Fact Check: Palin's Alaska spreads its wealth

Note from Greetings: So.. again by their own definition (McCain and Palin), are McCain and Palin the real socialists? McCain with his interest in corporate welfare for the wealthy in their tax breaks and the bailing out of Wall Street with government funds? And Palin, who did, indeed, spread the wealth around when she was in charge in Alaska.

By RITA BEAMISH – AP

Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin summon antidemocratic images of a communist state to attack Democrat Barack Obama's tax plan and his comment about spreading the wealth around. But in her home state, Palin embraces Alaska's own version of doing just that.

Palin and McCain seized on a comment Obama made to Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher, who asked about his tax plans.

Obama wants to raise taxes on families earning $250,000 to pay for cutting taxes for the 95 percent of workers and their families making less than $200,000. "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," he told Wurzelbacher.

McCain said that sounds "a lot like socialism" to many Americans. Palin has derided the Illinois senator as "Barack the Wealth Spreader."

But in Alaska, Palin is the envy of governors nationwide for the annual checks the state doles out to nearly every resident, representing their share of the revenues from the state's oil riches. She boosted those checks this year by raising taxes on oil.

McCain campaign spokesman Taylor Griffin said Thursday that spreading wealth through Obama's tax plan and doing it through Alaska's oil-profit distribution are not comparable because Alaska requires the state's resource wealth to be shared with residents, but it's not taxing personal income.

"It's how the revenue is shared between the oil companies and the state."

A look at Palin's and McCain's comments and the record in Alaska:

THE SPIN:

"Barack Obama calls it spreading the wealth. Joe Biden calls higher taxes patriotic," Palin told a crowd in Roswell, N.M., and elsewhere. "But Joe the Plumber and Ed the Dairyman, I believe they think it sounds more like socialism.

"Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism."

In Ohio, she asked, "Are there any Joe the Plumbers in the house?" To cheers, she said, "It doesn't sound like you're supporting Barack the Wealth Spreader."

McCain told a radio audience that Obama's plan "would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth at the direction of politicians in Washington."

"Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway."

THE FACTS:

In Alaska, residents pay no income tax or state sales tax. They receive a yearly dividend check from a $30 billion state investment account built largely from royalties on its oil. When home fuel and gas costs soared last year, Palin raised taxes on big oil and used some of the money to boost residents' checks by $1,200. Thus every eligible man, woman and child got a record $3,269 this fall.

She also suspended the 8-cent tax on gas.

"We can afford to share resource wealth with Alaskans and to temporarily suspend the state fuel tax," she said at the time.

Much as Obama explains his tax hike on the rich as a way to help people who are struggling, Palin's statement talked about the energy costs burdening Alaskans:

"While the unique fiscal circumstances the state finds itself in at the end of this fiscal year warrant a special one-time payment to share some of the state's wealth, the payment comes at a time when Alaskans are facing rising energy prices. High prices for oil are a double-edged sword for Alaskans. While public coffers fill, prices for heating fuel and gasoline have skyrocketed over the last six months and are now running into the $5- to $9-a-gallon range for heating fuel and gasoline across several areas of the state."

In an interview with The New Yorker last summer Palin explained that she would make demands of a new gas pipeline "to maximize benefits for Alaskans":

"And Alaska we're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

An 'Idiot Wind'

Note from Greetings: Has John McCain disavowed and condemned the acts of G. Gordon Liddy, his "friend" (in McCain's words), who suggested shooting government agents and bombing the Brookings Institute and who was sent to jail for subverting the Democratic Process in the 1960's? Has Sarah Palin condemned the Alaska Independent Party who want to secede from the U.S., and whose conference Palin addressed as recently as June of this year, saying "Keep up your good work"? (And to which her husband belonged.)

And has John McCain talked about the large sums of money he helped to give the same below-mentioned Rashid Kalidi? ????

And what about Governor Palin's church in Alaska, where she had hands "laid on her" to "drive away witches" by Pastor Muthee who persecuted women in Africa for being withches, much like our days in the Salem witch trials. Let's hope we do not return 4oo years in our history.

What IS a terrorist? If we go by McCain and Palin's own words (which I don't), then McCain and Palin fit the bill as well. By their own definition.

John McCain's latest attempt to link Barack Obama to extremism

Friday, October 31, 2008; A18, Washingtonpost.com Editorial

WITH THE presidential campaign clock ticking down, Sen. John McCain has suddenly discovered a new boogeyman to link to Sen. Barack Obama: a sometimes controversial but widely respected Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi. In the past couple of days, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have likened Mr. Khalidi, the director of a Middle East institute at Columbia University, to neo-Nazis; called him "a PLO spokesman"; and suggested that the Los Angeles Times is hiding something sinister by refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 dinner in honor of Mr. Khalidi at which Mr. Obama spoke. Mr. McCain even threw former Weatherman Bill Ayers into the mix, suggesting that the tape might reveal that Mr. Ayers -- a terrorist-turned-professor who also has been an Obama acquaintance -- was at the dinner.

For the record, Mr. Khalidi is an American born in New York who graduated from Yale a couple of years after George W. Bush. For much of his long academic career, he taught at the University of Chicago, where he and his wife became friends with Barack and Michelle Obama. In the early 1990s, he worked as an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at peace talks in Madrid and Washington sponsored by the first Bush administration. We don't agree with a lot of what Mr. Khalidi has had to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the years, and Mr. Obama has made clear that he doesn't, either. But to compare the professor to neo-Nazis -- or even to Mr. Ayers -- is a vile smear.

Perhaps unsurprising for a member of academia, Mr. Khalidi holds complex views. In an article published this year in the Nation magazine, he scathingly denounced Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and U.S. Middle East policy but also condemned Palestinians for failing to embrace a nonviolent strategy. He said that the two-state solution favored by the Bush administration (and Mr. Obama) was "deeply flawed" but conceded there were also "flaws in the alternatives." Listening to Mr. Khalidi can be challenging -- as Mr. Obama put it in the dinner toast recorded on the 2003 tape and reported by the Times in a detailed account of the event last April, he "offers constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases."

It's fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

Referendum on Trickle-Down

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, October 31, 2008; A19

SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. -- Emily Daywalt decided to go to the first political rally of her life because she wanted to cheer Sarah Palin, who was here a few days ago to inspire the faithful. Daywalt said she likes that Palin "hunts and that she believes in God and that she is a strong, independent woman."

