Posts Tagged ‘john mccain’

The nation’s president Barack Obama celebrates his 47th birthday today. We think President Obama looks pretty good. Happy Birthday Mr. President.
Michelle – Paul McCartney

The President  needs to keep a protective arm around his beautiful wife Michelle Obama. Beatle Paul McCartney serenaded the First Lady over the weekend when he dedicated the song “Michelle” to Michelle Obama.

The President might want to keep an eye on the cute Beatle.

Paul McCartney made no secret of his admiration – or is it adoration? – of Michelle Obama at his Washington-area concert on Saturday night.

The knighted, besotted singer dedicated the love song “Michelle” to the First Lady during his concert at FedEx Field, NBC Washington reported.

“I love you, I love you, I love you. That’s all I want to say,” he sang. “I need to, I need to, I need to, I need to make you see. Oh, what you mean to me.”

The First Lady wasn’t in the audience; she left hours earlier for a vacation at Camp David.

McCartney is a big fan of the Obamas and said before the election that he hoped he could one day sing a certain song to Michelle.

BARACK OBAMA BIRTHDAY

Today is Barack Obama’s birthday.

I know the crazy “birthers” out there don’t want to believe it, but the president of the United States was born on this day in Hawaii in 1961. So as the president celebrates the day while meeting with Senate Democrats for lunch at the White House, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the year that past.

A year ago this month, I was covering the Democratic National Convention in Denver for BET and The Daily Voice. I couldn’t help feeling proud to see the the Democratic Party nominate its first African American as the party’s official candidate for president.

stood on the press risers in Invesco Field as Senator Obama spoke on my birthday, August 28, and formally accepted the nomination. It was a big high for many of us, but the next day, Senator John McCain picked then Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate, and suddenly the press was in a frenzy about the new girl in town.

When you look back on where we were last August, you notice the stunning hypocrisy of the Republican Party in the past year. A year ago today, the Republicans were complaining that Barack Obama wasn’t qualified to be president and Sen. McCain was releasing TV ads calling Obama a media-fabricated “celebrity.”

But on August 29, McCain picked Palin, a person with no national governing experience, to be his running mate. It was, I believe, the single dumbest move of McCain’s ill-fated campaign. How could McCain-Palin complain about Obama’s experience when the Arizona senator had picked someone far less qualified than Obama to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

But they did complain about Obama’s qualifications even after Palin was picked. A woman who had barely finished serving as mayor of a tiny town in Alaska had the nerve to denigrate Obama, a distinguished and thoughtful U.S. Senator, as a mere “community organizer.”

And a campaign that had just complained about Obama’s celebrity had picked a woman who rose to media-created celebrity status overnight, not because of her knowledge or experience, but because McCain wanted a woman he barely knew to try to win disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters.

Just another one of the many hypocritical stands taken by the Republicans in their war against Obama in the past year. So today as the birthers use Obama’s birthday as their last attempt to milk the media attention for their lost cause, it’s worth remembering that John McCain wasn’t born in the United States.

The same right-wing conservatives who insist they want their country back from the Hawaiian-born Obama had no problem supporting a Panamian-born senator and his Alaskan-born running mate. And weren’t these the same power-hungry Republicans who had talked about amending the U.S. Constitution to allow Austrian-born California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president?

When angry white people start yelling at their members of Congress during the August recess, know exactly what they’re really saying. They’ve been watching Fox News and listening to Rush LImbaugh all day, and they still can’t get over the fact that we have a black president and will soon have a wise Latina Supreme Court Justice. They can’t accept the reality that America will no longer be a white majority nation by 2042, that Hispanics are the fastest growing segment of the population, and that gays and lesbians are getting married legally in half a dozen states. The country they want back is a racist, sexist, classist, misogynist, homophobic, heterosexist, culturally imperialistic, xenophobic world where right-wing white people don’t have to think about justice or equality.

You’ve got to admit that Bristol Palin’s baby daddy Levi Johnston is pretty brave to speak out against his former almost mother-in law Sarah Palin. Levi told the press why he thinks Sarah Palin quit as Governor of Alaska. Levi thinks Sarah Palin wanted the money and not the hassle connected to a life politics.

Levi Johnston, the former fiance of Gov. Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol, on Thursday joined the crowd offering up potential reasons for Palin’s decision to step down.

Johnston met with reporters to say that he heard her musing about a better life, one in which she could spend more time at home, reduce her stress, and accept the lucrative offers coming her way.

Back in December, a month after her election defeat as John McCain’s running mate, Johnston said that Palin “had talked about how nice it would be to take some of this money people have been offering us and just run with it, and saying forget everything else.”

