairfax City, Virginia, drew 23,000 people, attributing the crowd estimate to a fire marshal.
Fairfax City Fire Marshal Andrew Wilson said his office did not supply that number to the campaign and could not confirm it. Wilson, in an interview, said the fire department does not monitor attendance at outdoor events.
In recent days, journalists attending the rallies have been raising questions about the crowd estimates with the campaign. In a story on Sept. 11 about Palin's attraction for some Virginia women voters, Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher estimated the crowd to be 8,000, not the 23,000 cited by the campaign.
``The 23,000 figure was substantiated on the ground,'' McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said. ``The campaign is willing to stand by the fact that it was our biggest crowd to date.''
``Since day one, this campaign has been consistent that we're not going to win or lose based on crowd size but the substance of John McCain's record,'' Bounds said.
Town Hall Meetings
Until Palin, 44, joined him on the campaign trail, McCain, 72, had limited his political events to smaller town hall meetings and rallies of a few hundred people. His Democratic rival, Barack Obama, an Illinois senator, routinely draws thousands of people to his speeches, a phenomenon McCain has tried to use to his advantage by labeling Obama, 47, a celebrity.
That changed on Aug. 30, at Palin's first big public appearance after her nomination. The McCain campaign said 10,000 people showed up at the Consol Energy Arena in Washington, Pennsylvania, home of the Washington Wild Things baseball team.
The campaign attributed that estimate, and several that followed, to U.S. Secret Service figures, based on the number of people who passed through magnetometers.
``We didn't provide any numbers to the campaign,'' said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service. Wiley said he would not ``confirm or dispute'' the numbers the McCain campaign has given to reporters.

McCain Opposes Himself…

McCain has a spanish language ad out condemning Obama fo torpedoeing comprehensive immigration reform. He’s refering to two bills, where a close vote meant any Senator switching positions could have changed the outcome. The problem? McCain made the same vote as Obama. McClatchy reports:
Barack Obama and his Senate colleagues torpedoed meaningful changes in immigration laws.
“The press reports that their efforts were ‘poison pills’ that made immigration reform fail,” the ad charges. “The result: No guest worker program. No path to citizenship. No secure borders. No reform. Is that being on our side? Obama and his congressional allies ready to block immigration reform, but not ready to lead.”
What that’s wrong: Media accounts cited two votes as effectively killing immigration reform last year — and Obama was on the same side as McCain in both.
Is anyone else just plum amazed by the depth of the dishonesty in which the McCain campaign has recently plunged?

Pakistan order to kill US invaders

KEY corps commanders of Pakistan's 600,000-strong army issued orders last night to retaliate against "invading" US forces that enter the country to attack militant targets.
The move has plunged relations between Islamabad and Washington into deep crisis over how to deal with al-Qa'ida and the Taliban
What amounts to a dramatic order to "kill the invaders", as one senior officer put it last night, was disclosed after the commanders - who control the army's deployments at divisional level - met at their headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi under the chairmanship of army chief and former ISI spy agency boss Ashfaq Kayani.
Leading English-language newspaper The News warned in an editorial that the US determination to attack targets inside Pakistan was likely to be "the best recruiting sergeant that the extremists ever had", with even "moderates" outraged by it.
The "retaliate and kill" order came amid reports of unprecedentedly fierce fighting in the Bajaur Agency of Pakistan's tribal areas, an al-Qa'ida stronghold frequently mentioned as the most likely lair of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
At the same time, a series of brutal killings by the militants were reported.
The beheaded bodies of two of nearly 40 police recruits abducted a week ago were found near the town of Hangu. Their discovery follows warnings that the recruits would be put to death, one by one, unless Pakistan stopped its big offensive in Bajaur.
The bodies of three local Bajaur men who had been shot in the neck were also found yesterday. Notes were attached declaring the men to have been spies.
In a day of what appears to have been unrelenting combat in Bajaur, helicopter gunships, heavy artillery and tanks were used to strike al-Qa'ida targets.
Officials said at least 100 militants had been killed, bringing the number who have died in the six weeks since the offensive was launched to well over 700. The figure is regarded as remarkable, given that NATO forces in Afghanistan seldom achieve a "kill" rate of more than about 30 in any single operation. Many of those killed are reported to have been "foreign fighters" - mostly Arabs and Central Asians, who have been flooding into Pakistan's tribal areas to join al-Qa'ida and the Taliban.
Ground troops are said to have moved into key areas formerly controlled by the militants, despite a promised ceasefire marking the holy month of Ramadan.
"We launched strikes against militant hideouts in Bajaur and destroyed several compounds they were using," an official was quoted as saying.
The order to retaliate against incursions by "foreign troops", directed specifically at the 120,000 Pakistani soldiers deployed along the border with Afghanistan, follows US President George W. Bush's authorisation of US attacks in Pakistan.
Washington's determination to launch such attacks has caused outrage across Pakistan, with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last night strongly backing a warning by General Kayani that Pakistan would not allow its territorial integrity to be violated.
The "kill" order against invading forces, and the sharp deterioration in relations with the US, has far-reaching implications for the war on terror.
Anger at all levels in Pakistani society was summed up last night in The News, not normally sympathetic to the militants.
"There is an escalating sense of furious impotence among the ordinary people of Pakistan," the newspaper said.
"Many - perhaps most - of them are strongly opposed to the spread of Talibanisation and extremist influence across the country: people who might be described as 'moderates'.
"Many of them have no sympathy for the mullahs and their burning of girls' schools and their medieval mindset.
"But if you bomb a moderate sensibility often enough, it has a tendency to lose its sense of objectivity and to feel driven in the direction of extremism.
"If America bombs moderate sensibilities often enough, you may find that its actions are the best recruiting sergeant that the extremists ever had."

Problems With Sarah Palin 11 The Press Gets to Interview Her

Hungarians should not rap!!!!!

The really bad part is you can tell these guys are really into this song and video. But with lyrics like this:

I dun want a wall...
I just want a live and luv each otha'...
My family, my frnnnnssss...
Nobody wants war. Life isssshort...
Yeeee, c'mon. That's right... Check.
They just simple peepol...
Want simple life, simple land, simple things...
We have so many praces...
Wurld is big... A prace or not... (?)
That's right... C'mon... Yeeee...

what the fuck does yeee mean?

New York teen sues record industry

'Pirate' boy bites back
By Nick Farrell: Wednesday 31 January 2007, 16:15
A New York teen, dubbed a pirate by the Record Industry, is counter suing them for defamation, violating anti-trust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.
In papers responding to a lawsuit filed by five record companies, Robert Santangelo, who was 11 when he is supposed to have downloaded music, has come out fighting. He denies sharing music using P2P technology and says it's impossible for the record companies to prove that that he did.
Robert Santangelo and his lawyer, Jordan Glass, have raised 32 defences against the music industry's charges. Amongst Robert's defence is the information that all the music that it was claimed he downloaded he already owned on shop bought CDs.
They have demanded a jury trial and filing a counterclaim against the companies for allegedly damaging the boy's reputation, distracting him from school and costing him legal fees. The record companies have engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the courts of the United States, the court documents say. Competitors in the recording industry are a cartel acting together in violation of the antitrust laws by bringing the piracy cases jointly and using the same agency "to make extortionate threats ... to force defendants to pay", our precocious teen wrote.
Santangelo's mum, Patti Santangelo, is 42-year-old suburban mother of five who also refused to pay up when the music industry accused her of being a pirate. After the case started to get messy, particularly when it became clear that Patti didn't know how to turn a computer on, let alone file share, the music lawyers dropped its case against her.
More here

TAKE THAT YOU BITCHES!!!!!!!