Fred Upton Cancels The One Debate He Had Agreed To With Paul Clements-- And It Wasn't Even About A Fan

Fred Upton only agreed, reluctantly, to one debate— and only after Paul Clements started gaining tremendous traction in the southwest Michigan 6th congressional district. Upton, an heir to the Whirlpool fortune that once— but no longer— was the biggest employer in the area, doesn’t like being questioned or reminded of his record. Shipping all those Whirlpool jobs— i.e., Republican-backed “outsourcing”— doesn’t go over well with his constituents.

Western Michigan along the 94 in towns from Three Oaks, New Buffalo, Sawyer up through Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, and over to the 196 through Lake Michigan Beach, South Haven and Saugatuck is one of the most environmentally sophisticated areas of the country and they are not supporters of Upton’s GOP agenda of despoiling the natural beauty of one of America’s most beautiful areas for the benefit of a few wealthy corporate exploiters.

Yesterday, though, Upton suddenly canceled the one debate. He claims it interfered with the Ebola hearings in his committee, which ended at 3pm and had been scheduled almost 2 weeks ago. Yes, the hearings ended in plenty of time for Upton to hustle his ass back to Lake Michigan College— if he wanted to— for the 8:15 PM debate. Mark Miller, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party's 6th District Committee: “Last month, he ducked a debate request in Kalamazoo, and now he's cancelled the debate he agreed to over a month ago in Berrien County. The hearing he cites as a conflict started at noon, and he's known about it for two weeks. The debate was scheduled to being at 8:15 PM. I'm not a travel agent, but a quick search online shows multiple flights available that could have allowed Congressman Upton to keep his commitments to the people of southwest Michigan. I am sure that Congressman Upton has more than enough money for a flight after taking millions from the special interests, including over one million dollars from the health insurance industry. Members of Congress should be able to do more than one thing at once.”

Upton is starting to unravel in the face of the first campaign to ever give him a real challenge. He had been counting on his fellow Establishment shill, DCCC chairman Steve Israel, to protect him again— and Israel has put tremendous effort into preventing Democratic donors and PACs from helping Paul Clements. But the slimy Israel was unable to stop Lawrence Lessig’s non-partisan, good government, crowd-sourced operation, the MayDay PAC, from jumping into the race to finally let MI-06 voters know the truth about what Upton has been doing in DC and how he’s changed since they first elected him in 1986.

Upton has now focused his campaign on inchherent attacks against Lessig, calling him— falsely— “a Harvard billionaire,” whatever that’s supposed to convey. This race is turning into the single most important House race in the country— one that pits The People against the Beltway Establishment (Upton’s GOP crooks and Israel’s Democratic crooks).

Republican heavyweight Mark McKinnon, the former George W. Bush adviser, who co-founded MayDay PAC with Lessig: “Fred Upton obviously couldn't sit still while we told the truth about his record of putting the big-money special interests ahead of the people so he put up this misleading ad. At least he's wasting a bunch of that special interest money he has raised over the years. Chairman Upton is welcome to air all the ads he wants, and we intend to keep telling the voters of Southwest Michigan that we can't afford Fred Upton anymore." 

Yesterday, Fred Upton’s campaign released a new ad making provably false claims that Fred Upton has protected seniors’ access to Medicare and worked to secure coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

The truth is that Fred Upton is not on the side of regular people:

•        Upton has taken nearly $10 million in special interest money from PAC’s.
•        Upton voted against legislation that would have allowed lower drug prices and later voted in favor of the Ryan Budget, which was described by ABC News as the ‘end of Medicare as we know it’.
•       Upton has also been steadfast in support for changing federal health insurance law to eliminate insurance coverage for some of the most vulnerable patients.

…MYTH: “Fred Upton has always been on our side.”

FACT: Upton has received nearly $10 Million from special interests.

According to records maintained by CQ Political MoneyLine, Upton had received $9,996,939 from PACs during his career.

MYTH: Upton is “Working to protect seniors’ access to life-saving medications.”

FACT: In 2007 Upton Voted against Medicare Prescription Drug Negotiation Act. According to Govtrack.us, the bill “require[s] the Secretary of HHS to negotiate with pharmaceutical manufacturers the prices that may be charged to prescription drug plan sponsors and Medicare Advantage organizations [Roll Number 23, 1/12/07; Govtrack.us]

FACT: According to the New York Times, this proposal “would allow medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for millions of older Americans.” [New York Times, 4/18/07]

MYTH: Upton is “Fighting for and winning a Medicare prescription drug plan that saved seniors money on prescription drugs.”

FACT: In 2011, Upton Voted for the Ryan Budget, which would have turned Medicare into a voucher Program. [House Vote 277, 4/15/11]

FACT: According to ABC News, “Critics Have Called Ryan’s 2011 Proposal, the ‘End of Medicare as We Know It,’ and That’s True...Individuals Would Have to Pay More under His Plan.” [ABC News, 8/11/12]

FACT: In 2011, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that the typical 65-year-old’s out-of Pocket Expenses would more than double— from $6,150 to $12,500—in first year vouchers would apply. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/7/11]

MYTH: Upton is “fighting to ensure those with pre-existing conditions can stay covered. That’s the real Fred Upton, fighting for us.”

FACT: According to Upton’s Website, he “Supports Full Repeal of Obamacare…” [Upton.House.gov, 5/16/13]

FACT: According to the Kaiser Family Foundation “Obamacare Bars Insurers from Denying Coverage to People with Pre-Existing Conditions…Or Conditions that Began before Coverage Began.” [Kaiser Family Foundation, 10/1/13]

Right now Clements looks like he’s going to win handily in the Kalamazoo area. His campaign needs help with field operations in the western part of the district, where the Michigan Democratic Party isn’t doing anything. If you can volunteer, here the place. If you can contribute, this is the page.

Does The GOP Have A Future? Not All Republicans Who Go Cruising Are Lindsey Graham, David Dreier And Aaron Schock

Reagan would definitely rejoin the Democratic Party today

Joe Hagan's New York article, Blues Cruise has nothing whatsoever to do with Muddy Waters, Sonny Joe Williamson, Bessie Smith, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush or even Duane Allman or Derek Trucks. Nope, this cruise was a National Review scheme to make some money from a bunch of white reactionaries seeking solace after the GOP debacle in November. The cruise to the Cayman Islands-- "a kind of ark of American alienation," albeit a comfortable one-- featured right-wing operatives like Ralph Reed, John Yoo, Cal Thomas, Scott Rasmussen, Jonah Goldberg, Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter and GOP propagandists on what was billed as the “conservative cruise of a lifetime... Nostalgia and loss hung in the air, with much talk of endings, both personal and national." They were worrying that the dominant culture has painted Republicans badly. “[W]e’re the stupid people, we’re the yokels, we’re the dumb, we’re the racists, we’re the hicks, we’re against everything that’s hip and cool.” And old, wealthy, very wealthy, very privileged and very, very, very entitled.

