In the final days of the campaign, retractions abound. Some are more credible and effective than others.
To show you what I mean, here is what Sarah Palin said last week in North Carolina:
We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.
And here is her retraction:
I don't want that misunderstood. If that's the way it came across, I apologize.
Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show, also had a retraction to make, after he had jocularly said "f@#! you" to those in the McCain campaign--like Gov. Palin--who were playing the "real America" card to divide the American people. He realized his comment was inappropriately worded, and so he issued this heartfelt retraction:
Colbert puts Gen. Colin Powell's endorsement of Sen. Obama in perspective, and puts the racist commentators of the right in their place (beginning with Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh).
Then, Jon Stewart, and Jason Jones of the Best F@#!ing News Team on Television, team up in successive clips to put to shame the McCain's campaign argument real America can be found only where people vote Republican (you know, places like "real" Virginia, Wasilla, Alaska, etc.)
No, I am not talking about the risk of Comrade Obama being elected (really, have these people no sense of shame)? I am talking about what we poor people can do if Red America wins the election. You know Red America: Real America!
Read "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off - Why The Blue States Should Secede."
Jon Swift is back, and his with is pretty sharp still. He suggests all Americans should sacrifice a little for Joe the Plumber, as Joe is apparently not registered to vote.
First, a little fun exercise, then I will give you a couple of examples of spin:
(Left to Right, Top to Bottom: David Brooks, NY Times; John Meacham, Newsweek; Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC; Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman, MSNBC; Chuck Todd, MSNBC)
That is the discussion panel on yesterday's Meet The Press. Can you spot the liberal in the picture above? No? Exactly. Let's move on.
MSNBC and CNN are often accused of being in the tank for Barack Obama by McCain supporters. Progressive writer David Sirota's theory is that "objectivity in the media today is defined as worshiping the status quo, denigrating popular uprisings, and serving as stenographers to power, celebrity and money." There is much to agree with that assessment.
My theory is simply this: the media bloviates, a lot (it is hard to fill a 24 hour news cycle with intelligent, thoughtful analysis, but not impossible). Media "contributors," as they have come to be known these days, are generally lazy when it comes to doing intelligent, fact-based analysis. Much easier to pull "facts" straight out of one's ass than to do actual research. Add to that sad truth the fact that the media has to find balance where there is none, lest it should be accused of bias, and all bets are off.
Here are a couple of examples of spin and fabricated balance (whether it's intentional or reflexive, it does not matter.)
On yesterday's Meet The Press, Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC contributor and wife of Alan Greenspan, had this to say about negative ads.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): I said it at the last debate. I'm not George Bush. It's--if, if Senator Obama wants to run against George Bush, he should have run for president four years ago.
MR. BROKAW: Can [the Obama campaign] continue to tag John McCain with George Bush?
MS. MITCHELL: They can, and, in fact, they're doing it with a remarkably negative ad. I mean, we talk a lot about the negativity on the Republican side. But the fact is that Barack Obama has so much more money, and some of these targeted ads, one that they unveiled on Thursday and Friday of this week and it's on national television, has John McCain in his own words saying, in another interview, in another context, "I voted, I supported George Bush 90 percent of the time." So they've got him on videotape. And the fact is, that this ad is running and running and running.
OK. Let's cut straight through the crap. What Mitchell is essentially saying is that both campaigns are running negative campaigns. To some extent, that is true. But while McCain is running robo-calls in battleground states that falsely paint Obama as a friend of terrorists (Bill Ayers), the Obama campaign is running an ad that ties McCain with Bush. Mitchell defines it as "remarkably negative." What is remarkably negative about it? Simply the fact that the ad ties McCain with Bush. Does it do so using the same unsubstantiated allegations and innuendos that McCain is using in the "Ayers is a terrorist is Obama's friend" robo-calls? No, it simply shows McCain boasting that he voted with President Bush over 90% of time, more than many of his Republican colleagues. Mitchell's conclusion? A remarkably negative ad. Watch.
I don't know about you, but I see a world of difference between telling lies (negative tactic) and underscoring the fact that your opponent boasted that he supported the president more than 90% of the time (thus "stepping in it".) But a supposedly pro-Obama journalist is oblivious to the difference.
Then, just this morning, I heard Bill Schneider, CNN political analyst, explain the tightening in the polls that seems to be happening with this rationale (and I paraphrase using my best recollection of Schneider's statement): Sen. McCain has made a powerful argument in the debate that he is not President Bush.
How? By claiming that he is not President Bush in last week's debate. Really.
Bill, Bill, Bill. I looked up your profile on Wikipedia. You just turned 64 (happy belated birthday!). Don't you know the difference between an argument and a claim? (And an unsubstantiated claim, at that.) Or did you think that McCain was simply saying: "my birth certificate and the president's are totally different?"
Early voting is under way, and the Charleston Gazette reports that voters complained of their vote being switched (in the report, from Democratic to Republican.)
Voting is a partisan exercise. Counting votes is not, or should not be.
When I cast a vote, I want it be counted as I cast it. Once again, we go back to the fact that votes must be verifiable and hand-countable, and in many cases this is not true.
Many electronic voting systems do not allow manual recounts. This is a travesty.
West Virginia is not the only state where problems have been reported already. The list is long.
In related news, the Washington Post reports, and Brad Blog reprises the article, that massive vote purges that have led to thousands of registered voters being incorrectly rejected at the polls.
All these reports show that we need non-partisan, federal voting standards. Same equipment (or ballots), same vote verification mechanisms, same registration forms, one voter database, one identification procedure, everywhere in the country.
To complete the sad picture of our election system just two weeks before the election, news just came that a the owner of YMP, a GOP voter registration outfit, has been arrested in California for actual voter registration fraud. I wrote about about YMP's suspicious activities, in this post, just yesterday.
We can no longer allow a system in which voting registration, election management, and board of elections are a partisan affair.
The next Congress, and the next President owe it to the American people to set up a non-partisan, fair voting system.
Below is a clip of Sen Bernie Sanders's (I-VT) appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night.
Sen. Sanders got the biggest ovation I remember a politician getting on Real Time, when he said the following:
There is a lot of hate out there, and it's often among white guys. And you know why they're angry? They're angry because they're working really hard, their standard of living is going down, they're working really hard and the world is passing them by and they're not... they don't understand why. And instead of getting angry at the big money interests who are sending their jobs abroad, or taking away their health insurance, or giving tax breaks to people who don't need it, what the Republicans have successfully done is [they've] taken that anger, and turned it on gay people, turned it on the abortion issue. And what our job is is to bring people, in my view, around a progressive agenda, which is "let's all work together, you're a working person, let's work together.
Notably, Sen. Sanders calls himself a Democratic socialist, which is just about the most extreme suicidal maneuver a politician could perform in the United States. And yet, his message is more powerful than any prejudice the American people may have, and he keeps getting re-elected. Kudos, people of Vermont!
