Today things got way out of hand for Senator McCain.
In recent weeks he's tried to stir up his crowd and get them enthused by leveling a variety of charges against Barack Obama. Of course he's had plenty of accomplices in stirring up the GOP faithful to intense feelings of animosity towards the junior Senator from Illinois-- everyone from hotheaded talk show hosts to shadowy 'independent' groups who have done their best to convince everyone that if Obama is elected then he will begin the jihad against Christian Americans as soon as he takes away everyone's guns so they can't defend themselves.
So today in a townhall meeting with supporters in Lakeville, Minnesota, some of them urged him to get more negative and personal in his attacks on Senator Obama. And then they booed their own candidate when he complemented his opponent.
"If you want a fight, we will fight," McCain said. "But we will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments." When people booed, he cut them off.
In a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin,
He had drawn boos with his comment: "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."
Things are falling apart for the GOP. I've never heard of a major party Presidential candidate getting booed by his own supporters, at his own rally.
I can understand their frustration. For years some GOP strategists have known they were on the wrong side of a demographic divide, with a new generation (which a few years ago was defined as people under 25, then as people under 30, now as people in their twenties and thirties) leaning heavily towards the Democrats. This has been crystallized by the Iraq war (it is this generation which has been asked to sacrifice, and many if not most know a friend or family member who has fought in Iraq or Afghanistan while the GOP President hasn't even bothered to raise taxes on other generations to pay for the war-- meaning that the debt so incurred will also be passed onto the younger generation-- and many are resentful of that fact; I know some who feel this way, that their generation has been used, personally.) Other issues such as college aid, jobs and GOP cultural intolerance have also helped drive many younger people towards the Democratic party. Also, a lot of 'millenials' really only remember only two Presidents-- Clinton and Bush. They remember that when Clinton was the President people had jobs and Republicans tried to impeach him for sexual indiscretion (yes, I know that there were other issues but in a nutshell that is how it is perceived by most young people.) They've watched Bush as President, with a compliant Congress for most of it, and watched him go to war in Iraq instead of keeping after Osama bin Laden (they most certainly do remember 9/11), they have seen nothing actually get done about Katrina and they've watched the economy tank. Maybe in some cases Democrats have warts out of all this but for people who have paid attention for say the past 15 or 20 years (in which case they may also remember another President Bush who went to war with Iraq and fumbled on the economy) Republican leadership has been a failure, period. In fact, the youngest voters this year were born during the first Bush administration and may not even remember Clinton all that well. But polls show that overwhelmingly they favor Obama and other Democrats because they've seen enough of George W. Bush that the large majority have figured out they don't like him.
Another case in which the Republicans have ended up on the wrong side of a demographic divide is immigration. The GOP's suicidal focus on bashing immigrants has not won them a single seat in Congress, the Senate or a Governorship. In 2006 though it probably cost them at least two seats in Congress (one or possibly two in Arizona and one in Texas) as Hispanics, a demographic that in 2004 went 40% for President Bush, reacted with revulsion to the immigrant bashing and went only 20% GOP for Congress in 2006. John McCain is probably the best candidate the Republicans could have nominated to appeal to Hispanics but the truth is they've driven away a lot of culturally conservative, Christian, patriotic, hardworking voters who they should have been able to appeal to. In many cases Hispanics have relatives on both sides of the border, so GOP ideas like a border fence and requiring a passport to enter and leave the U.S. from Mexico have soured many Hispanics on the GOP (and I'm not even getting into racial profiling here.) Republicans like to point to polls showing that a majority of Americans favor tighter controls on immigration. That may be true but for hardly any is it a defining issue in a campaign. In contrast, the number of Hispanics whose own lives or the lives of their family is directly affected by it is much larger and for many of them it is a defining issue.
At the same time the bitter fruits of GOP economic policy have helped drive many working people, even those who had supported Bush, back to the Democrats. The GOP tried to take some hope from the fact that most of them supported Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama during this year's primaries. True enough, but now that the party (including Hillary) is pulling together behind Obama the Republicans are finding that the majority of the working people are now backing him too. Any suggestion that they might stick with the GOP because of God, guns, gays or similar types of 'red-meat' issues that have sometimes helped the Republican candidate in the past evaporated on Sunday, Sept. 14 (that was the day that Lehman Brothers bank failed, setting off the current nonstop economic drubbing that is affecting or likely will soon affect everyone's life for the worse.) Remember we've had thirty years of tax cuts, so-called "trickle down" and deregulation-- so these voters are smart enough to know that the fruit we have today is the result of these policies.) Instructive in categorizing the votes of working people is a new poll out in West Virginia. In the heavily Democratic state, which Hillary Clinton won by an enormous margin over Barack Obama and which Obama tried to downplay during the primaries by only visiting once (and he's not been back since) the new poll shows Obama opening up an eight point margin over McCain. That's pretty good for a state that he almost seemed to not want, not visiting, not even talking about and a state which went by a significant margin for Bush in 2004. McCain may pick off the occasional Hillary fanatic who refuses to ever vote for Obama, but it is clear that by and large the white, working class voters (West Virginia is a state where they predominate) who supported Hillary are now supporting Obama.
The personal attacks and smears (usually a GOP specialty) aren't working very well this year either.
So I can understand Republicans' frustration. Given the growth in the numbers and power of the millenial generation (and some late Gen-X'ers who exhibit some millenial outlook) and the decline in Republican voters (both those who have left the party over the past several years and the fact that on average Republican voters tend to be members of older generations than Democratic voters and therefore-- to be brutally blunt but harshly accurate-- have been dying at a faster rate than Democrats) to the point where they are a clear minority of the electorate it now seems as though the 2004 model won't work for the GOP. Even if the base is energized (as Palin was supposed to and for the most part has done) there just aren't enough Republicans anymore.
After the last time the economy looked this bad the GOP was in the wilderness for a generation (and it might have lasted longer than that if Ike hadn't come out as a Republican and provided them with their first really popular candidate since Teddy Roosevelt). Given the history of the two-party system I have no doubt that the GOP will eventually re-tool and figure out a way to get ahead on some issues that will come up in the future. But they will have to re-tool. The old deregulatory, tax-cuts-will-fix-any-problem, free market culturally restrictive conservative party that keeps looking backwards to Reagan for answers represents the Republican model that no longer appeals to enough Americans to win very many elections.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Thursday, October 09, 2008
The Sarah Palin way to avoid trouble: investigate yourself and discover you are innocent
Sarah Palin seems to have figured out an all-new way to dodge any negative or damaging conclusions in a report due tomorrow: investigate yourself and then declare yourself exonerated.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.
Sen. John McCain's running mate is the subject of a legislative investigation into whether she abused her power as governor by firing her public safety commissioner. The commissioner, Walter Monegan, says he was dismissed in July for resisting pressure from Palin's husband, Todd Palin, and numerous top aides to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, Palin's former brother-in-law.
The move came hours after the state Supreme Court refused to halt the ethics investigation.
Lawmakers were expected to release their own findings Friday. Campaign officials have yet to see that report — the result of an investigation that began before she was tapped as McCain's running mate — but said the investigation has falsely portrayed a legitimate policy dispute between a governor and her commissioner as something inappropriate.
Keep in mind that this probe, begun by a Republican-led legislature back in July when Monegan was fired, was originally supposed to be completed and a report due October 31. The date was actually moved ahead three weeks for the benefit of Palin and McCain-- so that it wouldn't be released four days before the Presidential election. In spite of this, Palin and officials in her administration, who had cooperated with the probe initially spent weeks refusing to cooperate after she was tabbed as John McCain's running mate.
So, apparently afraid of what the report might say tomorrow about whether Palin used the power of her elected office to try and settle a petty family squabble, Palin and the McCain campaign actually investigated this themselves and are now issuing a report clearing Palin.
What a novel concept! Maybe using this as a precedent, McCain will, if elected, allow people accused of crimes to conduct the investigation themselves. Using the Palin-McCain standard for investigations, O.J. Simpson should have been allowed to run the investigation into his Las Vegas hotel room holdup himself. He should have been allowed to collect his own evidence, interview his own witnesses and expect the court and the jury to accept his own report instead of the police report.
This so-called 'report' by the McCain-Palin campaign could be called a whitewash, but that would do a disservice to Tom Sawyer, Richard Nixon and anyone else who has ever been associated with the term, 'whitewash.' It is a fraud and a dupe.
Really, publishing a report you wrote yourself, hoping people will read your report instead of the official one. How stupid do they think we are?
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.
Sen. John McCain's running mate is the subject of a legislative investigation into whether she abused her power as governor by firing her public safety commissioner. The commissioner, Walter Monegan, says he was dismissed in July for resisting pressure from Palin's husband, Todd Palin, and numerous top aides to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, Palin's former brother-in-law.
The move came hours after the state Supreme Court refused to halt the ethics investigation.
Lawmakers were expected to release their own findings Friday. Campaign officials have yet to see that report — the result of an investigation that began before she was tapped as McCain's running mate — but said the investigation has falsely portrayed a legitimate policy dispute between a governor and her commissioner as something inappropriate.
Keep in mind that this probe, begun by a Republican-led legislature back in July when Monegan was fired, was originally supposed to be completed and a report due October 31. The date was actually moved ahead three weeks for the benefit of Palin and McCain-- so that it wouldn't be released four days before the Presidential election. In spite of this, Palin and officials in her administration, who had cooperated with the probe initially spent weeks refusing to cooperate after she was tabbed as John McCain's running mate.
So, apparently afraid of what the report might say tomorrow about whether Palin used the power of her elected office to try and settle a petty family squabble, Palin and the McCain campaign actually investigated this themselves and are now issuing a report clearing Palin.
What a novel concept! Maybe using this as a precedent, McCain will, if elected, allow people accused of crimes to conduct the investigation themselves. Using the Palin-McCain standard for investigations, O.J. Simpson should have been allowed to run the investigation into his Las Vegas hotel room holdup himself. He should have been allowed to collect his own evidence, interview his own witnesses and expect the court and the jury to accept his own report instead of the police report.
This so-called 'report' by the McCain-Palin campaign could be called a whitewash, but that would do a disservice to Tom Sawyer, Richard Nixon and anyone else who has ever been associated with the term, 'whitewash.' It is a fraud and a dupe.
Really, publishing a report you wrote yourself, hoping people will read your report instead of the official one. How stupid do they think we are?
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Nothing new to tell me how John McCain's plan would be any different from what got us here
What really stuck out to me from last night's debate is that in the face of the global economic crisis, Senator McCain couldn't suggest anything other than tax cuts (mainly oriented towards the wealthy) and his stale old economic plan that looks almost indistiguishable from George Bush's economic plan.
If tax cuts were the secret to prosperity then you'd think after the $1.3 trillion Bush tax cut plan that was passed in March 2001, we'd all be flying high by now. I guess you can judge how high you are flying (AIG execs attending their taxpayer funded 'retreat' and others with golden parachutes excepted, of course.) We will be paying for the Bush tax cuts for generations to come.
