JON STEWART INTERVIEWS PAULSON AND BERNANKE

Jon Stewart episode summary
President Bush's speech on the financial crisis is very similar to his speech on Iraq five years ago. John McCain arrives in Washington, DC 22 hours after he suspends his campaign. Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke ask Congress for a loan, and Bob Schieffer doesn't know if McCain will attend the first debate.

This is Thursday, September 25, 2008 episode below.
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McCain Returns to Washington

(05:12)

John McCain is the only man who can impulsively overreact to something 10 days old.

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Clusterf#@k to the Poor House - Dive of Death

(04:03)
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Awkward Loan Interview

(03:30)

Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke appear in Congress with hat in hand for the world's most awkward loan interview ever.

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Bob Schieffer on Jon Stewart

(06:08)

Bob Schieffer doesn't know if John McCain will show up for the first debate, but he's going to Mississippi anyway.

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Moment of Zen - More Than one Grill

(00:17)

John McCain tells Rachael Ray he can handle more than one grill.

Links to Jon Stewart's The Daily Show full episodes:

Aaron Eckhart on Jon Stewart September 24, 2008

Bill Clinton on Jon Stewart September 23, 2008

Tony Blair on Jon Stewart September 18, 2008

IT'S YOU - NOT ONLY THE CANDIDATE - WHO HAS THE RESPONSIBILITY

Some would have us believe that the USA was founded upon Christian principles. If that is true, why is the Golden Rule not adhered to?
"Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you."

RESPONSIBILITY BELONGS TO THE VOTER

I was not politically tuned in very much until the last 11 years. Now, I am anxious because I see a country that is not tuned in. Just like I was until my 50s. Throughout my life, my intuitive perceptions have proven correct in my experiences. And my intuition and knowledge of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates are strong and I am afraid of what is for me potentially a huge mistake. That mistake is another four years of the Republicans leading this country. Another four years of the secrecy, the lack of care for all of “We The People”, placing U.S. Supreme Court Justices in power of more conservatives with less balance of the whole picture, and less chance of holding accountable those who have broken the laws over the last (almost) 8 years. Justice and equality look less and less like the headline of the country's values and standards and just something to dress up in words that take the integrity away from what makes these words so powerful. Truth has been robbed. Intimidation, abuse of power and gaining power are the mainstay of our political house.

When I hear anyone say anything that rings with a capital T for Truth, I think, "Wow, some sanity". It is rare.

McCain and Palin physically affect me. A heavy feeling comes over me. I have barely been hanging on during Bush/Cheney and the really, really poor media touted as news. I am starved to hear intelligence come out of my President and Vice-President. I see that in Barack Obama and Joe Biden. I feel healthy when I hear them speak.

These catch words of "elite", "Reverend Wright", "most liberal", "muslim" that really are not inherently bad words but they are used as heaping negativity upon Barack Obama are fuel for depression.

Barack is said not to connect. Then why do people turn out in monumental numbers to see him live?

I hear people say that Barack has no stand on this issue or that issue, but when I ask the person who says that if they have done any work to find out Barack's stands. The answer is no.

I hear the pundits say what Barack isn't doing correctly to reach certain groups of people. Here, is what I say about that: It isn't all up to Barack. THE People have responsibilities to get more engaged, become a part of their participatory government and get educated. We are not educated. We don't know what our country is doing within our elected politician committees, in their offices and we are narcissists. On the whole, we have virtually no knowledge of the rest of the world. And that is wrong. Wrong. Barack Obama's philosophy is to lead but to be an intelligent leader by power through gaining respect by word and deed and not inflating respect by mighty force.

We act like we know-it-all. Forget what we say. We act like we are the only ones in the world who can say what is the right way or wrong way. The truth is that is just our opinion of ourselves. The rest of the world doesn't feel this way about us on the whole.

We can say that is doesn't matter what the other countries’ citizens think of us. But 9/11, Bush/Cheney’s reaction to 9/11 and our invasion into Iraq shows that the truth is that it does matter.

