Graham: Expect more McCain tax cut plans before Election Day
(CNN) - McCain surrogate Lindsey Graham said Sunday that the Republican nominee will unveil new proposals to "jump-start the nation's economy" over the final three weeks of the presidential campaign.
"I think it goes along the lines of, now's the time to lower tax rates for investors, capital gains tax, dividend tax rates, to make sure that we can get the economy jump-started," the South Carolina senator said on CBS's Face the Nation.
John McCain has already laid out a plan to buy $300 billion in troubled mortgages, and re-negotiate the terms directly with homeowners. On Friday, he endorsed the idea of suspending the current requirement that seniors start drawing down their IRAs and 401Ks once they reach age 70-and-a-half.
Graham said the proposals would form a "very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes" - but would not include any plans for further bailout funding.
Palin: I've been cleared of 'any hint of unethical activity'
(CNN) - Sarah Palin told Alaska reporters Saturday that she had been “cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of unethical activity” in the investigative report released the day before that explored her actions in dismissing a state official who refused to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police.
"Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there,” Palin said on a Saturday conference call with reporters from the Anchorage Daily News, KTVA-Channel 11 and KTUU-Channel 2. “Very pleased to be cleared of any of that."
She repeated the same contention on the trail Saturday: When a reporter asked if she had abused her power in firing Walt Monegan, the state police chief who would not dismiss her ex-brother-in-law Mike Wooten from the force, she said the report showed she had done nothing wrong. “No, and if you read the read the report you will see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member," Palin responded before boarding her campaign bus. "You got to read the report, sir."
Palin had the authority to fire Monegan, but the report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower concluded that she abused her power as Alaska's governor, and violated state ethics law by trying to get Wooten fired from the state police.
"Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states.
Palin draws a line between 'good guys' and 'bad guys'
ST. CLAIRSVILLE, Ohio (CNN) - At a campaign rally designed to reflect the pastoral beauty of the heartland in autumn - with a stage set up in a red barn overlooking a sweeping field and piles of pumpkins - Sarah Palin warned the audience about the threat of terrorism, and explained that the Republican ticket should be elected because “we know who the bad guys are.”
“Help me, Ohio, to help put John McCain in the White House,” she said. “He understands. He understands you. We understand how important it is that this team be elected. For one thing, we know who the bad guys are, OK?”
That statement elicited scattered shouts of “Obama!” throughout the crowd.
“We know that in the war, it’s terrorists, terrorists who hate America and her allies and would seek to destroy us, and the bad guys are those who would support and sympathize with the terrorists,” she said. “They do not like America because of what we stand for. Liberty. Freedom. Equal rights. Those who sympathize and support those terrorists who would seek to destroy all that it is that we value, those are the bad guys, OK?”
Clintons campaign with Biden in Scranton
SCRANTON, Pennsylvania (CNN) – The most powerful couple in Democratic politics came out to campaign with Joe Biden on Sunday - the first joint rally the Clintons have done for the Obama-Biden ticket, and the first time Bill Clinton has campaigned with either of the nominees.
Both Clintons sung the praises of the Delaware senator to a crowd of 6,000, pointing to his accomplishments in his 35-year Senate career and to his roots in this hardscrabble Pennsylvania town that has become synonymous with the blue-collar working class electorate.
“If you had a secret ballot of all the Republicans and Democrats in the Congress,” said former President Bill Clinton, “and you asked them to put two or three names down of the people in the entire Congress who know the most about the economic, political and security challenges of America and the world, his name would be on every single secret ballot.”
Missing from much of Clinton’s eight-minute introduction was Barack Obama himself, the latest in a series of lukewarm statements of support from the former president. Clinton said he would spend the rest of his life thanking those who supported his wife in the primary, and said that she had done more to support Obama than any of the other Democratic runner-ups combined.
McCain says he'll 'whip' Obama's 'you-know-what' at debate
(CNN) - John McCain predicted Sunday he would beat Barack Obama at the final presidential debate this week.
"After I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we're going to be going out 24/7," the Republican nominee told volunteers at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, sparking laughter and applause from the group. McCain immediately added: "I want to emphasize again, I respect Senator Obama. We will conduct a respectful race, and we will make sure that everybody else does, too."
Outside the doors of his campaign offices, McCain is fighting to hold on to the traditionally-red state. McCain talked Sunday about the tough fight for Virginia, where Obama currently leads by four points, 49 to 45, in the state's most recent CNN poll of polls. He also pointed to battlegrounds states like Ohio - which Sarah Palin visited Sunday - and Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
"And I'm telling you, we're coming on and we're going to work 24/7 for the next - who's counting - 22 days," he said.