But in fact, even during the most prosperous years of the Bush administration 200,000 jobs created in a month was considered 'good.' But that was less than the monthly average during the Clinton years. So let's get this straight-- the best that George Bush's economy could do anytime during his term was below Clinton's average.
And Senator Obama was right-- real incomes have gone down. He offers a different plan, one that is oriented towards making sure that ordinary people have what they need to survive, whether it is help with their mortgages or whether it is health insurance they can afford.
Some may call that socialism. So be it. Call it what you want, but it's obvious that after trying conservatism and massive tax cuts for eight years and seeing where that led us, maybe a dose of European-style socialism doesn't sound all that bad anymore. They are having the economic crisis in Europe like they are having it here (inevitable in a global economy) but at least in Europe nobody is afraid they might get sick and not be able to afford the doctor.
If tax cuts were the secret to prosperity then you'd think after the $1.3 trillion Bush tax cut plan that was passed in March 2001, we'd all be flying high by now. I guess you can judge how high you are flying (AIG execs attending their taxpayer funded 'retreat' and others with golden parachutes excepted, of course.) We will be paying for the Bush tax cuts for generations to come.
But in fact, even during the most prosperous years of the Bush administration 200,000 jobs created in a month was considered 'good.' But that was less than the monthly average during the Clinton years. So let's get this straight-- the best that George Bush's economy could do anytime during his term was below Clinton's average.
And Senator Obama was right-- real incomes have gone down. He offers a different plan, one that is oriented towards making sure that ordinary people have what they need to survive, whether it is help with their mortgages or whether it is health insurance they can afford.
Some may call that socialism. So be it. Call it what you want, but it's obvious that after trying conservatism and massive tax cuts for eight years and seeing where that led us, maybe a dose of European-style socialism doesn't sound all that bad anymore. They are having the economic crisis in Europe like they are having it here (inevitable in a global economy) but at least in Europe nobody is afraid they might get sick and not be able to afford the doctor.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Here it comes
Remember a few weeks ago when a McCain campaign advisor said that this year's campaign would be about 'personalities, not issues?'
And it began to be, with a flurry of negative ads by the McCain campaign, and misleading and irrelevant attacks on Senator Obama (i.e. claiming that the timeworn phrase, 'lipstick on a pig' was actually a sexist attack on Sarah Palin.)
Then we've had two weeks of the worst economic news since the Depression, and the focus was forcibly ripped back onto issues.
Now that the rescue plan has passed though the McCain campaign has wasted no time in saying they will be going back to the negative ad campaign.
Specifically, having used up Jeremiah Wright and milked the 'muslim' theme for all it is worth they intend to concentrate on Obama's past associations with disgraced fundraiser Tony Rezko and former Weatherman Bill Ayres. Never mind that when Rezko knew Obama he had not been convicted of anything, nor that Obama's associations with Ayres are at best of the 'acquaintance' variety and mostly occurred years in the past before Obama had any reason to know anything about Ayers' past, they intend to Willie Hortonize the campaign (former GOP operative Lee Atwater once bragged that he would have Mike Dukakis 'married' to murderer Willie Horton by the end of the campaign, and at least in the political sense, he did.)
In fact, the GOP are masters of pesonal attacks and distortions (does the term, 'swift-boat' raise any flags?) So we knew this was coming.
But that doesn't mean their campaign tactics have to work. There are two reasons to think they won't.
The first is that the issues this year are just plain too big. In 2004 they were plenty big (and Kerry was leading in the polls throughout the summer) but with the help of the 'swifties' the Bush campaign was able to sufficiently polarize the electorate to help their man across the finish line. But this year, after four more years of Bush failures, the issues are fundamentally huge. Rescue package or no, another Great Depression is staring us right in the face. Our army is still dangerously overextended, still fighting two wars at once and we now face a resurgent Russia to add to the same challenges that we faced in 2004.
The second is that the Obama campaign appears to be ready to respond to this crap. That makes a huge difference. The common theme between the Dukakis and Kerry campaigns is that they chose not to respond until it was too late. In contrast, Bill Clinton (who the GOP didn't even have to look for questionable associations, they had plenty on the candidate himself) was the master of the counterattack, and when he was negatively attacked, his campaign was able to throw it back, and harder (generally within hours or even minutes of the attack so it got into the same news story.) Obama has already pointed out that McCain 'plans to turn the page away from the issues and towards negative attacks' even before the first ones hit the airwaves.
Make no mistake. The Republicans are desperate to win the Presidency this year. They know very well that the failure called neo-conservatism that manifested itself in the 2006 congressional elections may well prevent the party that just two years ago had total control of the government from regaining Congress for at least a generation. Democrats are poised to make huge gains in the Senate. There is even an outside chance they could get to the sixty votes needed to prevent the GOP from even using the filibuster but even if they don't it seems likely that the GOP will be effectively prevented from using that tactic unless they can convince moderate Republican Senators like Arlen Specter or Olympia Snowe to suddenly become such fierce partisans that they would go along with filibusters designed to do nothing other than derail the Democrats (unlikely IMO that they would do that very often.) Democrats will almost certainly increase, maybe even substantially increase their margin in the House, probably by enough so that they could even survive the defection of some 'blue dog' Democrats on key legislation and still push through a liberal agenda.
So there is only one path the GOP has to block what they would see as the ultimate doomsday scenario: having a Republican in the White House, who would use his veto pen to stifle a wholesale rush towards (for example) withdrawl from Iraq, universal health care and tax rates where the wealthy pay their fair share. They still haven't given up on gaining a consrvative majority on the Supreme Court but that certainly can only happen with a Republican President (even though he'd have to nominate someone who could get past a Democratic Senate.) Having even lame-duck Bush in the White House has stifled Democratic efforts to do a lot of things, ranging from ending the Iraq war to providing health care for children, so the GOP is now going to put all its resources behind getting John McCain there. And to do it they will smear, distort and engage in the politics of personal destruction against Barack Obama.
But don't despair. Those politics can be defeated (as Bill Clinton proved) and it's the only thing they have left anymore.
And it began to be, with a flurry of negative ads by the McCain campaign, and misleading and irrelevant attacks on Senator Obama (i.e. claiming that the timeworn phrase, 'lipstick on a pig' was actually a sexist attack on Sarah Palin.)
Then we've had two weeks of the worst economic news since the Depression, and the focus was forcibly ripped back onto issues.
Now that the rescue plan has passed though the McCain campaign has wasted no time in saying they will be going back to the negative ad campaign.
Specifically, having used up Jeremiah Wright and milked the 'muslim' theme for all it is worth they intend to concentrate on Obama's past associations with disgraced fundraiser Tony Rezko and former Weatherman Bill Ayres. Never mind that when Rezko knew Obama he had not been convicted of anything, nor that Obama's associations with Ayres are at best of the 'acquaintance' variety and mostly occurred years in the past before Obama had any reason to know anything about Ayers' past, they intend to Willie Hortonize the campaign (former GOP operative Lee Atwater once bragged that he would have Mike Dukakis 'married' to murderer Willie Horton by the end of the campaign, and at least in the political sense, he did.)
In fact, the GOP are masters of pesonal attacks and distortions (does the term, 'swift-boat' raise any flags?) So we knew this was coming.
But that doesn't mean their campaign tactics have to work. There are two reasons to think they won't.
The first is that the issues this year are just plain too big. In 2004 they were plenty big (and Kerry was leading in the polls throughout the summer) but with the help of the 'swifties' the Bush campaign was able to sufficiently polarize the electorate to help their man across the finish line. But this year, after four more years of Bush failures, the issues are fundamentally huge. Rescue package or no, another Great Depression is staring us right in the face. Our army is still dangerously overextended, still fighting two wars at once and we now face a resurgent Russia to add to the same challenges that we faced in 2004.
The second is that the Obama campaign appears to be ready to respond to this crap. That makes a huge difference. The common theme between the Dukakis and Kerry campaigns is that they chose not to respond until it was too late. In contrast, Bill Clinton (who the GOP didn't even have to look for questionable associations, they had plenty on the candidate himself) was the master of the counterattack, and when he was negatively attacked, his campaign was able to throw it back, and harder (generally within hours or even minutes of the attack so it got into the same news story.) Obama has already pointed out that McCain 'plans to turn the page away from the issues and towards negative attacks' even before the first ones hit the airwaves.
Make no mistake. The Republicans are desperate to win the Presidency this year. They know very well that the failure called neo-conservatism that manifested itself in the 2006 congressional elections may well prevent the party that just two years ago had total control of the government from regaining Congress for at least a generation. Democrats are poised to make huge gains in the Senate. There is even an outside chance they could get to the sixty votes needed to prevent the GOP from even using the filibuster but even if they don't it seems likely that the GOP will be effectively prevented from using that tactic unless they can convince moderate Republican Senators like Arlen Specter or Olympia Snowe to suddenly become such fierce partisans that they would go along with filibusters designed to do nothing other than derail the Democrats (unlikely IMO that they would do that very often.) Democrats will almost certainly increase, maybe even substantially increase their margin in the House, probably by enough so that they could even survive the defection of some 'blue dog' Democrats on key legislation and still push through a liberal agenda.
So there is only one path the GOP has to block what they would see as the ultimate doomsday scenario: having a Republican in the White House, who would use his veto pen to stifle a wholesale rush towards (for example) withdrawl from Iraq, universal health care and tax rates where the wealthy pay their fair share. They still haven't given up on gaining a consrvative majority on the Supreme Court but that certainly can only happen with a Republican President (even though he'd have to nominate someone who could get past a Democratic Senate.) Having even lame-duck Bush in the White House has stifled Democratic efforts to do a lot of things, ranging from ending the Iraq war to providing health care for children, so the GOP is now going to put all its resources behind getting John McCain there. And to do it they will smear, distort and engage in the politics of personal destruction against Barack Obama.
But don't despair. Those politics can be defeated (as Bill Clinton proved) and it's the only thing they have left anymore.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
God Bless, Joe
Joe Biden has abruptly cancelled his campaign appearances tonight and tomorrow to be with his wife and her mother.
Bonnie Jacobs, Biden's mother in law is in a hospice in Pennsylvania and is reported to be very ill. David Waid, a spokesman for Biden put out a statement advising that Biden has suspended campaigning to be with his wife, mother in law and the rest of his family at this time.
We are keeping Senator Biden and his family in our thoughts and prayers.
UPDATE: Apparently Bonnie Jacobs has passed away. Best thoughts and wishes for Jill Biden and the family.
Bonnie Jacobs, Biden's mother in law is in a hospice in Pennsylvania and is reported to be very ill. David Waid, a spokesman for Biden put out a statement advising that Biden has suspended campaigning to be with his wife, mother in law and the rest of his family at this time.
We are keeping Senator Biden and his family in our thoughts and prayers.
UPDATE: Apparently Bonnie Jacobs has passed away. Best thoughts and wishes for Jill Biden and the family.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Too cute by half
The first thing that Sarah Palin said at last night's debate was to Joe Biden, "Hey, can I call you Joe?"
