WHO IS THE 2008 JOHN McCAIN?

I just watched the last half hour of the hour long show of the FOX station's Barack Obama The Ties That Bind tonight. I admit who I am voting for. Barack Obama and Joe Biden. FOX TV bothers me. This one hour show was using their pseudo news airwaves to promote their agenda - to smear Barack Obama and elect John McCain.

There is so much that Barack Obama could be putting out there about John McCain and Sarah Palin that would speak to their associations that would merit red flags. But Senator Obama doesn't do that. But I have done a little looking around. And here is a bit of it.

What is being said outside the USA about the USA ~ From Watching America:
Russia~ McCain-Palin: Team From Hell
The Netherlands ~ The Real Mavricks Are In Texas: McCain Is Not One of Them
Lebanon ~ If I Were an American, I Would Vote For Obama
Great Britain ~ For Conservatives, It Has to Be Obama

The Palin's un-American activities
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Bob Woodward interviewed George Bush ~ the surge is not the reason....at 6:00
October 03, 2008
Uploaded by TULLYCAST2

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Senator Obama's attorney speaks about election dirty tricks as a part of a plan by Republicans

Who IS Sarah Palin?

From Sarah Palin Information Page from Alaska:

Read the blog Alaskan Exposure to better understand Alaska

News Update 9/13/08): Huge anti-Palin rally draws 1,500 people in Alaska

Click here to read Palin: wrong woman, wrong message, op-ed piece by Gloria Steinem

This Website calls itself: The Truth About Sarah Palin

Palin supports the Alaskan Independence Party which seeks independence from the USA (VIDEO)

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Video about Sarah Palin and aerial wolf hunting in Alaska

Palin offered a bounty of $150 for each left front leg of freshly killed wolves

Palin used $400,000 of state money to fund a propaganda campaign in support of aerial hunting

Palin promotes aerial hunting of wolves even though Alaskans voted twice to ban it (VIDEO)

As mayor of Wasilla, Palin made rape victims pay for their own forensic evidence kits (VIDEO)

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Alaskan Independence Party Chairman Mark Chryson and Sarah Palin

At www.chron.com are two articles:

GOP 'robo calls' slam Obama - McCain camp defends their use in 10 states

and

Democrats, GOP Square Off Over ACORN - the first paragraph:

The furor over the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now's national voter registration drive exploded with new controversies Friday, including a call by Barack Obama for an independent prosecutor and the disclosure of a death threat against an ACORN worker.

Read both articles in full

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John McCain and HIS VOTING RECORD

At 47 years old, John McCain didn't know who Martin Luther King was when Senator McCain voted against MLK day in 1983.


VOTE OBAMA - BIDEN
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Your choices are

Travel to a swing state
Host a phonebank
Attend a phonebank
Make calls from home

DEDICATED TO JOHN McCAIN AND SARAH PALIN

Leadership begins now. During a campaign.

The best run campaign may be judged on its merits or it can be judged on who wins. It would be beneficial to have both of these. Merits and winner.

It is how you play the game for some of us. Still.

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The text just below was posted with this video on October 13, 2008
Former McCain Supporter Accuses the Senator of Deliberately Feeding the Most Unhinged Elements of Our Society the Red Meat of Hate
Uploaded by gfde08

Frank Schaeffer, bestselling author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. He is the son of the late evangelist Francis Schaeffer and considered himself a lifelong Republican. He voted for John McCain in 2000, and McCain even endorsed one of Schaeffers earlier books on military service. On Friday, Schaeffer published An Open Letter to John McCain in the Baltimore Sun:

John McCain: If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as not one of us, I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.

At a Sarah Palin rally, someone called out, "Kill him!" At one of your rallies, someone called out, "Terrorist!" Neither was answered or denounced by you or your running mate, as the crowd laughed and cheered. At your campaign event Wednesday in Bethlehem, PA, the crowd was seething with hatred for the Democratic nominee—an attitude encouraged in speeches there by you, your running mate, your wife and the local Republican chairman.