“Minorities came out like crazy,” said Hassett [a Romney campaign staffer], sighing. “White people didn’t get to the polls. There are far more African-­Americans voting than they expected.”

“In Tampa,” noted Bobbie, a petite woman from Vero Beach, Florida, “they had lots and lots of lines.”

Hassett, with an oddly cheerful, Oh-What-My-Country-Has-Done-Now mien, predicted economic doom under Obama, the most likely scenario being another Great Depression, which would make 2008 look like a joyride.

That prompted a tall, extremely tanned blonde named Kay, from Old Greenwich, Connecticut, to ask Hassett, the co-­author of the 1999 book Dow 36,000, “So what do we do with our money?”

He recommended investing in real estate in another country, maybe in Central America somewhere. A woman to Kay’s right wrinkled her nose: How about a Western country? “Okay, if Europe is what you want, go to Poland,” he said optimistically. “Go to Krakow, buy a house for $50,000, and it’s going to be like Paris in a few years.”

As we drained the Pinot Noir, Hassett gave his audience the insider’s view of the Romney campaign, describing how its election-monitoring software crashed on November 6 and Obama was probably behind it, “because those guys are so evil.”

The table grumbled in assent.

“The thing we have to understand is, these are people who don’t have any morals,” said Hassett. “They’ll do anything. I’m one of their No. 1 targets. I mean, they really want me bad.”

“Well, you’re safe on this ship!” said Bobbie boldly.

Then Hassett pivoted to the liberal media. “I actually think that Goebbels was more critical of Hitler than the New York Times is of Obama,” said Hassett, tucking into a piece of strudel. “I was in the middle of the fight against the propaganda, and I have stories like you wouldn’t believe. These people are so evil. They’re basically Fascists. It’s unbelievable.”

...It was hard to lose. And losing didn’t always bring out the best in people. They were struggling to comprehend the rejection, to understand how it had come to this... [A] sense of fear was everywhere on the ship, fear of an impending debt crisis that would crush all fortunes, fear that the Anglo majority was now marginal for the first time in their adult lives, fear that the country the cruisers once knew had fully given way to something more … diverse, foreign, incomprehensible.

Are these the people Republican strategist Mark McKinnon was trying to appeal to in his Daily Beast post this week, All I Want For Christmas Is A New GOP? If so... good luck! He says he's "tired of the Republican Party being the Stupid Party.” He's painfully aware, unlike most of the National Review cruisers that the GOP has become simply "the party is against everything and for nothing. That’s not governing. That’s just lobbing hand grenades."

All sanity seems to have left the ranks of those in charge of the GOP—or, more accurately, those who want to be in charge. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) demonstrated in a jaw-dropping performance Thursday on Morning Joe the depth of the problem and why we are bound to go over the fiscal cliff. He made it clear he won’t vote for a tax increase on anyone, no matter how much they make. So, by his logic, we will end up going over the cliff, and raise taxes on everybody, because he and too many others like him in the party are unwilling to raise taxes on anyone. This intransigence will also make a core Republican tenet of broader tax reform more difficult to pursue because the new Congress will then be fixated on smaller bore issues like fixing the rates.

And so voters look at the “negotiations” and see on one side the president--the guy who just won the election by a substantial margin--willing to compromise by lowering his revenue target from $1.6 trillion to $1.2 trillion and moving the goalpost for tax-rate increases from $250,000 a year to $400,000 a year. And on the other side, they see Republicans like Huelskamp responding with a one-finger salute to everything.

But there’s more. Huelskamp’s response to the Newtown tragedy? No need to change any gun laws. (Not even better enforcement of the laws we have?) And those who suggest any changes are simply “politicizing” the situation to fit their political agenda. Was George W. Bush “politicizing” 9/11 when he created the Department of Homeland Security? If so, then by all means shouldn’t we “politicize” in the wake of a national tragedy?

Other Republican elected officials said they wanted to wait to see what the National Rifle Association had to say. On Friday, Wayne LaPierre delivered. No new gun laws, but how about an armed guard in every school, because “the only answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Then LaPierre went on to blame every other facet of our culture for the problem. Now, I don’t disagree that much goes into the cultural equation causing violence, and much needs to be considered to address the root causes, like mental health and violent media. But in 2008, the U.S. reportedly recorded 11,000 gun-related deaths, and Japan recorded 11-- and I believe the Japanese play video games. So maybe we should at least include guns in the discussion.

...It’s a very odd situation when the losing party is the party refusing to negotiate. It may be how you disrupt, but it is not how you govern, or how you ever hope to regain a majority.

And so, we have a Republican Party today willing to eliminate any prospect for a decent future for anyone, including itself, if it cannot be a future that is 100 percent in accordance with its core beliefs and principles. That’s not governing. That’s just lobbing hand grenades. If you’re only standing on principle to appear taller, then you appear smaller. And the GOP is shrinking daily before our eyes.

Ronald Reagan was long thought to be the most conservative of Republicans. And by any standard today he is the most popular Republican in modern history. Yet he raised taxes 11 times, supported a ban on assault rifles and the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks, and established amnesty for 3 million undocumented workers.

No one questioned Reagan’s principles or values. But he was seen as great because he had the ability to maintain his principles while adapting, evolving, and negotiating as the world around him changed. When I raise these issues, many of my Republican friends respond, “We will not become a stronger Republican Party by acting more like the Democratic Party.” And I say, “No, we become a stronger Republican Party by acting like reasonable human beings who acknowledge reality.”

The world is still changing. Faster than ever. And so should the Republican Party. Or condemn itself to a smaller and smaller base of core supporters and permanent minority status. The cruisers, at least, have already spoken, And that chose the latter. You think the Fox-brainwashed base is going to make a smarter choice?

The GOP Establishment Disdain Her As a Gadfly But Their Base Of Unevolved Bigoted Voters See Their Own Miserable Existence In Her Cheap Soap Opera

I don't watch TV reality shows. Truth be told, I don't watch much TV at all. I can usually find some useful things to do with my mind and my time. And I'm sure you can guess that I''ve never seen an episode of Sarah Palin's TV shows-- nor any of her appearances on Fox News. And you've probably noticed that DWT doesn't help her propagate her gossip-and-small-town-bigotry-driven politics by writing about her routinely manufactured ridiculous controversies. I do passively watch her tweets though, unless I'm busy. Yesterday morning she released a torrent of them, smacking of desperation of someone whose TV ratings are sinking.