Certainly that fit her 'folksy' outlook better than if she'd used 'Senator Biden,' though at a time when people are looking for knowlege and breadth of understanding about the myriad issues facing America today I'm not sure if 'folksy' is what they want. We've had eight years of 'folksy,' (remember that supporters of President Bush bragged about him being a 'C' student?) Where has it gotten us? Into a very, very tough spot, that's where.
But I was waiting for a specific 'Joe' line, and it came towards the end of the debate.
Palin responded to something Biden had said with, "Say it ain't so, Joe."
For all but the oldest of baseball fans, the zinger there was lost. But it's one of the most famous sayings to come out of an awful situation.
The 1919 Chicago White Sox, led by their star, "Shoeless Joe" Jackson (considered by many baseball historians to be the second greatest player of his day, after Ty Cobb) won the American league pennant and were favored to win the World Series. Gamblers bought off eight members of the team, including Jackson, paying them money to lose the series on purpose. And sure enough, they did lose. The next year the plot fell apart. As Jackson left the Federal Courthouse, the story is told that a young fan, who had always idolized Jackson and looked up to him as a role model, went up to the star with tears in his eyes and pleaded, "Say it ain't so, Joe." Of course the great Joe Jackson could only hang his head in shame as he knew he could not speak those three simple words.
Maybe in ninety years, Mark McGwire's "I'm not here to talk about the past," will be similarly enshrined in America's lexicon of phrases whose original meaning is slowly being lost, but somehow I doubt it. It's hard to imagine heartbreak in a Senate subcommittee the same way as it is to imagine it in a ten year old boy.
So what was Palin up to by alluding to baseball's most painful moment of the past century? And yes, even though it happened before virtually anyone alive today can remember I rank the 'Black Sox scandal' as a peculiarly painful moment in the history of baseball ahead of the tragic and untimely deaths of stars Lou Gehrig, Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson, the ugly and horrible treatment that was accorded to Jackie Robinson all through the National League (and which came back to life though not so intensely and echoed again a quarter century later for Henry Aaron), the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, the Pete Rose ban, the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and the recent 'roid rage' scandals. All painful moments for baseball, but none so painful as the Black Sox scandal. Apparently Palin wanted to suggest something deeper than just "I think you're wrong about that, Senator." Viscerally the pain from the first time that phrase was uttered still lingers, even among people who aren't quite sure why it should hurt-- but it does.
Not coincidentally, Barack Obama is from the south side of Chicago-- White Sox territory.
Certainly that fit her 'folksy' outlook better than if she'd used 'Senator Biden,' though at a time when people are looking for knowlege and breadth of understanding about the myriad issues facing America today I'm not sure if 'folksy' is what they want. We've had eight years of 'folksy,' (remember that supporters of President Bush bragged about him being a 'C' student?) Where has it gotten us? Into a very, very tough spot, that's where.
But I was waiting for a specific 'Joe' line, and it came towards the end of the debate.
Palin responded to something Biden had said with, "Say it ain't so, Joe."
For all but the oldest of baseball fans, the zinger there was lost. But it's one of the most famous sayings to come out of an awful situation.
The 1919 Chicago White Sox, led by their star, "Shoeless Joe" Jackson (considered by many baseball historians to be the second greatest player of his day, after Ty Cobb) won the American league pennant and were favored to win the World Series. Gamblers bought off eight members of the team, including Jackson, paying them money to lose the series on purpose. And sure enough, they did lose. The next year the plot fell apart. As Jackson left the Federal Courthouse, the story is told that a young fan, who had always idolized Jackson and looked up to him as a role model, went up to the star with tears in his eyes and pleaded, "Say it ain't so, Joe." Of course the great Joe Jackson could only hang his head in shame as he knew he could not speak those three simple words.
Maybe in ninety years, Mark McGwire's "I'm not here to talk about the past," will be similarly enshrined in America's lexicon of phrases whose original meaning is slowly being lost, but somehow I doubt it. It's hard to imagine heartbreak in a Senate subcommittee the same way as it is to imagine it in a ten year old boy.
So what was Palin up to by alluding to baseball's most painful moment of the past century? And yes, even though it happened before virtually anyone alive today can remember I rank the 'Black Sox scandal' as a peculiarly painful moment in the history of baseball ahead of the tragic and untimely deaths of stars Lou Gehrig, Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson, the ugly and horrible treatment that was accorded to Jackie Robinson all through the National League (and which came back to life though not so intensely and echoed again a quarter century later for Henry Aaron), the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, the Pete Rose ban, the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and the recent 'roid rage' scandals. All painful moments for baseball, but none so painful as the Black Sox scandal. Apparently Palin wanted to suggest something deeper than just "I think you're wrong about that, Senator." Viscerally the pain from the first time that phrase was uttered still lingers, even among people who aren't quite sure why it should hurt-- but it does.
Not coincidentally, Barack Obama is from the south side of Chicago-- White Sox territory.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Palin takes a dig at Biden's age, but it was obviously scripted
It's been a couple of weeks since I've written anything about Sarah Palin. Truthfully, there really isn't much to write.
But I have to question something she said last week to Katie Couric that was broadcast today, and which she also said at a rally in Ohio.
She said she has been listening to Joe Biden's speeches since she was in the second grade.
The original comments came at an Ohio rally Monday, when Palin told the cheering crowd, "I'm looking forward to meeting [Biden] too, I've never met him before — but I've been hearing about his senate speeches since I was in, like the second grade."
Hmmm. My kids are pretty politically in tune, but I can guarantee you that when they were in the second grade they did not turn on C-SPAN II so they could listen to Senate speeches.
And somehow Palin just doesn't come across as that wonkish to me.
So this line was obviously inserted. Palin, 44, is clearly trying to take a swipe at the age of Biden, who is 66.
But I don't see how she wins on that at all. For one thing, the vice President only becomes President if the President doesn't finish his term. And Obama is 47. For another thing, if Biden, at 66 is old, then what about John McCain, who is six years older than Biden?
It is true that Biden and McCain are statistically speaking more likely to not make it through the next four years than are Obama and Palin. But put it this way-- suppose that in the next four years McCain and Biden both go to meet their maker. In that case, would you rather have elected this year's Democratic ticket, or this year's Republican ticket?
But I have to question something she said last week to Katie Couric that was broadcast today, and which she also said at a rally in Ohio.
She said she has been listening to Joe Biden's speeches since she was in the second grade.
The original comments came at an Ohio rally Monday, when Palin told the cheering crowd, "I'm looking forward to meeting [Biden] too, I've never met him before — but I've been hearing about his senate speeches since I was in, like the second grade."
Hmmm. My kids are pretty politically in tune, but I can guarantee you that when they were in the second grade they did not turn on C-SPAN II so they could listen to Senate speeches.
And somehow Palin just doesn't come across as that wonkish to me.
So this line was obviously inserted. Palin, 44, is clearly trying to take a swipe at the age of Biden, who is 66.
But I don't see how she wins on that at all. For one thing, the vice President only becomes President if the President doesn't finish his term. And Obama is 47. For another thing, if Biden, at 66 is old, then what about John McCain, who is six years older than Biden?
It is true that Biden and McCain are statistically speaking more likely to not make it through the next four years than are Obama and Palin. But put it this way-- suppose that in the next four years McCain and Biden both go to meet their maker. In that case, would you rather have elected this year's Democratic ticket, or this year's Republican ticket?
Monday, September 29, 2008
Obama: the safe alternative to McCain
John McCain's whole strategy has been based on essentially two elements-- the first is to try and suggest that for America to elect Barack Obama would be to take too big of a risk, and the second is to argue that McCain is a 'safe' alternative.
But I think that might be just a little bit backwards.
An article out yesterday in the New York Times (maybe why one of McCain's managers tried to stage a 'pre-emptive strike' against the Times) by accusing them of bias even before this article came out highlights John McCain's own gambling habits and more importantly ties to the gaming industry.
Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.
A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.
The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress....
in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.
This is troubling to me on two levels.
The first is the matter of McCain's campaign rhetoric. Now, I know that the way the game is played in Washington is thought lobbyists who can raise millions of dollars to help a candidate-- if he gives them what they want-- or millions to defeat him if he goes against their interests. But Mr. 'straight talk' has staked a lot of his campaign by claiming to be a reformer, and in particular one who doesn't tie himself to lobbyists or special interests. Instead of being a hypocrite about it, why not just fess up, and say 'I've been a tool of the gaming industry for years?' The article even quotes a gaming industry expert who calls McCain, “One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” Yeah, there are people who might have trouble with that one, but at least then McCain wouldn't be pretending to be something he's not, and that he never was.
The second way this is troubling to me is much more profound, however. Now, I recognize that there is nothing illegal about gambling in a casino, and many good and honest people do. But it also says something about a person's decision making process. And let's face it. The recent past, whether it be McCain's gamble that he could raise enough money fast enough in 2007 to support a $100 million political machine for the primary (a gamble which failed), his gamble that he could skip the Iowa caucuses and still chase down Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination (a gamble that succeeded, thanks to Mike Huckabee getting in Romney's way), his gamble to choose none of the VP candidates his campaign had been vetting for months and instead pick a little-known Governor or Alaska to run for VP (a gamble which looked like it succeeded early on but as time goes on appears more and more questionable), or his gamble last week to play chicken with the debate and try to get credit for the bailout package (a gamble which failed), it is clear from John McCain's decision making process that he likes to take chances, often acting impulsively.
It isn't hard to look for another individual who makes decisions the same way. And on virtually all of them, John McCain has stood right by his side and rolled the dice with him. That person of course is George W. Bush.
President Bush gambled by pushing forward with deregulation, including of banks and of the financial services industry. John McCain stood right there alongside of Bush.
President Bush gambled that we could pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. It's true that John McCain voted against the first round of tax cuts, but now he stands right with Bush in wanting to make them permanent.
President Bush gambled that we could take time away from the Afghan war and the people who had killed 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11 to go invade another country, Iraq. John McCain stood with him on that decision.
President Bush gambled that the Iraq war would be short, easy and lead to a democracy that we could count on to help us find all those WMD that had to be stored in huge stockpiles all over Iraq. John McCain gambled on that right alongside of President Bush.
President Bush tried to gamble with our Social Security into a privatization scheme that would have tied it to financial markets. John McCain stood right there with Bush and gambled on that one too. Thank God that Barack Obama and Congress stood up and gave a resounding 'no' to that one. Imagine how much more quickly the financial 'iceberg' that Social Security faces would be coming at us if our Social Security was all wrapped up in the financial mess we see right in front of us.
The problem with gambling of course is as Kenny Rogers sang in the song, "The Gambler,"
You've got to know when to hold 'em,
Know when to fold 'em.
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table,
There'll be time enough for counting,
When the dealin's done.
And for both George Bush and John McCain, their downfall is that second line. Have you ever seen either of them fold and admit to a mistake? Admit that maybe we need to do something differently than what they've been pushing? Well, yeah-- John McCain did change his position on the Bush tax cuts that got us here in the first place. Now he wants to keep them. Trust me, they really like guys like that in Vegas, ones who even when they have a winning hand, throw it away in exchange for a losing hand.
