Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the McCain campaign’s top surrogates admitted on Fox News Sunday morning that Sen. Barack Obama did well in the presidential debate. Graham claimed in the discussion with Chris Wallace that he was “tired” and did little to try to spin a win for McCain.
Here is an excerpt from the transcript. View the video at Huffington Post.
WALLACE: McCain’s rating on being prepared to be president didn’t change. Obama had a 16-point jump on that same question. Senator Graham, McCain keeps saying Obama is not ready to lead, but according to several polls, voters watching the debate thought he was.
GRAHAM: I think there’s an 18-point difference between who is best able to do the job. We’ll take that.
KERRY: Well, let me –
WALLACE: What you’re saying is even though Obama got more of a bump –
GRAHAM: It’s Sunday, I’m tired. Senator Obama did well. Senator Obama helped himself.
WALLACE: You can’t be tired on Sunday morning, sir.
GRAHAM: Quite frankly, I thought he presented himself well, Senator Obama.
No one would ever expect John McCain to win Ms Congeniality, but during the presidential debate he cemented his reputation as the Grumpiest Member of the Senate. He didn’t even try to hide his contempt for Barack Obam and refused to even look at him. That’s so not the kind of president we need negotiating with world leaders.
Check out this compilation edited by Jed Lewison of McCain’s most nostril-flaring moments. Cindy McCain should consider spending some of her cash on getting McCain some anger management classes.
Andrew Sullivan appeared along with Naomi Klein and Will.I.Am on Real Time with Bill Maher and eviscerated Sarah Palin. Here is a taste:
She is a farce. It is a joke. It is absurd. It is something [McCain's pick] that should dismissed out of hand as the most irresponsible act any candidate has any made.
His reasons are hilarious, absolutely hilarious. But then he knows that he’s coming from an intellectually dishonest position in order to get new donors from the 23% of the LGBT community that voted for Bush in 2004 when LCR didn’t endorse him and that he has to push for a sub-par candidate.
His reasons and a few responses are after the jump.
Okay, we were told that there was no money to provide healthcare to poor kids, properly take of our soldiers who had their minds and bodies shattered in Iraq, fix our crumbling schools, repair our national infrastructure or rebuild New Orleans. But, now George Bush is requesting $700 billion to bail out the financial services industry that he, Dick Cheney, John McCain and the rest of the “of the rich, by the rich and for the rich” Republican Party has destroyed?
Struggling to stave off financial catastrophe, the Bush administration on Friday laid out a radical bailout plan with a jawdropping price tag _ a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more in worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions.
I wanted to bump up this post by Vic Basile because with less than 50 days before election day Vic’s message is even more important than ever. This video from the Human Rights Campaign also underscores Vic’s message and makes clear what is at stake this election for LGBT voters.
By Vic Basile
Vic, a longtime GLBT activist, was the first executive director of the Human Rights Campaign and a co-founder of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.
During the 2004 election, I wrote about doing all that I could to prevent my family and friends from voting for candidates who oppose equality for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people. More importantly, I encouraged all of my GLBT brothers and sisters, as well as our straight allies, to do the same.
Of course, we can’t really stop our friends and families from voting for whomever they choose – it is, at least for them, a free and democratic country – but we can prevent them doing it without damaging our bonds of love, trust and friendship. The reality is that they can’t truly love or even respect us, and knowingly vote for candidates who work to deny us the same equality and freedoms they enjoy. The two are simply incompatible.
There are excellent developments to a story we posted last week on Republican-lead efforts to deny voting rights to homeowners facing foreclosures in Michigan. The story has gone national. The Barack Obama campaign, the Democratic National Committee and several Macomb County voters filed a lawsuit in federal court in Detroit to prevent the practice.
The injunction [would] prohibit the Macomb County GOP, the Michigan Republican Party, the Republican National Committee or anyone connected with them from challenging Michigan voters whose homes are on foreclosure lists.
Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer said during a conference call with reporters that the “lose your home, lose your vote” strategy, even if the challenges are unsuccessful, “creates an atmosphere of intimidation that could drive voters from the polls” because even people who aren’t challenged may leave without voting because polling gets bogged down.
Even better news: The despicable Republican foreclosure strategy is now becoming a campaign issue because “Obama was joined by running mate Joe Biden and a dozen other Democratic U.S. senators in calling on Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to ensure that voters facing foreclosure aren’t harassed or intimidated at polling places.”
But wait there’s more. Macomb County Republican Party Chairman James Carabelli claims he did not say the state party would challenge voters whose homes are on foreclosure lists. The party boss claims he will sue MichiganMessenger.com for libel if they do not retract the story. ‘Cause, you know, the Republican Party never challenges or suppresses voters and they can prove that. Not.
Voting rights are a bedrock of the Democartic Party and it’s freakin’ fantastic the Obama campaign will challenge Republicans in Michigan over this sacred right. After weeks of lackluster campaigning and being off-message, it’s downright orgasmic to hear Obama will adopt this issue. As we said last week, this is a winning issue in Michigan for the Obama campaign.
By Richard J. Rosendall
First published September 11, 2008 in Bay Windows
I’m sick of the phony reasons some gay people give for opposing Barack Obama. I am not talking about my friends in Log Cabin Republicans, who prefer John McCain for broader ideological reasons. I am talking about angry Hillary Clinton supporters.
For example, Sirius OutQ talk-radio host Larry Flick, still upset that Clinton had not won the Democratic nomination, slammed Obama on Aug. 28 for opposing same-sex marriage. Yet Clinton holds the same position on marriage — except that she would only repeal Article 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, whereas Obama favors total repeal.
Flick challenged Sirius Left host Mark Thompson, an African American minister and activist with whom I’ve worked for years, on his support for Obama. Flick expressed outrage that Obama accepted help from “blatant, aggressive homophobes” Donnie McClurkin and Illinois state Sen. James Meeks. Yet Clinton enjoyed support from homophobic Bishop Eddie Long of Lithonia, Ga., and from former D.C. City Council member Vincent Orange, who as a mayoral candidate in 2006 called his opponents morally unfit for supporting marriage equality.
UPDATE: It’s hard to keep up with the lies. Additions are below the fold. Jeebus H. Christ, from the man who needs his wife to surf the Internets, this breathtaking boast from a spokesbot:
Move over, Al Gore. You may lay claim to the Internet, but John McCain helped create the BlackBerry. At least that’s the contention of a top McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
Waving his BlackBerry personal digital assistant and citing McCain’s work as a senator, he told reporters Tuesday, “You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.” McCain has acknowledged that he doesn’t know how to use a computer and can’t send e-mail, one of the BlackBerry’s prime functions.
Within the hour, [Obama] chief spokesperson Bill Burton released a statement putting the falsehood in context: “If John McCain hadn’t said that ‘the fundamentals of our economy are strong’ on the day of one of our nation’s worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing said all week.” Now let’s briefly correct this latest McCain campaign whopper.
McCain did not “help create” the “miracle” of the BlackBerry — he does not even know how to use email or a computer. The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee was not even pivotal: the BlackBerry was invented by a Canadian company, Research In Motion. So this claim is false and absurd, obviously, and it may seem like a distraction from the current debate over the candidates’ economic agendas.
According to a McCain campaign pool report, senior aide Matt McDonald said that McCain “laughed” when he was told about Holtz-Eakin’s comment. “He would not claim to be the inventor of anything, much less the BlackBerry. This was obviously a boneheaded joke by a staffer,” McDonald said.
