The 2008 Presidential Campaign In One Picture

Watertiger has captured the essence of the 2008 election in one picture caption.

McCain: More Than Just Cranky

Last night I did something that I very rarely do. Two things, actually. The first was that I watched a baseball game on TV, and was actually interested in the outcome (Go Phillies!). Then, since the CBS evening news program was on so soon after, I watched that, too. On the news program, Bob Schieffer, Mister “George Bush is a regular guy" and "why do I need Democrats on the show to discuss a Republican scandal?”, mused about how dangerous the rhetoric from the McCain campaign was becoming. If I hadn’t had such a well-established position on the couch, I might have fallen off of it.

He's right, of course. It's dangerous both to McCain's campaign and to us as a country.

In today's column, Gail Collins caught the gist of the problem:

The Republican campaign strategy now involves sending their candidates to areas where everybody is a die-hard McCain supporter already. Then they yell about Obama until the crowd is so frenzied people start making threats. The rest of the country is supposed to watch and conclude that this would be an enjoyable way to spend the next four years.

Dear Old Golden Dog Days

McCain's problem, and the Republicans' in general, is so obvious that even David Brooks understands it. After explaining how conservative ideas reigned triumphant in the era of Reagan (and if that's not a premise that explains how out of touch Brooks is, I'm hard pressed to think of one that will), Brooks observes:

[O]ver the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.

The Class War Before Palin

This rhetorical strategy has continued, and worsened, to the present. Brooks, you may remember, was the New York Times columnist who couldn't be bothered to read his own newspaper before challenging Barack Obama to do something he'd done three days previously. That a man with so little situational awareness can recognize the intellectual bankruptcy of the McCain campaign's rhetoric is a testimonial to just how obvious it is. Or, it could be just random data, I suppose.

In any case, the mean-spirited nature of the McCain campaign is becoming a problem. In the CBS news segment I referred to, McCain was shown trying to tell a crowd of the faithful that Obama really wasn't a terrible person, and that the republic would doubtless survive an Obama Administration. He was greeted with boos. That's the danger - creating a schism so large in America that we won't be able to trust each other on anything of importance.

Hopefully, McCain has become aware of this and is willing to change. Unfortunately, there's not much else for him to talk about. As I've observed, it's going to be very difficult for him to portray himself as the guy who will fix our economy. He was so instrumental in breaking it in the first place that even a well-informed electorate wouldn't take him seriously. Our actual electorate will be even more skeptical, because that's how it's been in the past. The party in power when the economy turns bad is to blame, period. For once, wisdom and ignorance will lead one to the same conclusion.

The McCain campaign has made the ludicrous charge that the Obama campaign is one of the dirtiest ever. This, I think, should be ludicrous on its face. Obama, to his credit, has actually run one of the more effective campaigns of the last few decades while not indulging in the sort of mudslinging it used in the primaries, nor the kind that McCain has used in the general. Answering the opposition's bullshit isn't dirty politics. That's what the Obama campaign has done, and it's generally done it clearly and effectively.

So I suspect that McCain will continue to pursue this course in some form - make egregious statements about his opponent, and then occasionally sound a conciliatory note. He'll try to instill enough fear and doubt in voters' minds that they'll think twice about voting for "That One" while trying to still look like Presidential material. How well he'll do that remains to be seen.

For the sake of our present, as well as the future of our country and its political rhetoric, I earnestly hope that he fails badly.

Rolling Stone: Make-Believe Maverick

I'll add my voice to the chorus recommending that you read the Rolling Stone article on John McCain by Tim Dickinson. I certainly can't vouch for all of it, but parts of it ring true, like this one:

We have now watched McCain run twice for president. The first time he positioned himself as a principled centrist and decried the politics of Karl Rove and the influence of the religious right, imploring voters to judge candidates "by the example we set, by the way we conduct our campaigns, by the way we personally practice politics." After he lost in 2000, he jagged hard to the left — breaking with the president over taxes, drilling, judicial appointments, even flirting with joining the Democratic Party.

In his current campaign, however, McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000. He has embraced those he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," promised more drilling and deeper tax cuts, even compromised his vaunted opposition to torture. Intent on winning the presidency at all costs, he has reassembled the very team that so viciously smeared him and his family eight years ago, selecting as his running mate a born-again moose hunter whose only qualification for office is her ability to electrify Rove's base. And he has engaged in a "practice of politics" so deceptive that even Rove himself has denounced it, saying that the outright lies in McCain's campaign ads go "too far" and fail the "truth test."