After eight years of a Gambler in the White House (and not a very good one, at that) I'm certain that WE can't take the roll the dice on another risk-taker, especially one who has shown he really doesn't play his cards very well.
Luckily we don't have to. There is a safe alternative. When Barack Obama makes a decision he doesn't gamble. The way he chose Biden is instructive. He collects all the information that he has available. He reads it and ponders what he has read (Obama even took a week off the campaign trail out in Hawaii so he could work throught this decision.) He puts his head together with his advisors (which now includes Biden, who as the chair of the Foreign Services Committee has a great deal of experience in the one area where Obama recognized that he might need some help.) Obama is also a man of faith, so I suspect he prays for help in making the right decision. Then he makes it. And once it is made, he sticks firmly to it. At the same time, he does learn by experience. So for example, this year he opposed a 'vacation' from the Federal gasoline tax (an idea that McCain supported,) relying on his experience from doing the same kind of thing in Illinois and observing that the tax cut failed to reduce gas prices in Illinois (the reason for why it doesn't work would involve a discussion of the mathematical/economic concept of a relatively inelastic equilibrium point on the supply and demand curve which is too complicated to explain here, but Obama gets it.)
With the country facing it's most difficult economic crisis since the 1930's, we need a deliberate and careful decision maker, and one who is forceful in carrying out decisions but also able to recognize what works and what doesn't.
What we can't afford is to gamble on another gambler.
But I think that might be just a little bit backwards.
An article out yesterday in the New York Times (maybe why one of McCain's managers tried to stage a 'pre-emptive strike' against the Times) by accusing them of bias even before this article came out highlights John McCain's own gambling habits and more importantly ties to the gaming industry.
Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.
A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.
The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress....
in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.
This is troubling to me on two levels.
The first is the matter of McCain's campaign rhetoric. Now, I know that the way the game is played in Washington is thought lobbyists who can raise millions of dollars to help a candidate-- if he gives them what they want-- or millions to defeat him if he goes against their interests. But Mr. 'straight talk' has staked a lot of his campaign by claiming to be a reformer, and in particular one who doesn't tie himself to lobbyists or special interests. Instead of being a hypocrite about it, why not just fess up, and say 'I've been a tool of the gaming industry for years?' The article even quotes a gaming industry expert who calls McCain, “One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” Yeah, there are people who might have trouble with that one, but at least then McCain wouldn't be pretending to be something he's not, and that he never was.
The second way this is troubling to me is much more profound, however. Now, I recognize that there is nothing illegal about gambling in a casino, and many good and honest people do. But it also says something about a person's decision making process. And let's face it. The recent past, whether it be McCain's gamble that he could raise enough money fast enough in 2007 to support a $100 million political machine for the primary (a gamble which failed), his gamble that he could skip the Iowa caucuses and still chase down Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination (a gamble that succeeded, thanks to Mike Huckabee getting in Romney's way), his gamble to choose none of the VP candidates his campaign had been vetting for months and instead pick a little-known Governor or Alaska to run for VP (a gamble which looked like it succeeded early on but as time goes on appears more and more questionable), or his gamble last week to play chicken with the debate and try to get credit for the bailout package (a gamble which failed), it is clear from John McCain's decision making process that he likes to take chances, often acting impulsively.
It isn't hard to look for another individual who makes decisions the same way. And on virtually all of them, John McCain has stood right by his side and rolled the dice with him. That person of course is George W. Bush.
President Bush gambled by pushing forward with deregulation, including of banks and of the financial services industry. John McCain stood right there alongside of Bush.
President Bush gambled that we could pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. It's true that John McCain voted against the first round of tax cuts, but now he stands right with Bush in wanting to make them permanent.
President Bush gambled that we could take time away from the Afghan war and the people who had killed 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11 to go invade another country, Iraq. John McCain stood with him on that decision.
President Bush gambled that the Iraq war would be short, easy and lead to a democracy that we could count on to help us find all those WMD that had to be stored in huge stockpiles all over Iraq. John McCain gambled on that right alongside of President Bush.
President Bush tried to gamble with our Social Security into a privatization scheme that would have tied it to financial markets. John McCain stood right there with Bush and gambled on that one too. Thank God that Barack Obama and Congress stood up and gave a resounding 'no' to that one. Imagine how much more quickly the financial 'iceberg' that Social Security faces would be coming at us if our Social Security was all wrapped up in the financial mess we see right in front of us.
The problem with gambling of course is as Kenny Rogers sang in the song, "The Gambler,"
You've got to know when to hold 'em,
Know when to fold 'em.
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table,
There'll be time enough for counting,
When the dealin's done.
And for both George Bush and John McCain, their downfall is that second line. Have you ever seen either of them fold and admit to a mistake? Admit that maybe we need to do something differently than what they've been pushing? Well, yeah-- John McCain did change his position on the Bush tax cuts that got us here in the first place. Now he wants to keep them. Trust me, they really like guys like that in Vegas, ones who even when they have a winning hand, throw it away in exchange for a losing hand.
After eight years of a Gambler in the White House (and not a very good one, at that) I'm certain that WE can't take the roll the dice on another risk-taker, especially one who has shown he really doesn't play his cards very well.
Luckily we don't have to. There is a safe alternative. When Barack Obama makes a decision he doesn't gamble. The way he chose Biden is instructive. He collects all the information that he has available. He reads it and ponders what he has read (Obama even took a week off the campaign trail out in Hawaii so he could work throught this decision.) He puts his head together with his advisors (which now includes Biden, who as the chair of the Foreign Services Committee has a great deal of experience in the one area where Obama recognized that he might need some help.) Obama is also a man of faith, so I suspect he prays for help in making the right decision. Then he makes it. And once it is made, he sticks firmly to it. At the same time, he does learn by experience. So for example, this year he opposed a 'vacation' from the Federal gasoline tax (an idea that McCain supported,) relying on his experience from doing the same kind of thing in Illinois and observing that the tax cut failed to reduce gas prices in Illinois (the reason for why it doesn't work would involve a discussion of the mathematical/economic concept of a relatively inelastic equilibrium point on the supply and demand curve which is too complicated to explain here, but Obama gets it.)
With the country facing it's most difficult economic crisis since the 1930's, we need a deliberate and careful decision maker, and one who is forceful in carrying out decisions but also able to recognize what works and what doesn't.
What we can't afford is to gamble on another gambler.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The line of the night
After Senator McCain accused Senator Obama of compiling the 'most liberal' record in the Senate, Obama responded,
"Mostly that's just me opposing George Bush's wrong-headed policies."
Great answer.
"Mostly that's just me opposing George Bush's wrong-headed policies."
Great answer.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The difference in the candidates.
During the past 24 hours we've seen one candidate engage in a political stunt, jumping into the middle of ongoing negotiations affecting the future of the country as if only He can save us (clearly hoping to get credited with whatever the President and the leaders of the House and Senate come up with). We've seen him refuse to go to a debate that has been scheduled for almost a year, even though there are myriad ways he could still participate (whether by hopping on a campaign plane that could be in Mississippi in a couple of hours, or via satelllite hookup) in a debate in which millions of Americans, still unsure who to vote for, want to see the candidates answer some tough questions.
We've seen the other candidate not lose his cool, come to Washington when the President asked him to but also make it clear that he is prepared to work on the bailout plan AND debate.
What's more, this has been the pattern of the campaign. Obama rarely gets rattled, and doesn't go into crisis mode at the drop of a hat. For McCain, who has weathered numerous changes of his own doing during the campaign (at least two financial crises and several staff shakups) it seems like everything is a crisis all the time.
I know that for the next President I want the guy who won't blow his stack or run off and feel he has to do something rash instead of taking a few minutes to talk about it.
We've seen the other candidate not lose his cool, come to Washington when the President asked him to but also make it clear that he is prepared to work on the bailout plan AND debate.
What's more, this has been the pattern of the campaign. Obama rarely gets rattled, and doesn't go into crisis mode at the drop of a hat. For McCain, who has weathered numerous changes of his own doing during the campaign (at least two financial crises and several staff shakups) it seems like everything is a crisis all the time.
I know that for the next President I want the guy who won't blow his stack or run off and feel he has to do something rash instead of taking a few minutes to talk about it.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The timeline makes it clear that it is McCain who milked an opportunity for crass political gamesmanship
Here is the timeline of events according to both campaigns source
From the Obama campaign:
At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.
From the McCain campaign:
Senator Obama phoned Senator McCain at 8:30 am this morning but did not reach him. The topic of Senator Obama's call to Senator McCain was never discussed. Senator McCain was meeting with economic advisers and talking to leaders in Congress throughout the day prior to calling Senator Obama. At 2:30 pm, Senator McCain phoned Senator Obama and expressed deep concern that the plan on the table would not pass as it currently stands. He asked Senator Obama to join him in returning to Washington to lead a bipartisan effort to solve this problem.
Now, for a moment let's assume that events are exactly as the McCain campaign describes (though in fact the two statements in their details are not actually contradictory, just emphasizing different points.)
In that case I have only one question: why did Senator McCain then just moments after the phone call to Senator Obama, come out publically and issue a unilateral statement in which he said he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington and attempting to call off the debate? That was so quick that even if Obama was taking a few minutes to ponder Senator McCain's offer and talk it over with his staff he wouldn't have had time to respond before it was all over the airwaves.
If the two of them were really working on coming together to propose a resolution to this crisis (and both campaign statements seem to suggest that that was the gist of the conversations during the day) then why did McCain clearly become the one to throw it out the window in favor of a political circus?
Was it because he is willing to throw away an opportunity to demonstrate real bipartisanship in exchange for a few moments of appearing to demonstrate it?
Was it because he wanted to make sure (even though both campaigns agree that Obama called first) that he would get credit for whatever comes of this, and not Obama?
Was it because he's not been spending adequate time preparing for the debate and was afraid of getting his rear end handed to him on a subject he is supposed to have the edge on?
Was it because if he can move the first Presidential debate to next Thursday he will be able to cancel the Vice Presidential debate so people won't have their own chance to judge how Palin, who has already been kept away from reporters, thinks on her feet? Is there something about Palin we don't know yet?
Was it because with the polls moving against him, McCain just lost his head and did something desperate?
As we learn more about what happened today and the timeline of events, it is increasingly clear that it is John McCain who has some big questions to answer.
From the Obama campaign:
At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.
From the McCain campaign:
Senator Obama phoned Senator McCain at 8:30 am this morning but did not reach him. The topic of Senator Obama's call to Senator McCain was never discussed. Senator McCain was meeting with economic advisers and talking to leaders in Congress throughout the day prior to calling Senator Obama. At 2:30 pm, Senator McCain phoned Senator Obama and expressed deep concern that the plan on the table would not pass as it currently stands. He asked Senator Obama to join him in returning to Washington to lead a bipartisan effort to solve this problem.
Now, for a moment let's assume that events are exactly as the McCain campaign describes (though in fact the two statements in their details are not actually contradictory, just emphasizing different points.)
In that case I have only one question: why did Senator McCain then just moments after the phone call to Senator Obama, come out publically and issue a unilateral statement in which he said he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington and attempting to call off the debate? That was so quick that even if Obama was taking a few minutes to ponder Senator McCain's offer and talk it over with his staff he wouldn't have had time to respond before it was all over the airwaves.
