Conservative Blog Check-in... non-Palin version.

First, in a call-to-arms diary, by jdripper, called Wake Up GOP, Or Else...

He invaded Iraq and Tommy Franks with 140,000 men conquered another country. Anyone reading this are you aware that Tommy Franks war plans and the execution of them are now being taught in every military school on this planet. After making a bad choice when he replaced Tommy Franks President Bush corrected that and named David Petraeus as the new commander. The Iraq war is now won.

Oy. " The Iraq War is now won." These people are either dangerously incompetent, or dangerously rosy-eyed. This is the same stupid Pollyanna thinking that got us into this damned war. "Iraq will be an ally of Israel. The Sunnis and Shiites have never had a history of violence. The Shiite dominated government will be a bulwark against Iran." Fairy tales, all of it. And then, to top it off, we were told that the war was going badly because we at home weren't cheering hard enough. The TinkerBell Strategy. Oy.

Second:

BREAKING: Convention Back On?

The GOP Convention may very well get back on. Rumors are floating around the XCEL Center that the convention may be geared back up a few notches after Gustav came in weaker than expected.

Here, though, is what some of the behind the scenes people are bristling about: The McCain Campaign has ordered all punches against the Obama campaign taken out of speeches for the entire convention duration.

...

Nice guys finish last, Senator McCain.

Well, sure. This was the other strategy available to them - the one that I mentioned a month ago. First, through the summer when "no one pays attention," go heinously negative on Obama. Then reclaim your maverick, reform/change mantle at the convention for the start of the general election with a "clean campaign." Cynical, but it just might work. Just like with Palin.

Don't worry, though, Erik. Just because they want to effect the genesis of another storyline about McCain's resurgence of positivity, that doesn't mean they have to stay that way. They'll go negative again soon enough.

The Torture Debate

... "The Torture Debate?" My god, how did we get to a point where I had to title a post "The Torture Debate." In a saner world, the only "torture debate" available would go something like this:

Debater 1: I think torture is wrong.
Debater 2: I agree with you.

But here we are, debating ways to redefine the Geneva Conventions so that we can engage in activities that are universally decried as torture. Here we are, The United States of America, the shining city on the hill, modifying a treaty obligation that has never been a burden adhering to for 57 years, through multiple wars, and enshrining torture with color of law at the same time.

I really do not understand this. I can't believe that we're openly calling for the embrace of torture. Do our leaders not realize that in order to win this Global Counterinsurgency, our moral authority is even more important than our military might? If this was symmetric war, where the devastation and capitulation of a defined enemy was the target, then so be it - letting your opinion in the world burn in order to achieve military victory might be worthwhile. But in counterinsurgency your main objective is to stem the flow of recruits, a task to which the use of military force is antithetical. Put simply, if this conflict is fought as an ordinary war we assure our utter failure, as Bush's execution of the War thus far has proven.

The really painful thing here is that the person advocating torture isn't some kook academic cloistered in a thinktank - he's the President of the United States of America, and he's sullying all of us while simultaneously making us less safe. I know that sounds awfully like a "blame America first" position, or that I "care more about protecting the terrorists than the American people," but that is, of course, ridiculous. This has nothing to do with Al Qaeda - it has everything to do with America, who we are as a people, and whether or not we want to get serious about winning the War on Terror, because with these policies we are an immoral nation and we will never be safe.

I am chagrined to even forward an argument, but lets do so for a sense of completeness, shall we?

Regardless of the specifics of the Geneva Convention itself, the reason America ratified the Convention was to protect our soldiers from unacceptable treatment. That protection of our soldiers is achieved by the common standards set out in the Convention - in other words, you get the protection for your own soldiers you guarantee to soldiers you capture. So, when looking at modifications to the Geneva Conventions, the first thing America needs to consider is whether our new standards would be acceptable when applied to our soldiers.

Under President Bush's standards for detainee treatment, Iran could capture a non-uniformed special agent, torture a confession from him, convict him in a special court without allowing him to see the evidence against him, and execute him. If one of our soldiers was subjected to that treatment, Iran could claim what it did was completely justified, since America herself would approve of the approach.

How can you say you support the troops when you subject them to such treatment? How can that simple scenario not completely decide this "debate?" Who could remain unconvinced?

