Getting trashed in the polls? Just pick an unqualified Dick Cheney in a dress. Got a debate that you are worried about? Tell everyone you are suspending your campaign to help the country out of financial ruin and after throwing a monkey wrench into the process you return with your tail between your legs.

So what can John McCain do now to jump start his mess of a campaign?

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

When George Bush needed a boost, he had his terror warnings. John McCain has Sarah Palin.

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Well this might have something to do with it. From Obama’s spokesman Dan Pfeiffer on his latest ad slamming McCain’s internet skills

“Our economy wouldn’t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats,” [Obama spokesman Dan] Pfeiffer said. “It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn’t know how to send an e-mail.” (emphasis mine)

The only problem?

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.

Put aside for the moment that being able to use a keyboard is not a deal breaker if one desires to send an email, does Obama really want McCain’s POW card being used again, this time in the proper “noun verb POW” context? Yes McCain could send an email if he really wanted to learn even with his war inflicted injuries, but is the shi*storm that will likely ensue really worth it?

Newsflash to Obama and his surrogates. Before criticizing your opponent for his lack of internet skills, maybe consider hiring someone that knows how to use the internet, you know like maybe Google, so that they can research your attacks before you make them. There is so many other things that you could slam McCain on, why choose this one?

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Much of what I found is the standard stuff that McCain himself likes to discuss including his 5th from the bottom of the class graduation at the Naval Academy and his being shot down in North Vietnam but I did find out a few more interesting tidbits. The most intriguing of which being the fact that McCain is an ace, a reverse ace that is, meaning that he destroyed 5 aircraft during his military service, all of which were his own (4 in accidents and 1 in combat). This fact supposedly earned him the nickname "Ace" from his Vietnam flight buddies.

I was previously aware of 2 incidents, the most obvious being the one he had shot out from under him in Vietnam and the second which would be familiar to any sailor that has ever been to firefighting school, happened during the USS Forrestal fire in 1967 that killed 134 of McCain's shipmates. McCain was temporarily trapped in his A4 Skyhawk on the flight deck when an errant missile hit either his plane or the one next to his while preparing for flight ops. The unarmed missile knocked off a fuel tank that consequently started the deadly fire.

But of course an ace has to destroy 5 aircraft and McCain crashed 3 other times to get his 5. His first incident happened in 1958 when his engine quit while doing practice landings causing him to crash into Corpus Christi Bay. He was very lucky as the impact knocked him unconscious and the plane settled to the bottom of the bay before he came to and made it to the surface. A subsequent investigation found no engine problems.

McCain's second crash occurred while he was deployed in the Mediterranean and he took out power lines while flying too low which was similar to what happened in 1998 when a Marine Corps jet hit the Italian ski resort gondola cables.

And McCain's 3rd crash prior to the Vietnam and Forrestal incidents happened when the trainer he was flying from Philadelphia after the Army-Navy game flamed out and crashed into a row of trees. He was able to eject before the plane went down.

So there you have John McCain's flight record. 20 hours of combat flight and 5 planes destroyed. But considering McCain's flight instructor said that he was "positively one of the weakest students to pass our way", what else would one expect?

Other than possibly being our next commander in chief that is...

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It appears something else is happening, the Democratic base as well as undecided Independents seem to be catching Palin fever as well and Barack Obama is seeing the results.

First comes the results of the latest Gallup poll released on Tuesday which has Obama up 8 points over McCain, hitting 50% for the first time. A full 3 days after the Palin choice was announced.

And today came word of Obama's fundraising numbers since the Palin announcement and it appears that he will have also raised $10 million by the time McCain accepts the nomination this evening.

So while McCain has accomplished his mission of pandering to the religious right and winning their favor, has he also fired up the equally if not more important moderates and independents to the point where many of them have moved towards Obama.

With all that said, I don't give a hoot what September polls say or mean as they will change more than Cindy McCain changes her designer shoes and no matter what your views, you'll find one that will agree with your particular bias. But one thing I do know, even though I will be holding my nose when I pull the lever next to Obama's name in 2 months, choosing him now doesn't seem as hard as it did this time last week.

Read more about the upcoming election at Politics and Hypocrisy.

Asked about Palin’s national security experience, Cindy McCain could not come up with anything beyond the fact that, after all, her state is right next to Russia — so she surely knows a lot about that country. She added that Palin has “more experience than….” but  Stephanopoulos cut her off before she could say, for example, “Barack Obama” or maybe “others give her credit for.”

And while we are discussing ridiculous talking points, could we please stop mentioning Palin’s time in the PTA when trying to cite reasons for her having the necessary experience to be Commander in Chief?

Earlier, she actually said that Palin was “heavily experienced” in general, citing her going from the PTA to mayor to governor

Believe it or not, while I was born during the day, it wasn’t yesterday.

