Pundits of all stripes are using the following exchange from a McCain rally to prove that the Arizona senator has turned the page on the ghastly attack tactics that his campaign has used against Sen. Obama for weeks now.
McCain supporter: "I don't trust Obama.... He's an Arab."
McCain: "No, ma'am, he's a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with."
But, when confronted with a statement made by the Virginia GOP chair, Jeffrey M. Frederick, comparing Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden, Sen. McCain replied that he would have to see the statement in context. Well, here's context, Senator:
He [Frederick] climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon," he said. "That is scary." It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama's controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. "And he won't salute the flag," one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, "We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born." (From In Battleground Virginia, a Tale of Two Ground Games)
How's that for context?
Personally, I am quite tired of hearing McCain talk about decency and running a clean campaign when he has obviously chosen not to condemn the statements of his surrogates or signs at his rallies that read Obama Bin Lyin'. (See photo.)
As usual, Sen. McCain is trying to have it both ways: making himself look decent, while allowing surrogates, spokespeople and pitbullshit machine Sarah Palin slander Obama at any opportunity.
Christopher Hitchens writes well, even when he writes things that one disagrees with. But when he writes things one agrees with, reading Hitchens is one of the great pleasures in life.
It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.
[...]
With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.
As I said in an earlier post, rumors about Gov. Palin's truthfulness have been greatly exaggerated. She is now boasting that the Troopergate report cleared her of any wrongdoing. Did it? I didn't think so.
If we sent the Mars rover to MSM offices, I doubt we would find many signs of intelligent life. We would, however, find a lot of connections to Karl Rove and his spin. Here's one such example.
That would certainly be a newsworthy headline if it were, in fact, true. As it turns out, as is always the case with Palin and her curmudgeonly supporters, news of Palin's truthfulness have been greatly exaggerated. How? (Continued below the fold.)The myth is:
In the Illinois Senate, Obama opposed legislative efforts in 2001, 2002 and 2003 to give legal protections to any aborted fetus that showed signs of life. The 2003 measure was virtually identical to a bill President Bush signed into law in 2002 that unanimously passed the U.S. Senate.
The reality is deconstructed in great detail on Obama's website and by the independent Fact Check site. Here's an excerpt:
In discussions of abortion rights, definitions are critically important. The main bills under discussion, SB 1082 and the federal BAIPA, are both definition bills. They are not about what can and should be done to babies; they are about how one defines "baby" in the first place. Those who believe that human life begins at conception or soon after can argue that even a fetus with no chance of surviving outside the womb is an "infant." We won't try to settle that one.
What we can say is that many other people – perhaps most – think of "infanticide" as the killing of an infant that would otherwise live. And there are already laws in Illinois, which Obama has said he supports, that protect these children even when they are born as the result of an abortion. [Emphasis mine.] Illinois compiled statute 720 ILCS 510/6 states that physicians performing abortions when the fetus is viable must use the procedure most likely to preserve the fetus' life; must be attended by another physician who can care for a born-alive infant; and must "exercise the same degree of professional skill, care and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as would be required of a physician providing immediate medical care to a child born alive in the course of a pregnancy termination which was not an abortion." Failure to do any of the above is considered a felony. NRLC calls this law "loophole-ridden."
So, are Obama's pro-abortion views extreme? It is safe to say that, at least for Palin, any view that allows abortion is extreme, considering the fact that she would not even allow abortions in cases of rape and incest (one might call her views "extreme anti-abortion views", by the same token.) But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so the burden is on those who believe that Obama's views on the subject are extreme to prove that his views go beyond those of other congress members who support a woman's legal right to an abortion and beyond those of the general public.
That Obama sees abortion as a woman's legal right is no mystery, as he himself has stated. But for his views to be extreme, they would have to be out of the mainstream. The case that Palin and her curmudgeonly supporters make is far from conclusive. In fact, it seems highly dubious and tainted by extreme views of the opposite kind.
As is often the case, the truth should be evaluated in one-degree increments. Absolute statements rarely tell the whole picture.
A slanderous, Obama-hating blog, which never misses an opportunity to condemn Sen. Obama and Biden's behavior and judgment while glossing over or omitting examples of analogous behavior by McCain and Palin, all the while claiming to be grounded in reason, recently featured the following post: Obama's Close Association With An American Terrorist.
I replied to that post that while Obama's tenuous association with William Ayers has been much touted by the mainstream media (which the blog in question accuses of favoring Obama, while excluding the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Washington Times, and anti-liberal, hate-spewing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc. from the membership in MSM), little has been made of McCain's own connection, and support of, another domestic terrorist: G. Gordon Liddy.
The owner of the blog replied the following:
"So what if McCain has some connection to Liddy? Liddy is not terrorist who hates America, as is Ayers. Every politician has multiple contacts. The problem is Obama's deep ideological connections with William Ayers." (emphasis mine)
As is often the case, the Curmudgeon is both misleading and misinformed.
Liddy WAS (is?) a terrorist, as Carl Bernstein correctly points out.
The fact that Obama has "deep ideological connections with William Ayers" is also a complete fabrication, but it is permissible under the Curmudgeon's own rule of engagement because it serves to prove his entirely subjective point.
As for the contention that Ayers hated America, while Liddy--who trampled the constitution and advocated terrorism--doesn't, that's just typical of the attitude of the Constructive Curmudgeon has for facts. Facts that conform with his view of the world are sacred, those that go against it are fantasy instead. And should skeptics dare express a contrary opinion, Curmudgeon will be quick to censor them as needed under the pretext of incivility.
Note for misleading curmudgeons: While the truth can be scathing, that does not make it uncivil.
Some interesting examples of distortion of economic data, commonly used by Republican shills (who else?) to prove the imaginary superiority of their own governance over the Democrats', in an article by Mitchell Rofsky.
Pierre Tristam makes the point that by not decrying the call "Kill him" directed at Obama at a Palin rally, McCain and Palin are tacitly endorsing such calls. In fact, they have contributed to making such calls possible with their attitude during the campaign, as Frank Rich of the NY Times notes in his weekend column.
We can only hope, as Tristam says to close his opinion piece, that the era of incendiary division that Republicans have used so successfully for the last eight years plus will come to an end on Nov 4.
John McCain and his many, shamelessly partisan, and uninformed/deceptive spinmeisters are orchestrating a campaign aimed at destroying ACORN's hard work, without giving ACORN a chance for rebuttal. The latest attacks, amplified by the Republican echo chamber concern the issue of voter registration fraud (the real, undeclared target: Sen. Obama.)
Here are a few interesting sundry facts about economics to keep in mind before you vote for another president (McCain) who thinks supply-side economics is a wonderful idea.
Here are two posts that you must read. They are not about candidates going at each other. They are not about doing everything one has to in order to win, including lying. They are not about character issues. They are about the single, most important issue in your lives. It dwarfs all others. You don't know it until your whole world, not just financial markets, or your 401k, or your home value, crashes on you.