It is time for us to be a team player. We could be point guard. But even that requires that the other team members respect us on their terms. There is a song "I Can't Make You Love Me, If You Don't". It is true about our standing in the world. We can't shoot our way to being respected. For us to carry any weight in negotiating, we need to have citizens of the world respect us. And the Bush/Cheney administration has diminished the respect the USA has had in the past.

MEDIA FAILURE

Our media is a disaster. It doesn't report the news - it strives to feed our weaknesses. It chooses to entertain us. We get so very little news about the poor people of this country, the deep problems within our own borders. Importantly also, news from other countries and peoples of the world is direly unreported. It is a disaster. It is narcissism.

One example: I get my news about Darfur more from the activist lists that I am a member of or online. The newspapers in my area scarcely mention the five and a half year genocide in Darfur, Sudan. And the television coverage is so scant that it is still an unknown crisis to many of our citizens.

Here is an article that I read in my Newsweek magazine about an issue that has been neglected – cancer. Neglected by our government whose number one priority is to look out for “We The People”.

What the Next President Can Do

If a war were killing 565,000 Americans a year, you'd hear more than one or two references to it at the party conventions.

By Jonathan Alter

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 2:49 PM ET Sep 6, 2008

I'm a four-year cancer survivor, and when people inquire how I'm feeling nowadays I say "good" and sincerely thank them for asking. But some well-wishers respond awkwardly. One politician I know has me in his mental file under "cancer" and accompanies his hearty hello with "Glad you beat it!" As anyone who has had advanced cancer can tell you, this is understandable but unhelpful. It also reflects why politicians are still so out of touch about the disease.

At bottom, they don't want to face the truth, which is that they've failed to protect the lives of our citizens. If a war were killing 565,000 Americans a year (and none of our wars ever has), you'd hear more than one or two references to it at the party conventions. And we'd be doing better fighting it.

The fact is, most cancers remain incurable. Fewer than a half dozen cancer drugs show great results. So it's no wonder survivors get nervous during checkups for many years after diagnosis. The five-year survival marker used by doctors is statistically arbitrary and only partially reassuring.

Consider the case of John McCain. He underwent surgery in 2000 for stage IIa melanoma, a potential deadly skin cancer. The surgery found no dangerous spreading and McCain received no chemo or radiation. Good signs. He's been cancer-free for eight years, which is even better. But the statistics, however inexact, remain a bit unnerving. For those who stay cancer-free for five years, the probability of recurrence of stage IIa melanoma is 14 percent. The probability of death is 9 percent, which doesn't even include the many other diseases from which a 72-year-old man faces sharply increased risk of mortality. (And nearly a third of those who live past 70 will suffer some cognitive impairment.) This is why giving Gov. Sarah Palin a thorough media scrubbing isn't some left-wing media jihad. It's simple prudence.

McCain neither ignores nor emphasizes his cancer experience. He skipped a Lance Armstrong LIVESTRONG Cancer Forum in Iowa in 2007 but appeared with Armstrong in July in Columbus, Ohio, where he shared his melanoma history, advocated sunscreen and explained his Senate work pushing mammography. Press coverage was skimpy as usual (not enough conflict in cancer for reporters), in part because the event came during Barack Obama's trip abroad. So the media missed a good story about just how badly McCain wants to win this election.

In 1997, McCain was passionate on the subject of tobacco, which kills hundreds of thousands of Americans a year. He used his position on the Senate Commerce Committee to advance strong new regulation of the tobacco industry and a new federal tax on cigarettes of more than $1 a pack, with the proceeds going to smoking prevention and medical research. The bill passed the Senate but was killed in the GOP House. So presumably McCain will move on this if he's elected. Country first, right?

Well, no. McCain once angrily tossed Philip Morris lobbyist Charlie Black out of his office; today Black is one of his closest political advisers. To get nominated in the Republican Party—and to make his tax attacks on Obama stick—McCain feels he must oppose all new taxes, even one he once championed. His excuse is that he worries Congress would just use the money for other purposes, as so many state legislatures have. Instead of asserting that this would never be tolerated in a McCain presidency—that he would bring down his wrath on the wayward members of Congress—McCain punted on any new cigarette tax.