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If you are like me you might be wondering what a “Think Tank” does. Do they sit at a table all day thinking about one problem or another? Of course I kid but one think tank might want to re-think their latest solution.

John Goodman (no not that John Goodman), president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas based think tank believes that the 15.5 percent of Americans that do not have health insurance is in reality a mis-leading statistic. Why you ask?

Mr. Goodman, … said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau
should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

There you go, another liberal myth debunked! Oh and by the way, who is John Goodman and why does his ridiculous opinion matter?

He just so happens to be the guy that helped John McCain craft his health care policy.

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A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.

And here is the meat of the Justice Department plan:

The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.” The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,” the letter said. It was signed by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. (emphasis mine)

Just like when dealing with a 4 year old, you give in once and they want more. What’s worse, knowing the total lack of backbone exhibited by our wonderful Democrat led Congress, the Justice Department will likely get what they want.

Finally, speaking of FISA, since the FISA bill all but cut off at the knees all pending lawsuits against the Telco's, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has had to resort to plan B. They will instead sue the US Government over illegally spying on US citizens as the final bill signed into law didn't contain the government immunity that Bush had requested.

Considering George Bush will long have been out of office if and when this goes to court, the new administration will be left to deal with it. If it is Barack Obama, I will have zero sympathy considering his flip flop on the issue.

And yes I know the above scenario is highly unlikely, but I can dream can’t I?

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He also added: “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

Yep that POW card again.

Anyway the McCain camp was asked by Politico how many houses he and his wife owned and the McCain camp was only off by 4. But as McCain says, not remembering how many houses he has is a non-issue because voters care more about a candidates ethics and not whether they can find their way home at the end of the day…

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As T. Boone Pickens gets set to do the town hall thing this afternoon in Rapid City to promote his wind energy plan, we should be reminded that it’s not all about doing the right thing with T. Boone. The billionaire oilman who up until now was probably best known for his $1 million prize for anyone that could disprove anything in the Swiftboating of John Kerry and then pulling it back when someone did, has a lot to gain monetarily if his energy plan is implemented.

What could an oilman gain by reducing our dependence on oil other than feeling good? To figure that out you need to know where that oilman currently has his money invested. In Pickens’ case that would be in natural gas and emerging technology hedge funds as well as wind energy companies that would see big returns if T. Boone’s plan goes forward. You see, any energy gained from wind power, much of which would be generated by Pickens’ Mesa Power, would free up more natural gas for use in other places which in the T. Boone plan would be as fuel in the next generation of automobiles.

Pickens said that the United States could generate at least 20 percent of its electricity by tapping power from the nation’s “wind corridor,” a vast stretch of territory from west Texas to the Canadian border.

That would then enable the nation’s abundant natural gas resources, now widely used to generate electricity, to be used for powering transportation. American automobile manufacturers should dramatically ramp up natural gas-powered vehicles, he said, and government vehicle fleets should be powered exclusively on natural gas.

So while under Pickens’ plan we would reduce our dependence on foreign oil by up to $230 billion a year (according to Pickens), that dependence would be replaced by a larger dependence on natural gas and who will be sitting there waiting for the money to roll in?

I am more than willing to give Mr. Pickens credit for trying to solve the problem of oil dependence especially being from a so called “wind corridor” state that will directly benefit from his plan. But the next time you see one of his feel good commercials, remember it not all about doing what’s best for the country, it’s about doing what’s best for T. Boone which this time just might benefit the country. More than enough to make any self respecting Republican proud.

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This time of the election cycle is always fun. Speculating on who will be chosen as a candidate’s VP seems to be one step above picking Superbowl winners in August. Someone over at the National Review is chiming in on the latest popular prediction from emailer’s to their site.

So many e-mailers this morning are predicting that the McCain trial balloon is really about Giuliani. I’m not there, but here’s one:

I don’t think it’s being floated for Liebermann or Ridge.
I think he’s considering Giuliani.
- Might put NY in enough play to make Obama spend a lot of money there.
- Has name recognition and gets plenty of respect on law enforcement/national security
- Might be more palatable to pro-lifers if he were to make clear that it’s McCain’s pro-life administration

The McCain campaign has already hired a Giuliani staffer as the unnamed veep’s communications director…

Boy wouldn’t that get the Religious Right’s juices flowing? Divorced, abortion neutral Giuliani running alongside McCain, whom can’t even pander himself into their good graces. A GOP ticket for the ages if there ever was one.

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That’s because the plan is a Democratic giveaway. New production on offshore federal lands is left to state legislatures, and then in only four coastal states. The regulatory hurdles are huge. And the bill bars drilling within 50 miles of the coast — putting off limits some of the most productive areas. Alaska’s oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is still a no-go.