Earlier in the clip, Bill Maher also made the following comment about people who use Joe The Plumber's rationale ("Republicans will make it easier for me to get rich!") to decide who to vote for:
He's voting on the basis of a fantasy! He actually benefits from Obama's tax plan, but in his mind... His great wealth [...] only exists in his head, because Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity talk to him in the car every day and they get him all [worked up] about the immigrants and the gays and all these people, and the liberals, and this "uppity" black man that's going to be the president, they're all going to take away this fantasy life that doesn't exist. This is what's so sad about it. [Emphasis added.]
"During the twenty-one years I was there, even though there were political appointees who I worked with, never did we inject partisan considerations into our law-enforcement responsibilities. That has clearly not been the case in recent years under this administration. And it's going to take a long time to cleanse the Department of Justice." (Read the rest of the article on TPM Muckraker.)
Here is an interview that Gen. Colin Powell gave to reporters after announcing his endorsement of Barack Obama.
Salient parts of the interview start at about the half point mark, where Gen. Powell addresses campaign negativity, Rep. Michele Bachmann's inexcusable McCarhtyist comments (which he labels, quite mildly, as "nonsense") and the accusation that Obama is a socialist because he wants to review and revise the tax structure of our nation. Gen. Powell addresses the issue of income redistribution with the wisdom you would expect from an intelligent person, saying that all taxation leads to income redistribution and that most of the income is redistributed to everyone in the form of roads, education, services, etc.
I admit it's not very original, but I bet Keith Olbermann will award Worst Person In The World to involuntary comedian, Rush Limbaugh, for this statement:
Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race... OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with.
In rhetoric, this argument is known as "the douche bag fallacy."
It is worth stressing that President Bush's criminal and corrupt mismanagement of government, aided by his Republican accomplices for the most part of the eight years of Bush's irresponsible reign, may have done more to destroy Reagan's toxic legacy than anything I have seen in my lifetime.
The Bush administration, its cronies, and the Republican party, have managed to prove the point that Reagan famously made in 1981, that "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
Of course, the well-known twist on Reagan's words is that the centerpiece of Republicans campaigns is that government is the problem, which they set out to demonstrate once they have been elected.
The correct restatement of that famous and irresponsible pronouncement is "Bad government is not the solution to our problem; bad government is the problem." People are not tired of government, they are tired of incompetent government. And lately it has become painfully obvious that incompetent government, not government itself, is the cause of our problem.
Which would make Bush the greatest president I have seen in my lifetime: Not for his actions, but for their consequences.
As I said yesterday, some endorsements carry more weight than others. Colin Powell's carries a ton of weight, not just for who he is, but for what he said.
I [have] come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities--and we have to take that into account--as well as his substance--he has both style and substance--he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world--onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama. [Emphasis added.]
There is a lot to like about the reasons Powell gave to justify his endorsement of Sen. Obama, but the one that stands out is the one I emphasized above, because Obama's soaring rhetoric has been used by his detractors as a liability. Obama's opponents have portrayed him as an empty shell, a "rock star" politician, a person who thinks of himself as a messiah. The worst elements of the Evangelican and Conservative fringe have even drawn comparison between his rhetoric and Hitler's (thus earning a permanent place in rhetoric's Hall of Shame.)
Powell is saying, correctly, that style enhances Obama's substance. The ability to inspire is a useful complement, one might say an essential one, in a good politician. Good ideas, without the ability to inspire support for them, are doomed to fail. Crafting excellent solutions, without the capacity to convince others to implement them, makes their implementation unlikely. Oratory alone does not prove a candidate's ability to lead. But that is not the argument Powell makes for Obama, whom he credits with having "both style and substance."
Gen. Powell also gave a scathing indictment of the negative tactics of the McCain campaign, of McCain's judgment in his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate, of the direction the Republican party has taken, tacking further to the right.
Other concerns expressed by Gen. Powell include McCain's incomplete grasp of the economic problems the country faces, McCain's duplicity about the Ayers-Obama connection (if McCain thinks Ayers is a washed up terrorist, why focus so much of his campaign on it, and why employ the disgusting robo-calls that McCain was a victim of in 2000?), the danger of two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court (this coming from a man who says that he is still a Republican), the distressing use of the "Obama is a Muslim" falsehood, embraced by senior members of the Republican party, to taint his character by association ("But the really right answer is, what if he is?", said Powell. "Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America.")
McCain's supporters who would be quick to dismiss Powell's endorsement, should consider a few examples of what their candidate said in the past of Colin Powell:
McCain's high opinion of Powell as one of the "most credible, most respected" men in America is not merely an election-year spasm, either. When asked in 2001 if he would have chosen Powell for a Cabinet position had he succeeded in his first presidential run, McCain said "oh, yes." During two December 2000 appearances on NBC Nightly News, McCain described himself as "exuberant" over Powell's selection as secretary of state, which he predicted would secure "a beneficial effect on the conduct of American foreign policy."
You should watch the clip of Gen. Powell's endorsement of Obama below, and share it with convinced and unconvinced friends and family alike.
The fraud of 2008 is under way, and it has nothing to do with ACORN.
There have been numerous confirmed reports of machine "malfunctions" that cause the vote for president not to be counted by electronic machines when the "straight party vote" option is selected.
Please read the following alert to see if it applies to the state you live in.
My prediction? If polls tighten to within 3-4 percentage points in key battleground states, McCain will magically pull off an upset, and the media analysis will revolve around the "Bradley Effect", instead of focusing on the known machinations of corrupt election officials.
Oh, and Fix News will launch the following alternative explanation, which all other networks will swarm like pilot fish: thousands of voters registered fradulently by ACORN in key states did not show up to vote or were rejected at the polls. In other words, Fix News will say, ACORN's new voter numbers were inflated by their fraud, which we were the first ones to tell you about, when the true explanation has to do with vote suppression instead, at the hands of Republican vote challengers. Remember, Rove's goal is "a permanent Republican majority."
While we wait to find out whether, as rumors have it, Gen. Colin Powell will endorse Barack Obama in tomorrow's appearance on Meet The Press, here is a pretty powerful endorsement:
Many Americans say they're uneasy about Obama. He's pretty new to them.
We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president.
We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.
That is from the Chicago Tribune's Editorial Board. Easy, you will say: Chicago? Obama is from Chicago, who'd you think they'd endorse? Well, not a Democrat. It has not happened once since 1847, the year the newspaper was founded.
And on his radio show, conservative pundit Michael Smerconish said this:
John McCain is an honorable man who has served his country well. But he will not get my vote. For the first time since registering as a Republican 28 years ago, I'm voting for a Democrat for president.