If the two of them were really working on coming together to propose a resolution to this crisis (and both campaign statements seem to suggest that that was the gist of the conversations during the day) then why did McCain clearly become the one to throw it out the window in favor of a political circus?
Was it because he is willing to throw away an opportunity to demonstrate real bipartisanship in exchange for a few moments of appearing to demonstrate it?
Was it because he wanted to make sure (even though both campaigns agree that Obama called first) that he would get credit for whatever comes of this, and not Obama?
Was it because he's not been spending adequate time preparing for the debate and was afraid of getting his rear end handed to him on a subject he is supposed to have the edge on?
Was it because if he can move the first Presidential debate to next Thursday he will be able to cancel the Vice Presidential debate so people won't have their own chance to judge how Palin, who has already been kept away from reporters, thinks on her feet? Is there something about Palin we don't know yet?
Was it because with the polls moving against him, McCain just lost his head and did something desperate?
As we learn more about what happened today and the timeline of events, it is increasingly clear that it is John McCain who has some big questions to answer.
McCain scheme to duck out of the debate Friday
John McCain has said he is suspending his campaign so he can rush to Washington and work on the bailout plan with Congressional leaders. He is also saying he wants to postpone the first Presidential debate, which is scheduled for Friday and has been scheduled for almost a year.
This is the same John McCain who has not bothered to show up for a Senate vote since April 8.
This is the same John McCain who has favored deregulation for years, a big part of why we have this crisis going on even as we speak.
This is the same John McCain who admitted earlier this year that he doesn't know very much about economics and said he needs to be 'educated' about it.
The truth of the matter is that McCain has been out there campaigning nearly every day while Senator Obama has spent some time off the campaign trail prepping for the debates. So McCain's offer is a lot like an unprepared student who realizes two days before the big exam that he hasn't been cracking the books, trying to figure out a way to get his test pushed back so he can catch up to the rest of the class.
This is the same John McCain who has not bothered to show up for a Senate vote since April 8.
This is the same John McCain who has favored deregulation for years, a big part of why we have this crisis going on even as we speak.
This is the same John McCain who admitted earlier this year that he doesn't know very much about economics and said he needs to be 'educated' about it.
The truth of the matter is that McCain has been out there campaigning nearly every day while Senator Obama has spent some time off the campaign trail prepping for the debates. So McCain's offer is a lot like an unprepared student who realizes two days before the big exam that he hasn't been cracking the books, trying to figure out a way to get his test pushed back so he can catch up to the rest of the class.
Monday, September 22, 2008
The price of a missed opportunity
I'd like to take you back for a moment, to a time when American policy makers faced an enormous decision.
The time was during the spring of 2002. Following the September 11 attacks, the U.S. had assembled a truly international coalition (remember the world was on our side at that time) to go after al-Qaeda and their Taliban allies in Afghanistan. In an extraordinarily brilliant operation we had driven al-Qaeda from their stronghold in Tora Bora and by working with local warlords had driven the Taliban into a small sliver of mountains and caves in southwest-central Afghanistan.
Though nothing is ever perfect, we won a smashing victory by January of 2002. The one blunder we made was in contracting local Afghan forces to go in and finish off bin Laden instead of doing it ourselves, and he apparently still had either the influence or the money to make his way through their lines. But bin Laden and al-Qaeda were effectively non-entities and the only real question was how long he could stay ahead of our dragnet. We had at that time the full cooperation of the Pakistani military as well. The warlords and other Afghans who had chafed under the rule of the Taliban were glad enough to be gone from it, and the future looked pretty bright.
But then George Bush decided to essentially leave things as they were in Afghanistan, leaving only enough forces there to carry on a war of attrition and he turned our attention to Iraq.
The first major American politician to speak out against the change was Al Gore. He made it clear in the summer of 2002 that we should finish the job in Afghanistan and that it was a mistake to take our eye off the ball. So Republicans accused Gore of playing politics with national security so he could run for President in 2004. Gore responded by making a statement that he would not seek the Presidency in 2004 and continued to press for finishing the job in Afghanistan. I think this is why Republicans so detest Al Gore, more so than pretty much any other Democratic politician (even Bill Clinton.) It is clear that this one area of disagreement would likely have defined where a Gore Presidency would have diverged from the events of the Bush Presidency, and every day that goes by with more bad news from Afghanistan makes it clear that Gore was onto something.
Since then we've seen a muscular re-emergence of the Taliban. The local warlords (who have dubious loyalty to begin with and can be easily bought) began to reconsider their allegiances (why stick with us when it was clear that we were no longer prioritizing them?) The U.S. and our Afghan allies have pretty much become restricted to the cities and military bases, and control only the countryside they are patrolling in, and when they leave it reverts to Taliban control (President Mohammed Karzai has been derisively referred to as 'the mayor of Kabul,' a poke at how far his authority extends.) I've said it before and I've said it again-- the situation we now find ourselves in in Afghanistan is exactly the situation the Soviet Union found itself in during the 1980's. To most Afghans, we have become the Soviet Union.
More ominously the Taliban have strengthened themselves in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. With the unpopular Musharraf dictatorship itself stirring up opposition to its rule (and by implication support for Islamicists) our best hope for a reliable ally in the war against terror was former Prime Minister Benizir Bhutto. But she was killed, and it is still unknown exactly who was responsible and whether the failure of Pakistan's intelligence service to protect her was by design or incompetence. After seven years of war the Pakistani military and intelligence service, always full of Islamist sympathizers, have lost patience with America and now are led by a weak civilian government that is a very very questionable ally. There is ample reason to suspect that bin Laden and the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership now resides on the Pakistani side of the border. We've conducted more and more raids into Pakistan. The Pakistanis say they want advance notice, but with their intel service rife with Taliban informants we might as well CC al-Qaeda directly if we plan to tell the Pakistanis what we are doing. This week things came to an ugly, ugly head. A massive truck bomb at the Marriott hotel killed scores of people. It is clearly the work of either al-Qaeda or the Taliban (does it even matter anymore which one?) The target was twofold: a clear message to the Pakistani government that they are in grave danger if they continue to work with the Americans at all (a message they appear to have gotten with their first action to kick out the FBI and announce they will run the investigation themselves) and to western interests in Pakistan directly-- obviously the Marriott is an American hotel chain and this one was a favorite of western diplomats and media members, some of whom are among the victims.
Most worrisome of all, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Right now there is no reason to believe that any Islamicists have access to their nuclear arsenal, but with the situation deteriorating as it is, can anyone be confident that they won't have such access soon? If the specter of a nuclear cloud over an American city courtesy of a weapon smuggled in by terrorists was used to scare people into supporting the Iraq war, perhaps by allowing al-Qaeda and the Taliban to recover in Afghanistan and then expand over the border and establish themselves so strongly in Pakistan the Bush administration has in fact brought that specter far closer to reality than you or I want to imagine.
Now let's concede for the moment that after five long years of war Iraq appears to be stabilized. It won't become a Jeffersonian democracy to be sure, but we have routed al-Qaeda in Iraq (recall that while Saddam Hussein didn't want any organization operating in Iraq that he didn't control, bin Laden sent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Baghdad in December 2002 when war was imminent officially to seek dental treatment but in fact to begin organizing al-Qaeda in Iraq.) The Sunnis and Shiites are not carrying out ethnic cleansing anymore. And we know for sure that Saddam's alleged WMD stockpile was a ruse designed to maintain his internal power and scare his blood enemy the Iranians.
But let's say Iraq is a success. Forget for a moment the five years of war there, or the trillion dollar pricetag or the 4,000 American soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. There is just one question. is there ANYTHING AT ALL we gain from Iraq that makes it worth the price of letting our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan escape the noose and grow back as they have? With Pakistan and its nukes now part of the equation, the answer is clearly no.
The best evidence that conservatives know they have screwed up is found in the stretching they go through to justify their ill-fated decision to shift focus. The last time I put up a post on the Afghan situation they kept alluding to the losses al-Qaeda and the Taliban have taken since we went to war on October 7, 2001. Point conceded (though they've never been as strong in Pakistan as they are today.) But that argument misses the point. By January 2002 they were driven back to near total defeat. That was when we took our foot off their neck instead of finishing the job. And as a result they are now a virulent cancer, and in a political climate there where our options are far worse than they were at the time. To claim that because they are weaker now than they were on September 11 so we need not worry is like claiming that because Russia is weaker now than the Soviet Union was during the height of the Cold War therefore there is nothing to fear from Putin. Obviously there is a lot to fear from Putin (the past couple of months should have made that clear) and there is a lot to fear from the Taliban and AQ.
Leaving the root of the weed in the ground instead of finishing it off will likely go down as the most consequential decision of the Bush Presidency, and I only hope that the next President will figure out a way to put together a plan that really does get rid of them once and for all.
The time was during the spring of 2002. Following the September 11 attacks, the U.S. had assembled a truly international coalition (remember the world was on our side at that time) to go after al-Qaeda and their Taliban allies in Afghanistan. In an extraordinarily brilliant operation we had driven al-Qaeda from their stronghold in Tora Bora and by working with local warlords had driven the Taliban into a small sliver of mountains and caves in southwest-central Afghanistan.
Though nothing is ever perfect, we won a smashing victory by January of 2002. The one blunder we made was in contracting local Afghan forces to go in and finish off bin Laden instead of doing it ourselves, and he apparently still had either the influence or the money to make his way through their lines. But bin Laden and al-Qaeda were effectively non-entities and the only real question was how long he could stay ahead of our dragnet. We had at that time the full cooperation of the Pakistani military as well. The warlords and other Afghans who had chafed under the rule of the Taliban were glad enough to be gone from it, and the future looked pretty bright.
But then George Bush decided to essentially leave things as they were in Afghanistan, leaving only enough forces there to carry on a war of attrition and he turned our attention to Iraq.
The first major American politician to speak out against the change was Al Gore. He made it clear in the summer of 2002 that we should finish the job in Afghanistan and that it was a mistake to take our eye off the ball. So Republicans accused Gore of playing politics with national security so he could run for President in 2004. Gore responded by making a statement that he would not seek the Presidency in 2004 and continued to press for finishing the job in Afghanistan. I think this is why Republicans so detest Al Gore, more so than pretty much any other Democratic politician (even Bill Clinton.) It is clear that this one area of disagreement would likely have defined where a Gore Presidency would have diverged from the events of the Bush Presidency, and every day that goes by with more bad news from Afghanistan makes it clear that Gore was onto something.
Since then we've seen a muscular re-emergence of the Taliban. The local warlords (who have dubious loyalty to begin with and can be easily bought) began to reconsider their allegiances (why stick with us when it was clear that we were no longer prioritizing them?) The U.S. and our Afghan allies have pretty much become restricted to the cities and military bases, and control only the countryside they are patrolling in, and when they leave it reverts to Taliban control (President Mohammed Karzai has been derisively referred to as 'the mayor of Kabul,' a poke at how far his authority extends.) I've said it before and I've said it again-- the situation we now find ourselves in in Afghanistan is exactly the situation the Soviet Union found itself in during the 1980's. To most Afghans, we have become the Soviet Union.
