Digby and Jay Rosen go beyond theory in what the press has to fear from Trump and his supporters

Plus: TV Watch -- All set for Wednesday's "Rectify" series finale?

In her post "Demanding a show of power" today, Digby offers this chunk of her "storification" of a 20-tweet Jay Rosen tweetstorm:

-- Digby's excerpt from that Jay Rosen tweet "storification,"
offered today with her post "Demanding a show of power"

"The good news for all the Trump supporters in law enforcement is that if their man wins he has promised to let them take the gloves off, which is likely one of the major reasons they like him so much. Journalists should probably be a little more concerned about being used by this authoritarian partnership, however."

-- Digby, in her Nov. 4 Salon post "FBI’s Clinton smear
campaign is no surprise -- and has weird echoes of the
’90s," recalled today in her above-referenced post

by Ken

As Digby herself notes in the post today, it's important to read the full 20-tweet sequence of this tweetstorm by NYU Prof. Jay Rosen, which she has storified as "How bad is it likely to get by Jay Rosen." In the post today she adds this note: "This seems like a very likely scenario to me, particularly since it looks like the FBI is going to be Trump's personal goon squad." And that sends her back to the Nov. 4 Salon post, "FBI’s Clinton smear campaign is no surprise -- and has weird echoes of the ’90s" -- written, she tells us, a week before the Jay Rosen tweetstorm. We can tell, of course, that the Salon piece dates back to the far side of Election Day from from the now-poignant phrase, relating to "all the Trump supporters in law enforcement": "if their man wins." We can now scratch that "if."

The Nov. 4 post began:

For those who have been following the fraught relationship between the FBI and Hillary Clinton for a couple of decades, the revelations that rank-and-file agents are selectively leaking like a sieve in hopes of derailing her campaign in favor of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump comes as no big surprise.
If there is such a thing as an institutional memory, then the FBI has one with an antipathy for Hillary Clinton that’s downright pathological.

The fact that the selective leaking for maximum effect hadn’t started earlier should have tipped off us old-timers that there was a plan for a late surprise. . . .

She expresses observerly admiration for the "nice touch" of kicking off this particular smear campaign by "having the FBI director himself send a vague letter filled with innuendo and suspicion to the House Oversight Committee chairman, Republican Jason Chaffetz," and connects this to the reality that "it’s now taken as a given by a large portion of the country that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will be indicted for . . . something."

Hillary, she recalls, has been subjected to "shocking vilification" dating back to "fthe moment she came to Washington," and proceeding with "with such intensity it was frightening" all through the right-wing "witch hunts" aimed at driving her husband out of the presidency "one way or the other," beginning early in his first term and continuing through his impeachment in his second term.

The right-wing rage was redoubled by (a) the failure to convict President Clinton in his impeachment trial ("mostly because his approval ratings were sky-high" and (b) the fact that "the American people punished the Republicans at the polls instead of the president." Happily for the Clinton-haters,

Then, as today, there was a Republican FBI director, Louis Freeh, allowing his agents to run wild whispering in the ears of willing reporters that an indictment was imminent. And there were always reporters willing to breathlessly report the scoop.

Exhibit A: repeated "reporting" by NYT right-wing provocateur William Safire of an impending indictment of the First Lady, always claimed to be coming any day.

Jumping ahead to "the current torrent of selective leaks," she turns to a Daily Beast piece by Wayne Barrett, "Meet Donald Trump’s Top FBI Fanboy," where we learn, she says, that it's "being funneled through a retired New York FBI agent named James Kallstrom and coordinated by former federal prosecutor and New York mayor Rudy Giuliani." Highlight: Rudy on Fox, "grinning like a fool" two days before the Comey letter, blithering about the "surprise or two" that Trump has in store for us "in the next few days":

I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises. . . . We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.

Then there was Trump daughter-in-law Lara, on Fox the same day, promising, "We've got some stuff up our sleeves," while her father-in-law was "crowing on the trail that he’s heard that FBI agents were unhappy with the decision not to indict Clinton, including his claim that "the people that have been longtime workers at the FBI are furious."

