McCain-Falcone Connection: John McCain, received a total of U.S. $2,800 from Ms. Falcone from April 1999 to April 2000.
Independent.co.uk
By Angela Charlton and Pierre-Antoine Souchard, Associated Press Writers
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Defense lawyers and Angola's government are trying to stop the show, however, arguing the trial has no right to go on.
Prosecutors allege that between 1993 and 1998, two key suspects — French magnate Pierre Falcone, a longtime resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, and Arkady Gaydamak, an Israeli businessman based in France at the time — organized a total of $791 million in Russian arms sales to Angola, a breach of French government rules.
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Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin(below) are linked to the same cult.
This is not a Religion Column: Biblical Capitalism
By Jeff Sharlet
Posted on October 1, 2008, Printed on October 7, 2008
Only months ago, what scant attention the press paid to fundamentalism in American life was dedicated to declaring the Christian Right deceased. Of course, those were the days when Lehman Brothers still looked like a good investment. Now, Christian Right leaders are feeling bullish for the first time in years, ready to bet the farm on Sarah Palin, while the rest of us blink in shock as the clock goes spinning back to the Great Depression. In more ways than one—it was in the 1930s that modern fundamentalism’s strange marriage of laissez-faire economics and heavily-regulated morals was first consummated, in reaction not to abortion or homosexuality, but to economic malaise—“spiritual depression,” as it was called by an early advocate of “biblical capitalism.”
In 1932, James A. Farrell, president of US Steel, tried to persuade then Governor Franklin Roosevelt that economic depression was “caused by disobedience to divine law,” and that the only cure was a mix of spiritual revival and unprecedented powers for corporate leaders. In 1936, Frank Buchman, the founder of the Moral Re-Armament movement—a network of upper crust Christian clubs—announced, “Human problems aren’t economic. They’re moral, and they can’t be solved by immoral measures.” He suggested instead “God-controlled democracy, or perhaps I should say a theocracy.” Bruce Barton, a founder of advertising giant BBDO and the author of one of the 20th century’s bestsellers, The Man Nobody Knows (it was Jesus, whom Barton proposed as the greatest CEO in history), won a seat in Congress in 1938 by proposing to a nation battered by unfettered capitalism that it “Repeal a Law a Day.”
The most influential of these businessmen for God was a Norwegian immigrant named Abraham Vereide, founder of an annual ritual of piety and politics that survives to this day, the National Prayer Breakfast. In 1935, Vereide created a “fellowship” of Christian businessmen bound together by the idea that God hates government regulation because it interferes with a believer’s ability to choose right or wrong. He found receptive audiences in private meetings with Henry Ford and the president of Chevrolet, Thomas Watson of IBM and representatives from J.C. Penney. By 1942, he’d moved to the capital, where the National Association of Manufacturers staked him to a meeting of congressmen who would become students of his spiritual politics, among them Virginia senator Absalom Willis Robertson—Pat Robertson’s father. Vereide returned the manufacturers’ favor by telling his new congressional followers that God wanted them to break the spine of organized labor. They did.
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October 06, 2008 Issue
Copyright © 2008 The American Conservative
An Open Letter to Sarah Palin PDF
By TAC Editors
To: Gov. Sarah Palin
From: TAC Editors
Re: What Your Tutors Aren’t Telling You
Congratulations on being chosen as John McCain’s running mate. It’s an honor, if a dubious one. As you know, conservatives have reservations about McCain. To your credit, they have few such concerns about you.
You’ve given new life to a party whose brand was bankrupt. You’ve energized a campaign that was embarrassing its own partisans. Across America, crowds flock to see you—not that old man who barely wheezed his way through the primaries. If John McCain wins, he will owe you, as the guy in the undisclosed location says, “Big time.”
Wonder why Middle America finds you irresistible? Maybe they’re big Tina Fey fans. More likely, you remind them of the conservative values they feared lost: faith, family, independence. This impression owes more to who you are than what you’ve done. But at least you keep Obama from cornering the market on hope. Conservatives have faith in you. Don’t fail them as George W. Bush has.
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Pigs At The Trough: Behind The Citigroup, Wachovia, Wells Fargo Circus
Added: October 05, 2008
See the full-length video at http://KeatingEconomics.com starting @ noon Eastern on 10/6. KEATING ECONOMICS: The story of John McCain and the making of a financial crisis.
See the full-length video at http://KeatingEconomics.com starting @ noon Eastern on 10/6.
In the Demise of His First Marriage, John McCain's Life Seems to Have Found a New Path
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 6, 2008; C01
In early 1980, John McCain was a man in transition -- and in a hurry.
Nine months earlier, at a cocktail reception in Hawaii, he met a glamorous young heiress named Cindy Lou Hensley and, by all accounts, fell instantly in love. McCain spent months flying from Washington to Arizona pursuing this new relationship. Soon, the 43-year-old naval attache and his 25-year-old sweetheart were engaged.
There was only one complication: McCain was still married.
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Press kept under a watchful eye
"Track, the kid who joined the Army, did so because a judge told him it was that or jail due to his dealing drugs."
Be strong! Do you think it is just coincidence the people of the lie have become so obvious?
