When Your Volunteers Won't Read Your Message, You Are In Trouble

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."

Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.

"They walked out," Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. "They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day."

[via TPM]

Has John McCain's Campaign Been Honorable?

The recent Robocalls and attacks on Obama have turned nasty. Many voters have been turned off by these attacks. Voters want to hear McCain provide answers for our people and our economy. Jack Cafferty from CNN tells it like it is.

A commenter writes:

The Robocalls and false information being spread in vile brochures by the campaign have put him over the top in the area of dishonor and disservice to the nation as a whole. McCain may have been honorable with his service in the past and even the principles he once had. However, he has lost himself through this process and has been sucked into the RNC machine.

McCain Bets that Adding a 'Hussein' Will Win his Campaign

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

While the McCain team has widely circulated (and exaggerated) the Obama/Ayers connection, it seems he prefers palling with tyrannical dictators to terrorists personally.

Sarah Palin Uses Quote in Speech from Racist, Anti-Semitic Writer, Westbrook Pegler

From the New York Times:

No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.

More from Politico.

I'm not sure why pointing out the credibility of John Lewis is helpful to McCain's chances

We have the perfect "label" or "tag" for this bit of McCain news, via CNN:

Sen. John McCain said Monday that Rep. John Lewis' controversial remarks were "so disturbing" that they "stopped me in my tracks."

Lewis, a Georgia representative and veteran of the civil rights movement, on Saturday compared the feeling at recent Republican rallies to those of segregationist George Wallace.

"That's not from some, quote, party official, that's from one of the most respected people in America. It's unfair. It's unfair and it's outrageous," he said in an exclusive interview with CNN's Dana Bash.

Can you guess? All together now:

"Oh if you become VP, Oh it's Canada for me!"

There's alot of concern among voters as to whether Sarah Palin has what it takes to lead. This song sums up their feelings.

Diagramming Sarah Palin's Sentences

I recognize this Slate article is both mean and unfair. (Anyone who has ever transcribed a verbal interview with anyone recognizes how totally syntactically fuzzy conversational speech is.) However, I love diagramming sentences—and, honestly, these are some choice (tortured) specimens.

Branded!

Can you technically even be a "maverick" and espouse something other than a classically liberal, progressive ideology?

That's the question posed by John Swartz in this NYT's column that delves not just into the etymology of the term—which began with a 17th Century member of the Maverick family, who "got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants"—but also the current low opinion the Maverick family has of McCain and Palin using their family name today.

McCain's POW Secrets [October Surprise!]

Sydney H. Schanberg, the longtime New York Times reporter and editor and Newsday columnist -- and author of "The Killing Fields" -- has written a 9000-word investigative piece on John McCain and his longstanding efforts to, as Schanberg asserts in his lede, "hide from the public stunning information about the live Vietnam prisoners who, unlike him, didn't return home."

[Via Editor & Publisher]

Sarah Palin VP Debate Corrections

Obvious: The top general in Afghanistan is not Civil War General George Brinton McClellan [via TPM]

Not-So-Obvious: She does not seem to have supported Alaska's divestment from Sudan. [via ABC]