Too "juvenile" to lead?

Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter seems to think there's a candidate in the race for President of the USA who is behaving a juvenile, immature manner:

In the middle of John McCain's dopey Britney & Paris attack ad, the announcer gravely asks of Barack Obama: "Is He Ready to Lead?" An equally good question is whether McCain is ready to lead. For a man who will turn 72 this month, he's a surprisingly immature politician—erratic, impulsive and subject to peer pressure from the last knucklehead who offers him advice. The youthful insouciance that for many years has helped McCain charm reporters like me is now channeled into an ad that one GOP strategist labeled "juvenile," another termed "childish" and McCain's own mother called "stupid." The Obama campaign's new mantra is that McCain is "an honorable man running a dishonorable campaign." Lame is more like it. And out of sync with the real guy.

[bold added]

Wal-Mart denies pressuring employees to vote against Demos even as it admits it

The nice folks who put all the stores on your Main Street out of business -- Wal-Mart -- have admitted pressuring employees to vote against Democratic candidates in the fall even as they've denied the pressure is... well... pressure.

The New York Daily News writes, in part:

A report in The Wall Street Journal said the Arkansas-based discounter - which has resisted being unionized - held mandatory meetings with managers and supervisors to warn that if Democrats take power in November, they would likely push through pro-union legislation.

Company spokesman Dave Tovar confirmed there were talks about a specific congressional measure - allowing labor organizations to unionize workplaces without secret ballot elections - with workers.

But he said the company wasn't advocating that its employees vote against backers of the legislation.

"If anyone representing Wal-Mart gave the impression... they are wrong and acting without approval," said Tovar, who insisted the company works with both political parties.

"Half of our [political action committee] contributions are to members of each party," he said.

Not everyone was buying it though...

"They're trying to bully the American political" scene, said Stewart Acuff of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest union.

Wal-Mart also may be on thin ice as federal election rules allow businesses to encourage shareholders, executives and salaried managers to back a particular candidate, but prohibit such actions for hourly workers - which typically include department supervisors.

Rove aides take charge of McCain campaign, roll out Big Lie ads

Now that key aides to George Bush's political svengali, Karl Rove, have moved into the top positions of John McCain's campaign, they've begun the roll-out of a series of so-called Big Lie ads -- ads which take an outrageous lie and repeat and repeat it until their claims have become part of the political landscape (the so-called "swiftboating" of John Kerry and a whispered lie campaign against none other than John McCain, himself, in his 2000 bid for the GOP nomination against Bush where Rove agents spread false rumors about McCain's family and made racist attacks on his adopted daughter).

Apparently, John McCain has found enormous moral flexibility within himself, as he's not only moved the Rove acolytes into top positions in his campaign but embraced the sleazy Big Lie tactics Rove has used in all his campaigns, tactics which were pioneered by Hitler's own propaganda czar, Josef Goebbels.

Nonpartisan honesty-in-campaigning advocacy group, FactCheck.org thoroughly explores the lies in McCain's new ad, "Celeb" explaining, in part:

Summary
McCain's new ad claims that Obama "says he'll raise taxes on electricity." That's false. Obama says no such thing.

McCain relies on a single quote from Obama who once – and only once so far as we can find – suggested taxing "dirty energy," including coal and natural gas. That was in response to a reporter's suggestion that a tax on wind power could fund education. Obama isn't proposing any new tax on electricity or "dirty energy" as part of his platform, and he never has.

FactCheck goes on to point out that McCain has actually advocated the same policies his ads attempt to use to smear Obama:

Of course, by that standard, John McCain also favors raising taxes on electricity. McCain's Web site prominently proclaims his support for a cap-and-trade program, and in 2003, McCain and then-Democrat Joe Lieberman jointly sponsored legislation that would have implemented a cap-and-trade system.