In her interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said that Bill Ayers is “no question” a terrorist because he sought to destroy the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. Palin, however, refused to apply the same label to abortion clinic bombers:

Q: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist, under this definition, governor?

PALIN: (Sigh). There’s no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was one who sought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that uh, it would be unacceptable. I don’t know if you’re going to use the word terrorist there.

Watch it:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has repeatedly voted against protecting Americans from domestic terrorists carrying out violence at abortion clinics.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) frequently faults “wasteful spending” and “earmarks” as contributing to the current economic crisis, and has campaigned on a promise to take a “hatchet” to the federal budget and to impose a spending freeze on all non-essential government spending. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that, in an effort to court Florida voters, McCain has now pledged to increase funding for NASA, a major employer in the state:

During a visit to Florida last week, Sen. McCain said he, too, favors an additional $2 billion in spending. Asked by a local TV station, News 13, about his broader pledge to freeze spending and whether that would affect NASA’s budget, he said: “Of course not, of course not. It means we’re going to move money around….Space is vital.”

A McCain spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said on Wednesday that Sen. McCain’s NASA initiative would be exempt from the promised budget freeze.

NASA is the latest program to be added to the McCain campaign’s growing list of exemptions to his supposedly frozen budget:

– “Defense, Veterans Care, Social Security and Health Care“: “I will freeze government spending on all but the most important programs like defense, veterans care, Social Security and health care.” [McCain speech, 10/13/08]

– “Science“: The McCain budget plan includes “a specific carve-out for spending on science.” “You’ll definitely see, under John McCain, more spending on research.” [Senior Policy Adviser Ike Brannon, 10/14/08]

– “Worker Retraining“: “We have to impose a spending freeze to cover all but the most vital functions of government, like worker retraining.” [Palin, 10/13/08]

– “Several Other Issues“: “I think we ought to seriously consider [a spending freeze] with the exceptions the caring of veterans, national defense, and several other vital issues.” [McCain, 9/26/08]

A spending freeze that exempts health care, military and veterans programs, and entitlement spending has very little left to freeze, as illustrated by this chart showing the breakdown of the federal budget from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

Backing off from a reckless and ill conceived promise is not new to McCain. When it was pointed out that his war against earmarks could eliminate funding for Israel and military housing, he immediately back-peddled, saying he just objected to the “process,” not the actual earmarks. When pressed, he couldn’t even identify a single earmark he would actually cut.

During an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams which aired tonight, Gov. Sarah Palin offered two contradictory statements in the span of just a few minutes. When asked who is “an elite,” Palin answered: “Oh, I guess just people who think they’re better than anyone else.” Moments later, here’s how Palin responded when asked if she’s a “feminist”:

I’m not gonna label myself. And I think that’s what annoys a lot of Americans – especially in a political campaign – is to start trying to label different parts of America, different backgrounds.

Watch it:

Palin seemed not to realize that, just minutes earlier, she was labeling different parts of America.

Our guest blogger is Henry Fernandez, a Senior Fellow at the Center For American Progress Action Fund working on state and municipal issues.

As has happened at different points throughout United States history, New Americans — immigrants and the children of immigrants — are changing the face of the electorate. And apparently they aren’t too happy with the way their communities are being treated. This may in the end decide the outcome of the presidential election.

In a report released today, the Immigration Policy Center points out that New Americans are big voting blocs in key swing states, including: 14.8% of the electorate in Nevada and 14% in Florida. IPC also notes that Latinos and Asians together account for 31.5% of all registered voters in New Mexico, 16.2% in Nevada, 12.6% in Florida, and 11.1% in Colorado.

Most daunting for those politicians who have chosen to scapegoat immigrants — according to a Pew Hispanic Center poll this summer, 75% of Latino voters view the immigration issue as important or very important.

And they plan to vote — a recent NALEO Educational Fund poll found that an astonishing 90% of Latinos in battleground states (Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico) say they are certain to vote.

Why does this matter? The vote count gurus over at FiveThirtyEight.com rank Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico as top “tipping point states,” meaning a state that in a close national election would alter the outcome if decided differently. Both Pollster.com and FiveThirtyEight currently lists all of these swing states won in 2004 by Bush as leaning to Obama based on recent polling.

Why have these states and their 46 electoral votes moved? NALEO’s poll finds dramatically higher Latino support for Obama than the Latino vote for Kerry just four years ago.

Check out the full report here.

In a statement responding to reports that nearly 500,000 more Americans claimed unemployment benefits this week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tried to link Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to President Bush’s failed economic policies.: “Barack Obama’s only answer is to double-down on the Bush Administration’s legacy of out-of-control spending.” The Wall Street Journal notes that this claim “hangs on the thread of proposed spending increases by Obama,” adding that Obama nevertheless “opposes most major aspects of Bush’s economic legacy, including making permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which McCain supports.”

The New York City Council voted today to extend term limits so that Mayor Michael Bloomberg can run for a third term next year. The council’s vote of 29 to 22 undoes the result of two voter referendums that had imposed a limit of two four-year terms for the Mayor’s office. Here’s Bloomberg’s statement on the vote:

Today, the majority of the City Council decided to give the people of New York a fuller choice in the November 2009 election. I believe that was the right choice, and I want to thank Speaker Quinn for her leadership. Those of us who work on both sides of City Hall must now move forward with the important decisions that face us, particularly finding ways to soften the fallout from the economic downturn and balancing our budget as revenues decline. We have a lot of work to do together to get New York through these tough times.

The New York Times reports that after Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum announced the final result, the balcony in the Council chamber “erupted in shouts of ‘The city’s for sale!’ and ‘Shame on you!’”

Today on Fox News, host Neil Cavuto asked Karl Rove to explain today’s “very volatile markets.” Rove responded by claiming that it was a result of people’s uncertainty over an Obama presidency:

ROVE: But we have to be a little bit careful here, because markets try and predict the future. And what they may be doing here, this volatility may be people’s concerns about what would happen if Barack Obama, who has a lead in the polls and has been deemed by the media to be the likely next president of the United States, what would happen to their economy and their portfolios if he were to become president? [...]

Well, Americans understand instinctively, at least investors understand instinctively, that if you lower the corporate tax rate it makes American companies more competitive around the world, and it means that we’ll have more jobs, more growth, more prosperity in here in America. If you raise that tax, or leave it where it is — the second highest in the world — it means American companies are becoming less competitive.

Rove also claimed that investors were nervous about Obama’s “anti-business attitude,” pointing to how he would “raise the capital gains tax, which will take some value out of the market.” Watch it:

It’s absurd to claim that the entire market is responding to presidential election polls. Substantively, however, Rove is also off the mark. First, Obama is not proposing to raise corporate taxes. McCain wants to lower them, even though two-thirds of corporations already pay zero taxes. This cut is nothing more than a corporate giveaway; it would do little to boost the economy and create jobs.

Second, temporarily cutting the capital gains tax, as McCain has proposed, will actually “take value out of the market,” as CAP’s Michael Ettlinger explains:

One virtue of having a tax on capital gains is that it dampens volatility and promotes longer-term investing. That is, if you pay tax on profitable trades, you’re less likely to make moves based on short term movements on the market. Given the uncertain times we face, it’s far more likely that a [low] rate on capital gains would prompt a massive exodus from the market than a massive entry into it.

In the past, Rove has also blamed the media for the struggling economy.

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