If , as it appears, the McCain camp is obstructing justice by interfering with an ongoing investigation, this issue needs to be raised:

McCain and Palin may have disqualified themselves from seeking office with this obstruction.

The Obama camp has to be willing to entertain this possibility and take appropriate action.

I do not believe, pending what transpires in the next few days, that this will be a legitimate election.

And the rule of law must be returned to our country.

Obama and camp cannot take this matter lightly.

Because frankly I am FUCKING SICK of PASSIVE DEM WIMPS allowing Republicans to get away with IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES.

And trust me our beloved Dems will not have the spine to stand up to McCain/Palin if these right-wing puppets get into the White House.

 I don't trust Obama to do anything..

But he damn well start thinking about it.

Because there is every sign that this will not be a legitimate election..

Palin, a scandal-ridden Republican, is doing what these types always do: Shutting down investigations and making a mockery of the opposition. She, not McCain, is the person people will remember when they go to vote.

And scandals, ethics violation, crimes and cover-ups all dissolve like the Greenland ice cap, as we've seen continuously for eight years of unfettered criminality emanating from the Republicans- and to be fair, from not a few Dems, including O himself (conspiring with the Admin to immunize the telecoms).

And this always works in the Republicans' favor. I have never seen such a display of spinelessness from anyone in my life as Dems meekly refused to stop the torture-mongering, war-profiteering, DOJ-corrupting thugs in the WH from committing crimes in plain sight, robbing the nation blind and leaving us with a wrecked economy, a wrecked military, no trust in our public officials, and no credibility in the world.

Now Palin is going to get away with her abuses of power, just like Rove has. And where is Rove? On Fox making millions. That is because Dems have refused to prosecute, refused to impeach (they should have started with Gonzales over a year ago, he was the Admin's only weak link), and earned the disgust of not a few.

Obama/Biden now need to ask Palin what she is so afraid of. they need to discredit her. I am sorry... all those who say the tone should not be negative. They need to direct the public's attention to what is being covered up, and not count on the media, or, please God, Hillary, to do it for them.

Bush/Cheney have gotten away with everything because they understand how to grab and hold on to power. Palin strikes me as someone who can do the same.

Obama/Biden need to show they can stop her.

Now that the Alaska courts have announced that it would be "disrespectful" for Sarah Palin to honor her subpoena, I think she is in the same category as Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, a State- sanctioned criminal.

For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

It is obvious, but it can't be said enough:
http://news.yahoo.com/story/ap/20080903/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_measure_of_a_nation_palin_family_politics

The Republican message about the Palin offspring comes across as contradictory: Hey, media, leave those kids alone — so we can use them as we see fit.

If you doubt this scenario, consider this: On Wednesday morning, a teenage boy from Alaska stood in a receiving line on an airport tarmac, being glad-handed by the potential next president of the United States — because he got his girlfriend pregnant. TV cameras were lined up in advance. The mind boggles.

"Either the children are out of bounds, and you don't put them in the photo ops, or you don't complain when somebody wants to talk about them. You can't have it both ways," said John Matviko, a professor at West Liberty State College in West Virginia and editor of "The American President in Popular Culture."

"Right now, it looks like they're being used by the campaign more than the media are using them," he said

John McCain's seemingly disastrous pick of Sarah Palin has quickly drawn comparisons to George McGovern's ill-fated running mate, Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton's "unvetted" status prompted the intense vetting of subsequent Vice-Presidential candidates, and while Republicans have run some piss-poor nominees (Dan Quayle comes to mind), even Quayle was a Senator with no particular scandal to his name.

Palin is an outrageously bad candidate. Dems have immediately,. and with justification, called her Eagleton II. Following that formula, John McCain becomes the second coming of George McGovern. And so we have one strand of our plot.

The second strand? Palin is family values, pro-life. To the nth degree (which is why her formerly private life is not only relevant, but crucial to her campaign). And who was just accused by Fred Thompson at the RNC of being a baby-killer, not just pro-choice, but actually practicing infanticide? None other than Barack Obama, of course.