This tweet, by social commentator Andy Borowitz was far more to the point when it comes to Palinmania though:


Unless she's cooking up her self-promoting dribble, Palin isn't really about news and analysis any more than Paris Hilton or any hollow media-created celebrities are. However, the service of displaying the new photograph by the DWT art department (above), we decided to mention that Palin has drummed up a battle-of-resentment with the Republican countryclub set. We all know how much she hates the Murkowski family-- on a quasi Hatfields vs McCoys level-- but now that's spilling over in her sick and twisted version of right-wing populism to hating the pillars of Republicanism. It blew up a couple weeks ago when she and Barbara Bush got into a public catfight, something we noted at Streams Of Consciousness late one evening when normal people were in bed.

The Palin Family Freak Show

The Queen of America's White Trash Nation struck back at Barbara Bush today for the remark she made on Larry King's show about how Palin was pretty but should stay up in Alaska. Palin "denounced the Bush family as 'blue bloods' in an interview posted Wednesday and remarked that a mentality like theirs helped to cause the economic downturn." She also mentioned she loves the Bushes.

And then, presumably because she was upset about Bristol's DWTS loss and how crudely she handled it, Palin declared some kind of an alliance between Alaska and North Korea, on the Glenn Beck Show. To his credit and without a script, Beck actually knew the North were the bad guys and the South were the good guys. Palin can take out her frustrations clubbing halibut until her ratings failing reality show is eased off the air.

There, night time gossip worthy of Palin's role in American politics. Thanks for all you do, John McCain. We were better off as a nation when you were just crashing every plane you ever stepped into. And does the fact that McCain got all his millions from his mobster father-in-law booze distributor protect him from Palin's latest anti-blue blood jihad?

Yesterday the Christian Science Monitor, which has apparently been monitoring the latest Palin vs whomever mud wrestling matches, assessed the score this was: "In the ongoing drama that is Palin’s political reality show, score this past week 'Blue bloods 3, Palin zip'." Palin, of course, keeps trying to remind everyone that Reagan was also an empty celebrity who became an icon without ever having learned much more than the lines to regurgitate on cue. That seems to make the Republican Establishment uncomfortable.

Joining the growing number of conservatives critical of Palin were former Republican congressman (now MSNBC host) Joe Scarborough, Republican campaign consultant Ed Rollins, and columnist George Will.

...“Wasn't Ronald Reagan an actor?” she asked on Fox News. “Wasn't he in Bedtime for Bonzo, Bozo, something?”

That was too much for Rollins, as it had been for Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan a week earlier.

“To paraphrase the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's comments to Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice presidential debate: I knew Ronald Reagan, and you're no Ronald Reagan,” Rollins wrote on CNN’s website. “You might as well compare yourself to Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.”

“If you want to be a player, go to school and learn the issues,” he continued. “Put smart people around you and listen to them. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious... If you want to be a serious presidential candidate, get to work. If you want to be an imitator of Ronald Reagan, go learn something about him and respect his legacy. If you want to be a gadfly, just keep doing what you're doing.”

Columnist George Will says if Palin truly wanted to be on the national political stage, she should have taken a different course when she and John McCain lost the election two years ago.

“After the 2008 campaign, she had two things she had to do,” Will said on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour. “She had to go home to Alaska and study, and she had to govern Alaska well. Instead, she quit halfway through her first term and shows up in the audience of Dancing with the Stars and other distinctly non-presidential venues.”

Will acknowledged that Palin’s cheering on her daughter Bristol was good for “stirring family values.”

“But it's not good training to be president,” he added.

Using a phrase favored by Palin and two of her (unsuccessful) endorsees in the recent midterm elections-- Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell-- former Rep. Joe Scarborough (R) of Florida says it’s time for the GOP to “man up” in the face of Palin’s White House aspirational tease.

“What man or mouse with a fully functioning human brain and a résumé as thin as Palin’s would flirt with a presidential run? It makes the political biography of Barack Obama look more like Winston Churchill’s,” Scarborough writes on Politico.com. “Adding audacity to this dopey dream is that Palin can’t stop herself from taking swings at Republican giants. In the past month alone, she has mocked Ronald Reagan’s credentials, dismissed George H.W. and Barbara Bush as arrogant ‘blue bloods’ and blamed George W. Bush for wrecking the economy. Wow. That’ll win ’em over in Iowa.”

...“If Palin runs, I think the entire Republican primary process will be hijacked. With ardent fans and a rabid media, it will become Palin-palooza,” [Mark McKinnon] writes.

“Palin will suck the oxygen out of every room, everywhere she goes,” McKinnon continues. “And one of two things will happen. Discerning conservative voters in early primary states will be offended by the circus-like atmosphere and the presumption that they could so easily fall for a ‘cult of personality.’ And they will vote against her. And she will lose. Or, Republican voters will be completely swept up in the mania and nominate her as the GOP standard bearer to go up against President Obama. And she will lose-- perhaps the only Republican nominee who could lose in 2012.”

Saturday the Washington Post looked at the same Establishment disdain for Palin and pronounced it elitism, which, of course, is exactly what she's counting on from what she disdains as the lame stream media.

Palin, on the cusp of a possible presidential run, now finds herself facing a solid wall of conservatives who believe that, by virtue of their intellect, experience and such distinctive attributes as cultural tastes and social standing, they are her superiors.

They refuse to take her seriously and believe she shouldn't take herself seriously, either.

That opposition, by the way, is insulting, not only to Palin but to her supporters as well.

Palin is no accidental celebrity. Her star power didn't flame out after 2008. She has since earned her place in the sun. In the past two years, she has developed a following that far outnumbers the supporters of those conservative elites who now shun her.

Her 2010 campaigning helped strengthen the Republican Party's grip on Capitol Hill. Sure, some of her midterm endorsements flopped. But Palin-supported candidates won more contests than they lost. And don't forget, many of the 59 million Americans voting for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008 did so because of her.

Ah, but let's "hope she'll stay there" in Alaska, as former first lady Barbara Bush suggested recently. Or make Palin a talk-show host or "the new Oprah," as the National Review's Mona Charen wrote
.
Anything but a bid for the presidency.

I wouldn't want to see Sarah Palin anywhere near the White House, let alone in the Oval Office with a nuclear arsenal at her disposal. That's not a likely scenario anyway, given her low standing among independents and Democrats.

But the notion of a phalanx of conservative elites - Palin called them "blue bloods" - standing between her and the GOP nomination because they perceive her as inferior in intellect and social and political standing is pure snobbery.

At bottom, their real slander is against Palin and her slice of the American electorate, captured in H.L. Mencken's caustic observation: "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

So mean.

She may be bloodthirsty but Artemis the huntress she's not:

Will John Ensign Resign His Senate Seat? The Dripping Is Turning Into A Faint Sound Of A Drumbeat

Ace GOP strategist, Mark McKinnon-- for both George Bush and John McCain-- thinks Ensign should resign immediately. And he told him so. "I think the silence [from other GOP leaders] is inexcusable. We've got to be able to call out our own bad apples when they turn out to be rotten and this is a rotten apple. We shouldn't have to remind our elected officials-- who should be held to a higher standard-- of their firmly held convictions. This is a guy who campaigned on 'higher standards' and accused others of hypocrisy and now he's guilty of it himself... You can't be the 'party of family values' and not value your family-- which is precisely what is happening with John Ensign."



