My Predictions for 11-04-08

Let’s see how close I can get – here’s what I think is going to happen tomorrow.

Winner: Obama
Electoral College: Obama 349 McCain 189
Senate Seats: 58 Democrats 42 Republicans
House Seats: 261 Democrats 174 Republicans

News Orgs Investigate Possibly Fatal ’64 Car Crash Involving John McCain

From Huffington Post…

For the past two months, a major American magazine and an allied news service have been engaged in a legal battle with the United States Navy over records that they believe show that John McCain once was involved in an automobile accident that injured or, perhaps, killed another individual.

Vanity Fair magazine and the National Security News Service claim to have knowledge “developed from first-hand sources” of a car crash that involved then-Lt. McCain at the main gate of a Virginia naval base in 1964, according to legal filings. The incident has been largely, if not entirely, kept from the public. And in documents suing the Navy to release pertinent information, lawyers for the NS News Service allege that a cover-up may be at play.

“Plaintiffs have also obtained documents showing that law enforcement officers were ordered back to the accident scene to retrieve personal physical effects. The Navy has never publicly acknowledged this information,” one document reads. “This request involves federal government activity, as it addresses what may be an attempt by the Navy to protect by concealment the involvement of a former Navy officer, sitting Senator and Presidential candidate in a serious incident involving the injury or death of another human being.”

The first request for information concerning duty assignment logs to Portsmouth Naval Hospital — where McCain was allegedly brought after the accident — came in the form of a Freedom of Information Act request on August 28, 2008. The Navy acknowledged receipt of the request and advised that it had located the relevant information a few weeks later, only to deny the FOIA on grounds that it didn’t prove an “imminent threat to the life or physical safety of an individual” or satisfy the criteria of “a breaking news story of general public interest.”

“The patient admission record logs that you seek are exempt from release,” wrote G.E. Lattin, Deputy Assistant Judge Advocate General, “as information in personnel and medical files, as well as similar personal information in other files, that if disclosed to a requestor, other than the actual person in which the information is pertaining to or next of kin, would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

NS News Service and Vanity Fair appealed the decision and asked for expedited treatment of the case, as the end of the presidential election loomed. But the Navy denied that request as well.

“It appears to be a deliberate refusal to provide clearly releasable information concerning assignments to Portsmouth Naval Hospital,” wrote legal representatives for the two news organizations. “Allowing the Navy to extend its time to respond beyond a date when the documentary facts of this matter would be available for public consideration prior to the national election on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 would violate the spirit, as well as the provisions of the FOIA.”

Staff for National Security News Service and the company’s lawyer both refused to discuss the proceedings. And there are only parcels of information concerning the story that can be gleamed from the court documents.

At a minimum it seems clear that Vanity Fair and NS News Service have launched an investigation “disclosing first-hand witnesses’ recollection of an automobile accident in which then Lt. John S. McCain III was involved. Those witnesses specifically recall McCain’s assignment to that [hospital] facility with the other person involved in the accident.” This episode in McCain’s life has, it seems, not been made public, and the plaintiffs suggest that the Navy may be attempting to actively restrict information about the incident.

“The subject matter of the documents is a matter of current exigency to the American public,” reads a document filed by legal representatives for the news service, “because the requester is preparing a current news report addressing whether the Navy continues to conceal the involvement of a Navy officer in a serious automobile accident in July 1964.”

Props to These People for Having an Open Mind

This is what democracy is supposed to be. These people actually listened, considered and were open to the possibility of change. They didn’t support a candidate. They actually chose one. And while I’m happy this year they are voting for “my team,” they also inspired me to be more open in my own political life.

I thought we were making an ad campaign about Obama. But I think we ended up making an ad campaign about the essential ingredient that makes democracy work: an open mind. We don’t belong to our political parties. Our political parties belong to us.

Palin Thinks VP “Controls” the Senate…(sigh)

Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) sat for an interview with KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. In response to a question sent to the network by a third grader at a local elementary school about what the Vice President does, Palin erroneously argued that the Vice President is “in charge of the United States Senate“:

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”

PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

Watch it:

Indeed, while Palin suggests that questions about what the Vice President does is something only her daughter Piper would ask, Palin herself asked this very question on national television in July. Apparently, she still hasn’t learned the correct answer.