The Constructive Curmudgeon, Denver Seminary professor and vociferous advocate of all things Conservative, does not love McCain, but he despises Obama so much that he will uncritically and enthusiastically publish just about anything intended to tear Obama's character apart. He did it again, drawing his readers' attention to an article by the unreliable Thomas Sowell.
Prof. Sowell's Record Versus Rhetoric is a perfect, albeit disheartening, example of disgraceful framing and dishonest spin. Of course, it drew hundreds of mostly positive comments from his indoctrinated readers.
One paragraph into his opinion, Sowell says this:
The issue that is raised most often is her relative lack of experience and the fact that she would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency" if Senator John McCain were elected.
Perhaps this was true when Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate, when most people knew little or nothing of her. But questions about her knowledge, her intellectual competence, her fitness for the job, and even her character has emerged soon after that trump anything that was initially said about her experience. Experience is no longer the prevalent issue, and many conservatives have censored McCain's decision to select Palin as his running mate.
It gets worse, much worse.
Sarah Palin's record is on the record, while whole years of Barack Obama's life are engulfed in fog, and he has had to explain away one after another of the astounding and vile people he has not merely "associated" with but has had political alliances with, and to whom he has directed the taxpayers' money and other money.
This paragraph can only be accepted as truthful if one chooses to ignore the ample and available evidence against Sowell's statements. For example, saying that "whole years of Barack Obama's life are engulfed in fog" ignores the fact that Barack Obama has been subjected to fierce scrutiny for the last two years, which have been filled by his politically-motivated adversaries with the repetition of already debunked accusations.
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has come to the stage of national politics less than two months ago. Only time will tell what, if anything, she is hiding from public scrutiny. Considering the many distressing details of her political career that have emerged in only the last six weeks, the outlook's not good. We can only assume there would be plenty more to frown on in the next 22 months.
Even more despicable is Sowell's talking point, straight from the RNC and the McCain campaign, that Obama has associated with, and had political alliances with, "vile people." Sowell leaves his further accusation that Obama has "directed taxpayer's money" to vile people unsubstantiated, of course. Why? Because most people of average intellect and an unbiased mind would be loath to agree that ACORN is a group of vile people. It is a group whose goal is to help the poor and the disenfranchised. But Sowell's strength does not consist in substantiating his accusations. Evidently, he'd rather rely on sophistry and innuendos, so all's well in his corner.
Next Sowell says:
Sarah Palin has had executive experience-- and the White House is the executive branch of government. We don't have to judge her by her rhetoric because she has a record.
Yes, indeed, we don't have to judge her by her rhetoric, because that would not reflect well on her.
As for judging her by her record, remember that President Bush also came from the executive branch of the Texas government (he was Governor, just like Palin). Who wants to argue with me that experience in the executive branch of state government is a good indicator of suitability for the White House, after the last eight years?
In any case, I've always been of the opinion that experience is an overrated indicator of a person's ability and suitability for a job. Experience is mainly a measure of time spent doing something, not of the judgment that one is endowed with. This goes for Sowell as well. I am sure he has more experience at writing than I do, but look at the arguments he made in his article.
On Obama's record, Sowell has this to say instead:
he voted "present" innumerable times instead of taking a stand one way or the other on tough issues.
Sowell is, not to mince words, dishonest: "innumerable times" tries to convey the idea of Obama's irresponsibility. The facts? According to the Associated Press:
Obama acknowledges that over nearly eight years in the Illinois Senate, he voted "present" 129 times. That was out of roughly 4,000 votes he cast, so those "presents" amounted to about one of every 31 votes in his legislative career.
So Sowell fails to mention that the "innumerable times" he refers to amounts to 3% of Obama's total votes in the Illinois legislature. Even if that were a valid measure of responsibility, consider for example that McCain has missed 50% more votes in the 110th Congress than Sen. Johnson of South Dakota, who recently returned to the Senate after suffering a brain hemorrage on Dec 13, 2006.
Sowell continues:
"Clean up the mess in Washington"? He was part of the mess in Chicago and lined up with the Daley machine against reformers.
His reference to Chicago style politics? It should be clear by now that all a dishonest man like Sowell can do is resort to unsubstantiated/unsubstantiable "guilt by association" and to ad-hominem attacks, as he does right in his next paragraph:
He is also part of the mess in Washington, not only with numerous earmarks, but also as the Senate's second largest recipient of money from Fannie Mae, and someone whose campaign has this year sought the advice of disgraced former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, who was at the heart of the sub-prime crisis.
The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mess is so large that to say that one man (in Sowell's example Franklin Raines) was at the heart of the mess (implying he was responsible for it) is misleading at best.
Given what we know about Sowell from just this one article, we can assume the claim is not only misleading but dishonestly motivated. For example, he fails to mention that even deeper at the heart of the mess we're in was Phil Gramm. (If you are interested in understanding how, just click the previous link.)
Gramm's associations with McCain? Until recently, he was the most senior economic advisor to McCain's campaign, and its co-chair, but he was forced to step down last July in the wake of these super-intelligent comments that he made just days before resigning: "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners." Yes, Gramm really nailed the problem that he, to quote Sowell, "was at the heart of". But since Sowell does not live in one of McCain's seven glass houses, he can throw stones on McCain' behalf.
Sowell then tries to explain the reason why Palin gets negative coverage (hate, as the Constructive Curmudgeon describes it in customary academic fashion) as opposed to Obama's positive coverage in the media. This is how he does it:
One reason of course is that Senator Obama is ideologically much closer to the views of the media than is Governor Palin.
Let's pretend he did not use the lame "appeal to victimhood", and move on. Sowell then says:
More than that, her whole life has been outside the realm familiar to the intelligentsia of the media. She didn't go to the big-name colleges and imbibe the heady atmosphere that leaves so many feeling that they are special folks. She doesn't talk the way they talk or think the way they think.
In other words, she is better than Obama because, unlike Obama, she does not have a degree from Columbia University, because she is not a magna cum laude Harvard graduate, because she has not taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School.
Her folksiness (not that it is by any means contrived) and her humble academic record, in Sowell's warped mind, is why the media elite renders a negative opinion of Palin, when they in fact should be charmed by the fact that her stated foreign policy qualification include being able to see Russia from Alaska's shore, or the fact that she cannot name a single newspaper or article that contributed to her foreign policy views. But those, according to Sowell and to the authors of Republican talking points, are "gotcha" questions. Is Sowell's assessment disingenuous? Yessireebob, you betcha!
Sowell concludes his fantasy-land, ad-hominem laden opinion piece with the following, enlightening paragraph:
Whatever the shortcomings of John McCain and Sarah Palin, [...] they have not spent decades working with people who hate America.
As I said in several of my recent posts, the type of fraud that Republicans accuse ACORN of engaging in is not voter fraud at all.
But even if it were, consider that the number of successful voter prosecution cases pursued by the Feds between 2002 and 2005 is--get ready for this--twenty-four, as noted by Think Progress in a 2007 post. Staggering number, isn't it?
