Category: 2008 election

The Big Lie: Secret Service: No one yelled “kill him!” at McCain-Palin rally.

From the Times Leader:

The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.

The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on its Web site Tuesday and then again in its print edition Wednesday. The first story, written by reporter David Singleton, appeared with allegations that while congressional candidate Chris Hackett was addressing the crowd and mentioned Oabama’s name a man in the audience shouted “kill him.”

News organizations including ABC, The Associated Press, The Washington Monthly and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann reported the claim, with most attributing the allegations to the Times-Tribune story.

Agent Bill Slavoski said he was in the audience, along with an undisclosed number of additional secret service agents and other law enforcement officers and not one heard the comment.

“I was baffled,” he said after reading the report in Wednesday’s Times-Tribune.

He said the agency conducted an investigation Wednesday, after seeing the story, and could not find one person to corroborate the allegation other than Singleton.

Slavoski said more than 20 non-security agents were interviewed Wednesday, from news media to ordinary citizens in attendance at the rally for the Republican vice presidential candidate held at the Riverfront Sports Complex. He said Singleton was the only one to say he heard someone yell “kill him.”

H/t: Michelle Malkin

The Final Debate (thank God!): Live hate-blogging at 8:45 p.m.

Top post until after the debate. Scroll down for newer stuff.

I would much rather watch the Dodgers lose but, whatever, I’ll watch the debate so you guys can read my drivel.

Other live blogs:

Mark Warner admits he called Christians, pro-lifers, home schoolers, and the NRA a threat to America.

MARK WARNER FINALLY ADMITS TO DEMEANING REMARKS ATTACKING
PEOPLE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH, PRO-LIFERS, HOME SCHOOLERS AND THE NRA
Gilmore Campaign Demands Warner Apologize for the Remarks and for Lying About Them

Alexandria – The Jim Gilmore for Senate Campaign released a statement today after Mark Warner admitted this weekend that he made disparaging remarks about people of Christian faith, pro-lifers, home schoolers and NRA members — calling them “threatening” to “what it means to be an American”:

“After repeatedly denying for years that he made these intolerant statements, Mark Warner this weekend finally owned up to the hurtful remarks after an audio recording of him making these demeaning comments was made public, ” said Ana Gamonal, the Gilmore Campaign Communications Director.

“What is even sadder than his admitting that he had lied, after of years of denial, is the best Mark Warner could offer was that his comments were perhaps “over the top” and that he had “learned a lot” since then, with no offer of an apology to the people he attacked by inferring they were un-American,” Gamonal said.[1]

“Mark Warner owes Virginians several apologies. One, for making these statements in the first place; Second, for repeatedly “angrily” denying he did so and calling those who were confronting him on it, “disrespectful”, when in fact he was the one being disrespectful.[2]And third, for his lack of sincerity throughout this entire Senate campaign, where he has attempted to paint himself as a “centrist”, while at the same time attesting to the sentiments expressed in these statements, by affirming he would not support Supreme Court justices like of Justice Scalia or Justice Thomas, calling them “out of the mainstream,” Gamonal declared.[3]

“Now, Virginians will be able to hear first hand and in his own words, how Mark Warner really feels about so many of the values Virginians hold dear.”

Click here to hear the audio recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpicD6UIq8A

“One of the things you are going to see is a coalition that is just about completely taken over the Republican Party in this state and if they have their way it’s going to take over state government. It is made up of the Christian Coalition, but not just them. It is made up of the right-to-lifers, but not just them. It’s made up of the NRA, but not just them. It is made up of the home schoolers, but not just them. It’s made up of a whole coalition of people that have all sorts of differing views that I think most of us in this room would find threatening to what it means to be an American.”

Mark Warner, May 1994

________________________________________

[1] Quotes taken from the Northern Virginia Daily 10/11/08
[2] Quotes taken from the Richmond Times-Dispatch 10/31/2001
[3] Quote taken from the Virginian Pilot 10/4/08

Here’s the video again:

Pass it along.

And I officially declare Obama will be the winner of this election.

From Times Online out of the United Kingdom:

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign…

Mark Salter, McCain’s long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an “honourable defeat” rather than conduct a campaign that would be out of character – and likely to lose him the election.