Palin: Lies about the Teleprompter

Rush Limbaugh spent all day talking about how the teleprompter kept going during the applause lines of Palin's speech, and so by the end of the speech it was significantly past the portion she was currently speachfying. Anyone familiar with teleprompters, of course, knows this is bunk. To think that at the Republican National Convention they couldn't find a teleprompter tech who was familiar with the concept of applause lines defies the imagination. There's simply no way they are that incompetent.

Sarah Palin delivered a powerful speech last night, but she did not "wing it." ... This claim has been picked up on Drudge and could quickly enter into the insta-mythmaking about a speech that need not be embroidered.

Perhaps there were moments where it scrolled slightly past her exact point in the speech. But I was sitting in the press section next to the stage, within easy eyeshot of the teleprompter. I frequently looked up at the machine, and there was no serious malfunction. A top convention-planner confirms this morning that there were no major problems.

Conservatives need pleasing lies told about them so they can feel good about themselves, I guess. I think she did fine without the mythology, but I guess the Republicans aren't as convinced.

The Biased AP

Bad Ron Fournier! Why didn't you take that job with McCain instead of screwing up what's left of our objective press?

Last week, in an apparent effort to paint Sen. Hillary Clinton as self-absorbed, the AP's Ron Fournier counted the number of times she used "some variation of the pronoun 'I'" in her convention speech. Fournier came up with 17. Media Matters checked his work, and found 21 such uses. But Fournier's point was undermined by the fact that at least 13 of those uses of the pronoun were about Clinton's support for Obama, the importance of the 2008 election, or what matters in the election.

So ... when can we expect Fournier to tally up the number of times John "cause greater than self" McCain used the pronoun "I" in his convention speech? It's well over 100 -- and that doesn't even count variations.

Or has Ron Fournier suddenly realized that such an exercise would be pointless? He'd be right, but you have to wonder about the timing of his epiphany.

Oy.

Palin Bounce

This bounce definitely started during the convention, but there's no doubt Palin has helped accelerate the trend in Obama's direction.

Oh. Come. ON! Palin is a Successionist?

ABC News is now confirming that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party:

Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which since the 1970s has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

And while McCain's motto -- as seen in a new TV ad -- is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite -- "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."

...

She doesn't know what Palin's position was.

"It never came up in conversation," Clark recalls. "But when she joined the party our platform was right under her nose."

No kidding it was right under he nose. Their entire reason for the party's existence is emblazoned all over their website's front page:

A belief that there should be a vote on Alaskan secession, since the Alaskan people were not given the required slate of choices back in 1958.

Their founder, a man named Joe Vogler, famously said, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." The same man also said, "[T]he fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American government."

To polish it off, we have the following greeting to the AIP Convention for 2008.


Did McCain know that she had sent a love letter to a secessionist group this very year?

Of course their defense will be, "AIP members don't want to secede from the union... the just want the option to vote to secede from the union. Those are totally different things!"

Beck Loves Vampires and Militias... and McVeigh?

If you've been watching Glenn Beck, then you know he's obsessed with Vampires sucking the blood of the innocent, by which he means the horrible atrocity that is a Government financed by tax revenue.  It's violent commentary - literally blood soaked.  If you think he's just weird enough to make it all up on his own, you can be forgiven, but it turns out to have a more storied pedigree:

There you see Operation Vampire Killer, where this rhetoric got it start.  It's proudly displayed next to the Militiaman's Handbook at a militia convention.  See if this sounds familiar:

We in America, Officers and private citizens alike, are fortunate that at this moment in our history we can still LAWFULLY EXTERMINATE these parasitic Global Blood Suckers by placing numerous "STAKES" made of words, paper, pen, and hard work through their hardened hearts.

[…]

Very soon, if we do not stop these world government proponents, and install in places of leadership honorable men and women, all military, national guardsmen and officers of the law will be used as the "enforcement arm" to guarantee a full complement of "volunteers" for these imperialists' "peaceful" socialist global society.

Beck talks about driving stakes through the hearts of the government vampires all the time.

This dovetails nicely with the reading McVeigh did before committing his heinous act of terrorism:

Mr. McVeigh's reading, which he pressed on his sister, Jennifer, among others, also included Spotlight, the newsletter of the anti-semitic Liberty Lobby, Patriot Report, a far-right Christian identity newsletter that would later declare the Oklahoma bombing a plot by "the real hate groups," namely the F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, to crack down on armed paramilitary groups, and a strange document titled "Operation Vampire Killer 2000."

