All Posts Tagged With: "campaign"

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As TPM Election Central reported yesterday, John Natham, a retired four-star admiral after four decades in the Navy, responded to John McCain’s smear campaign ad calling Obama “dangerous” and “dishonorable to our troups”:

“As a recently retired Admiral, I know who has the strongest record of supporting the men and women currently serving in our military. Senator Obama has consistently voted to fund our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and, just as importantly, a proven record of support when they return home. That’s why independent veterans organizations give Senator Obama higher marks than Senator McCain. Despite consistent distortions of his record, thousands of veterans like myself support Senator Obama because he has the judgment, character and integrity to be a great president. We will need a great president to lead us in these very challenging times.”

FactCheck.org also challenged the honesty of the ad itself:

The McCain-Palin campaign released the ad, titled “Dangerous,” and said it would be televised nationally. It recycles a misleading, 14-month-old charge that Sen. Barack Obama disrespected U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan by accusing them of “just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” It also misrepresents votes in favor of withdrawing troops from Iraq as being votes “increasing the risk on their lives.”

You can read FactCheck’s complete detailed analysis here. They were being very charitable when simply describing the ad as “misleading.” “Dishonest” and “dishonorable” — the very same charge McCain leveled at Obama — would be more appropriate in describing this ad… and the candidate himself.

TPM Election Central takes note of the GOP nominees latest “do as I say, not as I do” moment…

In public remarks a little while ago, John McCain professed his disappointment with the “lack of bipartisan good will” in dealing with the financial crisis, and called for everyone to “come together in a bipartisan way” in order to chart the way forward.

At around the same time, his campaign released a new ad directly attacking Democrats and Obama and blaming them for the meltdown.

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McCain made his remarks calling for bipartisanship at around 11:10 this morning. The McCain campaign sent out the ad attacking Dems and Obama at 11:26.

So it only took 16 minutes for the McCain campaign to drop its principal’s bipartisan pretenses. Which is actually an improvement over yesterday, when McCain managed to attack Obama over the crisis and then call for no finger-pointing in the space of only two sentences.

I’m glad I didn’t watch it.

I haven’t even turned on the news this morning because I’m avoiding any reports and commentary about it. I’ve avoided all blog posts about it.

That’s why I’m in a good mood this morning. 

Wednesday afternoon I pointed to Drudge’s then-breaking news exclusive about David Letterman mocking John McCain during the taping of his show regarding the senator’s late cancellation to be a guest on tonight’s show. Well, here’s the video from that show…

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It demonstrates two things to me:  (1) McCain’s political stunt of “rushing” to Washington was exposed as a stunt and it backfired, and (2) it’s not a good idea to piss off a popular television show host who can certainly make you look even worse than you already do.

Drudge has an exclusive report about David Letterman mocking John McCain during the taping of his show regarding the senator’s late cancellation to be a guest on tonight’s show…

David Letterman tells audience that McCain called him today to tell him he had to rush back to DC to deal with the economy.

Then in the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, “Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?”

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, “You don’t suspend your campaign. This doesn’t smell right. This isn’t the way a tested hero behaves.” And he joked: “I think someone’s putting something in his metamucil.”

“He can’t run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?”

“What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!”

What he said.

Stranahan says, “John McCain can turn the economy around…he’s done it before!”

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Lyrics: Continued

As Andrew Sullivan pointed out, if Karl Rove was a Democrat, you would surely see an ad like this.

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It certainly would seem to be fair (and balanced) to apply the same standards of negative campaigning to McCain that he has employed against Obama. I’m truly sick and tired of mean-spirited attack ads, no matter which candidate or party it is — on the national and local levels. But, this parodying attack ad seemed appropriate for the man who has set the new standard for ridiculousness and mean-spiritedness in presidential candidate attack ads.

Does John McCain not have anything that would make a positive campaign commercial? Is he really so desperate that he’ll do anything to be president, even violating his own professed standards? Is the only way he can win is to tear down his opponent with smears, distortions and outright lies rather than sell the American people on himself?

Each day, he’s looking more and more like the current occupant of the White House. I just can’t stomach four more years of the same.

I’ve always loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I still eat them for lunch often. Aside from the great taste, they are easy to fix and can last all day without worrying about it spoiling. Now I have one more reason to keep on eating those PB&J’s: it reduced my carbon footprint and helps fight global warming. So says The PB&J Campaign:

Each time you have a plant-based lunch like a PB&J you’ll reduce your carbon footprint by the equivalent of 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions over an average animal-based lunch like a hamburger, a tuna sandwich, grilled cheese, or chicken nuggets. For dinner you save 2.8 pounds and for breakfast 2.0 pounds of emissions.

Those 2.5 pounds of emissions at lunch are about forty percent of the greenhouse gas emissions you’d save driving around for the day in a hybrid instead of a standard sedan.

If you have a PB&J instead of a red-meat lunch like a ham sandwich or a hamburger, you shrink your carbon footprint by almost 3.5 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Pretty impressive! And it tastes great too! In fairness, it’s really not just PB&J sandwiches that will make a different.

Any plant-based meal you eat instead of something based on meat, fish, eggs, or dairy products can have a big impact.

But wait! There’s more!

You’ll conserve water at lunch too! How about 133 gallons of water conserved at lunch versus the average American lunch? To put this in perspective, five PB&Js or other plant-based lunches per month would save more water than switching to a low-flow showerhead. If you’re replacing hamburgers, it should take you just three lunches to conserve more water than the low-flow showerhead.

Still not satisfied? There’s more still!

Don’t forget the land you save from deforestation, over-grazing, and pesticide and fertilizer pollution: about 24 square feet at lunch.

I’m happy to help out. I’ll do my part to fight global warming. Eat more chicken PB&J’s!*

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*This does not mean that I will completely give up hamburgers and other animal-based meals. I simply can’t cut out delicious, fresh-off-the-barbecue grill hamburgers… or steaks… or porkchops… or marinated chicken… mmmmmmmmm, grilled marinated chicken… (drooling)