Article I of the Constitution establishes an exceptionally limited role for the Vice President — giving the office holder a vote only when the Senate is “equally divided”:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

Moreover, the U.S. Senate website explains that the modern role of Vice Presidents has been to preside over the Senate “only on ceremonial occasions.” ThinkProgress contacted Senior Assistant Paliamentarian Peter Robinson, who also disputed Palin’s characterization of the Vice President’s role:

In modern practice the Vice President doesn’t really control the Senate. … If anyone has a responsibility to try to govern the Senate, it’s the responsibility of the two leaders.=

The following statement is from Jim Manley, spokesman to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV):

This comment is all the more puzzling because this is at least the 2nd time she has said this. Gov Palin needs to re-read or perhaps read for the first time the Constitution. While the Vice President presides over the Senate, he or she is not in charge of it. Article 1 says The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate is part of a co-equal branch of the federal government.

McCain Can Kiss These States Good Bye

For the Web Designers who are Still Undecided Voters

Brooke Marshall, web designer extraordinaire writes…

In these shaky economic and political times, it’s important to put aside our conservative-versus-liberal differences, to shun petty political squabbling and come together in perfect bipartisan agreement about an important issue facing this election: Web design.

I don’t care who you are, whether you’re a staunch conservative or a hardcore liberal, a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent — we can all agree that Barack Obama’s Website is freaking gorgeous. And that makes John McCain’s already mediocre site seem all the more lame. I mean, I know the guy doesn’t know how to use the Internet, but that’s no excuse for some of the design sins committed on his site.

Sure, this may seem like a paltry issue in light of the crisis on Wall Street, the government’s high-stakes bailout, astronomical gas prices, the broken health care system, the… well, you get the point. But with the polls split almost evenly, and 73 toss-up electoral votes slated to decide this election, the candidates owe it to themselves and their parties to put their best possible face forward, particularly on a medium as important as the Internet. September saw a huge spike in the number of visitors to McCain and Obama’s Websites, according to Web information site Alexa.com, and if their growth over the past few months is any indication, the sites are due for a lot more in the weeks ahead.

Now, I’m not just writing this for the distinct pleasure I get from putting McCain’s mediocre Web design in its place. (For the record, I’m a 22-year-old liberal/hippie with an Obama ’08 sticker affixed to the bumper of my Honda Civic.) I’m also impressed with the amount of pertinent information these two very different Websites have to teach us about the principles of sound design — what to do, what to avoid, what looks great, what looks cheesy, etc. So I examined the design and functionality of the sites, looking at aspects like quality, organization, use of current design trends, ease and pleasure of navigation, provisions for alternative users (the disabled, non-English speakers, etc.), and whether the site achieves its purpose.

And all I can say is that if quality of Web design decided the election, Obama would win in a landslide.

Despite a few minor flubs, Barack Obama’s site is a shining example of the amazing things that can be achieved through the art of Web design. Even so, it doesn’t have that much to teach us, except maybe to pay attention to detail. No, the true lessons lie in John McCain’s attempt.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying you shouldn’t vote for McCain because of shoddy Web design. Clearly the man has a lot to offer the American public — experience, intelligence, an impressive record of service, all that good stuff.

But what if McCain wasn’t running for president? What if he was running a small business instead? If that were the case, a lot fewer people would tolerate the mistakes he made on his Website. And that’s the lesson to take from this. McCain’s Website commits two grievous errors: Trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Instead of wasting time with McCainSpace — a doomed enterprise if ever there was one — he should have concentrated on picking color more wisely. Instead of trying to impress his visitors with hackneyed animations, he should have checked his site for errors. Instead of creating a mediocre site plagued by the same basic design mistakes people have been making since the days of animated GIFs and embedded MIDI players, he should have done his homework on current design trends.

In a way, his site almost mirrors his politics. The self-proclaimed maverick who votes with the current administration the vast majority of the time has created a blasé site that fails to step outside the safe boundaries of Web design, and even repeats a few obvious mistakes. Meanwhile, Obama’s site is poised at the frontier of innovative design, incorporating relevant trends with solid principles and a spirit for experimentation and evolution, all while keeping in mind the most important aspect of any Website — the user.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s the change we need.

Barack Obama’s September Fundraising Numbers

Barack Obama raised more than $150 million in September, a stunning and unprecedented eruption of political giving that has given him a wide spending advantage over rival John McCain.

The campaign had added 632,000 new donors in September, for a total of 3.1 million contributors to the campaign.

The average donation was $86.

You too can be part of the movement! Click here to see how you can get involved!

McCain’s Funny Faces

what the HELL is with McCain and his tongue?! I don’t even want to think about it, seriously, but c’mon, he is gross!

poor Johnny…looks like he’s going to cry

Why is John McCain so freakin’ awkward!?!