More ominously the Taliban have strengthened themselves in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. With the unpopular Musharraf dictatorship itself stirring up opposition to its rule (and by implication support for Islamicists) our best hope for a reliable ally in the war against terror was former Prime Minister Benizir Bhutto. But she was killed, and it is still unknown exactly who was responsible and whether the failure of Pakistan's intelligence service to protect her was by design or incompetence. After seven years of war the Pakistani military and intelligence service, always full of Islamist sympathizers, have lost patience with America and now are led by a weak civilian government that is a very very questionable ally. There is ample reason to suspect that bin Laden and the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership now resides on the Pakistani side of the border. We've conducted more and more raids into Pakistan. The Pakistanis say they want advance notice, but with their intel service rife with Taliban informants we might as well CC al-Qaeda directly if we plan to tell the Pakistanis what we are doing. This week things came to an ugly, ugly head. A massive truck bomb at the Marriott hotel killed scores of people. It is clearly the work of either al-Qaeda or the Taliban (does it even matter anymore which one?) The target was twofold: a clear message to the Pakistani government that they are in grave danger if they continue to work with the Americans at all (a message they appear to have gotten with their first action to kick out the FBI and announce they will run the investigation themselves) and to western interests in Pakistan directly-- obviously the Marriott is an American hotel chain and this one was a favorite of western diplomats and media members, some of whom are among the victims.
Most worrisome of all, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Right now there is no reason to believe that any Islamicists have access to their nuclear arsenal, but with the situation deteriorating as it is, can anyone be confident that they won't have such access soon? If the specter of a nuclear cloud over an American city courtesy of a weapon smuggled in by terrorists was used to scare people into supporting the Iraq war, perhaps by allowing al-Qaeda and the Taliban to recover in Afghanistan and then expand over the border and establish themselves so strongly in Pakistan the Bush administration has in fact brought that specter far closer to reality than you or I want to imagine.
Now let's concede for the moment that after five long years of war Iraq appears to be stabilized. It won't become a Jeffersonian democracy to be sure, but we have routed al-Qaeda in Iraq (recall that while Saddam Hussein didn't want any organization operating in Iraq that he didn't control, bin Laden sent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Baghdad in December 2002 when war was imminent officially to seek dental treatment but in fact to begin organizing al-Qaeda in Iraq.) The Sunnis and Shiites are not carrying out ethnic cleansing anymore. And we know for sure that Saddam's alleged WMD stockpile was a ruse designed to maintain his internal power and scare his blood enemy the Iranians.
But let's say Iraq is a success. Forget for a moment the five years of war there, or the trillion dollar pricetag or the 4,000 American soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. There is just one question. is there ANYTHING AT ALL we gain from Iraq that makes it worth the price of letting our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan escape the noose and grow back as they have? With Pakistan and its nukes now part of the equation, the answer is clearly no.
The best evidence that conservatives know they have screwed up is found in the stretching they go through to justify their ill-fated decision to shift focus. The last time I put up a post on the Afghan situation they kept alluding to the losses al-Qaeda and the Taliban have taken since we went to war on October 7, 2001. Point conceded (though they've never been as strong in Pakistan as they are today.) But that argument misses the point. By January 2002 they were driven back to near total defeat. That was when we took our foot off their neck instead of finishing the job. And as a result they are now a virulent cancer, and in a political climate there where our options are far worse than they were at the time. To claim that because they are weaker now than they were on September 11 so we need not worry is like claiming that because Russia is weaker now than the Soviet Union was during the height of the Cold War therefore there is nothing to fear from Putin. Obviously there is a lot to fear from Putin (the past couple of months should have made that clear) and there is a lot to fear from the Taliban and AQ.
Leaving the root of the weed in the ground instead of finishing it off will likely go down as the most consequential decision of the Bush Presidency, and I only hope that the next President will figure out a way to put together a plan that really does get rid of them once and for all.
Friday, September 19, 2008
An idea for Federal bailouts: let We the People keep 20%
For a change, it looks like George W. Bush did the right thing. Not that he had a lot of choice.
We came remarkably close earlier this week to a repeat of the events of 1929. Bush, whose legacy is already about as bad as it could be, along with his two biggest economic appointees-- Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, was faced with a stark choice between being Herbert Hoover or Franklin Roosevelt.
He and Bernanke and Paulson picked Roosevelt and moved to have the Federal Government aggressively intervene in the banking system to stave off a collapse. Things had gotten so bad at one point this week that investors were actually paying money to park their investments in safe treasury bonds, the first time since the great Depression that the effective interest rate on any kind of federal note had been negative.
A lot of pro-deregulation market oriented conservatives howled at the price tag of the federal bailout-- maybe as high as a trillion dollars. It joins the Iraq war and the medicare prescription drug handout to the pharmaceutical industry as trillion dollar debt busters that the Bush administration has given us. Unlike the first two however this one is absolutely necessary. Without it, well we'd be stuck in 1929 and all that that would augur for a very bleak future.
That isn't to say though that we should just let things go on as business as usual.
To start with, there is some outrage to go around. For instance, here are some golden parachute numbers, for CEO's of firms that failed monumentally:
Stanley O'Neill, Merrill Lynch: $161 million.
Jimmy Cayne, Bear Stearns: $61.3 million (plus another $4 million plus in J.P. Morgan stock, the company that ended up absorbing Bear Stearns.)
Michael Perry, IndyMac Bank: $37.5 million
Richard Fuld, Lehman Brothers: $22 million
Robert Willumstad (AIG July-Sept. 2008): $7 million
Martin Sullivan (AIG 2005-2008): $47 million
I'm sure I could run any bank into the ground as well as these guys did. Why can't I get that kind of cash?
Here is the good golden parachute news:
Daniel Mudd, Fannie Mae: $0
Richard Syron, Freddie Mac: $0.
Federal regulators, thanks to the hybrid nature of the companies to begin with, were able to ensure that Mudd's and Syron's golden parachutes failed to deploy. Chalk up two big wins for Federal control.
Beyond that, it is abundantly clear that the 'free market' that American conservatives like to sing about, really means that the rewards are private, but the risk is the responsiblity of all of us. Some hardcore ideologues on the right have been speaking out against the bailouts this week suggesting that we should just let the whole system fail and come crashing down. I guess they wouldn't have a problem with us going back to the 1930's when millions of ordinary people lived under bridges and ate boiled weeds for dinner but I do have a problem with that. Rather, I believe that since ultimately we as a society are on the hook for the long term stability of our economy anyway, and that the economy is tied to the stability of these banks, we should share in the rewards that come with this risk.
I don't necessarily mean through higher taxes either. Some are right that if you tax wealth then the wealthy will find and exploit loopholes to escape taxes. That's not a reason to give up on getting them to pay their fair share in taxes but it does mean that we can't expect to count on taxation of companies who can certainly employ enough lobbyists to create all the loopholes they need as the only answer here.
Nor does regulation provide the answer (though I do agree that we will need to take a look at tightening regulation). We already know that even as these institutions and banks were failing they employed armies of lobbyists and made millions of dollars in campaign contributions all over Washington so it's a fact that regulations can be skirted or rewritten over time (as institutional memories of why they were there in the first place fade).
And yeah, I'd love to see Washington ban corporate lobbyists but you and I both know that isn't going to happen anytime soon, or if it does there will be some loophole left open so they can still funnel money to candidates. So let's talk about practical solutions here, not pie-in-the-sky pledges to 'change Washington' as a way to prevent another crisis originating on Wall Street.
No, what I propose is very simple and straightforward. If the Federal Government is going to effectively back up institutions and banks that make risky decisions and then step in and absorb the fallout when the risks become reality, then we (collectively, as taxpayers) should share in the rewards. Let the Treasury Department hang onto a share-- say in the 10-20% range-- of stock in the company, and mandate that this stock remain under the control of the Federal government for at least 20 years after any bailout. That way if and when the company regains profitability then We the People will get a direct return on our 'investment' (made as it was under the darkest of circumstances.)
This may be criticized as 'socialistic' but let's face it-- the bailout and takeover of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG are nothing else. Maintaining a 20% federal ownership of companies like these actually would achieve three goals: 1. it would over time pay us all back as a society so that we wouldn't just be paying out good money for bad, 2. it would help stabilize the share price as the company clawed its way back, and 3. while 20% isn't a majority and the major decisions would ultimately be left to the rest of the investors and the CEO they appoint, it's a big enough piece that the government would have a lot of input. Treasury Secretaries are by nature a cautious bunch so having a representative of the treasury department representing taxpayer interests in a corporate boardroom meeting might influence those decisions in a more cautious direction but clearly that isn't such a bad thing.
And then once 20 years are past, the treasury department could slowly release our shares onto the open market, using the profits to pay off our own national debt or to pay for other spending (possibly reducing the need to collect taxes from the rest of us.)
We came remarkably close earlier this week to a repeat of the events of 1929. Bush, whose legacy is already about as bad as it could be, along with his two biggest economic appointees-- Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, was faced with a stark choice between being Herbert Hoover or Franklin Roosevelt.
He and Bernanke and Paulson picked Roosevelt and moved to have the Federal Government aggressively intervene in the banking system to stave off a collapse. Things had gotten so bad at one point this week that investors were actually paying money to park their investments in safe treasury bonds, the first time since the great Depression that the effective interest rate on any kind of federal note had been negative.
A lot of pro-deregulation market oriented conservatives howled at the price tag of the federal bailout-- maybe as high as a trillion dollars. It joins the Iraq war and the medicare prescription drug handout to the pharmaceutical industry as trillion dollar debt busters that the Bush administration has given us. Unlike the first two however this one is absolutely necessary. Without it, well we'd be stuck in 1929 and all that that would augur for a very bleak future.
That isn't to say though that we should just let things go on as business as usual.
To start with, there is some outrage to go around. For instance, here are some golden parachute numbers, for CEO's of firms that failed monumentally:
Stanley O'Neill, Merrill Lynch: $161 million.
Jimmy Cayne, Bear Stearns: $61.3 million (plus another $4 million plus in J.P. Morgan stock, the company that ended up absorbing Bear Stearns.)
Michael Perry, IndyMac Bank: $37.5 million
Richard Fuld, Lehman Brothers: $22 million
Robert Willumstad (AIG July-Sept. 2008): $7 million
Martin Sullivan (AIG 2005-2008): $47 million
I'm sure I could run any bank into the ground as well as these guys did. Why can't I get that kind of cash?
Here is the good golden parachute news:
Daniel Mudd, Fannie Mae: $0
Richard Syron, Freddie Mac: $0.
Federal regulators, thanks to the hybrid nature of the companies to begin with, were able to ensure that Mudd's and Syron's golden parachutes failed to deploy. Chalk up two big wins for Federal control.
