Here’s McCain deriding women’s health as some kind of ruse:
He doesn’t even try to spell out the argument conservatives make on this point, he just kind of asserts it as if (a) everyone is familiar with the argument and (b) it’s obviously correct when in fact neither is the case.
CNN who won the debate? — Obama 58, McCain 31:
CBS who won the debate? — Obama 53, McCain 22:
McCain had some okay jabs at Obama that I think impressed some of the CNN panelists and, especially, got the conservative ones jazzed up. But he used a lot of right-wing echo-chamber jargon, never explaining what he meant about trial lawyers and scare-quote “health” and so forth. He doesn’t really speak to problems in people’s lives. Nobody’s laying in bed, nervous about their situation in life, pondering the threat of pork-barrel spending. It’s an issue purely for political insiders.
McCain’s absurd claim in tonight’s debate that ACORN is “destroying the fabric of democracy” reflects other hate-filled cries from conservatives about the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people:
– Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL): “One organization in particular has developed a reputation for lawlessness in the electoral process.”
– Ken Blackwell (R-OH): “Election Day this year may bring the kind of chaos you expect from a category-five hurricane – with radical groups sending the nation into a protracted legal battle even worse than the mess back in 2000.”
– Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “[B]ecause the violations of federal voting laws by ACORN employees appear to be so widespread, ACORN and its affiliates should be investigated as a criminal enterprise.”
As Lori Minnite, a professor of political science at Barnard College who investigated allegations of widespread voter fraud but found no evidence to support such claims, told Salon:
The fact is that ACORN has been smeared by [conservatives]. Some of their employees do seem to fake registrations, sure, but when Macy’s has some of their employees stealing from them, we would not call them a quasi-criminal organization — we still call them a department store. ACORN is trying to help underprivileged people vote.
The small number of staffers who have knowingly submitted fraudulent registration forms are violating ACORN’s mission. When a department store calls the police to report a shoplifting employee, no one says the department store is guilty of consumer fraud. The same principle applies here.
Unfortunately, widespread voter suppression — unlike the myths of voter fraud and registration fraud — does exist. McCain has not raised any alarm about this troubling reality.
Unless I’m mistaken:
All told, a weird performance that seemed directed at people already inside the conservative bubble — people who think that when the public says it doesn’t like Bush, they mean they think Bush has spent too much money.
UPDATE: Also McCain doesn’t know the difference between Down’s Syndrome and autism.
When John concluded by reflecting on the “long line of McCains” that have served the country, I thought he was finally going to bust out the big guns — “my dad was an admiral, his dad was a Muslim” would, unlike most of what he says, actually true.
What do you guys think? I think McCain’s blinking a lot.
11:27: Asked how the race now changes for John McCain after this debate, CNN’s David Gergen responds, “Beats the hell out of me.”
11:15: On Fox News, Mitt Romney said it was McCain’s strongest performance since the Saddleback Forum in August: “It was a great night for John McCain.”
11:00: An instant CBS poll of uncommitted voters said Obama was the winner 53-22. CBS’s polls found that in the first presidential debate, second presidential debate and vice presidential debate, more uncommitted voters said the Democratic candidate was the victor.
10:55: Ambinder reports: McCain didn’t say “middle class” at all. Said Bill Ayers six times. ACORN three times.
10:51: Krauthammer on Fox: “It was a dead draw, which means Obama won resoundingly.”
10:48: CNN’s focus group gave the debate to Obama 15-10. 3 people changed their minds based on the debate. All three decided to vote for Obama.
10:44: ABC’s fact checker: McCain got “Joe the Plumber’s” name wrong, calling him Joe Wurzelberger instead of his real name, Joe Wurzelbacher.
10:40: A “clear majority” of Frank Luntz’s focus group on Fox News said Obama won. (Ambinder: “Four members of Frank Luntz’s 23-person focus group switched to Obama. None switched to McCain. Brit Hume did not seem happy to learn that.”) Read more
The AT&T signal quality inside the Flophouse is deplorable and the situation at my new place is, if anything, even worse. Too bad I don’t chair the committee that regulates telecom firms, if I did I might be able to get them to install a special cell tower just for me.
In 2005, as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) embarked on his efforts to rein in the administration’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding, his staff initially circulated a bill stating that “no person under U.S. control could be treated or interrogated with techniques ‘not authorized by or listed in’” the Army Field Manual. But McCain soon dropped this draft language, instead narrowing the scope of his legislation “to require the field manual’s use only for the military interrogations or interrogations on military property.”
When McCain struck a deal in 2006 with the White House over rules to govern military tribunals and interrogations, the White House said that it “would allow a key CIA interrogation program for suspected terrorists to go forward.” Since then, the administration has refused to rule out the use of waterboarding in CIA interrogations.
But in an interview released yesterday for PBS’ Frontline, top McCain aide Mark Salter, claimed that critics were “quite wrong” to say that McCain “let the CIA off the hook“:
QUESTION: And for those who say, Mark, he let the CIA off the hook?
SALTER: I don’t know why they say that. I think they’re quite wrong. … We negotiated with several members in the Senate — John Warner [R-Va.], Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] and the others — very senior members of the administration for a long time. And to get a standard in statute that we felt would prevent things like water boarding, we needed to rewrite the war crimes statutes, to change their definitions.
Now remember, some of the violations are punishable by death, serious. And to get them to allow us to do that, we agreed the law would not be retroactive but from date of enactment. I think that’s a perfectly respectable decision for a lawmaker to make. … You’re not going to get it done any other way.
Salter’s claimed confusion, however, is contradicted by former McCain aide John Weaver, who acknowledged to Frontline that there was “a CIA loophole.” Weaver said that if McCain is elected, it “will be fixed immediately“:
QUESTION: There’s one other practical side of it, though, the much-talked-about CIA loophole. Where does that come from?
WEAVER: When you’re trying to pass something, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. And I think at the end of the day, they did the best they could on that issue. And I think that’s how he sees it. I mean, he worked very hard with [Sen.] Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] and with Colin Powell. And I can assure you that if he’s president, that will be fixed immediately.
Furthermore, when the Senate voted in February to outlaw waterboarding by establishing one interrogation standard across the government, McCain voted against it. McCain then urged President Bush to veto the legislation, which Bush did.
Last night on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) daughter Meghan explained that she could never bring herself to “get behind Pesident Bush” because of “what happened in 2000.” She was referring to a racist smear campaign run by Bush supporters in the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary.
Meghan McCain recalled, “It had to do with my little sister … And there are things that I don’t know if I’ll ever completely get over.” Watch it:
In 2004, Sen. McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis wrote an article in which he explained the smear campaign that turned Meghan McCain against Bush:
John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh. … Bridget has dark skin. … Anonymous opponents used “push polling” to suggest that McCain’s Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child.
In 2000, Sen. McCain held that those “anonymous opponents” were Bush adviser Tucker Eskew and Bush political strategist Karl Rove. McCain accused them of negative campaigning, saying that they had “unleashed the dogs of war.” Today, however, Eskew is Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) chief of staff and Karl Rove is an informal McCain campaign adviser.
Eskew has been instrumental in pushing the McCain-Palin campaign to adopt a Lee Atwater-style playbook. Independent organizations have debunked numerous McCain campaign smears. Still, Meghan McCain yesterday said, “[O]f course, I’m supporting my father.” She further claimed that the attacks in this election have “been particularly harsh on my family.”
Transcript: Read more
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