McCain Tries to Call a Truce

As everybody knows, the big story in politics today is that McCain is "suspending" his campaign to ride into Washington like cowboy in a white hat, guns ablazin', to solve the U.S. financial crisis. But I like to look at the actions more than the explanations, and here's what we have: a call to stop campaign ads, to postpone the debate, and join in with the crowd in Washington, which already includes the best financial and economic minds. It sounds like a call for a truce to me, and when you call for truce, that's usually when you are losing and need time to rebuild.

As pointed out on Marc Ambinder's blog, who really knows what "suspending" your campaign means anyway.

I kind of wonder how this is going to play out. Suspiciously, McCain's decision comes at a time when Palin-mania is waning, and Obama is again surging in the polls. Kind of looks like round 2 of McCain's attempts to change the game and salvage a losing game.

CNN readers agree with me: As of this writing, out of 217 thousand votes on their website poll, 71% of people think McCain is pulling a political gimmick. McCain? The guy who brought in an unknown, inexperienced governor from Alaska pull a stunt? No way!

Interest in Palin Drops Below Obama

A lot of people have been speculating whether Palin-mania is over not. Of course its hard to say what a good indicator for that would be, but I like to use Google Trends as a casual indicator of interest in things. So, today, for the first time since her selection as the Republican VP candidate, search volume for Palin has dropped below the volumefor Obama, as shown in the Google Trends screencap below. Interestingly, for people who were claiming that the news was whipping up interest in Palin, it looks like the news lost interest over a week ago.

Vietnamese Call McCain a Liar Too

Apparently, the Vietnamese accounts of Senator McCain's stay at the "Hanoi Hilton" differ significantly from McCain's story. Far from being tortured and beaten, as McCain claims, the Vietnamese report that McCain's stay at the Hanoi Hilton was practically a vacation. According to According to The Wall Street Journal,

Photographs [at the jail] show smiling, well-coiffed American inmates having cookies and tea. "There's plenty of fruit in this tropical land. It is as if one is being in California, somewhere on the West Coast," says one poster depicting POWs playing basketball and guitar."
One photograph shows Sen. McCain -- who complained of being denied critical care for his broken limbs -- being examined by a Vietnamese doctor.

A Colonel Duyet, the camp commander when McCain was incarcerated, claims in fact, that he was McCain's "friend," and says that the two used to talk about the chicas together.

Mr. Duyet also insisted that "prisoners liked me because I was good to them and treated them nicely."

Sen. McCain doesn't remember it quite that way

In an interview with the magazine U.S. News shortly after his release in 1973, Sen. McCain described Mr. Duyet -- nicknamed "Slopehead" by the American POWs -- as "a particularly idiotic individual" and "the bad guy" with a penchant for sadism.

Ms. Hien, a director of the museum constructed where the Hanoi Hilton used to stand, says no prisoner abuse occurred there. She says, "What we display is based on historical evidence, and the evidence is that the POWs were all treated in a humanitarian way."

Further, according to Luu Dinh Mien, an official with the Vietnam War Veterans Association who served as a propaganda officer and interrogator in the camp, "The American body is different from the Vietnamese body -- the American diet is different, and so the American prisoners were receiving much bigger portions than our ordinary citizens."

Senator McCain claims that frequently the only food served was pumpkin soup and soggy bread.

I've been ragging McCain over his campaign lies over the last couple of days. But, c'mon folks, I've got to go with McCain on this one.

McCain Campaign Lies Continue

I guess now that Palin-mania is fading, the McCain camp has to come up with another trick, which appears to be outrageous fabrications.

Today, from CNN, come several more McCain lies:

• Reportedly, Palin has only left North America once, which was a trip last year to visit the troops in the Middle East. This trip supposedly included visits to Iraq and Ireland. But, as it turns out, she really only made it to the Iraq-Kuwaiti border, and the visit to Ireland was only a refueling stop.
• Obama says McCain is inflating estimates of crowds that attend his events. McCain says he gets the estimates from law enforcement. But law enforcement denies providing such numbers to the McCain campaign.
• McCain's "Disrespectful" television ad says that Obama attacked Palin and dismissed her as "good looking. But, Obama never made the statements in the ad, and the "good looking" comment was made by Biden, who was conceding that she was better looking than him. In fact, Biden has many times said that Palin was qualified to be vice president.
  

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor sums it up:

The McCain campaign said Gov. Palin opposed the bridge to nowhere, but now we know she supported it. They said she didn't seek earmarks, but now we know she hired a lobbyist to get millions in pork for her town and her state. They said she visited Iraq, but today we learned that she only stopped at the border. Americans are starting to wonder, is there anything the McCain campaign isn't lying about?

McCain Camp Resorts to Unabashed Lying

The McCain campaign is taking lying to the next level. According to Associated Press, "Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain's skirting of facts has stood out this week." Apparently, winning the Presidency is worth being two-faced, as McCain has previously denounced lying by other politicians. But its fine for him, and he isn't apologetic about it.

Politicians usually modify or drop claims when a string of newspaper and TV news accounts concludes they are untrue or greatly exaggerated...But McCain and his running mate Palin, the Alaska governor, were defiant this week in the face of similar reports.

