Bad Deeds for 8-22-2008

The McCains Lied Repeatedly About Their Baby Adoption Story, Then Changed It Just Before the 2008 Campaign Began – As was pointed out Wednesday by the Christian Science Monitor, the McCain campaign was called out for lying about the purported urging of Cindy McCain by Mother Teresa herself to adopt two children at her orphanage back in 1991. It turns out, McCain never met or even spoke with Mother Teresa on that trip. Once confronted by the Monitor about the deception, the campaign quickly erased such claims from the website, as it did with Cindy’s family recipes, which were proved to be lifted from the Food Network. But after doing some research, this deception was no careless accident, but rather another shameless and deliberate attempt by the campaign to reinvent and embellish the McCain family history in time for his 2008 presidential bid. Read the details of the repeated false stories put into various media outlets by the McCains.

 

McCain’s “Rove-Style” Politics Forces President Eisenhower’s Granddaughter to Quit the Republican Party – From Susan Eisenhower:

I have decided I can no longer be a registered Republican. For the first time in my life I announced my support for a Democratic candidate for the presidency … And now, as the party threatens to trivialize what promised to be a serious debate on our future direction, it will alienate many young people who might have come into party ranks.

My decision came at the end of last week when it was demonstrated to the nation that McCain and this Bush White House have learned little in the last five years. They mishandled what became a crisis in the Caucusus, and this has undermined U.S. national security. At the same time, the McCain camp appears to be comfortable with running an unworthy Karl Rove–style political campaign. Will the McCain operation, and its sponsors, do anything to win?

Hijacked by a relatively small few, the GOP of today bears no resemblance to Lincoln, Roosevelt or Eisenhower’s party, or many of the other Republican administrations that came after.

 

Rush Limbaugh Says, “You Can’t Criticize the Little Black Man-Child” – From the August 20 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Rush Limbaugh Show: “McCain’s just out there saying he’s putting his own personal political ambition ahead of the country’s. It’s — you know, it’s just — it’s just we can’t hit the girl. I don’t care how far feminism’s saying, you can’t hit the girl, and you can’t — you can’t criticize the little black man-child. You just can’t do it, ’cause it’s just not right. It’s not fair. He’s such a victim.” (Do you really know anyone saying that Obama should not be criticized? If it’s truthful and relevant, bring it on! – JLV)

And on the August 19 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh said about Obama’s nomination, “I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.”

And on his radio show, Sean Hannity said that Sen. Barack Obama “can’t point to a single instance in which President Bush or McCain or Karl Rove or Sean Hannity or talk radio or any other major Republican has made an issue of Obama’s race.” Of course, Limbaugh is not the only one proving Hannity wrong about that. There’s Glenn Beck, Monica Crowley, John Gibson, Melanie Morgan, and Sean Hannity.

 

McCain’s Campaign Says You Can’t Criticize the Ex-POW – When John McCain revealed that he didn’t know how many houses he and his wife currently own (they have at least eight properties), the Obama campaign pounced. They accused him of being elitist and disconnected and launched an ad within hours. The McCain campaign–realizing this was trouble–retorted the only way they knew how: With a truly stupefying response from McCain spokesman Brian Rogers:

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

Yes, you read that right. McCain justified not knowing how many houses he has by saying he was a POW in Vietnam, four decades ago. Sorry, but we’re sick of hearing about this as a justification for everything John McCain does or doesn’t do. And remember, thousands of other veterans are homeless–that is, they have ZERO homes.

 

McCain Rode In A Nine-Car Motorcade To Get A Cappuccino – “By midafternoon, both campaigns were in full battle cry and sought to portray the other candidate as living an ostentatious lifestyle. Both campaigns called reporters, rushed out scathing TV attack ads, unveiled new websites and unleashed surrogates. McCain, who huddled with advisors at his desert compound in Sedona, Ariz., said nothing in public. A nine-car motorcade took him to a nearby Starbucks early in the morning, where he ordered a large cappuccino. McCain otherwise avoided reporters.”

(Maybe he did other things while he was out, like getting his $500 imported shoes shined. I wonder if he threw some coins to the little people on the way? – JLV)

 

McCains Defaulted On Home Taxes For Last Four Years – When you can’t remember how many mansions you have, you can’t be expected to remember to pay the taxes on all of them.

 

McCain’s Chief Foreign Policy Adviser is a ‘Dual Loyalist’ and ‘Neocon Warmonger’ According to Pat Buchanan – According to conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, Sen. John McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is a ‘dual loyalist’ ‘neocon warmonger’. Scheunemann’s former employer, Orion Strategies, is a lobbying firm with strong ties to Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration in Georgia. “He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man,” he wrote. Scheunemann’s former lobbying firm, Orion Strategies, received at lest $800,000 from the government of Georgia between 2004 and May 15, 2008

In his recent history, Scheunemann was a key member of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which lobbied President Clinton for war with Iraq for years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He was also a signatory on a letter to President George W. Bush, just days after the terrorist attacks, demanding an invasion of Iraq and threatening political consequences if the president did not comply. Could Scheunemann be McCain’s Secretary of State if McCain is elected?

 

13-Year Military Pilot on Terror Watch List; Could End His Career – For Erich Scherfen, being on a government terror watch list isn’t just a matter of inconvenience. It could end his career. Scherfen served in the U.S. military for 13 years, as an Army infantryman in the first Gulf War and then as a helicopter pilot in the National Guard. After receiving an honorable discharge, he was hired as a pilot by Colgan Air Inc., a regional airline operating in the Northeast and Texas.

In April, Colgan informed Scherfen that he was on a government list and would be suspended from his job. He was told he faced termination on September 1 unless he was able to clear his name. But Scherfen, of Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, has been unable to do so and said fears it could mean he has no future as a pilot. “My entire career depends on me getting off this list,” he told CNN. “I probably won’t be able to get a job anywhere else in the world having this mark that I’m on this list.”

 

Documents Reveal the PR Push for Iraq War Preceded Intelligence Findings – New documents from within the Bush administration and US intelligence community during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq reveal that the White House began assembling a case for war before it had compiled the intel that ostensibly formed the basis of that case.

A new report on the documents from George Washington University’s National Security Archive also presents compelling evidence that the Bush administration pressured the CIA and other intelligence agencies to tailor their reports to back-up Bush’s desire to invade. The report suggests the bulk of this effort was run out of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, backing up numerous other post-war examinations of the path to invasion that saw Cheney as the mastermind of the plan to oust Saddam Hussein.

 

FBI Wants Power to Investigate Citizens “Without Any Basis for Suspicion” – A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday. The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.” The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,”

 

New Greenland Ice Crack Forms – In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday. And that’s led the university professor who spotted the wounds in the massive Petermann glacier to predict disintegration of a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere’s largest floating glacier within the year. If it does worsen and other northern Greenland glaciers melt faster, then it could speed up sea level rise, already increasing because of melt in southern Greenland.

Regards,

Jim