Well, well, well, the Republicans are getting desperate now aren't they?
In the sickest thing I've heard so far it turns out the McCain campaign worker who claimed that she was attacked by an Obama-supporting mugger did, in fact, carve a B (for Barack) into her own face and made up the whole story (and you NEED to click on the video) in an effort to discredit Obama supporters. Not surprisingly (as she IS a McCain supporter), the woman has a history of mental health issues… This was no small thing, it was national news and the McCain campaign (who are known for vetting things so well) had said in an official statement at the time: "We're shaken up by this. It's sick and disgusting" and Sarah Palin spoke with the "victim" by phone.
I think we've gone way too far past way too far when people are resorting to faking incidents with the intent of sparking racial tensions in order to win an election. I can't even believe the year is 2008 and it's even possible that we still have this stuff going on in America and what's really disturbing is the way this totally faked incident spread like wildfire in the media, before the police even had a chance to investigate. Is it a coincidence that the McCain campaign flew this woman up from Texas to Pittsburgh, where they are pushing hard to flip the state or that "McCain officials pushed a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time."
The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late Wednesday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.
With the markets melting down and the fact that I decided this election was over back on the 9th (our last Political Post), I haven't been paying much attention to the political shenanigans. Who cares that the McCain campaign spent $150,000 on clothes for Palin and another $5,000 on makeup alone (hell, they spent $8,672.55 just to try to make McCain not look like a walking corpse!)? What we should care about is the hypocrisy of the man who sponsored restrictions on "inherently personal expenses" being paid for by campaign financing. As McCain pointed out at the time, $150,000 is more than the entire salary of a Congressperson, of course a person accepting gifts of that magnitude are going to be a magnet for graft and corruption… There's the cutest picture here of Palin's 7 year-old daughter Piper with her own $3,000 Louis Vuitton bag – so precious!
Anyway, I'm not at all against the candidates being dressed and made up, we all learned from the Nixon/Kennedy debates that a poor appearance can cost an election and it's pretty silly for a campaign to spend $400M to get someone elected but then to parade them out in poor clothing but what's wrong here is McCain, -one of the richest men in the Senate, arguing to restrict others from using campaign financing to do something he can do with the money that fell in his couch this weekend. By setting these "reforms" what you are really doing is giving a massive advantage to the wealthy in running for office. If you are rich – you can spend what you want, buy what you want, fly where you want etc. but if you are poor – even if you have millions of supporters who are willing to pay your way, you must work within strictly defined parameters.
Campaign finance reform should level the playing field for all candidates. I think a number should be picked – let's say $5M is the average for a Congressional campaign, and that number should be the absolute most that can possibly be spent by either side. Whatever the total is, even if it's $2Bn a year, I would rather see it come from a general election fund than through donations too. If people want to contribute to a campaign, let them volunteer time – that supports the one man, one vote standard as Bill Gates can only put in as many hours a week as Joe the Plumber and that too levels the playing field.
