The Impeachment Hearing Room

Viewpoint: Desperate Republicans turn to desperate measures and Serious Questions Are Being Raised About Sarah Palin’s Mental Health!

The Word Is SOCIOPATH! (And Can You imagine a sociopathic devious, deviant shallow intellect, Pentecostal, Armageddon/Rapture believing Extremist “One Heart Beat” from the Presidency?) Seriously; read on and think about…please!

When You Say The Word "sociopath" most people think of serial killers. But although many serial killers are sociopaths, there are far more sociopaths leading ordinary lives. Chances are you know a sociopath. I say "ordinary lives," but what they do is far from ordinary. Sociopaths are people without a conscience. They don't have the normal empathy the rest of us take for granted. They don't feel affection. They don't care about others. But most of them are good observers, and they have learned how to mimic feelings of affection and empathy remarkably well.

Most people with a conscience find it very difficult to even imagine what it would be like to be without one. Combine this with a sociopath's efforts to blend in, and the result is that most sociopaths go undetected.

Because they go undetected, they wreak havoc on their family, on people they work with, and on anyone who tries to be their friend. A sociopath deceives, takes what he (or she) wants, and hurts people without any remorse. Sociopaths don't feel guilty. They don't feel sorry for what they've done. They go through life taking what they want and giving nothing back. They manipulate and deceive and convincingly lie without the slightest second thought. They leave a path of confusion and upset in their wake.

Sarah Palin's Almost Creepy Ambition Should Worry McCain

Frank Rich, The New York Times

Election 2008: Sarah Palin is the only hope for saving a ticket headed by a warrior who is out of juice and out of ideas. It seems she knows this only too well.

Palin: Another Sociopath
By Jill Hussein C., Brilliant at Breakfast
Isn't it odd how Sarah Palin never talks about the future? Read more »

A number of people noticed how, at her debate with Joe Biden the other night, Sarah Palin didn't so much as gaze over at Biden with a look of feigned sympathy when Biden alluded to his own sons' stay in the hospital after the death of his wife and daughter soon after his election to the Senate. Hilzoy wrote about it here.Nice Greek Boy wrote about it too. Simple human decency and kindness warranted some kind of a response. You can bet that if Sarah Palin was recounting a personal tragedy, however obliquely, Biden would have found something comforting to say.

The more I watch Tina Fey play Sarah Palin, the more I begin to realize that no matter how spot-on Fey is, she never really quite captures the cold, hard core at the center of Sarah Palin. Because Fey has a warmth, a light in her eyes that Sarah Palin just doesn't have.

Dr. Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited, describes pathological narcissism as:

a pattern of thinking and behaving in adolescence and adulthood, which involves infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of others. It manifests in the chronic pursuit of personal gratification and attention (narcissistic supply), in social dominance and personal ambition, bragging, insensitivity to others, lack of empathy and/or excessive dependence on others to meet his/her responsibilities in daily living and thinking.

Palin's bizarre non-response to Biden's indirect reference to his own experience was jarring coming from someone who presents herself as a paragon of apple pie and American motherhood.

It's always treacherous, especially these days, to ascribe nefarious motives to a woman's ambition, motives that are not questioned when they are attributed to a man. Frank Rich wrote about this ambition today:

But there’s a steady unnerving undertone to Palin’s utterances, a consistent message of hubristic self-confidence and hyper-ambition. She wants to be president, she thinks she can be president, she thinks she will be president. And perhaps soon. She often sounds like someone who sees herself as half-a-heartbeat away from the presidency. Or who is seen that way by her own camp, the hard-right G.O.P. base that never liked McCain anyway and views him as, at best, a White House place holder.

This was first apparent when Palin extolled a “small town” vice president as a hero in her convention speech — and cited not one of the many Republican vice presidents who fit that bill but, bizarrely, Harry Truman, a Democrat who succeeded a president who died in office. A few weeks later came Charlie Gibson’s question about whether she thought she was “experienced enough” and “ready” when McCain invited her to join his ticket. Palin replied that she didn’t “hesitate” and didn’t “even blink” — a response that seemed jarring for its lack of any human modesty, even false modesty.

In the last of her Couric interview installments on Thursday, Palin was asked which vice president had most impressed her, and after paying tribute to Geraldine Ferraro, she chose “George Bush Sr.” Her criterion: she most admires vice presidents “who have gone on to the presidency.” Hours later, at the debate, she offered a discordant contrast to Biden when asked by Gwen Ifill how they would each govern “if the worst happened” and the president died in office. After Biden spoke of somber continuity, Palin was weirdly flip and chipper, eager to say that as a “maverick” she’d go her own way.

But the debate’s most telling passage arrived when Biden welled up in recounting his days as a single father after his first wife and one of his children were killed in a car crash. Palin’s perky response — she immediately started selling McCain as a “consummate maverick” again — was as emotionally disconnected as Michael Dukakis’s notoriously cerebral answer to the hypothetical 1988 debate question about his wife being “raped and murdered.” If, as some feel, Obama is cool, Palin is ice cold. She didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s devastating personal history.

