Straight talk? Not from McCain

Even Karl Rove now admits that John McCain’s campaign has taken a sharp right-hand turn and straight into a mud pit.

Or maybe its’ a sewage pond.

There’s no other plausible explanation for the recent flurry of blatantly false, vicious and patently absurd commercials that misstate, twist and otherwise distort Barack Obama’s policy statements, speeches and legislative voting record.

McCain stands behind these commercials, which have been thoroughly discredited by every valid fact-checking campaign watchdog.

His only excuse? Well, he said Friday on “The View,” if only Obama had accepted his plan for a series of 10 Town Hall meetings with voters between now and Election Day, the “tenor of the campaign” would be different.

Clearly, McCain has now signed off on a political guerrilla-style campaign style that seeks to achieve victory at any cost.

It wasn’t so long ago that McCain was insisting he would wage a fall runoff campaign that would be positive in nature.

It is — it’s positively sickening.

He promised a campaign that would focus on issues.

It is — it’s fabricated issues.

He promised a campaign that the American public would be proud of.

Uh, no way to sugarcoat this one (After all, he can put lipstick on his mudslinging…)

Perhaps McCain learned a hard lesson from the 2000 primary season, where the Bush campaign knocked him from front-runner status in the South Carolina primary with a savage, unfounded flurry of accusations.

So, it seems, McCain DOES put victory over valor. And his speeches notwithstanding, he’d rather win an election than lose his dignity.

His much-heralded Straight Talk Express? Just more political barnyard bullshit.

Why Sarah Palin should make us worry

The  most significant thing about Gov. Sarah Palin’s address Wednesday night at the GOP convention wasn’t what she said.
It’s what she failed to say.
If Palin used the speech to introduce herself to the American people, what we received was an incomplete picture.
Palin’s brief foray into political life has revealed some troubling, extremist political views that are out of step with the majority of Americans.
So, since she failed to mention them in the 30-plus minute address written by President Bush’s chief speechwriter, here’s a couple of concerns that come to mind:
–She’s opposed to teaching sex education in Alaska’s schools, and instead advocates the principle of abstinence before marriage.
–She’s vehemently opposed to all abortions, including pregnancies triggered by rape or incest.
–Her fervent religious briefs carry over into the policy arena, suggesting at one point that a new natural gas pipeline through Alaska would be “God’s will” and that U.S. involvement in Iraq represents “God’s task.”
–She contacted Alaskan librarians for their views on, ”hypothetically,” banning certain books from library shelves because of language she considers offensive.
–She has a past affiliation with an offbeat Alaskan third-party political group which advocates the need for a vote to consider secession from the U.S. — and her husband was, for years, registered to vote as a member of that Alaskan Independence Party. (Her husband and oldest son, by the way, were not registered Republicans at the time she was selected to be the GOP nominee for vice president).

–She refuses to accept scientific, internationally accepted findings about the threat of global warming and the man-made factors the have contributed to climate change — putting her directly at odds with McCain, who knows what we’ve been doing to destroy the atmosphere.

–She professes to oppose so-called congressional budget “earmarks” but aggressively sought special congressional one-time earmarked grants for her town (to the point of hiring a Washington lobbyist to get federal funds flowing to her town) when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 9,700).
–Sen. John McCain specifically cited earmarked grants sought by Palin while mayor of Wasilla as examples of wasteful federal spending that result in bloated spending and rising deficits.
–She cited her opposition as governor to the well-publicized “Bridge to Nowhere,” a huge federal project that would have served an island with only 50 inhabitants and which already has an airstrip — yet as a candidate for governor she campaigned in favor of the project.
–She and her husband attend an Assemblies of God church — a fundamentalist wing of the Pentecostal movement — which recently hosted a sermon from David Brickner, executive director of “Jews for Jesus,” who described terrorist attacks on Israels as being God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity.
–She is under investigation in Alaska for possibility exerting undue political influence to force the firing of a state trooper who was married to her sister-in-law and who has been locked in a bitter divorce battle.
–She strongly supports oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — an idea that even John McCain opposes.
Is Palin really the perfect, highly qualified, ready to serve on Day One running mate for McCain? Will they be “of one voice” on the campaign trail? Given that McCain only met her once before deciding to make her his running mate, and given that his vetting team had only 24 hours to look into her background, you’ve gotta wonder.