But ask the 19-year-old from South Mountain, Pa., why she is voting against Barack Obama, and she homes right in on John McCain's closing argument. Obama, Daywalt said, "wants to spread the wealth," which she interprets as meaning that he'd "give it to people who don't do anything."

For all of the McCain campaign's relentless use of guilt-by-association techniques, the 2008 campaign is concluding on a remarkably substantive argument. It is a debate about what constitutes social fairness and whether a top-down or a bottom-up approach to economic growth will define the country's future.

Obama is often described as cautious, but he has been bold and unrelenting in his criticism of trickle-down economics and tax cuts concentrated on the wealthy. He used yesterday's negative numbers on economic growth to press his case against theories that conservatives have been touting for decades.

"The decline in our GDP didn't happen by accident," Obama said. "It is a direct result of the Bush administration's trickle-down, Wall Street-first, Main Street-last policies that John McCain has embraced for the last eight years."

Yes, economic populism is thriving right now, and if Obama wins, his election would not simply be a non-ideological verdict against the status quo. It would be a clear repudiation of conservative economic ideas and McCain's claim that a more egalitarian approach to growth constitutes "socialism." McCain's attacks on Obama's thinking have been so forceful and direct that they require this election to be seen as a referendum that will settle a long-running philosophical argument.

Obama has presented McCain with a problem. By endorsing tax cuts for Americans earning less than $200,000 a year -- i.e., the vast majority of taxpayers -- Obama has complicated the typical Republican claim that Democrats always support raising taxes.

Obama is candid in saying that he thinks the wealthy should pay more so that most Americans can pay less. He also thinks government can help vulnerable members of the middle class and the poor secure health care and go to college.

This has complicated McCain's effort to root his argument on taxes in middle-class self-interest, since Obama already has that covered. So McCain has actually had to defend giving large tax benefits to the wealthy and to business, and engage in a wholesale argument against any sort of redistribution.

McCain regularly charges that Obama wants to be the "redistributor in chief." Speaking at the rally here at Shippensburg University, Palin was forced to say this about Obama's support for a variety of tax credits aimed at helping the poor and middle class: "He says that he is for a tax credit, which is when government takes your money in order to give it away to someone else."

That is, of course, a mighty peculiar definition of tax credits. It is also an odd argument from a ticket that itself is committed to a research-and-development tax credit for corporations.

It's true that Obama favors "refundable" tax credits to help low-income workers, including some who may pay no income taxes but do pay many other taxes. McCain has argued that Obama's refundable tax credits amount to "welfare." That, too, is a strange claim, since McCain favors refundable credits as part of his health plan. But the whole idea is to convince voters such as Emily Daywalt that Obama really is just out to help those "who don't do anything."

And that is why Obama's 30-minute advertisement on Wednesday night was targeted directly to voters such as Daywalt, or at least to those like her who are still persuadable. It was Obama's tribute to the country's working people who seek nothing more than decent incomes, health care and a chance to see their children succeed. It was less a political ad than a documentary about the value of work and the responsibilities of family life.

For years, Republicans have argued that the way to help struggling working people is to give more money to the wealthy. Obama is saying that we should cut out the middleman and help working people directly. My hunch is that Obama's argument will prevail, and that conservatives will then work overtime to try to deny the judgment that the people have rendered.

postchat@aol.com

Will Mr. Burly vote for Obama?

The thought of replacing the Current Occupant with the Angry Old Man of the Desert and Whoopee the Ice Queen is miserable in the extreme.

By Garrison Keillor

Oct. 29, 2008 I was messing around in Tulsa, Okla., last week and got talking with a big burly man with a McCain-Palin pin on his blue blazer who told me he was descended from yellow-dog Democrats who thought the sun rose and set over FDR and Republicans were people who wore spats and top hats and sailed off Newport. So I told him that my Republican ancestors believed that only lazy people were unemployed in the '30s. He said, "So each of us is heading back to where the other one is coming from." He found that rather amusing. I said, "If that's so, I hope you're ready to be good and poor and endure some hard Minnesota winters."

"Poor, yes. Good, I'm not so sure about. Winter, no. No way."

He's proud of Tulsa, which survived the exodus of Big Oil and got into telecommunications and aeronautics, proud of its Art Deco buildings from the '20s, its art museums and ballet. "Outsiders hear Tulsa and they think Dust Bowl and Oral Roberts," he says, "but that's not who we are. This town is all about change."

I did not bother to tell him that change is exactly what the country is bursting to achieve in less than a week. Of course he knows all about it. Oklahoma seems safely red, but these days who knows? Obama looks more and more steadfast as the moment nears. The country longs for a president who can talk and think at the same time. We've been locked up with the Current Occupant for way too long and the thought of replacing him with the Angry Old Man of the Desert and Whoopee the Ice Queen is miserable in the extreme.

Most of my Republican friends are people who are not ashamed of having worked hard and done well in school, and their party's frantic appeal to anti-intellectualism is nothing they care to sign up for. Time to nip that sucker in the bud. The party needs to reform itself around some coherent philosophy of governance and vision of the future and for that, it must take a trip to the wilderness. They are quietly supporting the skinny guy this time around. They might tell a pollster otherwise but that's what they will do. Call it the Palin Effect.

Even Mr. Burly of Tulsa expressed sorrow over McCain's campaign, the jerkiness and desperation of it, and admiration for Barack's steadiness, his cool, his straightforward articulation and the old-fashioned story of his rise in the world. I thought about that the next day, flying to Philly and walking over to Independence Hall and riding the train to Lancaster through the little towns of old brick row houses, the red and golden trees, the trim farmyards and the fields of tan stubble, a state McCain has scrapped hard for even as he sank in the polls. I suppose he looks at that classic Rockwell landscape and those hardy German Lutheran faces and thinks those are his people and how can they possibly go for a Harvard Law graduate from the South Side of Chicago whose last name is Obama, for crying out loud?

They can and they will. Colin Powell was right when he called the guy a transformational candidate. We walk through the door and we close it behind us and the simplicity of it is dazzling. That's how it happens. You walk aboard a plane and glance into the cockpit and there's a woman in the left-hand seat, and who these days would even think this worthy of comment? You see Latino men and women moving up whose grandparents picked row crops for a living. In Tulsa, in 1921, there was a big race riot following the arrest of a young black man who was alleged to have touched a white woman on the arm. Fighting in the streets, neighborhoods torched, the National Guard called in -- and this story seems medieval to us, a dark age almost beyond our ken. That culture is gone, gone, gone, and on Tuesday we bury it by the simple democratic process of voting for the best man even though his father was African.