Make-Believe Maverick

I've certainly been puzzled by this change. That's mostly because I figured there had to be at least some truth to the notion that McCain was the person he seemed to be in 2000. Dickinson's hypothesis, which is that McCain was always the self-centered bastard we are watching now, at least fits the facts.

So read, consider, and, as always, take it with a grain of salt until the people quoted confirm they said what they were quoted as saying.

Of Foxes And Hen Houses

Image credit: Composite image by Cujo359 (see NOTE)


You'd think from things John McCain has said recently that he's now ready to take the economy seriously:

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime critic of excessive government intervention, vowed on Sept. 16 to "put an end…to running Wall Street like a casino." At an Orlando rally Sept. 16, McCain called for a high-level commission to investigate the securities industry, and for ending "multimillion-dollar payouts to CEOs that have broken the public trust."

Wall Street Crashes the 2008 Election

Is anyone taking this seriously? I sure hope not. It's McCain's sort of laissez faire philosophy that got us into this mess. In an interview with Keith Olbermann Monday, Princeton University economist Paul Krugman remarked on the likelihood of McCain being the economy's savior:

OLBERMANN: The senator and the Republican campaign obviously selling themselves throughout the campaign as a break from the Bush administration on the subject of the economy and this sub-subject gigantic, disastrous black holes opening up in the middle of the economy. Is McCain actually a difference from Bush?

KRUGMAN: No, if he had said, at any point, look, you know, we need some regulation, we need some policing, if there was—I‘ve actually been trying to see if I can come up with anyone sort of on the Republican side who has said anything, who said anything about the housing bubble, who warned about subprime. You know, I can‘t see it. The fact of the matter is he‘s—and you know, what he says is, well, we‘re going to clean up Washington, and then I‘ll clean the markets. I don‘t understand.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Monday, September 15

Of course, the people Krugman refers to include John McCain. In short, not bloody likely. Here's what Phil Gramm, McCain's principle advisor on economic matters, did as a Senator:

In June 2000, Senator Gramm co-sponsored the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, a measure aimed at deregulating certain kinds of futures trading, but not energy futures. That bill never made it to the floor, and thus quietly died. Six months later, on December 15, Gramm curiously turned up as co-sponsor of a bill with the same name, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which did deregulate energy futures and which, without undergoing the usual committee hearings and preliminary votes, was immediately attached as a rider to an 11,000-page appropriations bill. It passed and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton six days later. Few lawmakers had likely perused the rider carefully, if they even knew it was there. And at any rate, Enron had given to the campaigns of over 200 legislators.

Phil Gramm’s Enron Favor

In short, he helped set up the conditions that Enron could exploit to screw both its customers and its stockholders.

Gramm set up many of the financial conditions we're facing now:

Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

Foreclosure Phil

Needless to say, there's much more:

The general co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), led the charge in 1999 to repeal a Depression-era banking regulation law that Democrat Barack Obama claimed on Thursday contributed significantly to today’s economic turmoil.

“A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change because the nature of business had changed,” the Illinois senator running for president said in a New York economic speech. “But by the time [it] was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework.”

Gramm’s role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation’s investment houses and practices didn’t stop there.

A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.

McCain guru linked to subprime crisis

But wait, it gets even better:

Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.

For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more than $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs.

McCain guru linked to subprime crisis

Not only did Gramm screw consumers and the economy, he even managed to fuck up the company he worked for. What's more, he was paid handsomely to do so. While he wasn't a CEO, Gramm is just the sort of person McCain was railing about in the lead quote of this article.

The Politico article I just quoted, which was written in March, is well worth a read if you want to know everything a voter ought to know about Phil Gramm. It's a sobering read. This is the guy McCain trusts to run the economy. Paul Krugman put it best, in a quote that's been widely cited around the Net:

KRUGMAN: Yes. I mean, if you‘re going to ask who is responsible for the, you know, which people in official capacity would bear the most responsibility for getting us into this mess it would be, number one, Alan Greenspan, and then, number two, Phil Gramm. He‘s at the core of this. I mean, it‘s—and by the way, whatever they may say officially, everybody knows that if McCain becomes president, Phil Gramm is, the odds [are] in favor (ph) for him to be the treasury secretary.

