With the Republicans trailing in the polls a month before the presidential election, Mrs Palin said the time had come to take the gloves off. . . .

Mrs Palin described Mr Obama as someone who saw the US "as being so imperfect... he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7653132.stm

Speaking of "taking the gloves off", Palin is likely to deliver a knock out blow to herself if she intends to make further BS comments like this.

I hope it backfires.

There will have to be more linkage between Ayers and Obama for any of that to stick. Smoke em' if you got em'...AKA produce more evidence of a direct personal relationship between these two or shut the hell up about it and get on with the issues that matter and forget about what is now nothing more than a supermarket tabloid story.

And I am not an Obama supporter !

This is what you get when you're behind in the polls.

Well, does anyone remember what the right did in 2006 when they knew they were behind in the polls? They did the exact same thing, vote democrat and the terrorists will get you. The republicans only tool is fear. I think however people have larger fears right now than Osama Bin Laden.

neo-CONers suck!

Rove's pulling strings here I bet any amount of money....

McCain's chances in this election are getting smaller every day.
He's behind in the majority of swing states and losing ground.
There was zero bounce from the VP debate.
I think the VP debate gained Obama more votes than it did McSame. Fence riders probably thought to themselves that Palin is just not ready to assume the presidency (assuming McSame somehow won which he won't).

The warmongers, right wing gun nuts, and the most brainless among us (is that redundant?) will still vote for McOld, but the electoral math map is becoming a joke. Realclearpolitics.com has Obama at 264, Pollster.com has Obama at 260, 538.com has Obama at 333.

It's all over but the shouting.

All McCain is doing is energizing his (smaller by the day) base, to make sure they get to the polls. He may rope in a few shallow-minded independents too. Put on top of that the voter suppression tactics the right has used in every federal election in the last 20 years, and McCain's electoral calculus must be telling him he has a chance.

But I think he's making the mistake of using the same calculator Rove used in 2006...

This 700 billion bail/rescue thing has sharpened the minds of many voters . Lot of people are mad and wondering what brought us this mess. There have been some good reviews over the whole thing on Cable/satellite and many voters are making their conclusions now.

How they view campaign tactics and who ( what party) they blame for the current economic crisis will have a lot to do with how they vote in the end. To be fair, the Republicans were the ones who in 2004 and 2005 tried to pass legislation to fix Fannie and Freddie and to fix the problems of ALL sub prime loans, and that is verifiable history. Democrats voted down both of those regulatory bills in Congress. The Democrats , many of them anyhow , believed that anyone could have a loan and to qualify all you needed to do was have a pulse. Democrat backed organizations like A C O R N are a perfect example of this attitude.

Logically so, the Obama Campaign has decided to devote its general election "final lap" resources to go after the Republicans ( Bush ) on the economy. McCain seems to have gone into a ( so far ) happless strategy of an all ready vetted tenuous relationship of Obama with a shady character from the revolutionary 1960s.

I think McCain needs to re-shape his strategy and keep it to the facts and the issues that the voters care about most. And Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers , I would say , isnt on the "front burner" in the minds of most American voters !

Tonight, 60 Minutes did a good job explaining, to me, more of what I did not understand.

Uhhh, I guess that's all I have for you right now.

"the Republicans were the ones who in 2004 and 2005 tried to pass legislation to fix Fannie and Freddie and to fix the problems of ALL sub prime loans, and that is verifiable history. Democrats voted down both of those regulatory bills in Congress."

Considering the Republicans had the majority in both houses at the time plus Bush in the White House, blaming the Democrats is a stretch.

Besides, this problem is larger than Fannie and Freddie.

Wall Street created the instruments that failed. They bought up the risk laden mortgages, repackaged and sold them without having the money to meet the "swap" agreements to pay the buyer in the event of failure of performance. Watch the 60 minutes segment, i'm sure it's on their web site. Wall Street created, packaged, sold and then couldn't meet the fiduciary obligations on the swap agreement they used to attract the buyers.

I'm so sick and tired of the mentality that this is all caused by the victims of Wall Street's greed. It's not an easy series of events to follow, but simplifying them to make a partisan issue out of it is pretty lame.

Will the $700 billion bailout stifle that greed on Wall street?

No. If it could, they would not be there.

I hope it backfires.

This angle of attack could backfire very badly for both Governor Palin and Senator McCain. Not just with independents and moderates, but with portions of their own base.

Greg Sargent wrote a short and solid piece about the damage that could be inflicted on Palin in the October 4 edition of Talking Points Memo. Here is a little taste:

Sarah Palin attacked Obama's patriotism today over his association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers -- a move that makes it perfectly legitimate to raise questions about the Palins' associations with a group founded by an Alaska secessionist who once professed his "hatred for the American government" and cursed our "damn flag."

