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In October of 2008, Senator Obama's campaign accused Senator John McCain of planning to gut Medicare. ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (AFP) — Barack Obama's White House campaign Monday accused John McCain of plotting to impose savage cuts on government-run health care programs that insure the elderly and the poor.It was the latest attack from the Democrat's camp over an emotive issue that is taking on new urgency at a time when many Americans fear losing their jobs and thus the health care coverage that comes from their employers... "This plan would be a disaster. It would dramatically reduce the quality of...

Depictions ‘took place entirely in her imagination,’ says Wallace. NBC NEWS and NEWS SERVICES NEW YORK - Former McCain campaign senior adviser Nicolle Wallace says Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" is "based on fabrications," and that the basis for Palin’s depictions of her and former McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt as villains "took place entirely in her imagination." In a statement to The Rachel Maddow Show, the former McCain spokesperson repeatedly used the word "fiction" to describe Palin's narrative and echoed criticisms by other former McCain staffers. "She [Palin] probably has a legitimate complaint that things could have been better...

WASHINGTON – Sarah Palin's new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time. Ignoring substantial parts of her record if not the facts, she depicts herself as a frugal traveler on the taxpayer's dime, a reformer without ties to powerful interests and a politician roguishly indifferent to high ambition.

<p>Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday’s elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.</p>

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of ObamaCare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008. In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics — most prominently, rising minorities and the young — would bury the GOP far into the future. One...

Eighteen months later, Nevada Republicans have completed a count of all delegate ballots from last year's state convention. A group of disaffected Republicans says it feels vindicated after a Friday night count of missing ballots from the April 2008 gathering showed three delegates for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul should have been sent to the national convention. Paul supporters said they felt party leaders cheated them out of a place at the national convention when they abruptly recessed the convention before delegate ballots from the state's 2nd Congressional District could be counted. The district was allowed to choose three of the...

With lots of cable news shows, the feast of the 2008 election has lead to famine in 2009. Countdown with Keith Olberman’s ratings are in the famine range as well, with October year over year ratings down 53% in the cable news target adults 25-54 demo, and down 53% in average viewership. Although I don’t have a trend chart, October is also Olbermann’s lowest rated month so far in 2009 in both 25-54 and average viewers.

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) —Nevada Republicans who supported Ron Paul in last year's GOP presidential contest announced a political action committee Monday to oppose the U.S. Senate bid of former state party chairwoman Sue Lowden. Robert Holloday, spokesman for the Fair Nevada Elections PAC, said Lowden's handling of last year's state convention when delegate selections were stopped amounted to betrayal. "Sue Lowden's leading role in improperly halting the delegate election disqualifies her for any position of trust in government," Holloday said. "Our group hopes to raise awareness of the dismal record of Sue Lowden and to oppose her election to...

William White predicted the approaching financial crisis years before 2007's subprime meltdown. But central bankers preferred to listen to his great rival Alan Greenspan instead, with devastating consequences for the global economy. William White had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life after shedding his pinstriped suit and entering retirement. White, a Canadian, worked for various central banks for 39 years, most recently serving as chief economist for the central bank for all central bankers, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Then, after 15 years in the world's most secretive...

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney had already sent out invitations for his Phoenix fund-raiser, offering supporters the chance to meet him in a Chase Field luxury box over a $300-per-person lunch or a $3,000 VIP reception. But when former rival John McCain called with an offer to be listed as host for the event in his hometown, Romney happily went back to the printer for a new invitation with McCain’s name emblazoned on it. Yesterday, McCain’s gesture helped Romney’s political action committee raise about $80,000. It also consummated an 18-month rapprochement between two competitors who battled for the 2008 GOP presidential...

"I in my life have been abused, also. I mean just with an ex‑husband, a husband, you know, that just beat the hell out of me, you know, a few times and then, you know, I killed him."

