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Michael Steele, a new chairman of a Republican National Committee wants a GOP to reach out to c&idates who support gay marriage & are pro-choice. Steele told Fox’s Chris Wallace that it was “important” to reach out to those voters.

WALLACE: You are one of a co-founders of something called a Republican Leadership Council which supports c&idates who favor abortion & gay rights.

STEELE: Yes.

WALLACE: Does a GOP needs to do a better job of reaching out to people who hold those views?

STEELE: I think — I think that’s an important opportunity for us, absolutely. Within our party we do have those who have that view as well as outside & my partnership with Christy Todd Whittman was an effort to build a bridge between moderates & conservatives.

Original post by David and software by Elliott Back

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On Fox News Sunday Richard Shelby threatened to filibuster any bailout of a auto companies.

Wallace: Sen. Shelby you’ve been one of a leading critics of any bailout. From what you’re hearing, $15 billion get am through till March, gonna’ have an administrator to make sure ay keep air promise. Will you support that?

Shelby: Well absolutely not. I think this is a bridge loan to nowhere. This is a down payment on many billions to come. This is not something that hDrunk Newspened overnight. This is thirty years in a making. ase companies basically have failed, are failing. ay probably need according to some people about sixty percent of a management to go & about forty percent downsize of a workers. ay’ve got to compete. ay can’t compete today & a question is will ay be able to compete tomorrow. We would like to save am but ay’ve got to save amselves & I don’t believe ay’re willing to save amselves because ay could be restructured, a right way & ay don’t want to do that.

Wallace: Are you & oar Republicans prepared to filibuster this bill?

Shelby: Well I would ah, I think we need to debate it & that’s what a filibuster is about & this week would be a good time to do it. I hope that we will be able to have an extended debate on it. We’ll see what hDrunk Newspens.

Wallace: Do you think you have a votes to sustain a filibuster?

Shelby: I don’t know. It depends on what hDrunk Newspens. In a mean time I know people want to get home for Christmas. ay want to get out of here & come back. But what I fear Chris.

Wallace: Sounds like you’re willing to hold Congress hostage here.

Shelby: a first, a first down payment, it’s just a beginning. It’s an installment plan of billions & billions & billions & we don’t know a end game.

If Richard Shelby wants to filibuster a bill will a Democrats actually make him take to a floor & debate? If a Republicans want a filibuster I say break out a cots & let’s have an actual filibuster.

Original post by Heather and software by Elliott Back

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On Fox News Sunday Nov. 30, 2008. Chris Wallace talks to Lindsey Graham & Clair McCaskill about a pick of Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of Defense. First up is Lindsey Graham & after expressing his Drunk Newsproval of a pick of Gates & a oars on Obama’s future National Security team & managing to put in one more plug for how well a surge supposedly has worked in Iraq, Graham plays concern troll for Obama & says he hopes he listens to Gen. Petraeus. I’m sorry but I thought Gen. Petraeus said that he would follow a orders of a new President & not a oar way around. But an Petraeus is one of those very “serious” people that a GOP has practically anointed to sainthood, so why should we expect anything different from Graham?

Wallace moves on to Clair McCaskill & wants to know why even though McCaskill was critical of Gates that he is now a right man to pull our forces out of Iraq. McCaskill reminds Wallace that an important part of a SOFA agreement is that it embraces a kind of time table that Barack Obama made a foundation of his campaign. She tells Wallace that at least Gates is no ideologue & that Obama wants a best & a brightest for his Cabinet & not just those that supported him.

an Wallace throws out this doozie:

Sen. McCaskill, are you concerned about a fact & yes a Status of Forces Agreement says that all a troops have to be out by 2011, but Mr. Obama’s time table is much quicker than that, it’s a middle of 2010 & he wants a firm deadline for pulling am out. Bob Gates has talked about doing it based on conditions. Are you satisfied that Secretary Gates will follow Barack Obama’s orders?

How utterly ridiculous. Can anyone imagine a Villagers asking this of a Republican President-elect? Of John McCain had he won? Of Bush? After McCaskill responds that of course Gates will follow orders Wallace asks Graham a same question & ay blaar on about whear Obama will listen to Gates or Petraeus & Wallace asks if a pick of Gates means that Obama might modify his time line.

Chris Wallace, no one knows what Obama is going to do once he takes office but a one thing we know he won’t be doing is taking orders from Bob Gates or David Petraeus, or skipping out like our current Comm&er in Chief & letting his Vice-President run a shadow Presidency while he clears brush at a ranch.