If the guilt by association card is in play, McCain opens a big can of worms. In addition to his close ties to David Ifshin and G. Gordon Liddy, John McCain has other dirt in his past. Remarks by Paul Begala on Meet the Press raised some eyebrows and caught the attention of Ben Smith of Politico. Here is a bit of what Begala said:

I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign... John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League – the parent organization – which ADL said "has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites."

Boom.

Boom is very likely.

The way I see it Littlesongs, is for years the Republicans have welcomed all those people with an axe to grind. They, of course, are loyal as grinding that axe really, really matters.

This is low, but effective so long as a nice fraction of the rest of us remain convinced that voting against our own interests will work out ok.

Now the economic mess and very low Resident President approval rating combine to take away most of that fraction, leaving the Democrats with a fairly straightforward task of successfully courting the Independent voters.

IMHO, a good rout on the Republicans would actually be good for them. The party may well split pretty hard, with axe grinders and neo-conservatives in one camp, and "born again" Republicans, who remember or have learned what Republican used to mean.

Oh, and Ron Paul supporters. Can't forget those guys.

That dynamic will be interesting to watch as we see what the Republican party will then become.

While it's going on, Dems and third parties have a nice window to run primary challengers.

Third party politics could get very interesting. If they fund raise and post up solid people during this window, I think they've got a solid shot at holding some offices to establish their party with.

Bernie can't be the only guy able to do this.

CLEARWATER, Fla. -- "Okay, so Florida, you know that you're going to have to hang onto your hats," Sarah Palin told a rally of a few thousand here this morning, "because from now until election day it may get kind of rough."

You betcha. And the person dishing out the roughest stuff at the moment is Sarah Palin.

"I was reading my copy of the New York Times the other day," she said.

"Booooo!" replied the crowd.

"I knew you guys would react that way, okay," she continued. "So I was reading the New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago."

It was time to revive the allegation, made over the weekend, that Obama "pals around" with terrorists, in this case Bill Ayers, late of the Weather Underground. Many independent observers say Palin's allegations are a stretch; Obama served on a Chicago charitable board with Ayers, now an education professor, and has condemned his past activities.

"Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," Palin said.

"Boooo!" said the crowd.

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/06/in_fla_palin_goes_for_the_ roug.html

Meanwhile, the stock market is down 700 points. Every day the stock market goes down, McCain's numbers will trend the same way.

Governor Palin wants to whip up the crowd and bring out the torches. She thinks that the quaint history of Bill Ayers is going to scare us in an era of Kip Kinkel, Columbine and Virginia Tech. Her 60s fears are small potatoes. I would be willing to bet that her life would get a whole lot less comfortable if she was connected somehow to Al Qaeda. Yeah, that Al Qaeda. Aw heck, why not.

Sarah Palin was described just over a year ago by Alaska Independence Party Vice Chairman Dexter Clark as an "AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town -- that was a nonpartisan job. But you get along to go along. She eventually joined the Republican Party..." You can watch all of his remarks last October to the Second Secessionist Convention in Chattanooga.

Clark seems like a sincere fellow and had wonderful things to say about Sarah Palin. The Governor is a fan of the Alaska Independence Party and gladly gave a videotaped opening speech to the 2008 AIP Convention. Her husband was a longtime member until she ran for Governor and her initially reported membership matches the history relayed by the Vice Chairman of the AIP.

Now, a Vice Presidential nominee and her husband being a part of a secessionist movement might be enough for most folks to raise their eyebrows, but Sarah Palin raised the bar. She wants a political climate where thin threads of connection and association are enough to make a candidate into a suspect. So, we only have to connect a couple more dots to put her in league with the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11.

The AIP is supportive of many separatist movements around the world. In the United States, they are proudly affiliated with the violent Republic of Texas and other less infamous secessionist groups. They also support a number of Dixie-centric organizations that advocate another Southern uprising, but are careful to frame "tolerance" into their platforms.

Internationally, the AIP has ties to a variety of causes including the Ulster "Third Way" movement. I guess that after a few years of fleeting peace, terrorism in Northern Ireland is a passe connection these days. Among the other groups the AIP supports, you will find the Chechen separatists. Although they cannot spell the name right, the link appears on the AIP website.

Both Russia and the United States agree that Chechnya is a hotbed of narcotics and terrorism. In fact, two weeks after 9/11, President Bush said, "We do believe there's some al Qaeda folks in Chechnya." Other experts agree with him. According to a new report from the Council on Foreign Relations, Alexander Vershbow, a U.S. ambassador to Russia, said shortly after September 11, 2001, "We have long recognized that Osama bin Laden and other international networks have been fueling the flames in Chechnya..."