In America, a man is not held responsible for choosing his parents, only for his own life and conduct. This man promises to take us into a new era where we aren't defined by our differences, Short vs. Tall, Pale vs. Freckled, and can take a deep breath and do what's best for the country.

(Garrison Keillor is the author of a new Lake Wobegon novel, "Liberty," published by Viking.)

© 2008 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Measure Those Drapes: Our Presidential Candidates SHOULD Have Their Cabinets Selected

By now, both candidates should be deep into preparations for the responsibilities one of them is about to take on.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008; A16, Washington Post editorial

WE WRITE today in praise of drape-measuring. Early preparation for a presidential transition is essential to a successful launch of any presidency, and this transition will be more challenging -- more perilous -- than any in decades. It will be the first transfer of government since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, presenting America's enemies with a tempting moment of potential vulnerability. It arrives in the midst of a financial crisis and two wars. Any new president must scramble to produce a budget shortly after taking office; this president also will have to assume management of the $700 billion (and counting) financial bailout.

The candidates are understandably reluctant to discuss the transition for fear of appearing presumptuous. Indeed, Sen. John McCain has been deriding Sen. Barack Obama for "measuring the drapes" in the Oval Office. The fact of the matter, however, is that both candidates have engaged in transition planning, Mr. Obama in what appears to be a more systematic and detailed way than Mr. McCain. This is grounds for praise, not carping. As Clay Johnson, who launched George W. Bush's transition planning in spring 2000, wrote in a recent article for Public Administration Review, "It is irresponsible for anybody who could be president not to prepare to govern effectively from day one." Exhibit A in how not to handle the transition is Bill Clinton, whose dawdling on filling his Cabinet and naming his White House staff contributed to the early stumbles of his presidency.

Mr. Johnson and other transition experts believe the new president should announce his chief of staff within a few days of the election and, by Thanksgiving, name his key White House, economic, national security and foreign policy officials. That will be a daunting task; no recent president-elect has followed so ambitious a timetable. As Patricia McGinnis of the Council for Excellence in Government testified last month, of the 400 Cabinet and sub-Cabinet positions that require Senate confirmation, "No more than 25 . . . have ever been confirmed within three months of any new Administration and only half within six months." Having Cabinet secretaries in place does not help much if they are home alone at their departments without confirmed deputies to assist them.

There are grounds for hope that the process will be speedier this time. A 2004 law gives candidates the opportunity to submit the names of transition planners for quick security clearances, "completed by the day after the election, to the extent practicable." In addition, the president-elect may submit, the day after the election, "the names of prospective nominees for high-level security positions for the cabinet and sub-cabinet." The Bush administration appears committed to assisting in a smooth transition at a difficult time; President Bush recently signed an executive order creating a Presidential Transition Coordinating Council to oversee the handoff.

The Senate has a responsibility to act swiftly and without partisan considerations. The Sept. 11 commission recommended that it change its rules to require a vote to confirm or reject national security nominees within 30 days of their nomination at the start of a new administration; lawmakers chose not to adopt that recommendation, but they should live up to its spirit in dealing with economic as well as national security positions. A report by the Congressional Research Service found that the longest lag, however, has involved getting nominations to the Senate in the first place; of 31 positions in the Bush administration that would have been subject to the 30-day deadline, 22 were confirmed within that span, four were holdovers from the Clinton administration and just five took longer than the allotted time. Yet it took an average of 65 days for Mr. Bush to submit his nominations, and even longer, 90 days, for Mr. Clinton. Getting background checks done quickly is critical. But the country will be better off if the winner of next week's election has a firm idea now of whom he would like in key positions.

In Defense of White Americans

by Frank Rich, NY Times

IT seems like a century ago now, but it was only in 2005 that a National Journal poll of Beltway insiders predicted that George Allen, then a popular Virginia senator, would be the next G.O.P. nominee for president. George who? Allen is now remembered, if at all, as a punch line. But any post-mortem of the Great Republican Collapse of 2008 must circle back to the not-so-funny thing that happened on his way to the White House.

That would be in 2006, when he capsized his own shoo-in re-election race by calling a 20-year-old Indian-American “macaca” before a white audience (and a video camera). “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen told the young Democratic campaign worker for good measure, in a precise preview of the playbook that has led John McCain and Sarah Palin to their tawdry nadir two years later.

It wasn’t just Allen’s lame racial joke or his cluelessness about 21st-century media like YouTube that made him a harbinger of the current G.O.P. fiasco. It was most of all the national vision he set forth: There are Real Americans, and there are the Others.

The Real are the small-town white folks Allen was addressing in southwestern Virginia. The Others — and their subversive fellow travelers, the Elites — are Americans like the young man who Allen maligned: a high-achieving son of immigrant parents who was born and raised in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs during its technology boom. (Allen, the self-appointed keeper of real Virginia, grew up in California.)

Cut to 2008. You’d think that this incident would be a cautionary tale, but the McCain campaign instead embraced Allen as a role model, with Palin’s odes to “real” and “pro-America” America leading the charge. The farcical apotheosis of this strategy arrived last weekend, again on camera and again in Virginia, when a McCain adviser, Nancy Pfotenhauer, revived Allen’s original script, literally, during an interview on MSNBC.

After dismissing the Northern Virginia suburbs, she asserted that the “real Virginia” — the part of the state “more Southern in nature” — will prove “very responsive” to the McCain message. All Pfotenhauer left out was “macaca,” but with McCain calling Barack Obama’s tax plan “welfare” and campaign surrogates (including the robo-calling Rudy Giuliani) linking the Democrat to violent, Willie Horton-like criminality, that would have been redundant.

We don’t know yet if McCain will go the way of Allen in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1964, when L.B.J. vanquished another Arizona Republican in a landslide. But we do know that Obama swept like a conquering hero through Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, last week and that he leads in every recent Virginia poll.