Digby notes too irony, amid concerns about the Russian government also leaking on Trump's behalf during the election campaign, remembering the FBI's deep embarrassment by the discovery that the agent assigned to the Russian desk, Robert Hanssen ("now serving life in prison for espionage"), "had actually been a Russian spy for 20 years. She recalls "the admission by conservative columnist Robert Novak," one of the prime Clinton persecutors (fondly recalled as "the Prince of Darkness"), "that Hanssen had been one of his FBI sources for damaging information about the Clintons." Novak, she recalls,

innocently wondered if the man who had betrayed dozens of American intelligence assets in Russia, at least three of whom were executed, had really used him for nefarious purposes or if he really cared. Perhaps Novak wanted to believe that Hanssen was truly a patriot. Some reporters believe what they want to believe.

"There’s obviously no connection between the Hanssen case and today’s Russian investigation(s)," she notes.

But there are still too many people in the intelligence business who think it’s acceptable to interfere in the political business of the country when they disapprove of a leader. And there are still far too many credulous reporters willing to help them do it.

Then she offers the quote I've quoted up top about "the good news for all the Trump supporters in law enforcement," continuing:

Journalists should probably be a little more concerned about being used by this authoritarian partnership, however. Neither the FBI nor Donald Trump have much respect for democratic principles, including the First Amendment (as anyone can see by the crude insults hurled at the press by Trump and his followers every day.) It won’t end well for the country to empower these people and it certainly won’t end well for the press.

No, it won't end well for the country, or for the press. But for the so-called journalists who play ball with "Trump and his followers"? One's intuition informed by history suggests that they could do very well indeed.

TV WATCH: ALL SET FOR WEDNESDAY'S
RECTIFY SERIES FINALE?

I had originally planned to write today about the Sundance series Rectify, in anticipation of Wednesday's conclusion, not just of this spectacular final season, but of the series itself. But I made an executive decision to go with the above. Anyone who hasn't been watching should watch for further replays, and especially of Season 4. (It's possible to get caught up enough on previous events to appreciate what the creative team did here.) Now I guess that will have to wait till the show is completed.

#

Is Donald J. Trump The J. Parnell Thomas Of Today?

My old pal Steven Baker was putting together the soundtrack for the film Trumbo a year or so ago and he was all excited about the story and told me about it and I did a brief post about, in effect, a film-in-the-making, Embracing the Darkness of our own History: Trumbo. The movie Trumbo is out now and has nominations in several categories for an Academy Award, a Critics' Choice Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and, among others, a Writers Guild of America Award. The cast includes Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo, Louis C.K., John Goodman and James DuMont as one of the arch-villains in this dark chapter of American history, Congressman J. Parnell Thomas (R-NJ). This is historical footage of the real Parnell. Up top you can see DuMont's portrayal of Parnell at about 40 seconds in.

He's dead and mostly forgotten now, except when people ask who, historically, was the biggest asshole from the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings and the notorious blacklisting trials that followed. I'm writing about him today primarily because I saw how Trump has been calling Bernie a "Communist" the same way J. Parnell Thomas always called FDR a "Communist," and for all the same reasons. Like Trump, Parnell was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a crony of Roy Cohn's, in Thomas' day, an aide to fascist Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, and more recently, Trump's degenerate, Mob-connected attorney.

Thomas, who lived in Allendale in the northeast corner of New Jersey (Bergen County) was a Wall Street broker before getting involved in politics in the area that is now represented, suitably in terms of Thomas' disgraceful legacy, by the most right-wing Republican in New Jersey politics, Scott Garrett, another Wall Street stooge. Thomas was narrowly elected to Congress in 1935-- when the GOP incumbent died-- as one of the most vicious opponents of FDR and the New Deal, both of which, he claimed "sabotaged the capitalist system." In the late '40s he was named chairman of HUAC and was soon on a personal crusade against Defense Secretary James Forrestal. He was the bain of Hollywood's film industry and turned HUAC into a modern day version of the Grand Inquisition, with himself in the role of Grand Inquisitor. His first witnesses were right-wing rats-- Ayn Rand, Jack Warner, Walt Disney, Robert Montgomery, Gary Cooper, George Murphy and, of course, Ronald Reagan-- who turned in their colleagues on spurious, trumped up charges of possibly communistic sympathies. Trumbo was one of them, and Parnell Thomas' second victim. When asked if he was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, Trumbo refused to answer and responded:

"[T]he rights of American labor to inviolably secret membership have been won in this country by a great cost of blood and a great cost in terms of hunger. These rights have become an American tradition. Over the Voice of America we have broadcast to the entire world the freedom of our labor... You asked me a question which would permit you to haul every union member in the United States up here to identify himself as a union member, to subject him to future intimidation and coercion. This, I believe is an unconstitutional question."

Thomas accused him of being a Communist, just as he had accused President Roosevelt of the same "crime." Thomas ruined the lives of countless Americans with his baseless smears and pointless witch-hunt, all the while running a congressional payroll kickback scam to enrich himself at the expense of the taxpayers. He would put his friends on the official congressional payroll and they had no work to do and would-- quite illegally-- share their salaries with him.

Thomas was eventually exposed, tried, found guilty of fraud, forced to resign from Congress in disgrace, heavily fined and sentenced to serve 18 months in the same federal penitentiary where several of the Hollywood Ten were serving time (for nothing). His crackpot far-right wife decided to run for his seat but she got no political traction and soon dropped out. Described by Time magazine as a "pudgy, petulant man," he served less than 9 months and after getting out of prison, started a weekly rightist newspaper in Bergen County and was soon defeated in another run for his old congressional seat (in 1954). He later moved to Florida and died, a bitter, angry crank, in 1970.

It comes as natural for Republicans like the thuggish Trump to try to smear Bernie as a Communist as it did for Parnell Thomas to try to smear FDR with the same charge. The New Deal, which is historically credited with saving capitalism from the communists or fascists of the day is, basically exactly what Bernie is proposing, in updated fashion, today. And keep in mind, as the GOP marched around screeching FDR was a Commie, he won 42 states (all but 6) in 1932 (22,821,277 to 15,761,254 for incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover) and then 46 states in 1936 (27,747,636 to 16,679,543 for Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, who lost Kansas). Help keep fascism at bay by tapping the thermometer:

The Senate's Back At Work

This morning the first bill in that chamber was for cloture-- to cut off the filibuster on H.R. 1256, Henry Waxman's Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which passed the House 298-112 on April 2. The bill gives jurisdiction over tobacco products to the Food and Drug Administration. The tobacco industry opposed it and the biggest recipients of their legalized bribes backed them (of course).

The de facto filibuster was shut off at 11:01AM 84-11. The 11 pro-cancer senators (with the "donations" they've gotten from Big Tobacco):

Kit Bond (R-MO- $53,950)
Sam Brownback (R-KS- $4,950)
Jim Bunning (R-KY- $194,166)
Richard Burr (R-NC- $359,100-- the #2 all time recipient of Tobacco largesse)
"Dr." Tom Coburn (R-OK- $6,500)
Jim DeMint (R-SC- $53,750)
Kay Hagan (D-NC- $19,200)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT- $55,500)
Jim Inhofe (R-OK- $63,500)
Miss McConnell (R-KY- $419,025-- the #1 all time recipient of Tobacco largesse)
Pat Roberts (R-KS- $59,597)

Meanwhile, much of the Senate is still obsessing over the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor. The Republicans are now playing a stalling game, claiming July, which is when President Obama has asked them to settle the matter, is too soon. Alabama's KKK member, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, claims he won't be ready until September. (He went to an unaccredited Buy Bull college and is a slow reader.) What the Republicans are trying to do-- mostly through their surrogates on Fox and at Hate Talk radio-- is to just keep on smearing Sotomayor with the hope that it turns voters off to Obama.