Written by Jack McLamb, a former Phoenix police sergeant, it seeks to enlist police and military personnel against "the ongoing, elitist covert operation which has been installed in the American system with great stealth and cunning." It continues, "They, the globalists, have stated that the date of termination of the American way of life is the year 2000."

When the nuts amongst their followers take this rhetoric to its unavoidable conclusion, people like Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and O'Reilly will scream bloody murder at the merest hint that they have some blame in the matter.  But clearly, they have created the climate for this violence.  They must take some responsibility.

O'Reilly: What a Tool.

Oprah had Bill O'Reilly on her show to talk about pedophiles and people who abduct children. Oprah, of all people, who should know better.

Here is video of Bill-O questioning whether or not Shawn Hornbeck just preferred to live with his captor, rather than living with his parentsm, having to abide by rules and go to school. Never mind the forced sodomy, no no! That's a small price to pay for being able to avoid the evil Department of Education! I hear they're more dangerous than Al Qaeda, after all (oh, Boortz, how you disappoint me)!

It was these statements that got O'Reilly uninvited from speaking at the National Convention for Missing Kids. You'd think it would be enough to keep him from being brought on Oprah's show as a self-righteous advocate for abducted children.

Finally, here's the video of Bill-O's performance on Oprah. What a bloviating idiot. My god. The end of that first clip is just sickening given the context with Hornbeck.

The Current Buchanan

First, Pat Buchanan's his response to the Obama nomination acceptance speech:

BUCHANAN: “I stand with Obama! It was a genuinely outstanding speech, it was magnificent. I saw Cuomo’s speech, I saw Kennedy in ‘80, I even saw Douglas MacArthur, I saw MLK; this is the greatest convention speech and probably the most important because unlike Cuomo and the others, this was an acceptance speech, this came out of the heart of America, and he went right at the heart of America. This wasn’t a liberal speech at all. This is a deeply, deeply centrist speech. It had wit, it had humor, and when he used the needle on McCain, he stuck it into McCain and it was funny. It was Kennedy’s speech in ‘80. ”

About Sarah Palin, his ardent supporter back in the day:

Biggest political gamble I believe just about in American political history...that is not hyberbole. I can think of no choice of VP that approaches this.

I like the new Buchanan better than the old. He's McCain in reverse, because he no longer has Republican political ambitions.

YKos: Hilary Evades the Nail

I was late to the convention this morning because somehow my pass was not with me, so I had to run back home and catch the next train. I came into Clinton's session late, so I wasn't able to strategically position myself, dooming my chance to ask a question. Luckily, two of the five questions she took were about the issues of tyranny I wanted to raise... of course, they weren't as biting as mine. But she answered them perfectly.

Clinton is a very interesting candidate. She really is pitch-perfect. Despite the fact that she's already clearly running a general campaign (see Iraq War), she still gets on famously with this activist slice of the Democratic Party.

I'm at the Presidential Candidate's Forum right now, and even here, poor Senator Gravel doesn't get any questions. He's looking pissed-off over there. Edwards is tearing it up... he's really quite impressive as well. I've never been a big fan of Edwards. I don't know what exactly he lacks, so I've always just called it Voltage. Well, he's got it today. Hairs are standing on end here. Neat.

Maybe it's just that all of these people are better in person. Except Richardson.

Palin Speech Reaction - Election Not about Issues

First, there were basically no issues discussed in that speech.  It was all lying-bio on herself and scurrilous-attack on Obama.  All saccharine and sarcasm.  And after Rudy's hyper-divisive barn-burner?  I wonder about how this tone will play at home.

She lied multiple times in discussing her bio.  The Bridge to Nowhere?  That's been destroyed by the press.  She supported it fervently, and only "opposed" it after Congress cancelled it and it became a national laughingstock.  Why would she feature a lie so prominently?

The convention hall still doesn't look full in the top tiers.  Embarrassing.

And most importantly, WTF is with that gigantic video screen behind her?  I mean, it's beautiful and all, but why show only the red and white parts of the American Flag?  Why exclude the Blue?  I know this will seem like I am reaching, but literally no symbolism is left to chance at these things.  Where Barack Obama speaks of the United States of America, the Republicans are only interested in the Red and White America.  It's time for a change, America.  You can't campaign this way and then govern as a uniter.