(snip) Listening to Sen. McCain's elegy, however, I found myself increasingly bothered. "We disagreed on most issues," McCain said at one point, "but I admired his passion for his convictions ... ." Really? Kennedy was the farthest-left liberal during nearly five decades in the U.S. Senate. McCain, just one year ago, campaigned for president, proclaiming his conservative convictions. And without doubt, Kennedy's wholehearted support of Barack Obama helped to torpedo McCain's campaign. Perhaps one moment disturbed me most: "When we worked together on the immigration issue," McCain recalled, "we had a daily morning meeting with other interested senators. He and...

Last year, many at NRO and other conservative news organizations, including myself, wrote quite a bit about William Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright, and Michael Pfleger, and Tony Rezko, etc. And more than a few Obama supporters, and more than a few mainstream media voices, thought that the criticism was wildly overhyped and Obama's ties to those types were irrelevant, because as president, Barack Obama would never put anyone in his administration with such controversial, paranoid, extreme, and anti-American views. In light of Van Jones, all of those folks who said we made too much out of Ayers and Wright and...

BOSTON -- Political blogs are abuzz with a rumor that former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is moving to Rhode Island. The rumor was first reported Saturday by the Anchorage Daily News, which said the gossip is that Palin has “finally decided” what she is going to do with the rest of her life. Her plan, the column said, is to settle “in Rhode Island with $7 million from her book and a contract with FOX.”

Report: DNA Test Confirms that John Edwards fathered mistress’s child

"When you are running for President, everything should be public..."

Mayor Bloomberg said Tuesday he never thought he was on the short list to be Republican Sen. John McCain's running mate last year -- even though a new book claims he was one of the six finalists for the coveted slot. McCain's staff took Bloomberg's chances seriously, the book claims -- especially when they were told to set up a short podium for the still-secret vice-presidential candidate. "When I told them to lower it for someone who was 5-7, they thought it was Bloomberg," McCain aide Davis White says in "The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary...

In 2005, when I was working as a speechwriter in the South African parliament, a far-left faction of the ruling African National Congress spun a yarn that accused the leader of the opposition, the intelligence minister, and the Mossad of colluding to frame Jacob Zuma, the faction's chosen presidential candidate. Intelligence agents loyal to Zuma bugged the opposition's parliamentary offices and produced a bogus document that they claimed was a transcript of Internet chats between Zuma's supposed opponents. It was all nonsense, but the conspiracy theory galvanized Zuma's supporters, who soon pushed him to the top of the ruling party...

There are, of course, a whole lot of truly baffling things about the Birther movement and its theories. But perhaps one of the most puzzling is this unanswered question: If President Obama really were born in Kenya, why didn't the McCain or Clinton campaigns dig up the evidence and publicize it? Why has that task fallen to the ragtag crew that is the Birthers, led now by Orly Taitz, a dentist/lawyer/real estate agent who got her law degree online and is regularly admonished for having little, if any, idea how to properly file her court papers? Turns out there's an...

Okay it's official. Obama's completely distasterous start, disregard for the Constitution and American people, non-citizenship, cluelessness on the economy, foreign policy, healthcare, taxes, gun rights, civil liberities, traditional marriage, bailouts, industry take overs, ethic corruptions, lavish personal spending, general love and appeasement of socialist dictators, complete reinvention of Jimney "Cricket" Carter and now plummeting aproval numbers have finally convinced me he's not ready to be president.

Many pundits and commentators assume that they live in the same world as the current group of 16-20 somethings currently gathering all the media and political attention. Yet even if they have barely crossed the ’30 mark’ their world is still vastly different from ours. To point out a few differences, most of us learned to drive on two to three dollar a gallon gasoline and don’t consider it too bad, we’ve never really looked anything up in an encyclopedia except for an assignment, the internet is a part of our daily social lives rather than an addition to it,...