With Newt Gingrich trying to take back his despicable "she's-a-racist" comments on Judge Sotomayor, Republicans are starting to turn on the loudest and most recognizable voice of the GOP: Pig Man. First it was far right Texas Senator John Cornyn asking Limbaugh to zip his trap. And today is was Lindsey Graham, another Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who said it isn't fair for Republican extremists (like Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, Tancredo, Buchanan, etc) to call Judge Sonia Sotomayer a racist. Not to put too fine a point on it though, Lindsey then admitted that opposing Sotomayor puts the interests of the GOP over the interests of the country-- and says he intends to do just that! "I'm not doing the country any good looking back playing a game of tit for tat," he admitted. "But I'm not going to put my party at a disadvantage if this is the way the game is played." So? Since when does "fairness"-- or veracity-- have anything to do with Republican Party talking points? Limbaugh, though he's still smarting from Schwarzenegger referring to him as the GOP's 650 pound gorilla, isn't retracting or backing down. Here's the problem the GOP has to face:




UPDATE: Coburn Wants To Ban Tobacco

When Coburn didn't vote for the bill I assumed he was just a crook on the take like Burr, McConnell, Bunning, Roberts and DeMint. I was incorrect. He didn't vote for the bill because it didn't go far enough.

“What we should be doing is banning tobacco,” Coburn said in a recent Senate floor speech he gave during a debate on a tobacco regulation bill. “Nobody up here has the courage to do that. It is a big business. There are millions of Americans who are addicted to nicotine. And even if they are not addicted to the nicotine, they are addicted to the habit.”

...Coburn has suggested banning tobacco outright rather than passing a bill that would authorize the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restrict the manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products.

“If we really want to make a difference in health and we want to eliminate dependence on tobacco, what we have to do is to stop the addiction,” Coburn said during floor debate.

...Coburn made his case against the bill because he said it would send a mixed message to the FDA, which is charged with ensuring the safety of food and drugs. Coburn’s argument is that there’s nothing safe about tobacco and that it would make more sense for the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to regulate it.

Coburn suggests that putting cigarettes and chew under the authority of an agency that to this point has been tasked with ensuring product safety would only make it tougher to ban tobacco someday.

“In this bill, we allow existing tobacco products not ever to be eliminated,” he said.

Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, supports the bill.

Coburn suggested Democrats are backing the legislation with an eye on helping a key interest group: trial lawyers.

“We have had all of these lawsuits through the years where billions of dollars have gone into attorneys' coffers,” he said.

We'll have to check in on that brilliant theory by talking with some of the bill's supports, like Lamar Alexander (R-TN, David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), Jerrferson Beauregard Sessaions III (R-AL), John Thune (R-SD), John McCain (R-AZ), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), John Cornyn (R-TX), Thad Cochran (R-MS)...

Poor Sarah

by Mags

Poor Sarah. She has no clue about the definitions of words or the reality of the political world. Even though I have heard over and over how politically savvy she is, this woman from the hinterlands of the great frigid north is so isolated that she is not even aware that she is woefully ignorant. When you go to 6 colleges in order to get your journalism degree... well maybe you miss something essential in your education. When you are a big fish in a small pond, there is no way to measure yourself and your accomplishments against the mainstream. When you get to the lower 48, people will not be so supportive of you.

The other day Sarah and others on the right revealed their ignorance by criticizing Barack Obama calling the Constitution a document of “negative rights.” One must wonder why there was no one on the McCain band wagon who had even a smattering of knowledge regarding legal definitions. What the term means is that the Constitution tells us what the government may not do rather than to tell us exactly what our rights are. Pretty simple right? It would seem so, but for those who are helplessly lost in the right wing spin machine, it is muddy. They think that Obama was saying the Constitution was a negative. Never mind that Barack Obama is a Constitutional Scholar and that he taught Constitutional Law. Small detail? I think not.

