Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/22mccain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=politics&pagewanted=print

Must be sad to see the Democrats be as powerless as you appear to believe them to be.

eriksfbay, you talk all about budgets submitted, as if that was the beginning and end of the process.

In case you have forgotten, CONGRESS spends the money and levies taxes, quite often in ways that have little to do with the budget submitted by a president.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The original legislation we saw said that you would be buying up the mortgage-related assets from financial institutions having headquarters in the United States. Yet last night, the fact sheet put out by the Treasury seemed to expand that. It said only that the financial institutions have to have significant operations in the U.S., and that you could waive that at your discretion.

So, will foreign financial institutions be eligible to have their assets bought?

PAULSON: Yes, and they should, because as you think about this, if a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution.

That’s a distinction without a difference to the American people. The key here is about protecting the system.[..]

But, remember, this is about protecting the American people and protecting the taxpayers. And the American people don’t care who owns the financial institution. If a financial institution in this country has problems, it’ll have the same impact…

you're insinuating that a woman tried to kill her yet unborn child because he had Downs Syndrome and I'm supposed to fulfill your request to put a motive to her actions....

why don't you wait for the next edition of the National Enquirer then maybe you'll have your answer...

your post and that rag are both comparably despicable

this is incredibly, horribly, digustingly....
about the worse thing I have had the displeasure to read on POF

I don't give a flying fvck if you are for or against her as a candidate, but as a human to a human, WTF is YOUR humanity!

Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley: He said he was at the North Texas meeting this year when Palin’s water broke. She gave her speech and then quickly left to get back to Alaska before her baby was born. He said he and others were impressed with her speech. "A lot of comments then were made to look out for her in the future. I think people will take a wait-and-see attitude with her.  . . . She’s going to have to prove herself, but I think people will be surprised."

http://www.star-telegram.com/state_news/story/876326.html

From Alaskan NBC affiliate KTUU:

Just yesterday, Palin was in Texas at a forum on energy with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and executives from four other states.

The governor's water broke during the energy conference but she stayed and gave a 30-minute speech before boarding an Alaska Airlines plane home to deliver the baby.

Palin gave birth to Trig Paxson Van Palin Friday at 6:30 a.m.

No word on why Palin was so determined to make sure young Trig wasn't born a Texan.

http://startelegram.typepad.com/politex/2008/04/governors-water.html

Palin was in Texas last week for an energy conference of the National Governors Association when she experienced signs of early labor. She wasn't due for another month.

Early Thursday -- she thinks it was around 4 a.m. Texas time -- she consulted with her doctor, family physician Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, who is based in the Valley and has delivered lots of babies, including Piper, Palin's 7-year-old.

Palin said she felt fine but had leaked amniotic fluid and also felt some contractions that seemed different from the false labor she had been having for months.

"I said I am going to stay for the day. I have a speech I was determined to give," Palin said. She gave the luncheon keynote address for the energy conference.

Palin kept in close contact with Baldwin-Johnson. The contractions slowed to one or two an hour, "which is not active labor," the doctor said.

"Things were already settling down when she talked to me," Baldwin-Johnson said. Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said.

"I don't think it was unreasonable for her to continue to travel back," Baldwin-Johnson said.

So the Palins flew on Alaska Airlines from Dallas to Anchorage, stopping in Seattle and checking with the doctor along the way.

"I am not a glutton for pain and punishment. I would have never wanted to travel had I been fully engaged in labor," Palin said. After four kids, the governor said, she knew what labor felt like, and she wasn't in labor.

Still, a Sacramento, Calif., obstetrician who is active in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said when a pregnant woman's water breaks, she should go right to the hospital because of the risk of infection. That's true even if the amniotic fluid simply leaks out, said Dr. Laurie Gregg.

"To us, leaking and broken, we are talking the same thing. We are talking doctor-speak," Gregg said.

Some airlines have policies against pregnant women onboard during the last four weeks of pregnancy, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises against flying after 36 weeks.

This was going to be Palin's last flight anyway, her doctor said.

Alaska Airlines has no such rule and leaves the decision to the woman and her doctor, said spokeswoman Caroline Boren. Palin was very pleasant to the gate agents and flight attendants, as always, Boren said.

"The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress," Boren said.

Palin never got big with this pregnancy. She said she didn't try to hide it but didn't feel a need to alert the airline, either.

They landed in Anchorage around 10:30 p.m. Thursday and an hour later were at the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Wasilla.