OLBERMANN: What would that do to the American economy, do you think?

KRUGMAN: Oh, boy. Well, you know, under current management, Hank Paulson, I have some sympathy for, the (INAUDIBLE) works for the czar, he can only do so much given the guy he works for. But boy, Phil Gramm, you know, Ben Bernanke, I think Hank Paulson understand that we could manage to have another Great Depression if we work at it hard enough. I think Phil Gramm might be just the guy to do it.

Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Monday, September 15

Barack Obama summed up his differences with McCain on the economy thus:

"This March, in the wake of the Bear Stearns bailout, I called for a new, 21st century regulatory framework to restore accountability, transparency, and trust in our financial markets. Just a few weeks earlier, Senator McCain made it clear where he stands: 'I'm always for less regulation,' he said, and referred to himself as 'fundamentally a deregulator.' This is what happens when you confuse the free market with a free license to let special interests take whatever they can get, however they can get it."

Obama Seizes Opportunity, Hammers McCain On Economy

We've been letting the foxes guard the hen houses for the last decade, and what we have to show for it is generally lousy growth followed by a financial system that seems to be on the verge of collapse. We've tried that strategy before, and each time it ended up either the same, or worse.

On this issue, Obama is clearly headed in the right direction, and McCain just as clearly can't be trusted to do anything but more of the same.

NOTE: The image on the left is an official image of the McCain for President campaign. The image on the right is Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, a photo of a Depression era migrant worker and her children. It is one of the more iconic images of that era.

Afterword: It doesn't fit in with the narrative above, so I offer this last quote from the Wikipedia as further example of the Republicans' inability to understand how to manage an economy:

Marriner S. Eccles, who served as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Chairman of the Federal Reserve from November 1934 to February 1948, detailed what he believed caused the Depression in his memoirs, Beckoning Frontiers (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951)[21]:

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery. [Emphasis in original.] Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth.

Wikipedia entry: The Great Depression

The tax changes brought about by the Bush Administration, coupled with the sort of "tort reform" Republicans have been pushing lately, rampant deregulation, and general lack of interest in helping out the working stiffs of this country are creating this same structural problem. McCain and Gramm gave these changes their full-throated support.

People are having to choose between the basics, like food or medicine, food or heat, or housing or health care for their children. People who can't afford to buy things aren't going to drive the economy out of a recession. The Republicans, with the help of far too many Democrats, have set up these conditions.

They've had their fun. It's time for adults to be in charge again.

UPDATE: Over at his blog, Bustednuckles had this to say about the financial meltdown we're watching:

That is what is what has been bothering me, with 24 hour a day coverage of this carnage, Billions and Billions of dollars in damages and the legal and economic Tow trucks hauling off the burnt out carcasses of Financial business left and right, The New York Times, WAPO, the LA Times, pick a news source, I have yet to see anyone point a finger at ANYONE as to just who is responsible for this disaster.

Oh, there is the vague reference to this or that but I don't see any names.
I call Bullshit!

I want names.

I Am Not Going To Ask Politely

You can start with the two I mentioned, Bustednuckles.

Kinsley On Sarah Palin

[Another illustration courtesy Bobby G. Full size image.]



Over at the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley has a column about John McCain and his running mate:

The official response to the question of experience emerged within hours and is only slightly more plausible: She may not have foreign policy experience, but -- unlike Obama, Joe Biden or even McCain -- she has executive experience. Why, before her stint as governor of Alaska, population 670,000, she was mayor of a town of 9,000. Remember when the Republicans mocked Bill Clinton for being governor of a "small state"? That would be Arkansas, population 2.8 million. As it happens, 670,000 is the population of metropolitan Little Rock.
...
[T]he important point about Palin's lack of experience isn't about Palin. It's about McCain. And the question is not how his choice of Palin might complicate his ability to use the "experience" issue or whether he will have to drop experience as an issue. It's not about the proper role of experience as an issue. It's not about experience at all. It's about honesty. The question should be whether McCain -- and all the other Republicans who have been going on for months about Obama's dangerous lack of foreign policy experience -- ever meant a word of it. And the answer is apparently not.

