Dear John, When becoming a soulless zombie, try to remember that brains are in the head. Honestly, you should fire your debate prep team.
Who the hell knows what he's doing. Honestly.
Writing Raven (Native Tlingit/Athabascan) on Sarah Palin’s egregious policies and attitudes toward Native People and on the spuriousness of Todd Palin’s claim to a Native (Yup’ik) identity, which is being reported as an uncritical fact in the lower 48.
Indian Country Today (the newspaper of record in Native America) on McCain/Palin’s egregious policies toward Native issues.
A mefite chimes in: You will hear often that Alaska has the highest rate of forcible rape in the US, but you will almost never hear why. The one and only reason for that is the very high population of Native people, long regarded as fair game for rapists and criminals and poorly protected by the state and, too often, inept tribal law enforcement authorities.
Such jokes are *common* expressions of masculine and white power in rural Alaska. So is the rape they refer to. And this isn’t just Alaska. Rape of Native American women by whites taking advantage of their vulnerability is quite common in other Western states as well. But it’s worse in Alaska.
People don’t understand Alaska. They think it’s like any other rural American state. It’s not. The presence of Native people is much stronger and larger than in other Western states, the history of their disenfranchisement, and their resistance to it, much more recent. And the exertion of Anglo power over Natives is much more brutal and subject to much less oversight. Alaska is bigger and far more rural and far less policed than any other state in the US, by a long shot.
So Sarah Palin’s “pay for your own rape kit” policy, while it may have been targeting the inclusion of emergency contraception in the kit (you want to bet this was justified as “the government won’t pay for contraception for rape victims, or anyone else,” and not directly by the cost of rape kits), was among her various anti-Native policy initiatives and statements, as I document in a post above.
You think I am kidding? Here’s Amnesty International’s report on the issue. You will there note the statistic that one in three Native Alaskan women will be raped in her lifetime. From personal observation, I’d say that might be a conservative number based on a narrow definition of “rape.”
Make no mistake: Alaska is founded on a racist and genocidal stealing of Native lands just like the lower 48. The only difference up there is that it is still going on big time, and that oil wealth and a later start to the genocide gave Native Alaskans a little more of a fighting chance than the Indians of the lower 48 had.
Even his own family is coming out and remarking on the 180° turn from the Straight Talkin’ Maverick to the craven, say anything, do anything, pander to all politician desperately taking his last covetous bid at the White House. Ouch.
John and I are related through our grandmothers. Katherine Vaulx McCain and Huetta Vaulx Boles, both of Fayetteville, Ark., were sisters. My side of the Vaulx family represents a long line of Democrats, but it is with no small amount of pride that we’ve followed the life and career of now-Sen. John McCain.[..]
Although neither my father nor I have ever voted for a Republican, when John threw his hat in the ring in 2000, we were both very proud and encouraged, and not just because he’s our relative. This was the first Republican who, on a national stage, was saying things like, “If we repeal Roe vs. Wade tomorrow, thousands of young American women will be performing illegal and dangerous operations,” and, “Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer-reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance.” Wow!
Here was a man who was not abiding by partisan lines, who was, instead, living up to his promise of “straight talk” and commonsense thinking. The right-wing Republican base may not have agreed with everything he said, but the rest of America certainly respected him for speaking his mind honestly.
Jump ahead to the campaign Sen. McCain is currently running. Clearly, a lot can change in eight years. Our nation has gone from a time of unparalleled prosperity and peace to one marked by debt in the trillions of dollars, record foreclosures, and a global reputation for warmongering and neo-imperialism.
So, where is the straight-talking, commonsense John McCain of 2000? I’m afraid he is long gone, replaced by a desperate version of himself who seems to contradict nearly everything he once stood for.
What becomes apparent in his ideological about-face is just how out of touch McCain really is with America’s working families. [..]