With the Palin pick directed at the base it is clear that this campaign is now all about running the Bush-2004 campaign of rallying the base.  That's insane in this political atmosphere, but they know that their tribalism is so deeply ingrained that there would be an explosion if he had gone the maverick direction and picked someone like Ridge or Leiberman.

Her speech was almost entirely culture war stuff: that liberals hate conservatives, and want to destroy their way of life.  They're victims of those dastardly and all-powerful liberals.  Has she not noticed who has been in charge these last eight years?  And even if the Democrats were in power, do they really think we sit around thinking about how much we look down on the red states?  If that was true, Obama wouldn't be the sensation that he is.

The McCain campaign manager just said recently that issues wont decide the election.  That strategy is what this speech is all about.  This campaign is about personality, it's not about substance:

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain's presidential bid, insisted that the presidential race will be decided more over personalities than issues during an interview with Post editors this morning.

"This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

That's how the GOP runs their elections.  They're all about our personal views of the candidates, because if people voted for their actual values as embodied in policy, the Republicans would never win another election.

final update: A guy from Alaska just said that she gave the best speech she's ever given tonight... that's right.  That's because it was written by presidential speech writers, before Palin was even picked.

Another Convention Overthrown

The Attack Ad that the Republicans are running against one of the Republican District Attorneys - a man who is now a private citizen, not running for anything or even selling any books. Still, they're using campaign money to attack him.

Here's the audio of that 60 second spot.

The ferocity of that attack lets us know exactly which of the prosecutors they fear the most.

What's wrong with the people that run our government? In the past we didn't need to worry about the conventions of our government being used to subvert the Republic.

The RNC Allows itself to be BarackRolled

Well done, McCain campaign.  Demonstrating that even though the only thing Republicans are good at is getting themselves elected, they still managed to mess up a search for Walter Reed Medical Center, causing the rest of the photo-montage to be cancelled and replaced with a beautiful blue sky.  In other words, they put a blue-screen behind John McCain.

Once again, McCain had issued a challenge for the  internet to make him interesting.  HtMaltin knocked it out of the park, below.

It's called a Rick-Roll.  If you haven't heard of it, I'll describe the internet tradition this way.  I post something to a thread saying something to the effect of "Click this link for the most awesome web video you've ever seen.  Whatever you personal desires are, this video fulfills them in ways you've never imagined possible.  It is all you need in life to remain happy.  Have you clicked it yet?"  It turns out to be a video by some obscure 80's guy.  You've been Rick Rolled.  And so has the Republican National Convention and John McCain.  He probably thinks the video behind him is part of the google.  He would totally fall for a Rick Roll... but then, so have we all.

"Bitter Americans"

Obama catches a lot of crap for his quote in San Fran about smalltown Americans clinging to their guns and religion because of hard times. But this convention is providing the proof for that poorly-worded statement. Things are tough out there in America right now, and the GOP still hasn't mentioned the economy. Its all culture war stuff. All red meat. You can't campaign this way, dividing the country, and then govern effectively.

Rep Inglis(R) Is Now Free To Speak

Republican Representative Bob Inglis has been making a splash lately.  He lost his GOP primary because he had the gall to try to lead his constituents away from the fever swamps by telling them to "Turn turn the television off when Glenn Beck comes on."  Remember, Inglis was a 1994 Republican Revolutionary, and no moderate.  Of course, Rep. Inglis lost to his Tea Partying opponent.  There is no room in the Republican Party for anything but the most hard core conservatives.

Luckily for us, now that he's not beholden to his crazy-ass voters he's giving "straight-talk" to the AP:

Inglis, 50, who calls himself a Jack Kemp disciple because he has emphasized outreach to minorities as the late Republican congressman did, thinks racism is a part of the vitriol directed at President Barack Obama.

"I love the South. I'm a Southerner. But I can feel it," he said.

Racism. It's the Teapartiers, my friends.  When your spiritual leader is someone that's convinced Obama is ruining the economy on purpose in order to give him the chance to make reparations to the blacks for slavery, then Racism is par for the course.

"There were no death panels in the bill ... and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It's not leadership. It's demagoguery," said Inglis, one of three Republican incumbents who have lost their seats in Congress to primary and state party convention challengers this year.

Inglis said voters eventually will discover that you're "preying on their fears" and turn away.