Shame!

John McCain: In 2000, as a lifelong Republican, I worked to get you elected instead of George W. Bush. In return, you wrote an endorsement of one of my books about military service. You seemed to be a man, who put principle ahead of mere political gain.

You have changed. You have a choice: Go down in history as a decent senator and an honorable military man with many successes, or go down in history as the latest abettor of right-wing extremist hate.

John McCain, you are no fool, and you understand the depths of hatred that surrounded the issue of race in this country. You also know that, post-9/11, to call someone a friend of a terrorist is a very serious matter. You also know we are a bitterly divided country on many other issues. You know that, sadly, in America, violence is always just a moment away. You know that there are plenty of crazy people out there.

Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs.

John McCain, you're walking a perilous line. If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters when they scream out "Terrorist" or "Kill him", history will hold you responsible for all that follows.

John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.

Change the atmosphere of your campaign. Talk about the issues at hand. Make your case. But stop stirring up the lunatic fringe of haters, or risk suffering the judgment of history and the loathing of the American people forever.

We will hold you responsible. End of text

At the Alfred Smith Dinner, John McCain spoke of his respect of Barack Obama. At the same time, McCain has the automated call - robo call - going out that says the following:

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500."

Repeatedly I have heard John McCain say that the people quoted at his and Sarah Palin's rallies and town halls with "Kill him", "Terrorist", "Off with his Head" about Barack Obama are "fringe" people. Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin draw fringe people together which means they have a great opportunity to educate our fellow citizens on racism and how it can hurt our economy, security and well-being as a people of justice and peace.

Senator McCain said at the third debate when questioned about this, not that this is inappropriate behavior, but that he is "proud" of the people who come to his and Palin's rallies. He also said that he has things said to him at his rallies. McCain doesn't say what is being called out. I will dare to say that what is being called out to McCain or Palin doesn't amount to "Kill him or her". We have a history in this country of what racism bears in society's fruit.

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Billie Holiday sings Strange Fruit
Uploaded by wingedambersky

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McCain and Palin and their roles in helping divide the United States of America
Uploaded by PoplicolaPhronesis

"No, it's not negativity. It's truthfulness!" - Sarah Palin

"I'm not gonna stand for people saying that the people coming to my rallies are anything by the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation." - John McCain

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Late Show with David Letterman - Senator John McCain
4:42
"I screwed up."
"I don't (know)... yes..."
"It's a matter of trusting the word of someone..."
John McCain's relationship with and attendance of fund-raiser at G. Gordon Liddy's question and John' wriggling, avoidance and eventual answer

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David Letterman questions Senator McCain about choosing Sarah Palin
5:33

GOP Senator Slams McCain Robo Call

Source

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Rigel Anderson report: Embattled Republican Sen. Susan Collins is calling on Sen. John McCain to stop paying for automated phone calls which describe Sen. Barack Obama as having "worked closely" with "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers."

"These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics," said Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley. "Sen. Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately."

Contacted on Friday by ABC News, the McCain campaign would not say if it was going to heed the request of Collins who serves as his campaign's co-chair in Maine.

"Obviously, Sen. McCain has great respect for Sen. Collins. But beyond that," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, "we don't have any comment."

Ayers is the former leader of the Weather Underground. To protest the Vietnam War, his organization ran a domestic bombing campaign which resulted in fatalities.

Obama, who was 8 years old at the time, has repudiated those acts as "despicable." Friday's statement from the Collins campaign came after Maine's Democratic Party issued a press release earlier in the day challenging the Republican incumbent to denounce what it called "blatantly false phone calls personally attacking" Obama.

Collins' Democratic opponent was not satisfied.

"If she truly feels that strongly about it," said Carol Andrews, communications director to Democratic Rep. Tom Allen, "she should resign as co-chair of McCain's campaign in Maine."

Here is the script of the McCain-RNC robo call about Bill Ayers, which Collins criticized on Friday:

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500."

Politico has the audio HERE.