There are at least two larger national lessons to be learned from what is likely to be the last gasp of Allen-McCain-Palin politics in 2008. The first, and easy one, is that Republican leaders have no idea what “real America” is. In the eight years since the first Bush-Cheney convention pledged inclusiveness and showcased Colin Powell as its opening-night speaker, the G.O.P. has terminally alienated black Americans (Powell himself now included), immigrant Americans (including the Hispanics who once gave Bush-Cheney as much as 44 percent of their votes) and the extended families of gay Americans (Palin has now revived a constitutional crusade against same-sex marriage). Subtract all those players from the actual America, and you don’t have enough of a bench to field a junior varsity volleyball team, let alone a serious campaign for the Electoral College.

But the other, less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.

That includes acknowledging that the so-called liberal media, among their other failures this year, have helped ratchet up this election cycle’s prevailing antiwhite bias. Ever since Obama declared his candidacy, the press’s default setting has been to ominously intone that “in the privacy of the voting booth” ignorant, backward whites will never vote for a black man.

A leading vehicle for this journalistic mind-set has been the unending obsession with “the Bradley effect” — as if nothing has changed in America since 1982, when some polls (possibly for reasons having nothing to do with race) predicted erroneously that a black candidate, Tom Bradley, would win the California governorship. In 2008, there is, if anything, more evidence of a reverse Bradley effect — Obama’s primary vote totals more often exceeded those in the final polls than not — but poor old Bradley keeps being flogged anyway.

So do all those deer hunters in western Pennsylvania. Once Hillary Clinton whipped Obama in the Rust Belt, it’s been a bloviation staple (echoing the Clinton camp’s line) that a black guy is doomed among Reagan Democrats, Joe Sixpacks, rednecks, Joe the Plumbers or whichever condescending term you want to choose. (Clinton at one low point settled on “hard-working Americans, white Americans.”) Michigan in particular was repeatedly said to be slipping out of the Democrats’ reach because of incorrigible racism — until McCain abandoned it as hopeless this month in the face of a double-digit Obama lead.

The constant tide of anthropological articles and television reports set in blue-collar diners, bars and bowling alleys have hyped this racial theory of the race. So did the rampant misreading of primary-season exit polls. On cable TV and the Sunday network shows, there was endless chewing over the internal numbers in the Clinton victories. It was doomsday news for Obama, for instance, that some 12 percent of white Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania said race was a factor in their choice and three-quarters of them voted for Clinton. Ipso facto — and despite the absence of any credible empirical evidence — these Clinton voters would either stay home or flock to McCain in November.

The McCain campaign is so dumb that it bought into the press’s confirmation of its own prejudices. Even though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 1.2 million in Pennsylvania (more than double the 2004 gap), even though Obama leads by double digits in almost every recent Pennsylvania poll and even though no national Republican ticket has won there since 1988, McCain started pouring his dwindling resources into the state this month. When the Democratic Representative John Murtha described his own western Pennsylvania district as a “racist area,” McCain feigned outrage and put down even more chips on the race card, calling the region the “most patriotic, most God-loving” part of America.

Well, there are racists in western Pennsylvania, as there are in most pockets of our country. But despite the months-long drumbeat of punditry to the contrary, there are not and have never been enough racists in 2008 to flip this election. In the latest New York Times/CBS News and Pew national polls, Obama is now pulling even with McCain among white men, a feat accomplished by no Democratic presidential candidate in three decades, Bill Clinton included. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finds age doing more damage to McCain than race to Obama.

Nor is America’s remaining racism all that it once was, or that the McCain camp has been hoping for it to be. There are even “racists for Obama,” as Politico labels the phenomenon: White Americans whose distrust of black people in general crumbles when they actually get to know specific black people, including a presidential candidate who extends a genuine helping hand in a time of national crisis.

The original “racist for Obama,” after all, was none other than Obama’s own white, Kansas-raised grandmother, the gravely ill Madelyn Dunham, whom he visited in Hawaii on Friday. In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama wrote of how shaken he was when he learned of her overwhelming fear of black men on the street. But he weighed that reality against his unshakeable love for her and hers for him, and he got past it.

When Obama cited her in his speech on race last spring, the right immediately accused him of “throwing his grandmother under the bus.” But Obama’s critics were merely projecting their own racial hang-ups. He still loves his grandmother. He was merely speaking candidly and generously — like an adult — about the strange, complex and ever-changing racial dynamics of America. He hit a chord because many of us have had white relatives of our own like his, and we, too, see them in full and often love them anyway.

Such human nuances are lost on conservative warriors of the Allen-McCain-Palin ilk. They see all Americans as only white or black, as either us or them. The dirty little secret of such divisive politicians has always been that their rage toward the Others is exceeded only by their cynical conviction that Real Americans are a benighted bunch of easily manipulated bigots. This seems to be the election year when voters in most of our myriad Americas are figuring that out.

A Makeover With an Ugly Gloss

By MAUREEN DOWD

McCain advisers have been scathing about the “sexism” of critics who dismiss Sarah Palin as Caribou Barbie.

How odd then, to learn that McCain advisers have been treating their own vice presidential candidate like Valentino Barbie, dressing her up in fancy clothes and endlessly playing with her hair.

In 1991, with Americans fretting about a shaky economy, Poppy Bush visited a J. C. Penney and bought $28 worth of tube socks and a toddler’s sweat suit in a desperate effort to seem in touch with the common folk. Palin might have followed that example and popped into Penney’s to buy some new American-made duds. She is so naturally good-looking, there is no need to gild the Last Frontier lily.

Instead, with the economy cratering and the McCain campaign running on an “average Joe” theme, dunderheaded aides, led by the former Bushies Nicolle Wallace and Tracey Schmitt, costumed their Eliza Doolittle for a ball when she should have been dressing for a bailout.

The Republicans’ attempt to make the case that Barack Obama is hoity-toity and they’re hoi polloi has fallen under the sheer weight of the stunning numbers:

The McCains own 13 cars, eight homes and access to a corporate jet, and Cindy had her Marie Antoinette moment at the convention. Vanity Fair calculated that her outfit cost $300,000, with three-carat diamond earrings worth $280,000, an Oscar de la Renta dress valued at $3,000, a Chanel white ceramic watch clocking in at $4,500 and a four-strand pearl necklace worth between $11,000 and $25,000. While presenting herself as an I’m-just-like-you hockey mom frugal enough to put the Alaska state plane up for sale on eBay, Palin made her big speech at the convention wearing a $2,500 cream silk Valentino jacket that the McCain staff had gotten her at Saks.