Is voter registration fraud "destroying the fabric of democracy" as two-faced John McCain said in Wednesday night's debate? Sure. Wait until that army of Disney and other assorted cartoon characters shows up at the polls with their valid Mickey Mouse, government-issued driver licenses to exercise the right they fraudulently obtained. Gimme a freaking break!
On the other hand, guess who is engaging in actual voter registrationn *fraud*? You would never know it, but it's the GOP.
YPM is a firm whose services were retained in California by the Republican Party. The LA Times reports:
Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.
If you think this is an isolated case, think again:
Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties say they are investigating complaints about the company.
And here's the kicker:
Some also report having their registration status changed to absentee without their permission; if they show up at the polls without a ballot they may be unable to vote.
The last quote is particularly distressing, because it is not just about voter registration fraud. It is about fraud with intent to suppress the vote.
So you see, once again the GOP stands out as the party of hypocrisy.
Republican Congressmen and pastors rant against homosexual behavior, then it turns out they engage in homosexual activities themselves (Sen. Craig, Ted Haggard, and don't forget to look up Mark Foley, Glenn Murphy Jr, and Bob Allen of Florida). They talk about the sanctity of marriage, but they divorce and remarry as if marriage were only a civil contract (guffaw, guffaw for Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh--who we might as well consider a Republican operative, etc.). And they accuse others of destroying the fabric of society with voter registration fraud while they are actually doing it themselves.
It wouldn't even be so despicable, were it not for the fact that they also portray themselves as the party of Jesus. You know, the guy who said "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?"
Perhaps all the prayerful ones out there can join and pray that we are delivered from hypocrisy. Please?
With two weeks or so to go before the election, and in the wake of what the Republican echo chamber led by Fox News continues to misleadingly call voter fraud by ACORN, many shows have been talking about election fraud. Bill Moyers, as so often, did it best.
Watch the Moyers interview with NYU professor and election expert, Mark Crispin Miller.
PBS's Now also has an interesting report on the implications that the current economic crisis has in a battleground state, Virginia. It contains some really scary comments by a voter who says she is not going to vote for Obama because of his name, the fact that his mother was an atheist and that his father was a Muslim, but some heartening facts, too, like the fact that U.S. troops serving overseas have contributed five times as much money to Obama's campaign than to McCain, showing that the Republican stranglehold on military vote is perhaps starting to crumble.
In his analysis of the final debate, Stephen Colbert takes McCain to task for the hyperbolic statement that ACORN is "destroying the fabric of democracy" in America, and other inanities.
Michele Bachman may not speak for Sen. McCain, but this is something he needs to repudiate!
If McCain says nothing, his silence will confirm what we have known all along: That he, his campaign and his party, represent the worst this country has to offer. Nothing but incendiary, divisive rhetoric, aimed at destroying opponents. In essence, the exact antithesis of what he represents as his best quality: the ability to reach across the aisle.
Also, yesterday I wrote a post called Voter *Registration* Fraud, Republican Dirty Tricks, and David Iglesias. In it I spoke of the US Attorney firing scandal (the Bush Administration fired US Attorneys that *IT* had appointed because--among other things--they refused to prosecute bogus claims of voter fraud).
Today Robert Bauer, General Counsel for the Obama campaign, sent a letter to AG Mukasey asking the DOJ to extend the ongoing investigation of the US Attorneys firing scandal to include the recent and ongoing use of political pressure on law enforcement authorities to help with the smear campaign that Republican operatives have been conducting against ACORN.
Some say this is the Obama campaign fighting back against what is sure to be the third presidential election in a row manipulated by Republicans to their advantage, but is it too little, too late?
I really don't have a good feeling about the way things are going, and I am not the only one. Can someone post a comment to explain why I should not worry?
But... wait a second! Wasn't one of the right's memes during the Democractic nomination campaign that Obama was the ultimate celebrity candidate? (A charge, by the way, that deserves this articulate and intelligent response).
The media have gotten in the habit of creating false moral equivalences where there are none. They do so, presumably, in the name of a misguided sense of fairness and balance (with the exception of the Fair and Balanced network, Fox News, which unabashedly gives 3 times as much airtime to Republicans as to Democrats). But building artificial parallels, and destroying any sense of proportion in the process, is not a service to the public, it is a disservice to journalism and its audience. My previous post exposes one such glaringly false parallel: the false analogy the media have built between voter registration fraud, perpetrated by canvassers who work for a non-partisan organization (ACORN) that helps the poor and disenfranchised (Democrats, mainly) and illegal voter suppression tactics, perpetrated by Republican operatives to disenfranchise large numbers of mainly Democratic voters in swing states.
But the perfect example of how the media manufacture balance where there is none is their treatment of campaign negativity.
Let’s get this out of the way: Both sides engage in spin. Both sides have talking points. Both sides try to paint their candidate in the best possible light and his opponent in the worst one possible. Both sides resort to negative attacks. But that is where the similarities end.
However, while both campaigns are indeed guilty of many forms of negative attacks, there are substantial differences in the type, the degree and the gravity of the accusations that are flung around.
For example, saying that a candidate is erratic, or that he behaves erratically, as Obama and his campaign have done about McCain, is aimed at painting a picture of John McCain's volatility, lack of resolve, and impulsive temperament.
Saying that a candidate pals around with terrorists, as Sarah Palin said of Obama's superficial association with William Ayers, is not just commentary on Obama's presumed lack of judgement: it is a pedestrian and inflammatory effort to paint him as a terrorist, a truly dangerous individual. So it is not surprising (and perhaps not altogether accidental) when a deranged individual at a McCain rally yells "Terrorist!"
Saying that John McCain's plans are a repeat of the policies of the sitting president is an attempt to convince people who are not happy with the way things have been going for eight years to vote for change.
Selectively quoting Sen. Obama's statement that "We’ve got to get the job done [in Afghanistan], and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there" to make it sound like Obama actually said that our troops are "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians" attempts to paint Sen. Obama as unpatriotic and unworthy of being commander-in-chief because he hates our troops. It is no wonder, then, that other deranged individuals at McCain and Palin rallies yelled "Traitor!" and "Off with his head!"
Stating that a John McCain White House would be run by lobbyists, as evidenced by the number of lobbyists who occupy important roles in McCain's campaign (including Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manage) is designed to convince people that it would be corporate interest, not their interest, that would be served by a McCain presidency, without going as far as saying that Sen. McCain is a crook.
But stating, as McCain did on several occasions, that Obama is a Chicago-style politician is a direct and unsubstantiated assault on Obama's character. It doesn't just say that he is bought by special interests. It says, essentially, that Obama is corrupt and that he associates with shady characters. That is worse than saying someone associates with lobbyists, because it is a not so thinly veiled attack on the moral fiber of Obama the person, not Obama the politician.