You will never know how important it is, until it's too late too do anything about it.
That the McCain/Palin ticket has little or nothing to offer to solve the country's problems has been glaringly apparent in the three debates we have seen so far.
That they are out of touch with the American public is obvious in some of the answers the two Republican candidates have given to some of the most pressing issues that face the country (Healthcare in America? A responsibility. The Iraq war? We MUST come home as victors and stay in Iraq for as long as it takes, even while the economy plummets and more people join the ranks of the unemployed, the uninsured, and the uncared-for-poor. And the list goes on, too long as it is for a short post.)
That the McCain campaign is desperate to change the subject, from the problems they have no answers for to anything else, is no secret. McCain and Palin have launched a guilt by association campaign that may very well backfire on them, for the company they have kept (G. Gordon Liddy, Charles Keating, Alaskan secessionists, and a witch hunting pastor, just to name a few) is--at least--just as bad as the company they accuse Sen. Obama of keeping.
That McCain is a desperately dishonorable, rancorous, and acrid candidate came across quite plainly when, after his latest attack on Obama's ties with Weather Underground founding member William Ayers, an audience member at the rally shouted, quite loudly and clearly, "Terrorist!". Sen. McCain obviously heard the shout, as he halted for a split second, smirked, and then continued in his speech without condemning the perpetrator. His bitterness and lack of class his equaled only by Gov. Palin's stultifying vitriol, when she called Obama unpatriotic and unfit to be president, again for Sen. Obama's ties with Ayers, and charged on as a member in her audience shouts "Kill him!" Obviously, whether the audience member referred to Sen. Obama or William Ayers is immaterial.
That they are using disgusting Rovian tactics is unforgivable, since Rovian tactics are what Bush used to destroy McCain in the 2000 campaign for the Republican nomination, and because McCain has on many occasions disavowed them. His justification for using those same tactics against Sen. Obama is that the Illinois senator has refused to indulge McCain's offer to hold ten town hall meetings instead of the debates. After last night's vitriolic performance by Sen. McCain, one is left to wonder what benefit the Arizona senator might expect from losing in a town hall meeting instead of a debate, not to mention the fact--highlighted by Jon Stewart (at 4:35 in the video)--that the "town hall excuse" for the smear campaign McCain is running is tantamount to saying "I wanted to play Monopoly, he wanted to play Scrabble, so I punched him in the nuts."
Against this background, it is not surprising that Cindy McCain, in defiance of reality and of observable facts, is now calling Sen. Obama's campaign for change in America (and, consequentially, against her husband) the "dirtiest campaign" in U.S. history, in a reversal of the truth straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
The really emblematic trait of Sen. McCain's campaign is that he is attempting to win by sucking his audience into the contempt he holds for Sen. Obama. In the first debate, McCain did not look at Sen. Obama once. In last night's debate, he busied himself taking notes while Sen. Obama was speaking, in a contrived and clear effort to justify his not looking at Sen. Obama, whom he spent the evening attacking.
The wheels finally came off McCain's bullshit bus when, during an exchange on energy policy, the curmudgeonly, peeved, and petulant senator referred to Sen. Obama as "that one."
It was a first. Never, in my experience of watching debates, do I remember a candidate referring to his adversary wish such dismissive spite. This attitude, as reflective as it is of Sen. McCain's true colors, is particularly deplorable coming from a senator who never tires of reminding us how he has a history of reaching across party lines to get things done.
But even as offensive as the moment was, it will be remembered only as one of the many symptoms of a truly diseased campaign, one of too many moments of subconscious transparency of a man who apparently considers vitriol, ill-temper, and dismayingly bad manners necessary ingredients of a half-baked maverick.
NPR's This American Life took a fascinating and highly instructive look into the financial mess which has risen to the forefront of our American lives of late.
I am an ignoramus about things such as credit default swaps, as I think most of my readers are, but I found the material to be very clearly presented and understandable. Do yourself a favor and listen in.
The show runs for 53 minutes and is a true clinic for the financially-challenged.
NOTE: A few months ago, in May, This American Life did another episode on the housing crisis and the role Wall Street played in it. Follow this link, then click the Full Episode icon to listen to the program.
As the Dow plunges, the 401k plans of many middle-class Americans are worth less and less, and many financial experts warn that this is just the beginning of a much larger crash, what does John "Nero" McCain do?
First he poses as the savior of the economy by parachuting himself onto the Senate floor just in time to see (make?) a done deal collapse; then he blames his opponent for sitting it out on the sidelines and takes credit for a new bill before it, too, fails to pass; and finally he votes in favor of a $700 billion rescue package that, under his supervision, balloons all of a sudden into an $850 billion bill, due to the last minute addition of billions in "pork"--the very "pork" he had railed against until two weeks ago.
And now that the battleground states that Bush won in 2004 are starting to turn from fiery red to cool blue, John "Nero" McCain--never one to miss the pulse of the nation--has turned to fiddling the "Obama connection with Ayers" tune over the burning ruins of America's economy.
First, Brooke Gladstone and Kathleen Hall Jamieson talk about Thursday night's vicepresidential debate and about campaign coverage to date on Bill Moyers Journal.
Particularly important is Jamieson's recommendation to weak interviewers like Gwen Ifill, on how to proceed when a candidate skirts a question: "For my next question, could you please answer the last question?" "For my next question, could you please answer the question that I asked earlier?"
For the upcoming debates I am not hopeful, though, because the next two moderators (Brokaw and Schieffer) are old and biased in favor of John McCain/the GOP (the fact that they are in the GOP's good graces is well known). I'd be really surprised if either one handled follow-ups fairly, particularly with John McCain. Schieffer's performance in the 2004 Bush-Kerry debate was disgraceful for its very lack of follow-ups when Bush failed to answer the question (much like Ifill with Palin on Thursday night).
And while we are on the subject of campaign coverage and debates, here is a study that examines the type of questions that candidates were asked during the primary season. The problems highlighted during the primary debates, alas, have not gone away in time for the presidential debate season.
Then, this week Congress passed the largest bailout in the history of the world, $840 billion. We must add this staggering figure to the prohibitive cost of the war in Iraq (not to mention Afghanistan). At this point, a look back in history is in order, to a tape by Osama Bin Laden in which he boasts of Al Qaeda's contribution to bankrupting America, which should remind us of how mujahideens played a role in bankrupting the Soviet Union already.
Finally, to end on a slightly lighter note, here is SNL's excellent take on the Biden v Palin debate.
The McCain campaign is now running an ad saying that Obama is not truthful about taxes, and that he has voted 94 times to raise taxes. For the last time, McCain, Palin, their surrogates and the GOP are intentional liars.
This assertion has been fact-checked by several organizations, and it has turned out to be false every time. Repeating it on the stump, in debates, ads and on talk shows does not make it true. It just makes the McCain campaign harder and harder to tolerate with every day that goes by.
