I guess it’s only fitting that Ronald Regan’s Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein announced today that he will not be voting for John McCain.

Update: 

Here is a small list of other prominent republicans that have chosen to endorse Barack Obama over John McCain:

From Think Progress:

Hotlz-Eakin argues that “under McCain’s plan, employer-funded care will generally be preferable to the tax credit alone — since it’s the tax credit plus the employer contribution — but that the tax credit alone will be a huge step up for people who have nothing at all.” In other words, in the individual market, without the employer contribution, Americans would have to pay more for less…and less as McCain’s tax credit does not keep up with medical inflation.

In fact, high deductible plans typically lead to higher out-of-pocket expenses, resulting in “a one-time shift in spending from premiums to patient out-of-pocket outlays.” As Holtz-Eakin himself points out:

McCain’s would leave them better off than they are now, but still with something less than complete coverage, unless they reach into their pockets to supplement the tax credit.

Oddly enough, Holtz-Eakin is now arguing that under McCain’s health care plan (which pushes about 20 million Americans out of the employer market and into the unregulated individual market), Americans would receive sub-prime health care coverage.

In 2001, Chicago Public Radio interviewed then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama about civil rights.  Over the weekend, someone posted excerpts of the interview, edited to misrepresent Obama’s statements.  The item is now catching national attention.

Click here for Obama’s full interviews.

The clips are taken from an interview that aired in January of 2001. Then State Senator Obama is one of three legal scholars interviewed for a show about civil rights. Over the weekend, someone pulled excerpts of the show and posted them to You Tube—and today, the posting caught fire on political blogs, the Drudge Report, and Fox News.

The 4 minute spliced collection of clips portrays Obama as advocate a redistribution of wealth through the power of the Supreme Court. That folds in with some allegations by the McCain Palin campaign.

The twist here is that, when heard in the context of the whole show, Obama’s position is distinctly misrepresented by the You Tube posting. Taken in context, Obama is evaluating the historical successes and failures of the Civil Rights movement—and, ironically, he says the Supreme Court was a failure in cases that it took on a role of redistributing resources.

The McCain campaign told ABC News it plans to use the material to bolster its criticism of Obama.

Note: WaPo fact checker debunked this almost immediately.  This just goes to show how little substance the McCain campaign is working with at this point.  Instead of focusing on the issues that are important to us he has focused solely on the old warn out politics of negativity and fear.

The Statement:
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, speaking in Canton, Ohio, on October 27, referred to Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s tax plans and said, “It’s not change when he wants to give $200 billion to the biggest corporations or $4 billion to the oil companies.”

Get the facts!

The Facts:
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the numbers cited by Obama come from two studies analyzing McCain’s tax proposals, including cuts in the corporate tax rate. The two studies were done by unrelated organizations. LaBolt also said that Obama’s remarks do not refer to two separate tax cuts — the $4 billion in purported cuts to oil companies is part of the larger $200 billion.

Both studies project the effects of McCain’s proposal to cut the corporate tax rate from the current maximum of 35 percent to a maximum of 25 percent in a phased reduction over the next seven years.

One analysis, published in March by the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, predicted how large oil companies would fare under McCain’s proposed corporate tax reductions. Based on taxes that the five largest American oil companies paid in 2007 and calculating what the study called “savings under McCain plan,” the study concludes that those five companies would realize a total tax cut of $3.8 billion a year under McCain’s plan to cut the corporate rate.

On its Web site, the organization refers to the tax reduction as “nearly $4 billion.” LaBolt said the Obama campaign uses the $4 billion figure because the study included only the five largest American oil companies, and the total tax cut to all American oil companies would be bigger. Also, 2008 earnings for oil companies are expected to be higher than earnings in 2007.

The other study — a detailed analysis of both McCain’s and Obama’s tax plans — was done by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That study predicted the impact of McCain’s tax proposals on revenue in several categories. The Obama campaign arrived at its $200 billion figure by combining various categories in that study. Roberton Williams, principal research associate for the Tax Policy Center, said the Obama campaign’s calculation of $200 billion from McCain’s proposed reduction in corporate taxes was an accurate conclusion.

The McCain campaign contends that lowering the corporate tax rate will enhance business development and create jobs in the United States. In an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Oct. 22, McCain cited lower tax rates in other countries as being a key reason American companies move business overseas. “We should be cutting corporate tax for every business in America,” he said. “To somehow allege that a company or corporation that can be international is not going to go where they pay the lowest taxes and create the most jobs is just foolishness.”

The Verdict: True. Obama’s statement accurately reflects two studies of McCain’s tax proposals.