Now comes Sarah Palin complaining that we must not call the smears she is slinging, the accusations of being a pal of terrorists and being a secret PLO lover, negative campaigning. If we do so, we might be violating her 1st Amendment rights. What? Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, why must you continually open your mouth to show just how ignorant you are? Seriously, I enjoy it since I have no respect for you as a person or as a woman, but it sets my brain on fire to think that someone who is so, may I say it, stupid to speak in public at venues that will be broadcast to the entire nation? Come on, what are we going to tell our children?

Sarah, negative campaigning means that you are campaigning by smearing your opponent rather than talking up the positives that you will achieve. Positive campaigning is telling people what you will do. It is selling your own plan. I realize people with pea sized brains and big egos such as your self cannot elevate themselves without getting into the gutter to take someone else down, but honey, it is possible to campaign and to have freedom of speech without lying. Ya, you betcha.

So often have you criticized the “gotcha media” that you cannot see yourself as the “gotcha” vice presidential dispenser of lies. If all of these pronouncements are your idea, then you are doubly repulsive, but if you are spewing these lies merely at the behest of campaign managers, then you are a mere actor reciting a script. Neither possibility explains the relish with which you seem to throw this red meat to the crowds. Nor does this recommend you as a public official. The look on your face is full of self-righteous self-serving satisfaction. These rallies are an exercise in self-gratification of the baser natures in us all, the baser natures which we fight to keep in check. This is self-indulgence at its worst. You hold all that is good in contempt. It is written on your face.

Your flaws are legion Sarah, but most of them you have revealed yourself. It makes an observant person shake their head in disbelief that you do not even understand how you undermine your own credibility. I mean really, it would make me embarrassed for you if I did not already despise all of your politics and your methods. Can you express yourself without being snide and attacking others? Is it possible? I doubt anyone of your belief system and your political persuasion can any longer make any meaningful statements in the public sphere. It is all attacks and hate.

Your bitter and snide nature is caught again and again in your facial expressions and in your tone. It is clear that you hold yourself in high regard, you think you are better than the rest of us. It is clear that you disrespect those who display integrity and intelligence.

Everything you say is meaningless and ill logical. If it is not obvious to you, it is obvious to us. This is the thing that has been making us crazy for 8 years. We know what is said again and again by the right wing does not make any sense, but night after night the media has on supposed experts to dissect the statements as if they made perfect sense.

Poor Sarah, you have begun to think this is about you. I am so sorry dear. This is not about you. This is not about how “cute” you are. Cute does not get real power Sarah, besides on camera and in the bedrooms of the GOP. Cute gets you nothing, but attention. The election is not about you. No one of any position takes you seriously. I am sorry that your illusions of a 2012 run for the presidency will end in flames, and trust me, they will. If you had not been a user and an opportunist for your whole life, I would be tempted to feel sorry for you. But, I don’t.

Here is the one thing for which American women can be grateful. We can be grateful that despite your celebrity status, your $11,000 per week make-up artist, and your $150,000 wardrobe that any of us who are intelligent and able to speak in well measured and cogent sentences might now be taken seriously in political circles. Your candidacy has made Hillary Clinton look like a lioness in comparison. Frankly, Sarah, I would make a better VP than you would, and I have never held public office. If nothing else, you helped us to appreciate the women in Congress who serve with intelligence and distinction that is well-earned.

As for you Sarah, poor Sarah, we hope you go back home. And, when you get there I hope the citizens of your own state will hold you accountable for your abuses of power, your lapses of judgment, and your deceptions in governing. You have shown us that women such as yourself are fully capable of being as corrupt and greedy as any man in any political office. Go home Sarah. Study the Constitution of these United States. It was never about you. It is about the country, America, first... remember?

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Republicans Plan To Go Down Dirty And Ugly

Although the Republican Party has made a concerted effort to keep Bush and Cheney out of public sight this month, the latest polls show that most American voters associate McCain with all the Bush-Cheney policies and the entire toxic GOP agenda that has done so much damage to the country. AP is reporting that, around the country, Obama supporters are energized and celebratory and that the McCain supporters are depressed and glum.