At that point, Palin should have been savvy enough to tell those doing her makeover that she was a Wal-Mart mom. The sartorial upgrade was bound to turn into a strategy downgrade, as Palin pressed her case as a homespun gal who was ever so much more American than the elite, foreignish Obama, while she was gussied up in Italian couture.

Politico broke the news that the Republican National Committee spent over $150,000 on a “Pretty Woman”-style shopping spree for Palin, including about $75,000 at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis and nearly $50,000 at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York and St. Louis.

Palin advisers did their best to spin the fashion explosion during the economic implosion, telling The Times that she needed new outfits to match the climate changes across 50 states.

Republicans once more charged the media with sexism for reporting on Palin’s Imelda Marcos closet. “No one would blink if this was a male candidate buying Brooks Brothers suits,” said William F. B. O’Reilly, a G.O.P. consultant.

It doesn’t wash to cry sexism now any more than it did at the beginning, when the campaign tried to use that dodge to divert attention from Palin’s lacunae in the sort of knowledge you need to run the world. The press has written plenty about the vanities and extravagances of male candidates. (See: Haircuts, John Edwards and Bill Clinton.) Sexism would be to treat Palin differently, or more delicately, than one of the guys.

The governor who spent all her time talking about how she had cleaned up excesses in Alaska, and would do the same in Washington, also went over the top on hair and makeup. As a former beauty pageant contestant and sports anchor on TV, Palin already seemed on top of her grooming before the McCain campaign made her traveling makeup artist, Amy Strozzi, the highest-paid individual on the campaign for the first two weeks of October. Ms. Strozzi, who earned an Emmy nomination for her war paint skills on the TV show “So You Think You Can Dance,” made $22,800 for the first half of this month.

Governor Palin, who used to get her hair done at the Beehive in Wasilla and shop at an Anchorage consignment shop called Out of the Closet, paid her traveling hairstylist — recommended by Cindy McCain — $10,000 for the first half of October.

In The New York Times Magazine today, Robert Draper reveals that the campaign also hired a former New York stage and screen actress, Priscilla Shanks, to be her voice coach for the convention. The expense was listed in finance reports as Operating Expenditures and Get-Out-The-Vote consulting. Apparently getting out the vote includes teaching a potential vice president the correct way to pronounce “nuclear.”

The conservative big shots who have not deserted Palin and still think she can be Reagan in a Valentino skirt are furious at those who have mishandled the governor and dimmed her star power. They mourn that she may have to wait now until 2016 to get rid of the phony stench of designer populism.

Makeovers are every woman’s dream. But this makeover has simply pushed back Palin’s dream of being president.

A tale of two faces - McCain Campaign's Fake Hate Crimes while Perpurtrating their own real ones

Update from Greetings: Sunday, October 26
I thought that the Salon article pointed out the distinct issue with those on the far right so ready to use racism to divide the country; with the McCain campaign ready to jump on a false story generated to cause more fear of other races; and with the quiet, steady-handed work of the Pittsburgh police that put truth at the forefront, thus casting light on those who tried to act scurrilously.

I noted the quote from Fox News VP in the article who, while saying that if this were a hoax, it should be the end of John McCain's campaign, his point was that it should cause those who support Obama to rethink that support. My first thought was, if it did happen, I hope they find the person and I hope this woman is alright. My second thought was, "why should it cause anyone to rethink support for Obama?" Although, certainly, I have rethought my support of McCain and Palin because their supporters were shouting such outrageous statements as "Terrorist" and "Kill him" of a U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate who has served honorably, and who might be our future President. This, while, Palin and McCain continued to whip these marginal personalities into a murderous frenzy... personally.

So today I looked up the Fox News (Faux News) website, and thought, "OK... Moody should be talking about what he said... this should be the end of McCain's campaign." But to my feigned surprise, there was no such statement from Moody or Fox.. and there was absolutely no coverage.. even followup coverage. .. of this very dangerous, racist hoax on the part of a McCain supporter.. a hoax which was amplified by McCain's campaign, by Faux News, Drudge, and others. Only reports of "Palin attacks Obama " and other such headlines.

Whoops. We might actually have to do what we said we'd do? Act responsibly? Decry racism in America and race baiting on behalf of one of the candidates?... nahhhhhh

Saturday October 25, 2008 23:29 EDT Salon.com

I was attending the fascinating WebbyConnect conference for a few days, and the campaign got deeply weird while I was gone. Catching up on television Friday I found myself transfixed by wall-to-wall coverage of two female faces suddenly at the center of this presidential race --the expensively made-up visage of Sarah Palin and the sad self-mutilated face of Ashley Todd, the disturbed McCain volunteer in Pennsylvania who claimed she was sexually assaulted by an Obama supporter. In a two-day news environment that was supposed to be a big opportunity for John McCain -- Barack Obama was off the trail with his ailing grandmother --McCain instead faced critical coverage of the shocking sums Palin spent for clothes, hair and makeup, as well as his campaign's role in advancing what turned out to be the totally false tale of a white woman abused by a black male Obama backer.

Should either of these stories be big news? Of course both are a distraction from the big issues of the campaign -- the economy, the environment, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I think the strange controversies over these two women matter because they reveal a corruption at the heart of the McCain campaign. The huge sum spent perfecting the already beautiful Palin for the cameras is the less disturbing of the two stories, but I would disagree with some of my Broadsheet colleagues: I think it's a valid topic for reporting, analysis and criticism. It shows the insanely screwy priorities of the McCain campaign.

Sarah Palin didn't need the best clothing and stylists money could buy; she needed tutoring and coaching on the issues. (She also needed more vetting in August, and what she really needed was to stay as the governor of Alaska, but we won't go there.) Then there's the class hypocrisy -- the so-called Wal-Mart mom shopping at Neiman Marcus, spending more on clothes in a few days than most women spend in their adult lifetimes. The fact that the highest paid staffer on the troubled McCain team this month is Palin's makeup person is also ludicrous; you can't make this stuff up. But it proves that the campaign values Palin primarily for her star power. Robert Draper's incredible article in the New York Times Magazine makes the cynical emphasis on artifice clearer, and more damaging to the campaign.