John McCain and Sarah Palin both personally approved an intensive internal search of the emails of top campaign staffers in order to determine who had been leaking damaging information about Palin to reporters, McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt just told me in an interview. “John McCain and Sarah Palin were both informed that we were doing this in an attempt to catch the person,” Schmidt told me, referring to his decision to undertake the email search, which has been the topic of fierce controversy since it was revealed yesterday. Schmidt’s revelation sheds new light on the campaign’s internal discord and...

The publication of a Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin appears to have opened old wounds in the McCain campaign. At issue is a question that was never resolved following McCain’s loss in November: Who in the McCain campaign was secretly trashing Sarah Palin to the press?

Preliminary results of a study on presidential campaign donations shows that President Obama had more than 3.7 million donors compared with 827,000 who donated to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) And while Obama had a substantial lead over McCain in small donors -- $200 or less -- Obama also led in the number of individuals who gave at or near the legal limit of $4,600, researchers at Brigham Young University said. Donors gave Obama $700 million to Obama (sic) and $316 million to McCain. Donations from individuals giving $200 or less represented nearly a quarter ($178 million) of Obama's fund-raising total...

GOP's Coburn likes plan to require birth certificates. BY BOB UNRUH Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says it's the responsibility of the states to make sure political candidates are eligible for the offices they seek, but he's in favor of both state and federal demands that future presidential candidates have a formal procedure to document their qualifications. The relatively strong statement from Coburn on the issue of the eligibility of a president came in a recent letter to a constituent who contacted WND. WND has reported on a federal plan in the U.S. House by Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., that would...

June 14, 2009Obama's Other Controversial ChurchBy Andrew Walden "This is a guy (former Weatherman terror-bomber Bill Ayers) who lives in my neighborhood ... the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago - when I was 8 years old - somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense." -- Barack Obama on the Campaign trail, 2008 As President Obama prepared to commemorate D-Day, the Associated Press dug up old details and photos to write a warm fuzzy story about the WW2 service record of Obama's maternal grandfather...

Just a quick reminder of some facts about the 2008 election. Here are some quick polling numbers on key questions from the exit polls of both 2004 and 2008: Bush approval 53-46 in 04, 27-71 in 08. His approval declined by half and there was a net swing of -51 from +7 to -44, by far the worst in history. If Bush's approval had even been a bad 40%,we probably would have squeezed it out. Needless to say we got 51% in 04 when he was at 53 and we got 46% in 08 when he was at 27. Not...

WASHINGTON -- So much for the Obama common touch. After whisking his wife to Manhattan for dinner and a Broadway show last weekend, President Obama is treating his family to a Paris vacation -- paid for, in part, by the taxpayers. ...Now, the French press is buzzing about whether the first family will dine at a posh restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower, what fashions the first lady will wear, and whether she'll outshine Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, her glamourous French counterpart.

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews. The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms. Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit...

Link to Japanese story. Breaking initially from South Korean news organization Yonhap about 30 minutes ago Said former President died in a "mountain climbing" accident. Also speculating suicide.This was the architect of the "Sunshine Policy" of appeasement toward North Korea. Good friend of Clintons. BREAKING

WASHINGTON (CNN) – In an unusual move for the person tasked with being his party's top cheerleader, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele is shining a light on the political vulnerabilities of one of the GOP's top figures and a likely frontrunner for the 2012 Republican nomination — former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Now Romney's team is hitting back. Steele, guest-hosting on Bill Bennett's radio show Friday, cast doubt on Romney's conservative bona fides and blamed the Republican base for rejecting Romney last year because "it had issues with Mormonism" and was unsure of Romney's commitment to opposing to abortion...

RNC Chairman Michael Steele argued this week that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney didn’t win the presidential primary of his party because the GOP base had, among other things, issues with his Mormonism, according to a report in Think Progress. Steele, who made the remark while guest-hosting Bill Bennett’s radio show, was rebutting a caller’s claim that The New York Time’s endorsement of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., contributed to Romney’s defeat -- in spite of his money, fresh ideas, ability to articulate, and deep knowledge of financial matters. “But remember,” said Steele, “it was the base that rejected Mitt because...

