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PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
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(caricatures by
Linda Eddy)
Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
Ya
have to see it to believe it:
kids taught to sing for Dear Leader Obama
head of NBC Universal Jeff Zucker
among the Hollywood 'comrades' behind the video...
How voter fury stopped the bailout
Voters opposed to the deal deluged Capitol Hill with letters, emails, phone calls and faxes over the past week. Some 23,000 signatures were collected over two days by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, calling for a five-year, 10% surtax on the wealthiest Americans to help fund the bailout. Some prominent conservatives and bloggers criticized the deal as an unwarranted intervention in the free market.
"The vast majority of my voters looked at this as a bailout for Wall Street," said Rep. Darrell Issa of California, one of the most outspoken Republican critics of the proposal...
The
House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue
for the nation's financial system, ignoring urgent
warnings from
President
Bush and congressional leaders of both parties
that the economy could nosedive into recession without
it.
Stocks plummeted on Wall Street even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was announced on the House floor.
... Ample no votes came from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle. More than two-thirds of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats opposed the bill...
see also:
HOUSE ADJOURNS UNTIL THURSDAY House website overwhelmed
DOW has biggest one-day points drop ever: -777.68
McCain says Obama policies will deepen the recession :McCain said Democrat Barack Obama advocates tax-and-spend policies that "will deepen our recession," and voted against funding for equipment needed by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pelosi pre-vote speech riles GOP (video)
House GOP blames Pelosi's speech
Obama proven over-optimistic; changes earlier remark :After seeing the bill fail, Obama scrapped the original script and talked of Rocky Mountain-like turbulence...
Gingrich switched stance before vote - 'reluctantly' supported
Michael Moore: "biggest robbery in the history of this country"
Obama 'Truth Squad' going too far?
Last
Tuesday without any fanfare, the Barack Obama campaign announced
Jennifer Joyce and Bob McCulloch, the top prosecutors in St. Louis
city and St. Louis County, were joining something called an Obama
truth squad.
...By Saturday afternoon, outgoing Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, a McCain supporter, was also outraged and accused Obama of "police state tactics" that would "intimidate people and kill free debate."
"The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill open debate," Blunt said in the statement.
Prosecutor Jennifer Joyce said: "We're here to respond to any character attacks, to set the record straight."
"Barack Obama needs to grow up," Blunt continued. "Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations, because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them."
more from Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt:
“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment,” Blunt said in a written statement.
"Palin better than Obama" ad
causing a stir online
$700 billion rescue plan goes to the House today
Treasury’s $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets goes to the House floor Monday, backed by the two major presidential candidates but facing resistance still on the right and left.
Coming just weeks before the November elections, the 110-page bill is a major test of whether the political center can hold behind what’s become an unprecedented government intervention to try to break the credit crunch threatening the larger U.S. economy.
House Republicans are at the center of the storm, with conservatives in open rebellion. But Democrats have their own defections, and within hours of the agreement, the leadership was already highlighting the bill’s promise to crack down on Wall Street pay, mitigate foreclosures and even allow Congress to cut off funding at $350 billion.
“People have to know this isn't about a bailout of Wall Street; it's a buy-in, so that we can turn our economy around," said Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But from the moment the California Democrat brought down the gavel Sunday, a parade of conservatives and liberals were on their feet bashing the deal—and Wall Street, as a haven for frauds and criminals.
see also:
GOP leaders on board, will others join?
Both candidates likely to support bailout deal
McCain, Obama may skip bailout vote
Michelle Malkin: Kill the bailout!
Post-debate: Obama's lead grows
Two days after a presidential debate many commentators scored as a tie, it's beginning to look like the public saw things differently, as several polls show a small but significant post-debate boost for Barack Obama...
see also:
Gallup poll: Obama 50, McCain 42
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain & Sarah Palin... today's headlines with excerpts
Palin ready to rumble - Thursday night debate looms
Seemingly
brimming with confidence, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says
she is ready to go head-to-head with Democratic Sen. Joe
Biden in the vice presidential debate this week.
"I guess it's my turn now and I do look forward to Thursday and debating Senator Biden," she told a roaring crowd at a joint campaign rally Monday in Columbus, Ohio with Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.
... "I'm looking forward to meeting him too," Palin said. "I've never met him before. But, I've been hearing about his senate speeches since I was in like second grade. I have to admit though he is a great debater and looks pretty doggone confident like he's sure he's gonna win. But, then again this is the same Senator Biden who said the other day that the University of Delaware would trounce the Ohio State Buckeyes. Wrong!"
Palin gives McCain extra boost in Kansas
Kansas Republicans expect John McCain to
enjoy a typically large Republican margin in the Nov. 4 election,
thanks to running mate Sarah Palin.
Some Republicans acknowledge many conservatives weren't excited about McCain, the Arizona senator, but believe his putting the Alaska governor on the ticket energized that core constituency...
Zardari met Palin on Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where Zardari was making his debut on the world stage and Palin was meeting with visiting heads of state in the hope of improving her much-derided foreign policy credentials. The resulting exchange turned Palin into a household name in Pakistan, but saw Zardari pilloried at home as a source of national embarrassment and accused of sexism and impropriety...
see also:
Islamists bristle at Pakistani president for hitting on Palin
Barack Obama & Joe Biden... today's headlines with excerpts'
Obama's camp believes he can win by a landslide
Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states.
Insiders say that Mr Obama's apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party.
Biden told it ignore Palin during VP debate this Thursday
Democrats
are worried that his penchant for verbal missteps and his occasionally
aggressive style could be a liability as he faces only the second
woman to serve as a major party nominee for the vice presidency.
"His goal is to ignore Palin and focus on connecting with voters sitting in their living rooms by making clear he is indeed one of them — an uncommon, common man," a Democratic strategist who served as an aide to Vice President Gore during the 2000 campaign, Christopher Lehane, said.
Appearing with his running mate, Joe Biden, in front of a flag-decked train station, Obama tried to turn McCain's aggressive style to his own advantage, portraying his opponent as more interested in scoring points than in presenting a program.
"John McCain had a lot to say about me, but nothing to say about you," Obama told a crowd of 20,000 who waited for the Democratic candidates under drizzly skies...
Union leaders confronted by resistant to Obama
When Mike Pyne and other union foot soldiers knock on doors to promote Senator Barack Obama, they often confront a tricky challenge: how to persuade union members to vote on the basis of their wallets rather than on issues like abortion, gun rights and race...
... MacDavis Slade, a political activist with the painters’ union, said that was why “some people are having a hard time seeing things for what they are or hearing what he has to say.”
“I think race is playing a major part,” Mr. Slade said. “I think that’s why some people say, ‘Isn’t he a Muslim?’ ”
Other union leaders said that some members had acknowledged opposing Mr. Obama because he is black, and that canvassers had heard racial slurs against him...
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