Bad Deeds for 6-10-2008

Justice Department Gives Grant Money to Programs Having Political, Social or Religious Connections to the Bush White House – The Justice Department gave a $500,000 federal grant to the World Golf Foundation’s First Tee program, even though Justice Department staffers had rated the program 47th on a list of 104 applicants. The honorary chairman of the First Tee program is former President George Bush. Many top-rated programs were denied federal grants. Current and former Justice Department employees allege that the staff rankings were ignored in favor of programs that had political, social or religious connections to the Bush White House. A Washington, D.C. program, Best Friends, that promotes sexual abstinence was awarded $1.1 million even though it ranked 53rd on a list of 104 applicants. Best Friends is run by Elayne Bennett, the wife of Bill Bennett, a former Republican cabinet member and now political commentator.

 

Conservative Adman Sets Up Attack Web Site Aimed at Obama – Conservative activist Floyd G. Brown, who had a hand in the 1988 “Willie Horton” attack ad, produced a TV ad accusing Barack Obama of being “weak” on Chicago gang killers in 2001 and suggesting he’d be weak on terrorism, too. Brown bases the claim on Obama’s vote against a bill to make gang killers automatically eligible for the death penalty.

The author of that very bill says the ad is a “tasteless and reprehensible misrepresentation” of Obama’s stand. She further says, “The ad completely mischaracterizes Senator Obama’s position against ruthless criminals and attempts to paint him as weak on crime, when I know that to be the furthest thing from the truth.”

This same Republican operative has now set up a web site for the purpose of creating vivid multimedia content, including cartoons, animations, stories, jokes, illustrations and movies, all for the purpose of smearing Obama’s religious and political leanings. The backers of the site have bragged that that this underground peer-to-peer advertising campaign falls outside of the boundaries of the law, and so won’t have to abide by the rules that prohibit political action committees from certain kinds of activities.

“Reprehensible Misrepresentation”

 

McCain Pledges to Send Unlimited Troops to Iraq – On NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams asks John Bush McCain about Iraq. “Will your support be there for however many U.S. troops are required?” McCain answers emphatically: “Yes.” In other words, John McCain isn’t going to change a single thing on Iraq — it’s just going to be four more years of George W. Bush.

 

 

At Fundraiser Attended by Lobbyists, McCain Mocks Anti-Lobbyist Sentiment – John McCain, surrounded by lobbyists at a fundraiser on June 9, said, “I’m gonna thank some corrupt unscrupulous lobbyists that are destroying America as we speak, everything we stand for and believe in,” McCain said, which got the crowd laughing. “You can’t even eat a piece of apple pie any more without being corrupted.”

 

Videotape Shows McCain Doesn’t Know What He Said – John McCain told Newsweek that he did not deliver a portion from the prepared text of his speech last Tuesday chiding the media for not giving Hillary Clinton her due. Asked about this statement in an interview last week with Newsweek’s Holly Bailey and Jon Meacham, McCain interjected, “I did not [say that] — that was in prepared remarks, and I did not [say it] — I’m not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage.”

But video from McCain’s address shows him giving the line as written. “The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans,” McCain said in a nationally broadcast speech in Kenner, La. “And she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometime received.”

 

 

Fox News Ambushes Bill Moyers– At the National Conference for Media Reform 2008, a producer for FOX’s The O’Reilly Factor, Porter Barry, ambushes PBS’s Bill Moyers and peppers him with questions regarding his political affiliations and his “refusal” to appear on O’Reilly’s show. Moyers disputes FOX’s “facts” for the record and asks to interview someone at The O’Reilly Factor about Rupert Murdoch and the show’s coverage during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The journalist crowd then reacts, chasing down Barry and intentionally giving him a dose of FOX-style bullying reportage. I recommend that you watch the entire video.

 

 

Fox News Calls Obama Fist Bump a “Terrorist Jab” – Fox News Calls the fist bump that Barack Obama and his wife Michelle exchanged at his speech claiming the Democratic presidential nomination a “terrorist jab.”

 

 

The Swift-Boaters Are Back – Regnery Publishing, which in 2004 released “Unfit for Command,” the attack book against Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry, just announced two books for August: David Freddoso’s “The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate,” and Thomas Blood’s “The Clinton Collapse: How Bill Clinton Lost Hillary Her ‘Sure Thing’ Nomination (And Might Even Make Obama Lose Too).”

 

Republicans Block Tax on Unreasonable Windfall Profits – Senate Republicans blocked a proposal Tuesday to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies, despite pleas by Democratic leaders to use the measure to address America’s anger over $4 a gallon gasoline. The Democratic energy package would have imposed a tax on any “unreasonable” profits of the five largest U.S. oil companies and given the federal government more power to address oil market speculation that the bill’s supporters argue has added to the crude oil price surge. The oil companies could have avoided the tax if they invested the money in alternative energy projects or refinery expansion.

The legislation also would have:

• Required traders to put up more collateral in the energy futures markets and open the way for federal regulation of traders who are based in the United States but use foreign trading platforms. The measures are designed to reduce market speculation.
• Made oil and gas price gouging a federal crime, with stiff penalties of up to $5 million during a presidentially declared energy emergency.
• Authorized the Justice Department to bring charges of price fixing against countries that belong to the OPEC oil cartel.

 

McCain Panders to Small Business Owners on Estate Tax – On Tuesday, John McCain spoke to small business owners where he described the estate tax as “one of the most unfair” in the entire tax code. But in a June 8, 2006 speech from the Senate floor, McCain said he has “consistently voted against repealing this tax.” During that debate, McCain argued that the cap for triggering the estate tax should be raised to $5 million. And on a June 12, 2002 Senate floor speech, McCain was already suspicious of the idea, floated by some estate tax opponents, that the tax was bedeviling small business owners — precisely the crowd targeted in his remarks on Tuesday.

McCain often suggests that voters should look to his record in order to reach a judgment about his fitness to lead. A close look at his record on the estate tax — a record of statements that affirms its underlying morality and debunks any danger it poses to modest family businesses — brings to mind pandering more than it does the maverick persona McCain would prefer to promote.

Regards,

Jim