When Senators McCain and Obama met in Mississippi for the first of the 2008 Presidential Debates there were many moments when the Arizona senator plainly lied about his opponent's proposals and record, and many more in which he lied about his own record. But none of his mischaracterizations was as difficult to stomach as his position on veteran benefits.
I know the veterans. I know them well. And I know that they know that I'll take care of them. And I've been proud of their support and their recognition of my service to the veterans.
And I love them. And I'll take care of them. And they know that I'll take care of them. And that's going to be my job.
Now, I am no veteran, and I don't suppose many veterans read my blog. In fact, I have no friends who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, so I do not have a personal stake in the treatment of veterans. However, I have read enough, and listened to enough discussions on the subject, to know that Sen. McCain is not exactly a favorite of many veterans.
So I did a little research, and I found an opinion piece published by the LA Times, and a post on Think Progress. Read them, then judge for yourself.
These two examples are a good starting point, and there are many more articles and posts like them, if you care to look for them.
Again, it seems that Sen. McCain's commitment to veterans is grounded, as so many of his positions, in lofty but empty rhetoric. Facts, those stubborn little things, tell a very different story.
McCain, by the way, voted against the reauthorization of SCHIP to cover uninsured children, one of the votes that earned him that not-so-much sought after honorary title of "America's Worst Senator For Children."
He then went on to say that he supported President Bush's veto of the expansion of SCHIP because--he said--the program's expansion would create an "unfunded liability." Guess what unfunded liability Sen. McCain just voted in favor of? The $700 billion Wall Street bailout. I guess that when you are a maverick saving irresponsible grown ups and the companies they ran into a ditch is more important than health care for children.
Sen. McCain: Today's Worst Person For Children in America!
I do not have a gift for drawing cartoons. If I did, this would be my visual for tonight's debate:
On the left of the screen, Joe Biden. On the right, a tape recorder on a lectern.
(And if I were really a gifted cartoonist, I would include a visual to represent the total disconnect between the questions Gwen Ifill asked, and the answers Sarah Palin, a.k.a. the tape recorder, gave.)
While John Fund, Wall Street Journal hack, writes drivel like "Stealing Elections", about the alleged and vastly exaggerated problem of voter fraud, hundreds of thousands have been purged from voter rolls. Most of them won't know it until Election Day.
One thing you can do RIGHT NOW to make sure that your voter registration is valid is to visit CanIVote.org.
You may also check the deadline for voter registration in your state at Declare Yourself. Do it now: the deadline is looming in many states.
Voter purges and caging lists are not a new phenomenon, but they have come to the fore in the closely contested 2000 and 2004 elections.
I agree with most of the report's Policy Recommendations, except for the one on the use of provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are already used when voter registration is not confirmed, but a large number of provisional ballots end up not being counted. Provisional seems to have become synonymous with discardable. To give voters provisional ballots, without safeguards that valid votes will be counted, makes no sense.
Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain (their surrogates and their indefensible defenders) have gotten in the habit of defining any question Gov. Palin does not have an articulate answer for (more and more as her ignorance of anything outside Alaska becomes apparent) as a gotcha question or gotcha journalism.
In reality, all questions are gotcha questions to people who know nothing about the world around them. (Continued below the fold.)
These are not gotcha questions. Some of these are, to quote Michael Feldman's What Do You Know, "things you should've learned in school, had you been paying attention."
A Supreme Court case other than Roe v Wade?
How about Dredd Scott v Sanford, which every American child has been taught of in school?
Or how about Edwards v Aguillard? Since you are a Young Earth Creationist and you served as a PTA member, chances are you probably heard about the decision that ruled that it is unconstitutional to require that Creationism be taught in public schools. You know, because of the Establishment Clause... Never mind.
A newspaper or magazine that contributed to forming your views on foreign policy matters?
How about Time, or Newsweek, without getting too fancy?
How about The National Review or The American Spectator?
Or The Weekly Standard? Hey, after all it was Bill Kristol, of The Weekly Standard and the Project for A New American Century, who has been lobbying for a U.S. president to reinvade Iraq since Daddy Bush failed to complete the mission in Gulf War I.
An honest answer? I have five kids, are you kidding me? I haven't had any time, let alone the curiosity, to read about foreign policy until three weeks ago! But from time to time I do read "The Alaskan's Russia Watch" (I am sure, since Alaska and Russia are so close, such a magazine must exist!), and the "Moose Field Dresser Magazine."
It's not just the fact that the questions listed should really not stump a potential VP. It's the answers that are stupefyingly stupid.
Even allowing that some questions might have been intended as gotcha questions, there are a million possible answers to be given, and it looks like--in every case--Gov. Palin has scraped the bottom of the barrell of stupid answers until she gave the one she came up with.
The Bush Doctrine? His worldview.
What magazines do you read? All of them, any of them that have been in front of me. (Most likely, People and Us Weekly).
How does Alaska's proximity to Russia help your foreign policy credentials? Our next door neighbors are foreign countries, um,they're in the state I'm executive of.
By stating or implying that the questions above are examples of "gotcha journalism," Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin show that they resent the fact that qualifications, credentials, preparation, and intelligence should be part of the evaluation process for the highest office in the land.
In fact, they are running their campaign in the same way: spreading lies, deception and misinformation about themselves and their opponents, as if people were too stupid too check, or as lazy and intellectually stumped to care, as they themselves are.
What they are really saying is: forget about all this stuff about knowledge, and intellectual preparation. I am a 72 year-old Senator, former POW, (pseudo-) maverick, and honorable guy (because I said so.) My running mate is an attractive woman who was good enough to become Alaska's Governor. What else do you need to know?
If you don't have a problem with the constitutionality of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, you should. (This is one of my many disagreements with Sen. Obama, by the way.)
And if you don't find this wrong, leave a comment. I'd really like to know how you are able to justify the distortion of our constitutional principles documented in the linked article.
In a country which chooses its presidential candidates based on trifling factors, like electability, looks, and their likability factor (would you like to have a beer with your former alcoholic president?), Congressman Kucinich will never be president. Too bad, because he is hardly ever off base on the issues.
I know sometimes he acts "goofy", and that he looks like Dr. McCoy's close relative (but then again, Bush looks sometimes like a Gremlin and he got elected anyway--but then again Kucinich does not have a Daddy whose friends can buy him the White House.) Nonetheless, he has been consistently right on many almost all issues, including during the Democratic debates. (Continued below the fold.) He was right about a single-payer solution for health care. So right, in fact, that he was disqualified from participating in a debate on health care, sponsored by the AARP (which "derives significant income from the sale of health and life insurance policies"), so you can see why he was not welcome to debate his opponents.
He was right on the war in Iraq (and has consistently voted against funding it, since it was apparent it was the only way to stop the Bush Administration's madness.)
He is against NAFTA and thinks the U.S. should withdraw from it because the treaty does not adequately safeguard American workers or the environment.