Until now, Obama has also been disappointing on cancer. While he often mentioned that his mother died in her early fifties of ovarian cancer, it was usually in the context of her having to worry about her insurance not fully covering treatment, a common problem. And though Obama won passage in Illinois of a law making insurers cover colorectal screenings, he missed both LIVESTRONG forums and didn't make cancer a campaign priority.

Then last Friday, on the day of the Stand Up to Cancer telethon, Obama finally stood up. He pledged to double funding over five years for the National Institutes of Health (which houses the National Cancer Institute), expand clinical trials, end discrimination by insurance companies against those who have had cancer (and thus can't change jobs) and improve coordination among federal agencies. McCain also used the occasion to address cancer on his Web site for the first time, but he's sketchier on the details and hasn't committed to big funding increases or any cancer initiatives beyond smoking-cessation programs.

Politicians have been slow on the cancer front partly because it's a downer, and partly because most don't seem to understand how perilous the research situation has become. It's not just that fewer than two in 10 applications for NIH grants are funded—down sharply under President Bush. It's that the wrong researchers often get the money, as Thomas Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has pointed out. The system, he writes, is "risk averse." Older researchers with old-boy-network contacts receive a disproportionate amount of the funding. Cech notes that younger, less-connected but more creative researchers, the ones most likely to find cures, are leaving medical research in droves because they can't get funded.

That's where Stand Up to Cancer comes in. The funds raised by all the celebrities will be what Jerome Groopman of the Harvard Medical School calls "catalytic money" devoted to highly innovative grants and to "dream teams" of doctors who work in collaboration rather than along parallel lines. For a disease that destroys families and costs the economy $200 billion annually in lost productivity, it's the least we can do.

The new president shouldn't promise that we'll cure cancer in 10 or 20 years. That's not realistic. But he must set plausible goals, like doubling survival time for major cancers. The War on Cancer that Richard Nixon declared in 1971 has been a failure. McCain or Obama can succeed if they get passionate about the havoc that cancer wreaks, make gutsy budget and tax decisions and resolve not to claim they've "beat it" when they haven't.

Source: www.newsweek.com/id/157575

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www.savedarfur.org

www.darfurolympics.org

GENOCIDE STOPS WITH US

Remember the Darfuri people

Silence Kills

Use Your Freedom to Speak Out Against Genocide

1-800-GENOCIDE

VOTE OBAMA AND BIDEN
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Nashua, New Hampshire

Primary Night
The first time I have volunteered in a Presidential campaign
I traveled to New Hampshire and volunteered
the last full week prior to the New Hampshire Primary

Uploaded by BarackObamadotcom

Nashua, New Hampshire
Primary Night
That is me in the center

NEW-FANGLED DISCRIMINATION CONSTITUTIONAL - PRACTICAL EQUIVALENCE OF RACISM

While we're not paying vigilant attention, our moral high ground sinks. I am very concerned, worried about this country. Our U.S. Constitution has not been protected or honored by the Bush/Cheney administration. We are at war, but behave as a country that the war isn't as important as it would merit. The good questions aren't even being asked. For one, have you read the U.S. Constitution? Tell us what each article means to you? How would you specifically protect the U.S. Constitutional rights of the people? What is a signing statement? How many signing statements has George W Bush signed? Do you believe a signing statement should be used to negate the law? Why or why not? How will you open the government to the public? Be specific. When is it okay to misrepresent what the executive branch of the government is doing? Give an example of over reaching or abuse of power by a President. Give an example of using executive privilege that is over the line.

Think of the stupid questions being asked this past week.

Here comes a very important election in 52 days and what happens at the polls must be transparent and just. But my fear is that it won't be.

Our voting standards dangle from election to election as untrustworthy and are outright shameful in a country that claims to pride itself as the ultimate government in the world. Shameful because of inconsistencies and abuse of power as to who is allowed to vote. Intimidation is alive at the voters polls. And not by the voters.

