Flashback: In 2000, McCain said there is ‘nothing wrong’ with the wealthy paying ’somewhat more’ taxes.»

At an October 2000 town hall on MSNBC’s Hardball, an audience member asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about why the rich pay higher taxes than the middle class. McCain defended progressive taxation, stating, “I think it’s to some degree because we feel, obviously, that wealthy people can afford more”:

[T]he very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don’t pay nearly as much as you think they do when you just look at the percentages. […]
So, look, here’s what I really believe, that when you are — reach a certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more. … And frankly, I think the first people who deserve a tax cut are working Americans with children that need to educate their children, and they’re the ones that I would support tax cuts for first.

Watch it:

McCain’s tax plan delivers almost half its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, and gives the top 0.1 percent a $1 million tax cut. “Oh, yes, sure, the wealthy, the wealthy. Always be interested in when people talk about who the, quote, ‘wealthy’ are in America,” mocked McCain in February when asked about his pro-rich tax plan.

Transcript:

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. Since I’ve been studying politics, I’ve had
this question that I’ve never fully understand. Why is it that someone
like my father, who goes to school for 13 years, gets penalized in a
huge tax bracket because he’s a doctor? Why is that — why does he
have to pay higher taxes than everybody else, just because he makes
more money? Why — how is that fair?

MATTHEWS: You mean…

MCCAIN: I think your question — questioning the fundamentals of a
progressive tax system where people who make more money pay more in
taxes than a flat, across-the-board percentage. I think it’s to some
degree because we feel, obviously, that wealthy people can afford
more. We have over the years, beginning with John F. Kennedy, reduced
some of those marginal tax rates to make them less onerous.

But I believe that when you really look at the tax code today, the
very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of
loopholes, really don’t pay nearly as much as you think they do when
you just look at the percentages. And I think middle-income Americans,
working Americans, when the account and payroll taxes, sales taxes,
mortgage pay — all of the taxes that working Americans pay, I think
they — you would think that they also deserve significant relief, in
my view…

MATTHEWS: How many — how many people here believe that the people who
made the highest level of incomes in this country should pay a higher
percentage of their income in taxes?

Miss, do you want to follow up? Miss, do you want to follow up, do you
want to follow up, do you want to follow up? Go ahead.

MCCAIN: Do you want to follow up? Please…

MATTHEWS: Go ahead, please, go ahead.

MCCAIN: … you were dissatisfied with Chris’s comment, I could tell.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I still don’t see how the — how that’s fair.
Isn’t the definition of slavery basically where you work and all your
money goes? I’m not saying this is slavery, I’m saying that isn’t the
defin — are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism and
stuff, when you have — you have some people paying 60 percent overall
in a year of their money to taxes. That’s their money, not the
government’s. How is that fair? I haven’t understood it.

MCCAIN: Could I point out, one of the fundamentals of a town hall
meeting is, we respect the views of others, and let them speak. So,
look, here’s what I really believe, that when you are — reach a
certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat
more. But at the same time, that shouldn’t be totally out of
proportion. There’s some countries such as Sweden where it doesn’t pay
anything to work more than six months a year. That’s probably the
extreme.

But I think the debate in this country is more about tax cuts rather
than anything else. And frankly, I think the first people who deserve
a tax cut are working Americans with children that need to educate
their children, and they’re the ones that I would support tax cuts for
first.
That's exactly the idea of Barack Obama which is now called socialism.
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Palin hysterical lying that Obama wants communism like in the European Union.

"See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record... Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Let us fight for what is right. John McCain and I, we will put our trust in you."

To prevent that we should think that with "other countries" is meant countries like Cuba or China, McCain has repeatedly named some, the UK, Germany, France and so on. He even does not want to talk with the Spanish government, as he does not want to talk with Iran or North-Korea. It's all communism abroad and "Europe is the arch fiend of America."
But to return to American domestic politics, we know that Obama does not want higher taxes for everyone and also no big government. Why should he follow the lines of Bush43 with the largest growth of government in history, supported by McCain?
Huffington Post writes:

Sarah Palin had a few memorable moments during her campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. But the most eye-opening of them all came, it would appear, when the Alaska Governor somehow drew a connection between Barack Obama's tax policy and an encroaching, nightmarish, communist government. The Illinois Democrat, she hysterically suggested, would, through his proposals, create a country "where the people are not free."
That yarn goes well beyond what Palin and McCain have, to this point, been comfortable asserting: mainly that Obama is proposing economic socialism. But there are a few things to keep in mind here: the McCain-Palin ticket does not oppose a progressive tax system. In fact, back in 2000, the Arizona Republican said rich people paid more in taxes because they could afford to do so.

"I think the first people who deserve a tax cut are working Americans with children that need to educate their children," he said, "and they're the ones that I would support tax cuts for first."

More importantly, Obama's tax plans are less progressive than those in place during the Clinton years. In fact, the rates that people making over $250,000 would have to pay would be the same as during the 1990s -- a time definitely not marked by the absence of freedoms.

