Non-partisan FactCheck.org calls McCain claims "groundless," "false and misleading"

The campaign of John McCain -- stunned by a continuing sharp drop in the polls -- has continued to field a barrage of advertising and claims in stump speeches suggesting that opponent Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" -- based on the fact that Obama was part of the same non-profit educational foundation as a reformed 60's radical. McCain and his campaign have gone on to claim that the two men a "ran a radical 'education' foundation" -- charges that FactCheck.org have found to be "groundless," "false and misleading."

(The nonpartisan truth-in-politics organization has been quoted in McCain advertising as an authoritative source -- but FactCheck.org found that those very McCain ads seriously mischaracterized and even misquoted their findings.)

According to a lengthy and exhaustive debunking of McCain and VP running mate Sarah Palin's claims:

In a TV ad, McCain says Obama "lied" about his association with William Ayers, a former bomb-setting, anti-war radical from the 1960s and '70s. We find McCain's claim to be groundless. New details have recently come to light, but nothing Obama said previously has been shown to be false.

In a Web ad and in repeated attacks from the stump, McCain describes the two as associates, and Palin claims they "pal around" together. But so far as is known, their relationship was never very close. An Obama spokesman says they last saw each other in a chance encounter on the street more than a year ago.

McCain says in an Internet ad that the two "ran a radical 'education' foundation" in Chicago. But the supposedly "radical" group was supported by a Republican governor and included on its board prominent local civic leaders, including one former Nixon administration official who has given $1,500 to McCain's campaign this year. Education Week says the group's work "reflected mainstream thinking" among school reformers. The group was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, started by a $49 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, which was established by the publisher Walter Annenberg, a prominent Republican whose widow, Leonore, is a contributor to the McCain campaign.

But -- please -- read the whole article because it reveals very clearly just how far the McCain campaign will take the falsehoods and gross exaggerations that have been at the center of their attacks on Obama's character and associations.

McCain booed by his own angry supporters

John McCain has a tiger by the tail.

It is the tiger of no longer hidden cultural and racial hatred that his own campaign has stoked as polls show his chances of winning November's presidential election have slipped away.

As crowds at the rallies of McCain an VP candidate Sarah Palin have turned increasingly bold in their overt expressions of violent hatred -- with shouted incitations to violence and racial epithets greeting reporters and TV crews trying to cover the rallies as the agitated crowds spot minority members of the media and their technical crews -- McCain's position in the polls -- including those from cable channel Fox News who many of McCain supporters consider their media outlet for its own over-the-top opinion-as-reporting support for the McCain/Palin campaign -- has begun to plummet.

Today, sensing the public relations disaster that the increasingly angry and out of control crowds represent, McCain tried to tone things down -- to disturbing results. According to the San Jose Mercury News:

Late Friday, after broad criticism for not stepping in earlier, McCain tried to tamp down tempers but was booed by his own supporters when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Obama's character, he described Obama as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."

The switch underscores the Republicans' treacherous high-wire after an inflammatory week when the McCain campaign began focusing on Obama's character and judgment.

In recent days, the campaign launched a series of searing stump speeches and ads that some experts call racially tinged. It also spills over to terrorist fears, they say. While the McCain campaign says it doesn't condone emphasizing Obama's middle name Hussein, speakers at McCain rallies have used it this week. Others point to McCain ads, which earlier called Obama "dangerously unprepared," now simply call him "dangerous'' and the constant linking of Obama to [former 60s radical turned university professor William] Ayers. This comes after months of false Internet rumors that Obama is a Muslim and not an American citizen.

The Mercury News talked to experts in political communication:

McCain campaign attacks on Obama have "gone beyond the level of code words,'' said Shanto Iyengar, Stanford University professor of communications and political science who has studied racial attitudes in elections. "I call it a racist appeal to identity. Do you want to vote for someone who doesn't look like you or have a name like yours? In America, racial identity tends to trump other forms of identity. It's the most salient basis for making the distinction between us and them."