With Mr. Bush’s job approval ratings at historic lows, political analysts have long said Republican candidates simply do not want to be seen with him. But now, with the election just days away, it seems that Republican candidates do not want Mr. Bush to be seen, period.

“One of McCain’s biggest challenges has been how to deal with Bush, and he never quite got it right,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. “Now, the best thing is silence.”

So the president has temporarily dropped out of sight. Until recently, Mr. Bush was giving talks about the battered economy on nearly a daily basis, prompting some Republicans to grumble privately that so much presidential face time was hurting their election chances. This week, Mr. Bush stepped back, holding just four public events, none with real policy implications.

House candidates most closely associated with Bush-- especially the ones for whom he has done publicized fundraising events-- are all losing:

CT-04: Jim Himes- 433.6 vs Shays- 42.9
MI-07: Mark Schauer- 44.6 vs Tim Walberg- 35.1
MI-09: Gary Peters- 42.8 vs Knollenberg- 39.0
NM-01: Martin Heinrich- 47.5 vs White- 42.9
NY-29: Eric Massa- 49.3 vs Kuhl- 42.9
WA-08: Darcy Burner- 50.4 vs Reichert- 46.1

AP has served as part of the McCain hype machine this year. They have been shameless in their slanted coverage and in their unsubstantiated and vicious attacks on Obama. So their report today on the emotional disparities between McCain and Obama supporters is especially telling. When they write about McCain supporters feeling suicidal, they're projecting their own shared reaction to their failure in swaying voters with their shameful garbage reporting:

That smiling guy walking down the street? Odds are he's a Barack Obama backer. The grouchy looking one? Don't ask, and don't necessarily count on him to vote next week, either.

Supporters of John McCain, long less enthusiastic than Obama's, have become increasingly glum about the presidential campaign in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Saturday. Their feelings have turned more negative during a period that has seen Obama, the Democratic senator from Illinois, take a firm lead in many polls.

Obama's backers have retained a higher level of excitement. One expert says the contrasting moods could affect how likely the two candidates' supporters are to vote on Election Day, possibly dampening McCain's turnout while boosting Obama's.

...More McCain supporters also feel angry and bored, while Obama's are likelier to say they are proud and hopeful.

All of this is a bad sign for McCain, according to George E. Marcus, a political scientist from Williams College who has studied the role emotion plays in politics. Negative feelings about a campaign can discourage voters by making them less likely to go through what can be a painful process: Voting for someone who will lose.

This is causing the desperation that has turned the end of the Republican campaign into the worst smear-fest seen in contemporary American politics. The absurd stories about Obama's (and other Democrats') personal lives is not meant to sway a single vote-- just to fire up the pitchfork wielding base and get them to the polls-- not so much for McCain-- a lost cause-- but to save the skins of endangered GOP rubber stamps like Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina and John Shadegg in Arizona. Dole's series of "godless" ads against conservative Democrat Kay Hagan will probably go down in ad history as the worst blunder an incumbent senator has ever made.

Other Republicans-- aside from McCain-Palin-- whose especially vile smear attacks seem to be backfiring against them include Robin Hayes (R-NC), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Ric Keller (R-FL), Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Erik Paulson (R-MN), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Darren White (NM), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Jeb Bradley (R-NH), and John Gard (R-WI), the worst of this year's smear artists.

UPDATE: CHENEY POPS HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS HOLE

...in Wyoming and endorses John McCain and Sarah Palin in one of the few non-Confederate states where they will win. Watch:



Biden noticed: "If you ever had any doubt that John McCain would continue George Bush's policies -- you can put those to rest. Just today, Vice President Cheney came out and endorsed John McCain. Do we need any more proof? I'm not surprised. Dick Cheney has been wrong on everything else the last eight years. He's on a roll."

We Are All Chaylee Cole

This morning all Americans should feel pride in one of us-- no, not Charles Keating's Ohio relative Joe the unlicensed plumber-- in Fremont State University student Chaylee Cole. When someone stands up to the inhuman all-powerful Machine and just says "no," the way Cole did, it is a person striking a blow for our national dignity and our liberty for all of us.

