Congratu-f*cking-lations!

Yesterday was the 2,000th day since Mr. Bush prematurely announced "Mission Accomplished" aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in front of a huge banner with the same erroneous claim. If this 2,000-day period was a child, then this child would be almost 5 1/2 years old by now. (However, I strongly doubt that this child would have killed 4,500 U.S. and Coalition soldiers on its own and cost approximately $565 billion to raise.) Looking at the last statement, I don't know whether to cry or commit hari kari.

Time to Look in the Proverbial Mirror

At a campaign rally last week in Bethlehem, PA, Cindy McCain, the wife of presidential candidate John McCain, spoke about her two sons and Sen. Barack Obama: "I'm proud of my sons, but let me tell you, the day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body. Let me tell you, I would suggest that Sen. Obama change shoes with me for just one day and see what it means, and see what it means to have a loved one serving in the armed forces and, more importantly, serving in harm's way."

Ms. McCain was referring to a single vote in the United States Senate in 2007. Obama supported a war funding bill which included language calling for withdrawing our troops from Iraq but he later voted against a version of the same bill because the withdrawal language was no longer present. With that being said, Obama had previously voted for more than ten other war funding bills during his 3+ years in office. However, McCain's long history of not supporting our troops and veterans is absolutely pathetic:

• As I pointed out in a recent posting, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) provided McCain with a grade of D for his voting record when it came to veterans' issues.
• Earlier this year, McCain was absent for three votes on the widely popular Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act.
• Although he stated at a campaign rally that improving veterans' health care was his top domestic priority, McCain voted against increasing funding for veterans' health care in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.
• McCain opposed a 2007 amendment which would have prevented the Department of Veterans Affairs from outsourcing jobs primarily held by blue collar veterans. It is important to note that the outsourcing of federal employee jobs contributed to the horrible conditions uncovered in 2007 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
• Since arriving in the U.S. Senate in 1987, McCain has voted at least twenty-eight times against ensuring important benefits for the country's veterans, including providing adequate health care.
• McCain was one of thirteen Republicans in 2006 to vote against providing an additional $430 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs for outpatient care and treatment for veterans. Aside from opposing an assured funding stream for veterans' health care in that same year, McCain also voted against establishing a $1 billion trust fund to improve military health facilities by refusing to repeal tax cuts for individuals earning more than $1 million a year.
• McCain opposed a 2005 amendment to appropriate $500 million annually from 2006-2010 for counseling, mental health and rehabilitation services for veterans diagnosed with mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder or substance abuse.
• In 2003, McCain voted against increasing spending on the TRICARE program by $20.3 billion over ten years to order to provide members of the United States National Guard and Reserves and their families with greater access to the health care program. I would imagine that the fact this increase would be offset by a reduction in tax cuts for the wealthy was the primary reason for McCain's opposition to this legislation.
• McCain was one of five Senators in 2001 to vote against the bill and seven to vote against the conference report which provided $51.1 billion in funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs; the federal housing, environmental and emergency management agencies and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
• McCain was one of eight Senators in 2000 to vote against a bill which provided $47 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
• McCain was one of five Senators in 1999 to vote against a bill which provided $44.3 billion in funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies.
• McCain opposed a 1996 amendment to increase spending on veterans programs by $13 billion.
• In 1991, McCain voted against providing automatic annual cost-of-living adjustments for certain veterans' benefits.

Bastards of the Week

Less than a week after an $85 billion bailout by the federal government, executives at AIG spent more than $440,000 on a week-long "conference" at the exclusive St. Regis Resort in Dana Point, CA. Testifying in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Robert Willumstad, the former Chairman and CEO of AIG, stated that "I was totally unaware that there was any plan for any conference. Had I been aware of it I would have prevented it from happening." However, Nicholas Ashooh, a spokesperson for the company, declared that the outing had been scheduled for over a year.