Congratulations You’re RICH!

Ok I don’t know why anyone else isn’t talking about this, but it really disturbed me last night when John McCain addressed Joe the Plumber and said “Congratulations, you’re rich!” as if he was on some game show or something. It weirded me out and I didn’t understand the point. John McCain freaks me out with all his weird gestures and facial expressions and grimaces, but some of the stupid things that come out of his mouth just really throw me for a loop. They leave me cocking my head to the side and saying “huuuuh?” like Scooby Doo. What about you?

If It Looks Like a Duck, Swims Like a Duck, and Quacks Like a Duck, Chances Are….

US-Iraq Withdrawal Plan Reached…Mirrors Obama’s Plan…Now Who is the LEADER?!

From The Independent…

Iraq and the United States have finally agreed on a security pact which would mean that US forces would withdraw from Iraq by 2011, American and Iraqi officials said yesterday.

The accord became a major test of strength between the Iraqi government and Washington since negotiations began in March with the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, pictured below, demanding US concessions on the date of the troop withdrawal and immunity for US troops. The pact replaces the UN Security Council resolution enacted after the American invasion of 2003.

US troops are to withdraw from Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year and from Iraq entirely by the middle of 2011 said the government’s spokesman, Ali Dabbagh.

He said: “The withdrawal is to be achieved in three years. In 2011, the government at that time will determine whether it needs a new pact or not, and what type of pact will depend on the challenges it faces.”

The US administration will present the pact as a sign of its success in Iraq but in fact the accord is very different from originally envisaged by Washington which would largely have continued the occupation as before.

President Bush was opposed to timelines or dates for an American withdrawal and the US is still stressing that this is conditional on improved security in Iraq. But it is unlikely that the Shia majority will want to share power with the US.

Iraqi politicians have always assumed that Washington’s insistence on signing a new accord before the presidential election was motivated by the White House’s hope that the accord would be seen as a sign that its Iraq policy had at last produced a success. The Republican contender, Senator John McCain, started off his campaign by saying that US troops might stay for 100 years and there should be no date for their withdrawal. The Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama, wants combat troops home by the middle of 2010, which was also the date originally proposed by Mr Maliki.

Iraq has faded as an issue in the presidential election as the financial crisis worsened. However, claims that the Republicans had won a victory in Iraq looked increasingly unreal as it became clear that a withdrawal date would be determined by Mr Maliki, and not by the US.

The US has given ground on crucial issues. On the legal immunity of American troops Mr Dabbagh said: “Inside their bases, they will be under American law. Iraqi judicial law will be implemented in case these forces commit a serious and deliberate felony outside their military bases and when off duty.” Contractors, who have more men in Iraq than the US army, will no longer have immunity.

You Decide!

John McCain’s Anger Management Problem

John McCain’s BEST Can’t Hold a Candle to Barack Obama’s Worst

Enough said….

Sarah Palin Needs a Map

This video is self-explanatory…

New Hampshire….NorthWEST? hmmm…

Sarah Palin Doesn’t Know JACK: Part 1,694

The campaign of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said the Alaska governor was unaware of a visit by Russian energy officials to Anchorage on Monday.

Eight high-level officials from Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy conglomerate, traveled to Anchorage earlier this week to meet with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the chief executive of ConocoPhillips to discuss energy projects and the possibility of expanding into new markets.

The meeting on Alaskan soil comes at a time of chilly relations between Russia and the United States following Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August. Both Palin and John McCain have been critical of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail, and Palin raised eyebrows last month in an interview by saying that Putin “rears his head” by dispatching Russian jets into Alaska’s airspace.

Palin has argued that her state’s proximity to Russia, as well as trade missions between Alaska and Russia, have helped give her the foreign policy experience necessary to be Vice President. But the campaign said the governor did not know that the Gazprom delegation was meeting with the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, who is a Palin appointee.

Todd Palin Disqualified from Obtaining Security Clearance

Although Sarah Palin smack talks Barack Obama for “palling around with terrorists,” it turns out that the Palin family has its own history of palling around with Alaska’s own unique brand of America-haters. Palin’s husband Todd was once an actual member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). Palin herself was not a member of AIP — but many AIP luminaries claim her as a kindred spirit and “one of their own.”

A charitable characterization of AIP might be “quirky down-home Alaska politics.” However, the security processes that govern access to our defense and national security institutions might not look so kindly on Todd Palin’s past political associations. Indeed, if Todd Palin were applying for a job in the US government or at a contractor that required access to sensitive classified information — a security clearance — he would very likely be ineligible.