The Collins criticism of McCain's robo call was first reported by Jessica Alaimo of Politicker-Maine and later confirmed by ABC News. End of article's text.

Below article's source at this link:

Surprise, shock and some fear in a local neighborhood, after an anti-Obama display is hung from a tree. The display is at a home at Symmes and Hicks Road in Fairfield.

And the person who put it there says the message isn't political, it's racist. Shawn Ley spoke with the man who isn't shy about his views.

There it is, right above the "McCain-Palin" sign: a make-shift ghost, hanging from a noose. A Barack Obama sign attached upside down. Obama's middle name: "Hussein" spray painted and misspelled above.

Mike Lunsford hung the ghost in his yard. He spoke to us off-camera, saying his views could hurt his employers business ... but he says make no mistake: He doesn't want an African American running the country.

Lunsford says he believes Barack Obama is not a "full blooded American." And he says the United States is a white, Christian nation - and only with white Christians should be in power. With Lunsford not willing to share his views on-camera:

"It's like whoa. He's definitely anti-black."

His neighbors are. Vickie Crowe lives next door. She's an Obama supporter.

"What did you think when you first saw that?" Vickie Crowe/neighbor: "Well actually my 5 year old son says Obama's hanging upside down. He's what? He's hanging upside down. It's the neighbor's ghost. I took it as a little bit of a racist statement because my grandson's mixed and it hurt a little bit."

Mike Lunsford says he got the idea after an Obama supporter in New York put up this display of a Obama mannequin being chased by a figure of John McCain wearing Ku Klux Klan robes.

Here - new mom Megan story says this symbol makes her more than uneasy it scares her. Megan Story/neighbor: "He's been a really nice neighbor but it's one of those you question and wonder, you know, if he's that forward about something will he be forward enough to do something else, too. it is scary at times but we live in a scary world."

Lunsford also says he's motivated by the national media which he says is pro-Obama. The McCain KKK image is being celebrated as a "hit" on the internet. Lunsford expects a negative reaction to this, although he hasn't gotten any complaints. Article source

Video of the story above

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I agree with Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Editor of The Nation

This is what is being discussed in the video above:
Congresswoman Michelle Bachman speaks for Americans of her type

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Barack Obama speaking about coming together

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In a recent appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman," actress Tina Fey discussed her now infamous impersonation of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

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We Just Need to Vote
Uploaded by ExFilms
When people at Barack Obama's rally began to boo about John McCain,
Senator Obama said
"No, we don't need that, we just need to vote, that's what we need to do".

VOTE OBAMA - BIDEN
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Your choices are

Travel to a swing state
Host a phonebank
Attend a phonebank
Make calls from home

RALLYING THE TROUPS - RACISM IN DAYLIGHT AND OUT OF THE CLOSET

Daylight on racism at the McCain and Palin town hall meetings and rallies

You can call it whatever you need to - but latent racism or ignorance is coming out of the closet. And it is not a proud moment. The world is watching and some can loudly say that they don't care what the rest of the world thinks of us. But you know that saying about the chickens come home to roost? We can choose not to care. But even today GW Bush said the world needs to cooperate and work together.

How does that work exactly? We choose not to care what the rest of the world thinks of us then we ask them to care what our President says to them.

Here is an article from Great Britain on our Presidential race:

Viewpoint: The impetuous John McCain

By Jamie Stiehm Political commentator, Washington DC Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7663091.stm

Senator John McCain's personal charms are in danger of turning into a liability as the former Navy fighter pilot looms large in the American sky.

In private the impetuous, nearly manic nature of the Republican running for president is exhilarating - in public it's beginning to look like volatility, a cause for alarm among friends and foes alike.

Aside from an unfortunate reference to his opponent as "that one", McCain gave a rather restrained performance on Tuesday in the debate at Nashville, Tennessee.

It was a strategy to show voters he had, as he put it, "a steady hand at the tiller".