Beyond that, it is abundantly clear that the 'free market' that American conservatives like to sing about, really means that the rewards are private, but the risk is the responsiblity of all of us. Some hardcore ideologues on the right have been speaking out against the bailouts this week suggesting that we should just let the whole system fail and come crashing down. I guess they wouldn't have a problem with us going back to the 1930's when millions of ordinary people lived under bridges and ate boiled weeds for dinner but I do have a problem with that. Rather, I believe that since ultimately we as a society are on the hook for the long term stability of our economy anyway, and that the economy is tied to the stability of these banks, we should share in the rewards that come with this risk.
I don't necessarily mean through higher taxes either. Some are right that if you tax wealth then the wealthy will find and exploit loopholes to escape taxes. That's not a reason to give up on getting them to pay their fair share in taxes but it does mean that we can't expect to count on taxation of companies who can certainly employ enough lobbyists to create all the loopholes they need as the only answer here.
Nor does regulation provide the answer (though I do agree that we will need to take a look at tightening regulation). We already know that even as these institutions and banks were failing they employed armies of lobbyists and made millions of dollars in campaign contributions all over Washington so it's a fact that regulations can be skirted or rewritten over time (as institutional memories of why they were there in the first place fade).
And yeah, I'd love to see Washington ban corporate lobbyists but you and I both know that isn't going to happen anytime soon, or if it does there will be some loophole left open so they can still funnel money to candidates. So let's talk about practical solutions here, not pie-in-the-sky pledges to 'change Washington' as a way to prevent another crisis originating on Wall Street.
No, what I propose is very simple and straightforward. If the Federal Government is going to effectively back up institutions and banks that make risky decisions and then step in and absorb the fallout when the risks become reality, then we (collectively, as taxpayers) should share in the rewards. Let the Treasury Department hang onto a share-- say in the 10-20% range-- of stock in the company, and mandate that this stock remain under the control of the Federal government for at least 20 years after any bailout. That way if and when the company regains profitability then We the People will get a direct return on our 'investment' (made as it was under the darkest of circumstances.)
This may be criticized as 'socialistic' but let's face it-- the bailout and takeover of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG are nothing else. Maintaining a 20% federal ownership of companies like these actually would achieve three goals: 1. it would over time pay us all back as a society so that we wouldn't just be paying out good money for bad, 2. it would help stabilize the share price as the company clawed its way back, and 3. while 20% isn't a majority and the major decisions would ultimately be left to the rest of the investors and the CEO they appoint, it's a big enough piece that the government would have a lot of input. Treasury Secretaries are by nature a cautious bunch so having a representative of the treasury department representing taxpayer interests in a corporate boardroom meeting might influence those decisions in a more cautious direction but clearly that isn't such a bad thing.
And then once 20 years are past, the treasury department could slowly release our shares onto the open market, using the profits to pay off our own national debt or to pay for other spending (possibly reducing the need to collect taxes from the rest of us.)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Hillary was right to dodge a GOP photo op
Today Hillary Clinton is being derided for backing out of a rally at the United Nations to protest Iranian nuclear development once she found out that Sarah Palin would also be there.
I think she made a wise decision. There is nothing wrong with protesting Iranian nuclear development or the failure of the U.N. to take a stronger stand against it (though I believe that the Iranians will do what they want to do whether the U.N. toughens their stand or not; and our own misadventure in Iraq has effectively taken any real threat of a U.S. invasion of Iran off the table for the foreseeable future since we right now don't have the available military units to be able to carry it out.)
There is also nothing wrong with Governor Palin going as a representative of the McCain campaign, clearly indicating Senator McCain's support for stronger U.N. action against Iran.
The reason Hillary was right to decide against going is that she might have been stuck with a no-win situation, completely unrelated to Iran or nukes.
Keep in mind that last week Hillary informed the Obama campaign that while she is willing to keep up the attack on McCain she refused to jump all over Palin. And I can see why that is, she herself would gain nothing from such an attack and frankly is probably happy in at least the most general sense that a woman (even one she herself would never support) is now running for VP. It does in a sense validate the historic nature of Hillary Clinton's campaign earlier this year.
Suppose that Governor Palin made a point of seeking out Senator Clinton and making a light conversation, possibly including a handshake? In this hyper-political year, that would be all over the front page and would seem to imply that Hillary at least found a McCain-Palin Presidency acceptable (remember that the McCain folks have spent a lot of time and effort going after disaffected Clinton supporters.) So if that is not a message that Hillary Clinton wants to send she can't afford to be photographed yukking it up while shaking hands with Sarah Palin (though publically neither woman has said anything negative about the other recently).
The other alternative, to publically snub Governor Palin, would be even worse. That would cast Hillary as purely a party hack (not that you would find many Republicans who would say she's not, but it's still a label she doesn't want to refresh.) It would also cast her to a lot of people as rude and would seem to undercut the whole success she had in earning 18 million votes. And that would also be a headline that the Obama campaign doesn't need right now, with Obama gaining momentum in the polls this week thanks to a combination of the Lehman Brothers-Dow Jones-AIG economic woes and McCain's gaffe on Monday that have definitively moved the focus away from Sarah Palin and onto the economy.
So going to the rally was a lose-lose proposition for Hillary. True she is now still getting some bad press (and the right will spin this is a snub of Palin anyway) but it's a minor story and doesn't look one fiftieth as bad as a face to face snub would be.
I think she made a wise decision. There is nothing wrong with protesting Iranian nuclear development or the failure of the U.N. to take a stronger stand against it (though I believe that the Iranians will do what they want to do whether the U.N. toughens their stand or not; and our own misadventure in Iraq has effectively taken any real threat of a U.S. invasion of Iran off the table for the foreseeable future since we right now don't have the available military units to be able to carry it out.)
There is also nothing wrong with Governor Palin going as a representative of the McCain campaign, clearly indicating Senator McCain's support for stronger U.N. action against Iran.
The reason Hillary was right to decide against going is that she might have been stuck with a no-win situation, completely unrelated to Iran or nukes.
Keep in mind that last week Hillary informed the Obama campaign that while she is willing to keep up the attack on McCain she refused to jump all over Palin. And I can see why that is, she herself would gain nothing from such an attack and frankly is probably happy in at least the most general sense that a woman (even one she herself would never support) is now running for VP. It does in a sense validate the historic nature of Hillary Clinton's campaign earlier this year.
Suppose that Governor Palin made a point of seeking out Senator Clinton and making a light conversation, possibly including a handshake? In this hyper-political year, that would be all over the front page and would seem to imply that Hillary at least found a McCain-Palin Presidency acceptable (remember that the McCain folks have spent a lot of time and effort going after disaffected Clinton supporters.) So if that is not a message that Hillary Clinton wants to send she can't afford to be photographed yukking it up while shaking hands with Sarah Palin (though publically neither woman has said anything negative about the other recently).
The other alternative, to publically snub Governor Palin, would be even worse. That would cast Hillary as purely a party hack (not that you would find many Republicans who would say she's not, but it's still a label she doesn't want to refresh.) It would also cast her to a lot of people as rude and would seem to undercut the whole success she had in earning 18 million votes. And that would also be a headline that the Obama campaign doesn't need right now, with Obama gaining momentum in the polls this week thanks to a combination of the Lehman Brothers-Dow Jones-AIG economic woes and McCain's gaffe on Monday that have definitively moved the focus away from Sarah Palin and onto the economy.
So going to the rally was a lose-lose proposition for Hillary. True she is now still getting some bad press (and the right will spin this is a snub of Palin anyway) but it's a minor story and doesn't look one fiftieth as bad as a face to face snub would be.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Now I know which Republican President John McCain reminds me of.
Quotable:
The fundamental business of the country, that is production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis
-- Herbert Hoover, October 30, 1929.
Our economy, I think, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
-- John McCain, Sept. 15, 2008.
The fundamental business of the country, that is production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis
-- Herbert Hoover, October 30, 1929.
Our economy, I think, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
-- John McCain, Sept. 15, 2008.
It isn't just John McCain who doesn't have a clue about the economy. Neither do the people advising him.
Today, Hewlett Packard announced another 24,000 job cuts, officially associated with its merger with Electronic Data Systems.
The job cuts however represent eight percent of HP's total workforce, suggesting that there are some intrinsic structural problems that are also being addressed. In fact, current CEO Frank Hurd has been very aggressive about cutting jobs since he was first hired in 2005.
While I might complain about Hurd's image as the new "Chainsaw Al" or point out that he is far from the only one doing it in these times (the unemployment rate has risen a full point since April) there is one thing that it also points out: the company that Hurd took over was unprofitable, bloated and badly in need of the overhaul he has brought to it.
And who did he replace? The answer is Carly Fiorina. Apparently she is at least partially responsible for the slow, lumbering company that Hurd has been riding herd on (and with some success, at that-- I'll give him credit for that.)
Hmmm. Not long ago the same Carly Fiorina stepped up to become John McCain's chief economic advisor, after Phil Gramm had to step down for saying that the bad economy was just in people's heads and that we had become a 'nation of whiners.'
Just today, John McCain said at a rally in Florida that the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong.' This on a day when the Dow fell 500 points and National Public Radio reported that the International Monetary Fund will be conducting a stability assessment of the United States economy, a 'privilege' usually reserved for third world debtor nations that are in danger of defaulting on their loans.
Well, remember that McCain admitted back during the primaries that he doesn't know very much about economics.
So who else can he get economic advice from? Palin? Whatever her strengths and weaknesses are, has anyone even from Fox News suggested that she knows anything at all about subprime mortgage defaults or has a clue about how to get people back to work?
Keep in mind that the standard Republican playbook of 'tax cuts for the wealthy, loosen regulation and let the market drive the economy' has been in force for eight years and it's clear that it doesn't work.
Electing McCain would be a disaster. Not only has he pretty much appropriated the Bush economic strategy as his own (apparently not being able to figure out a better one) but the people around him, even his economic advisors, seem to have no better a record on the economy than he does.
The job cuts however represent eight percent of HP's total workforce, suggesting that there are some intrinsic structural problems that are also being addressed. In fact, current CEO Frank Hurd has been very aggressive about cutting jobs since he was first hired in 2005.
While I might complain about Hurd's image as the new "Chainsaw Al" or point out that he is far from the only one doing it in these times (the unemployment rate has risen a full point since April) there is one thing that it also points out: the company that Hurd took over was unprofitable, bloated and badly in need of the overhaul he has brought to it.
And who did he replace? The answer is Carly Fiorina. Apparently she is at least partially responsible for the slow, lumbering company that Hurd has been riding herd on (and with some success, at that-- I'll give him credit for that.)
Hmmm. Not long ago the same Carly Fiorina stepped up to become John McCain's chief economic advisor, after Phil Gramm had to step down for saying that the bad economy was just in people's heads and that we had become a 'nation of whiners.'
Just today, John McCain said at a rally in Florida that the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong.' This on a day when the Dow fell 500 points and National Public Radio reported that the International Monetary Fund will be conducting a stability assessment of the United States economy, a 'privilege' usually reserved for third world debtor nations that are in danger of defaulting on their loans.
Well, remember that McCain admitted back during the primaries that he doesn't know very much about economics.