Arguing that Roe v Wade should be settled law, as Sen. Obama believes, and that the right of women to have access to legal abortion services should not be repealed is a policy position, however misguided one might think it is.
Accusing Obama of having "extreme pro-abortion views" (instead of pro-choice) is read meat for Evangelicals and is code for "baby killer." In other words, McCain implies that Obama is not simply a bad choice for president, but a dangerous one (and trust me, many Evangelicals hold that view.)
There is no argument on the fact that both campaigns are guilty to a smaller or larger degree of deceiving the public about the other candidate, and in a perfect world that would not be condoned or tolerated. But it is one thing to go after (and often distort) the policy differences of your opponent. It is quite another to systematically demonize your opponent, to impugn not simply his judgment but his character and his moral compass, to rally fear about him instead of promoting your own merits.
Let's be clear: Only one campaign is engaging in gutter politics.
If you do not know who David Iglesias is, you should.
Iglesias is the New Mexico US Attorney who, when pressured to do so by Republican operatives and members of the Bush administration, refused to prosecute voter registration fraud which he had no evidence for. Subsequently he was fired by the Administration, in spite of having received positive job performance reviews.
This all ties in with the Republican brouhaha about ACORN with less than 20 days to go in this year presidential election.
The real scandal, of course, is not voter registration fraud, which leads to actual voter fraud in a very limited number of cases. It is caging, the illegal practice which prevents hundreds of thousands of legally registered voters, if not millions, from casting a vote.
The problem is that in order to appear unbiased toward the two parties, the media covers voter fraud registration and caging as if they both had the same gravity, although--of the two--only one, caging, constitutes voter fraud. This type of reporting, which does not discriminate between degrees of severity, has very grave consequences, because it leaves unsophisticated audiences under the mistaken impression that both parties have engaged in voter fraud. Only one has, and it does not refrain from firing its on appointees when they don't all march in lockstep to the beat of the RNC's drum.
Technically, we are all plumbers. You don't believe me? Well, I don't have a plumbing license, but neither does Joe the Plumber.
And another thing:
Wurzelbacher told Obama that he was preparing to buy the plumbing company, which earns more than $250,000 a year, and said: "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?"
Obama said that under his proposal taxes on any revenue from $250,000 on down would stay the same, but that amounts above that level would be subject to a 39 percent tax, instead of the current 36 percent rate.
Wurzelbacher said Obama's tax plan wouldn't affect him right now, because he doesn't make $250,000. "But I hope someday I'll make that," he said. [Emphasis added.]
Yeah, so do I, Joe, so do I. But I also realize that my marginal tax rate would increase under Obama by only 3% and that a 50% tax credit to insure my employee's health is a good enough offset to convince me to accept a small increase (Why? Because insured employees make happier, more loyal employees who might even work harder for me.)
I also know that there are those who never will make $250,000. They make up the majority of the American people, and they are carrying much too large a burden of national expenses for their ability. Measured not, as Republicans like to point out, as the effective tax rate on gross income, but as a percentage of taxes paid on discretionary income.
The value of your last dollar earned is much higher to you if you make $50,000 than if you make one million dollars. Apparently, this is not an easy concept to grasp for the masses of plumbers, truck drivers, and electricians who vote Republican. Why? Because they live their lives dreaming of being one of the few that rise to the ranks of the rich, when in fact less than %5 of the American people do.
Astonishingly, many people who scrape a living together and go paycheck to paycheck delude themselves into thinking "I will vote Republican because, even though it is somewhat (or highly) unlikely, there will be one day in the indefinite future when I will be so rich that I will benefit from Republican policies designed to favor the rich. In the meantime, I will shoulder much more than my fair burden in order to keep that dream alive."
That, my friends, is the "Las Vegas mentality" that allows 40% of Americans to think they are voting for their best economic interest, when in fact they are voting against it.
One of my favorite movies is a legal drama called A Civil Action. The story, based on real events, tells of the deaths that two negligent corporations caused by illegally dumping toxic chemicals that seeped into the waterways and the aquifers near the town of Woburn, Mass.
In the movie, Duvall plays Jerome Facher, a seasoned, revered, and iconic attorney who works for one of the most successful law firms in Boston. The story pits him against a young, handsome, and exuberant up-and-coming lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, played by John Travolta. Schlichtmann sets out to prove the guilt of the two corporations, one of which is represented by Facher's law firm.
In one of the pivotal scenes, Schlichtmann puts on the stand Mr. Riley, the owner of one of the companies that contaminated the soil and waters of Woburn. Schlichtmann grills the defiant, combative witness to incriminate him and his company. Just when it seems that Schlichtmann is ready to dismiss the witness, whom he has successfully painted in the worst possible light, he presses him with one final question. The answer catches Schlichtmann completely off-guard, at which point the old, experienced Facher's voice is heard, off screen, saying: "Never ask a witness why, unless you already know the answer."
Which brings us to one pivotal moment in last night's presidential debate. Sen. McCain, talking as he did all night to Joe The Plumber, cautioned him that under Obama's health plan small businesses like his would be fined for not providing health insurance to his employees. Watch Obama's response, when McCain asked him "I'd like -- still like to know what that fine is going to be"
Never ask a question, Duvall's character said, unless you already know the answer. A nugget of wisdom that McCain is not likely to forget any time soon. The bitter irony of it all is that Duvall, alas, is a McCain supporter. But I still love his acting, and I am thankful that he never got the chance to talk about Jerome Facher's legal wisdom with Sen. McCain.
To describe McCain's strategy in the final debate before the election, the NY Times Alexandra Stanley makes the following, pithy remark: "In trying to cast doubt on Barack Obama, John McCain threw the kitchen sink at him — along with the plumber."
The third and final debate of the presidential season had a few memorable moments, but one thing will be remembered above all: John McCain’s obsession with "Joe the Plumber".
Who is Joe the Plumber, exactly? The Story of Joe the Plumber
The way McCain's campaign has been unraveling of late would make you think that Joe the Plumber is Sen. McCain's imaginary friend, a figment of the old Arizonian's fevered imagination. As it turns out, Joe the Plumber is Joe Wurzelbacher. He was thrust on the main stage of the political season when he approached Sen. Obama at a rally in Toledo, Ohio, and explained to him that he intended to buy a business that makes a little over $250,000 a year, and Obama's tax plan would cost him more in taxes than Sen. McCain's. Obama responded that his philosophy is that spreading the wealth around by raising taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year would benefit everyone in the long run.
McCain snatched on to the story like a school of frenzied piranhas, gnawing it to the bone and consuming the entire evening by speaking directly to Joe the Plumber, and to all Joe the Plumbers out there. By the time the debate was over, I was wondering what the rest of us, the almost three hundred million Americans not named Joe and not engaged in plumbing would do. It felt like we were totally excluded from McCain’s field of vision, set as his mind was on this quasi-mythical figure.