He voted against the Patriot Act, and the 2006 Military Commissions Act.
He wants to end the war on drugs, and to legalize homosexual marriage.
Most importantly, he introduced to the House floor articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, because intentionally leading a country into war under false pretenses is a more serious offense that getting serviced in the Oval room.
He holds many other positions on which I completely agree with him.
And now, surprise surprise, he is also right on the financial crisis.
John Nichols of The Nation says about Congressman Kucinich:
That Kucinich is spot-on [on the financial crisis and the bailout] comes as no great surprise.
When he bid for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, he spoke more consistently and more bluntly about the economic crisis than any of the other contenders.
Kucinich was not treated particularly seriously the media or his fellow Democratic candidates.
Now that Kucinich has been proven right, however, Barack Obama might want to pay attention to what the former mayor, state legislator and veteran congressman is saying.
Spoiler alert! Sarah Palin makes George W Bush look like a master of oratory and coherence. From the second presidential debate in 2004, moderated by Bob Schieffer (emphasis mine).
Keep in mind that, after four years in the White House, the Bush administration had not yet created a single job, being the first administration since Herbert Hoover's that had a net job loss. The only thing Bush could claim as a success (and even that was debatable) was the bipartisan passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (which later on has come under lots of criticism). In that perspective, read the following exchanges.
SCHIEFFER: Let's go to a new question, Mr. President. Two minutes. And let's continue on jobs.
[...]
Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?
BUSH: I'd say, Bob, I've got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here's some help for you to go get an education. Here's some help for you to go to a community college.
[...]
You know, there's a lot of talk about how to keep the economy growing. We talk about fiscal matters. But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works.
[...]
No, education is how to help the person who's lost a job. Education is how to make sure we've got a workforce that's productive and competitive.
Note that Bush did not really answer Schieffer's question. Also note that the solution he proposed did little or nothing to solve the immediate problem that people how had lost their job (many, under his first term), and that it would be a medium to long term solution, if it was a solution at all.
And again, later on:
SCHIEFFER: [...] The gap between rich and poor is growing wider. More people are dropping into poverty. Yet the minimum wage has been stuck at, what, $5. 15 an hour now for about seven years. Is it time to raise it?
BUSH: [...] let me talk about what's really important for the worker you're referring to. And that's to make sure the education system works. It's to make sure we raise standards.
Listen, the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it. The No Child Left Behind Act says, "We'll raise standards. We'll increase federal spending. But in return for extra spending, we now want people to measure -- states and local jurisdictions to measure to show us whether or not a child can read or write or add and subtract. "
You cannot solve a problem unless you diagnose the problem. And we weren't diagnosing problems. And therefore just kids were being shuffled through the school.
And guess who would get shuffled through? Children whose parents wouldn't speak English as a first language just move through.
Many inner-city kids just move through. We've stopped that practice now by measuring early. And when we find a problem, we spend extra money to correct it.
I remember a lady in Houston, Texas, told me, "Reading is the new civil right," and she's right. In order to make sure people have jobs for the 21st century, we've got to get it right in the education system, and we're beginning to close a minority achievement gap now.
I remember my disbelief at the rambling, diversionary answer the President gave, which contained ridiculous statements like "Reading is the new civil right" and "we now want people to measure -- states and local jurisdictions to measure to show us whether or not a child can read or write or add and subtract," in answer to a question about the gap between rich and poor and the minimum wage. Not in 1894, mind you. In 2004.
I have an especially vivid memory of how stunned I was when the President said "the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it." I was as stunned then as when I heard President Bush give this answer to a divorced mother of three, in Omaha, Nebraska, on Feb. 4, 2005: "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." (Listen to the clip at http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/multimedia/bushism_uniquely_american.mp3)
The truly appalling thing was the sound of people clapping in the audience. There should have been an insurrection at the townhall meeting, but people were clapping instead.
I thought, at that moment, America cannot be so stupid to reelect this moronic charlatan, who thinks that we are so easy to dupe that we cannot see through his bullshit.
Well, as it turns out--thanks to the help of vote suppression tactics that disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters in key states, and god knows what other electronic shenanigans--I was wrong.
That is why, four years later, I am more than a bit uneasy about the Republican choice for vicepresident, a woman of little knowledge and low intellect, who rose to the top of Alaska's politics through god knows what tricks, and whose only qualification for the job was her ability to mobilize the Evangelical troglodytes who are soooooo excited about McCain's choice of a running mate, a woman who believes in Young Earth Creationism and who thinks a rapist should be able to choose the mother of his child (while making the woman pay for her own rape kit).
Sarah Palin may very well become the next President of the United States. As Fareed Zakaria said on CNN this afternoon, the actuarial data is not encouraging, there is actually a 1 in 5 chance that she may succeed President McCain before the end of his term.
The answers she gave in recent interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric are more moronic than those George W Bush gave in 2004 to Bob Schieffer, and to a transfixed American public.
Palin on McCain as a regulator, with Couric:
COURIC: You've said, quote, "John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business." Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?
PALIN: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie - that, that's paramount. That's more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.
COURIC: But he's been in Congress for 26 years. He's been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.
PALIN: He's also known as the maverick though, taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he's been talking about - the need to reform government.
COURIC: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you've said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?
PALIN: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.
COURIC: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.
PALIN: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.
Palin on her foreign policy credentials, with Couric:
PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It's funny that a comment like that was kinda made to … I don't know, you know … reporters.
COURIC: Mocked?
PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.
COURIC: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.
PALIN: Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there…
COURIC: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?
PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.
And finally, Palin with Couric on the Wall Street rescue package:
COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy? Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That’s why I say, I like ever American I’m speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout.
But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Helping the — Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas.
And trade we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation.
This bailout is a part of that.
Notice the last sentence in bold text? Isn't it a frightening echo of the answer George W Bush gave to Bob Schieffer four years ago?
The point of this really long post, I guess, is this: How you vote reflects on your education and your intelligence. It shows not only what your values are, but how informed you are, and to what extent you are capable (or incapable) to see through the spin and the bullshit that candidates dish out to you. How you make your pick shows how (and if) you think about the candidates and the issues. What kind of country you want to build for yourselves? What future do you want to leave your children? What do you wish to reward: lies, spin, personal appeal, and gut decisions? Or thoughtfulness, competence, and the ability to think complex issues through and make informed decisions?
What I am really asking is: America, how lucky will you feel, on November 4th? Lucky enough to reward ignorance and stupidity, again?
Predictably, Nancy Pelosy, Democratic House Speaker, is being blamed by Republicans for the failure of the House to pass the bailout resolution. Arguably, her speech was neither a masterpiece of political wisdom, nor a show of political diplomacy. But for the party that coined the slogan "Country First" in time for its Convention to kill a bill which will cost the country's economy billions of dollars is the height of hypocrisy.