Ahhh, honesty. Refreshing.

"I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading," he said. "What it takes to lead is to say, 'You know, that's just not right.'"

Inglis said the rhetoric also distracts from the real problems that politicians should be trying to resolve, such as budget deficits and energy security.

"It's a real concern, because I think what we're doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni," he said, referring to the two predominant Islamic denominations that have feuded for centuries. "It's very difficult to come together to find solutions."

Very nice, Rep Inglis. Way to Lead.  Better late than never.

European Vacations

This alert was just recently filed by the AP:

MADRID (AP) — Spain's top investigative magistrate has opened an investigation into the Bush administration over alleged torture of terror suspects at the Guantanamo prison.

Baltasar Garzón's move on Wednesday is separate from a complaint by human rights lawyers that seeks charges against six specific Bush administration officials.

Judge Garzon's action, which is separate from the inquiry requested by human rights lawyers against six Bush Administration officials including John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and Douglas Feith, and is said to be premised upon the complaints of four individuals who claim to have been tortured while detained at Guantanamo, one of which is a Spanish citizen, along with two Brits and a Moroccan previously residing in Spain. All were accused of being members of al-Qaida in Spain, though all four were cleared

Whoa.  Remember, Reagan's Convention Against Torture establishes an universal jurisdiction - if the host country is unwilling or unable to investigate credible claims of torture, then any signatory in the world can begin an investigation, culminating in prosecution.  Perhaps this will increase pressure for us to police our own citizens, like a modern Democracy should.

Time to cancel those European Vacations, you loyal Bushies.

Fox News gets everything wrong

Fox News is saying that protesters for the Democratic Convention are preparing to have the Brown Note Generator used against them.

Of course, this will be difficult because such a weapon does not exist. In fact, such a "note" does not exist. The Mythbusters busted the hell outta that one. Once again, Fox News couldn't be bothered to do 3 minutes of Googling before putting it's crap on the air.

Fournier!

Remember Ron Fournier, the partisan that nearly took a Senior Advisor job in the McCain campaign, but instead decided to go be the DC Bureau Chief for the Associated Press?  You know, the objective wire service?  He's doing a bang-up job.  Here's Fournier take on last night's White House press conference.

What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?

A careful one.

President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference, reading a prepared statement in which he took both sides of the AIG bonus brouhaha and asked an anxious nation for its patience. [...]

One of the few times he summoned raw emotion came after a reporter demanded to know why it took him so long to express outrage over the AIG executive bonuses.

"It took a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

Even better, he likes to have it up on the teleprompter.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is presented as an "analysis" piece.  Just like his "analysis" of Clinton's convention speech was to count the number of times she used a variation on the pronoun "I."  The answer was in the teens.  You'd think, if that were interesting analysis, the same would be the case of McCain's speech - where he used the word "I" itself over 100 times.

And once again, we've got the AP parroting the Republican talking point of the week.  It's simply amazing that they're trying to make this stick.  They think they can paint the guy who writes with surpassing eloquence, went through 27 Democratic Debates, then another 3 with McCain, as someone who cannot think without the teleprompter doing it for him.  They make this case after Bush.

Astonishing.

McCain's Temperament - Unvetted Pick for VP

The pick of Sarah Palin confirms what you had been growing to suspect about McCain's temperament. He's reckless. He's a gambler. He's unsteady.

First, we've got all the backstory about McCain's blowups, wherein other Republicans say McCain acted aggressively in inappropriate situations. He roughed up a Sandinista. He screamed "Fuck You" to Senator Cornyn over the immigration battle. In fact, here's a list from the College Conservative Movement of the Top 10 McCain Temper Explosions.

Second, factor in the gambling habit of Senator McCain, a man who has been known to play for 14 hours at a time and for thousands of dollars. Craps is a game where skill plays no part. It is a game of irrationality. You will always lose to the house, and yet he plays compulsively. It is a game that psychologically rewards the double-down, and that is exactly what McCain has done with the choice of Sarah Palin. He doubled-down, and then threw snake-eyes.

McCain himself admits that he is often hasty:

At the very least, the process [to select Palin] reflects Mr. McCain’s history of making fast, instinctive and sometimes risky decisions. “I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can,” Mr. McCain wrote, with his top adviser Mark Salter, in his 2002 book, “Worth the Fighting For.” “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”

That kind of decision making is acceptable, if not desirable in a Senator. It is flatly unacceptable in a President. Especially so when you add that McCain's will openly joke about starting wars, and finding ways to kill Iranians (whether with Bombs of Cigarettes).