From the WaPo Fact Checker:

The Facts

“Obama Bombshell Audio Uncovered. He wants to Radically Reinterpret the Constitution to Redistribute Wealth!!” runs the YouTube headline from the conservative video blog Naked Emperor News. “This video exposes the radical beneath the rhetoric.”

On closer inspection, the “bombshell audio” turns out to be a rather wonkish, somewhat impenetrable, discussion of the Supreme Court under Earl Warren. Obama, then a University of Chicago law professor and Illinois state senator, argued that the courts have traditionally been reluctant to get involved in income distribution questions. He suggested that the civil rights movement had made a mistake in expecting too much from the courts — and that such issues were better decided by the legislative branch of government.

You can read the entire transcript of the interview here, courtesy of Fox News, but here is the passage in which Obama explains that courts are “not very good” at redistributing wealth:

Maybe I am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but you know I am not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know the institution just isn’t structured that way…. Any of the three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts. I think that, as a practical matter, that our institutions are just poorly equipped to do it.

In other words, Obama says pretty much the opposite of what the McCain camp says he said. Contrary to the spin put on his remarks by McCain economics adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, he does not express “regret” that the Supreme Court has not been more “radical.” Nor does he describe the Court’s refusal to take up economic redistribution questions as a “tragedy.” He uses the word “tragedy” to refer not to the Supreme Court, but to the civil rights movement:

One of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think, there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.

Holtz-Eakin “read a different interview to the one I heard,” said Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor who joined Obama in the panel discussion. “Obama said that redistribution of wealth issues need to be decided by legislatures, not by the courts. That is what a progressive income tax is all about.”

While there are sharp differences between the two candidates on economic issues, they both favor a progressive income tax system in which people with high incomes are taxed at a higher rate than people with low incomes.

The Pinocchio Test

With very few exceptions, all American politicians, including both presidential candidates, are in favor of a progressive income tax system and welfare policies (such as Medicare and Social Security) that “redistribute wealth.” Barack Obama is more enthusiastic about “spreading the wealth around” than his Republican rival. But that does not make him a “Socialist.” The McCain camp is wrong to suggest that the Illinois senator advocated an “wealth redistribution” role for the Supreme Court in his 2001 interview.

In perhaps the saddest move of the political season CNN reports that a McCain spokesman was pushing the story of their poor campaign worker being attacked by a 6’4″ black man who carved a B in her face before the details were even released by the police department:

Note:  I do not believe John McCain in any way condoned this sick attempt at race baiting by some in his Pennsylvania camp.  This is however another example of the dirty attempts to play on peoples racial fears made by people in his camp.

Today on Meet The Press:

He touts his immigration reform as going against his own party.  The problem is that he actually folded to his own party even saying that he would vote against his own immigration bill.

Note: John McCain often uses the McCain / Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Bill as an example of him reaching across the isle even though he does not support it.  This bill also mirrored the immigration plan laid out by no other then George W. Bush.  McCain only changed his position after running for president.

Update: TJR shows just how much McCain’s words today don’t add up:

So what has changed?  You only need to look at who is now running John McCain’s campaign.  He seems to have sold out on every key position he has ever taken.

Update:

I just came across this video of the John McCain I supported in 2000.  

From the Russian newswire RIA-Novosti (via Politico):

Russia’s permanent mission to the UN has received a letter from U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain asking for financial support of his election campaign, the mission said in a statement on Monday.

“We have received a letter from Senator John McCain with a request for a financial donation to his presidential election campaign. In this respect we have to reiterate that neither Russia’s permanent mission to the UN nor the Russian government or its officials finance political activities in foreign countries,” the statement said.

According to Ruslan Bakhtin, press secretary of the Russian mission, the letter dated September 29 and signed by McCain, was addressed to Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s envoy to the UN, and arrived on October 16.

The ambassador’s title was not included in the letter, and was not clear why the letter had taken over two weeks to arrive.

Enclosed was a request for a donation of up to $5,000 to McCain’s election campaign to be returned with a check or permission to withdraw the money from the donor’s credit card until October 24.

Individual donations to candidates’ election campaigns are capped by law at $2,300, and it is illegal to accept donations from foreign nationals.

McCain accepted the $84 million in public financing available to his election campaign, and consequently cannot accept private donations. However, the Republican National Committee is collecting donations that can be used to support his candidacy in limited ways.

“You know, I think you may have noticed that Senator Obama’s supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately,” McCain told the audience in the town of Moon Township. “And you know, I couldn’t agree with them more…”