These are just some of the instances that I found on a quick look

• The McCain camp twisted a report from FactCheck.org to say that Obama had made false attacks on Palin, when that is not what they said at all. Here is FactCheck's response denouncing McCain for doing so.
• McCain made a big issue out of Obama saying that a pig with lipstick is still a pig, when in fact McCain has also used the same phrase
  
• The McCain campaign falsely claimed that Obama was advocating sex education for kindergarteners
  
• McCain has been claiming that Obama would raise taxes. But the truth is that most Americans would have their taxes lowered more under Obama than McCain. The only Americans who would get a better tax deal under McCain would be those making over $112K/year, and the more they make, the more they would benefit. Go figure.

Palin is fully in the lying game herself and has already told a slew of lies in just the short time she's been on the ticket. Besides repeating McCain's standard lies (above), she has added lying that she opposed earmarks and that she opposed the infamous "bridge to nowhere." The truth is that she was originally for it and only changed her mind when it became an embarrassment. But she still kept the money.

See this report from Anderson Cooper:


And finally, one of the big lies for most of the campaign has been that Obama is all about hope and has no substance. But see Obama's complete plan here.

McCain Jettisons the Playbook and Throws the Long Ball

I'll be the first to admit that elections aren't decided by the rational decision making of voters. That's a good thing for John McCain, because if logic was the major factor in deciding on a president, he would be pretty much finished for this race.

By selecting Palin as his running mate, McCain pretty much concedes that Senator Obama is ready to lead, which has been the Republican's chief criticism of the Democratic nominee. But worse, Obama has been saying its not about experience but about judgment, and McCain seems to have played right into his hand there. I mean, surely, there are plenty of women in this country more qualified than a gun-toting journalist and self-proclaimed "hockey mom" from Alaska with a consituency smaller than most major American cities. (The population of Alaska is about 670,000.)

For those who might say, "Well she's got more executive experience than Obama," you're missing the point. The point is, "Was that the best choice McCain could make?" According to CNN, "McCain first met Palin only six months ago and had just one conversation with the Alaska governor before offering her the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket." Is that how the most powerful person in American should choose their potential successor?

CNN's Paul Begalia says,

In choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate, he is not thinking "outside the box," as some have said. More like out of his mind.

I've got to agree with Mr. Begalia. See the bottom of his article for a short but poignant list of other more qualified candidates that McCain could have chosen.

Clearly, McCain didn't choose Palin because of her qualifications to be President. Rather, she was picked because of her perceived potential to lure angry Hillary Clinton supporters over to McCain. Here again, you've got to wonder what McCain is thinking. Anyone that switches over to McCain because of Palin would have to be a Democrat who had no loyalty to Hillary or any affinity with Democratic platform. Such a person would have to be voting strictly for getting a woman in as either President or Vice-President. I'm sure these people exist, but is that a big enough constituency to bank your campaign on? And what is the net result when you figure in people who don't like the choice of Palin?

Besides the potential draw for angry Hillary supporters, the McCain camp would like to have us believe that Palin is rebel like him who would fight lobbyists and shake things up. But let's get real here. First, just shaking things up is not a goal in itself--it could make things worse. Things need to be shaken up a in the proper direction, which is mainly in a different direction than what Bush was doing. Secondly, as much as we all desire a change, just sending in a maverick to shake things up rarely works. Remember that maverick Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary who were "Washington outsiders" who went to shake things up? The Washington system is impervious to any single person coming in and changing it. If we want change, we have to gather together and elect the people who will support our values across the board. So if Sarah Palin matches your values, then good. But if its just because she's a woman, or you're mad at the Democrats for not picking Hillary, then think again.

If anything, Palin's selection is an indicator of how the McCain campaign viewed their chances of winning the election as of last week. The pick has been labeled by pundits as a "Hail Mary" pass. When do that? When you are behind in points, desperate, and the clock is running out.

IOC Makes Mockery of Underage Gymnast Investigation

I'm sure the International Olympic Committee wishes the whole scandal of underage Chinese gymnasts would go away, and they are doing their best to confuse the situation.

Background: If by chance you just go back from climbing Mt. Everest and haven't had access to the news, the evidence that corruption has occurred on a major scale is pretty convincing. See these links:

David Flumenbaum shows how He Kexin as able to age 2 years within a few months
Sports Illustrated gives a solid overview the situation
The Stryde Hax blog shows how "someone" attempted to cover up the deception

Its clear from those reports that He Kexin, and perhaps several others on the Chinese gymnastics team, is underage. So why did the IOC let her compete? According to Flumenbaum, "Chinese Olympic officials have forcefully defended He's eligibility, maintaining that when asked, they submitted proper passport documentation to the IOC."

Okay, that's reasonable. I can understand that the IOC received a seemingly valid passport, and that is normally considered adequate. But here's the problem: Now that we know there is a cover up, the passport is obviously dubious. Moreover, a faked or otherwise fraudulent passport suggests something more sinister: complicity or corruption in the Chinese government.

Chinese coach Lu Shanzhen says, ""Surely it's not possible that these documents are still not sufficient proof of her birthdate?" Lu asked. "The passports were issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The identity card was issued by China's Ministry of Public Security. If these valid documents are not enough to clarify this problem, then what will you believe?"

Exactly, coach. So why is the IOC's solution to ask for more official documents from the Chinese government? Clearly who ever produced the fake passport can fabricate as many other documents as they need.

The solution here is get some documents, like a birth certificate and grade school records that would have have been created years ago and submit them to forensic analysis by outside experts to confirm the age of the documents. But it looks like the IOC's plan is to just ask for more fake documents and then shrug their shoulders after the intense scrutiny dies down.