UPDATE: Ensign's Lucky-- As Polling Numbers Tumble, He Won't Have To Face The Voters Until 2012

Polls show his popularity rapidly diminishing. And Ensign has changed his story again and now claims that Doug Hampton was trying to extort him "for cash and other financial benefits." Every photographer in DC wants to snap a picture of Ensign and Vitter together. Meanwhile, let's hope videographer Max Blumenthal decides to turn this into a docudrama.

McCain Unleashes The Republican Smear Machine-- Obama Talks Health Care For Working Families

The media strategist responsible for Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, Mark McCinnon, isn't exactly shy about negative advertising. And his media campaign for Bush is fondly remembered by Republican partisans as one of the dirtiest, most shameful and nastiest anyone had ever seen. Needless to say, McCain hired him immediately. But after working with McCain for a while-- and after taking a look at the game plan of personal destruction McCain had mapped out for Obama-- McClinton warned that he would resign if Obama was the candidate. And in May, when Obama won the nomination, McKinnon did quit. Mark McKinnon knew that McCain, the sleaziest man to ever run for the presidency, had every intention of running a perverted and racist campaign against Obama and the details started leaking out last spring.

The end will be McCain's claims-- through his arm's length surrogates and the lower end of the GOP media chain (the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Reillys, Coulters... that kind of garbage-- that Obama is the antichrist. Today's Washington Post reported that McCain's Operation 24/7 Smear, Smear, Smear is going into effect now. Meanwhile, though, he has that wretched piece of pathetic white trash from Alaska shoveling the shit.

The issues that Americans face are all stacked against McCain and his decades of voting wrong on everything has led to dismal poll results that just keep getting worse and worse by the day. Nothing is working out for him and he's falling back on the one thing he knows he can count on: I'M WHITE-- DON'T VOTE FOR THE NIGGER. That, and Sarah Palin, will be John McCain's political legacy.

With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain's team has decided that its emphasis on the senator's biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan's campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

"We're going to get a little tougher," a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here," said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Associations? Like this one?



Sometimes I wish Obama would hit back when McCain and his surrogates and the GOP-owned media lets loose with their smears and lies. But the voters seem to appreciate Obama's calm, solid, decisive campaign and his commitment to sticking with the real issues-- you know, the ones Americans care about and McCain runs from. Today one of Obama's spokespersons addressed McCain's threat to drag the campaign into the gutter:

"On a day after we learned that America lost three-quarters of a million jobs this year and a week after our financial system teetered on the brink of collapse, John McCain and his campaign have announced that they want to 'turn the page' on the economic crisis facing working families and spend the last month of this election launching dishonest, dishonorable character attacks against Barack Obama. We understand that it's not easy for John McCain to defend the worst economic record of our lifetime, but he will have to explain to the people struggling to pay their bills and stay in their homes why he would rather spend his time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy."

So today when McCain's brother Joe (along with rubber stamp Republican Congressman Frank Wolf were rushing around Virginia, accusing people in Arlington and Alexandria of being communists, presumably because polls there show that they have turned away from McCain's reactionary campaign of hatred, bigotry and failure, Obama was talking about the issues that are important to Americans, like health care:

With just a month to go until election day, I know you've all been hearing a lot about politics out here in Virginia. I know you've been seeing a lot of ads, and getting a lot of calls, and reading a lot about this election in the newspaper. But being here today to talk with you about health care-- this isn't about politics for me. This is personal. 
 
I'm thinking today about my mother. She died of ovarian cancer at the age of 53. She fought valiantly, and endured the pain and chemotherapy with grace and good humor. But I'll never forget how she spent the final months of her life. At a time when she should have been focused on getting well, at a time when she should have been taking stock of her life and taking comfort in her family, she was lying in a hospital bed, fighting with her insurance company because they didn't want to cover her treatment. They claimed that her cancer was a pre-existing condition. 
 
So I know something about the heartbreak caused by our health care system. 
 
I know something about the anxiety of families hanging on by a thread as premiums have doubled these past eight years, and they're going into debt, and more than half-– half-- of all personal bankruptcies are caused in part by medical bills. 
 
I know about the frustration of the nearly 40% of small business owners who can no longer afford to insure their employees-- folks who work day and night, but have to lay people off, or shut their doors for good, because of rising health care costs.
 
I know the outrage we all feel about the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance-- kids who can't see a doctor when they're sick; parents cutting their pills in half and praying for the best; folks who wind up in the emergency room in the middle of the night because they've got nowhere else to turn. 
 
But I also know that this is not who we are.  
 
We are not a country where a young woman I met should have to work the night shift after a full day of college and still not be able to pay the medical bills for her sister who's ill. That's not right-- and it's not who we are.
 
We are not a country where a man I met should have to file for bankruptcy after he had a stroke, because he faced nearly $200,000 in medical costs that he couldn't afford and his insurance company didn't cover. That's not right-- and it's not who we are. 
 
We are not a country that rewards hard work and perseverance with debt and worry. We've never been a country that lets major challenges go unsolved and unaddressed. And we are tired of watching as year after year, candidates offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise, only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance lobbying once the campaign is over. 
 
That is not who we are. And that is not who we have to be. 
 
We know change is possible. We've seen it across this country as governors and legislatures move ahead of Washington to pass bold health care initiatives on their own. We see people across the spectrum-- doctors and patients, unions and businesses, Democrats and Republicans-- coming together around this issue, because at a time when rising costs have put too many families and businesses on a collision course with financial ruin and left too many without coverage at all, they know that bandaids and half-measures just won't do. 
 
Now I know that at this moment, when we stand in the midst of a serious economic crisis, some might ask how we can afford to focus on health care. Well, let's be clear: the rescue package we just passed in Congress isn't the end of what we need to do to fix our economy-- it's just the beginning.  Because the fundamentals of our economy are still not strong-- contrary to what Senator McCain says. And we've got to address those fundamentals-- and address them right now. 
 
In other words, the question isn't how we can afford to focus on health care-- but how we can afford not to. Because in order to fix our economic crisis, and rebuild our middle class, we need to fix our health care system too. Let's not forget, it's not just small businesses and families who are struggling. Some of the largest corporations in America-- including major American auto manufacturers-- are struggling to compete in the global marketplace because of high health care costs. They're watching their foreign competitors prosper-- unburdened by these costs-- as they struggle to create the good jobs we need to get our economy back on track. 
 
So it's clear that the time has come-- right now-- to solve this problem: to cut health care costs for families and businesses, and provide affordable, accessible health insurance for every American. 
 
And you'd think that anyone running for president would understand this. You'd think any candidate for the highest office in the land would have a plan to achieve these critically important goals. Well, if you think that, you haven't met my opponent, Senator John McCain.
 