The invoice summary (http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20081007102513.pdf)
obtained by the Congressional committee shows that AIG spent $139,375.30 for more than 60 guest rooms, $147,301.71 for banquets and $3,064.71 for room service and the lobby lounge, as well as $6,939.09 on golf. The company also spent $5,016.32 at the Stonehill Tavern, $23,380 at the Spa Gaucin and $1,488 at the Vogue Salon. The group reserved the resort's 3,100-square foot Presidential Suite for $1,600 a night for five nights. Last but not least, the company also paid $1,075 in no show fees and $2,949 in gratuities. Ashooh attempted to justify the financial abuse by stating that the event was planned as a reward for independent agents who sell the company's life insurance products. According to Ashooh, "This is very standard in the industry to reward the top 5 to 10% of top sellers. In the insurance business, it's as basic as salary as a means to reward performance." Standard?!? Your employer was just rescued by the federal government but the company still has the nerve to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on cocktails, manicures and massages. How in the world is that considered standard? I call it greedy.

Skeletons in the Closet

Conservative pundits nationwide have been busy loading up their guns (no pun intended) for Sen. Barack Obama and his former relationships with William Ayers and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Now regardless of how close Obama's connections are with these two individuals, I certainly don't condone Ayers's radical history as a domestic terrorist or Wright's controversial comments. With that being said, the right wing media seems to be conveniently turning away from the individuals in Sen. John McCain's life with sordid pasts. The following individuals don't appear to be beyond reproach:

1. The Annenberg Foundation: In the mid-1990s, The Annenberg Foundation provided a $49.2 million grant to the winner of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge; the grant matched local private funds in order to improve public schools. One of the co-authors of the victorious proposal was William Ayers (yes, that William Ayers). On Wednesday, the McCain campaign announced that Leonore Annenberg, currently the President and Chairman of The Annenberg Foundation and widow of former U.S. Ambassador William Annenberg, had endorsed McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The Annenbergs also contributed substantially to the 1980 presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan, and upon Reagan's election in 1981, Leonore Annenberg was named Chief of Protocol of the United States.

2. John Hagee: McCain actually sought and received the endorsement from Hagee, the founder and senior pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, TX. Here are some of Hagee's previous statements and actions:

• "Your daughter can get an abortion in public school without telling you but she can't get an aspirin without your approval."
• "America has become a pagan society and we are in a moral, emotional, spiritual free fall. When a school teacher cannot refer to the Ten Commandments on the wall but can command your child to read Harry Potter, which is nothing but a precursor of witchcraft, we're going in the wrong direction here. This is not intelligence. We are embracing the era of darkness. When the Boy Scouts of America are censored and penalized for refusing to accept homosexual scout leaders, we are a pagan nation where we're rebirthing Sodom and Gomorrah."
• Commenting on Hurricane Katrina, Hagee stated that "All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that."
• "I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are [homosexuals] who demur from that but I believe that the Bible teaches that, when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgement."
• "God says in Jeremiah 16: 'Behold I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers' -- that would be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 'Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them' -- that will be the Jews -- 'from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks'. If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can't see that...A fisher is someone who entices you with a bait...A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter."
• "The feminist movement today is throwing off authority in rebellion against God's pattern for the family."
• In March 1996, Hagee announced a "slave sale" to raise funds for high school seniors in the church bulletin. The event was introduced with the phrase "Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone" and ended with "Make plans to come and go home with a slave".

3. The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989 for improperly intervening on behalf of Charles Keating, the chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. At the time, Lincoln Savings and Loan was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Apparently Keating contributed $1.3 million to the five Senators and, in turn, asked for those individuals to assist him in resisting government regulators. The Keating Five were comprised on Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), Donald Riegle (D-MI) and...wait for it...John McCain (R-AZ).

The Grades Are In!