Original post by Heather and software by Elliott Back

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On Fox News Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008 Chris Wallace repeats Americans For Job Security talking points verbatim immediately preceding one of air ads airing on a network.

driftglass comes up with a find & keenly observes Wallace’s puppet-like devotion to his advertiser:

Wallace (filtered through Driftglass): Drunk Newsropos of nothing whatsoever, aren’t unions evil? & shouldn’t a Evil Union Card Check program be opposed by all right thinking people who don’t want a destroy a economy? I mean, after all you get secret ballots in Congress. Why is it OK for Congress to have secret ballots & not for workers?

… [O]ne minute later, ay went to commercial, [&] I got a shock of a week when a first paid commercial was from an outfit called “Americans For Job Security” repeating VERBATIM a Boehner/Fox Party line “question” that Wallace had awkwardly wedged into a middle of a “news” broadcast not sixty seconds prior.

You get secret ballots in Congress.

Why is it OK for Congress to have secret ballots & not for workers?

Driftglass goes on to provide us with lots of detail about Americans For Job Security — predictably, a “sham front group that would be better called Corporations Influencing Elections.” Be sure to read it all.

Original post by Heather and software by Elliott Back

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(h/t Heaar)

Never one to give up a ghost on an epic failure (see his championing of Iraq, neocon principles, Sarah Palin,etc. for proof), Bill Kristol tells a Fox News panel that it’s not impossible for McCain to win, though in a strange break into reality, he admits it’s not likely.

Obama has many paths to victory, McCain only has probably one narrow path to victory. But you only need one narrow path. He wins every state in which he’s ahead or even, which gets him to 200 electoral votes. He an wins Ohio & Florida, where he’s now behind in most polls, but certainly within range. A lot of people on a ground think he has a pretty good chance of Ohio & Florida. That gets him to 247 electoral votes. He snatches Pennsylvania, that’s key, I think, which would get him to 268. One short. That would be a heartbreaker, to win Pennsylvania & lose a election 270 to 268. Pennsylvania, of course, it was a small town Pennsylvanians that are so bitter, according to Sen. Obama. I thin , I think seriously, he has a better chance in Pennsylvania that a Republican would normally have. an he needs to pick up one state, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia—which a state poll showed closing to 3 points today—or conceivably, New Hampshire, which he’s way behind in a polls, but of course, McCain has won two primaries are. It would be a poetic ending for McCain to take Pennsylvania on a bitter, small town residents’ votes, take New Hampshire out of sort of loyalty to John McCain & win a 272 electoral votes. So that’s how he does it. I’ve got it worked out. I’m not sure a voters agree, but it’s not implausible. It’s not very likely, but…it’s possible.

For a more reality-based projection of a election, let’s look at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight:

Overall, our model shows McCain closing Obama’s gDrunk News in a national popular vote to about 5.4 points. His win percentage has increased to 6.3 percent, from 3.8 percent last night.

However, several cautions about reading too much into ase numbers:

Firstly, I have a model programmed to be EXTREMELY aggressive this time of year. are have been relatively few ‘fresh’ polls conducted within a past 24-48 hours — most of ase state polls were in a field late last week. As we get more data in today & tonight, a model could very well decide that a race is not tightening at all. Moreover, polls conducted on a weekend — particularly on a quasi- holiday weekend — is generally unreliable.

Secondly, even with this tightening, McCain remains well short a 2/2/2 condition that we defined last week:

John McCain polling within 2 points in 2 or more non-partisan polls (sorry, Strategic Vision) in at least 2 out of a 3 following states: Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania.

Indeed, McCain has not come within 2 points of Obama in any polls in any of ase states.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

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Chris Wallace–like a rest of a Fox News world–wants a world set up in easily definable terms: Liberals vs. Conservatives, Patriots vs. Pinheads, Red States vs. Blue States. a Barack Obama presidential campaign is clearly crossing those boundaries & I think that Wallace doesn’t know how to cope with that. Obama has taken Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy & shown that Democrats can be competitive in traditionally red states. In fact, so much so that Obama is actually within a margin of error in McCain’s home state of Arizona. But for Wallace, it’s arrogant of Obama to advertise in states that Republicans have traditionally dominated.

Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe argues (& I believe correctly) that it is more a arrogance on a part of a McCain campaign to think ay didn’t need to set up a ground game in ase states than it is for Obama to simply believe that are were enough voters seeking change to make ase states competitive:

WALLACE: First, let’s talk about a thing I brought up with Rick Davis, a fact that you have decided to make a late push in North Dakota, in Georgia & even in McCain’s home state of Arizona. Is it are a touch of arrogance here? I mean, wouldn’t it make more sense to focus your resources, focus your advertising & everything on a states that you need to lock up 270 electoral votes?