Now, it's not that he doesn't care about what people are going through. I just think he doesn't know.  That's the only reason I can think of that he'd propose a health care plan that is so radical, so out of touch with what you're facing, and so out of line with our basic values.
 
Senator McCain has been eager to share some details of his plan-- but not all.
 
He tells you that he'll give you a tax credit of $2,500 per person-- $5,000 per family-- to help you pay for your insurance and health care costs. But like those ads for prescription drugs, you have to read the fine print to learn the rest of the story. 
 
You see, Senator McCain would pay for his plan, in part, by taxing your health care benefits for the first time in history. And this tax would come out of your paycheck. But the new tax credit he's proposing? That wouldn't go to you. It would go directly to your insurance company-- not your bank account. 
 
So when you read the fine print, it's clear that John McCain is pulling an old Washington bait and switch. It's a shell game. He gives you a tax credit with one hand-- but raises your taxes with the other. And recently, after some forceful questioning on TV, he finally admitted that for some Americans-- those with the very best plans-- his tax increase will be higher than his tax credit, and they'll come out behind. 
 
John McCain calls these plans "Cadillac plans." In some cases, it may be that a corporate CEO is getting too good a deal. But what if you're a line worker making a good American car like Cadillac who's given up wage increases in exchange for better health care? Well, Senator McCain believes you should pay higher taxes too. The bottom line: the better your health care plan-- the harder you've fought for good benefits--the higher the taxes you'll pay under John McCain's plan. 
 
And here's something else Senator McCain won't tell you. When he taxes people's benefits, many younger, healthier workers will decide that it's a better deal to opt out of the insurance they get at work-- and instead, go out into the individual market, where they can buy a cheaper plan. Many employers will be left with an older, sicker pool of workers who they can't afford to cover. As a result, many employers will drop their health care plans altogether. And study after study has shown, that under the McCain plan, at least 20 million Americans will lose the insurance they rely on from their workplace. 
 
It's the same approach George W. Bush floated a few years ago. It was dead on arrival in Congress.  But if Senator McCain were to succeed where George Bush failed, it very well could be the beginning of the end of our employer-based health care system. In fact, some experts have said that that's exactly the point of John McCain's plan-- to drive you out of the insurance you have through your employer-- and out into the marketplace, where your family will be given that $5,000 tax credit and told to buy insurance on your own. 
 
A $5,000 tax credit. That sounds pretty good. But what Senator McCain doesn't tell you is that the average cost of a family health care plan these days is more than twice that much-- $12,680. So where would that leave you?  
 
Senator McCain also doesn't tell you that insurance in the individual market isn't just more expensive than insurance you get through work-- it also includes fewer benefits. For example, many of these plans don't cover prescription drugs or pre-natal care. Many don't cover giving birth, so you'd have to pay out of pocket for that-- roughly $6,000. So when you're out there fending for yourself against the insurance companies, you pay more and get less. 
 
Here's another thing Senator McCain doesn't tell you-- his plan won't do a thing to stop insurance companies from discriminating against you if you have a pre-existing condition like hypertension, asthma, diabetes or cancer… the kind of conditions that 65 million working age Americans suffer from-- people from all backgrounds and walks of life all across this country. Employers don't charge you higher premiums for these conditions, but insurers do-- much higher. So the sicker you've been, the more you'll have to pay, and the harder it'll be to get the care you need. 
 
Finally, what John McCain doesn't tell you is that his plan calls for massive deregulation of the insurance industry that would leave families without the basic protections you rely on. You may have heard about how, in the current issue of a magazine, Senator McCain wrote that we need to open up health care to-- and I quote-- "more vigorous nationwide competition as we have done over the last decade in banking." That's right, he wants to deregulate the insurance industry just like he fought to deregulate the banking industry. And we've all seen how well that worked out.
 
It would be equally catastrophic for your health care. Right now, different states have different rules about what insurance companies have to cover. Senator McCain's plan would create a deregulated national market where companies can cherry pick the state where they're based-- and sell plans anywhere in America. 
 
It's the starting gun for a race to the bottom. Insurance companies will rush to set up shop in states with the fewest protections for patients. States where they don't have to cover things like mammograms and other cancer screenings, vaccinations, maternity care, and mental health care.  States where you don't have a right to appeal when your HMO refuses to cover the treatment you need. These are commonsense protections to make sure that you and your doctor-- not insurance company bureaucrats-- are making decisions about your health. And John McCain wants to give insurance companies free reign to avoid them. 
 
And believe it or not, just to top it all off, Senator McCain plans to give the top ten largest insurance companies $2 billion in new tax cuts. 
 
So, anyone want to guess who's running and funding John McCain's campaign? I'll give you a hint. Remember when we tried to fix health care back in the 1990s, and the insurance companies spent millions running misleading ads to scare people into opposing reform? That's right, John McCain has lobbyists for 69 insurance and drug companies and trade groups advising his campaign, writing his policies, and raising his money. Three of them are his top advisors. 
 
And if you think that Washington lobbyists who are working day and night to elect him are doing it to put themselves out of business, well, I've got a bridge in Alaska to sell you.
 
So here's John McCain's radical plan in a nutshell: he taxes health care benefits for the first time in history; millions lose the health care they have; millions pay more for the health care they get; drug and insurance companies continue to profit; and middle class families watch the system they rely on begin to unravel before their eyes. Well, I don't think that's right. I don't think we should settle for health care that works better for drug and insurance companies than it does for hard working Americans. I don't think that's the change we need. We can do better than that.
 
In the end, it's not surprising that Senator McCain's plan isn't a vast improvement on the same failed policies of these past eight years.Remember, Senator McCain voted against expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program-- a program that provides health care for millions of children in need. He voted against protecting Medicare 40 times over the course of his career. And he supported a massive cut in Medicare that would have raised premiums and out-of-pocket expenses for seniors while weakening the care they depend on.
 
In other words, Senator McCain's plan reflects the same bankrupt philosophy he's subscribed to for the past three decades in Washington: take care of the healthy and wealthy, and good luck to everyone else. They call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is-- you're on your own. Your job doesn't give you health care? The market will fix it. Pre-existing condition? Tough luck. Insurance company won't pay for your treatment? Too bad, you're on your own.
 
This approach hasn't worked these past eight years, it won't work now, and it's time to turn the page.
 
Let me be clear – I don't think government can solve all our problems. But I reject the radical idea that government has no role to play in protecting ordinary Americans. I reject the thinking that says preserving our free market means letting corporations and special interests do as they please. 
 
I know that nothing is more important than the health and well-being of the people you love. And if you work hard and do everything right, you shouldn't live in fear of losing everything because of a fluke of genetics, or a bad diagnosis, or a stroke of bad luck.
 
