On Keith Olbermann's program Friday, March 6 Margaret Carlson made a comment during a discussion on stem cell research.  

Carlson's statement related to the announcement by the Obama administration that same day that an executive order would be initiated lifting the previous ban by the Bush administration.

Citing John McCain's position in the 2008 presidential campaign that he also favored lifting the ban imposed by the Bush administration, Carlson concluded that in this one policy area there would have been comparable action in a McCain administration.

Irrespective of McCain's then stated position, which was more inclined to be palatable to moderate and independent voters that he needed to win over to be competitive or ultimately defeat Obama, my mind immediately began to focus on the strong power wielded by the religious right in Republican politics.  

During an informative MSNBC political talk show Thursday the subject of Joe Lieberman was discussed.  The political journalist being interviewed delivered a cautionary note to Senate Democrats regarding Lieberman that dessert is better digested and enjoyed when cold.

The point being made was that efforts to impose party discipline on Lieberman for his recent activities on behalf of his close friend and Senate colleague John McCain could produce negative results for Democrats.  The issue deemed as potentially thorny related to evicting the Connecticut senator from the Democratic Caucus.

As I sat watching with interest, the reverse of that same question surfaced in my mind, to wit, "How can the Democratic Caucus, considering all that has happened with Joe Lieberman from the period of the Republican National Convention to the recently concluded presidential election, allow him to remain within their operating framework?"

Consider the following.  Lieberman, who can sound very soothing in the midst of nefarious activities, was said to have assured his Democratic senatorial colleagues that he would be speaking at the Republican Convention in a purely supportive manner relating to a close friend, Senator McCain.  

The honest answer to that disturbing question is an emphatic "No!"

We were told in a State of the Union Address by presenting as a proven fact that the U.S. had accurate knowledge that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction" and was developing "nuclear power" which would soon be capable of threatening us.  

This sent fear surging through that fateful congressional gathering before the State of the Union Address.

Congressional members jumped up, giving Bush a rare standing ovation.  As Bush smilingly left the impressive chambers, the congressional members patted Bush on the back and hugged him, all so grateful that this farsighted president had the vision to save the U.S.A. from a catastrophic nuclear disaster.  

E. J. Dionne Jr.'s column in the Seattle Times November 1 datelined from Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, told of a first-time voter and how she looked at the 2008 election.  It was most interesting to find out what mattered most to this individual.  This Washington Post Writers Group columnist wrote:

"Emily Daywalt decided to go to the first political rally of her life because she wanted to cheer Sarah Palin, who was here a few days ago to inspire the faithful.  Daywalt said she likes it that Palin `hunts and she believes in God and that she is a strong, independent woman.'"

But it was the economic philosophy that caught Daywalt's attention.  Dionne explained:

"'The decline in our GDP didn't happen by accident,' Obama said.  `It is a direct result of the Bush administration's trickle-down.  Wall Street first, Main Street last policies that John McCain has embraced for the last eight years.'"

November Bolt From the Blue?

Barring an attempt to disrupt, destabilize or delegitimize the results of next Tuesday's election, the number of newly registered voters in key battleground states virtually guarantees the election of the Obama-Biden ticket.

The name calling from the McCain camp has reached fever pitch as more polls are released showing his damaged posture while we march toward Tuesday's climactic presidential election.

A study of the electoral college map is staggering in terms of current trends.  A current Arizona State University shows that McCain with a scant 2-point edge in his own state, one that had been conceded to him from the outset.

Meanwhile in the south McCain has more than Virginia and North Carolina to be worried  about as Georgia looms interestingly close, sparked by a large early voting turnout by African Americans.  Even in a stalwart Republican state such as Mississippi the numbers have narrowed.

So what does McCain do as he becomes increasingly desperate?  He dusts off an ancient right wing Republican scare tactic that has pushed beyond the re-dristibutionist charge to accusations of socialism.  McCain's "I'll say anything" Caribou Barbie running mate has upped the ante by linking Barack Obama to Marxism.