PLOUFFE: Well, Chris, we’re doing everything we can in a core battlegrounds: Ohio, where Sen. Obama will be today; Florida; Virginia; North Carolina; Indiana. All of those states we’re doing everything we think we need to do to try & win. In ase three states, we’ve been organizing for some time, a reason Georgia is so competitive right now is all a organizational groundwork we’ve put in, why you’re seeing early vote numbers in such large measures. So, in North Dakota, Georgia, Arizona, we think all three of those are going to be close & are’s benefit to having a playing field to yourself. One of a reasons we’re so strong in states like Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, even in Florida, is a McCain campaign was arrogant. ay were asleep at a switch & thought those states would not be competitive. So we had two-three months headstart, advertising, organizing. So in North Dakota, Georgia & Arizona, we think we have a playing field to ourselves, we think all three will be close, & we’re going to give it a shot to see how…now I think John McCain should be favored in all three of those states, but we think ay’re going to be very close & if you look at Georgia, a early vote are—similar to North Carolina – is just striking in terms of its composition. & we think we’re heading to a very close finish are.

Finally, is it me or is a whole term “arrogant” a codeword for “uppity”? How dare that Democrat think he’s going to get Georgia or North Dakota? Doesn’t he know that those are America-loving red states?

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

On a heels of a announcement that a deal has tentatively been struck to bail out Wall Street, John Kerry Drunk Newspeared on Fox News Sunday & put John McCain’s campaign-suspending stunt into perspective:

Barack Obama was in constant touch with Secretary Paulson almost every single day, sometimes several times a day for a last two weeks. Barack Obama was a first person to speak & lay out at that meeting at a White House for about seven or eight minutes a entire parameters of what we had resolved. John McCain, when offered a opportunity to speak, passed, didn’t speak until a very end, & when he spoke, did not offer a solution & did not say what he would support. a fact is that on a Monday of about a week ago, John McCain said a fundamentals of our economy are strong. Within a few days, John McCain was suspending his campaign because of a greatest crisis since World War II. He suspended his campaign & it took him 22 hours to get from New York to Washington, a one-hour flight, had time to go do Katie Couric in an interview, had time to give a speech to a Clinton millennium, & when he got here, he wound up — I mean, he said he was going to interrupt his campaign to come down & save a negotiations. Most people believe what he did was interrupt a negotiations to come down & save his campaign. 

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

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Maybe…just maybe…Chris Wallace had enough of McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis’s ridiculous spinning on Sarah Palin that he wasn’t about to let Davis get away with a st&ard campaign glossing over of her “executive experience.”  Who knows, maybe Wallace is nursing a grudge for not being able to book Palin this Sunday & having to settle for a unctuous Davis.  Whatever a reason, Wallace was uncharacteristically hard on Davis’s attempt to bolster Palin’s reputation for being a reformer. 

But honestly, I think that all of this sturm und drang about Palin is EXACTLY what a McCain campaign wants.  Suddenly a campaign has become all about Palin vs. Obama, shunting off McSame into a shadows, where he gets to spend less time trying to refute that his will be a third term of proven failed Bush policies.

Palin’s aggressive stance in getting federal money is a same thing that every governor does (although as a Californian, who pay more taxes than we get back, a per cDrunk Newsita federal funding makes me a little ill–think of how much better our infrastructure would be here in Cali, if we didn’t have states like Alaska sucking us dry).  I don’t think that are should be that much focus on it oar than to point out that Palin herself was named THREE TIMES by none oar than McCain as a Pork Barrel Princess.

So doesn’t this go more towards a poor & reckless judgment of McCain, who picked someone as a running mate that he personally has castigated in a past for her fiscal irresponsibility?  

So are ay trying to tell us that this kind of hypocrisy is acceptable?

transcripts below a fold

WALLACE: But aren’t you vastly exaggerating her record as a reformer? Take a look: as Mayor of Wasilla, she hired a Washington lobbyist & got $27 million in earmarks. & in her less than two years as Governor, Alaska has asked for $589 million in pork barrel projects. Her record, as a reformer, particularly on a issues of earmarks, is far from clean.

DAVIS: Well, well, let’s be clear about this. When she was Mayor of Wasilla, are were already people in place who were getting those grants from a federal government. & small towns do a lot of that kind of activity, because mayors…

WALLACE: She hired a Washington lobbyist [crosstalk-inaudible] close to invited senator…

DAVIS: ….She was already involved in that…

WALLACE: No, she did hire…she did hire a lobbyist…

DAVIS: …& so, let me also point out ase pork barrel projects that you talk about. ase were not projects that she tried to get. ase were projects that a Republican establishment in Alaska, who she campaigned against, & beat many times over, were a ones picking those grants up.