That's why I believe that every single American has the right to affordable, accessible health care-- a right that should never be subject to Washington politics or industry profiteering, and that should never be purchased with tax increases on middle class families, because that is the last thing we need in an economy like this.
 
I know we can do this. I know what we can accomplish when we come together. I saw it in Illinois, when as a state senator, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass legislation that has expanded coverage to more than 150,000 people, including 70,000 children. I helped expand coverage for routine mammograms for women on Medicaid. And we created hospital report cards, so that every consumer could see things like the ratio of nurses to patients, the number of annual medical errors, and the quality of care they could expect at each hospital. 
 
So I reject the tired old debate that says we have to choose between two extremes: government-run health care with higher taxes… or insurance companies without rules denying people coverage.  That's a false choice. It's the same distracting rhetoric that's kept us gridlocked for decades. And we know that neither of these approaches is the answer to this problem. 
 
The real solution is to take on drug and insurance companies; modernize our health care system for the twenty-first century; reduce costs for families and businesses; and finally provide affordable, accessible health care for every American. And that's what I intend to do as President of the United States.
 
Of course, it's easy to have good ideas and make big promises. You've all heard plenty of that these past 20 months. The hard part is coming up with a concrete, detailed plan, and translating that plan into action. So today, I want to take a few minutes to tell you exactly what I plan to do, how I'll get it done, and how I'm going to pay for it. 
 
We'll start by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family-- and we'll do it by taking the following five steps to lower costs throughout our health care system.  
           
First, we'll take on the drug and insurance companies and hold them accountable for the prices they charge and the harm they cause. 
 
We'll start by increasing competition in the insurance industry, and outlawing insurance company discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies spend $50 billion a year on elaborate efforts to cherry pick the healthiest patients and avoid covering everyone else. I intend to save them a whole lot of time and money by putting an end to this practice once and for all. 
 
And we'll tell the pharmaceutical companies, thanks, but no thanks for the overpriced drugs – drugs that cost twice as much here as they do in Europe and Canada. We'll let Medicare negotiate for lower-prices; we'll stop drug companies from blocking generic drugs that are just as effective, and far less expensive; and we'll allow the safe re-importation of low-cost drugs from countries like Canada.
 
Second, we'll focus on prevention-- on promoting wellness rather than just managing sickness.  Today, we spend less than four cents of every health care dollar on prevention and public health, even though 80 percent of risk factors involved in the leading causes of death are behavior-related-- and thus, preventable. Under my plan, we'll make sure insurance companies cover evidence-based, preventive care services-- weight loss programs, smoking-cessation programs, and other efforts to help people avoid costly, debilitating health problems in the first place.
 
Third, we'll reduce waste and inefficiency by moving from a 20th century health care system based on pen and paper to a 21st century system based on the latest technology. According to one study, just by transferring medical records from yellowing pages in file cabinets to electronic records in computers, we can save $77 billion a year. And we can save lives too by reducing deadly medical errors and ensuring that doctors and nurses spend less time with paperwork and more time with patients.
 
Fourth, we'll reduce the cost of our care by improving the quality of our care. It's estimated that poor quality care-- from medical errors that cause complications to poor hygiene practices that cause infections-- costs up to $100 billion a year. So we'll provide you with information about your hospitals' and providers' quality of care. We'll track which drugs and procedures work best. And we'll reward providers not just for the quantity of services they provide, but for the quality of outcomes for their patients. So you'll get better care, and we'll all save money in the long run.
 
Fifth, we'll reduce costs for businesses and their workers by picking up the tab for some of the most expensive illnesses. Right now, the five percent of patients with the most serious illnesses like cancer and heart disease account for nearly fifty percent of health care costs. Insurance companies devote the lion's share of their expenses to these patients, and then pass the cost on to the rest of us in the form of higher premiums. Under my plan, the federal government will pay for part of these catastrophic cases, which means that your premiums will go down.
 
So that's how we'll cut costs. But that's not enough. Because today, in the year 2008, 45 million Americans still don't have any health insurance at all. This is one of the great moral crises of our time. And it's creating a vicious cycle that affects every last one of us. As premiums rise, more people become uninsured. And every time those uninsured folks walk into an emergency room because it's their only option, insurance companies raise premiums to cover the cost-- a hidden tax of $922 per family. That extra cost means even more people can't afford insurance, so the problem just gets worse. We cannot go on like this. This is not who we are, and this is not who we have to be. 
 
That's why my plan will cover all Americans. And unlike Senator McCain, I'll do it by building on and strengthening-- rather than dismantling-- our current, workplace-based system. So if you have insurance you like, you keep that insurance. If you have a doctor you like, you keep that doctor. The only thing that changes for you is that your health care costs will go down. 
 
But if you don't have insurance, or don't like your insurance, you'll be able to choose from the same type of quality private plans as every federal employee-- from a postal worker here in Colorado to a Congressman in Washington. All of these plans will cover essential medical services including prevention, maternity, disease management and mental health care. No one will be turned away because of a pre-existing condition or illness. If you have children, they will be covered too. If you change jobs, this insurance will go with you. And if you can't afford this insurance, you'll receive a tax credit to help pay for it.   
 
...I know that if we come together, and work together, we can do this.  So many people are counting on us.

McCain's response? More vicious smears and lies. The Post: "Moments after the House of Representatives approved a bailout package for Wall Street on Friday afternoon, the McCain campaign released a television ad that challenges Obama's honesty and asks, 'Who is Barack Obama?' The ad alleges that 'Senator Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes. Ninety-four times. He's not truthful on taxes.' The charge that Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes has been called misleading by independent fact-checkers, who have noted that the majority of those votes were on nonbinding budget resolutions."

A senior campaign official called the ad "just the beginning" of commercials that will "strike the new tone" in the campaign's final days. The official said the "aggressive tone" will center on the question of "whether this guy is ready to be president."

McCain's only positive commercial, called "Original Mavericks," has largely been taken off the air, according to Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political ads.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's performance at Thursday night's debate embodied the new approach, as she used every opportunity to question Obama's honesty and fitness to serve as president. At one point she said, "Barack Obama voted against funding troops [in Iraq] after promising that he would not do so."

Palin kept up the attack yesterday, saying in an interview on Fox News that Obama is "reckless" and that some of what he has said, "in my world, disqualifies someone from consideration as the next commander in chief."

McCain hinted Thursday that a change is imminent, perhaps as soon as next week's debate. Asked at a Colorado town hall, "When are you going to take the gloves off?" the candidate grinned and replied, "How about Tuesday night?"