We get the country we deserve. We have taken our eyes off the prize of equality and justice and a government that responds to the needs of the present and the future of all of the people counted in the phrase "We The People".

End of my thoughts. And the beginnning of Jonathan Alter's

‘Jim Crawford’ Republicans

The GOP is working to keep eligible African-Americans from voting in several states.

Jonathan Alter

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Updated: 2:37 PM ET Sep 11, 2008

It was a mainstay of Jim Crow segregation: for 100 years after the Civil War, Southern white Democrats kept eligible blacks from voting with poll taxes, literacy tests and property requirements. Starting in the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court declared these assaults on the heart of American democracy unconstitutional.

Now, with the help of a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Crawford vs. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board, white Republicans in some areas will keep eligible blacks from voting by requiring driver's licenses. Not only is this new-fangled discrimination constitutional, it's spreading.

GOP proponents of the move say they are merely trying to reduce voter fraud. But while occasional efforts to stuff ballot boxes through phony absentee voting still surface, the incidence of individual vote fraud—voting when you aren't eligible—is virtually non-existent, as "The Truth About Vote Fraud," a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, clearly shows. In other words, the problem Republicans claim they want to combat with increased ID requirements doesn't exist. Meanwhile, those ID hurdles facing individuals do nothing to stop the organized insiders who still try to game the system.

The motive here is political, not racial. Republicans aren't bigots like the Jim Crow segregationists. But they know that increased turnout in poor, black neighborhoods is good for Democrats. In that sense, the effort to suppress voting still amounts to the practical equivalent of racism.

In Crawford, the court upheld an Indiana law essentially requiring a passport or driver's license in order to vote. But more than two thirds of Indiana adults have no passports and nearly 15 percent have no driver's licenses. These eligible voters, disproportionately African-American, will need to take a bus or catch a ride from a friend down to the motor vehicles bureau to make sure they obtain a nondriver photo ID. Otherwise, they cannot vote in Indiana this year.

To get an idea of how many African-Americans nationwide lack driver's licenses, recall Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when thousands were stranded without transportation. "Crawford Republicans" could make the old "Jim Crow Democrats" look like pikers when it comes to voter suppression.

Consider Wisconsin, a swing state. Republicans officials there are suing to enforce a "no match, no vote" provision in state regulations, where voters must not only show a photo ID, but establish that it matches the name and number in the Department of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration database. (Democrats are resisting the suit.) These lists are riddled with errors in every state, as the Brennan Center has proven in its report, "Restoring the Right to Vote."

How error prone? Florida wrongly purged tens of thousands of law-abiding, mostly Democratic, voters from the rolls in 2000, claiming they were felons. (This, among other things, cost Al Gore the presidency). Even after the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and worldwide attention, the Florida software is still flawed. It requires only an 80 percent match to the name of a convicted felon. "So if there's a murderous John Peterson, the software disenfranchises everyone named John Peters," Andrew Hacker writes in a recent New York Review of Books.

Voters caught in these snafus can have their rights restored but not if they fail to straighten things out before Election Day. Otherwise they are granted "provisional ballots" that are sometimes counted and sometimes not. Even obtaining a provisional ballot can require an appearance in front of a judge in some states. Faced with the hassle, most voters just give up.

The ability of actual felons to get their right to vote back varies by state. It's especially hard for felons to vote in Virginia; a bit easier in Pennsylvania and Michigan. (Other countries are far more generous to ex-convicts, figuring that having paid their debt to society they should be allowed to vote again.)

All of this would seem to favor John McCain over Barack Obama this year, but some voting-rights trends are pointing in the opposite direction.

In Ohio, where the governor and secretary of state changed in 2006 from Republican to Democrat, a new law allows voters to register to vote and fill out an absentee ballot at the same time between Sept. 30 and Oct. 6. This will mean a week of furious campaigning and early voting in a key state.