Experience? Never Mind

One of a political campaign's legitimate rhetorical approaches is to point out weaknesses in the opponent's views or resume. That's part of campaigning. What they have to do is avoid getting caught like this in such an obvious predicament created by their own talking points. The Republicans have done just that. In a country that had a truly free press, McCain would be skewered for this, but in America, he quite probably will get away with it.

Palin probably isn't any less qualified, on paper, to be President than Barack Obama. The difference as I see it, is that Palin's demonstrated lack of interest in learning about the rest of the world is what makes her disqualified. Her own family is a living testament to how wrong her views on family planning are. In that regard, she's a stark contrast to both Obama and Joe Biden.

I find it rather frightening that at a time when knowledge and the opportunities to obtain that knowledge are so plentiful that we produce and elect leaders like Sarah Palin. She makes the current President look like a Rhodes Scholar. We're in for troubling times when the people who run our country can't be bothered to understand how it, or the rest of the world, work.

And John McCain has done his country a serious disservice to have named someone so disqualified as the next in line for the Presidency.

What About the Other Veep Candidate?

[UPDATE: Bobby G. left this graphic in the comments, so I'll use it as long as he doesn't mind. Full size image here.]



For whatever it's worth, I've offered my opinion about Barack Obama's choice for a running mate, and about what he should have been looking for. I suppose it's only fair that I spend a bit of time dissecting John McCain's choice.

First off, I'm not one of those who imagine that this is some sort of temporary choice, or that McCain will dump Sarah Palin before the convention in hopes of finding a newer model. It's hard to imagine someone with McCain's ego admitting that he was wrong. They won't choose another candidate unless forced to.

As folks like Steve Benen have noted, Palin's colleagues in Alaska are less than enthused about her:

There's never been a politician from Alaska on the national stage before, so I kind of expected Alaskans and the Alaskan media to have a decidedly positive attitude about Sarah Palin joining the Republican ticket. It's not exactly turning out that way.

Those Who Know Her Best ...

You could collect quotes like that from any politician's political rivals, so let's look at a few facts, shall we? While she was mayor of Wasilla, the town she grew up in, Palin managed to lumber the town with a $20 million debt. That doesn't sound like much, unless you know how to do long division:

Palin, who portrays herself as a fiscal conservative, racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla — that amounts to $3,000 per resident. She argues that the debt was needed to fund improvements.

Dems armed with Palin opposition

This is what fiscal conservatives do these days. Didn't Politico get the memo? Does Mrs. Palin handle the family checkbook? I sure hope not for their sake.

She also doesn't seem to be too clear on how the law should work. For instance, as Siun observes at FireDogLake:

According to the Alaska TV news station KTUU where Gov. Palin “appeared occasionally as a television sportscaster,” Palin was so determined to defeat a Clean Water ballot measure this summer that she broke the law to oppose it[.]

Sarah Palin: Maverick For Mining Interests

Of course, there's also that little problem with Palin having supposedly fired Alaska's director of public safety because he wouldn't help Palin's sister:

Democrats are zeroing in on an ongoing probe into Palin’s role in the firing of the state’s public safety director, who had reportedly refused to sack Palin’s estranged former brother-in-law.

Audiotapes released last month reveal that aides to the 44-year-old governor pressured Safety Director Walter Monegan to dismiss Trooper Mike Wooten, after Wooten allegedly threatened Palin’s father during a messy child custody fight with the governor’s sister Molly.

Monegan refused to do so and was fired on July 11 and replaced by an official who had previously been suspended for sexual harassment.


Dems armed with Palin opposition

Guest blogger Shannyn Moore made some observations about Palin's legal acumen at Progressive Alaska:

I’m all about killing and grilling moose. So is Sarah. But to the degree she will influence elections by spending $400,000 of state money to propagandize her position to shoot wolves and bears out of planes is bizarre. You would think Alaska has a ban on the importation of Viagra for all the fervor to chase animals with airplanes.

Shannyn Moore's Take on Gov. Palin's Judgement

So, massive public indebtdness, obliviousness to the need for the government to obey the law, and bad judgement on matters important to the health and future of her constituents - I suppose if you liked the last eight years you'll feel right at home with Sarah Palin.

As I noted earlier, McCain's support is already higher among his party's faithful than Obama's is with his. I think Palin's anti-abortion stance will tend to dissuade Democratic fence-sitters from crossing over. The swing vote will be mostly among independents. How they will view this choice I can only guess. She's certainly photogenic, which will be a plus no matter what she's saying. People judge others by their looks far more than most are willing to admit. Her regressive attitude about science and education, and the effect that attitude has on her thinking about things like abortion and medical research, probably won't matter as much as they should.

