The political career of John McCain has been made possible by a series of political maneuvers and a skillful public relations campaign, creating the juggernaut that I like to call The Legend of John McCainTM. There are many facets of The LegendTM, but the base of the entire concept lies in John McCain’s military service. The deification of his service and of his time in Vietnam as a prisoner of war has been constructed into a nearly impenetrable firewall against scrutiny, and have also served, along with media complicity, as rose colored glasses to the public throughout his political career. Up until recently, no one could ever think of questioning any part of The LegendTM without facing serious public backlash. Fortunately, his candidacy for President has allowed and demanded closer scrutiny of his history, and of the phenomenon that is The Legend of John McCainTM.
Cleveland-area congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones had a massive aneurysm last night and is on life support. It does not look good.
Please send up some thoughts and prayers to her and her family.
She is Ohio's first African-American woman to be elected to Congress and has served Cleveland's east side for 10 years. She is also one of Hillary Clinton's most trusted supporters.
Let's hope she pulls through.
UPDATE (12:14 pm EDT) : Officials were to update her condition at noon. At least one local news station, WOIO Channel 19, is reporting that the situation is grim and life support will be removed this afternoon.
UPDATE II (12:22 pm EDT): From WKYC Channel 3:
According to police, officers stopped her car late last night in the 2300 block of Lee Road in Cleveland Heights. Tubb Jones was reportedly found unconscious behind the wheel. Upon reaching the vehicle the officer found the driver, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, to be in obvious medical distress and called for an ambulance.
As readers know, Slinkerwink and I have been fed up with Obama’s milquetoast, undisciplined press strategy. For all the talk about how miserable a candidate McCain is, he says something, his advertising echoes it, his press releases repeat it, and his surrogates are disciplined and drill in the same talking points over and over. Obama’s camp wants to get something across, they put the candidate out there to say something once in a town hall and then they drop it. No surrogates. No repetition. No discipline.
Obama is one of the best candidates we’ve had in years and, more importantly, will make a great president. And on the ground, in terms of organization, his campaign is incredibly impressive. But a ground-game cannot make up the difference for lacking a coherent strategy for setting a macro-narrative, and it’s mind-boggling to think they’ve let McCain hit them with the "celebrity" tag over and over for a month now with no response.
So, in interests of DOING something instead of just complaining about it, Slink and I are launching a new project: creating our own unofficial press releases and talking points (changed from earlier)
One more round on the Church thing--but perhaps from another angle. Pardon me if this thought has been posted before, but I haven't seen it.
As far as the Saddleback thing goes, couldn't Obama have pulled a Stephen Colbert/Press Club thing that night?
By that I mean, while McCain was speaking to the audience in front of him and ignoring the fact that the nation was watching, Obama was speaking to all of us.
As we see news of the possible (and increasingly likely) bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by the US Treasury, I am reminded of something that I have been writing about nuclear energy, ie that it should be financed by the State, and I'd like to extend on why I think there are fascinating similarities between the two topics, however distinct they may seem.
Has the traditional media worm turned? Is it possible that Jerome Corsi is the occasion when what we have called the main stream media has finally had enough? Today I offer an example that may provide a hint.
Scot Lehigh of The Boston Globe is the centrist voice of that major publication's stable of op ed writers. And today's column, addressing "Doctor" Corsi's latest opus is entitled Doctoring the facts against Obama and is a major takedown of Corsi's Obama Nation. In his first paragraph he describes the book as a "revelation." Lest that scare you, it is intended as a sarcastic remark, which he quickly makes clear by noting how often Corsi reminds us he has a doctorate: on the cover, on the title page, in the author bio (which tells us it is from Harvard), in the preface, and
Oh, yes, and as a header on every other page throughout the book.
Unfortunately for Corsi's, um, scholarly reputation, the last high-profile work he was involved with didn't withstand independent scrutiny
You should now be relaxed enough for the rest of this review.
Recently, a fair number of high-profile progressive bloggers have been, to put it mildly, flipping out about Barack Obama's campaign style and his chances in November. Josh Marshall thinks there need to be consistent lines of attack against McCain. John Aravosis thinks Team Obama is in a bubble and this is feeling like the Democratic campaigns of the past. Matt Stoller thinks it's time for message testing to find the attack that'll work on McCain.
All of these are smart people who want Obama to win and see it slipping away. But they are failing to totally account for the X factor of the election, which is going virtually unmentioned throughout the blogosphere - the historic ground effort that the Obama campaign is banking on to win. It is not without peril, but it is a very new thing, and I think we have to understand it if we want to understand the twists and turns of this election.
Post partisan my ass! That MIGHT be a good theme as a campaign strategy. It MIGHT appeal to an electorate tired of the incompetent, ineffectual and just plain stupid brand of government they have been getting for the last ten years....you know, since the incredibly partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton by the Republican Congress....
It might sound ... nice ...and evenhanded and reasonable and mature and responsible and all that. But it ignores the simple and undeniable fact that since the Republicans lied, cheated and smeared (including smearing their current champion when he was running against Bush) their way into having full unfettered dominance of the government.....just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and the country is in sad, sorry shape.
Because of the Republicans.
Everything the Republicans has touched in the last decade has turned to crap. From the micro (life saving stem cell research) to the macro (Climate Crisis) the Republicans have had full power to implement their vision, programs and policies....and have gotten it wrong every single time.
Happy Now?
The network will be formally announcing this tomorrow, but I am pleased to inform you in this fully authorized leak, that as of Monday, September 8, our mutual friend Ms. Maddow will become host of her own show, on MSNBC, at 9 PM Eastern Time.
And, yes, we will be making another unofficial announcement of this on tonight's edition of Countdown. My guest to analyze the Rachel Maddow news will be Rachel Maddow.
Over at military.com, Dr. Phillip Butler (USNA '61) has a very interesting article up. Who is Dr. Butler? He was a hall mate of John McCain's at the Naval Academy. He was a Vietnam War light-attack carrier pilot. He was a POW for 8 years in North Vietnam during the time that McCain was in captivity. He has two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals.
Senator John Sidney McCain, III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who "Returned With Honor." That's our POW motto. But since many of you keep asking what I think of him, I've decided to write it out. In short, I think John Sidney McCain, III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States.
The good doctor runs through the reasons why being a POW isn't a qualification for being president (which obviously applies to himself) ...
Crusty, curmudgeonly commentator Jack Cafferty of CNN has tossed a spanner in the works of the MSM. In his most recent commentary piece, McCain's many shortcomings as commander in chief are laid bare:
More multiple point messaging like this please. While Obama is vigorously going after McCain's deplorable patriotism attack, the DNC is just out with this in response to the Saddleback forum:
Host Beth Troutman: "Is there anything from over the past few years that you would have done differently? That you are maybe the least proud of? If anything?"
Rep. Robin Hayes: "Hard, as I can't think of anything honestly, right off hand."
As we reminded him last cycle, the working families of North Carolina's 8th District may have some suggestions.
(h/t to Bob Sackamento for notifying us of this subject)
Barack Obama is speaking in front of the VFW right now in Orlando, and is hitting McCain very hard on his Achilles heel - the fundamental decision to go to war, and for the first time, brings up the fact that McCain pushed for war with Iraq right after 9/11:
Six years ago, I stood up at a time when it was politically difficult to oppose going to war in Iraq, and argued that our first priority had to be finishing the fight against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Senator McCain was already turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, and he became a leading supporter of an invasion and occupation of a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and that – as despicable as Saddam Hussein was – posed no imminent threat to the American people.
And he then pivots to the original decision to launch the war in Iraq:
