[Illustration via 23/6] SALON 1999: GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s wife Cindy took to the airwaves last week, recounting for Jane Pauley (on “Dateline”) and Diane Sawyer (on “Good Morning America”) the tale of her onetime addiction to Percocet and Vicodin, and the fact that she stole the drugs from her own nonprofit medical relief organization. It was a brave and obviously painful thing to do. It was also vintage McCain media manipulation. But both of Cindy McCain’s staged, teary drug-addiction confessions have been vintage John McCain. His MO is this: Get the story out — even if it’s a […]
LIBERTY MEDAL: Goes To Ex-Commie Stooge Turned Lifter Of Iron Curtain Turned Louis Vuitton Pitchman
WIKIPEDIA: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, born March 2, 1931 in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai), is a Russian politician. He was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the last head of state of the USSR, serving from 1985 until its collapse in 1991. Gorbachev’s attempts at reform — perestroika and glasnost — as well as summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan, contributed to the end of the Cold War, and also ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He was awarded […]
He Was Against It Before He Was For It & Vice Versa
CARPETBAGGER REPORT: Confronted with the inconsistencies in McCain’s record in March, the senator’s aides told the New York Times that the senator “has evolved rather than switched positions in his 25-year career.” That’s a perfectly sensible spin — when a politician holds one position, and then, for apparently political reasons, decides to embrace the polar opposite position, it’s only natural for his or her aides to say the politician’s position has “evolved.” But in McCain’s case, the spin is wholly unfulfilling. First, McCain sells himself as a pol who never sways with the wind, and whose willingness to be consistent […]
EARLY WORD: Take The Skinhead Bowling
Details are few, as per the Secret Service’s wishes, but Senator Obama will be town Friday for a private fundraiser at an undisclosed location. On Saturday he will be holding a Townhall meeting “in the Philadelphia area,” we’re guessing the suburbs where he still has is work cut out for him. Wondering if or when Obama and Clintonista Nutter make nice and go bowling. These two are like the hot girls who went to the prom with the wrong dates (Obama/Chaka Fatah & the resulting Nutter/Clinton mismatch). Here’s to no more tears on Prom Night. More details as they come […]
MEDIA COP: Fox Calls Michelle “Obama’s Baby Mama”
SALON: An alert reader wrote in just a little while ago to let us know about something he’d spotted on Fox News Wednesday afternoon. During a segment discussing conservative attacks against Michelle Obama, the wife of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, the network described the former as “Obama’s baby mama.” I checked, and sure enough, as you can see below, our e-mailer was right. In fact, that description was displayed on-screen several times during the segment, which featured anchor Megyn Kelly and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, an FNC contributor. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Michelle Malkin Is A Cunt With Teeth PREVIOUSLY: Fox’s […]
BREAKING: Supremes Smackdown Gitmo Tribunals
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Supreme Court [NOT pictured, above] ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, ”The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” MORE […]
WORTH REPEATING: Let’s Impeach The President
BY JONATHAN VALANIA When Stephen Colbert hosted the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner — the annual D.C. puppet show where reporters play pattycake with the Prez — he rode the Trojan Horse of Truthiness right up to the President’s table and unleashed its hidden contents: a disinfecting dose of reality-based reality, thinly-coated with irony for easier digestion, though impossible to swallow for those weaned on Fox News comfort food. Speaking truth to power at point blank-range, Colbert’s barbs essentially added up to: The emperor has no clothes, and all of you, the Fourth Estate, have become nothing more than royal […]
McCain In Town To Campaign For Third Bush Term
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] INQUIRER: Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP candidate, plans a town-hall meeting this morning at the National Constitution Center. [via Obama For America] McCain’s Gas Tax Holiday Would Cost Pennsylvania $330 million and 11,500 jobs. John McCain’s gas tax holiday would cost Virginia $330,462,939 in federal funding for local road and bridge projects and 11,493 highway related jobs. [American Road and Transportation Builders Association] State Highway and Transportation Officials: “McCain’s Gas Tax Holiday Would Devastate Highway and Transportation Programs;” Savings Would Be $28 For the Average Motorist. “Presidential contender Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has called for […]
WORTH REPEATING: Why Rendell Will NOT Be Veep
[Photo by TED ADAMS] THE NEW REPUBLIC: A large, hairy bear of a man, Rendell would enliven Washington in a way that nobody has in years. He doesn’t double-talk when it comes to describing political reality. Like when he told me he would never consider being a U.S. senator: “It’s an incredibly easy job. They don’t do shit.” Like how he described his address to the Democratic National Convention in the 1980s: “Thirty seconds into my speech, it dawned on me that I could have been reading the best parts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and it wouldn’t have mattered. … […]
CENSORSHIP: Comcast Won’t Run Ad Exposing Its Role In The Fascist Takeover Of The United States
SALON: Two weeks ago, the Blue America PAC submitted ads to numerous cable television stations, newspapers and radio stations criticizing Blue Dog Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.) for his support of a bill to expand dramatically the President’s warrantless eavesdropping powers and to immunize telecoms (such as Comcast) which broke the law in enabling the Bush administration to spy on their customers with no warrants. The ads also documented that several of the lawbreaking telecoms which would benefit most from the amnesty Carney advocates donated substantial sums to his campaign (with Comcast being the largest such contributor to Carney). The ads […]
McCSAME: When The Levees Broke
WHITE HOUSE: President George W. Bush joins Arizona Senator John McCain in a small celebration of McCain’s 69th birthday Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, after the President’s arrival at Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix. The President later spoke about Medicare to 400 guests at the Pueblo El Mirage RV Resort and Country Club in nearby El Mirage. White House photo by Paul Morse * ASSOCIATED PRESS: Republican presidential candidate John McCain took stock of still-hurricane-damaged areas of New Orleans on [April 24th] and declared that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have immediately landed at the […]
A NEW LOW: Fox’s ‘Terrorist Fist Jab’ At The Obamas
MEDIA MATTERS: During the June 6 edition of Fox News’ America’s Pulse, host E.D. Hill teased an upcoming discussion by saying, “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.” In the ensuing discussion with Janine Driver — whom Hill introduced as “a body language expert” — Hill referred to the “Michelle and Barack Obama fist bump or fist pound,” adding that “people call it all sorts of things.” Hill went on to ask Driver: “Let’s start with the Barack and Michelle Obama, because that’s what most people are writing about — the […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Tenacity Of Nope
NEW YORK TIMES: While she emphasized its trailblazing nature as she exited the race, her campaign also represented a back-to-the-future effort to restore the Democratic dynasty of the 1990s that could never quite escape the past. Although Mrs. Clinton proved a more agile candidate than many had expected, she built a campaign that was suffused in overconfidence, riven by acrimony and weighted by the emotional baggage of a marriage between former and would-be presidents. As she flew from town halls to rallies on the road, she did little to stop the infighting back home among advisers who nursed grudges from […]