Plus, while she may be nice looking, it's also quite clear from her bio that she's a bulldog on the inside. Don't underestimate her. She can almost certainly deliver her simplistic message about how the world should be and have lots of people believe her simply because she does and because it conforms to their own prejudices. It won't matter if Obama or Biden could out-think her even when they're sedated. She's not going to be easy to defeat in a debate. Political debates aren't about ideas any more. They're about appearances. Or didn't you get the memo?

Over the last thirty years I've learned to never underestimate the stupidity of the average American voter. Even though the last few years should have been a wakeup call, I don't believe this election will be an exception. Far from being an irrational choice, Sarah Palin may do something that Vice Presidential candidates rarely do - help the ticket she's on.

UPDATE (Sep. 1): Biologist PZ Myers does a bit of dissection on Mrs. Palin over at Pharyngula. He sums her up thus:

See Question 2 above. Do we really want stupid people dictating what people should learn?

From The Horse's Mouth

I wrote that Palin's views on science and education were regressive. Myer's article does a good job of pointing out why.

Attendance And The Google

Did you mean John McCain vote attendance

Image credit: screenshot by Cujo359.

Over the last few months, one of the most visited articles at this blog has been On Attendance. This article is about the attendance records of the various Senators who were running for President at the time. It concluded that Clinton's attendance was very good by the prevailing standards, and Obama's better than average.

People usually happen by that article because they're doing a web search for Barack Obama's attendance record. Now, there are lots of possible reasons, but I keep wondering why none are looking for John McCain's attendance record, which is bad by any standard. While I've seen a few hits for Hillary Clinton's attendance record, I've seen none for McCain. Why is that?

It turns out that you needn't posit political bias to explain this fact. Simply doing a Google search of John McCain vote attendance, my article comes up on the tenth page. That means that people have to scroll past ninety or so other articles to get to mine. Some of those articles are by nationally known publishers. Some, like this provocative one, would be at least as interesting as mine. On the other hand, that article is the number one article for Barack Obama vote attendance. Only the gods of internet search know why such a difference exists.

For those who might have alighted here first, here are the totals as of today:

Senators With Lowest Vote Attendance - 110th Congress

Name	State	Missed (%)	Comment
John McCain	R-AZ	63.8%	Rep. Pres. candidate (as far as we know, he didn’t have a brain haemorrhage)
Tim Johnson	D-SD	48.7%	had a brain haemorrhage
Barack Obama	D-IL	45.5%	Dem. Pres. candidate
Hillary Clinton	D-NY	32.3%	Dem. Pres. candidate
Joseph Biden	D-DE	30.3%	Dem. Pres. candidate thru Jan. 3, now V.P. candidate
Christopher Dodd	D-CT	26.8%	Dem. Pres. candidate thru Jan. 3
Sam Brownback	R-KS	26.8%	Rep. Pres. candidate thru Oct. 19
Edward Kennedy	D-MA	17.2%	Diagnosed with brain cancer
Daniel Inouye	D-HI	10.5%	wife died in March, 2007 after long illness

(As of today, August 29, 2008) Source: Senate Members Who Missed Votes

McCain's, Clinton's, and Obama's records have all gotten worse, though Clinton still enjoys a comfortable lead. Johnson's has gotten much better, thanks to the fact that he is now physically able to attend votes. The rest have stayed roughly the same or improved somewhat.

I suppose there are three lessons you can draw from this little exercise. First, everything that happens is not due to a right wing conspiracy or bias. Sometimes, things just go a lot differently when you change the question a little. Second, somthing that's true seven months ago may not be as true today. Third, when someone says "I wonder how Candidate A does at vote attendance?" and concludes that this is or is not good, the next logical question is "What about Candidate B?"

UPDATE (Aug. 30): I'm still waiting for my first hit from someone looking to see how many votes McCain has missed. This article is number three or four in that search.

UPDATE 2: The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is one of the lobbying groups that rate legislators on their voting records in light of whatever the group is interested in. Here's what they had to say about John McCain's record last year:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) scored 0 percent in 2007 (24 percent lifetime) due to missing all 15 votes scored, including the key vote on repealing tax giveaways to big oil – a measure that failed by only one vote.