On Friday she lost her job in West Virginia. She lost her job because she refused to read a Republican script lying about Barack Obama, smearung him and degrading American politics.

"I was working at the call center," Cole said. "We got a campaign ad talking about how Obama had been part of terrorist attacks on the Capitol, the Pentagon and a judge's home and had ties with Bill Ayers.

"Last Thursday, I told them I did not want to read it," Cole said. "They said, 'Either you read it or you go home.'

"I told them I wasn't going to read it. They made me go home without pay for the rest of the day."

The "work paper" told callers to say:

"Hello, I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers [airs], whose organization bombed the US Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans.

"And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democrat allies lack the judgment to lead our country.

"This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee."

Cole said, "We were just supposed to read that message and hang up. One of my other issues working there was that someone told me it didn't matter who picked up the phone, whether it was a 5-year-old or a 95-year-old. We should read the message."

Right now the Republican Party is busy trying to disenfranchise as many voters in as many battleground states as they can. It is a time for individuals to stand up and not take it anymore. That's what they have left: smears and voter theft. Watch Olbermann:

Erratic And Creaky Old McCranky Has A New Old Message: Obama Is A Socialist

Since Barack Obama's polling numbers keep rising and more and more states have been slipping out of McCain's clammy grasp, something tells me the red scare isn't exactly scaring anyone. We dealt with this silliness when he started babbling incoherently about Obama wanting to-- God Forbid-- share the wealth after the last debate. But, as Colin Powell, patiently explained as he left Meet the Press yesterday, one way or another, tax policy addresses who gets what in terms of "the wealth."

During this last, rapidly extinguishing, Republican era, the rich got a lot richer, and, inevitably, the rest of us got royally screwed for not paying better attention and bending over when they said, "Bend over and enjoy your $300 tax rebate."



Yesterday's NY Times termed the idea of "spreading the wealth," both accusation and prescription, the former for McCain's campaign and the reactionaries it's appealing to, the latter for the rest of us. And it isn't quote so straight forward this special last year-- this culmination of 8 years of Republican corporate rule.

In any other year, it would seem routine. Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, is spending the final weeks before the election painting his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, as a quasi socialist who wants “to redistribute wealth” and whose tax cuts are a “government giveaway.”

But it can be a complicated argument in this topsy-turvy year of financial collapse, when the government, from the Republican president on down, has seemed to be in the giveaway business and the wealth-spreading business an awful lot of late.

There have been taxpayer-financed bailouts of individual businesses and broader interventions like the $700 billion bailout of the financial system-- which both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama supported-- not to mention the Bush administration’s move to buy a $250 billion stake in the nation’s banks. In the wake of the financial crisis, everyone seems to like some state-directed form of wealth redistribution, including Mr. McCain, who wants to use taxpayer money to buy distressed mortgages and sell them back to homeowners at more affordable rates.

“I’m going to spend a lot of money to bring relief to you,” Mr. McCain pledged to cheers at a rally here Sunday, just a few minutes after criticizing Mr. Obama for wanting to “spread the wealth around.”

McCain has veered-- or at least has had Palin's speech writers veer-- from insinuating Obama is a Muslim, a terrorist, an elitist, a crook, the antichrist and now seems to have settled-- at least for a few days-- on the sobriquet "socialist." Yesterday they had her, appropriately enough, in a hangar in Roswell, New Mexico, where she demonstrated her great knowledge of economic theory-- she must have picked up something besides clap in one of these five colleges she went to-- by chirping ominously that “Senator Obama said the wants to ‘spread the wealth.’ What that means is he wants government to take your money and dole it out however a politician sees fit.” Her supporters are as brainless and manipulated as she is. they cheered. But even the Dallas Morning News, one of the only newspapers in a city with over 75,000 people to have endorsed McCain, acknowledged that the socialism changes are... a stretch.

Both Mr. McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, have criticized Mr. Obama's proposal to raise taxes on high earners and require that businesses provide health insurance. Ms. Palin referred to the plan as "a little bit like socialism."
And in a radio address Saturday, Mr. McCain said: "At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives."