What’s so bad about the AIP? The party officially renounces violence and disloyalty to the United States, even though its members often do not. The AIP has long been aligned closely with paramilitary militia groups — the kind that fear black helicopters and a United Nations takeover of the US. Indeed, under the leadership of AIP’s tough-talking founder, Joe Vogler, AIP allied itself with the Islamic dictatorship in Iran in 1993 so that Vogler could appear at the United Nations to appeal for Alaska’s freedom from US “tyranny.” A fellow AIP member murdered Vogler before he could take the UN stage. The current AIP chairwoman, Lynnette Clark, believes that Vogler’s killer was framed and all but blames the Federal government for Vogler’s “execution.”

Security clearances are a defining fact of life for the national security drones who quietly toil away in secret vaults and mean foreign streets to help protect America. Entry-level defense and intelligence employees often wait months — even years — for the results of an exhaustive background investigation and maybe even a polygraph interrogation before they are allowed to start work with a government agency or contractor. Seasoned intelligence and defense workers routinely re-submit to the security investigation process every few years, or if their work requires them to gain access to a specialized or “compartmented” program.

The criteria for security clearances have changed with the times, but some bedrock principles always apply. When I was in the Army in the ’80s for example, tattoos were actually a disqualifying factor for a clearance, as was any past drug use. Fashion and social changes forced a change to those kinds of exclusions. In the early ’90s, homosexuality was still a disqualifier — but that was overturned with Clinton-era adjustments to the clearance process. The rise of computer culture has brought new concern over illegal computer activity, which has found its way into security investigations.

However, security investigators will always be interested in particularly serious issues — criminal activity, for example, or major financial problems like a history of debt collections and bankruptcy. And of course, loyalty to the US and foreign connections are a major focus of personal security investigations. “Is the subject a foreign spy?” the investigators ask. “Would the subject ever participate in activities intended to harm the United States?”

The security clearance investigation is based on the Standard Form 86, a 21-plus page government form that gathers information on an individual’s family, friends, education, employment, residences, finances, law enforcement history, drug and computer use, foreign contacts, and associations with violent or subversive political groups. I have filled out the SF 86 dozens of times. When I was the security officer for an intelligence contractor, I routinely reviewed our employees’ SF 86 forms before asking the government to process them for security clearances, looking for obvious disqualifications. The idea here was to avoid the costs of investigating employees who were obviously not eligible for a clearance, like the guy who “experimented” with marijuana at least 100 times in the previous year.

Above all, honesty is the rule for anyone filling out an SF 86 — do you think CIA or DoD will want to hire or retain someone who lied on a security form?

Which gets us back to Todd Palin. From the security officer’s perspective, Todd Palin the hypothetical applicant should be truthful and disclose his former association with AIP on the SF 86 in Section 29, Association Record. And because AIP has been associated with the Revolutionary Government of Iran, he probably should also disclose his AIP membership on Section 20, Foreign Activities.

How would government security officials who administer the security clearance process view the facts of Todd Palin’s association with AIP? The answer is not clear cut, but his involvement in a secessionist party with foreign and violent connections would inject serious doubts about his security suitability. At best, the AIP association would raise questions that might be resolved favorably with further investigative work. However, many security officials would likely view the AIP association negatively — especially the Iranian connection — and deny Todd Palin a clearance.

Managers of the most sensitive special security programs are allowed wide latitude in denying clearances. These programs, called Special Access Programs, or SAPs, are scattered across government and are focused on specific tasks, such as weapons development or special operations or presidential transportation. A SAP program can exclude individuals based on connections to a foreign country, such as immigrant parents (often excluding vitally needed foreign language speakers), or very stringent financial criteria, such as $10,000 in unsecured debt (often excluding many recent college graduates). Many SAP managers would very likely deny Palin a clearance based on association with or membership in a secessionist party with known ties to a hostile foreign government.

So the Palin family is associated with a political party hostile to America in word and deed. That’s a matter of record that has real impact on established norms in the national security community. According to the laws and processes that help protect national security, actually joining a fringe, gun-toting, anti-government party indicates a potential risk of disloyalty, or worse.

Meanwhile, acquaintance with an aging ex-hippy who once belonged to a terrorist group famous for accidentally blowing itself up — I’m not sure if that’s relevant to presidential qualifications. Or national security.