After the debate, Republicans who had been bailing on Palin rushed back to the fold. They know her relentless ambition is the only hope for saving a ticket headed by a warrior who is out of juice and out of ideas. So what if she is preposterously unprepared to run the country in the midst of its greatest economic crisis in 70 years? She looks and sounds like a winner.

I'm quite sure that the Usual Suspects on both the right and the left will be shrieking about Rich's sexism in painting her ambition as being sexist and part of a double standard.

But there's something about Palin's speeches and interviews that I've found unnerving, and this morning I finally realized what it is.

She never, ever talks about the future.

Ever.

One would think that the mother of four children, including an infant, and the soon-to-be-grandmother of another infant, would use her "hockey mom" persona to frame her ticket's agenda as creating a better world for her children. Barack Obama does it when he talks about his daughters. Joe Biden does it when he talks about his grandchildren. Even Hillary Clinton, a woman who Sarah Palin makes look like Mamie Eisenhower by comparison, did it. Sarah Palin doesn't. And I think I know why.

It's because Sarah Palin doesn't believe there is a future.

Philip Munger at Progressive Alaska recounts a conversation he had with Palin in 1977:

In June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Palin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature.

As the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.

I asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon "during MY lifetime," were obvious. "I can see that, maybe you can't - but it guides me every day."

Our next discussion about religion was after she had switched to the less strict Wasilla Bible Church. She was speaking at, I was performing bugle, at a Veterans ceremony between Wasilla and Palmer. At this time, people were beginning to encourage her to run for Governor.

Once again, we found ourselves being able to talk privately. I reminded her of the earlier conversation, asking her if her views had changed. She was no longer "necessarily" a young earth creationist, she told me. But she strongly reiterated her belief that "The Lord is coming soon." I was trying to get her to tell me what she felt the signs were, when she had to move on.

Think of the cold, dead look in Sarah Palin's eyes. Think of her bizarre non-response to Joe Biden's tragedy. Now watch about 4:15 into this video:

...when Palin says about Biden's current wife, "I know you're passionate about education, with your wife being a teacher for thirty years, and God bless her, her reward is in heaven, right?"

Go back and watch this video again. Then think about how a mother of four never once on the stump talks about her children's future.

Now imagine that John McCain is elected and dies of a stroke while in office. And this woman now has the nuclear codes.

Then ask yourself, and your friends, just how important a passing acquaintance with William Ayers is when the alternative is a pathological narcissist who's also a believer in the Left Behind model of the apocalypse.

Sarah Palin's Debate Performance Tanked Among Women

Linda Hirshman, TheNation.com

Reproductive Justice and Gender: Palin is a lot like a '90s "Rules Girl." She follows a playbook that men respond to -- one that gives women indigestion.

Alaska GOP's Last-Ditch Palin Defense
Only days before a scheduled report on Gov. Sarah Palin's "Troopergate" scandal, Republican allies in Alaska are trying to shut down the inquiry, Jason Leopold reports. October 5, 2008

Neocon Desperation Is Showing
Neoconservative commentators cheered Sarah Palin's debate performance, but the praise was so excessive it had a touch of desperation to it, Robert Parry reports. October 3, 2008

Will `Ace' McCain Flame Out Again?

Over the years he's played many roles and worn many titles, including Navy aviator, prisoner of war, hero, congressman, U.S. senator, Washington insider, maverick outsider and, now, presidential candidate. But the one title of which few are aware is that of "service ace."

John Sidney McCain III is known among many of his Vietnam flight buddies as "Ace" McCain. This title has not been bestowed upon McCain because he destroyed five enemy aircraft. On the contrary: It was five on our side -- in fact, five of his own. Since throwing his hat into the presidential ring, the fact that McCain was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy nearly at the bottom of his class has been publicized. His star-crossed flying, on the other hand, remains unknown to most.

Robert Timberg, author of The Nightingale's Song, a book about Annapolis graduates and their tours in Vietnam, wrote that McCain "learned to fly at Pensacola, though his performance was below par, at best good enough to get by. He liked flying, but didn't love it." Timberg counts himself a friend of McCain and has written a McCain biography.

It wasn't long after arriving in Pensacola that McCain racked up the first of his five crashes, beginning in 1958, on his way to becoming a "reverse ace." As told by Timberg, "McCain was practicing landings; his engine quit and he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane settled to the bottom."

There was, however, no engine failure with the aircraft. According to one of McCain's former flight instructors, "The engine was removed from the aircraft that afternoon, mounted on a test stand and a new propeller installed. [It] was flushed with fresh water and started. It ran just fine. So the theory of engine failure was proven false."