Congressman Barney Frank, D-MA, nailed the hypocrisy with characteristic wit when he accused Republicans of "hurting the country" because someone "hurt their feelings," and proceeded to say this:
We have come together on a bill to alleviate the crisis, and because [Nancy Pelosi] hurt their feelings, they decide to punish the country? I mean, I would not have imputed that degree of pettiness and hypersensitivity. ... There were 12 Republican members who were ready to stand up for the economic interests of America, but not if anybody insulted them. I'll make an offer. Give me those 12 people's names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they'll now think about the country.
He suspended his campaign. He spent the weekend calling Republican colleagues. His surrogate, Steve Schmidt, said on Meet The Press on Sunday: "What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this." Should he be commended for his show of leadership?
Well, for example, the financial rescue package failed to pass, but some Senate and House members have to leave to observe Rosh Hashanah. No, I am not kidding you.
This is what happens when you mix church and state.
And no disrespect meant to those of the Jewish belief. I'd say the same to members of Congress who wanted to celebrate Christmas or Ramadan: Get your f***ing asses back on the floor of the House and get back to work!
P.S. As of this moment, the Dow has lost 707 points.
It is not because Palin answers questions as if she were a runner-up in a beauty contest. It's because of her 20th century approach to energy and environmental issues.
Bill Cunningham, host of Live on Sunday Night, it's Bill Cunningham, rose to national fame on February 26th of this year for calling "Barack Hussein Obama... a hack, Chicago-style" politician. Even John McCain, one who is generally loath to disavowing and repudiating [ad hominem or false attacks on his opponents], was quick to distance himself from Cunningham's use of Sen. Obama's middle name as inappropriate, given the obvious negative connotation, and from Cunningham's characterization of Obama as a "hack, Chicago-style" politician.
(Interestingly, on that occasion, Sen. McCain also said the following: "My entire campaign I have treated Senator Obama and Senator (Hillary Rodham) Clinton with respect. I will continue to do that throughout this campaign..." and "I want to dissociate myself with any disparaging remarks that may have been said about them." How soon we forget, right?)
Anyway, back to Cunningham... Last night Cunningham played a You Tube montage, made by interspersing comments by Democrats who were all against oversight for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and comments by Republicans who all asked for more oversight and reform of the two mortgage giants.
Cunningham glibly underscored the disingenuous presentation, assembled by cherry-picking quotes (all Democrats opposed, all Republican in favor? Come on!) by voicing the adjectives "Democrat" and "Republican" on each sound bite.
Cunningham's artful conclusion? Democrats carry the entire blame for the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I'll say this: No doubt, some Democrats must have contributed to block reform and greater oversight of the two troubled companies, but guess who else did? McCain's campaign manager Rick Davies, a lobbyist who actively worked to prevent reform of the two housing giants; Phil Gramm, McCain's financial advisor who was instrumental in deregulating the banking industry; and many staffers of McCain's campaign, also lobbyists.
To suggest--as Cunningham was only too happy to do--that blame lies all on one side of the aisle is exactly the problem with the way politics are reported in this country.
Even allowing the point that Cunningham makes, that many Democrats opposed necessary oversight and reform, there is a huge gap in his reasoning (if we may call Cunningham's patent chicanery reasoning):
The clips in the You Tube video are from 2004. The last time prior to Jan 3, 2007, that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate was in 1994. Since 1996, Republicans have controlled the House uninterruptedly and the Senate for 8 of 10 years.
Additionally, available data shows that Republicans have held the majority in the Goverment Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee from 1997 to 2007.
So I ask, Mr. Cunningham: who is to blame for the inaction that cost taxpayers $700 billion?
McCain's campaign has been running another false ad about Obama's Tax Plan. Again.
You can almost sense the desperation at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. I think, if they could, they would disqualify McCain from the presidential election. Because, let's face it, relying on the people punishing this type of campaign is a utopian dream.
As often, Ed Brayton hits the nail on the (he)ad on his blog:
But of course, these commercials are not aimed at voters who might go online and check the facts. They're aimed at voters who will accept them at face value. And there are lots of those voters out there, which is why they do it. They really should just end their campaign commercials with "I'm John McCain and I approved this lie.
Sen. McCain has many problems. The most apparent ones lately are that he knows nothing about the economy, and that he has no qualms about lying about his record or his opponent's, rather embellishing the former and slandering the latter. He also has--what do you know--a gambling problem.
I like going to Las Vegas myself, once in a while, so far be it from me to chastise Sen. McCain for his penchant for gambling (although the gambling problem that the NY Times reports in its article is a little more complex.)
But I rather wonder how the Sen. McCraps' Evangelical base will react, and what they will do on November 4th?
My guess is that they will hold their noses, vote for Gov. Palin, and pray that the Lord's will be done--soon into the first term.
If you have not seen Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric last week, watch the video below. Such are the times we live in, when comedy cannot outdo reality.
If spin were a fuel, The McCain campaign would have single-handedly solved America's energy needs. (McCain and his surrogates are indeed using it as a fuel for their campaign.)
Here's an example:
Steve Schmidt, McCain campaign strategist, was on Meet The Press today. Again, and again, and again, he repeated that Sen. Obama voted to raise taxes on people making more than $42,000. This assertion, which has nothing to do with Sen. Obama's current tax plan, has been analyzed by FactCheck.com on August 8th. Seven weeks later, the McCain campaign keeps repeating this non-fact as if it were true.
Oh, and one more thing on the liberal media bias thing.
Tom Brokaw, liberal media representative ;-), concluded his interview with Steve Schmidt and David Axelrod (Obama's campaign manager) with this comment, following a discussion of the war in Iraq:
In fairness to everybody here, I'm just going to end on one note, and that is that we continue to poll on who's best equipped to be commander in chief, and John McCain continues to lead in that category despite the criticism from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
He could, of course, have quoted any of the many polls that have Sen. Obama leading, but the one category in which Sen. McCain leads was too good to pass, wasn't it, liberal media Tom?
Need I really tell you who gave this answer to bolster her foreign policy credentials?
We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.
Or this one, about the Wall Street bailout package?
That's why I say, I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bailout. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are [glances down] concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed [glances down] to help shore up our economy. [glances down] Helping the—oh, it's got to be about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform [glances down] and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief [glances down] for Americans, and trade we've—we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing, but 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout [is a part of that].
The first analogy that comes to mind is that my high school classmates and myself used to give the same type of answers when our professors gave us an impromptu interrogation about things we were supposed to have studied, and hadn't. At least we had not been drafted for the vicepresidency of the United States, and the worst consequences our nation faced for our ignorance were... well, there weren't really any.
No matter how Republicans choose to spin the matter of McCain's alleged superiority in matters of foreign policy, this video puts the nail in the coffin.
Those are not my words, but conservative writer Kathleen Parker's. She wrote The Palin Problem after the latest, laughable interview that the Republican VP candidate gave, with CBS's Katie Couric. Parker ends the article asking Palin to bow out, for the good of the country (in keeping with the Republican Convention's ridiculous slogan: "Country First".)