The REAL Story About ACORN

For years, conservatives have grumbled about voter registration efforts aimed at low-income citizens, particularly those mounted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), claiming these campaigns are rampant with fraud and corruption that benefits Democrats. On Tuesday, this low-grade battle became a headline-making clash, as the McCain-Palin campaign blasted ACORN and the Obama-Biden campaign and ACORN responded in kind.

At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, the McCain campaign put the chairmen of its “Honest and Open Election Committee,” former Republican Senators John Danforth and Warren Rudman, front and center before the national media. The pair asserted that the election is in danger of being compromised, accusing ACORN of submitting thousands of phony voter registrations nationwide. They noted that they had sent a letter to the Obama campaign, Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, and top state election officials proposing the creation of joint election observation teams. “Each campaign would list every precinct where either fears there is a potential for voter intimidation, fraud, or mistrust of the tabulation process on Election Day,” the letter reads. “Each campaign would be responsible for recruiting a volunteer for each named precinct. The Republican and Democratic volunteers would work jointly as an observation team.” (It is already routine for campaigns and parties to send election observers, often trained lawyers, to polling locations on Election Day. Representatives of local media outlets are commonly on hand as well.)

Danforth and Rudman’s letter ends, “Let’s talk.” The Obama campaign isn’t interested. It points out that the campaigns already dealt with this issue in an exchange of letters in September that generated little media attention. At that time, the McCain folks notified the Obama campaign of its joint observation teams idea and a week later the Obama campaign responded harshly: “This seems a starkly political maneuver to deflect attention from the reality of the suppression strategies pursued by national, state and Republican party committees.” Nothing further occurred.

At the press conference, Danforth and Rudman suggested that ACORN was engaging in fraudulent voter registration on a massive scale — they mentioned 5,700 rejected ACORN registrations in Philadelphia, 1,400 more in New Mexico, reports of individuals registering to vote dozens of times, and so on. Senator Rudman said that he does not know what ACORN, which works with low-income communities and is a known sympathizer with liberal causes, hopes to accomplish, but that their actions call the integrity of the election into question. They repeated the charges on the cable news networks after the press conference.

The Senators didn’t quite accuse Barack Obama of orchestrating massive voter fraud, but they came close. “Senator Obama has a special responsibility to reign in ACORN,” said Danforth. The campaign pointed to Obama’s connections to the group: Obama worked with ACORN briefly while a community organizer, did minor legal work for it after law school, and distributed funds to it while a board member of the Chicago-based Woods Fund. Further, the Obama campaign paid a subsidiary of ACORN over $800,000 to help with get-out-the-vote efforts (not voter registration) in the Democratic primary. ACORN takes pride in primarily registering low-income people, people of color, and young people. All three groups are major parts of Obama’s coalition. Together, these facts are enough for many on the right to claim a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election. Practically every conservative group with a mailing list, from the Republican National Committee to the pro-life Family Research Council, has sent an email alerting its supporters to the grave threat ACORN supposedly represents.

Shortly after the McCain press conference ended, ACORN had an opportunity to defend itself. Renting a room just down the hall from the McCain campaign press conference, the group admitted to the press that in the process of registering 1.3 million new voters with the help of 13,000 mostly part-time canvassers, problems have occurred. Most commonly, its representatives said, workers seeking to make a quick buck have inflated their registration totals with duplicate or fictional registrations — thus the report that the Dallas Cowboys roster has allegedly been registered to vote in Nevada. But there is no institutionalized attempt to steal the election, they maintained. In fact, problematic registration forms are flagged by ACORN before they are sent to election officials, who frequently require all forms, legitimate or not, to be handed over to the state in which they were filed. In many of the cases where hundreds or thousands of problematic registration forms were found, ACORN was the first to identify the problem. And, the organization pointed out, those responsible for submitting phony registrations have been fired and in some cases, reported to authorities for possible criminal action.

ACORN officials also pointed out that fraudulent voter registrations do not equal fraudulent votes. Someone registered to vote 72 times can only cast one vote at the polls. (In response, the McCain campaign pointed to vulnerabilities in the absentee voting system, but offered few details.) On this front ACORN was echoed by Demos, a think tank, and Common Cause, a good government advocacy group. The heads of both groups cited studies indicating that very few people try to use a fake name to vote. Voter fraud at the polls, they said, is a minor problem compared to voter intimidation, intentional voter misinformation campaigns, and barriers to voting commonly set up in conservative states, such as Voter ID laws. The Obama campaign, in a conference call held hours after the dueling press conferences, reiterated these points. Campaign manager David Plouffe called the McCain campaign’s focus on ACORN a “strategic and cynical ploy… to sow confusion in a deliberate attempt to decrease turnout.”