In his rebuttal, Obama explained the difference in how people like Joe the Plumber and Warren Buffett would be taxed. He explained that at this moment in time we should be helping the middle-class and the poor more, and those who are fortunate enough to make a good living should bear a slightly bigger share of the burden.
Obama missed a good opportunity here. What he should have said to Joe instead, and all the plumbers out there, is that if we don't help the middle class and the poor a little, they will learn to do their own plumbing instead of calling Joe the Plumber, bringing him and his business down.
The Class Warfare Meme
McCain spent a considerable amount of time attacking the idea that spreading wealth is bad and that Obama is engaging in class warfare, a favorite refrain of those who belong to the exclusive class of the "have everything" (the true elite, you might call it, as opposed to the mythical, cultural liberal elite).
I was surprised to learn that spreading wealth is a bad thing for Republicans. Wasn't the whole point of trickle-down economics to spread wealth, without government involvement, from the top down? How'd that work out for you, the average American, under Republican presidents?
Larry Bartels, the esteemed political scientist, wrote an article about income distribution and how partisan politics affect it. Let's say it does not reflect well on the claims of trickle-down economics. And Paul Krugman, who just received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, wrote an article in 2006 called The Great Wealth Transfer. In it, he made two very important points:
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hourly wage of the average American non-supervisory worker is actually lower, adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1970. Meanwhile, CEO pay has soared -- from less than thirty times the average wage to almost 300 times the typical worker's pay.
And again...
[T]he statistical evidence shows, unequal societies tend to be corrupt societies. When there are huge disparities in wealth, the rich have both the motive and the means to corrupt the system on their behalf.
[…]
Indeed, the gap between rich and poor doesn't just mean that few Americans share in the benefits of economic growth -- it also undermines the sense of shared experience that binds us together as a nation. "Trust is based upon the belief that we are all in this together, part of a 'moral community,' " writes Eric Uslaner, a political scientist at the University of Maryland who has studied the effects of inequality on trust. "It is tough to convince people in a highly stratified society that the rich and the poor share common values, much less a common fate."
In the end, the effects of our growing economic inequality go far beyond dollars and cents.
Like Warren Buffett said: "There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."
"I Am Not George Bush"
"If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."
That this was the best line of the debate for John McCain really says how bad a night it was for him.
Obama used kid gloves on McCain when he responded:
[T]he fact of the matter is that if I occasionally have mistaken your policies for George Bush's policies, it's because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people, on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities, you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush.
He could have been much more forceful and said: "John, the only way I know that I am running against you and not George Bush is that I can see you, not him, sitting across the table. But when I look at your policy positions on the economy, healthcare, education, and so forth, I cannot tell the two of you apart."
Obama and Fox News
One of Sen. McCain's main blunders of the evening was going after Sen. Obama on "a budget resolution that increases the taxes on individuals making $42,000 a year."
That was a really foolish thing for him to do, because fact checkers all over the world have already cut that notion to shreds. It is simply false, and Sen. Obama did not miss his chance to point that out:
[T]he notion that I voted for a tax increase for people making $42,000 a year has been disputed by everybody who has looked at this claim that Senator McCain keeps on making.
Even FOX News disputes it, and that doesn't happen very often when it comes to accusations about me.
: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion
According to the Merriam-Webster definition, which as you see is almost as old as McCain himself, there is not one terrorist in this campaign, but three: William Ayers, and the two Republican candidates. Sen. Obama understands that this is how most Americans have interpreted the incessant attacks that McCain and Palin have been leveling at the association between Sen. Obama and William Ayers.
When Bob Schieffer asked them to explain the negative tone of the campaign, Sen. McCain pulled out the famous "townhall meeting" excuse, saying that if Obama had accepted to meet him in that setting, things wouldn't have gotten ugly. He then accused Sen. Obama of failing to repudiate the statements made by Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights leader who just a yesterday condemned the tone of the Republican campaign as incendiary, and reminiscent of the atmosphere that Lewis himself had lived through during the civil rights battles.
Obama's response was designed to make McCain's blood pressure rise:
The notion, though, that because we're not doing town hall meetings that justifies some of the ads that have been going up, not just from your own campaign directly, John, but 527s and other organizations that make some pretty tough accusations, well, I don't mind being attacked for the next three weeks.
What the American people can't afford, though, is four more years of failed economic policies. And what they deserve over the next four weeks is that we talk about what's most pressing to them: the economic crisis.
Senator McCain's own campaign said publicly last week that, if we keep on talking about the economic crisis, we lose, so we need to change the subject.
At that particular moment, Sen. McCain seemed ready to explode. He didn't, but the anger on his face was so ill-contained that it looked like the chances of him spending the next four years in the White House were dwarfed by the likelihood that he would spend the rest of his life in jail.
But Obama was not done; egged on by Sen. McCain to repudiate Rep. Lewis's statements, he responded coolly (and provokingly):
I mean, look, if we want to talk about Congressman Lewis, who is an American hero, he, unprompted by my campaign, without my campaign's awareness, made a statement that he was troubled with what he was hearing at some of the rallies that your running mate was holding, in which all the Republican reports indicated were shouting, when my name came up, things like "terrorist" and "kill him," and that you're running mate didn't mention, didn't stop, didn't say "Hold on a second, that's kind of out of line."
McCain's response was another lie: "But the fact is that we need to absolutely not stand for the kind of things that have been going on. I haven't."
In fact, there is video to prove that neither Sen. McCain nor his running mate did anything to reprimand those in their audiences that yelled things like "Terrorist!" or "Kill him!", referring to Sen. Obama.
The Moment Obama Nailed The Election
After all the talk about negative attacks, McCain finally resorted to the desperation pitch, the last arrow in his quiver: Obama's connection to William Ayers. McCain said: "But as Senator Clinton said in her debates with you, we need to know the full extent of that relationship."
The response that followed was emblematic of the difference in stature and tone between the old, angry Senator, and his younger, calmer, and intellectually superior opponent:
Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Senator McCain's campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let's get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago.
Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan's former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg.
[Emphasis added.]
Other members on that board were the presidents of the University of Illinois, the president of Northwestern University, who happens to be a Republican, the president of The Chicago Tribune, a Republican-leaning newspaper.
Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that's Mr. Ayers.
But Obama had to yet finish the job, and he did:
Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO.
Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House. And I think the fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Senator McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.
[Emphasis added.]
Case closed, election over, thank you, Sen. Obama.
Sen. McCain's Evening Unravels
From that moment on, the debate, and possibly the election, unraveled for John McCain.