Figure it as a manifestation of human psychology.  About the time that you feel obliged to name your campaign bus the "straight talk express" figure on fraud being an active agent in that individual's operating process.

From the time that "Joe the Plumber" surged on the scene many of us were extremely skeptical.  

One got the feeling from watching Barack Obama with patient courtesy responding to the inquiry from a man who, as it turned out, is not a licensed plumber, is not in a position to buy his employer's business, would not be anywhere close to the threshold of any federal tax hike even if he did, has donated campaign money to McCain and has a federal tax lien against him, that the alleged "man on the street" was a plant.

The body language was unconvincing.  Joe seemed tenuous and his performance appeared stagy as in managed.  After monopolizing a significant amount of Obama's time, an impatient hush could be heard coming over the group of Obama supporters.  One got the distinct feeling that many were skeptical of Joe.

The Republican right proceeds at a blinding speed to commit political suicide.

During an era when things so frequently went their way within the national political power structure, aided in no small part by a mainstream media that so often looked the other way or approved of atrocious electioneering and policymaking, right wing Republicans began to believe that power should be theirs, particularly the presidency, for the eternal taking.

How furious they became and how quickly already loose springs shattered from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly when Bill Clinton had the rank audacity to not only run for president, but actually win it twice.  He countered the relentless bully machine with an effective instrument of his own in 1992 called the rapid response team, which met smear attacks with carefully crafted rebuttals.

McCain, after achieving the 2008 Republican nomination by pleasing the right by proudly asserting that he had voted with George Bush "90 percent of the time" ended up cornered by his own strategy when a differently structured general election beckoned.

John McCain has taken to once more demagoging the economic issue as the Republican right has traditionally done beginning in the modern era with the tactical and markedly unsuccessful propaganda front directed at Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Roosevelt's first reelection campaign in 1936 was fresh on the heels of congressional passage and the president's signature on the landmark 1935 Social Security Act.  There was much anger as well resulting from such sweeping legislation as the National Recovery Administration and the creation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 with disciplinary powers applicable to Wall Street.

Laissez faire was what the members of the American Liberty League, the vigilant opposition group to Roosevelt's economic policies, favored.  His comprehensive changes in U.S. economic policy during a critical Depression period prompted them to hurl charges of "socialism" while others went beyond that and asserted that FDR was a dictator of a Communist or Fascist model.

It was under Woodrow Wilson, another Democratic president known for comprehensive change, that the federal income tax became a reality.  Not only did those of the American Liberty League and their well heeled predecessors not wish to pay federal income tax; they feared and were incensed by the national government using taxation as a leveling tool.

What a thorough reversal America is seeing with the Republican retreat on the part of John McCain and others from programs and a presidency which they thoroughly supported before national polling numbers were eviscerated.

One of numerous incumbents said to be in trouble, Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, said on the October 26 edition of Face the Nation that Republicans will need to re-establish themselves and find their identity.  

Actually they already had, except for now when the "chickens have come home to roost" and it is time to pay the ultimate consequences for actions deceitful and irresponsible both militarily and fiscally as they now, as Chris Matthews put it a few weeks back, "take off their uniforms and flee the battlefield."

It is both outrageous and outrageously hilarious to see John McCain, who while competing for the Republican presidential nomination proudly proclaimed that he had supported Bush via his senatorial votes "90 percent of the time" and added that this exceeded the support level of his rivals, now sounds more like John F. Kennedy running against Richard Nixon in 1960.

Note: The cartoon is the logo of the real Joe the Plumber in Amarillo. Send him some business, I'm told that he's an Obama guy. If his website takes off because of all this attention maybe he can switch from actual plumbing to an online plumbing advice column. Bob

The month began with Sarah Palin celebrating her campaign's close identification and long association with "Joe Six Pack," the mythic every man vision of America that he and they dream that they represent.