My favorite passages from the article:
Palin's recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League...
Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there...
If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself...
UPDATE: A friend of The Daily Fuel passed on the following article, written by Carl Bernstein, who needs no introduction. It ties in nicely with the Kathleen Parker article references in this post.
Bernstein cuts right through the "Country First" hogwash with this question: "whether in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has committed -- by his own professed standards of duty and honor -- a singularly unpatriotic act." In his article, the answer is unmistakably affirmative.
Some crises warrant canceling an appearance on a late night show, some do not.
The McCain campaign has released an official excuse to explain why Sen. McCain canceled his appearance on Letterman on Wednesday night, only to be caught taping an appearance with Katie Couric.
An NBC News transcript shows that Ms. Nicole Wallace, a McCain campaign spokeswoman, said the following in an interview with the Today show with Matt Lauer: "I think we felt that this wasn't a night for comedy. David Letterman is, at all hours, very funny and humorous. And so I don't think people felt that having a few laughs last night was a priority, so." To which Lauer commented: "So it just was about comedy, not rushing--not actually rushing back to Washington." Exactly, Matt Lauer.
And in fact, the next morning McCain spoke at the Clinton Initiative--in NEW YORK.
So why am I still ranting about this? Because, as it happens, Ms. Wallace's explanation is a bit fishy. Why? Because on the night of Aug 29, 2005, Sen. McCain appeared on Conan O'Brien. In case you don't remember, on Aug 29, 2005, the levees broke in New Orleans.
In other words, not all crises are created equal in McCain's world. Of course, crises acquire a more solemn look when one is in the middle of a presidential campaign, right?
On Monday, I blogged the following about the as yet undebated bailout plan:
[I]t looks more and more like a plan to somehow thwart Obama's run for the White House. I am not smart to have figured it out, yet, but I am sure somebody smarter than me will find an explanation before long.
I smelled a rat, but I could not see things clearly. But at about 8 p.m. tonight, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced that House Republicans had walked out of the evening session that had been called to reconcile the differences that had emerged in the afternoon, after the "agreement in principle" that the parties seemed to have found in the morning had started to crumble.
Immediately afterward, CNN reported that soon after this afternoon's White House meeting with President Bush, congressional leaders, and his presidential rival, Sen. Obama, Sen. McCain went to talk to House Republicans who had expressed doubts on the agreement. A few hours later came Rep. Frank's announcement that talks had ended unproductively and that they will resume tomorrow morning.
It did not take long to put two and two together: McCain did not come to Washington to help an agreement; he came to kill it. After all, he is the same person who said, back in January: "The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should" (as reported by Think Progress). And who, on Tuesday, said that he had not yet read the two and a half pages Paulson report. (Once again, via Think Progress.) So what could he possibly contribute to the solution of the greatest financial crisis this country has seen since The Great Depression?
And now that Sen. McCain's ploy is evident, Sen. Obama finds himself in a no-win situation.
He can choose to go to Mississippi alone for Friday night's debate. If he does, I can almost guarantee you that House Republicans will announce, right before or right after the non-debate, that Sen. McCain was instrumental in convincing them to agree to a/the bailout plan that they had already agreed to, in principle, 24 hours earlier. And by the way, they will add, where is Obama in a time of crisis?
If Democrats should reject the newly drafted "McCain resolution" proposed by House Republican, they would be accused of playing politics at a time when the country needs true leadership. And we would never hear the end of how Sen. McCain put "Country First" while his opponent was debating himself in Mississippi.
The alternative is only slightly less undesirable. Sen. Obama could go along with Sen. McCain and postpone or cancel the debate to stay in Washington, which would kill the momentum his campaign has gained this week in virtually all polls.
Canceling, or postponing the debate, would be a win for Sen. McCain and a definite loss for Sen. Obama, as the debate could not have come at a worse time for Sen. McCain. The dip his poll numbers have taken is paralleled only by the worsening of the financial crisis. McCain needs a game changer to resurrect a wilting campaign. The added benefit, as some have already suggested, is that the make-up date for the missed presidential debate might very well be next Wednesday, the date originally reserved for the vice-presidential debate. It would spare the McCain/Palin ticket the certain embarrassment that Palin would bring upon herself with answers like "I can see Russia from Alaska, which makes me a foreign policy expert" or "I don't have that info with me, but I will get back to you, Gwen."
Either way, McCain has nothing to lose.
Trust me, this is exactly what his campaign advisers had in mind when they made McCain announce that he would suspend his campaign to take care of the financial crisis in Washington. Some observers called the decision a Hail Mary pass. In fact, it was a gadget play all along.
UPDATE: McCain's impulsiveness being what it is, he chose a third option, which I did not contemplate in my original post. He is, after all, going to debate Obama, even though the financial crisis has not been solved. Call it a flip-flop, if you like, or just another chapter in the myth of the maverick. Erratic, he is indeed.
The most important book you have not read is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In it, Klein gives example after example of how the Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics has wreaked havoc on democracies and economies around the world under the (false) pretense of spreading free market ideas through democracy, whereas as a matter of fact democracy has often been the first casualty of free market expansion.
Now, Klein wrote an article that you need to read in order to understand the perils and the true intent that hide behind the financial crisis that this administration, with the complicity of an impotent Congress, has allowed to happen, much as many say that 9/11 or Katrina were allowed to happen (through ineptitude, willful neglect, or--as some maintain--by design).
Just today, the Wall Street bailout plan was halted in its tracks when it seemed that Congress had reached agreement. All of a sudden, Republicans pulled out of their hat, full of no end of tricks, a plan that would involve suspending the capital gains tax for two years. Now Republicans are showing their true colors: subsidizing the wealthy is their credo.
Some (non-partisan operatives, no doubt) are commending Sen. McCain for suspending his campaign and going to Washington instead, to help Congress reach an agreement on the financial bailout bill. Some are even calling it a show of leadership on McCain's part. I do agree with them: it was a show indeed. One might even say all show, no substance.
Particularly distressing is the fact that, as of Tuesday, Sen. McCain admitted the following about the bailout package proposal: "I have not had a chance to see it in writing. I have to examine it." (see "Undecided on Wall Street Bailout Package.") By comparison, I blogged about it on Sunday, and I am not running for the highest political office in the country. That is the type of leadership that Bush displayed when he ignored the August PDB that preceded the September 11 attacks, entitled: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S."
Let me sign off with this video from last night's Colbert Report, where--as customary--Colbert flattens the spin dead.
It bears repeating these two charts from Colbert's video: might this be the real reason why McCain decided to suspend his campaign?
(DISCLAIMER: Obviously the charts are not real, but they do make the larger point that McCain might be fleeing Friday's debate because it comes at a very inauspicious point in time for him, since most voters have begun to make a link between the current state of affairs and the responsibility that Republicans--McCain included--bear for it.)