On health care, Sen. Obama clearly laid out a better plan, dismantling Sen. McCain's numerous misrepresentations one by one. When Sen. McCain ranted about the government mandates and bureaucracy in Obama's plan and prodded his young opponent to name the fine that he would levy on small businesses like Joe the Plumber's, if they failed to provide health care for their employes, he seemed genuinely stunned--scratch that: disgusted--by the answer:
OBAMA: I just described what my plan is. And I'm happy to talk to you, Joe, too, if you're out there. Here's your fine -- zero. You won't pay a fine, because...
MCCAIN: Zero?
OBAMA: Zero, because as I said in our last debate and I'll repeat, John, I exempt small businesses from the requirement for large businesses that can afford to provide health care to their employees, but are not doing it.
[...]
In fact, what, Joe, if you want to do the right thing with your employees and you want to provide them health insurance, we'll give you a 50 percent credit so that you will actually be able to afford it
Sen. Obama also dismantled McCain's plan, piece by piece, as follows:
He says he's going to give you all a $5,000 tax credit. That sounds pretty good. And you can go out and buy your own insurance.
[...]
And once you're out on your own with this $5,000 credit, Senator McCain, for the first time, is going to be taxing the health care benefits that you have from your employer.
And this is your plan, John. For the first time in history, you will be taxing people's health care benefits.
By the way, the average policy costs about $12,000. So if you've got $5,000 and it's going to cost you $12,000, that's a loss for you.
And Finally, How To Lose Undecided And Moderates
The discussion then moved to Roe v. Wade. No surprises here: Sen. McCain is against legal abortion, Sen. Obama for it. (We need to move away from the standard labels of pro-life and pro-choice, because they are much abused, emotionally loaded, and intellectually dishonest--at least as far as the dichotomy of concept v. reality goes.) So no real surprises here, right? Well...
Obama called for people of good will and different opinions to come together to try and reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions. He also defended his votes in the Illinois legislature that have been misrepresented by McCain's campaign over and over again, and expressed his complete support for "a ban on late-term abortions, partial-birth or otherwise, as long as there's an exception for the mother's health and life." The bills under scrutiny did not contain that exception.
McCain's response, which started with the usual condescending attack on Obama's eloquence (read "sophistry"), immediately turned into an incredible pronouncement on the "health of the mother exception":
He's health for the mother [sic]. You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything.
That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, "health."
[Emphasis, once again, added.]
Now, I don't know about you, but I would be hard pressed to find a person who would consider the "health exception" to abortion an extreme pro-abortion position. If anything, in fact, I'd say that most people who are not rabid anti-abortion militants would make exceptions not only for the health of the mother, but also for rape and incest.
McCain's statement was so completely out of the mainstream that the only explanation I can venture is this: He knows his chances of winning the White House are next to zero, and he is just being a good soldier for the party and trying to mobilize the hard-right base so the Republicans can at least save some congressional races which they might lose if the turnout of Republican voters plummets.
The End
The evening dwindled with a discussion on education that, once again, goes to prove how far out of touch with America's sensibilities McCain's campaign is. Referring to McCain's vow of a spending freeze, Obama went on to say:
Recently his key economic adviser was asked about why he didn't seem to have some specific programs to help young people go to college and the response was, well, you know, we can't give money to every interest group that comes along.
I don't think America's youth are interest groups, I think they're our future. And this is an example of where we are going to have to prioritize. We can't say we're going to do things and then not explain in concrete terms how we're going to pay for it.
Then came the time for closing statements, and to wrap up the longest debate season in the nation's history. It started in April 2007 and ended, tonight, with McCain's desperate attempt stop the hemorrhage of undecided and moderate Republicans that have decisively tilted the election in Obama's favor over the last two weeks: Enter Joe the Plumber.
But according to post-debate polls, McCain's stop gap solution did not work. Joe the Plumber is in fact just that: a plumber, not a miracle-worker.
[NOTE: You can find the full debate transcript here.]
The third debate is over and my real time impression is that John McCain may know exactly what to do for "Joe the Plummer", but I don't think he knows anything about people like me and you. In fact, his solutions are by far inferior to those proposed by Barack Obama. More impressions to follow soon.
You're certainly going to hear that line from John McCain in tonight's debate (and not just once).
But facts are stubborn little things, so arm yourself with this knowledge:
As you can see, McCain should change his campaign slogan to "Gentry First!", which is definitely a more accurate description of his tax plan, and a good way to describe the very homogeneous crowd that attended the Republican convention in Minnesota a while back.
By the way, you can find the full article that features the comparison I posted above here.
And if you wanna have a little fun while you wait for the debate, play around with this tax calculator gadget, which lets you estimate your projected tax cut under the two candidates' tax plans. I found it on the Economists For Obama blog, which is also a good way to kill the two hours or so before the debate.
I just found a post written before the second presidential debate, which says:
At some point in tonight's debate, John McCain will falsely accuse Barack Obama of planning to raise taxes on most, if not all, Americans (I expect a rehash of the debunked tax raise on families earning over $42,000 claim - McCain's not one to let fact checkers interrupt his flow). McCain will follow this allegation with a plaintive warning to the American people that raising taxes costs jobs. "We know this," McCain will say with saddened expression.
As Eric Martin, who wrote that paragraph, I am also sure that McCain won't let facts get in the way of his tirades. But do yourself a favor, and read the rest of Martin's quite well-crafted exercise in spin deconstruction.
Seems to me opponents of a single-payer health care system have a little explaining to do, since many of them had no problem bailing out Wall Street. (That's the beauty of convenient rationalization, isn't it?)
Thankfully, tonight is the last presidential debate. I can't take it any more, as apparently is the case with other people, including one David Bollier.
Sen. McCain has called Sen. Obama to repudiate the statements made by civil rights leader and Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who said that McCain and Palin are "sowing the seeds of hatred and division" and that he is "deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign". Most importantly, Rep. Lewis drew the following analogy:
During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.
[...]
As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better. [Emphasis added.]
Notably, the rancor toward Obama at McCain/Palin rallies has escalated after the two Republicans and their surrogates began hitting Obama's association with William Ayers harder and harder, as their poll numbers started to fade everywhere. That is what Rep. Lewis was condemning.
After McCain's campaign hit back hard at Lewis's statements, calling them beyond the pale, the Obama campaign put out the following statement:
Senator Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies. But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for President of the United States 'pals around with terrorists.' As Barack Obama has said himself, the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart at a time of crisis when we desperately need to come together. That is the kind of campaign Senator Obama will continue to run in the weeks ahead.
The fact is that when someone yelled "Terrorist!" about Obama at a McCain rally, McCain said nothing, in spite of obviously having heard that incendiary cry. So it is quite a marvel that Sen. McCain should have the gall to call his opponent to repudiate Congressman Lewis's statements when neither he nor his running mate have done anything in real time, or anything of any visibility, to rebuff those who cried "Terrorist!", "Kill him!", "Bomb Obama", "Traitor!", etc.
Which leads us to Keith Olbermann's Special Comment from tonight's Countdown.