Not every expert they talked to agreed -- particularly not those with ties to the GOP and Republican politicians who work at pl

"It's not about race, it's about getting voters to take another look at Obama "and fill in the blanks,'' said Bill Whalen, a former speech writer for Republicans and now a fellow at the Hoover Institution. McCain is hoping to take the voters' eyes off economic problems, where polls show he's weak, and move the attention to Obama's ties to Chicago associates, notably Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground which the FBI labeled a "domestic terrorist group," as well as convicted felon Antoin "Tony" Rezko and the controversial black minister the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

[...] McCain has tried to play-up Obama's association with Ayers; however, media reports have concluded the relationship was only a casual one.

But as the race hurdles to its Nov. 4 climax, political observers say these words and images will stoke fears, particularly racial ones.

"In a fear environment, what's effective is to draw on fears of racism,'' said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at Cal State Sacramento. Such tactics might be particularly effective if McCain wants to shore up support among conservatives and older voters in places like Florida, Virginia and Midwest swing states. And Obama, she contended, is using "code words to show McCain as rickety and old,'' unable to lead a turnaround.

The irony, she added, that for an election about change, the economic crisis may cause some voters to seek the candidate they believe is safest "when everything else is turning upside down. The fear of the different is the flip flop of change. Change has been the mantra but now people have had way too much change.''

UPDATE: The New York Times has a bit more detail on the incident, which was preceded by a harsh attack on Obama by McCain -- and after the crowd booed McCain -- followed by another harsh attack -- although McCain again later tried to calm the crowd as it turned ugly once again.

Then he added, “I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments, I will respect him.” The crowd interrupted Mr. McCain to boo, but he kept talking. “I want everyone to be respectful and let’s make sure we are, because that’s the way politics — —”

At that point, Mr. McCain was drowned out by applause.

The Times doesn't speculate on why the crowd burst into applause at that odd point -- but those who've observed such rallies know that the crowd response is sometimes, to some extent, orchestrated by campaign workers scattered throughout the venue.

UDATE 2: The oston Globe coverage adds a few more details: Supporters jeer as McCain calls Obama 'a decent person'

Maybe McCain supporters need to look in the mirror...

Shouting racial epithets and calls for violence, the crowds at some John McCain rallies are turning ever angrier, putting on ugly public displays of raw hatred and paranoia as national electoral polls virtually without exception -- including those sponsored by media outlet Fox News, seen by many on the far right as "their" news source -- have shown a strong surge of support for Obama.

Analysts attribute the increased support for the Democrat to spiraling concern about the economy, the widespread perception that Obama and his running mate Sen. Joe Biden performed better than McCain and his VP choice, Gov. Sarah Palin, in the first two presidential and only vice-presidential debates, and to the growing notion that Obama's calm and steady demeanor, contrasting sharply with the increasingly shrill -- and widely denounced -- personal attacks launched by McCain and Palin, makes the Democrat seem more "presidential."

Yet, when reporters talk to the crowds at some McCain rallies, the Republican's supporters aren't buying any of it, expressing a range of responses from shock and disbelief that their candidate continues to sink in the polls to the ill-explained notion that some sort of fix is in. Particularly vexing to some appears to be the realization that their own Fox News' polls reflect the same upward surge of Obama support.

And then there is race. While overt displays of race hatred and paranoia had been limited, the increasingly harsh -- and largely unfounded or grossly exaggerated -- accusations by McCain and Palin have seemed to give license to the most ardent of Republicans, who are coming out of the box showing an ugly and unrepentant brand of racism seldom seen in the mainstream of US national politics.


As McCain supporters plaintively ask why their candidate continues to slide, they express bewilderment or cynical paranoia.

But perhaps they should take a good look in the mirror.