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the nation's first and largest group dedicated to the troops and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the civilian supporters of those individuals, recently released their 2008 Congressional Report Card (http://www.veteranreportcard.org/reportcard.pdf) on every member of the United States Senate and House of Representatives. The report card from this non-partisan organization measures each individual's leadership and voting record during the 2007 and 2008 legislative agendas concerning the most critical issues facing veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Here are the grades for the politicians currently in the presidential race:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): D

• McCain was absent for votes on legislation to both expand and enhance veterans' benefits and to stop a poorly conceived GI Bill, as well as three votes on the much more popular Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act. Along with his absence, McCain went even further to display his strong dedication towards the veterans of the military by actually refusing to sponsor the educational assistance legislation, which was supported by 300 members of the House of Representatives, 60 members of the Senate and all of the leading Veterans Service Organizations.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL): B

• Obama did vote in favor of the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act that McCain refused to sponsor. However, Obama was absent for votes on increasing funding for veterans' health care, expanding and enhancing veterans' benefits and stopping the second rate GI bill.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE): B

• Biden also voted in favor of the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act. At the same time, he was absent for votes on increasing funding for veterans' health care and expanding veterans' benefits.

What grade did Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin get? She received a gold star and a cookie for coloring in between the lines and reciting her ABCs.

Apparently Cute Little Songs Are Acceptable

During the second presidential debate on Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) attempted to criticize Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and his comments on his approach to Pakistan. After Obama provided his answer, McCain countered by saying "He said he wants to announce that he's going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable. You know, if you are a country and you're trying to gain the support of another country, then you want to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion."

Obama's actual comments from just seconds before were as follows: "We're going to encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our non-military aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us but insisting that they go after these militants. And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out." McCain was clearly making a stretch with his statement. However, it is not a stretch by stating that McCain's comments from a town hall meeting don't seem to be very cooperative. In that campaign appearance from all the way back in April 2007, McCain responded to a question about the Middle East: "That old, that old Beach Boys song, 'Bomb Iran'. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb." During this week's debate, McCain defended his answer by claiming "I was joking with an old veteran friend, who joked with me about Iran". Really? The question was asked during a town hall meeting and, I'll be honest, the question doesn't really sound like a joke: "How many times do we have to prove that these people are blowing up people now, never mind if they get a nuclear weapon. When do we send them an airmail message to Tehran?"

Stretch of the Week

In her closing statement of this week's vice presidential debate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin delivered the typical right wing scare tactic by saying "We have to fight for our freedoms also, economic and our national security freedoms. It was [President] Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free."

Stopping just short of uttering the phrase "9/11", Palin (well, let's face it, her speechwriter) certainly attempted to continue aligning herself with the conservative members of the Republican Party. However, for non-lemminglike individuals with the ability to conduct even the smallest amount of research, her paraphrasing of Reagan's words definitely lacks any sort of punch. The reason for that? Reagan uttered his comments on a LP recording in 1961 while he was still performing as an actor. Titled "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine", the future President details the "dangerous threat" supposedly posed by Medicare and similar programs. Yes, you heard me right. The star of "Bedtime for Bonzo" provided his time for a recording which has absolutely nothing to do with what Palin was talking about it. The LP was supported by the American Medical Association so I guess Reagan's association with lobbying started pretty early.

Let's See the Forest for the Trees

Following Thursday's vice presidential debate between Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, we have obviously seen and heard the political pundits from both sides discuss not only the winner and loser but also inaccuracies and supposed mistakes. The following are some of my favorites:

Palin: "[General] McClellan did not say definitively the surge principles would not work in Afghanistan."
Truth: First and foremost, the correct name of the commanding officer of NATO troops in Afghanistan is General David McKiernan. General George McClellan served in the Civil War and died more than 120 years ago. With that being said, McKiernan had this to say on Wednesday: "What I don’t think is needed — the word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word 'surge'. There needs to be a sustained commitment of a variety of military and non-military resources, I believe. That’s my advice to winning in Afghanistan. It won’t be a short term solution."

Biden: The Senator from my home state of Delaware was criticized vehemently by various conservatives on FOX News, including the ridiculous Ann Coulter, for supposedly incorrectly describing the individuals living in Bosnia as "Bosniaks".
Truth: Spelled correctly, the term Bosniaks does refer to South Slavic individuals living primarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina. If you think that I am may be spinning this topic, I recommend that you to go http://www.bosniak.org/06/, the web site for the Congress of North American Bosniaks.

