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By H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman; $24.95
By Dominic Lieven $23.73
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The former secretary of state and Joint Chiefs chairman revealed on Sunday whom he is voting for and why. Powell explained that it was not easy to disappoint his friend, John McCain, but that Barack Obama is the “transformational figure” America needs at this moment.
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 Flickr / Joe Crimmings Photography
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The Obama campaign announced early Sunday morning that it had raised $150 million in September, more than doubling the previous single-month record of $66 million, set by Obama in August.
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It’s hard to make fun of someone to their face, although Alec Baldwin made an effort when Sarah Palin stopped by “Saturday Night Live” for some free PR. Tina Fey managed to dodge a direct confrontation with the woman she has so ably mocked.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — John McCain’s debate performance almost certainly did him good among those whose votes he already has: very conservative Republicans who share Joe the Plumber’s view that Obama is some kind of socialist.
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By David Sirota — No Republican says aristocrat like Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon. And no Senate election could more intensely shift economic politics than his state’s.
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By Eugene Robinson — Grouchiness, twitchiness and haughtiness didn’t help John McCain in Wednesday’s debate, but what he said hurt him more than how he said it.
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By Amy Goodman — The 2008 presidential election may see the highest participation in U.S. history. Voter-registration organizations and local election boards have been overwhelmed by enthusiastic people eager to vote. But not everyone is happy about this blossoming of democracy.
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John McCain has accused the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now of trying to commit “one of the greatest frauds in voter history” by submitting fraudulent voter registration forms, but ACORN says it was required by law to submit the forms. The Center for Investigative Reporting explains.
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Here’s one way to liven up the political process.
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 AP photo / Madalyn Ruggiero
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Things really aren’t going well for John McCain, but then he has only himself to blame. Take Joe the Plumber, whom McCain mentioned more than 20 times in Wednesday’s debate. For the record, Joe’s name is Sam, and he’s not a plumber.
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 AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite
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Although the pundits were impressed with John McCain’s debate performance, the polls showed another win for Barack Obama, who once again kept his cool against an angry, negative opponent.
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By Marie Cocco — The last thing we need is another “economic stimulus” package. What we need is a jobs package. And we ought to start calling it that.
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 solvingpoverty.org
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Conservatives are on the march against the community organization ACORN, but what exactly is it and who pays for it? Actually, it’s many, many things, and it’s funded by a mix of labor union money, government grants (which really drive conservatives crazy) and charitable contributions from large foundations.
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Sarah Palin was supposed to attract women to the GOP ticket, but her charm hasn’t worked with the Feminist Majority, which is running this ad to tell voters that “a McCain and Palin win hurts women.”
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Here’s what one McCain-Palin supporter had to say about Barack Obama: “I don’t like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash, because we’re not.” No, the people who think that may not be trash, but they are full of nonsense, as are those in this clip who declare that Obama is a terrorist.
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Now we know where John McCain has been getting his campaign ideas: 1960s camp television. My friends, who is the Batman? And why is he always palling around with criminals?
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 AP photo / Rick Bowmer
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By Bill Boyarsky — From the Southern California suburbs to Ohio’s Appalachia, places that have not been especially friendly to African-American candidates, Sen. Barack Obama seems to be convincing a substantial number of whites that their votes should be determined by their economic troubles rather than race.
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 Flickr / buddhakiwi
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The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank found many former Hillary Clinton supporters in Pennsylvania who had a hard time switching to Barack Obama—until Sarah Palin joined the Republican ticket. One Gail Silverberg captures the sentiment: “Hockey moms and lipstick on a pig and six-packs? I don’t want that stuff.”
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 collage: DoD / Flickr (Marcn)
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The answer is William Timmons, a lobbyist tapped by McCain to head his transition team. Timmons was connected to a lobbying effort on behalf of the Hussein regime, though he has denied any wrongdoing.
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Christopher Buckley has resigned from his father’s magazine, with the help of a stiff boot to the rear, thanks to his recent endorsement of Barack Obama. The satirist says he has no hard feelings, but “I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me.”
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 AP photo / Jim Mone
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Are we witnessing the re-emergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger?