While the thread between Osama bin Laden and Sarah Palin is certainly thin, the connection is every bit as plausible as an 8 year old boy supporting the violent young adulthood of a man he would not meet for decades. If she wants to play the Ayers card, folks will just have to play the 9/11 card. After all, she was still supportive of the AIP as recently as last spring.

Trump!

If you have 11 or so minutes to spare, Keith Olberman has a great rebuttle to Palin's smear tactics. He points out quite clearly why it's not in the McCain/Palin interests to take the low road:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/06/olbermann-special-comment_n_132456.html

I love Olbermann's "special comments".

Dear PETA,

Sara Palin is an animal murderer. I saw the photos.

Sincerely,

concerned citizen.

So will Obama embrace the Virginia group registering felons? "FELONS FOR OBAMA"

The Weathemen Underground went about things the wrong way in the 60s. As a candidate you have to figure if you schmoozed the wrong people in your past, someone will use it later. how about some candid bachelor party photos from his past were they to surface? A photo of Barry doing a line from years gone by?

How about encouraging Vietnam War deserters and AWOLs to back Big Mac? Would the dems pounce on that? (I'm sure he talked while staying at the Hanoi Hilton.) Let's probe the damage that may have caused.

The only lesson we have learned in the past eight years is to NEVER AGAIN ELECT ANYONE FROM TEXAS!

Johnson thumbs down.
BOOSH Two Thumbs down.

I'm for LOW COST energy. solar, wind, Nuke, oil, coal, whatever it takes. Subsidize it if you have to. Ban anything non commercial that gets less than 25 MPG. Whatever it takes to heat homes cheaply, transport people and goods cheaply, and drive the economy at the lowest possible price.
5 dollar a gallon gas whether market driven or taxed to subsidize other sources, not consuming what we produce, and expensive home heating costs helps no one but those who profit from it.

They had some nut-bag in the audience actually say "Kill Him!" and he's not in jail right now?

They are not on the TeeVee and the Tubes, making damn sure that's not ok and that they don't support violence of this kind?

Did you guys read the post Amus contributed here?

Do it and think.

I'll wait a minute.....



















































Didn't read it? Well, read it!





























This is not ok right? RIGHT!

Thought so. Me too.

I'm gonna make some phone calls on this one. I'm gonna start with my Republican friends.

The Secret Service is investigating the incident.

Baseless character assassination is the low road, but condoning or inciting violence is a very dangerous path to wander. Flailing in a vacuum of intellectual bankruptcy, and utterly devoid of her own ideas, Palin is lashing out wildly without a second thought of consequences.

Clearly, they are both overwhelmed by the challenge of addressing current events in a thoughtful way. Still, that is not an excuse to create a mob mentality heading into this election. I believe the good book says that what ye shall sow, so shall ye reap.

If cooler heads do not prevail, or the G.O.P. leadership stands idly by, this will be the lasting legacy of their 2008 ticket. We may be witnessing the very public political suicide of not only John McCain and Sarah Palin, but of the entire Republican Party.

Abraham Lincoln would be disgusted at what his party has become in the last four decades.

If you thought what I have posted about Sarah Palin was disturbing, or that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was on to something bigger, you should see what the reporters at Salon found. For instance, you may not know that there was a direct connection between the AIP and Iran, or that the Governor worked to ease restrictions on militias, or that she is proudly considered an "infiltrator" by the separatists, or that Palin used dog whistle to brand a candidate Jewish, smear him and win an election. A trio of journalists penned two very interesting stories after doing some digging up in Alaska:

Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals

"He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. "This here is my attack dog," he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. "Her name is Suzy." Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol — once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops — out of his glove compartment. "I've got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement," he said, clutching the gun in his palm. "Then again, so do most Alaskans." But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call "the 48." "We want to go our separate ways," he said, "but we are not going to kill you."

The Palins' un-American activities

"When the bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. In the federal government are the biggest liars in the United States, and I hate them with a passion. They think they own [Alaska]. There comes a time when people will choose to die with honor rather than live with dishonor. That time may be coming here. Our goal is ultimate independence by peaceful means under a minimal government fully responsive to the people. I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we're ready to die."

I would suggest that Obama and Ayers being board members of the Annenberg Challenge was nothing compared to these associations. Sharing membership on a bipartisan education board -- led, financed and coordinated by philanthropic Republicans -- is tiny beans. The Annenbergs -- a proud conservative family that boasted ambassadors under both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan -- did not care about Ayers' past and neither should we. On the other hand, Palin has an element of unknown danger that ought to make every American think twice about her candidacy.

I want Obama to win, but I have to say I really fear for him. I think the nuts are really going to come out if he becomes president. Let's face it, there are parts of this country that are still unwilling to accept a man of color can run the country and do it well. In reality, how many black CEOs do you see out there, same good ol boy mentality. Hopefully the republicans will come around after this is over and say "maybe our tent should reject SOME people".