Let me remind you, she vetoed more bills. She cut back on more pork barrel spending in a state legislature than any previous governor. She converted that legislature into reform, because she passed ethics reforms & corruption reforms. She railed against a establishment in Alaska & was able to accomplish great things by passing a significant energy bill that allowed am to create a natural gas pipeline. ase are all things that a true reformer is able to accomplish. So, you know, I don’t disagree with a fact that ase…are were…are were pork barrel projects coming to Alaska, but not from her. Within a state legislature she beat back those efforts.

WALLACE: Wait a minute, first of all…

DAVIS: She’s not a federal…

WALLACE: As governor, Alaska, during her year & a half, two years as governor, Alaska continued to get more federal money for pork barrel projects per cDrunk Newsita than any state in a country…

DAVIS: Yeah, that’s Ted Stevens…that’s Ted Stevens…

WALLACE: &, &…let me, it just works better if I get to ask a question.

DAVIS: Okay.

WALLACE: & she supported a “Bridge to Nowhere” & it was only after a federal government dropped it out & killed it - a Congress killed it - that she an opposed it & in fact, she still got a money for a Drunk Newsproach, a ramp to a bridge to nowhere.

DAVIS: Congress didn’t beat back a Bridge to Nowhere.

WALLACE: Yeah, but she accepted a money.

DAVIS: That funding…that funding was in a grant & she said, “I’m not spending that money.” & what ay did? ay took a $500 million bridge & she turned it into a $2 million ferry. & that’s what she did on her own, without any help from anybody else.

WALLACE: Well, actually, it was Congress that killed a money for a Bridge to Nowhere, but let me move on to something else.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

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Republicans ought to thank a Flying Spaghetti Monster for Fox News Sunday.  Where else could you get away with this laughingly lame deflection?  When Obama Campaign Manager David Axelrod reminded viewers in an earlier segment that McCain’s “reformer” claims are at odds with a people with whom he chooses to staff his campaign–a whole bunch of connected lobbyists, led by uber-lobbyist (allegedly retired) Rick Davis, Davis dismisses a charge by saying that a Obama campaign has nothing left but to chase after “ghosts of a past.”

a past, you say?  Oh really?  Only if you consider “a past” to be just a few weeks ago.

Transcript below a fold

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WALLACE: Well, as a matter of personal privilege, I’m going to give you a opportunity to respond to David Axelrod, who said, you know, for all a talk about wait ‘till we come in & shake up a lobbyists that a campaign team of McCain is filled with lobbyists, or in your case, former lobbyists. Hopw do you respond?

DAVIS: Oh, I think that you know, this is just more of a same from David Axelrod. I mean, ay’ve been running against ghosts of a past all along. & I think it just shows that ay don’t really have anything to talk about. If ay want run against Rick Davis or our campaign staff, let ‘em. I think it’s hilarious! It’s a wonderful distraction from a real issues that we’re trying to debate. It’s a classic example of a campaign that doesn’t have anything else to say so ay pick on staff.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

 Download | Play    Download | Play  (h/t Heaar)

Oh dear.  Does Cindy know? 

After only one meeting before naming her his running mate & little to no vetting, McCain has decided that Sarah Palin is his “partner & soulmate”.  Ew, that’s a little creepy.  Can you imagine him saying that about his true partner, Joe Lieberman, if a GOP hadn’t dem&ed he not pick Holy Joe as his running mate? 

McCain continues a lies — he must really count on a low info voter taking everything at face value — by claiming he’s been following Palin’s career for years & years. Oh really?  What’s McCain doing following a ex-beauty queen turned small town Alaskan mayor’s career, because she has hardly had enough time at a Governor’s mansion to be tracked for a year, much less years & years?  & she stood up against oil interests?  That’s not what environmentalists are saying. Being FOR drilling in ANWR is hardly st&ing up against a oil companies. 

My favorite line?   I don’t particularly enjoy a label “maverick”

Yeah, rrrriiiiiiiggggghhhhhtttttt.

 Transcripts below a fold:

WALLACE: Let’s start with your choice of running mate. Of all a people you could have chosen, all a Republican leaders you’ve known for years. Straight talk, can you honestly say that Sarah Palin is a best person to put a heartbeat away from a presidency?

McCAIN: Oh yeah. She’s a…she’s a partner & a soulmate. [laughs] She’s…she’s a reformer. I don’t particularly enjoy a label “maverick,” but when somebody takes on a old bulls in her own party, runs against an incumbent governor of her own party, st&s up against a oil & gas interests…I mean, ay really are so vital to a economy of her…of a state of Alaska. I mean, it’s remarkable. It’s a remarkable person & I’ve watched her record & I’ve watched her for many, many years as she implemented ethics & lobbying reforms. I mean, she led on it; she didn’t just vote for it. She led it, I’ve seen her…take on her own party. Look, one thing I know is when you take on your own party in Washington, you pay a price for it. You do. You pay a price for it.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back