Biden: Calvin Woodward of The Associated Press claimed that Biden's complaints about how the "economic policies of the last eight years" have created "excessive deregulation" fall on deaf ears because he actually voted for deregulation in 1999.
Truth: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999 repealed legislation from 1933 and, by doing so, allowed for competition among banks, securities companies and insurance companies. The Congressional vote (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s1999-105) shows that Biden voted against the act and (surprise, surprise) Sen. John McCain voted for the legislation.

Biden: "[Sen.] Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes. The vote [Palin's] referring to, John McCain voted the exact same way. It was a budget procedural vote. John McCain voted the same way."
Truth: Multiple web sites (including FactCheck.org) stated that Biden was incorrect when making this claim. At the same time, according to the web site for the Congressional voting record (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00042), the amendment to which Biden was speaking did provide tax relief to, among other groups, middle class families and small businesses. FactCheck.org attempted to connect their false claim to another piece of legislation (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/bills/s_4/). However, this particular bill clearly focused on improving homeland security.

Biden: "John McCain said as recently as a couple of weeks ago he wouldn't even sit down with the government of Spain, a NATO ally that has troops in Afghanistan with us now."
Truth: FactCheck.org and other web sites declared that McCain did not deliver a definitive statement against inviting President Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to the White House if McCain was elected President. Well, view McCain's response for yourself: "Uh, I don’t, you know, honestly I have to look at the relations and the situations and the priorities."

Palin: "John McCain has been the consummate maverick in the Senate over all these years."
Truth: An article from the "Congressional Quarterly" in January 2008 determined that McCain was the most reliable voter for the Bush administration in 2007: "McCain's 95% support score for last year was the highest in the chamber." Maybe it doesn't count if you are running for President of the United States.

With all of this in mind, here is one more Palin quote from the debate that I wanted to point out: "I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or [Sen. Biden wants] to hear but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also." Listen, dingbat, there are two important things that you should know. (1) You are not as cute or as smart as you think you are and (2) the American people do want you to actually answer the questions asked.

Just Say Something!, Part II

When discussing her choices of newspapers and magazines with Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News", Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin provided these bewildering comments:

Couric: "And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?"
Palin: "I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media." Couric: "What specifically?"
Palin: "Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years."
Couric: "Can you name a few?"
Palin: "I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, 'Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C. may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?'. Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America."

"Um, all of them, any of them"? You have got to be kidding me! Now although I wish her reading material was along the lines of "Mother Jones" or "The Nation", I would completely understand if her choices were conservative publications such as "National Review" and "The Washington Times". However, based on her responses above, I am worried that she is frequently perusing "Highlights", "Tiger Beat" and "MAD Magazine".

Just Say Something!, Part I

After discussing her opinion on the Roe v. Wade decision with Katie Couric this evening on the "CBS Evening News", Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was asked the following question: "What other [U.S.] Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?"

You would probably assume that this little Alaskan Einstein would be able to name at least one other recent Supreme Court decision viewed as controversial by the right wing. For example, Wallace v. Jaffree (prayer in public schools), Grutter v. Bollinger (affirmative action) or Lawrence v. Texas (homosexual rights). You assumed wrong...

Palin: "Well, let's see. There's, of course, in the great history of America, there have been rulings there's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but…"
Couric: "Can you think of any?"
Palin: "Well, I would think of any again that could be best dealt with on a more local level maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as a mayor and then as a governor and even as a Vice President, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today."

If you think that Palin's response to Couric's question was unbelievable, it gets even better. On June 25, 2008, the Supreme Court reduced the amount of punitive damages (from $2.5 billion to $507.5 million) to Alaska fishermen and other residents as a result of the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. In a prepared statement, Palin announced that "I am extremely disappointed with today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court". Yes, you read that correctly. Even though Palin provided a dissenting opinion against a Supreme Court decision from less than 100 days ago and involving a case in the state of which she is currently governor, this mental giant could not provide an intelligent response to an extremely straightforward question from Couric.