Less than five years after Karl Rove mused openly about the possibility of Republican dominance for decades – an idea which was absurd at the time – the Republican Party finds itself in disarray. The moderate wing is showing itself to be as RINO as ever, and in one case, that of Sen. Arlen Specter, the pretense is finally over. It goes without saying that the moderates are wrong; their advice to do as the Democrats do, only a little less enthusiastically, not only betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamic nature of electoral politics in a democracy, but ignores...

This week’s defection of Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democrats predictably set off another round of factional flame wars within the Republican party. The mutual finger-pointing is well-known by now. So-called “moderates” or “reformers” claim the GOP has drifted rightward, or that it is now dominated by a social conervativism toxic to the larger body politic. Social conservatives respond that such critics are unprincipled, that the 2008 presidential nominee, Maverick-y reformer John McCain, was a big loser, and so on. We have heard it all before. The debate was clarified for me by an exchange at Instapundit. Glenn Reynolds correctly...

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller announced Monday that voter registration fraud charges have been filed against an organization that works with low-income people and two of its employees in its Las Vegas office. The complaint includes 26 counts of voter fraud and 13 counts for compensating those registering voters, both felonies. The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, Inc., also known as ACORN, operated a Las Vegas office that helped register low-income voters last year. Throughout 2008, ACORN employed canvassers to register people to vote in Nevada, the complaint said. ACORN paid the...

(CNN) – House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in an interview airing on CNN's State of the Union Sunday morning that the GOP wasn't directly responsible for much of the party's electoral misfortune in 2008. "I frankly believe that much of what happened in the last election revolved around the fact that the economy fell apart at the time we were, if you will, holding the hot potato. Republicans and Democrats have been playing this game, passing the hot the potato, spending money like there was no tomorrow," Romney told John King. "And...

On Wednesday, September 24, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., phoned Reid and told him, “Harry, I am suspending my campaign to come back and help negotiate a deal.” McCain explained that he was also calling upon Obama to suspend his campaign, and together they could convene a meeting at the Bush White House to help come to a deal on a bailout for Wall Street. Reid didn't think it was such a great idea... "They were on the verge of an agreement, and any such McCain stunt would cost us valuable time," writes Reid, also noting that McCain "had no standing...

A handful of readers took note of this passage in my story on Steve Schmidt's and David Plouffe's appearance in Delaware last week: [Schmidt] explained his decision to deny Palin an election night speech as a nod to the fact that the concession is a “singular moment” in American public life. “It begins the process by which power is transferred peacefully,” he said. Asked blogger DougJ: "Is Schmidt implying that Palin would have given an incendiary speech that would have, in some small way, disrupted the peaceful transfer of power?" I hadn't really heard it that way, but it seemed...

10:49 a.m., April 24, 2009----While their political opinions may differ, University of Delaware alumni David Plouffe and Steve Schmidt, the two men who helped run the opposing campaigns for the 2008 presidential election, agree that President Barack Obama was a once-in-a-generation candidate and that young people have become an important part of the American political process. Schmidt, who led the Republican campaign of U.S. Sen. John McCain, and Plouffe, who led the Democratic campaign of Obama, discussed their experiences with candor and humor before an audience of about 500 people on Thursday, April 23, in Clayton Hall. The discussion was...

NEWARK, Del. – The men who ran the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain appeared together on stage for the first time Thursday at the University of Delaware to complete a pair of tasks: To articulate their (remarkably similar) views of the election, and to hash out the details of continuing coursework so that they can, at last, graduate. McCain chief strategist Steve Schmidt and Obama campaign manager David Plouffe seemed to agree on a central point: McCain was always the longest of long-shot candidates. (You would not have known this from hearing either of them talk during...