Asked about Johnston’s remarks, Palin’s spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, said, “It is interesting to learn Levi is working on a piece of fiction while honing his acting skills.”

Johnston, 19, and his family have engaged in a public feud with the Palins over issues like whether his mother and sister could visit his son, born to Palin’s daughter Dec. 28, and respect. Now Johnston is the latest to join the rampant national speculation about why Palin made the decision to step down July 26 as governor.

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• Sarah Palin Resigns (dickstersrandomthoughts.blogspot.com)
• Sarah Palin Resigns Video As Governer of Alaska Preps for 2012 Presidential Run? (binside.typepad.com)
• Sarah Palin threatens legal action over resignation rumours (telegraph.co.uk)

Sarah Palin has resigned as the Governor of Alaska.

The former Vice presidential candidate who was blamed for contributing to John McCain’s loss in the presidential race is now calling it quits with a public press conference. There is now speculation that she is resigning to prepare for her run as President of the United States in the next election. Palin has already received criticism for how she handled the pregnancy of her teenage unwed daughter Bristol Palin.   There are also rumors that her mentally disabled son Trig is her daughter Bristol Palin’s son.

Sarah Palin the former Republican vice-presidential candidate who electrified her party’s campaign last year, has resigned as Alaska’s governor in a dramatic decision that has fuelled speculation she is positioning herself to run for president.

But after an at times rambling speech in which she compared herself to battle wounded American soldiers in Kosovo and said only dead fish go with the flow, Palin’s critics accused her of a “flaky” decision and walking away from her post.

Palin, who built strong support among conservative Republicans as John McCain’s running mate last year, said she will step down in three weeks because she can contribute more away from politics.

“We know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time on another scale and actually make a difference for our priorities,” she said.

But Palin also hinted at continuing political ambitions when she repeated a quote she attributed to general Douglas MacArthur: “We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction.”

For someone who is supposedly stepping back from politics, Palin’s resignation speech was weighty with policy specifics which prompted speculation that she is positioning herself for a 2012 presidential bid or seeking another office which would move her from distant Alaska to the heart of Washington politics.

But the timing, coming during one of the biggest American holidays of the year, independence day, raised questions among some of Republicans who accused her of attempting to escape falling poll numbers in Alaska as a series of economic problems and ethics investigations take their toll.

A prominent Republican strategist, Ed Rollins, who directed Ronald Reagan’s election campaign, said Palin had made a serious mistake.

“She was a shooting star who dimmed in recent months and now she’s crashed,” he said.

Another Republican strategist, Tony Blankley, disagreed and said Palin appeared to have made a smart move to position herself for a run for president.

“It looks like she’s moving down a path toward it,” he said. “It frees her up. The normal rules don’t seem to apply to her. She’s a fascinating character who seems to do things her own way.”

Blankley said that it makes sense for Palin to resign as governor if she is seeking higher office.

“This is going to be a pretty tough time for incumbents the next couple of years in America with everything going to tell and this may be a pretty good time not to be in office,” he said.

Blankley also said that Palin faced particular difficulties trying to juggle a national campaign with being government of Alaska.

Sarah Palin conducted one of several post election interviews with Matt Lauer on the Today Show. During the interview Sarah Palin blames everyone else except herself and negative campaigning for the loss of the Republican ticket. Watch Matt Lauer’s awkward interview with her cooking in the kitchen like Martha Stewart while saying she may run in 2012.  The Alaska Governor also brags about going rogue and complains that she wasn’t able to introduce John McCain before his concession speech. Sarah Palin’s first post election press conference was cut short. Some Republicans were not happy with the way that the Palin press
conference was conducted, complaining that it seemed intended to
bolster her status as the leader of the party and that she was hogging
the media attention.source

Click here to watch the video.

Can anyone explain why everyone is running to interview Sarah Palin and do  hand holding in Alaska while she complains about her treatment in the press? How often do people run to hang out with the loser in a major political election?

Reporters are baffled that Sarah Palin is still saying negative things about Barack Obama like she did on the campaign trail. Watch the reaction to the Sarah Palin press conference.

Jonathan Capehart told MSNBC’s David Shuster, "I watched her entire
speech, and I had to remind myself that the election was a week ago,
and this was not a McCain/Palin rally." Is that crazy white-haired lady
who thought Obama was "an Arab" a Republican Governor? Probably!
"Everything you heard at a McCain/Palin rally since she was selected as
the Vice Presidential nominee since September, and even down to the
same rhetoric was in that speech," said Capehart.

Jonathan Martin added that Palin’s speech was "perplexing" and
"jarring," which are the two nicest things ever said about a Palin
speech. He added that he wasn’t "sure if she wanted to, you know,
re-litigate the past campaign or look forward and diagnose where the
party should go from here. And it was sort of a little bit of both, but
also neither."