Palin, 44, has led the character attacks on Obama in the belief that McCain may be throwing away the election and her chance of becoming vice-president. Her supporters think that if the Republican ticket loses on November 4, she should run for president in 2012…

A McCain official confirmed that there was dissension in the campaign. “There is always going to be a debate about the costs and benefits of any strategy,” he said.

H/t: Ace of Spades HQ, Hot Air

“We’re Screwed ’08” and why I am seriously considering not voting for McCain (or anyone).

The “We’re Screwed ’08” is Michelle Malkin’s view on this election.

I kinda like the tagline from the first Alien vs. Predator film: “Whoever wins… We lose.”

A commenter on The right-wing liberal posted the following on an optimistically written post about Tuesday’s debate:

Thank God you have a somewhat calm and collected take on this. If I read many more “we’re doomed, doomed I say!!” blog posts by conservatives I’m going to start slapping people (with a baseball bat).

Well, threat of a baseball bat or not, we are doomed.

We have both Presidential candidates supporting a $700,000,000,000 bailout of banks that were ineptly ran. Those banks chose to give loans to people that had no ability to repay them. That $700,000,000,000 adds an additional $2,292.31 of debt to every American. Anyone have $2,292.31 that they are willing to pony up to give to banks that were ran by idiots (those idiots were making a mint too with their golden parachutes) and had bad business practices?

Now, we have the Republican candidate stating he’s going to spend $300,000,000,000 to bail people out of variable-rate mortgages that those people chose to agree to. McCain’s plan would give the Treasury Department the power to lower the principal and fix the interest rate on people’s mortgages. These people agreed to variable-rate mortgages when you have some of the lowest fixed interest rates over the last couple years since 1972. That $300,000,000,000 would add another $982.42 to every American’s debt. Pay through the nose please.

Hell, he essentially stole the idea from Biden who mentioned it during the Veep debate. Obama/Biden want to give United States Bankruptcy Courts the power to lower the principal and interest rates on mortgages.

And McCain had the gall to state he was considering appointing a campaign advisor and buddy (Meg Whitman) as Secretary of Treasury. That worked real well for Bush and Michael Brown over at FEMA.

Ham Sandwich is looking more and more promising as a candidate as this goes along.

I have a feeling that it’s only going to get worse from here on out.

Besides the whole bailout thing, we have the genius Mav[erick] stating that after the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan the Taliban came back in.

Uh, the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989.

The Taliban didn’t exist until September 1994 and didn’t take control of the country until 1996.

Isn’t McCain supposed to be an expert on foreign policy?

You had Obama stating the following on foreign policy: invade Pakistan, embargo Iran, pullout out of Iraq, and occupy Darfur.

Did McCain press Obama on any of that? No, of course not. In fact, you had McCain stating intervention in Lebanon was a bad thing while bombing, invading, and occupying Yugoslavia (especially Serbia) needed to be done.

Let me get this straight: Muslim terrorists in Lebanon holding CIA officers hostage = not a threat. Dictator in Yugoslavia (Serbia) with no means to effect the United States = threat.

I would just like to thank all the geniuses that voted for McCain over Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney in the early primaries.

You guys got us in this mess and frankly, you can get us out because I’m finished with it.

A snoozefest, definitely.

I asked the following question about the debate in the title of my live blog post: A debate for the ages or a snoozefest?

Well, we got our answer.

As Matt “threat to democracy” Drudge notes: “B O R I N G”

Michelle Malkin: “Zzzzzzzz”

I think I will just copy and paste the stuff from this live blog for the next live blog. No one will notice the difference probably.

A debate for the ages or a snoozefest?: The second Presidential debate; live hate-blogging starting at 8:45 p.m.

This is the top post until after the debate. Scroll down for the newer stuff.

The cool thing about this software is that you, my precious readers (all three of you), don’t have to bother refreshing the page every minute just to read my inane ramblings.

Other live blogs:

RWL: “Warner’s explanation: Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your lying ears?”

Check out it out. A sample:

This will cause some fun in the blogosphere and at the very least a major hiccup for Warner, but it’s emblematic of a larger issue with Marky Mark. The Dem nominee is the poster-boy for the “limousine liberal” (as Bob Novak calls them), wealthy politicos who vote for the Democrats on social or foreign policy issues, but mainly driven by an elitist snobbery that has no use for ordinary Virginians or what they think.

Read the whole thing as they say.