Today, the editors of the NY Times fretted that Palin's idea of a role model is Dick Cheney but they should have thought of what kind of a man-- and what kind of a voting record and what kind of character and what kind of judgment he had-- before they endorsed him earlier this year. For the last two weeks, all the Blue America candidates have been telling me their Republican incumbents are turning even more nasty and negative than usual. It isn't just McCain. His whole party would rather wreck the country than give up power. McCain may be the worst, but James Inhofe's vile campaign of lies against state Senator Andrew Rice has been pretty putrid. Rice has tried to stick to the issues and let Inhofe play in the mud by himself. Today Rice answered him back-- and very effectively:

HE MEANT "WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S"... BUT YOU GET THE POINT-- McCAIN ISN'T AMONG THE QUICK

"The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of 'Weekend With Bernie,' handcuffed to a corpse."
-Larry Hunter former chief economist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

A few days ago, political circles were buzzing because vulnerable Republican incumbent Gordon Smith isn't turning for help to his party's nominee, John McCain, but is instead up with ads all over Oregon TV touting his supposed closeness to McCain's rival, Democrat Barack Obama. (Obama immediately issued a statement thunderously endorsing progressive Democrat Jeff Merkley for the Oregon Senate seat his "pal" Smith holds.) Today's Washington Post reminds its readers that it wasn't all that long ago that the GOP felt the way to win was to play the racism card and tie Democratic candidates to Obama. Not only didn't that work in heavily Republican districts, it didn't work in heavily Republican districts in the Deep South. Democrats in Louisiana and Mississippi-- who every TV viewer had to be certain were Obama's candidates-- won upset victories after nearly $9 million of pointless smear was spent by the Republican Party and their extreme right allies.

With an over the top KKK faction firmly in control of the North Carolina GOP, that strategy is still being used and probably endangers two House seats (Hayes and McHenry), a Senate seat, the gubernatorial race and dozens of local races all over the state. North Carolina Democrats are begging Obama to come to the state and campaign with them.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ken Spain said the GOP will stick to that script this fall "on a district-by-district basis." But a senior Republican strategist involved in House races said that strategy is now largely dead, "except in rare instances, and I'm not sure it was a good idea in the first place."

And Gordon isn't the only Republican aware that Barack Obama is positively magic. This morning's Robert Novak column is titled The Obamacons Who Worry McCain. The typical Novak gossip is about big name Republicans who favor Obama. He talks about Colin Powell, Chuck Hagel (a probable Obama cabinet appointee, whose wife has already written contribution checks to Obama's campaign) and Larry Hunter, whose quote is at the top of this post.

And Hunter isn't the only Republican with colorful things to say about the GOP. Former Reagan economist Bruce Bartlett, who also worked for the current moron's father, George I, wrote in the New Republic expressing "disgust with a Republican Party that still does not see how badly George W. Bush has misgoverned this country"-- echoing his scathing 2006 book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.

Novak points out, that like many mainstream conservatives, Colin Powell is also disgusted, disgusted with McCain surrogates stirring divisive racial hatred, particularly against Obama's highly accomplished and much admired wife. The unfolding desperate McCain campaign is exactly what Mark McKinnon saw in the vicious playbook that caused him to announce he would quit the Double Talk Express if Obama became the Democratic nominee. And he did. Novak, the ultimate Inside the Beltway suck-up elitist, doesn't bother looking at Republican and independent voters, just at the big names. McCain has far more to worry about from millions of people who don't like the tenor of his vicious campaign than he does from a bunch of GOP insiders who can smell the rotting corpse up close.

REPUBLICAN SMEAR MACHINE GOES AFTER OBAMA

The John W. McCain campaign opposes smears

Republican strategist Mark McKinnon vowed to leave the McCain campaign soon after he read the plans for the most colossal smear campaign in the history of modern American politics. He wanted nothing to do with it. And he left.

Today at Time Magazine Karen Tumulty disclosed the plans the Obama campaign has to fight off the Rove-era smears.

As long as there have been rumors in politics, there has been one widely accepted way for a candidate to deal with them. Basically, it's not to. Otherwise, according to prevailing wisdom, all a candidate achieves is to elevate the rumors to a legitimate story for the media to feast on. That don't-go-there approach was Barack Obama's plan for months until, on the candidate's first full day of campaigning as his party's presumed presidential nominee, a reporter from McClatchy Newspapers who was traveling aboard his plane asked him about a particularly toxic bit of hearsay that was zooming around the Internet about his wife Michelle. Obama lost his cool. "We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails, and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it," Obama said, bristling. "That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it."

That night, in a conference call, Obama told his top aides it was time for a more aggressive solution to the rumors that have been popping up on the Internet about him and his family for months. And so the Obama campaign has built what might best be described as a Web-based rumor clearinghouse, located at FightTheSmears.com,
in which it hopes all the shady stories about Obama's faith, his family and his rumored connections with controversial figures can go to die.

And, of course, Rove and his little minions, plus all kinds of racist and Republican and Republican racist smear-mongers get paid a great deal of money to create these distractions. So there are enough rumors out there to fill a cemetery. Much of this new website "is designed to be a guided tour of other sensational rumors circulating on the Web about Obama and his family. Click on the claim that Obama attended a 'radical madrasah,' for instance, and it takes you to a CNN feature on the very ordinary-looking elementary school he actually went to as a child in Indonesia. The rumor that Obama was sworn in to the U.S. Senate with the Koran yields a photo of him with his hand on a family Bible. Also featured are videos of Obama saying the Pledge of Allegiance, to combat claims that he refuses to. And, yes, there is a pdf of his birth certificate. Near each rumor will be a fight-back button, offering suggestions as to where and how Obama supporters can call or e-mail to counter the rumors. The site will also have a spot where Obama supporters can alert the campaign to any new rumors they may be seeing on the Web or in their mailboxes or hearing on the telephone."

But it will take even more energy from Obama's supporters to expose the smears and lies than Rove and McCain's "unofficial" campaign are putting into creating them. And there is unlikely to be many that are more typical of either McCain or Rove than the Larry Sinclair filth you can expect to see ginned up by Fox and other McCain supporters next Wednesday. Some right-wing propagandists have gotten the National Press Club to actually host the vilest of all the smear merchants. Larry Sinclair is a very sick man who has accused Senator Obama of everything from having sex with him, using cocaine with him to murdering his pastor. He also failed a lie detector test when he was offered $100,000 if he could pass it. Sinclair, who has been in and out of jail for much of the last 30 years, having been charged or convicted of several crimes including fraud and forgery, was in Colorado on one of the days he claims to have been with Obama in Illinois (November 8, 1999). This is a typical GOP slander agent and not worthy of a national audience. And yet the National Press Club is hosting this kook? Firedoglake is asking everyone to sign a petition to the National Press Club to withdraw its invitation to Sinclair. They can move it to a porn theater where people like Rove will feel more at home anyway.

ANOTHER TOP McCAIN OPERATIVE LEAVES THE CAMPAIGN-- BUT NOT IN DISGRACE LIKE THE REST OF THEM

McCain's campaign is almost losing as many Republicans as the House caucus. After a whole gaggle of crooked lobbyists were exposed by the media and asked to leave the Double Talk Express, one of the few decent operatives McCain has had around him, Mark McKinnon, jumped ship yesterday.

