McCain campaigns for dirtbag Saxby Chambliss

U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)was at the Cobb Enery Performing Arts Center yesterday to to help reelect his Republican buddy Saxby Chambliss (R-Moultrie) to the U.S. Senate.

"Chambliss has been a steadfast defender of the taxpayer's dollar," said McCain. "He's been doing what we Republicans should have been doing the last eight years, and that's restrain spending."

Although Chambliss ended the General Election with a virtual tie against Jim Martain, he must a heavy favorite going into the Dec. 2 runoff. Georgia is a heavily Republican state and the voter turnout will be very different in the runoff.

During the Nov. 4 election, there were record numbers of voters, many of them who turned out to vote against the incumbents on all levels. Many of those voters were first-time voters, or cared only about the presidential race. During the runoff, those voters will be at home and not at the ballots.

I expect a stuanch showing from die-hard voters. These will typically be Republicans and many of them will vote for Chambliss as an anti-Obama/ anti-Democrat vote. It isn't wrong for them to do that. They believe Chambliss and the Republicans will represent their view's best.

I personally am not a fan of Chambliss and it's not because of his political views or how he has performed in office. It is because of his 2002 campaign agianst Max Cleland, which Chambliss won to hold his current office. Cleland, is a war hero that is now confined to a wheelchair and is a triple amputee from his service to this country. During the campaign, Chambliss released a commercial that compared Cleland to the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Yea, that's right. Don't believe me? Here is the commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKFYpd0q9nE

You can question Cleland's political record (which by most accounts was outstanding) but to compare this war hero to two of the world's most hated men is inexcusable. I find it hard to look past Chambliss' dirty campaigning to ever consider voting for him.

More voting problems

Voting rights groups are trying to stop Georgia elections officials from screening new voters by asking them to prove their identities and citizenship.
Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Stanley Birch has asked the voting groups, the state and the federal government to hammer out a compromise during a long lunch break.
The groups asked a three-judge federal panel Wednesday to stop Secretary of State Karen Handel from matching new voter applications with driver's license and Social Security data.
It comes days after a federal judge rejected their claims.
District Judge Jack Camp said he worried that halting the screenings could lead to "significant voter confusion" before the November 4 election. But he noted the groups still had the option to appeal to the three-judge panel.

Pay up TI

Well, we try to stick to politics here, but TI is an Atlanta homeboy. Check out the latest report:

The mother of two of T.I.'s children has sued the platinum-selling rapper for child support, saying she is having a hard time supporting the boys and now wants a court-ordered arrangement for payment.

Lashon Dixon and T.I. have known each other since they were teenagers and dated before he reached megastar status. They have two sons together, ages 7 and 8.

Dixon says T.I. currently gives her about $2,000 a month to care for the boys, but now she wants to schedule a more stable stipend that is commensurate with his success. Both parties appeared in Fulton County Superior Court on Thursday.

In March, T.I. is expected to be sentenced to at least a year in prison after he pleaded guilty to federal weapon possession charges.

"You can't put lipstick on a pig"

Wow! Barack Obama is already getting a lot of heat from his lipstick on a pig comment. While it isn't a direct shot at Gov. Sarah Palin's comment that lipstick is the only thing that separates a hockey mom from a pit bull, there are some shots that could be implied.

Let's suppose Obama was trying to take an underhanded shot at Palin, what would that message be? Here are a few ideas:

Palin cooks some mean bacon.
She looks like a pig? (hubba hubba)
She is a female chauvinist pig
Palin needs to wear more make up

OK, I know you can come up with better. Please share your thoughts. What was this comment really supposed to mean?

Oh and if anyone cares, here is the actual article. I find it hard to believe this really was a shot after knowing all the facts, but facts don't seem to matter too much in this race.


By NEDRA PICKLER

Associated Press Writer

What's the difference between the presidential campaign before and after the national political conventions? Lipstick.
The colorful cosmetic has become a political buzzword, thanks to Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's joke in her acceptance speech that lipstick is the only thing that separates a hockey mom like her from a pit bull.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama told an audience Tuesday that GOP presidential nominee John McCain says he'll change Washington, but he's just like President Bush.

"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said to an outbreak of laughter, shouts and raucous applause from his audience, clearly drawing a connection to Palin's joke even if it's not what Obama meant. "It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."

McCain's campaign called the comments "offensive and disgraceful" and said Obama owes Palin an apology. Obama's campaign said he wasn't referring to Palin and said the GOP camp was engaging in a "pathetic attempt to play the gender card." Obama's camp also noted that McCain once used the same phrase to describe Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan.

Obama followed up by saying Palin is an interesting story, drawing boos at the mention of her name that he tried to cut off.
"Look, she's new, she hasn't been on the scene, she's got five kids. And my hat goes off to anybody whose looking after five. I've got two and they tire Michelle and me out," he said.

In Virginia, a questioner asked Obama to join Republicans and agree that candidates' families and religion are off limits. Palin's pregnant teenage daughter and the teachings of her church, the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church, have been the subject of scrutiny since McCain picked her as his running mate.