(CNN) — John McCain’s general election campaign began as “the strategic equivalent of throwing a football through a tire at 50 yards” – and was doomed weeks before Election Day, his former chief strategist said Thursday. “We were running a campaign under extra difficult circumstances — the state of the Republican Party, the president’s unpopularity, the economy — a lot of issues that were not John McCain’s fault, but were John McCain’s problem in this race,” Schmidt told an audience at the University of Delaware, according to Politico. “When Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall I knew pretty much right...

It may be, a colleague notes, a fitting coda to the McCain campaign: He apparently rejected his first choice as a running mate, Joe Lieberman, in part based on a faulty legal opinion. McCain lawyer and vetter A. B. Culvahouse said last week that West Virginia law could have barred McCain from nominating a Democrat as his running mate in the key state, knocking Lieberman out of the running.

I thought it was interesting....

He mishandled her national rollout to the public, botched her relationship with the media and now supporters of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin are charging Sen. John McCain with snubbing his former running mate during an interview on NBC’s “Tonight Show With Jay Leno” Monday night. Mr. McCain is coming under fire for his conspicuous memory lapse when listing the names of Republican governors who could be the next in line to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012. Mrs. Palin did not make the cut. “We have, I’m happy to say, a lot of voices out there,” Mr. McCain told host...

Three-quarters (74%) of internet users went online during the 2008 election to take part in, or get news and information about the 2008 campaign. This represents 55% of the entire adult population, and marks the first time the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that more than half the voting-age population used the internet to connect to the political process during an election cycle. SNIP This post-election survey finding comes after a similar poll in the spring of 2008. At that time, our survey found than 46% of Americans were online political users. In 2004, using a somewhat...

The presidential election is coming to the small screen. HBO will make a film based on the landmark 2008 election, featuring larger-than-life political characters like Sarah Palin, John McCain and President Barack Obama, the network announced this week. The film will be based on the book "Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime," by Time magazine editor-at-large Mark Halperin and New York magazine political correspondent John Heilemann.

HBO Films has optioned "Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime," an in-the-works Harper Collins book by political writers Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. The pay network has hired "Blood Diamond" scribe Charles Leavitt to adapt the behind-the-scenes look at the 2008 presidential election from the perspective of the candidates and their respective camps. Halperin is editor-at-large at Time magazine, and Heilemann is national political correspondent for New York magazine. They will be consultants for the film. The book will be published early next year. Heilemann and Halperin have covered other presidential...

Jury indicts 2 in scheme to slay 88 BY JOHN KRUPA Posted on Thursday, November 6, 2008 A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted an Arkansas man and his Internet friend for plotting to launch a racially fueled killing rampage that also called for the assassination of Barack Obama. The seven counts of federal law violations are: conspiracy to rob a federal firearms licensee; conspiracy to transport and the transportation of a firearm across state lines; conspiracy to transport and the transportation of a short-barreled shotgun across state lines; possession of a short-barreled shotgun; and making a threat against a...

OREM, Utah -- Kirk Jowers has an answer for whether Mitt Romney's presidential bid was lost because of Mormonism: "I can unequivocally tell you that the answer is 'yes, no and maybe.'" owers' comment elicited laughter at the "Mormonism in the Public Mind" conference on Friday, April 3, at Utah Valley University. He is director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah and associate director of the Institute of Public and International Affairs. According to Jowers, in October 2007 many pundits were saying Romney was on his way to winning. He had focused on the early...

Yamaha recalls 2008 RhinosProblem with brake caliper affects 7,800 vehicles Story by ATV.com Staff, Apr. 01, 2008 Yamaha Motor Corp. USA of Cypress Calif. has recalled some of its 2008 Rhino side-by-side vehicles due to a problem with a brake caliper. The recall, which was voluntarily conducted by Yamaha in cooperation with the Consumer Products Safety Commission, affects about 7,800 Rhino YXR450 and YXR700 UTVs. Owners of these vehicles should stop using them immediately unless otherwise instructed. The brake caliper on the left front wheel may have been made incorrectly, which could result in brake fluid leaking. This can cause...