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By Marie Cocco — The essential fallacy of the 401(k) has been exposed. It took a historic market collapse—one that threatens to impoverish workers already in retirement and those who are nearing it.
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 dailykos.com
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First Dude Todd Palin has said he and some “buddies” built his lakefront home in Wasilla, Alaska, but an investigation by the Village Voice connects the home’s construction, if circumstantially, to the beneficiaries of a local boondoggle championed by his wife.
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Christopher Hitchens has reached an endorsement by process of elimination. John McCain, he writes, isn’t up to the job, while “the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience.”
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 Flickr / Allison Harger
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Barack Obama unveiled his $60-billion economic rescue plan on Monday and urged Washington not to wait for a new president to take up his proposals. The Obama plan includes tax breaks for companies that hire new workers, a short moratorium on foreclosures and, with an eye on job creation, federal financing for public works and infrastructure projects.
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 AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite
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Sarah Palin’s relationship with the press has been like that of a deer to high-beams, but it’s not for lack of practice. According to an Associated Press count, Palin clocked more than 300 interviews and news conferences in just 20 months as governor.
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David Axelrod and Rick Davis of the Obama and McCain campaigns, respectively, dispensed with the niceties on “Fox News Sunday.”
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America has come a long way, says Democratic strategist and CNN personality Donna Brazile, so if Americans don’t vote for Barack Obama, it had better be because of his policies.
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Philadelphia hockey fans were less than thrilled to meet “the best-known hockey mom in the United States” over the weekend. With the arena music coming to her aid, Sarah Palin endured a full 90 seconds of booing at the Wachovia Center.
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Two new books resurrect the seductions and corruptions of pre-revolutionary Cuba.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Each campaign has given voters ample notice about the inclinations, temperaments, habits, philosophical leanings and advisers they would bring to the White House. That’s enough.
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 AP photo / Susan Walsh
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By Bruce Fein — Would the Republican VP nominee vote for herself? During her debate with Joe Biden, Sarah Palin said “we have to fight for” and “protect” our freedom, but her party and the policies she seems to support have crippled American liberty.
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 collage: Flickr / videocrab / transplanted mountaineer
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Flush with cash, Barack Obama has purchased air time on at least two networks for a half-hour special to air a week before the election. No word yet on how much a half-hour of prime-time sweeps air costs, but it’s certainly more than Ross Perot paid back in ‘92.
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By William Pfaff — The issues that have fueled Russian-American tensions in Europe in recent months, and European tensions with both Russia and the United States, have suggested a willingness on all sides to reignite tensions that on the face of it serve no one’s real interests. Recent developments could change all that.
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During the first presidential debate, John McCain gave a high-profile shout-out: “I suggest that people go up on the Web site of Citizens Against Government Waste, and they’ll look at those projects.” The group quickly returned the favor—its political action committee is calling McCain a “taxpayer hero” in TV ads airing over the next two weeks in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.
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 White House / Shealah Craighead
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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, with much prodding from Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, is thinking about using some of that $700 billion to buy ownership stakes in shaky banks. The scheme would ostensibly give taxpayers a share in the fortunes of the bailed-out institutions.
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 AP photo / Jim Bourg, pool
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By Scott Ritter — Ralph Nader is right: The two-party system is failing America. There isn’t time between now and Election Day to create a viable third-party candidate, and so the sad reality is one of two deeply flawed men, the byproduct of a deeply flawed political system, will serve as president for the next four or eight years.
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Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune —
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By Joe Conason — Nothing in the presidential campaign so far has been as instructive as its swift descent into the politics of personal destruction. Although voters have probably heard little lately that they did not already know about Sen. Barack Obama, they have learned something very important about Sen. John McCain.
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By Ellen Goodman — Uncertainty is the backdrop for a presidential campaign whose last month is being conducted over the shakiest terrain. What we didn’t know yesterday, last week, last month suddenly reshapes the contours of our lives.
Posted on Oct 8, 2008
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By Marie Cocco — In the second presidential debate, the questioners seemed to understand better than either candidate that we are in the midst of a national emergency as grave and possibly more far-reaching than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
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