Obama responded that he already has said families are off limits and he's very protective of his daughters, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha. He said he doesn't want their inevitable future mistakes to become newspaper fodder if he gets to the White House.

Obama also is no stranger to attacks on his religion. He's been the subject of a false rumor campaign saying he's a Muslim, and the racially tinged sermons of his longtime former preacher caused problems for his campaign earlier this year.

He stressed that he's a Christian and "so the fact that Gov. Palin is deeply religious, that's a good thing." He said poking around in her religion or saying it's wrong is "offensive" and he wants to have a debate about the issues.

"But don't give people some sort of religious litmus test because I don't want somebody to question my faith and I'm certainly not going to question somebody else's," he said.

Obama on cable: duel of softballs vs. shout-downs

Here is an interesting piece I just saw. Check it out



By DAVID BAUDER
AP
Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) _ Barack Obama competed against himself Monday with interviews airing simultaneously on two different networks. They might as well have been two different galaxies.


The Democrat waded into cable TV's blood feud, between Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News Channel, becoming as much a bit player as any even-odds presidential candidate can be.

In one interview Obama had to fight — not always successfully — to keep from being shouted down. In the other he couldn't succeed in keeping a straight face at the ease of the softballs tossed at him.

We'll leave you to guess which is which.

Obama sat down with O'Reilly first last week. The Fox News Channel host aired a portion of the interview last Thursday, and it became the second-highest rated episode of "The O'Reilly Factor" ever. He'll spread the interview out over two more nights this week.

O'Reilly came after the senator for an income tax plan that Obama said would lower tax rates for 95 percent of Americans while increasing rates for the richest citizens to Clinton administration levels.

The Fox host complained that Obama wanted "50 percent of my success." They fought briefly over numbers, and Obama said to O'Reilly, "you can afford that." O'Reilly said Obama's plans would promote class warfare. He called him "Robin Hood Obama" and said his tax plan was a "socialist tenet."

"If I'm sitting pretty and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can't, what's the big deal for me to say I'm going to pay a little more?" Obama said. "That's neighborliness."

O'Reilly said he and others he knew would be be making less stock transfers if the Obama tax plan went through. "It's going to come back and haunt you, senator," O'Reilly said.

It was a much different atmosphere at the MSNBC studio in Rockefeller Center. Olbermann interviewed Obama campaign on Monday and will run it in two parts with the second one on Tuesday.

He criticized a McCain television ad that characterized him and Palin as mavericks who can get things done.
What, he asked Obama, could he do to prevent people from lying about his record? "Why do people hesitate to use the word 'lie' about these things?"

Olbermann drew the smile from Obama when he asked whether the candidate should use more "exclamation points" in its statements. "Have you thought of getting angrier?" he asked.

He praised Obama for his use of the word "enough" in his convention acceptance speech and wondered why the Republicans, in his words, were having success muddying the waters of the campaign.

"The Republicans cannot always govern, but they run very smart campaigns," Obama said.

O'Reilly said he had frequently interrupted Obama because he didn't want to let him wander. Olbermann let him wander, lapse into stump speeches, and ducked when Olbermann asked him the most direct question, about whether he believed Sarah Palin had enough experience to be president.

"I'll let Gov. Palin answer that," Obama said with a smile. "I'm sure she'll be appearing on your show."

It's Sarah Palin's turn: What she must say tonight

Now it's Sarah Palin's turn.

Seldom has someone who hopes to introduce herself to a nation gotten such an unwanted introduction by her critics beforehand.

Tonight, she has to define herself. The media has already painted a picture of her, but tonight she can show the country who she is for herself.

So far, we know the personal story of the 44-year-old mother of five and a soon-to-be grandmother. There is the pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol,who is playing a surprising role in the campaign. Tonight the soon to be father, 18-year-old Levi Johnston, plans to join the Palin family at the convention, presenting something of a three-generation tableau on stage.

But tonight should be more the political story of someone who may be highly popular in Alaska, but is largely unknown throughout the nation. It turns out that, as mayor of tiny Wasilla, she hired lobbyists to draw earmark money from Washington - the evil that McCain promises to eliminate as president - raising questions about how much of a "reformer'' this running mate of a self-styled "original maverick'' really is.

It turns out that as a longtime member of the Wasilla Assembly of God - she since has changed churches - she espouses a faith that may carry a lot of appeal to the Evangelical Christian base of the Republican Party but cause pause among independent voters: On the stage of that church this year, she called the war in Iraq "a task that is from God'' and a new pipeline "God's will.''

Supporters say she knows something about foreign policy because Alaska sits next door to Russia. But Palin's own world travels, with a not-long-issued passport, appear to center on her visit to the Alaska National Guard deployed in Iraq. It is said, too, that Palin has more executive experience than Democrat Barack Obama - presiding for less than two years over the government of a state of 670,000, and having run and served on the council of a city that had about 5,500 citizens at the time.

Now it will be Palin's turn to tell her story, and there is a potential for a big audience here at this convention that got off to such a slow, storm-soaked start.