The Ashley Todd hoax is much more disturbing, of course -- and what's worst about it is the role of the McCain campaign and conservative media in validating it. A local McCain communications staffer gave out details of the alleged attack that hadn't been confirmed by police. Both McCain and Palin called to console this lone staffer, again before the details of the attack could be confirmed, increasing its news value. Matt Drudge , of course, hyped the story hard. Fox News V.P. John Moody said the attack could lead some voters to "revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee." (Moody also said that "if the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting." We'll be watching for a Fox "Breaking News " alert declaring the McCain campaign officially "over," now that the hoax has been revealed.) Andrew Sullivan rounded up the conservatives who breathlessly advanced the story here.

Why were so many people on the right so ready to believe such a disturbing tale based on so little evidence? Was the story of a violent 6-foot-4-inch black man -- how tall is Obama? --punishing a white female McCain voter too good not to be true? It's hard not to see the troubled Ashley Todd's story, and its reception on the right, as a result of the climate of fear and demonization that McCain and Palin clearly believe is their only hope to win Nov. 4. Todd needs help, but McCain and Palin need to be criticized for helping to advance this story before the facts were in. It's really one of the most despicable things this awful team has done in a pretty lowlife campaign. There's no doubt in my mind that the anti-Obama slurs ("pallin' around with terrorists") that have come from Sarah Palin's lovely and expensively lacquered mouth helped create a climate that leads a disturbed person like Todd to her drama of victimization.

But while these strangely disturbing female faces -- one gussied up with the best makeup money can buy, the other tough to look at, mutilated by self-hate -- visually dominated the news Friday, a parade of male Republicans endorsing Obama this week was the real story. Charles Fried, Scott McClellan, William Weld, Arne Carlson and of course Colin Powell last Sunday -- each laid out a devastating case for why they had to abandon their party, and most of them focused on McCain's irresponsible pick of Palin as a major factor in their decision. Christopher Hitchens likewise came out for Obama, calling McCain "borderline senile" on "Hardball" Friday. The news was weird this week, but still, it's all bad for McCain-Palin.




-- Joan Walsh

Wassup???? Change

SNL's Ferrell as George Bush "When You Think of McCain (and Palin) Think of Me"

Understanding Real America in Wasilla

After a few days in Wasilla, Jason Jones understands what real America is all about.

As Andrew Sullivan noted on his blog: Why does it take a fake journalist to find out the truth about Sarah Palin and Wasilla? Where is the rest of the Media on this?

Sorry, I Can’t Find Your Name - the Republican Party's Attempt at Voter Purges

I'm posting this before the editorial... a line FROM the editorial. If you find your name has been wrongfully purged from the voter rolls on election day, or that someone is trying to keep you from voting, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Do not let anyone steal your vote or this election. These sorts of practices are NOT America. America is a country where all are encouraged to vote, and where your vote is sacred. It is third world countries, dictatorships, communist dictatorships, and other such places that deny their citizens the right to vote. I hope the Republican Party understands this and the future backlash these purges will incur... backlashes that may be more than they can control in the future.

Compete honorably, and win or lose like a champion. But do not change the rights this country was founded on.

NY TIMES EDITORIAL

Before Mississippi’s March presidential primary, one county election official improperly removed more than 8,000 voters from the eligible-voter rolls, including a Republican Congressional candidate. Fortunately, the secretary of state’s office learned of the purge in time and restored the voters.

It’s disturbing that a single official (who acted after mailings to voters were returned) could come so close to disenfranchising thousands of voters. But voting rolls, which are maintained by local election officials, are one of the weakest links in American democracy and problems are growing.

Some of these problems are no doubt the result of honest mistakes, but in far too many cases they appear to be driven by partisanship. While there are almost no examples in recent memory of serious fraud at the polls, Republicans have been pressing for sweeping voter purges in many states. They have also fought to make it harder to enroll new voters. Voting experts say there could be serious problems at the polls on Nov. 4.

When voters die or move to a new address, or when duplicate registrations are found, a purge is necessary to uphold the integrity of the rolls. New registrations must also be properly screened so only eligible voters get added. The trouble is that these tasks generally occur in secret, with no chance for voters or their advocates to observe or protest when mistakes are made.

A number of states — including the battleground state of Florida — have adopted no match, no vote rules. Voters can be removed from the rolls if their names do not match a second list, such as a Social Security or driver’s license database. But (like the U.S. mail) lists of this kind are notoriously mistake-filled, and one typo can cause a no match. In Ohio, Republicans recently sued the secretary of state, demanding that she provide local officials with a dubious match list. As many as 200,000 new voters could have been blocked from casting ballots. The Supreme Court rejected the suit, but Republicans are still looking for ways to use the list on Election Day.

Congress and the states need to develop clear and accurate rules for purges and new-voter verification that ensure that eligible voters remain on the rolls — and make it much harder for partisans to game the system. These rules should be public, and voters who are disqualified should be notified and given ample time before Election Day to reverse the decision.

For this election, voters need to be prepared to fight for their right to cast a ballot. They should try to confirm before Nov. 4 that they are on the rolls — something that in many states can be done on a secretary of state or board of elections Web site. If their state permits it, they should vote early. Any voter who finds that their name has disappeared from the rolls will then have time to challenge mistakes.

If voters find on Election Day that their names are not on the rolls, they should contact a voters’ rights group like Election Protection, at 1-866-OUR-VOTE, or a political campaign, which can advocate for them. They should not, except as a last resort, cast a provisional ballot, since it is less likely to be counted.

There is a desperate need for reform of the way voting rolls are kept. Until then, election officials, voting rights advocates and voters must do everything they can to ensure that all eligible voters are allowed to vote.

Confessions of a Phone Solicitor

By GAIL COLLINS

Word comes from Madison, Wis., that a telemarketer named Ted Zoromski quit his job this week over John McCain’s message.

Zoromski was prepared to interrupt people during their dinner hours to encourage them to vote Republican. But when he got the script saying “you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans,” he packed it in.

“Even though I was paid to do it, I didn’t feel comfortable,” Zoromski told WKOW-TV.

This story, relayed via Mike Allen on Politico.com, struck me because I once worked as a telemarketer, and it is an occupation so soul-numbing that it is hard to imagine that anything could make it worse. I woke up people on the overnight shift who had just managed to fall asleep for the first time in six days. Sometimes, when there was clearly nobody at home, I would just let the phone ring and ring in order to avoid having to call anybody else. Once after about 30 rings, I heard the breathless voice of a man who had climbed down off the roof in hopes that this was the critical business call he had been waiting for all year, the one that was going to change his life forever. Imagine his joy when he discovered that it was, instead, an exciting opportunity to purchase an entire packet of portrait photographs of his loved ones at a special discount price.

