Advice to Obama. I sent the following email via feedback form to the Obama campaign this evening:

TWO points you need to make in Wednesday's debate: (1) The $250,000 threshold for tax increases refers to PERSONAL income, not small-BUSINESS income, and that business income tax relates to PROFIT, after all tax-deductible expenses, not gross revenues before deductions. (2) William Ayers was NOT a "domestic terrorist" when you met him and in fact NEVER tried to "bring down the Government" but only to get the U.S. to withdraw from Vietnam. He was agitated by the Vietnam War, and attacked the Pentagon with a tiny bomb that did very little physical damage and hurt no one. Opposition to the Vietnam War may have been "radical" early on but became MAINSTREAM, and it is Richard Nixon, a REPUBLICAN, who sent Henry Kissinger (a close advisor to John McCain today who, after the second debate, publicly called John McCain a "dear friend") to negotiate the surrender to Communists in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia — which surrender cost at least three million people their lives. John Kennedy, a Democrat, got us into Vietnam, in honor, to defend the Vietnamese from Communism. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, REPUBLICANS, "waved the white flag of surrender" and ran out of Vietnam in disgrace, their tail between their legs, and that surrender produced the Cambodian "autogenocide". Do not let Republicans, the party of Vietnam surrender, cast hostility to the Vietnam War as a Democratic, partisan, and "un-American" stance. A great many present-day voters were not alive during the Vietnam era, so do not know that it was Nixon and Kissinger who surrendered in Vietnam, so opposition to the Vietnam War was fully as Republican — that is, "conservative" — as "radical". Ayers was not trying to destroy the United States nor even bring down a particular administration, and has in fact not attacked the government since the U.S. left Vietnam. He was never convicted of anything, and multiple murderers have been released, their "debt to society" considered repaid, in less time than has passed since Ayers put little bombs in a few places that killed no one. Now he is fully rehabilitated and is doing good work for Americans. His Sixties activism is part of what changed this country from a racist, sexist hellhole to a place where a black man can run for President, and a white woman for Vice President. So if John McCain wants to disown the Sixties, he should ask Sarah Palin to step down and let a white man replace her on the Republican ticket. In short, Bill Ayers could be a MUCH GREATER EMBARRASSMENT TO REPUBLICANS than to Democrats. For people who do remember Vietnam, reminding them of the Republican withdrawal, with refugees desperately clinging to the runners of helicopters as the military evacuated the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, will remind them as well that it is Nixon and KISSINGER who disgraced us with such a pitiful and contemptible image of U.S. weakness of will. Remind Americans that it is because of Republicans that the main city of southern Vietnam is now called "Ho Chi Minh City". JFK wanted it to remain "Saigon".

Advice to Chris Dodd. John McCain is running ads that accuse Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd of effectively taking a bribe from Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac to induce Congress to take no action to rein in unwise policies. Aside from the fact that no one member of Congress controls what the U.S. Senate or House does, the attack upon Dodd's integrity deserves a fierce condemnation from Dodd himself. If he felt, as many people did, that lenders should give the poor and lower middle class a chance to achieve "the American dream" of home ownership, and it is not their fault that thieves in the banking industry lured people in with low rates but then, in "bait-and-switch" fashion, raised those rates from payments the home buyers could afford to payments two, three, even four times as high that they could NOT afford. It is the thieves and ripoff artists in the banks who made good mortgages bad, not Congress, not Christopher Dodd, not Democrats, but the REPUBLICANS who own and control the banks. These bait-and-switch con artists should be in PRISON, and be made to pay the full costs of their own incarceration. And if John McCain was concerned not with preventing foreclosure due to the crime of the "adjustable rate mortgage" scam, but with preventing poor people from being able to buy their own house, by offering them long-term fixed-rate mortgages at an interest rate they could afford, maybe John McCain should join his banker friends in prison, and have his multimillionairess wife pay for that incarceration.
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Advice for Democrats on McCain. McCain seems to feel he has a free ride on the issue of character. But how well do voters know John McCain? Do voters really know that McCain cheated on his first wife and divorced her when she was CRIPPLED due to an accident, so he could marry his girlfriend and live off her money? How many Americans really want a cheat and gigolo as President?

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a
leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John
McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something
wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.

‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left
behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him
knew it.

‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very
wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was
better.

‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no
character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it
all belonged to Carol.’

The people have the right to know about the real John McCain, a man of absolutely no integrity who will say anything to anyone about anyone to become President, not because he wants to serve the people but only because in his own mind he is a failure because he didn't make Admiral. His father was an Admiral. His grandfather was an Admiral. Senator isn't enuf, because a Senator (as I note above as regards Chris Dodd) can't order anyone to do anything. But President, ah, Commander-in-Chief. That trumps Admiral by a lot. That is the be-all and end-all of John McCain's ambition to be President: AMBITION to surpass his father and grandfather, and outrank them. Petty? You bet. But that is the real John McCain: a petty, vain man whose ambition is all personal, and who will sell out any principle and betray any person to become President. Democrats need to alert the voters to the appalling "character" of the man who would be king.
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'Class Warfare' and Redistribution of Wealth. The McCains are megamillionnaires who own 7 HOUSES and 13 CARS. Why haven't the Democrats landed harder on that? Why aren't John McCain's first remarks on the foreclosure crisis not rereun endlessly, contrasted with his own 7 houses? McCain first said, with absolute cold-blooded heartlessness, that if people took bad mortgages (adjustable rate: bait-and-switch) and couldn't afford to make the (hugely increased) payments, then they should just lose their house, and Government shouldn't lift a finger to help them (because they deserved to lose their house). RUN THAT FOOTAGE, every day until the election, and show PICTURES of his 7 houses and 13 cars (if you can get them; and you should be able to get them). If he has a yacht, run pictures of him on that yacht too. And use a slogan like "John McCain has 7 houses but doesn't think you should have even one." Class warfare? You bet: the rich are making war on the poor and middle class, but the poor and middle class are not supposed to fite back. We think it's time for the rich to give back some of our money. Our money? You bet. It's got our name on it: "United States of America". That's you and me. He can't present "McCain Dollars" at the store and get a bag of groceries — or a pair of $520 shoes. That's "U.S. Dollars", not "McCain Dollars". Nobody would sell him a thing if all they got for it was "McCain Dollars". It is only OUR NAME on the money that gives it any value. So if we choose to move some of OUR MONEY from the bank accounts of the super-rich to the U.S. Treasury where it can pay for things the poor and middle class need without crushing the poor and middle class under excessive taxes, we have an absolute right to do that. Maybe in a New America, the rich could afford "only" 6 houses and 12 cars! Awww, wouldn't that be tragic and unfair? No, it sure as hell would not.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:36 PM