Then in last night's "debate" came "Joe the Plumber," a guy who claims that he wants to buy a business which "makes" 250k a year and he's worried about Obama's tax policies. Who's next, Joe Bananas, Joe Cool, Joe Mama?

Forgetting for the moment that I have strong suspicions that "Joe the Plumber" is a ringer. Yes, nefarious as it sounds I'm afraid that Joe may be, a not too carefully selected, and poorly rehearsed plant from the McCain camp. He was probably chosen by the same group of desperately drunken political geniuses who trotted out Sarah Palin.

The part of Senator John McCain's life story that his campaign has not wanted to talk about while his Naval career and prisoner of war status were accelerated was how he came into possession of the money and influence that enabled him to start his political career culminating with the Republican presidential nomination.

It was John McCain who launched an extra-marital affair with a woman linked to a leading American fortune.  After John married Cindy his political career was given a rocket thrust by his father in law, a multimillionaire brewery distribution heir.  He left his first wife following her serious injury in an automobile accident.

So now it is John McCain along with his "do anything that I'm asked to do" running mate wearing Neiman Marcus and leading designer labels characteristically unlike her "Soccer Mom" self-cultivated image who endlessly shriek about Barack Obama and his roaring pursuit of socialism.

On Tuesday, the very day that Barack Obama's campaign announced he would be taking a 36-hour respite from campaigning to visit his seriously ill grandmother in Hawaii, CNN  reported that John McCain's campaign was giving up on Colorado just one day after a blitz in the state by running mate Sarah Palin.

The flurry of activity in Colorado followed by a decision to concede the state is reminiscent of what happened recently in Wisconsin.  It was in Wisconsin that a man attending the rally sizzled with rage when he asked what America could do about turning the federal government over to "socialists" in a certain reference to a prospective Obama administration.

The correlative proposition one strategically ponders following the Colorado move is the curious McCain strategy to intensify efforts in Pennsylvania, a state carried by the Democrats not only by John Kerry in 2004 but extending back all the way to the last Republican victory in the Keystone State by George Bush the Elder in 1988.

It appears that the "wing and a prayer" strategy devolves heavily on Sarah Palin and her ability to generate enthusiastic crowds in rural areas.

Joe Klein the October 27 Time Magazine accurately descried where th Republican Party is now:

"It wouldn't be fair to blame McCain for the bilious mess his party has become.  The most vehement of the Republican faithful lives in an alternate universe, fermented by decades of Rush Limbaugh's brilliant meretricious baloney and Sean Hannity's low-rent bullying.

"As Mr. McCain's audiences went out of control Hannity stoked the rage with a documentary about Obama that featured without qualification, a poisonously flaky anti-Semite who claimed to know Obama was a Muslim.

"But McCain had consistently stoked the rage as well, with nonstop negative advertising and questioning Obama's patriotism trying to make an Everest out of Obama's association -- passive at best -- with the former terrorist William Ayers."

Since the Republican right is seemingly incapable of looking forward and only looks backward, meaning backwards to America's most cruel political and economic past, it is interesting to examine the antecedents of the current robo calls being made in important battleground states by the forces of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Richard Nixon made his first foray into national politics after being discharged from the Navy after answering an ad placed by a committee of right wing professionals seeking a candidate to run for the seat of 10-year veteran Congressman Jerry Voorhis.

Nixon was intrigued.  The district included Nixon's hometown of Whittier.  The young lawyer demonstrated himself to be politically active as he ran successfully for student body president at Whittier College.  

He would also prove adaptable at serving the needs of his professional benefactors, as was later exemplified by the secret fund established by them for his personal use after he was elected.  

This gave rise to the teary-eyed Checkers Speech when he denounced that he was not giving up the Cocker Spaniel that his daughters had been given by a citizen admirer, hardly on point, but then again when the facts are clearly against you, what do you do if you are Nixon?