The highlight is instead $84 billion in tax credits, subsidies and federal handouts for alternative fuels and renewables. The Gang of 10 intends to pay for all this in part by raising taxes on . . . oil companies! The Sierra Club couldn’t have penned it better. And so the Republican Five has potentially given antidrilling Democrats the political cover they need to neutralize energy through November.

Could it be that Thune, unlike many of his own GOP colleagues, realizes that “Drill here, drill now” is just a slogan that will in reality do very little to affect prices at the pump either now or in the future? And how are the rest of his big oil Republican’s buddies going to react to their plan that would raise taxes on oil companies?

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The question to be answered then is can he represent South Dakota despite not debating or even being able to debate effectively as is the implication from this announcement? My observations:

- Since returning to work last August he has kept his committee assignments and hasn’t missed a vote in the Senate (unlike John McCain).
- Organizations that monitor these things rate Senator Johnson as the most Conservative Democrat in the Senate.
- Does the average non-political blog reading die hard political junky South Dakotan even know where Joel Dykstra stands on the issues? 2 of the 3 voters in my house would say no.

So we have a Senator from the hard working blood red state of South Dakota that goes to work every day and votes conservative more than any Democrat with at least some seniority (re:power) in the Senate. He is facing a questionable candidate that doesn’t seem to want to raise money and who appears to be afraid to go on the offensive even after Johnson puts the health question on the table. And now that Johnson will not be debating him, Dykstra will have almost no opportunity to gain any name recognition that a successful debate would have given him and will be left with limited late election season ad buys and hand shaking tours.

If the Republican’s had a stronger candidate things might have been different so I would say that not debating, while not what some South Dakotan’s want from Johnson, will likely not lead to much other than maybe a 15-20 point win instead of a 30 point win in November. He has too much money, too much name recognition, and very little competition.

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McCain shill Michael Goldfarb ignores this summary paragraph from the report:

McCain leads the money race with nearly every other top giver in the oil and gas industry, though — Koch Industries, Valero, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, the list goes on. (You can see detail on all these companies in the spreadsheet linked below.) McCain also has a big edge with Hess Corp. — $91,000 to Obama’s $8,000 — which has gotten some attention. And, overall, McCain’s campaign has gotten three times more money from the industry than Obama’s has — $1.3 million compared to about $394,000. (emphasis provided by Think Progress)

And instead reports this single exception to the final tally:

“Tallying contributions by employees in the industry and their families, we found that Exxon, Chevron and BP have all contributed more money to Obama than to McCain. Through June, Exxon employees have given Obama $42,100 to McCain’s $35,166. Chevron favors Obama $35,157 to $28,500, and Obama edges out McCain with BP $16,046 vs. $11,500.”

And then despite that fact that McCain has in reality received 3 times as much money from oil companies, you get led down their talking point highway to believe that Obama is the big winner in the oil money sweepstakes. And of course the McCain talking point army was quick to spin:

Exxon-Obama
Obama Gets More Donations From Exxon Than McCain
Time to create an Exxon-Obama site
Let’ not forget the MSM - Exxon [Hearts] Obama

You really got to love that political math that the McCain camp uses, you know the formula that says you are only in someone’s pocket if you can’t get your supporters to believe otherwise…

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Yesterday I wrote on McCain’s link to big oil and the massive contributions he received after changing his position and now more is coming out on some of the louder voices in the House protest stunt including “Mr. Twitter” John Culberson. It seems he has a very good reason to want to promote offshore drilling, or like $301,961 reasons to be exact as that is his share of the millions given to certain members of Congress from big oil. As for some of the other prominent House Republican’s involved in their “drill here, drill now” stunt? They weren’t left out in the cold either.

John Shadegg (R-AZ- $119,495)
Ron Lewis (R-KY- $82,650)
Chris Shays (R-CT- $41,400)
Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO- $182,912)
Marsha Blackburn (R-TN- $85,717)
Eric Cantor (R-VA- $159,250)
Louie Gohmert (R-TX- $185,663)
John Kline (R-MN- $118,705)
Mike Pence (R-IN- $150,950)
Lamar Smith (R-TX- $342,897)
Tom Cole (R-OK- $277,050)
John Doolittle (R-CA- $127,525)
Patrick “Cheap Date” McHenry (R-NC- $26,000)
Mike McCaul (R-TX- $107,934)
Denny Rehberg (R-MT- $238,901)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ- $66,000)
Frank Wolf (R-VA- $77,682)
Adam Putnam (R-FL- $70,300)

And while I am discussing the hypocrisy, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention House Minority Leader John Boehner who has been vocally admonishing House Democrats for leaving town on vacation while ordinary Americans are suffering from high gas prices. It seems many of his comments ripping the Democrats has been coming from, of all places, the 19th hole of an Ohio golf course while he is enjoying his time off…