So it is only fitting that Letterman chose to tear him a new one when McCain cancelled his appearance on Letterman (his prerogative, mind you) saying that he had to catch a plane to Washington, D.C. to solve the financial crisis, only to be caught minutes later being interviewed by the obnoxious Katie Couric.
Lately I have spent a lot of time calling out Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin for the blatant lies they keep repeating about their records, and Sen. Obama's. So the time has come for me to dispel the impression that my support for the Illinois senator is driven exclusively by anti-McCain sentiments, instead of pro-Obama enthusiasm. The type of presidency that Obama envisions is one where his supporters should get involved, both socially and politically, to help him bring about the change he promises. This view of personal involvement in the life of one's local community, and of the nation at large, has been shaped by the years he spent in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods as a community organizer. He understands the power of the people, as well as he understand that a community organizer cannot bring about the change he envisions without the help of the people he is seeking to help. This is a very important, often misunderstood and wrongly maligned component of Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer: the realization that epochal change can only take place when people demand it and get personally involved.
Behind the Republicans’ distasteful and self-defeating sarcasm aimed at community organizers, best (worst) represented by Rudy Giuliani's odious snickering "what?!?" at the Republican Convention, lies the realization that the worst thing that can happen to Republicans, the protectors of the status quo, is for common people to get directly engaged in their own social and political future. Obama's plea for popular involvement in support of his presidency, were he to get elected, scares the bejesus out of the party that is literally hell-bent on not only maintaining, but in expanding the status quo to their advantage.
Obama's ability to mobilize supporters (shown by the grassroots support and direct involvement by legions of supports in his campaign) offers the perfect antidote to the unholy conservative alliance with, and exploitation of, the evangelical right. Obama’s message is so appealing, and so powerful, because he seems to have a genuine urgency about the change he talks about in his campaign speeches, having lived it himself. Sen. McCain's call for change, on the other hand, seems merely a slogan, accompanied as it is by his inability to genuinely relate to the problems that ail America's middle-class and the poor and by his 26 years in the Senate, during which things have hardly changed at all, if anything for the worse.
In other words, Obama's call for change seems credible, whereas McCain's campaign cries for change seem a last-ditch effort to defeat Obama on his strongest turf, behind which lies the Arizona senator's true desire: to maintain the status quo for the Republican's biggest contributors. Why else would he back the same fiscal policies, health care policies, and energy policies that have already failed under the eight years of Bush's rule? And why else would he surround himself with so many advisers currently or previously registered as lobbyists?
No one with an ounce of understanding, a beating heart, and a regular bank balance can doubt that change, quite radical in nature, is the only hope for a country left in shambles by eight years of neo-con mismanagement and hijacking of public resources. Republicans know it, and the best shot they had at preserving power was to field a candidate portrayed by the media (even the much despised liberal media) as a maverick, an anti-establishment candidate, which is more the stuff of legend than a reality-based assessment of a politician who has spent the last 26 years in Washington and has voted with President Bush 90% of the time. Also handy is McCain’s experience as a POW, the trump card that McCain pulls out whenever his credibility as a maverick is called into question. Stephen Colbert, ever the wry and perceptive commentator of political hypocrisy, summed it up best: "McCain himself is famously reticent about his Vietnam experience. He only mentions it when people ask unrelated questions."
My worst fears about McCain were confirmed when he picked his running mate: Gov. Palin, a churchy, ultra-conservative, former beauty queen who believes that victims of rape and incest should, by law, carry their pregnancies to term, and whose resemblance to George W. Bush in terms of secretiveness and cronyism is too close for comfort. The only plausible justification for McCain picking Palin over his favorite VP candidate, Joe Lieberman, was the Republican's party attempt to energize the base.
To counter Obama's message for change, Republicans have desperately thrown their full financial and media weight behind the most despicable smear and spin campaign yet seen, which rests on the willingness of disreputable characters to bald-facedly lie in front of mics and cameras around the country in exchange for substantial compensation, and which is funded by the moneyed interests that have more to lose from an Obama presidency than from a McCain's term as a butler for special interests.
These tactics hardly represent change, instead they are Washington usual at its very worst. I believe that is why Obama has so far tried not to respond in kind, to reinforce the change he advocates by avoiding the lies and smear on McCain's campaign that Republicans resort to with respect to Obama.
Republicans have also been trying to shift the country's focus from the need for change to Obama's inexperience. Needless to say, inexperience can be seen as an asset, not as a liability, by those who are tired of business as usual.
When Republicans attack for Obama's lack of experience, because he has only been a U.S. senator for only the past four years, their argument seems likely to backfire in a country that is really hungering for change. Who can better deliver change? McCain, with his 26 years of Senate experience which have culminated in his party dragging the hopes and finances of the middle class down for the past eight years; or Obama, with his desire "to make the government 'cool' again"?
If, on the other hand, Republicans imply that lack of experience is synonym for lack of judgment, as Sen. McCain himself has done on several occasions, that argument can also quite easily backfire. All people need to remember is that Sen. Obama was right in his opposition to the war in Iraq. The Republicans' hail Mary play is that Sen. Obama opposed the surge, which Sen. McCain instead supported, and that the surge has in fact worked. Of course, whether the surge has worked or not depends on the standards that one adopts to measure its success, which once again will be the subject of spin by both campaigns. But the inevitable truth remains: there would have been no need for a surge had the country followed Obama's lead in opposing the war in Iraq, instead of supporting it as Sen. McCain did. I trust that Obama's judgment on foreign policy more than Sen. McCain's famous distemper and volatility, and I believe that there is more than one way to secure the country against its enemies. Under President Obama, diplomacy and international cooperation would regain their pre-eminent role in dealing with the security threats that one country, even one with the mightiest military in the world, cannot defeat alone.
This country needs change on too many levels to mention, and it is unlikely that any one president can bring about all the change we need. The need for health care reform is critical, not only for individuals but to make American business more competitive around the world. Energy reform is needed to rebalance the mix of fuels we use to power our industry, transportation, and residential needs. Fiscal reform is needed to rebalance the tax burden from the middle-class and the poor to the wealthiest. To conservatives who like to say that the rich are already paying their fair share, I respond: not in terms of discretionary income, they are not. (Discretionary income is defined as gross income, minus taxes, minus necessities.) Corporate reform is needed, both in terms of the effective tax rate which corporations pay (corporate tax revenues are at their lowest point as a share of GDP since 1937. Source Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), and also in terms of CEO and Director compensation, particularly when compensation does not match the company's performance for investors. Other changes we desperately need are campaign financing reform, media and FCC reform, consumer credit reform, and-–as has become painfully apparent over the last few weeks—-banking reform.