Baldwin-Johnson said she had to induce labor, and the baby didn't come until 6:30 a.m. Friday.

"It was smooth. It was relatively easy," Palin said. "In fact it was the easiest of all," probably because Trig was small, at 6 pounds, 2 ounces.

Palin said she wanted him born in Alaska but wouldn't have risked anyone's health to make that happen.

http://www.adn.com/626/story/382864.html

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,..."

"That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that,"

Georgian president to McCain: Move 'from words to deeds'

From CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby

(CNN) – Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili on Wednesday called for John McCain and other American leaders to do more for Georgia in their response to the conflict in his country.

“Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,’” Saakashvili said on CNN’s American Morning. “Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”

McCain told a crowd in Pennsylvania yesterday that he had called Saakashvili to express solidarity with the people of Georgia, saying: “Today, we are all Georgians.”

McCain’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann told reporters on the campaign plane Tuesday that McCain’s remark “obviously meant a lot to Saakashvili personally, but more importantly the message it conveyed to the Georgian people in this really, time of unprecedented national emergency.” Scheunemann said McCain and Saakashvili are friends who have speaking daily throughout the crisis.

But Saakashvili said action is more important than rhetoric in the face of “brutal” and “deliberate” Russian violence. He urged the United States to take the lead in installing an international peacekeeping force.

“We should realize what is at stake here for Americans,” he said. “America is losing the whole region.”

“What Americans should do know, first of all, clearly make known their intentions,” he said.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/13/georgian-president-to-mccain-move-from-words-to-deeds/

The McCains adopted the girl, naming her Bridget. She would become part of the 2000 presidential campaign when Republicans opposed to McCain's nomination – and allegedly supporting George W. Bush – spread rumors before the South Carolina primary that Bridget was McCain's illegitimate black daughter.

It would be years before Bridget McCain would learn of the incident by Googling her own name.

Her daughter was very upset, recalls her mom, who says she has forgiven the political opponents.

"She wanted to know why President Bush hated her," Cindy McCain told the New York Times. "And I had to explain to her that it wasn't the president that hated her, that no one hates her. It was a very maturing process for her. I had to explain to her how nasty campaigns can be."

It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"

People in some areas of South Carolina began to receive phone calls in which self-described pollsters would ask, "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

It was a reference to Bridget, who was adopted as a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh and is darker skinned than the rest of the McCain family. Richard Hand, a professor at Bob Jones University, sent an e-mail message to "fellow South Carolinians" telling recipients that Mr. McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage."

An October surprise is American political jargon describing a news event with the potential to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the presidency.

I'm sorry, did someone say that there was a middle class at the time of the American Revolution?

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Platform Point Five

"Any system of civil service under which the subordinate positions of the government are considered rewards for mere party zeal is fatally demoralizing; and we, therefore, favor a reform of the system, by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage, and make honesty, efficiency, and fidelity the essential qualifications for public positions."

Platform Point Six

"We are opposed to further grants of public land to corporations and monopolies, and demand that the national domain be set apart for free homes for the people."

Platform Point Seven

"The [nation's] annual revenue, after paying current expenditures, pensions, and the interest on the public debt, should furnish a moderate balance for the reduction of the principal [of the national debt]; and that revenue should be raised by duties upon importations, the details of which [duties] should be so adjusted as to aid in securing remunerative wages to labor, and promote the industries, prosperity, and growth of the whole country."

Platform Point Fourteen

"The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom. Their admission to wider fields of usefulness is viewed with satisfaction; and the honest demand of any class of citizens for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration."

Platform Point Sixteen

"The Republican party proposes to respect the rights reserved by the people to themselves as carefully as the powers delegated by them to the States and the Federal government. It disapproves of the resort to unconstitutional laws for the purpose of removing evils, by interference with rights not surrendered by the people to either the State or National government."

Platform Point Eighteen

"We believe that the modest patriotism, the earnest purpose, the sound judgment, the practical wisdom, the incorruptible integrity, and the illustrious services of Ulysses S. Grant have commended him to the heart of the American people, "

Platform Point One

"Menacing foreign difficulties have been peacefully and honorably composed, and the honor and power of the nation kept in high respect throughout the world."

Platform Point One

"This glorious record of the past is the party's best pledge for the future. We believe the people will not intrust the Government to any party or combination of men composed chiefly of those who have resisted every step of this beneficent progress."