Advantage Obama. With 470,000 students enrolled in Ohio's public colleges and universities (and nine out of 10 are Ohio residents), expect a bumper crop of young voters.

The combination of voter suppression and early voting make turnout predictions perilous. And without knowing turnout, most polling is deeply flawed.

So about the only thing we know for sure this year is that with the Crawford decision we are seeing a return to the days when one political party saw a huge advantage in preventing as many poor people as possible from voting. That's understandable politically, but also un-American.

Source: www.newsweek.com/id/158392

FELLOW PRISONER OF WAR of JOHN McCAIN SPEAKS ABOUT McCAIN

Why I Won't Vote for John McCain

Source of this article: www.laprogressive.com
At this link Phillip Butler has a video of himself talking about his life as a POW and more.

by Phillip Butler, PhD –

John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I won’t vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days

we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior), and his roommate lived directly across the hall from me and my two roommates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a senator and candidate for president!

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit, and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4-inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. I could tell many midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact, he barely managed to graduate, standing fifth from the bottom of his 800-man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always “No, John McCain was a POW with me.” The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 ½ years later, so he was a POW for 5 ½ years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

John’s treatment as a POW:

1) Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September 1969, the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965, so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years. President Ho Chi Minh died on September 9, 1969, and the new regime that replaced him and his policies was more pragmatic. They realized we were worth a lot as bargaining chips if we were alive. And they were right because eventually Americans gave up on the war and agreed to trade our POWs for their country. A damn good trade in my opinion! But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

2) John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately, this was often the case; new POW’s arriving with broken bones and serious combat injuries. Many died from their wounds. Medical care was nonexistent to rudimentary. Relief from pain was almost never given and often the wounds were used as an available way to torture the POW. Because John’s father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW’s suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda.

3) John was offered, and refused, “early release.” Many of us were given this offer. It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to “admit” that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was “lenient and humane.” So I, like numerous others, refused the offer. This was obviously something none of us could accept. Besides, we were bound by our service regulations, Geneva Conventions, and loyalties to refuse early release until all the POW’s were released, with the sick and wounded going first.

4) John was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds in combat. This heroism has been played up in the press and in his various political campaigns. But it should be known that there were approximately 660 military POW’s in Vietnam. Among all of us, decorations awarded have recently been totaled as follows: Medals of Honor – 8, Service Crosses – 42, Silver Stars – 590, Bronze Stars – 958 and Purple Hearts – 1,249. John certainly performed courageously and well. But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many - not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe. Among the POWs John wasn’t special. He was just one of the guys.

John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty, and tenacity. More that 600 of us did the same. After our repatriation a census showed that 95% of us had been tortured at least once. The Vietnamese were quite democratic about it. There were many heroes in North Vietnam. I saw heroism every day there. And we motivated each other to endure and succeed far beyond what any of us thought we had in ourselves. Succeeding as a POW is a group sport, not an individual one. We all supported and encouraged each other to survive and succeed. John knows that. He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60s and 70s. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John’s age (72) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for four or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush’s war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me, John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John’s views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

I’m disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate or maverick Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist minister. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he dislikes that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don’t see that John is the “straight talk express” he markets himself to be.

Senator John Sidney McCain III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who “Returned With Honor.” That’s our POW motto. But since many of you keep asking what I think of him, I’ve decided to write it out. In short, I think John Sidney McCain III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States.

by Phillip Butler, PhD

Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals. After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.

JOHH McCAIN - PURPOSELY DECEITFUL

John McCain approves this message:
Lying Ads Are Acceptable to McCain Because He is Hoping Voters Will Believe His Lying Messages about Barack Obama

Not long to find out if McCain is right

McCain is NOT Puttting Country First

And those campaign Service signs that he has his followers hold up at his venues are hypocritical

Didn't John McCain say that he would rather lose the election than lose the war?

My opinion is that John McCain lied about that too. John will lie to win. That is how little he cares about justice.

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John McCain's Campaign Negative/Lying TV ads
Uploaded by bravenewpac