Most US voters have said repeatedly that they don't like negative campaigning. Most US citizens are extremely uncomfortable with overt signs of racial hostility of any kind. And most US voters are looking for real answers in a time of deep economic troubles, an Iraqi occupation that never seems to end and a war in Afghanistan that is spiraling farther out of control -- war efforts that are costing US taxpayers around 12 billion dollars a month.

But when Americans -- and others around the world -- tune into video from a McCain or Palin rally what do they see? Candidates who evade the issues, seemingly preferring to attack their rival as an outsider -- someone who is -- in the oft-repeated words of many McCain supporters -- not one of us.

But maybe that is precisely why Obama continues to rise in the esteem of mainstream Americans.

McCain Big Idea: mortgage buyback proposal actually proposed by Obama two weeks ago

Well, well, well...

Senator John McCain's big, groundbreaking proposal for the federal government to buy troubled mortgates -- an idea he claimed was his and his alone -- was already part of the $700 billion bail-out package -- and was proposed by his opponent, Senator Obabma, two weeks ago.

According to CBS News' Reality Check:

The campaign calls it a bold new program aimed directly at homeowners - John McCain's proposal to have the government buy and refinance shaky mortgages, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

He said it was: "to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes."

McCain claimed this was his idea, and no one else's.

"And it's my proposal, it's not Sen. Obama's proposal, it's not President Bush's proposal," he said.

That claim is exaggerated. Similar authority was granted in last week's bailout bill. And, Obama proposed the same idea - two weeks ago.

"... we should consider giving the government the authority to purchase mortgages directly instead of simply purchasing mortgage-backed securities," Obama said.

CBS goes on to suggest that neither candidate is really facing up to the enormity (usage noted) of the bail out package's impact on the US budget and economy:

The biggest reality check from the debate Tuesday night is how little the fiscal crisis has changed these candidates. The federal government has just assumed roughly $1 trillion in new liabilities - and neither candidate will admit there's been any real impact on their promises.

Throwing stones from glass houses... McCain's Iran-Contra connections revealed

The Associated Press and other news organizations are reporting on links between Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, and an organization involved with the illegal gun and drug running, terrorist bombings, and subversion of the US Constitution that threatened to bring down the Reagan White House in the overlapping scandals of the so-called Iran-Contra affair.

The organization, the U.S. Council for World Freedom, which the AP describes as "an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America" that was " dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe" -- and, so, embraced by Republicans like John McCain, who USCWF founder and arms merchant, John Singlaub, says was more a "supporter" than an active member. But that would seem to be contraindicated by the facts: McCain served on the board of the Council.

"I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated," Singlaub told the AP.

McCain has subsequently claimed he resigned from the group in 1984 and asked to have his name removed from the group's letterhead in 1986 -- a contention denied by Singlaub and Joyce Downey, who oversaw the Council's day to day operations.

Renewed attention to McCain's membership on the board of the ultra-right wing, terrorist-connected organization comes in the wake of a series of McCain campaign attacks on Democratic rival Barack Obama's exceedingly tenuous connections to an aging University of Chicago professor, William Ayers, who, more than 40 years ago was a founding member of the leftist Weather Underground, whose members later took credit for several terror bombings.

At the time of the Weather Underground crimes, Obama was 8 years old. He has since strongly and unequivocally condemned the activities of the Underground and Ayers. But with McCain's continuing plummet in electoral polling, his advisers have been quoted by a number of sources as saying that if the McCain campaign does not "change the topic" from the current economic crisis they will lose the election.

Since almost every move by McCain, from his pick of pretty, but pretty vapid Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, to his disastrous and quickly reversed "campaign suspension" -- which was widely seen as a cheesy gimmick that unnecessarily politicized an already chaotic recovery plan being argued in Congress -- has been panned by all-important undecided voters, McCain was told he had no recourse but to pursue an ever-sharpening attempt at character assassination.