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For some reason out of the blue Tom Brokaw asked Kerry about Wes Clark’s comments and he almost on queue became the latest to throw Clark under the bus:

Yeah, I, I don’t agree. I don’t agree with Wes Clark’s comment. I think it was entirely inappropriate. I have nothing but enormous respect for John McCain’s service. I had the privilege of standing with John McCain in the, in the cell in Hanoi when we visited there together, when we worked on the issue of Vietnam together. It was an emotional moment. I,
I have awe for John McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war, and he, and he does understand duty and service. But…

What is it that makes folks like Kerry, whom should have an understanding of this issue as well as anyone, throw his fellow Democrat and veteran under the bus like that? Especially since the comments in question by Clark are valid and have never been answered by McCain?

I’ll say it again for the hard of hearing like John Kerry, it’s not McCain’s service itself that was being questioned by Clark, it’s about what part of that heroic service that qualifies him to be President!

Unfortunately the lack of understanding by Democrats like Kerry and others on this will likely mean that one of the more qualified VP candidates will not be considered by Obama for that position and that’s a shame.

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In an overlooked USA Today article from Friday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and "insider sources" quietly all but confirmed that the company has retained exclusive rights to the iPhone until 2010. The previous exclusivity agreement with Apple had AT&T retaining the rights until 2009. The article implies AT&T managed to negotiate the extension thanks in part to the subsidized $200/$300 iPhone 3G's it's eating by the hundreds of thousands right now.

1 word, “oil”. These Republicans kept their promise to filibuster any legislation hitting the Senate floor until Democrats allow them to bring drilling for oil in ANWR and offshore to a vote.

You know,

- The same drilling that will take 10 years for the oil to hit the market.
- The same drilling that the Bush Administration even admits would have little or no effect on the price of oil.
- The same drilling in which the oil pumped would likely not even go directly to Americans but would be placed onto the world market where other emerging oil hogs would also reap the minimal benefits.
- That same drilling that will have no environmental impact? (as long as you ignore the 100’s of thousands of gallons spilled during Rita and Katrina)

Oh and the same drilling that John McCain changed his mind on and now supports that conveniently coincided with a sudden windfall in campaign contributions from big oil. McCain was absent from this vote which is the norm these days but I am sure there is no connection with his flip-flop there right?

Nothing like holding our troops hostage for legislation with nothing more than psychological implications for those that still think that offshore drilling is any kind of real answer to our oil crisis.

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Current House rules prohibit members from posting any House content outside of the house.gov environment and with the explosion of such new media services like YouTube and Twitter, many of the more technically inclined House members want to be able to use these services to communicate with their constituents. Capuano’s proposal would address the main concerns of those that have issues with the practice, possibilities that the information would be posted alongside political or commercial advertising, by suggesting that Congress work with the media sites to develop advertising free channels that would allow members to “tweet” ad free.

Now if you thought all is right within the halls of Congress now that Capuano has sought to bring our government into the 21st century, you would be wrong. Rep Culberson, whom is the most active user of social media, looks at the proposal as an attempt at partisan censorship and in good social media fashion, he announced his opposition in a “tweet”

“I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them”

While I won’t go as far as Culberson and liberal blogger Matt Stoller who contends that Capuano’s proposal would amount to an outright ban on Congress using the Internet, something will need to be done sooner or later.

Culberson wants totally open communication similar to what they already have when dealing with traditional media and Capuano wants to ensure that we aren’t fighting through Viagra ads so hopefully something in between ends up getting agreed to.

In the mean time there are several House members currently breaking the rules besides Rep. Culberson including Speaker Nancy Pelosi so feel free to seek them out and follow their “tweets” as to be honest I can’t think of a better way for us to communicate with our elected officials. How cool would it be to have updates on important issues delivered directly to you from your elected officials as they happen?

And speaking of Twitter, if you are a member, click here if you would like to follow the escapades of this new Twitter user and go here if you want to follow the movement to “Let Our Congress Tweet”. And finally, if you have no idea what I am talking about, here is an explanation of what Twitter is.

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Todd Epp Tells Us About the Benefits of Twitter

While the turnout was small it was nice to put some faces to the words from many of the blogs I read regularly like Cory from Madville Times (our gracious host), Todd Epp from South Dakota Watch, and Scott Ehrisman from South DaCola and a few new friends like Jackie from Sioux Falls Cartoonists and Rebecca from Flying Tomato  Farms.

Big thanks to Cory for the invite and to Rebecca and Cory for providing the kayaks. Not only did my daughters enjoy their first rides in a kayak, the now have a new request for Christmas.

P.S. I didn’t have my camera with me at the lake but hopefully Jackie will provide us with photos of Todd’s kayak ride which let’s just say was quite comical and ended up with him just a bit damp.

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