Now we've got the additional data point of his VP pick Palin - by all accounts an unvetted, hasty choice, and one that he was forced to adopt. Going into the day of decision, McCain still had his heart set on Leiberman, but was vetoed by his advisers who told him with certainty that there would be a revolt at the convention if his pick were Pro-Choice. Pawlenty and Romney would be seen as status-quo, safe Republican choices, and McCain felt the need to gamble. He may, in fact, be right. A hail-mary, election-changing vice presidential pick may have been his only chance to win... but I doubt it. He could have gone safe and still won. Now it all rides on his ability to throw the dice with luck - even when the decision is who will lead a war-time America.

It turns out the McCain Camp didn't even search the Wasilla newspaper archives.

He picked her after meeting her twice, one of which was a cell phone "interview," and yet he went on to say she was his "partner and soulmate." Soulmate is laying it on a little thick, don't you think? Does Cindy know? Is he trading up again?

Anonymous people inside his campaign claim she was fully vetted, but Andrew Halcro, an Alaska Republican, says otherwise:

The campaign of John McCain has sent a staff of eight people into Alaska to conduct background checks and vetting on Governor Sarah Palin. Word is they have have eight rooms reserved at a Wasilla hotel.

Sending people to vet the VP after you announce the pick. That is being a maverick, alright.

Of course, the campaign has a vested interest in appearing to have fully vetted the pick. Then again, reality may get in the way of that spin:

Phillips has been active in the Ted Stevens re-election steering committee and remains in close touch with Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other party leaders, and she said nobody had heard anything about McCain's people doing research on his prospective running mate.

"We're not a very big state. People I talk to would have heard something."

There clearly was not a real vetting done on Sarah Palin. You get an idea of Obama's vetting when Tim Kaine says that Obama's vetters asked him what his high school girlfriend's middle name was, then came back and told him "She says she was never your girlfriend." It is supposed to be an intensive process, reflecting your - not just a quick googling. This stuff will be trickling out for days.

In fact, before publishing this post, I got another tidbit on the vetting from Josh Marshall:

...George Stephanopoulos appears to have more. George says the McCainers are sending a "rapid response team of about ten operatives that includes lawyers" to do the aforementioned deeper vet. A lot of attention is being given to Gov. Palin's daughter's situation. The much bigger deal is the expanding trooper-gate investigation, the fact that Palin lied in her Friday speech about her purported opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, her apparent former membership in the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, and more. Individually, you can come to your own judgment about how consequential these stories are. What they show pretty clearly now -- in addition to the news that the McCain campaign is only now sending in a vetting team -- is that John McCain didn't do any serious vetting of Palin before he invited her to join his ticket and, he hopes, become Vice President of the United States.

McCain's temperament is just not suited to this job. We can't have a President that thinks he can beat the odds. We need a President that stays cool.

McCain loses more of his Base: Journalists

More of McCain's base is leaving him. It's now clear that he's losing the NYT’s Thomas Friedman. McCain's ridiculous gimmickry over energy is the last straw:

John McCain recently tried to underscore his seriousness about pushing through a new energy policy, with a strong focus on more drilling for oil, by telling a motorcycle convention that Congress needed to come back from vacation immediately and do something about America’s energy crisis. “Tell them to come back and get to work!” McCain bellowed.

Sorry, but I can’t let that one go by. McCain knows why.

It was only five days earlier, on July 30, that the Senate was voting for the eighth time in the past year on a broad, vitally important bill — S. 3335 — that would have extended the investment tax credits for installing solar energy and the production tax credits for building wind turbines and other energy-efficiency systems.

Both the wind and solar industries depend on these credits — which expire in December — to scale their businesses and become competitive with coal, oil and natural gas. Unlike offshore drilling, these credits could have an immediate impact on America’s energy profile.

Senator McCain did not show up for the crucial vote on July 30, and the renewable energy bill was defeated for the eighth time. In fact, John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote.

McCain will no doubt dispute this, since he can get any fact wrong without being called on it by the liberal media. Remember him lying to the vet's face about his voting record on veteran's issues? Probably not, since it generated nary a peep.