McCain acknowledged the dip in his poll numbers since the financial crisis began, but said overall trends were in his favor. "...I'd like to give you a little straight talk, we're a couple points down, ok,
nationally, but we're right in this game," he said. "The economy has hurt us a little bit in the last week or two, but in the last few days we've seen it come back up because they want experience, and they want knowledge and they want vision. And we'll give that to America, and I know that we're going to win this race."
Obama did not ask to delay security agreement, Iraqi FM says
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama did not urge Iraqi officials to delay a decision on a security agreement with the United States, Iraq's foreign minister told CNN on Sunday.
The statement by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari refutes a recent published report and a statement by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that Obama tried to influence Iraqi politicians negotiating with the United States to score political points.
Fact Check: What did Obama tell the Iraqis?
Obama "never, ever discouraged us not to sign the agreement," Zebari said. "I think this was misrepresented, and I have clarified this case in a number of interviews back in the United States recently."
Fact Check: Are all McCain's ads negative?
Watch CNN's Alina Cho fact check whether McCain's ads are all negative.
The Statement:
At a campaign stop Sunday, October 12, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, said, "A recent analysis showed - and this is literal - a recent analysis showed that 100 percent of the advertisements that the McCain campaign is now running - 100 percent - are
advertisements attacking, attacking Barack Obama."
Get the facts!
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Ohio Poll of polls: McCain, Obama in tight race
(CNN) - Pennsylvania may be slipping from John McCain’s grasp, but the Republican nominee is keeping the race close in the neighboring battleground state of Ohio – a state that no successful GOP presidential contender has failed to win.
CNN's new Ohio poll of polls shows Barack Obama leading McCain by three points, 49 to 46 percent. Five percent of the state’s voters were unsure about their presidential pick.
The network’s last Ohio poll of polls, released October 9, showed Obama leading McCain by four points, 50 to 46 percent. In the September 21 poll of polls, Obama led McCain by a single point, 47 to 46 percent.
Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin is slated to stop in Ohio Sunday - the third time on the past week week the GOP ticket has visited the state.
Map the candidates' path through the swing states with CNN's Election Tracker
The Ohio general election "poll of polls" consists of four surveys: Ohio Newspaper Poll/University of Cincinnati (October 4-8), ARG (October 4-7), CNN/Time/ORC (October 3-6) and ABC/Washington Post (October 3-5). The poll of polls does not have a sampling error.
Palin: Hockey mom experience on 'executive side' of the sport
PHILADELPHIA (CNN) - Sarah Palin seems to have slipped effortlessly into the role of John McCain’s attack dog - but those aggressive tendencies may have been cultivated many years ago as an “exuberant” hockey mom in Wasilla, where she used to bang her fists on the penalty box glass and demand that her son get tougher with his opponents on the ice.
At least that’s how she described her time as a hockey mom to Comcast SportsNet’s Steve Coates, who interviewed Palin after she dropped the puck at the Philadelphia Flyers’ season opener on Saturday night. The governor recounted how she used to embarrass her son Track by yelling at him from the side of the rink, telling him to play nice. But if he was going to play rough, Palin said, she gave him license to go all out.
“I was telling him be nice, and if you’re going to get a penalty, man, make it worth it!,” she told Coates. “Don’t just be picking on somebody. Grind ‘em into the boards! Do something that’s going to be effective. Don’t just be picking on someone.”
Palin said she soon put her energies into the “executive side” of the youth hockey team instead of shouting at her embarrassed son from behind the glass.
“I put my passion towards hockey to better use by becoming the hockey manager,” she said. “The team mom. You know, working on the stats, working on the management, the executive side of the sport, and hopefully that was put to better use. I was pretty exuberant.”
McCain to make up with Letterman, make a Late Show stop
(CNN) - Looks like they may be ready to bury the hatchet back at the Home Office.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain is slated to make an appearance on David Letterman's show Thursday - three weeks after he raised the ire of the generally mild-mannered host by canceling his scheduled appearance at the last minute, citing his decision to suspend his presidential campaign because of the financial crisis.
"This doesn't smell right," Letterman said then, during a routine that only half appeared to be a joke. "This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil."
Watch: Letterman skewers McCain
Letterman didn't appear to buy the Arizona senator's explanation for the cancellation, showing the audience a live feed of McCain preparing for an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric. After praising McCain's record as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he said, "This is not the John McCain I know, by God."
"It makes me believe something is going haywire with the campaign," he said. "Something's gotten to him."
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