Do Over! Palin Answers Katie Couric's Questions ... to Fox News' Carl Cameron (She Reads The Economist, She Says)
October 03, 2008 2:52 PM
In a post-debate interview today with Fox News' chief political correspondent Carl Cameron, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin provided some of the answers that seemed to elude her in her past interview with Katie Couric.
Cameron told her that some observers, pleased with her debate performance, asked, "Where was this Sarah Palin in the interview with Katie Couric?"
"OK, I'll tell you honestly," Palin said, "the Sarah Palin in those interviews is a little bit annoyed because it's like, man, no matter what you say, you're going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you are going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try and pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that, too."
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October 5, 2008
Will a new US President mean a new foreign policy?
Gareth Porter: McCain subscribes to extreme neocon ideas, but Obama is not a break with the past Pt.5
In George W. Bush's final speech to the UN as head of state, he provided a series of reasons to view his administration's policies as having succeeded in conducting a global war on terrorism. Despite his regime's demonstrated aversion to multilateralism, Bush called on the UN and all international institutions to take a lead role in the War on Terror in the future. Investigative reporter and historian Gareth Porter tells Senior Editor Paul Jay why he believes that while Obama and McCain represent different visions of US foreign policy, neither truly represent a clean break from the legacy created by the Bush administration.
Bio
Gareth Porter is a historian and investigative journalist on US foreign and military policy analyst. He writes regularly for Inter Press Service on US policy towards Iraq and Iran. Author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
There's no debate
On Friday afternoon, just at the time of the week when people unveil unhappy news releases in order to minimize media coverage, the McCain-Palin campaign released Sarah and Todd Palin's federal income tax returns for 2006 and 2007. The returns do not include as taxable income any of the per diem allowances or travel expense reimbursements that the State of Alaska paid for travel by Sarah or Todd Palin, or by three of their children (Bristol, Willow, and Piper Palin), in 2007. At roughly the same time as it released the returns, the campaign also handed out an opinion from a Washington, D.C. tax lawyer that purports to address at least some aspects of the propriety of the omission of the travel money from the 2007 tax return.
Since then, one commentator has reported that there is now a "wonky debate" as to the correctness of their omitting the travel money from their tax returns. We disagree. There is no serious debate (at least, none that has been brought to our attention) about the fact that at least the amounts paid for the children's travel -- $24,728.83 in 2007, according to the Washington Post -- are taxable. The campaign's tax lawyer has got at least that much of the law, and perhaps more, wrong.
The opinion is from Roger M. Olsen, an M Street solo practitioner who was a tax official in the Reagan administration. His specialty appears to be the criminal side of the federal tax laws. Olsen's three-page letter never comes out and directly says "It's my opinion that the travel payments the Palins received were not taxable to any of them."1 Instead, it bobs and weaves a fair amount and never lands squarely on point:
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October 5th, 2008
In slip up, Palin calls Afghanistan “our neighboring country”
Posted by: Jason Szep
Tags: Tales from the Trail: 2008, Afghanistan, CBS, Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey
SAN FRANCISCO - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin called Afghanistan “our neighboring country” on Sunday in a speech that could revive questions over her tendency to stumble into linguistic knots.rtx95kp.jpg
Three days after a mostly gaffe-free debate performance, the Alaska governor fumbled during a speech in which she praised U.S. soldiers for “fighting terrorism and protecting us and our democratic values”.
“They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan,” she told several hundred supporters at a fundraising event in San Francisco.
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* LRB
* 9 October 2008
Short Cuts
Adam Shatz
If you live in an American swing state you may have received a copy of ‘Obsession’ in your Sunday paper. ‘Obsession’ isn’t a perfume: it’s a documentary about ‘radical Islam’s war against the West’. In the last two weeks of September, 28 million copies of the film were enclosed as an advertising supplement in 74 newspapers, including the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. ‘The threat of Radical Islam is the most important issue facing us today,’ the sleeve announces. ‘It’s our responsibility to ensure we can make an informed vote in November.’ The Clarion Fund, the supplement’s sponsor, doesn’t explicitly endorse McCain, so as not to jeopardise its tax-exempt status, but the message is clear enough, and its circulation just happened to coincide with Obama’s leap in the polls.
The Clarion Fund is a front for neoconservative and Israeli pressure groups. It has an office, or at least an address, in Manhattan at Grace Corporate Park Executive Suites, which rents out ‘virtual office identity packages’ for $75 a month. Its website, clarionfund.org, provides neither a list of staff nor a board of directors, and the group still hasn’t disclosed where it gets its money, as required by the IRS. Who paid to make ‘Obsession’ isn’t clear – it cost $400,000. According to Rabbi Raphael Shore, the film’s Canadian-Israeli producer, 80 per cent of the money came from the executive producer ‘Peter Mier’, but that’s just an alias, as is the name of the film’s production manager, ‘Brett Halperin’. Shore claims ‘Mier’ and ‘Halperin’, whoever they are, are simply taking precautions, though it isn’t clear against what. The danger (whatever it is) hasn’t stopped Shore – or the director, Wayne Kopping, a South African neocon – from going on television to promote their work.