But, as he continually demonstrates in this campaign, my cousin John is long gone. “Straight talk” has been replaced with “flip-flop.” Saddest all, this is the same man who, when campaigning in 2000, told a crowd of supporters, “I don’t think Bill Gates needs a tax cut. I think your parents do.”
My parents, John, need some help after the economic destruction Bush has wrought in the last eight years, but it’s clear you’re not the one who’ll give it to us. America’s working families no longer recognize you, nor does your own.
ABC News’ David Wright reports: At a joint rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Thursday, Republican John McCain slammed the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) for being “asleep at the switch” saying that if he were president, he would fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the SEC since 2005 and a former Republican congressman.
McCain said the SEC has allowed trading practices such as short selling to stay in place that turned the “markets into a casino.”
“The regulators were asleep, my friends,” McCain said. “The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the president. And in my view has betrayed the public trust. If I were president today, I would fire him.”
But while the president nominates and the Senate confirms the SEC chair, a commissioner of an independent regulatory commission cannot be removed by the president. From time to time, presidents have attempted to remove commissioners who have proven “uncooperative.” However, the courts have general upheld the independence of commissioners. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt fired a member of the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court ruled the president acted unconstitutionally. Asked how McCain would fire Cox if the president does not have the formal power to fire the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the McCain campaign pointed to former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt who resigned in 2002 when it was made clear to him that he had lost the confidence of the Bush administration. “Not only is there historical precedent for SEC Chairs to be removed, the President of the United States always reserves the right to request the resignation of an appointee and maintain the customary expectation that it will be delivered,” said McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds. The White House said this week it wants to stay out of politics, but a Bush administration spokesperson said today of SEC Chairman Cox, who was nominated by President George W. Bush: “the chairman has the president’s support.” Campaigning together in Iowa today McCain and Sarah Palin accused the Obama campaign of taking political advantage of the recent economic crisis.
“My opponent sees an economic crisis as a political opportunity instead of an opportunity to lead,” McCain said.
Said Palin of Obama: “He likes to point the finger of blame, but does he ever lift a finger to help?”
McCain accused Obama of taking more campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives than anyone aside from the chair of the Congressional committee that regulates the lenders.
“While Sen. Obama was lining his pockets with campaign contributors, he didn’t lift a finger” said McCain, who took credit for warning Congress of the impending crisis two years ago. McCain also noted that the former head of Obama’s vice presidential search committee Jim Johnson was formerly a Fannie Mae executive.
The Obama campaign says when Sean Hannity asked Palin last night whether there should be an investigation of campaign contributions by Fannie and Freddie executives, she deferred saying, “that’s significant, but even more significant is the role that lobbyists play in this.”
Obama campaign staffers note that several of McCain’s top advisors – including campaign manager Rick Davis, vice presidential vetter Arthur Culvahouse, and McCain consigliere Charlie Black – lobbied on behalf of the mortgage giants.
ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, Lisa Chinn, Teddy Davis, Alyssa Litoff, Bret Hovell and Imtiyaz Delawala contributed to this report.
John Cole of Balloon Juice has some great stuff to say about the election and the lying liars who are trying to steal it. Here’s an example.
Apparently some crazy people at the DNC have decided to attempt the herculean endeavor of counting and chronicling all of the lies coming from the McCain campaign. I have no idea how they have time to sleep, but here is what they have so far. They might want to head over to Think Progress, where we learn that even Fox news reporters are calling the McCain campaign liars.
For his part, Andrew Sullivan is chronicling the lies of Sarah Palin, with three initial installments: the lie about firing Monegan, the lie about the Bridge to Nowhere, and the lie about firing the librarian and the police chief.
Maybe this is the McCain campaigns unemployment solution- lie so much that an army of fact checkers is needed to keep up with all the bullshit.
*** Update ***
Sullivan already has two more- the lie about the Endangered Species is #4, and #5 is the Pipeline.
What is so crazy about all this is that we are not dealing with differences of opinion, or spin, or things in which there is some nuance and people can disagree. These are just plain, simple, outright lies.