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Krauthammer Bashes Wishy-Washy Conservatives Defecting from McCain

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet
It's all about more war for Dr. Strangelove.
Charles Krauthammer's pissed today (this being a day with the letter "Y" in it).
Surrounding him are all these wishy-washy "conservatives" abandoning the sinking McCain ship. But the Hammer's having none of it …

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

See, it's not because the GOP could run a lump of human excrement and Krauthammer would vote for it -- it's because he's a contrarian, and that means that he's not going to be swayed by the wisdom of the crowd. And, principled conservative that he is, he just doesn't give a damn if that stance means he never gets invited to another rubber-chicken dinner anywhere within the Beltway.
Here he expands on this contrarian streak of his …
He continues ...

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

That, my friends, is why Krauthammer gets the big bucks. Seriously -- a beautiful single-sentence paragraph. He stands athwart those losers, damnit!
And, apparently, he has no truck …

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

He sure talks pretty, but does any of that make sense?
Sharing the WaPo's real estate today is former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson blabbering about how the "surge" in Iraq, which most Washington Post columnists insist worked, was McCain's undoing, and Kathleen Parker of the National Review writing about how it was the selection of Sarah Palin that's causing her to (possibly) bolt from the fold. Chris Hitchens didn't say anything about McCain being "erratic" -- he wrote that McCain is "someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical" and that Palin is "a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience." And Buckley, while mentioning that McCain had become "irascible and snarly," focused his criticism on matters of substance: "his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget 'by the end of my first term.' Who, really, believes that?" he wrote.
But Krauthammer's having none of it -- he knows what's really important ...

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Kind of sad to see the venerable Hammer reach for such a lame talking-point. Ayers, of course, has for decades been a tweedy education professor who served as an aide to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and won the city's "Citizen of the Year" award in 1997 for his advocacy for schools. Krauthammer knows all that, but election season brings out the stupid in people, and here he doesn't bother "standing athwart" the worst nonsense of the Rush Limbaugh crowd.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was.

Yes, because we never heard a word from any of McCain's surrogates about …

Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

Never heard of him.
Towards the end, as he often does, Chuck let's you know what the real deal is …

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism.

That's it. McCain won the Krauthammer vote when he sang Bomb, Bomb Iran, and nothing -- not his senior moments, his cluelessness on economic matters, his choice of running mate -- can shake the bloodlust from Chuck's loins. For you and I -- and most of America -- election 08 may be about the financial crisis, health care, energy and America's relationship to the rest of the world, but for Krauthammer it's always been all about killing brown people. Politics in general boils down to that -- even Chris Hitchens isn't that devoted.

Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Wow. Those nutty Islamofascists and Putin rearing his ugly head over Alaska apparently don't offer enough threat-sex for the Hammer -- he's actually invoking those terrible days of the Falkland Islands conflict.
Vote McCain, or Grenada may well slip into the hands of those dirty damn Cubans.

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Obama is Back on the Trail

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Palin: 'I Don't Know' If Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists

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Questions and Polls

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Al-Qaeda Supporters Endorse McCain

Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.
The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Md., monitors the Web site and translated the message.
"If al-Qaida carries out a big operation against American interests," the message said, "this act will be support of McCain because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida then will succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it."

Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser, said he had heard about the Web site chatter but had no immediate comment.
The message is credited to a frequent and apparently respected contributor named Muhammad Haafid. However, Haafid is not believed to have a direct affiliation with al-Qaida plans or knowledge of its operations, according to SITE.

SITE senior analyst Adam Raisman said this message caught SITE's attention because there has been little other chatter on the forums about the U.S. election.

SITE was struck by the message's detailed analysis _ and apparent jubilation _ about American financial woes.
"What we try to do is get the pulse of the jihadist community," Raisman said. "And it's about the financial crisis."
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden issued a videotape just four days before the 2004 U.S. presidential election directly addressing the American people.

Palin allies report rising campaign tension

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics.
Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline.
"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

"I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.
"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.
"A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.
Wallace declined to engage publicly in the finger-pointing that has consumed the campaign in the final weeks.
"I am in awe of [Palin's] strength under constant fire by the media," she said in an e-mail. "If someone wants to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most graceful thing to do is to lie there."
But other McCain aides, defending Wallace, dismissed the notion that Palin was mishandled. The Alaska governor was, they argue, simply unready — "green," sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticize McCain for, for instance, not attacking Sen. Barack Obama for his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Palin has in fact performed fairly well in the moments thought to be key for a vice presidential nominee: She made a good impression in her surprise rollout in Ohio and her speech to the Republican National Convention went better than the campaign could have imagined. She turned in an adequate performance at a debate against the Democratic Party's foremost debater.
But other elements of her image-making went catastrophically awry. Her dodging of the press and her nervous reliance on tight scripts in her first interview, with ABC News, became a national joke — driven home to devastating effect by "Saturday Night Live" comic Tina Fey. The Couric interview — her only unstaged appearance for a week — was "water torture," as one internal ally put it.
Read more:

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