But contrast the mellow McCain of Nashville to the warrior of the first debate in Oxford, Mississippi, where he gripped the podium with an expression of suppressed fury, and seemed on the verge of swinging a fist at Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Viewers could easily draw the conclusion that the candidate is dominated by his passing moods.

Collective crush

When I covered Congress as a reporter years ago, I lunched with the senator and his press secretary in the Senate dining room.

VIEWPOINTS Jamie Stiehm is a political journalist based in Washington DC, whose essays on the 2008 presidential campaign have appeared in the liberal, pro-Obama Huffington Post. This is one of a series of comment and opinion pieces that the BBC website will publish before the election.

There McCain showed me how he communicated with other prisoners of war in Vietnam, by tapping in Morse code on the table.

In a winning way, he also mockingly threatened to thrash author Michael Lewis, who had just cracked my heart. This light-hearted McCain "never met a stranger", as they say.

It's no secret the media had a collective crush on the straight-talking, disarming Republican when he ran for president and lost to George W Bush in 2000. For he was an honourable man, we felt.

One of his finer moments in the Clinton years was reaching out to a junior Democratic senator, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, to pass a co-authored campaign finance reform bill.

At 72, the snow-topped senator knows this is his last try.

The first sign that his temperament may be "erratic" - as Mr Obama now puts it - was when he cancelled the first night of the National Republican Convention up north in Minnesota for fear of a hurricane down south.

Some thought McCain needed a reason to keep President Bush (who was scheduled to speak) from showing up at the party. But this sort of thing is just not done - it's never happened before.

Unpredictable

Then, when McCain suspended his campaign during the financial crisis and headed for the halls of Congress, his move shocked observers on both sides of the party aisle.

He ran the risk of missing the first debate, an odd form of political suicide.

In Oxford, his dark side showed up. Obama, he insisted over and over, does not understand Iraq, Army General David Petraeus and the like.

In fact, McCain has curiously made the "surge" general a personal issue: either you accept his word as gospel and ask to meet him or you don't understand war and peace in the Middle East.

(That kind of public deference to a commander, by the way, is counter to the American civil-military code, and points to something deep in McCain's way of seeing the world.)

Casting the unschooled Governor Sarah Palin in an understudy role was McCain's most spectacularly unpredictable decision. Impetuous? You betcha, the woman from Wasilla might say in her downhome way.

The larger picture is that a sobered-up American public wants to look and listen to determine if candidates have clear-cut answers to their questions and worries about a frail economy.

'Brawling traditions'

But few know what McCain is going to do next on the national stage, which could make voters uneasy in these troubled times.

The next question: if he does show up, which side of McCain are we going to see?

A minor variation on this theme is McCain's last-minute decision to stand up the popular late-night CBS talk show host, David Letterman - who took umbrage and has not let millions forget the slight.

Letterman claims McCain told him he had to rush back to Washington, but stayed in New York to be interviewed by Katie Couric, anchor of the CBS Evening News.

Former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has described McCain's character as molded by the "brawling traditions of the United States Navy". There is something to that.

McCain boasts of his checkered record at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, where he graduated perilously close to the bottom of his class.

By his own admission, he was a hotheaded and privileged young man who narrowly avoided expulsion. Later, as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, the lesson he seems to have learned over long years is to never give up the fight, even when the war is lost.

The son and grandson of admirals, McCain still has a swagger in his step and a permanent air of defiance. It's part of his appeal, but it may sink his ship in this rough political sea.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7663091.stm
Published: 2008/10/10

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Here is a website dedicated to

Watching America

The following text is from their About Us page

Watching America reflects global opinion about the United States, helping Americans and non-Americans alike understand what the world thinks of current issues that involve the U.S. This is done by providing news and views about the United States published in other countries.

It is not our purpose to find favorable or unfavorable content, but to reflect as accurately as possible how others perceive the richest and most powerful country in the world. We have no political agenda.

Watching America makes available in English articles written about the U.S. by foreigners, often for foreign audiences, and often in other languages. Since Watchin gAmerica offers its own translations, regular users of our site will enjoy articles not available in English anywhere else. We are a unique window into world opinion.