So truly, if you can come up with something that would send a telemarketer over the edge, you have really overachieved on the offensiveness front.

For a while, John McCain and Sarah Palin were so over-the-top about Barack Obama that people in the crowds started yelling death threats — sometimes while simultaneously begging McCain to “take the gloves off.” The idea of what they were hoping to see in a post-glove era scared everybody so much that the campaign tamped things down.

Opening for a McCain rally in North Carolina last weekend, Representative Robin Hayes said he wanted “to keep the crowd as respectful as possible.”

In order to pursue that goal as efficiently as possible, Hayes then announced that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” This was an especially unfortunate turn of phrase given the fact that he had begun his remarks by saying he wanted to “make sure we don’t say something stupid.”

All this was a direct outgrowth of Sarah Palin’s own comments in North Carolina, in which she praised the “pro-America” areas of the country. But Hayes had clearly been absent for the day in scurrilous campaign school when they explain that you aren’t supposed to specifically name the anti-American parts.

Meanwhile, over on MSNBC, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was launching into the Obama/terrorist spin when she suggested that the news media should investigate “the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America.” So far, the only person who’s felt the impact of her call to reinvent McCarthyism for a post-Communist planet has been her opponent, a hitherto totally ignored Democrat named Elwyn Tinklenberg, who was stunned to discover in the following days that he had received close to $1 million in donations.

When reporters first began covering political speeches in the 19th century, politicians were so appalled at the idea that somebody planned to write down what they said that they would stop speaking if a reporter showed up along the campaign route. Today, in the post-macaca era, you’d figure that politicians would be so sensitive to the perpetual presence of recording devices that they’d censor their comments even while muttering to themselves when taking a shower. Not to mention comments made right after they have been made up, offered coffee in the MSNBC green room, had a technician install three different recording devices under their clothing and given a seat in front of a large camera.

But the tone of this campaign has given some of the Republican faithful, even those who are members of Congress, the impression that questioning the patriotism of large groups of the population is now O.K.

Right now, all the polls predict that in less than two weeks, Barack Obama is going to be elected president. The McCain campaign disputes this. Large numbers of Obama supporters are also in doubt, possibly because they keep getting e-mails from their relatives in Toledo revealing that Obama has gone to Hawaii not to visit his ailing grandmother, but to destroy evidence that he is not actually an American citizen.

For John McCain, the best question now is not whether he’s going to lose, but what kind of a country he’d wind up with if he won after a campaign even a telemarketer can’t love.

Palin Apologizes for 'Real America' Comments

From Greetings: So, as they say they can 'reach across the aisle', the Republicans, especially McCain and Palin, continue to try to divide America into "two Americas"... their supporters... and everyone else who they deem "unpatriotic". I refer to one of Palin's debate comments. "Say it ain't so, Joe! (McCarthy)"

Two Congressmen Face Backlash After Their Own Remarks Questioning Others' Patriotism

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 22, 2008; A04

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin apologized yesterday for implying that some parts of the country are more American than others, even as similar comments by two Republican congressmen were causing a backlash that threatened their chances for reelection.

In an interview on CNN, Palin said comments she made last week in North Carolina praising small towns as "the real America" and the "pro-America areas of this great nation" were not intended to suggest that other parts of the country are less patriotic or less American.

"If that's the way it has come across, I apologize," she told CNN's Drew Griffin.

In Minnesota, little-known Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg announced yesterday that he has raised $1 million over the past four days for his House campaign, after Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann questioned Sen. Barack Obama's patriotism and recommended that the news media investigate whether other members of Congress are "pro-America" or "anti-America."

The money began flooding in from across the country after Bachmann made the comments in a seven-minute appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball" on Friday. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?" she told host Chris Matthews.

The backlash from Bachmann's remarks gave Tinklenberg enough donations to quadruple his television advertising, prompted the nonpartisan Cook Political Report to flip its take on the race from "likely Republican" to "tossup" and inspired a Republican who lost to Bachmann in the party's primary to launch a write-in campaign.

Republican Rep. Robin Hayes, who is locked in a closely contested House race in North Carolina, has also been criticized after telling a crowd Saturday that "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Hayes initially denied making the remarks, but he was forced to acknowledge them after an audiotape of the speech surfaced.

"I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way," Hayes said in a statement released by his campaign. "I actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible, so this is definitely not what I intended."

Hayes had spoken at a campaign rally in Concord, N.C., where Sen. John McCain appeared. The 10-year congressman told the crowd he wanted to "make sure we don't say something stupid, make sure we don't say something we don't mean."

He then went on to praise Palin. "Folks, there's a great American," Hayes said. "Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God."

A spokesman for Hayes's challenger, Democrat Larry Kissell, said the Republican's remarks revealed how he truly feels. "Mr. Hayes often talks about being able to reach across the aisle and not be limited by party loyalty," said Thomas Thacker, Kissell's spokesman. "This indicates his hypocrisy knows no bounds."

Kissell is making his second run at Hayes after coming within 329 votes of unseating the veteran lawmaker in 2006. This time, Kissell is better funded, as the national Democratic Party is putting more than $1 million into his race.

The party is also spending heavily to help Tinklenberg unseat Bachmann, who was expected to cruise to victory before her comments.

"This is quite phenomenal," said John Wodele, a spokesman for Tinklenberg. "We were doing fine, we had a good campaign going. But this has got us in a position we never thought we'd be in."

More than 17,000 individual donors sent money to Tinklenberg in the days after Bachmann's television appearance.

"Almost instantly, the first contributions came in, before I could get on the phone and talk to the campaign manager and the candidate to think about what our reaction was going to be," Wodele said. "Then I just realized we didn't need to discuss it because it was going on its own. It was happening, and it was coming in from around the country."

Michelle Marston, Bachmann's spokeswoman, said the campaign has benefited from the controversy surrounding the congresswoman's "Hardball" appearance and it too has received additional contributions, though she would not say how much.

In fact, Mike Gula and Associates, a Capitol Hill fundraising and consulting firm, has sent an e-mail seeking donations to her campaign with the subject line "Bachmann HELP -- Under Fire."