Mr. Obama hit back Saturday, saying that Mr. McCain is "out of touch with the struggles" of many Americans.

William Wallace, a former vice president and chief operating officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said the country's progressive tax code, which Mr. McCain does not propose abolishing, is "socialist in nature.

"It's a term that gets people's attention, and therefore I understand why a political candidate might want to use it," said Dr. Wallace, a professor at the University of North Texas. "But to say we are headed toward socialism is a vast overstatement in my book."

...Both candidates have proposed a mix of tax credits and exemptions that would reduce overall tax bills for many households.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Obama's plan would reduce taxes for 80 percent of households, while raising them for 10 percent. Mr. McCain's plan would lower taxes for 60 percent of households, and raise them for 1 percent.

And the paper pointed out that despite McCain basing much of his campaign this weekend on "Joe the Plumber, "Independent analysts have concluded that Mr. Wurzelbacher would likely see a tax cut under Mr. Obama's plan."

Smear, Smear, Smear-- It's All They've Got

I'm downstairs at the computer but I left the TV on in my bedroom and I hear the singsong musings of Palin's fingernails on chalkboard voice whipping a crowd of out-and-out bloodthirsty fascists into a frenzy. The whole ugly scene is abetted and encouraged by Republican Party TV's viciously anti-Obama biopic, “Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism,” which was hosted by Josef Goebbels Sean Hannity. Whipping up fear and loathing for Obama won't have much of an impact on normal Americans but the hate-obsessed, low-IQ Republican base eats it up and gets itself into a lather and frenzy of bigotry and self-righteous rage.

As Dana Milbank pointed out in today's Washington Post fascism is alive and well at Palin rallies. Obama has pulled ahead of McCain in Florida polling but that doesn't mean the KKK is dead and buried-- and they're all coming out for the Sarah Palin Show. The McCain has "let Sarah loose" and Republican racists have taken this as a signal that they're free to scream racist epithets and give voice to the hatred that drives their lives.

Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

And it isn't just rednecks who are susceptible to the blandishments of Hannity and Palin. The extreme right GOP front group, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) has been trying to trick Jews into thinking Obama is anti-Semitic with ads screaming: "Barack Obama's Friends: Pro-Palestinian. Anti-Israel. Hostile to America." Spending over a million dollars the RJC has:

- Linked Obama's name and picture to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Pat Buchanan among others.

- Not so subtly threatened "tragic outcomes for the Jewish people" in a headline over a photo of Obama speaking in Berlin.
 
- Called Obama advisors "anti-Israel" and "pro-Palestinian" for arguing for American diplomacy intended to achieve Middle East peace.

These ads play on the deepest fears and worst prejudices of the Jewish community-- and they are everywhere. They're running in local Jewish newspapers in places like Miami, Philadelphia, and Columbus, Ohio where they can have maximum electoral effect.

More and more observers are aghast at how viciously the McCain campaign-- mostly via Palin-- has been inciting the right-wing faithful, who don't need much incitement-- to scream for the assasination of the Democratic candidate! So on the day a veterans group has reported McCain's real record on the troops and on vets-- it ain't pretty-- Palin is shouting about Obama not being one of us and inciting violence. Anything to change the subject away from McCain's ghastly record on things that are important to normal Americans. And it is clear, that by watching how McCain and Palin react to the vicious, racist behavior of their base, these are two people utterly unfit for national office.

A true leader would stop their politicking for a moment to remind the crowd that we are all Americans, that a sitting U.S. Senator is not a terrorist, that calls for murder have no place in a democracy because we work out our differences through debate and argument and law.

A true leader would recognize the pain ripping through his or her people and would seek to comfort them and then inspire them. A true leader would empathize with his or her people and then ask the nation to rise above our baser instincts, to come together as we’ve done before.

A true leader would lift his or her people up, not prey on their fears, their insecurities, their ignorance and their anger.

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:

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.