ACORN’s leadership has sent a letter to Senators Danforth and Rudman requesting a sit-down meeting to address the controversy. It mirrored the letter Danforth and Rudman sent to the Obama campaign. The McCain campaign has a political interest in declining the invitation. After all, why would it put to bed a controversy that has the ability to energize its base in the final weeks of the election?

Haven’t We Had ENOUGH of Trickle Down Economics? Obviously, John McCain Hasn’t!

From Huffington Post…

If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That’s what came to mind this AM when I read that John McCain’s plan to address the ailing economy includes a big cut in the capital gains tax rate, from 15% to 7.5% for the next two years.

How wrongheaded is this? Let me count the ways.

First, the McCain folks may have missed this, but asset values have been falling, big time. Remember, John?… That whole financial mess that folks have been talking about? When capital assets, like stocks or bonds, lose value, that’s a capital loss, and it’s already deductible from your taxes.

OK, but there’s probably a few folks out there who’ve realized some capital gains, or will do so at some point in the next couple of years. What’s the point of giving them a tax break? What itch does that scratch?

The vast majority of realized capital gains–that’s the money you make, for example, when you sell a stock for more than you paid for it–go the richest families, so they’re the ones who benefit from this. The good number crunchers at the Tax Policy Center examined who would benefit from the McCain proposal. The middle fifth of families end up with all of 0.2% of the benefits. That’s not a typo. The tax break would lower their annual tax bill by $4.00. OK, that is a gallon of gas, but it’s not what you’d call a game-changer.

The top 20% end up with 98.3% of the benefits of the cut, and the top 1%, with income above $600,000 get 75% of the gains, for an average benefit of $37,600. The average tax savings for the top 0.1%–income above $3 mil–is $244,000. In other words, this isn’t a recipe for helping families hurt by the financial crisis and the recession. It’s a recipe for more income inequality.

So why do it…why cut the rate? You guessed it: good old trickle down. It’s yet another example of that supply-side fairy dust that worked so well for Bush that McCain and Co. want to see the Bushies and raise them.

If cutting taxes for the wealthiest households boosted job creation, we’d know it. The Bush cuts, originally opposed by John McCain by the way, were sold on this premise. Yet before we began to shed jobs this year, employment growth in the Bush years was the worst on record.

If you want to provide income and job opportunities to people who are hurting, your best bet is to do so directly, through tax cuts targeted at them, and through infrastructure investment designed to create new, quality jobs. That’s what Obama aims for in his recently announced package.

Finally, and this is important, does anyone really believe that this allegedly temporary cut will really sunset in two years? Like Dr. Phil says, “this ain’t my first rodeo!” That’s the tripwire in the Bush cuts. They end in 2011, but anyone who wants to let them do so is accused of supporting the “largest tax increase in history.”

If we’re foolish enough to sign onto this cut in the capital gains tax rate based on our understanding that the rate will reset in two years…well, as Bush himself put it, “fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me…you can’t get fooled again.” In fact, here’s a quote from a straight-talking Republican Senator back in 2003 when he opposed Bush’s capital gain and dividend tax cuts based on these illusory sunsets: “…the problem with that is it’s gimmickry. It makes a mockery out of the whole budgetary process…” Listen to yourself, Senator McCain.

So we are yet again left with John McCain getting it wrong on economic policy. There is absolutely a need to help struggling families right now, but if this is the best he can come up with, we’d all be much better off if he put the hammer back in the tool shed and left the policy construction to others.

Even Wonder Woman Hates Sarah Palin

Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman on television in the 1970s, slammed Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as the “anti-Wonder Woman.”

Carter made her remarks in response to a question from Philadelphia Magazine about comparisons between Wonder Woman and Gov. Palin (Alaska), the GOP’s first veep nominee.

“She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives,” Carter added. “And a superior religious self-righteousness … that’s just not what Wonder Woman is about. Hillary Clinton is a lot more like Wonder Woman than Mrs. Palin. She did it all, didn’t she?”

Carter said that it was “anti-American” to try to force religious views on others.

“I like John McCain,” Carter said. “But this woman — it’s anathema to me what she stands for. I think America should be very afraid. Very afraid. Separation of church and state is the one thing the creators of the Constitution did agree on — that it wasn’t to be a religious government. People should feel free to speak their minds about religion but not dictate it or put it into law.”