McCain's American Idol Make-Up Artist Makes Big Bucks

Note from Greetings: Now who is the REAL elitist? 7 homes.. and $8500/month makeup bill from the makeup artist for American Idol. (Sort of dwarfs that "$300 elitist haircut of John Edwards, now, doesn't it?") So here's the real "celebrity" with American Idol's makeup artist at his beck and call... and just why does he need all that makeup?

By Marianne Akers, The Washington Post
American Idol make-up artist Tifanie White has found some high profile work while the show is on break. (Altaffer/AP)

Remember last month when Republican presidential nominee John McCain got made up by the American Idol make-up artist?

Well, it wasn't a one-shot deal. The make-up artist to the wannabe-stars is getting paid beaucoup bucks to make McCain, 72, more telegenic.

Tifanie White, who reportedly has done makeup for the shows "So You Think You Can Dance" and "American Idol," was paid a total of $8,672.55 in September by the McCain-Palin campaign, according to the campaign's latest monthly financial report filed this week with the Federal Election Commission. She was paid $5,583.43 the previous month, records show.

We asked McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers whether McCain was happy with the American Idol make-up artist's work, and whether Ms. White also does makeup for McCain's naturally telegenic vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin. Rogers replied via email, "No comment."

We refrained from asking whether McCain might have a future on "American Idol" if things don't break his way two weeks from today on Election Day. But at least he has an in if he so chooses.

Who's Behind Those Ugly Robocalls from the Republican Party? Freedom's Watch

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro and Mark Murray
The donors who are financing the new multi-million-dollar TV ad campaign arguing against a withdrawal from Iraq include a Who's Who of former Bush Administration ambassadors (to plum assignments like France, Italy, and Malta); a least one of Bush's original Pioneers; the man ranked by Forbes (in 2006) as the third-richest American; and, of course, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

Brad Blakeman, the president of Freedom's Watch, which is running these ads, released the following names as donors to his group. Blakeman told NBC that the rest of the donors are choosing to be anonymous. Freedom's Watch is a 501(c)4 organization, which can collect unlimited contributions and doesn't have to disclose its donors.

Here they are....

-- Anthony Gioia, former ambassador to Malta. Per a White House press release announcing his appointment as ambassador, "Gioia is presently the Chairman and CEO of Gioia Management Company, a management and investment holding company located in Buffalo, New York."

-- Kevin Moley, whom Bush appointed U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva in September 2001. Per the White House press release announcing his appointment, Moley "was a private investor and served on the Board of Directors of five publicly held companies and three privately held companies. He previously served as a consultant to Kinetra LLC, the successor company to Integrated Medical Systems Inc., which Ambassador Moley served as President and CEO. Ambassador Moley was also Senior Vice President of PCS Health Systems, Inc."

-- Mel Sembler, whom Bush appointed as US ambassador to Italy in 2001. According to a State Department bio, Stembler was "most recently the Chairman of the Board of The Sembler Company, one of the nation's leading shopping center developers. He is nationally recognized as an activist in the anti-drug campaign and as a staunch, long-time supporter of the Republican Party and its candidates."

-- Howard Leach, who was Bush's ambassador to France from 2001-2005 and an original Bush Pioneer. Per the US embassy's Web site, Leach is "an entrepreneur, investor and chief executive. He began his career as founder and president of several agri-business corporations. He has served as president and major shareholder of numerous industrial and financial companies."

-- Dr. John Templeton is chairman and president of the John Templeton Foundation

-- Edward Snider

-- Sheldon Adelson, casino mogul, ranked as the third-richest American (worth $20 billion) according to Forbes in 2006

-- Richard Fox

-- Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary

-- Gary Erlbaum

-- Matt Brooks

FROM WIKIPEDIA

Origins

Freedom's Watch has tight connections to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the American Enterprise Institute.^[3] The group was conceived at a Florida meeting of the RJC in March 2007 ^[4][5] in part to counter MoveOn.org and help the Bush administration sell its Iraq policy.^[3] It was founded by a dozen conservatives of immense wealth,^[4] most notably Sheldon Adelson, who donated almost all of its initial funding.^[6] Four out of five members of Freedom's Watch original board are Republican Jews, and four of the eight initial donors are Jewish, though board member Matt Brooks said "it would be a mistake to regard the group as having a Jewish direction," and noted that "half of the donors contributing to the group's first $15 million ad campaign are not Jewish."^{[7] [8]}

In 2008, the group became paralyzed by internal problems and plagued by gridlock and infighting, with operatives complaining of Adelson's insistence on parceling out money project by project limiting the group's ability to plan and be nimble.^[6] For example, the group spent weeks working on a package for the presidential election, only for Adelson to decline to fund it.^[6] Some staff members blamed the problems on Freedom's Watch president Bradley Blakeman, who resigned in March 2008.^[6]

Positions

Freedom's Watch believes that President Bush's Iraq War policies should be supported. "More and more Democratic and Republican members agree: The surge in Iraq is working," according to one ad. "Victory is America's only choice."^[9] The group also claims that Iran is a grave threat to the United States and Israel. According to the group's president, "If Hitler's warnings were heeded when he wrote 'Mein Kampf,' he could have been stopped." Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he continues, "is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region — he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel." One ad calls Ahmadenijad "a terrorist."^[4]

Board

• Ari Fleischer,^[7][10] a former Bush press secretary.
• Matthew Brooks,^[7][10] executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).
• Mel Sembler,^[7][10] a longtime RJC leader and former ambassador to Italy who helped finance the 2000 Florida recount battle.
• William Weidner,^[7][10] a Las Vegas casino operator.

The original president was Bradley Blakeman, though he resigned in March 2008 after a series of high-level staff departures. ^[11]

Notable donors

Freedom's Watch's donors include:^[12]

• Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corporation and the fifteenth richest American in Forbes magazine's rankings last year, is the top donor.^[6][3]
• Mel Sembler
• John Templeton, Jr, board member of the Templeton Growth Fund and financier of Let Freedom Ring.
• Kevin E. Moley, former U.S. ambassador to international organizations in Geneva, and a senior adviser to Dick Cheney during the 2000 campaign.
• Howard Leach, CEO of Leach Capital and former ambassador to France who also helped fund the Florida recount.
• Anthony Gioia, head of Gioia Management and former ambassador to Malta.
• Richard Fox, co-founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
• Gary Erlbaum, owner of Greentree Properties.
• Ed Snyder, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers and 76'ers