On all of the above points, Obama has convincing and pragmatic plans. And while some of his plans do not go far enough (for example, Obama's health care reform plan stops short of single-payer, which would be my preference) they reflect Obama's carefully developed idea of what seems achievable under the current circumstances. After eight years of ideology-driven mismanagement of the republic, pragmatism seems particularly palatable. Politics, in a democracy, is the art of achieving what is possible. Under President Bush, too often, politics have been interpreted as the means of achieving ideological perfection, by running over one's opponents and by twisting the interpretation of the Constitution in a pretzel, to give the administration quasi-monarchic, if not dictatorial, power.
Which brings me to the last, but not least, reason why President Obama would be a breath of fresh air. It would be oh-so-nice to have someone in the White House who has a real appreciation for the importance of the Constitution as the glue that has held together the country for 230 years after its ratification. After eight years of quasi-dictatorial rule by a clan seemingly hell-bent on redefining the Constitution to its exclusive advantage, having a professor of Constitutional Law at the helm would be a dramatic change of course.
In the end, will Obama be able to deliver on his promise of change, or is change going to prove an empty campaign slogan? That depends largely on the support he gets from the American people. As I said, no one president can bring about all the change the country needs, but we can try with Obama and give him what he asked for: our enthusiasm, our commitment and our involvement. Count me in, and I hope we can count on you, too.
That would be McCain's home (well, one of them ten homes, anyway).
Remember when McCain said that Rick Davies, his campaign manager and lobbyist-in-chief, "has had nothing to do with [Freddie Mac] since [2005], and I'll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it"? Well, as it turns out, he should not have challenged anybody to examine Davies's record, because the NY Times and Newsweek did, and here is a summary of what they found.
This is particularly important because the McCain campaign has been running a smear ad campaign against Obama for his very tenuous ties with former (and discredited) Fannie Mae chairman, Frank Raines. The Obama campaign has denied Raines's role as an Obama economic adviser, and Time's magazine Karen Tumulty has already called the ad in question an attempt by the McCain campaign to play the race card on Obama.
Turns out that McCain's campaign ties to Freddie Mac are at least as egregious as Obama's ties to Fannie Mae, arguably more.
Which reminds me: those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Particularly when they have so many lobbyists on their campaign and so many houses to fill with them that they have trouble keeping score.
So who is to say that the $700 billion package, which our Treasury is dying for Congress to approve and which would be out of bounds as far as Congressional review goes, will not contain several billion dollars for bonuses and golden parachutes for the companies it wishes to rescue? Once again, Section 8 of the bailout package seems a little fishy, don't you think? ("Section 8: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.")
Not only that: it looks more and more like a plan to somehow thwart Obama's run for the White House. I am not smart to have figured it out, yet, but I am sure somebody smarter than me will find an explanation before long. And when they do, I will post it here.
We must be living in really interesting times for me to quote, with a measure of approval, an op-ed by William Kristol. In today's NY Times he says he has doubts about the wisdom of the Wall Street bailout plan, and wonders:
[I]s the administration’s proposal the right way to do this? It would enable the Treasury, without Congressionally approved guidelines as to pricing or procedure, to purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of financial assets, and hire private firms to manage and sell them, presumably at their discretion There are no provisions for — or even promises of — disclosure, accountability or transparency. Surely Congress can at least ask some hard questions about such an open-ended commitment.
Coming from a guy who supported giving the administration blank check after blank check for the disastrously managed war in Iraq, this is really some call to caution.
As the saying goes, which is much used in Texas Hold'em when a bad player wins an incredibly badly played hand: "Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn from time to time." Well done, William Kristol!
UPDATE: Other endorsements of sorts can be found in this Bloomberg article, including those of three former SEC Chairmen (one Democrat and two Republicans). This quote is particularly striking: "Detached observers who watched [Obama] last week, especially in a Bloomberg Television interview, were taken by how conversant and comfortable he was on the subject, despite his thin record. Few detached observers came away with that impression watching the Arizona senator." Although, in fairness, it would be interesting to know the names and qualifications of the "detached observers" Hunt talks about in his article.
UPDATE TWO: Brace yourselves, for these must be the end times. George Will has voiced a quasi-endorsement of Obama (in the form of a rejection of McCain as, Will's words, the Queen Of Hearts.).
As usual, Frank Rich hits the head of not just one, but all the many rusty, rotten, infection-laden nails left lying around by McCain and his campaign. Read his Sunday op-ed and pass it on to friends, family, and foes alike.
If you are not outraged yet, you really have been paying no attention to the events of the last few weeks in the financial world. (If that is any consolation, you are in the company of John McCain, who said on Monday that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong"). Or perhaps your really busy life prevented you from following the news.
That is why I have put together this handy digest of quotes and articles that summarize some of the most hair-raising, bloodcurdling, stroke-inducing aspects of the mess we just found out we're in. From Moguls Steal Home While Companies Strike Out, by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship:
During the last five years of his tenure as CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld's total take was $354 million. John Thain, the current chairman of Merrill Lynch, taken over this week by Bank of America, has been on the job for just nine months. He pocketed a $15 million signing bonus. His predecessor, Stan O'Neal, retired with a package valued at $161 million, after the company reported an eight billion dollar loss in a single quarter. And remember Bear Stearns Chairman James Cayne? After the company collapsed earlier this year and was up for sale at bargain basement prices, he sold his for more than $60 million.
[I]f the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can't it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure? By the same token, if $85bn can be made instantly available to buy the insurance giant AIG, why is single-payer health care - which would protect Americans from the predatory practices of health-care insurance companies - seemingly such an unattainable dream? And if ever more corporations need taxpayer funds to stay afloat, why can't taxpayers make demands in return - like caps on executive pay, and a guarantee against more job losses?
The "free market" Republican administration has ended up nationalizing nearly $1 trillion worth of businesses, including the federal mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, and global insurer AIG. Welcome to Wall Street socialism.
What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded...
The three key provisions [of the bailout plan are]: (1) The Treasury Secretary is authorized to buy up to $700 billion of any mortgage-related assets (so he can just transfer that amount to any corporations in exchange for their worthless or severely crippled "assets") [Sec. 6]; (2) The ceiling on the national debt is raised to $11.3 trillion to accommodate this scheme [Sec. 10]; and (3) best of all: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency" [Sec. 8].
Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes. (Emphasis added.]
And, finally, you can find a roundup of what several economists think about the bailout plan in 'Taxpayer Ripoff': Many Economists Skeptical of Bailout, by Avi Zenilman. It contains, among many, the following chilling quote:
President Bush is “asking for a huge amount of power,” said Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University who was among the first to predict the crisis. “He's saying, ‘Trust me, I'm going to do it right if you give me absolute control.' This is not a monarchy.”
Knowing everything we know about how President Bush's has mishandled the power he has been given or that which he has seized during his almost eight years in power, how do you feel about him "doing it right"?
. In it, Klein gives example after example of how the Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Economics has wreaked havoc on democracies and economies around the world under the (false) pretense of spreading free market ideas through democracy, whereas as a matter of fact democracy has often been the first casualty of free market expansion.
