If you travel to the comments section of basically any local newspaper article about the primary campaign, you'll find people putting forth the notion that Obama is a Manchurian Muslim candidate who hates America.
Whether they believe this stuff or consider it their patriotic duty to lie, I do not know, but that's what we'll get if he's the candidate. A fundamental question will be how this stuff is mainstreamed by the "respectable" press.
CUKURCA, Turkey (AP) -- Two Turkish soldiers and at least 35 Kurdish rebels died in new fighting in northern Iraq on Saturday, the Turkish military said.
Several of the nation's largest lenders, along with smaller ones, are shutting off access to home equity lines in areas where home values are declining. It's an unusually aggressive move as the industry grapples with fallout from the mortgage crisis that began unfolding last year.
Now that home prices have dropped in many parts of the country, lenders are nervous that they may never collect the money that they extended to borrowers. They are responding by freezing or lowering the credit limits on home equity lines, leaving thousands of borrowers like Corazzi in the lurch.
"Nearly all the top home equity lenders I know of are doing this or considering doing this," said Joe Belew, president of the Consumer Bankers Association, which represents some of the nation's largest home equity lenders. "They are all looking at how to protect themselves as real estate values go down, and it's just not good for the borrowers to get so overextended."
One of California's largest for-profit insurers stopped a controversial practice of canceling sick policyholders Friday after a judge ordered Health Net Inc. to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient it dropped in the middle of chemotherapy.
The ruling by a private arbitration judge was the first of its kind and the most powerful rebuke to the state's major insurers whose cancellation practices are under fire from the courts, state regulators and elected officials.
Broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson today contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson's behalf.
Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson's quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.
Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post today. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."
The recollection of the now-retired Paxson conflicted with the account provided by McCain about two letters at the center of a controversy about the senator's ties to Iseman, a partner at the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay.
The ultimate question of campaign '08 is whether the press will actually do their jobs and occasionally point out that St. McCain is full of shit, or whether they'll be so worried about McCain not bringing the fun in anymore if they write mean things about him that they couldn't possibly do anything to hurt their special relationships.
It's worth remembering that one of the big concerns was that people might, one day, be able to make videos! And put them on the internet! And ... that would be bad!!! It was never quite clear why that would be bad, but it did become clear to me that some on the reform community aren't just bothered by money in politics, but by politics itself. It's as if they wanted politics to be some highly refereed competition between candidates, rather than a big messy thing in which we all get to have a say even outside of the ballot box.
On Wednesday night, the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman's clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.
Just hours after the Times' story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff--and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC," the campaign said in a statement emailed to reporters.
But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue," McCain said in the September 25, 2002 deposition obtained by Newsweek. "He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint."
Some of these examples of Clinton campaign spending, suggested to be somehow inappropriate, are perfectly fine. Parties, hotel rooms, and snacks actually cost money and campaigns sort of need them.
U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., could soon step down in the wake of a federal investigation into his involvement in a federal land swap deal and FBI raids of an insurance agency owned by his wife.
His resignation could come as early as Friday or soon after, according to sources familiar with the matter.
For several weeks, I have been the subject of leaked stories, conjecture, and false attacks about a land exchange. None of them bear any resemblance to the truth, including the rumor that I am planning on resigning.
WASHINGTON — Prodded in part by some of the nation’s biggest banks, the Bush administration and Congress are considering costly new proposals for the government to rescue hundreds of thousands of homeowners whose mortgages are higher than the value of their houses.
Not since the Depression has a larger share of Americans owed more on their homes than they are worth. With the collapse of the housing boom, nearly 8.8 million homeowners, or 10.3 percent of the total, are underwater. That is more than double the percentage just a year ago, according to a new estimate of the damage by Moody’s Economy.com.
This isn't necessarily a problem for all of these people. Not everyone needs to sell their house. It will be difficult for people who lose their jobs to move to a new one. If broader economic troubles continue, and unemployment rises, this will add to the difficulties.
I know journamalisting is hard and "the google" is quite the mystery, but since he accused Obama of refusing to disclose his earmarks I thought maybe he could use a pointer.
I promise to endorse the candidate who, in tonight's debate, says something like the following:
Not only are we going to Texas, we're going to Ohio and Rhode Island and Mississippi and Wyoming and Pennsylvania, and we're going to Guam and Indiana and North Carolina … And we're going to West Virginia and Kentucky and Montana and South Dakota and Puerto Rico, and then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! Yeaararh!!!
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