 "Acid, amnesty, and abortion" is the famous formula that was used to defeat McGovern in a landslide. (In one of life's endless ironies, the slogan was said to have been supplied by Eagleton himself.) The second two A's are still at the center of our political lives. McCain won the Republican nomination by prevailing over a listless and uninspiring set of candidates like Romney and Thompson. He hadn't himself inspired his party. By choosing a  person remininescent of Monica Goodling- an unqualified, lawbreaking petty despot in whom the Christian Right sees its own idealized image- he has done so. Amnesty, for which McCain has taken such grief, has been extended, in a truly rare show of magnanimity, to the Presidential candidate himself.

And abortion? Now we hear Obama accused of infanticide. The Republicans are not merely accusing Obama of being cut-and-running anti-military cowards like John Kerry and McGovern himself  (and the utterly counterfactual nature of Republicanism is shown by the fact that both of them were decorated veterans), but the crazed baby-killer, the enemy of the American family, the new George McGovern.

It remains to be seen whether Obama, or anyone else, dares to reply to this slander. The Democrats have been deathly afraid of being painted as McGovern-like extremists, and responding to the charge may be beyond their limited capabilities.  It is instructive to look at what happened when McGovern lost his Senate seat in 1980:

Targeted by Terry Dolan and NCPAC, McGovern was trounced 58-39 percent by the ineloquent James Abdnor. McGovern can laugh now about the perversity of the 1980 election. “It ticked me off, and it was also kind of laughable. A group called American Family Index rated us. I came out with a zero, Jim Abdnor got a perfect score. Here I am a guy who has been married to the same woman for 37 [now 62] years with five children and ten grandchildren and I’m running against Jim Abdnor, a 58-year-old bachelor who gets a 100 percent rating. I’m not against 58-year-old bachelors, not for one minute, but they’re hardly a symbol of what promotes the American family.”

McGovern's words definitely have resonance in the present election.

 

<blockquote>"As a person of faith," said Paul Begala, a White House political adviser, "I am not offended by the religious views of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. I am offended by their political views. Jerry Falwell accuses our President of murder, and with a precious few exceptions no major Republican had the courage to take him on. Where is Bob Dole?" Shrewdly sitting on the sidelines?</blockquote>

How successful was this strategy for the Republicans?

This quote comes from just before the Republican landslide of 1994.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03E3D61739F932A1575BC0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

 

What explains the Democrats' penchant for self-destruction?

I have my theories, but its disregard for the Constitution and pathological fear of Republican disapproval speak for themselves.

For example: MoveOn.org posts an ad in the NYT, childish, but not slanderous, asking if he will be "Petraeus or Betrayus?" Now I think that is extremely poorly written: The American Conservative's terming of Gen. Petraeus as a "Sychophantic Savior" was far more successful, aesthetically. But what happens? THIS happens:

<blockquote>The GOP-introduced resolution condemning MoveOn just passed by a huge margin, 72-25. Roughly half the Democrats in the Senate supported it.</blockquote> (Italics mine.)

Now the First Amendment protects freedom of expression, and the Senate should not be the self-proclaimed arbiters of speech. This resoution was "symbolic" of a cruel  standard condemning Democratic free speech.
And, as the vote tally shows, it was "bipartisan." (So talk of a media "double standard" is off the mark, when the Democrats hold it themselves.)

Now, the American Conservative (which, by the way, I highly recommend), shortly afterward, ran an issue with the far more clever words "Sychophantic Savior" describing Petraeus. (See it here.) No resolution was ever introduced, let alone passed.

Why? Because the AC is not perceived as "liberal" or even "Democratic."

And let me be clear: This is, perversely, a bipartisan prejudice. Which makes me wonder if the term "bipartisan" retains any meaning in the post-Lieberman era.

OK, last night Fred Thompson said something truly slanderous and despicable about Barack Obama:

<blockquote>We need a President, and Vice President, who will take the federal bureaucracy by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shaking. And my friends we need a President who doesn't think that the protection of the unborn or a newly born baby is above his pay grade.</blockquote> (Italics in the original TPM citation.)

Will Thompson's outright slander (the likes of which reveal a bigotry and hatred which bypass that of the McCarthy era and go straight for that of the incipient Civil War) receive censure from the Senate?

And if not, why not?

Nobody, to my knowledge, has yet mentioned that she would excel even Dick Cheney in this role.