The instructor added that McCain was "positively one of the weakest students to pass our way, and received consistently poor marks and a number of Dangerous Down grades assigned by more than one instructor. He had no real ability and was clearly out of his element in an airplane, and way over his head even as a junior naval officer."

The second of McCain's crashes occurred while he was deployed in the Mediterranean. "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula," reports Timberg, "he took out some power lines [reminiscent of the 1998 incident in which a Marine Corps jet sliced through the cables of a gondola at an Italian ski resort, killing 20] which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral."

Crash three occurred when McCain was returning from flying a trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. According to Timberg, McCain radioed, "I've got a flameout." He went through the standard relight procedures three times. At one thousand feet, he ejected, landing on the deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees."

By 1967, McCain was ready for battle and assigned to the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk pilot. While seated in the cockpit of his aircraft waiting for takeoff, a freak accident occurred when a rocket slammed into the exterior fuel tank of McCain's plane. Miraculously, McCain escaped from the burning aircraft, but dozens of his shipmates were killed and injured in the explosions that followed.

McCain's final downing came just three months later when his A-4 Skyhawk was hit by antiaircraft artillery over Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi, North Vietnam. McCain spent the next five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war and, upon return to the United States in 1973, like the other returning POWs, McCain became an instant hero. The POWs had been treated abominably, yet stood up to their torturers and were deserving of the accolades they received. But some questioned the number and types of medals bestowed upon "Ace" McCain, the son of the admiral commanding in the Pacific as well as the grandson of another admiral.

"McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat," explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs -- the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon. "Since McCain got 28 medals," Bell continues, "that equals out to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys -- grunts on the ground -- who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I'm sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."

"John McCain," says another Navy pilot and acquaintance of that era, "was the kind of guy you wanted to room with -- not fly with. He was reckless, and that's critical when you start thinking about who's going to be the president," The old pilot laughs, and then continues: "But the Navy accident rate was cut in half the day John McCain was shot down."

(Continued)

McCain Plans Fiercer Strategy Against Obama

Why McCain's Final Attacks Won't Work
411mania.com

- Sugar Land,TX,USA
This is evidenced by the fact that polling during the primaries indicated that Obama was in fact headed toward a landslide victory against virtually any ...

http://www.alternet.org/election08/101017/barack_obama's_team_believes_he_can_win_by_a_landslide/?page=entire

A poll last weekend that found Mr. Obama would be six points higher in the polls if he were white. That is really Good News as the 12% Race Factor Is What we have been keeping our eye on. That still appears to be solid in Tennessee, Kentucky and Oklahoma!

Analysis: Appalachia key to winning Ohio
The Newark Advocate - Newark,OH,USA
Some point to the March Ohio Democratic presidential primary, where, in some southeastern Ohio counties, Hillary Clinton defeated Obama with more than 70 ...
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30 days out the ball is in McCain’s court, Obama leads

With just a mere 30 days to go to Election Day, the ball is in McCain’s court to make some moves and regain ground in the polls along with the all-important swing states. Luckily for McCain, he’s got two more debates to make a stand in before voters head to the polls. On the other hand, unfortunately for McCain, and Obama, they have two more debates to possibly perform bad in also, the sword cuts both ways.

Polls are in Obama’s favor at this point as he leads, on average, by about 5.9% according to RealClearPolitics.

Election historians often note the most movement happens in the last 72 hours before election day as the 10% to 15% of “undecideds” finally make up their mind, and change it like 8 more times before they actually cast their vote.

At this point, McCain has become the “underdog” and his campaign is painting him in that light. Most likely it’s a planned strategy since people like supporting the “underdog” in most cases.

So the bottom line here is that Obama needs to keep doing what he’s doing, which is staying on his message about the economy and assailing McCain’s policies. McCain, on the other hand, needs to work harder at convincing voters they need to reject Obama’s philosophies and go with a more free market approach, a task which grows more difficult as the media piles on the current financial news. (More)

-John McCain: A Man Without Honor
By Booman, Booman Tribune
John McCain is going to make the last month of this campaign as unpleasant and dishonorable as possible. Read more »

The shifting election battleground

Under FINANCIAL Restraints, McCain Drops Michigan

National electoral map: Obama seizes 273 to beat McCain (My Call 304 Today)

Minnesota Poll: Obama leaps ahead of McCain

In the Event of a Tie
CQPolitics.com - Washington,DC,USA
McCain won the New Hampshire primary both in January and eight years ago and is polling well there at the moment. This analysis assumes that Nebraska and ...
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Washington University - RocketNews
theimpeachmenthearingroom.blogspot.com. - Sun, Oct 05. The Golden Parachute Survives. Sarah Binder, political science professor at George Washington ...

Prepare All Things
... aliens" and "potential terrorists." Fraud-busters such as Rep. ... The Impeachment Hearing Room - http://theimpeachmenthearingroom.blogspot.com/ ...