Here’s one way to tell the difference between a war and an occupation: In response to the “success” of the surge and the undefined “victory” that lies just around the corner in Iraq, the president on Tuesday will pledge to maybe reduce troop levels by about 5 percent six months from now after he’s left office. How can John McCain win this argument with Barack Obama?
Just before the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, al-Qaida has released a lengthy videotape featuring the group’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, providing updates about how the holy war is faring around the globe and laying into Iran for “cooperating with the Americans” and with the American-approved governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Team McCain has rejected the “vicious smear” that as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin wanted to ban books from the local library, but the campaign’s 1,615-word memo on the subject indirectly supports the accusation. As Palin’s mayoral predecessor recalls, “She asked the library how she could go about banning books.” According to the Anchorage Daily News, she also fired the library director “without warning” for “not fully supporting her efforts to govern.”
Investors have been throwing money at stock markets the world over following the news that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been placed under federal conservatorship. Some analysts are confident that the move will stabilize the mortgage giants and, in turn, a tanking housing market. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, let’s hope they’re right.
Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will no longer anchor MSNBC’s coverage of major political events, but will instead provide analysis for the network’s David Gregory, who will sit in the anchor’s chair. The network was under pressure, both internal and external, to rein in its two leading men, whose politics are well known. Olbermann himself initiated the move.
After days of insisting that she is ready to be president but not ready to answer questions, the McCain campaign announced that Sarah Palin will, at last, be interviewed by the dreaded media. Why ABC’s Charlie Gibson was specifically chosen for the honor, we don’t know, but he’ll be flying to Alaska to sit down sometime this week with the VP nominee.
John McCain has captured the lead from Barack Obama, according to Gallup’s daily tracking poll. The data, which include two days of post-convention rumination, show McCain leading 48 percent to 45 percent. Rasmussen has the two candidates dead even. Updated
Pakistan will have a new president, Asif Ali Zardari. The widower of slain Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto has successfully continued along his wife’s path, drawing upon the support of her allies to emerge the victor by a wide margin in the election held to replace Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down as president in mid-August.
“Fun Steve is dead” was the announcement that Steve Schmidt, the McCain campaign adviser who The New York Times notes “worked closely with Karl Rove” in 2002 and 2004, made to his team at a particularly low moment last summer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the bombastic tactics Team McCain has since adopted can be traced to the demise of “Fun Steve.”
Barack Obama was busy drumming up support—and additional funding—in New Jersey on Friday, readying his response to the McCain campaign’s Palin-palooza at last week’s Republican National Convention and telling supporters he’s ready to scrap it out.
In Friday’s New York Times article about whether Hillary Clinton will go to the mat against Sarah Palin, a woman delegate at the GOP convention says, “I just bet Hillary was watching Sarah’s speech on TV Wednesday night and cheering, ‘You go, girl!’ ” Really?
Apparently undeterred by Sarah Palin’s challenging stance from the RNC podium Wednesday night, The Boston Globe and other media outlets went about their business of vetting Palin’s past, as with any other public figure who aspires to play a major leadership role on the world stage. As it turns out, Palin’s own experience on said world stage has thus far been rather limited.
With the mainstream news largely riveted on the U.S. election campaign and convention mania, little attention has been paid to the aftermath of the series of storms that rocked the Caribbean this past month. Flooding in Haiti has put 600,000 people at serious risk as hunger and disease rise in what Haitian President Rene Preval calls a “catastrophe.”
George W. Bush and his father share more than a last name. Reports show that August’s unemployment rate increased past the level initially forecast, rising to 6.1 percent. But even more disturbing is the fact that the misery index—unemployment aggregated with inflation—also soared to its highest level since 1991, when George H.W. Bush was in office.
The AP took a closer look at some of the claims in Sarah Palin’s speech Wednesday and found that the VP nominee, like some of her allies, is simply full of it on a number of points.
It’s hard to paint the other guy as an elitist when your wife wears an outfit that cost more than most houses. Vanity Fair estimates that Cindy McCain’s convention ensemble, complete with super jewelry, set her back somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000.
Jack Abramoff was given four years in prison by a federal judge Thursday—a sentence whittled down from a possible 11 years because he cooperated with investigators —for his part in the fraud and corruption scandal that jolted Washington and landed several other lobbyists and Capitol Hill players in trouble as well.
The GOP merchandising machine is kicking into gear following VP nominee Sarah Palin’s Wasilla-to-Washington pep rally on Wednesday night, angling to compete with those ubiquitous Shepard Fairey Obama T-shirts and such by offering “Sarah Is My Homegirl” cotton separates and, yes, “Wonder Palin” thong underwear.
In the aftermath of her convention speech, it seems clear that Sarah Palin is an effective mascot for the base of her party. She excited the Xcel Center, but failed to impress independents, who didn’t like her sarcasm and still aren’t sure she’s qualified. John McCain will have to do the heavy lifting there, notes the Political Insider, if he has any hope of winning the election.
How would the president rate the government’s response to Hurricane Gustav? In a word: “Excellent.” Eager to escape the shadow of Katrina, which has come to symbolize the incompetence of his administration, Hurricane George made landfall in Louisiana Wednesday for some hands-on disaster relief.
The U.S. is giving Georgia $1 billion in aid, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced. That could be just a friendly donation, or, seen in the light of America’s meddling in the Caucasus, perhaps something more sinister. Sorry we didn’t go to war with Russia, baby, but here’s a billion dollars. Buy yourself something nice.
Russia announced Wednesday its willingness to withdraw its remaining troops from Georgia if, and only if, some conditions were met: one, bring international peacekeepers in to replace Russian soldiers and, two, Georgia must sign nonaggression pacts with South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Beginning Saturday with a guns-drawn assault on a protester meeting space and continuing through the weekend with raids on houses of known activists in St. Paul, Twin Cities police have arrested over 300 anti-RNC demonstrators. At least 120 of them are accused of felonies, including trumped-up “conspiracy to riot” charges.
As governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, now the mother of a pregnant teen, cut state funds that would have helped house and support teenage mothers. This on top of the news that both Palin and John McCain have opposed teen pregnancy prevention programs.
It was a lineup designed to bring women at the Republican National Convention ever forward and onward into the year 1800, but alas, Sarah Palin couldn’t make it.
Palling Around With Meteorologists