In telling the Cox News Service last June that he would not work against an Obama candidacy, Mr. McKinnon had said that Mr. Obama’s election to the presidency “would send a great message to the country and the world.” In that interview, Mr. McKinnon had said that he had policy differences with Mr. Obama, especially on Iraq, and that he believed Mr. McCain was best suited for the presidency because of his national security positions. But, he added, “I just don’t want to work against an Obama candidacy.”

There has been a great deal of speculation-- confirmed by sources inside the bus-- that McKinnon was sickened by the vicious, racist GOP game plan McCain approved to deploy against Obama and that was the reason he refused to work for his old friend. "Mr. McKinnon had told friends, and some journalists, that he did not want to be part of a hard-fought campaign against such a historic candidacy. In his interview with Cox, he had said of Mr. Obama: 'I think he has a deep character and good judgment. I also think he’s wrong on some fundamental issues. But I believe he is honest and independent.'”

WHO IS MARK McKINNON AND WHY IS HE THREATENING TO QUIT THE DOUBLE TALK EXPRESS?

Bush's media strategy wasn't too much for McKinnon to take, but McCain's...

Mark McKinnon worked for Bush in 2000 and 2004 as his chief media advisor. You may recall those were two of the dirtiest, nastiest most shameful political campaigns ever run. Needless to say, McCain could barely wait to hire him-- which he did. A couple months ago we talked about how McKinnon, now the chief media strategist for McCain, the most media-dependent candidate in history ("the media is my base") promises to leave the campaign rather than run the kind of filthy and divisive negative smear attack ads the lobbyists who call the shots over at McCain Headquarters have devised. Today McKinnon was on the radio, reiterating his promises to leave the McCain camp rather than run the negative strategy on Obama, who he admires and respects. The far right of the GOP coalition moved into attack mode against him immediately, some smearing him as gay. Would anything less be expected from them?

Winning the presidency is very serious business-- and I do mean business-- for the far right. They don't like or trust McCain but they know, in the end, he will do what they tell him to do; except when he loses his temper or has his more and more frequent "McCain moments," he always has. As Paul Krugman pointed out today, in regard to domestic policy, McCain is anything but a moderate or a maverick. "McCain, we’re told, is a straight-talking maverick. But on domestic policy, he offers neither straight talk nor originality; instead, he panders shamelessly to right-wing ideologues." And what is true for domestic policy is even more the case for international policy, where McCain and Bush see eye to eye on the catastrophic and failed approach to international relations. McCain's hothead demeanor and his innate nastiness presages even choppier waters ahead though.

But why would anyone vote for someone espousing the kinds of anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-middle class policies we've all watched drag the country down under Bush? Needless to say, it is the job of Mr. McKinnon to present McCain in an entirely different light than his record would. Today I heard another of McCain's staffers on the radio-- an economics policy advisor who worked in the White House during Bush's first term-- and he was trying to make the point that McCain's approval of $400 billion for greedy and selfish bankers on Wall Street has nothing to do with McCain's opposition to $30 billion for what they see as irresponsible bums who lost their homes because of some kind of inherent moral failings. The spin was so intense I started getting dizzy and nearly pulled off the side of the road.

The Real McCain is completely out of step with what American voters are looking for in a president. That has led them to the smear campaign McKinnon wants nothing to do with and to rolling out another re-invention of McCain. (I used to be the General Manager of Sire Records, Madonna's label; I know about re-invention. And when I was president of Reprise Records, if there was anything I missed on the Madonna tip, I learned when we rolled out Cher v.76.9.)

McCain will run from his voting record and try to make the election about "islamofascism" and play on every kind of ugly fear the right always uses to divide and mislead people. Here's what he won't be talking about:

• His recent votes against the expansion of the SCHIP program.
• His opposition to the current Medicare prescription drug program on the basis that it gives too many benefits to too many seniors.
• His support for changing the tax treatment of employer-provided health benefits as a component for funding health care for low-income individuals.
• His support for free trade agreements and favorable trade treatment for China.
• His view, stated during the primary campaign, that while today Americans are facing tough economic times the country is better off economically than it was eight years ago.
• His slowness to call for urgent action to deal with the housing finance situation.
• His past admissions of knowing less about the details of economic policy than about national security issues.

McCain's tranformation into McBush, his willingness-- even eagerness-- to cast away his carefully crafted image as a maverick and a moderate independent, is not something McKinnon will find easy to deal with if he stays aboard the Double Talk Express. So eager was McCain to grasp for the White House that he has shifted drastically on many fundamental positions in order to cater to extremists in his own party.

He has flipped and flopped all over the board on immigration reform, from working with Ted Kennedy on serious reform to championing fences and deportations and anything else the extreme right demands. Similarly he voted against Bush's tax cuts and now says he wants deeper tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. The old John McCain wanted to close gun show loophole but the more elderly John McCain doesn't care-- as long as you make him president and let him bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb whoever he wants he couldn't care less about loopholes or gun control or anything else. John McCain as just another craven political hack with “wishy-washy” views that shift with the seasons-- or, rather, with his own short term political needs. A leader? Hardly.

His 19th century views on health care-- particularly women's health-- makes him appear out of touch with modern day realities. His claims to be a moderate are not born out by his voting record on women's issues. McCain is not 70% anti-choice and he's not 90% anti-choice... no, not even 99.9% anti-choice. His voting record is 100% anti-choice (and anti-contraception!). There is not one member of the United States senator more radical right than McCain when it comes to women's rights to control their own bodies. Several extremist maniacs, though, are tied with him-- like John Cornyn (TX), James Inhofe (OK), David Vitter (LA) [hopefully he uses contraceptives when he visits all his ladies of the night], Saxby Chambliss (GA), Mitch McConnell (KY), Jim DeMint (SC)... Those are the senators with identcal voting records. Would anyone accuse them of being moderates? Maverick? Independent? I don't think so. These are the half dozen most bizarre extremist in the Senate. Actual moderate Republicans have voting records on women's health that look nothing whatsoever like McCain's. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) may be a bit right of center but you can at least see the center. Her voting record compares to McCain's like night to day. Same story with Arlen Specter (R-PA). Even hard core conservatives like Ted Stevens (R-AK), John Warner (R-VA), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) make McCain look like he's far, far from the mainstream he always tries portraying himself as part of. McCain is on the record to overturn Rose v Wade and criminalize abortion. He freely admits it-- if you can pin him down and answer the question straight.

McCain is convinced that virtually the only important problem worth his time and energy is what he insists is the greatest threat to America: "radical Islamic extremism." He's obsessed as Cheney... and eager to be the next war president. And I do mean EAGER. Bush's job approval rating is hovering between 18-24%. Those people should probably vote for McCain because if they think Bush has been doing a good job, they'll love McCain. The other 76-82% should look elsewhere.