The 60-minute film was first released in 2006 and shown during the mid-term elections on Fox News. Since then it has received top billing at ‘Islamo-Fascism Awareness’ week on American campuses, at Christian-Zionist conferences and at events organised by Republican politicians in Florida. It has found a powerful backer in the real estate magnate Sheldon Adelson, who describes himself as ‘the world’s richest Jew’. The Endowment for Middle East Truth, a neoconservative think tank in Washington DC which recently hosted a series of seminars named after Adelson and his wife, arranged distribution of ‘Obsession’, at a cost in the tens of millions.
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"We need a VP who understands, respects the balance of power, and the limits of power. That is fundamental to our democracy. So far, Palin has it exactly, frighteningly wrong."
The New York Times
October 4, 2008
Dick Cheney, Role Model
In all the talk about the vice-presidential debate, there was an issue that did not get much attention but kept nagging at us: Sarah Palin’s description of the role and the responsibilities of the office for which she is running, vice president of the United States.
In Thursday night’s debate, Ms. Palin was asked about the vice president’s role in government. She said she agreed with Dick Cheney that “we have a lot of flexibility in there” under the Constitution. And she declared that she was “thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president also, if that vice president so chose to exert it.”
It is hard to tell from Ms. Palin’s remarks whether she understands how profoundly Dick Cheney has reshaped the vice presidency — as part of a larger drive to free the executive branch from all checks and balances. Nor did she seem to understand how much damage that has done to American democracy.
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Obama: McCain health plan 'radical'
By MIKE ALLEN | 10/4/08 8:42 AM EDT
Text Size:
With families increasingly worried about their economic security, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is opening a major assault on what he charges is a “radical plan” by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to decentralize health insurance.
Bill Burton, national press secretary of the Obama campaign, charged: “Millions [would] lose the health care that they have.”
Obama is unveiling his new assault at a rally in Newport News, Va., this afternoon, and the campaign is following up with TV ads, radio spots, mailers and grass-roots events in battleground states, aides said.
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"There is a fairly wonky debate over whether she should have been charged for these trips or whether it was accounted for in her salary. John Bogdanski, a tax professor at the Lewis and Clark Law School, told the Huffington Post's Seth Colter Walls that they did qualify as taxable income."
And $60 grand isn't a big deal if you're a total millionaire like John McCain and own eight houses, but Palin is merely wealthy. So she rips off the Treasury Joe Six-Pack style.
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Robert Fisk
www.rupeenews.com
Robert Risk is one of the few independent journalists left in the Western world who can dare to say it like it is. He correclty points out the lack of usage of the term Palestinian. He also correctly points to the outlandhish remark by Biden that Pakistani Nuclear missiles could reach Israel. Fisk correctly says that Pakistan has never threatened Israel and that Pakistan is on the side of the West–though having supported the USA for the past six decade, the Pakistanis get “do more’ lectures from “the allies” that keep bombing Pakistan and killing Pakistanis on a daily basis.
- Afghanistan in Peril: Defeat and disaster for USA & India
- Afghanistan: Omar rebuffs weak Karzai. No Saudi lifeline for him
GWOT: Map of possible war with Iran Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan
Robert Fisk’s World: When it comes to Palestine and Israel, the US simply doesn’t get it
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FACT CHECK: The Truth Hurt During Debate
October 03, 2008 12:46 AM
ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports:
Sarah Palin got her facts wrong in Thursday's debate with Joe Biden when discussing where John McCain stands on new protections for homeowners facing foreclosures.
The Alaska governor incorrectly made it sound like McCain supports giving bankruptcy judges the power to rewrite mortgage payment terms on first homes.
He doesn't..
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Tom the Dancing Bug - Maverick McCain vs. the collapsing economy.
Related
TV Ad: Keating
Caribou Barbie's Earpiece
VP Debate - a true "natural" and a wannabe
The New Energy Expert Doesn’t Blink - She Winks.
Tonight, we met the latest version of Sarah Palin. A mix between the RNC pitbull and the brawling Ross Perot.
We’ve been winked at, mavericked, joesixpacked, hockeymummed, heckofaloted,mainstreeterlikemeed, waktawaktaktataked by the new self proclaimed national expert in energy issues.
Tonight, Joe Biden was controling himself (he only managed to lose the gay-lesbian voters, who anyway won’t rush to Sarah Read My Lipstick Palin*). Like Obama the other day**, he missed opportunities on economics (he could for instance denounce the politics of "fear" of her opponent).
But he didn’t blink when it came to put a label on the Bush legacy, "an abject failure", Dick Cheney, "the most dangerous Vice-President in History". And he shed a tear that looked more genuine than Palin’s fake and nervous compassion. His support of Israel sounded more sincere than her AIPAC leaflet... The true "natural" was the one who didn’t have to train clumsily to look and sound like one.
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October 02, 2008
No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates
The Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed secret contract dictating the terms of all the 2008 debates. This includes who gets to participate, as well as the topics raised during the debates. We speak to Open Debates founder and executive director George Farah. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
George Farah, executive director and founder of Open Debates. He is the author of No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.
Rush Transcript
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mparent7777_1- CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
- Marc Parent
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