End of borrowed text

Here is one article from their archive page:

US Election: Why top Tories are turning their backs on John McCain

By Iain Dale

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 10/10/2008

All my adult life I have supported Republican candidates in American presidential elections. Like most Tory MPs and activists, I have wanted to be impressed by John McCain. I went to see him speak at the Tory conference in 2006, expecting to be wowed. Like most others, I left profoundly disappointed by his speech, which was pedestrian and devoid of inspiration. Maybe he was having an off day, I thought.

I felt McCain - as a maverick - could distance himself from the ideological zealots in his party who have done so much to turn it from a political party into a narrow sect. Many of us thought Sarah Palin could give his ticket the "wow" factor Barack Obama had given the Democrats. We were wrong on both counts.

Many Conservative MPs have travelled a similar journey over the past few months - a journey most of us thought we could never make, and a journey that has resulted in a decision to break the habit of a lifetime and declare our support for the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama.

Tory MP Richard Spring, who doubles as David Cameron's envoy to the City of London, is one of many who have always supported the Republicans, but are now backing Obama. "It's important for America's reputation in the world to be improved and Obama can be instrumental in bringing this about," he says. "He sends out a signal of change."

Spring's colleague Andrew Tyrie agrees: "I have always been a Republican, but Bush has done so much damage to the project of the family of western nations that I feel only an Obama presidency can rectify it. We need something that is demonstrably a huge change."

Richard Spring estimates that at least half the Conservative Parliamentary Party would vote for Obama given the chance, something that would have been unthinkable in the pre-George W. Bush era.

Many shadow ministers remain publicly coy about their leanings, but it's remarkable how few, even privately, express any enthusiasm for the McCain-Palin ticket. Senior whip Simon Burns and the shadow business secretary, Alan Duncan, have both outed themselves as Democrat supporters, but few others are willing to go on the record.

One shadow cabinet member is a signed-up member of the Obama fan club, yet believes if he were to admit to it publicly, it would damage his status within the party. He likens it to the reluctance of so many Tory MPs to sign up to David Cameron's leadership campaign in the early days. "We thought people would think we had taken leave of our senses," he tells me. "Cameron and Obama are both agents of change, in a way that their opponents never could be." He adds: "The Conservative Party is always suspicious of change - until it has been proved to work."

Few Obama-supporting Tories seem remotely bothered by his extremely liberal voting record in the Senate. Simon Burns says: "Obama is like any true compassionate Conservative. He is focusing on helping the vulnerable and the middle classes." Another former Republican-supporting Tory MP, Ben Wallace, thinks an Obama victory is necessary to give the Republicans a much-needed jolt. "Young people on the centre-Right don't have a home to go to," he complains. "The religious Right has taken over the Republicans." He cites the so-called Blue Dog Democrats, who believe in fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets, as the reason British Conservatives can feel comfortable about supporting Obama.

While Cameron remains a fan of McCain, he has been very careful to demonstrate even-handedness, as he knows only too well that Obama is closer to many of his own ideas and goals. Cameron's trusted adviser, Steve Hilton, has wisely been given the task of developing closer relations with Obama's entourage during his six-month stay in California. Could it be that the Tory leader himself is a closet Obama backer?

Original source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Additional links from Watching America

The Gulf Times of Qatar: McCain Contempt is No Laughing Matter:

...the most cringe-worthy viewing came when McCain tackled America’s bogeyman of yesteryear and reemerging cause for concern, Russia. Recounting a time that he met with Vladimir Putin, McCain said: “I looked in Mr Putin’s eyes and I saw three letters – a K, a G and a B.” This coming from a man who hopes to be the lead diplomat of one of the most powerful countries in the world...

The Independent of Great Britain: McCain is Deluding Himself

La Repubblica translated from Italian ~ Science, Environment and Stem cells: Obama vs. McCain

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Your choices are

Travel to a swing state
Host a phonebank
Attend a phonebank
Make calls from home