Capehart added, "She needs to stop." And, according to David
Shuster, 52% of people polled agree that it’s time for Sarah Palin to
go home. By contrast, 45% say they can’t get enough of her. Funny how
those numbers seem to correspond with another large accounting of the
American electorate that was recently taken! source

Former 60’s radical and Weather UnderGround member William Ayers went on Good Morning America for an interview with Chris Cuomo. Ayers kept a low profile during the campaign. Sarah Palin and John McCain constantly repeated the "guilt by association" slogan during their campaign and accused Barack Obama of "paling around  with terrorists."  Sarah Palin has also been linked to her share of extremists and seccionists. John McCain did admit on David  Letterman that he too had a relationship with G. Gordon Liddy who is considered by many to be an "unrepentant terrorist" who idolized Adolf Hitler. 

University of Illinois-Chicago professor Bill Ayers, the Vietnam War-era radical who was a campaign headache for Barack Obama, downplayed his relationship with the President-elect this morning on "Good Morning America." Ayers discussed his decision not to comment to the media as reports circulated about his association with Obama and became the focus of attacks from Sen. John McCain’s campaign.

"I felt that I was feeding a profoundly dishonest narrative," Ayers told GMA’s Chris Cuomo. "I didn’t want to participate in that." 

Ayers criticized the media and the Republican party for making Obama "guilty by association" for what Ayers called their "professional relationship."

"We came together in the civic community around the issue of school improvement … that’s the full extent of our relationship," said Ayers.

Ayers called Obama’s win in the Nov. 4 election a "great credit" to the American people that "politics of fear" were rejected.

Ayers also disputed the notion that he had gone into hiding during Obama’s campaign.

"I was doing the things I always do," he said. source Watch the GMA video. It is important to note the Chris Cuomo sounds  like Sarah Palin during this interview with his line of questioning.

John McCain kept his promise to stop by for his interview with David Letterman. The Republican presidential candidate lied  to the Late Show host and canceled his appearance on the show to do an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric. David Letterman bashed McCain on his program ever since the diss and even talked about his absent guest with MSNBC’s  Keith Olbermann.  During Letterman’s interview with John McCain he asked him why he lied about his reasons for canceling his interview last month.  David Letterman also grilled McCain about his decision to choose hockey mom  Sarah Palin for his running mate and his relationship with G. Gordon Liddy. McCain tried to play dumb and pretend he didn’t know anything about Liddy or who he was. John McCain later admitted that G. Gordon Liddy was an "old friend" that he wasn’t ashamed of who has donated to his campaign and served his time in jail. Read David Letterman’s Top 10 List. Top 10 Messages Left On Joe The Plumber’s Answering Machine

Dave: Did you not have a relationship with Gordon Liddy?
McCain: Uh, I met him. I –
Dave: Did you attend a fundraiser at his house?
McCain: Gordon Liddy’s?
Paul: I object, your honor.
Dave: We will be right back here… (laughter)

G. Gordon Liddy was a former FBI agent who was a mastermind of the Watergate burglary.  President Nixon resigned from the presidency after the Watergate scandal while G. Gordon Liddy served 4 years in jail.

G. Gordon Liddy could also be described by many as a terrorist who plotted the firebombing of the Brookings Institute, planned the murder of journalist Jack Anderson, believed Adolf Hitler was a political hero and advocated  shooting federal agents in the head. John McCain has made the argument of guilt by association in his attempts to connect Barack Obama with the activites of William Ayers.

After weeks of hammering Barack Obama for having an association with
a former Weather Undergound member, John McCain was asked Thursday
afternoon about his own connections to a past felon: G. Gordon Liddy.

The question came, of all places, from late night comedian David
Letterman, who pressed the Senator to explain why he was friendly with
the man who was convicted in the Watergate scandal of conspiracy,
burglary, and illegal wiretapping. McCain – according to an advanced report of the show – initially said that he "met" Liddy before adding, "He paid his debt, he went to prison, he paid his debt." source

Here are examples of some of G. Gordon Liddy’s beliefs and inflammatory statements.

Hitler as an early political hero

The Fuhrer was G Gordon Liddy’s first political hero.

When he listened to Hitler on the radio, it "made me feel a strength
inside I had never known before," he explains. "Hitler’s sheer animal
confidence and power of will . He sent an electric
current through my body."

G. Gordon Liddy admits at assemblies where the national anthem is played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm." His beloved German nanny taught him that Hitler had — through sheer will-power — "dragged Germany from weakness to strength."

When he listened to Hitler on the radio, it "made me feel a strength inside I had never known before," he explains. "Hitler’s sheer animal confidence and power of will . He sent an electric current through my body." source