The Obama campaign had warned that they would fight fire with fire if the McCain campaign forced their hand and, along with a dredging up of the so-called Keating Five scandal that had previously been seen as one of the darkest blots on McCain's record, stories about McCain's very spotty record as a navy aviator have surfaced -- notably in the LA Times, which noted that McCain had three major aviation accidents in his military career and that two and possibly all three of those accidents appeared to have been due to his own reckless disregard for proper flying protocols; they go on to point out that McCain's account of at least one of those accidents in his autobiography was strongly contradicted by the Navy's own findings, which indicated that McCain was at fault, though he blamed the crash on an engine failure the Navy claimed simply did not happen.

And now McCain is being implicated in what has widely been seen (at least until the ever-unfolding scandals, mis- and malfeasance of the Bush administration) as the most serious scandal involving a seated US president since Watergate.

It just doesn't seem to get any better for John McCain.

Ever.

Palin crowds get uglier -- racial taunts and shouts of "kill him"

As the McCain campaign grinds out more and bigger lies about opponent Barack Obama, the crowds at some Palin rallies are getting uglier and uglier.

Racial taunts and threatening gestures greeted reporters at one rally. At another, a Palin supporter, carried away by the anti-Obama fervor stirred by Palin's non-stop assault on Obama, yelled out "Kill him!" (Although it wasn't clear precisely who he wanted to kill.) Palin's screed reeled from painting Obama as a crooked and petty ward-heeler at some times and at others as a kind of millennial anti-Christ.

But it's the hateful frenzy of Palin supporters that's begun to concern some. According to Dana Milbank writing in the Washington Post's Washington Sketch:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

If the fevered image of Palin supporters driven into a racist frenzy wasn't enough to stop the mind in its tracks, one might have a moment to giggle at the notion that Palin's pathetically bubble-brained performance in prearranged interviews with Couric were somehow Couric's fault (because she asked hard questions like What newspapers do you read? and What Supreme Court decisions don't you agree with? Who wouldn't be thrown for a loop by those stumpers, huh?)

Desperate times: McCain & Palin to lie bigger, more often

Faced with an increasingly dire campaign situation, the McCain team has clearly made the decision to begin hitting Barack Obama with all they've got left: lies, more lies, and bigger lies.

Addressing supporters in California yesterday, VP candidate Palin repeated the claim that a President Obama would "pal around" with terrorists and -- in an indirect reference to one of a number of deer-in-headlights moments she experienced being interviewed by Katie Couric: Couric had asked her what news periodicals Palin got her facts from and Palin could not name a single newspaper or magazine -- Palin cited an article she claimed to have recently read in the New York Times, saying, according to the LA Times:

"I was reading today a copy of the New York Times. And I was really interested to read in there about Barack Obama's friends from Chicago. Turns out one of his earliest supporters is a man who, according to the New York Times, was a domestic terrorist, that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.' "

She's referring to William Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago, but who was, almost a half century ago, a founding member of 60s leftist group, the Weather Underground, who sat on some of the same education boards as Obama.

What she doesn't mention is that the New York Times also determined that, though acquainted, the men were never close, and that Obama has repeatedly denounced Ayer's radical past -- which occurred when Obama was a small boy.


Despite John McCain's now empty promises that he would run a clean campaign, observers have long expected that McCain or his supporters would attempt to inflate Obama's acquaintance with Ayers into the kind of character assassination through association practiced by right wing witch hunters since the 30s, when they tried to derail FDR's plan to save the US from the effects of the Great Depression with any insult, exaggeration or outright lie they could think of. It didn't work then. We'll have to see if the same kind of shameful lies will work today.

The exceedingly tenuous connection to Ayers has already received the Big Lie treatment from McCain supporter, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, the primary force behind the so-called "Swift Boat" attacks against John Kerry that tried to paint the Medal of Honor winner as a coward. Ads backed by Simmons have played in some markets since August.

Will non-partisan fact-checking operations like Factcheck.org have any affect in fighting the blizzard of lies expected in the last month of the campaign from an increasingly desperate John McCain?

Stay tuned...