So who else can he get economic advice from? Palin? Whatever her strengths and weaknesses are, has anyone even from Fox News suggested that she knows anything at all about subprime mortgage defaults or has a clue about how to get people back to work?
Keep in mind that the standard Republican playbook of 'tax cuts for the wealthy, loosen regulation and let the market drive the economy' has been in force for eight years and it's clear that it doesn't work.
Electing McCain would be a disaster. Not only has he pretty much appropriated the Bush economic strategy as his own (apparently not being able to figure out a better one) but the people around him, even his economic advisors, seem to have no better a record on the economy than he does.
Monday, September 15, 2008
McCain still claiming the economy is 'fundamentally strong.'
John McCain today at a rally in Florida-- that's right, TODAY, said that he feels that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."
Today was the day after Lehman Brothers bank failed and went to bankruptcy court, Merrill Lynch failed and avoided bankruptcy court only because they were bought out by Bank of America (which is itself taking a risk, having recently also bought out mortgage giant Countrywide) and AIG appears headed to bankruptcy court unless something happens fast.
Today was the day when the DOW dropped five hundred points.
Today was the day I heard a report on National Public Radio that the International Monetary Fund will be conducting a stability assessment on the U.S. economy, something which normally happens to developing countries that are on an unsustainable economic course.
Just in the past five months the unemployment rate has spiked upward by a full percentage point.
Strong fundamentals?
I guess if you consider $5 million a year to be the threshhold of 'rich,' the fundamentals are strong. I guess if your plan for tax cuts, market based reform and resistance to regulation is indistinguishable from what President Bush has done for the past seven years, the fundamentals are strong.
For anyone besides John McCain the fundamentals are just plain wrong.
Today was the day after Lehman Brothers bank failed and went to bankruptcy court, Merrill Lynch failed and avoided bankruptcy court only because they were bought out by Bank of America (which is itself taking a risk, having recently also bought out mortgage giant Countrywide) and AIG appears headed to bankruptcy court unless something happens fast.
Today was the day when the DOW dropped five hundred points.
Today was the day I heard a report on National Public Radio that the International Monetary Fund will be conducting a stability assessment on the U.S. economy, something which normally happens to developing countries that are on an unsustainable economic course.
Just in the past five months the unemployment rate has spiked upward by a full percentage point.
Strong fundamentals?
I guess if you consider $5 million a year to be the threshhold of 'rich,' the fundamentals are strong. I guess if your plan for tax cuts, market based reform and resistance to regulation is indistinguishable from what President Bush has done for the past seven years, the fundamentals are strong.
For anyone besides John McCain the fundamentals are just plain wrong.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
John McCain would rather throw kids to pedophiles than lose an election
John McCain was confronted during an interview last night on "The View" by host Joy Behar.
She specifically mentioned an ad the McCain campaign has put out (including the legally mandated caption, "I'm John McCain and I approved this message") which accuses Barack Obama of supporting comprehensive sex education children starting in kindergarten.
The truth is that Obama as a state legislature sponsored a bill that mandated teaching kindergarten students to recognize what is inappropriate touching by adults and who they can report it to.
Behar pointed to that ad specifically and said that what McCain had said he stood by (calling this 'comprehensive sex education for kindergarten students') 'are lies.' She asked if he still stood by them.
McCain's response?
"They are not lies."
OK. So this guy claims that calling a program to educate children about child molesters is the same thing as 'comprehensive sex education' for kindergartners.
What is worse, the McCain campaign came out with a statement trying to justify the ad suggesting that this kind of stuff should be taught at home (apparently still using their stock answer for 'sex education' to discuss teaching about pedophiles.) Taking education for kindergartners about pedophiles out of the schools is very dangerous since most child molestation does happen at home, and obviously pedophiles who have children in the home would be the last ones to teach them that there is anything wrong with it, or who they could talk to about it.
This ad, and this ad alone (and McCain's refusal when confronted with the facts to repudiate it) should be enough to disqualify John McCain from any serious consideration for the Presidency.
She specifically mentioned an ad the McCain campaign has put out (including the legally mandated caption, "I'm John McCain and I approved this message") which accuses Barack Obama of supporting comprehensive sex education children starting in kindergarten.
The truth is that Obama as a state legislature sponsored a bill that mandated teaching kindergarten students to recognize what is inappropriate touching by adults and who they can report it to.
Behar pointed to that ad specifically and said that what McCain had said he stood by (calling this 'comprehensive sex education for kindergarten students') 'are lies.' She asked if he still stood by them.
McCain's response?
"They are not lies."
OK. So this guy claims that calling a program to educate children about child molesters is the same thing as 'comprehensive sex education' for kindergartners.
What is worse, the McCain campaign came out with a statement trying to justify the ad suggesting that this kind of stuff should be taught at home (apparently still using their stock answer for 'sex education' to discuss teaching about pedophiles.) Taking education for kindergartners about pedophiles out of the schools is very dangerous since most child molestation does happen at home, and obviously pedophiles who have children in the home would be the last ones to teach them that there is anything wrong with it, or who they could talk to about it.
This ad, and this ad alone (and McCain's refusal when confronted with the facts to repudiate it) should be enough to disqualify John McCain from any serious consideration for the Presidency.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Why can't we adopt the Cuban hurricane plan?
It appears that hurricane Ike is set to nail the Texas coast, the city of Houston and a quarter of American oil refining capacity. I've already heard that when we wake up tomorrow morning gasoline prices may be up by as much as a half dollar (we filled both our vehicles this evening and lent my daughter twenty bucks so she could buy gas in case those rumors turn out to be right.)
I hope and pray that there is little loss of life (I'd say none, but one man in Corpus Christi, two hundred miles away, has already drowned in heavy surf).
There are some troubling questions I have right now though. The first is why when a mandatory evacuation was ordered for Galveston, so many coastal residents-- as many as a quarter million according to one site I read-- didn't leave. I know that about two weeks ago a lot of them left for Gustav, which weakened and then hit over two hundred miles away in Louisiana. But this was cleary much more dangerous than Gustav, it just seems to me that it is incredibly stupid to hang out on a low lying coastal island with a major hurricane coming. Well, I guess I should feel lucky that I live in a place without many natural disasters.
Now, I know why they haven't evacuated Houston. There was a botched evacuation three years ago for hurricane Rita and the highways ground to a standstill so that more people actually died out on the highway (of both storm-caused and non-storm caused accidents and other problems) than would have died if they'd all stayed home. But the question that has to be asked then is this: why haven't planners over the past three years developed a better evacuation plan for Houston? They knew this day would be here sooner or later. Not only could they have developed a secure network of local shelters (more on that later) but if necessary the state police have the authority to close highways, and if they have to even reverse highways (so that all lanes would lead in the same direction.) That would double the number of lanes available for evacuees. But for some reason they twiddled their thumbs for three years so that now that Houston is again a target all they can do is tell people to remain at home. Let's hope that Ike doesn't flood Houston too badly and that the inevitable damage to homes won't lead to loss of life.
There is another question that will have to be asked if Ike kills a lot of people (or even if it does not): Ike, as a much stronger category four storm, raked every bit of Cuba, crossing the island near its eastern end, with the eye running parallel to and just offshore for a couple of days as it worked its way up the island and then coming back onshore and nailing Havana. It then exited the island at very nearly the same point as Gustav had (and remember that Gustav was also a category four when it encountered Cuba). Yet in spite of what could have been a horrific loss of life (as there has been in Haiti, where Gustav, Hanna and Ike have likely killed at least a thousand people together-- maybe more, maybe many more) the total loss of life from all three hurricanes (Hanna also brushed by Cuba on the northeast) has been five (all from Ike.) Why do these things kill so few people in Cuba even when they are directily in the path? The answer is simple. In Cuba they have a network of local shelters, similar to bomb shelters where local residents can report and ride out the storm. In urban areas they are close enough for most people to walk to, but even in rural ares they are ubiquitous enough that people won't have to take very long to get to one.
I know, Cuba is a repressive communist dictatorship. True, it is. But that doesn't mean they can't do some things right, and the network of safe local shelthers makes a lot of sense. It is a smart alternative to being forced to choose between two risky alternatives-- evacuating millions of people down a few highways within a few hours, or hoping and praying that nothing happens to people who 'ride it out' in their homes.
But building safe local shelters would make entirely too much sense here, so expect no one to suggest that we do.
I hope and pray that there is little loss of life (I'd say none, but one man in Corpus Christi, two hundred miles away, has already drowned in heavy surf).
There are some troubling questions I have right now though. The first is why when a mandatory evacuation was ordered for Galveston, so many coastal residents-- as many as a quarter million according to one site I read-- didn't leave. I know that about two weeks ago a lot of them left for Gustav, which weakened and then hit over two hundred miles away in Louisiana. But this was cleary much more dangerous than Gustav, it just seems to me that it is incredibly stupid to hang out on a low lying coastal island with a major hurricane coming. Well, I guess I should feel lucky that I live in a place without many natural disasters.
Now, I know why they haven't evacuated Houston. There was a botched evacuation three years ago for hurricane Rita and the highways ground to a standstill so that more people actually died out on the highway (of both storm-caused and non-storm caused accidents and other problems) than would have died if they'd all stayed home. But the question that has to be asked then is this: why haven't planners over the past three years developed a better evacuation plan for Houston? They knew this day would be here sooner or later. Not only could they have developed a secure network of local shelters (more on that later) but if necessary the state police have the authority to close highways, and if they have to even reverse highways (so that all lanes would lead in the same direction.) That would double the number of lanes available for evacuees. But for some reason they twiddled their thumbs for three years so that now that Houston is again a target all they can do is tell people to remain at home. Let's hope that Ike doesn't flood Houston too badly and that the inevitable damage to homes won't lead to loss of life.
There is another question that will have to be asked if Ike kills a lot of people (or even if it does not): Ike, as a much stronger category four storm, raked every bit of Cuba, crossing the island near its eastern end, with the eye running parallel to and just offshore for a couple of days as it worked its way up the island and then coming back onshore and nailing Havana. It then exited the island at very nearly the same point as Gustav had (and remember that Gustav was also a category four when it encountered Cuba). Yet in spite of what could have been a horrific loss of life (as there has been in Haiti, where Gustav, Hanna and Ike have likely killed at least a thousand people together-- maybe more, maybe many more) the total loss of life from all three hurricanes (Hanna also brushed by Cuba on the northeast) has been five (all from Ike.) Why do these things kill so few people in Cuba even when they are directily in the path? The answer is simple. In Cuba they have a network of local shelters, similar to bomb shelters where local residents can report and ride out the storm. In urban areas they are close enough for most people to walk to, but even in rural ares they are ubiquitous enough that people won't have to take very long to get to one.
I know, Cuba is a repressive communist dictatorship. True, it is. But that doesn't mean they can't do some things right, and the network of safe local shelthers makes a lot of sense. It is a smart alternative to being forced to choose between two risky alternatives-- evacuating millions of people down a few highways within a few hours, or hoping and praying that nothing happens to people who 'ride it out' in their homes.
But building safe local shelters would make entirely too much sense here, so expect no one to suggest that we do.
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