This is starting to get some play in the media: Christopher Buckley, son of National Review founder William F. Buckley, endorsed Barack Obama for President.While he was quick to disassociate his personal opinions from those of the National Review, the reaction from the magazine's editors made it clear that his resignation was in order, as he explains in Sorry, Dad, I was fired.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.
[..]
I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.
While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.
Even the staunchest opponents of abortion have to admit that an outright ban on abortion is politically impractical and highly unlikely.
Nonetheless, many Evangelical bloggers who oppose abortion continue to paint an extremely divisive picture of anyone who does not support the repeal of Roe v Wade, by calling them promoters of the culture of death, infanticidal maniacs who support "abortions on demand, for no reason at all" and, if they happen to be Democrats running for president, unfit for the White House.
They resent being called single-issue voters when they offer their support for anti-abortion candidates without regard for the candidates' other positions, because--they say--a person's stance on abortion trumps all other considerations and anyone who supports abortion has a broken moral compass. Thus, they allow criminals like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney & Co. to wreak havoc on this nation and the world with absolutely no pangs of conscience.
To them, there is no issue more important than wiping abortion off the law books. They liken abortion to the Holocaust, because they believe that every fetus, down to a fertilized egg, is a human being worth giving birth to. They resort to every trick in their arsenal to make abortion illegal even if Roe v Wade were never to be reversed. For example, see the appallingly bad Amendment 48 that abortion opponents have put on the ballot in Colorado. That amendment would confer the rights of personhood on a fertilized egg, thereby banning all forms of contraception like Plan B because they interfere with the beginning of a person that started when sperm met the egg. A truly absurd scenario, to be sure, in which the rights of a single cell would outweigh the right of two sentient and intellectually developed adults to prevent an unwanted pregnancy within hours of intercourse, hardly a scenario that most sensible people would classify as abortion.
Well, luckily not all Christians are Evangelical fundamentalists. Some, like the Rev. Jim Wallis, look at the whole picture of abortion instead of clinging to their hard-right ideological prejudices which are sure to alienate middle-grounders who would like to see abortions kept to a minimum, while ensuring that access to legal abortion is maintained in extreme contingencies.
Rev. Wallis understands, unlike his more radical colleagues, that much progress is to be made by diminishing the weight of factors that contribute to a woman's decision to have an abortion, such as economic fears, fear of societal abandonment and stigmatization, lack of knowledge about the alternatives, lack of information about or access to contraception methods, etc.
I will write more on this issue as soon as I have the time to do so, but in the meantime please read Rev. Jim Wallis's article and consider it an example of what people of good will can do, Christians and non-Christians alike, if they are just willing to put unrepentant ideology aside for a moment in pursuit of commendable and desirable results.
While the RNC/FNC (Republican National Committee/Faux News Channel) alliance is leading in the push to paint ACORN as an organization hell bent on delivering the election to Democrats through "voter fraud" (actually, voter "registration" fraud, but why be sticklers for accuracy, right?), guess who served at keynote speaker at an ACORN conference (on immigration reform) in 2006?
Well, you might say, that was 2006, and McCain was not running for president then. True, but as we are being reminded on the hour every day, on every cable channel and radio talk show, ACORN has been at it at least since 2004. Never mind that ACORN cooperated with authorities in all cases of alleged registration fraud. Never mind that ACORN itself is a victim, not a perpetrator of fraud. And never mind that most of the states in which probes on voter registration fraud have been launched are "toss-up" states, i.e. states on which Republicans have an interest in casting a long shadow on the legitimacy of a likely Obama win.
So why would John McCain want to associate himself with a group whose goal, according to Republicans, is to fix elections in favor of Democrats? Well, he is a maverick of course. Or perhaps it's because duplicity knows no boundaries in McCain's make-believe maverick world.
Wayne Barrett, Village Voice investigative reporter, wrote an excellent piece uncovering the truth about the hol(e)y record of change of one Sarah Palin.
Click the Mavericks, My Ass cover to read the article.
The Republican echo chamber, courtesy the so-called liberal media, is throwing around accusations of voter fraud. A few clarifications are in order. (Continued below the fold.)1) First of all, what Republicans and their propaganda organs are alleging, with Fox News, the WSJ and Limbaugh at the helm, does not equate voter fraud. It is voter registration fraud. Now, some shills make this necessary distinction and some (Malkin, for example) don't. It may seem like a trivial distinction, but it is not. Voter fraud successfully perpetrated by individuals is very rare and hard to accomplish (one such successful case, ironically: Ann Coulter's). ACORN collects registrations. It is not ACORN's job to refuse the registration of a person who has volunteered to register. In most states ACORN has to submit *all* registrations to the state election board, even those known to have problems. However, registration fraud is a concern, and so ACORN spends a considerable amount of time and money flagging dubious or faulty registrations and helps law enforcement agencies to prosecute dishonest canvassers. But it is up to the state election board to follow up and clean up voter rolls.
2) Secondly, it is ridiculous that some of those who have been called to testify about registration fraud have complained that they have been pressured by ACORN canvassers to register multiple times. Sure, pressuring people to register multiple times is wrong. But Republicans always like to spew platitudes on "personal responsibility." So where is the personal responsibility of the idiots that agreed to be registered multiple times?
3) ACORN certainly needs to do something to address the impression that their canvassers are subject to quotas. ACORN canvassers who collect registration are now paid hourly wages. As any employer would, ACORN asks workers to meet basic productivity standards, a "quota" of--allegedly--25 registrations a day. Canvassers who don't meet this "quota" can be dismissed. (Why pay for those who are not doing their jobs, right? You'd think conservatives would understand and approve.) This scenario is far from the false one that Republicans allege, under which canvassers are paid for each registration they collect. Nonetheless, a perception problem exists that ACORN needs to solve somehow.
4) Election fraud is indeed a serious matter, and it has hardly anything to do with "Mickey Mouse" or "Bugs Bunny" registering to vote, or with some jackasses registering multiple times to vote.
The real fraud over the last two presidential elections has been consistently perpetrated by those same Republicans who are now crying foul at ACORN. The most insidious kind of fraud is that which relies on unverified electronic machines (DREs), that do not leave a paper trail and that can be hacked by anyone with access to them who wants to manipulate election results (typically by flipping vote counts).
The real fraud consists in denying people who are legally registered to vote a chance to cast their ballot because they have been illegally purged from election rolls by unscrupulous election officials.
The real fraud is the fact that in a presidential election in 2008 there is no unified federal standard that determines what equipment votes will be cast on (if any) or a uniform standard for recounts, for voting procedures, ballot types, etc.
Of course, you are free to join the Republican echo chamber and scream foul if you choose to. That just shows how uninformed and duped you are about the dangers that lurk for democracy at the polls.
Or, you can monitor election proceeding with a camcorder and make sure that you minimize the chance for foul play.