LCV Releases 2007 National Environmental Scorecard

In the related field of alternative energy, McCain's record is equally unimpressive:

Voteskipper McCain shirked votes supporting renewable tax credits four times this session, letting them be filibustered every time. Twice the bill was blocked by a single vote. In the past month alone, he missed every single energy vote brought to the floor. Sen. McCain stayed on the campaign trail while his conservative allies filibustered each proposal — on energy speculation, low-income heating bills, and renewable energy and energy efficiency incentives — and he drilled for cash from the oil industry.

McCain Says He’d End His Vacation From Congress To ‘Drill Here, Drill Now’

Here's what John McCain had to say about that record, according to Think Progress:

McCAIN: I have a long record of that support of alternate energy. … I’ve always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote. But my citizens in Arizona know that when I’m running for the President of the United States I have to be out campaigning.

McCain: ‘I Have Not Missed Any Crucial Vote’ On Energy Legislation

[emphasis from original]

Sometimes the wisest course is to do nothing. I don't think that wisdom applies here, though.

Patrick Lang On Obama And "Elitism"

Patrick Lang has an excellent commentary up about the performances of Barack Obama and John McCain at the Saddleback Civil Forum last Saturday. First, he quotes Sally Quinn:

Obama came first, and he handled himself well in front of an audience that clearly disagrees with him on many issues. He also managed to put to rest the notion that he is a Muslim, which 12 percent of Americans still believe he is. He talked directly to Rick Warren as though they were having a real conversation, whereas McCain played to the audience, rarely looking at Warren. He was low-key, thoughtful and nuanced.

That kind of nuance is hard to understand sometimes -- it's unclear, complicated. Obama's world can be scarier. It's multicultural. It's realistic (yes, there is evil on the streets of this country as well as in other places, and a lot of evil has been perpetrated in the name of good). It's honest. When does life begin? Only the antiabortionists are clear on that. For the majority of Americans (who are pro-choice), it is "above my pay grade," in Obama's words, where there is no hard and fast line to draw on what's worth dying for, and where people of all faiths have to be respected.

I would rather live in McCain's world than Obama's. But I believe that we live in Obama's world.

Worlds Apart:McCain's Clarity vs. Obama's Nuance

That phrase "above my pay-grade" didn't go over with the holy rollers on USA Today's review board:

The differences showed up most sharply in questions related to abortion. When Warren asked when life and human rights begin, McCain's succinct reply, "At conception," and mention of his pro-life voting track record were greeted with some of the loudest applause of the evening.

Obama's pro-choice stance and flippant language were not.

"Whether you're looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective," Obama said, "answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade."

Differences Surface in McCain-Obama Christian Forum

That Sally Quinn recognizes the truth of this better than that so-called panel of experts demonstrates how bizarre our national discourse has become. You don't need to be a secularist to understand that this is a personal ethical dilemma for most people. All you need to be is someone with a functioning mind.

Lang goes on to observe:

Obama is a lot like [Adlai] Stevenson. You could see that in the "forum" held in Orange County the other night. McCain has been trained by his neocon handlers and advisers to suppress the music in his rugged old soul in favor of "memotics and neurolinguistics." He spoke to the audience, not to the host. He spoke in simplistic terms of complex issues. He exhorted the crowd to fear against the "other." It was a rally against the enemies that so many in America hold dear as a focus for their own group identity.

I continue to think that McCain will win.

Obama - Too smart for America?

For anyone who is aware of our political history, this is a troubling observation. Stevenson really did try to appeal to thinking people. Obama is like him in that respect. His speech on race demonstrates his ability to see an issue from more than one perspective. What Stevenson's repeated failures to win the Presidency show is that America doesn't have much patience for such people.

In short, I fear Lang may be right.

And Still It Goes ...

Image credit: The Franklin Institute

Since the news doesn't feel like dropping the John Edwards affair story, I'm going to answer the rhetorical question that Cenk Uygur asked the other day:

Now, we get to the most relevant question - if John Edwards' political career is done, why isn't John McCain's? John McCain had a well-documented affair on his first wife, with his current wife. He has admitted in the books he has written about his life that he ran around with several different women while still married to his first wife. And don't forget that he left her for a younger, richer woman - multi-millionaire Cindy Hensley who is now Cindy McCain - after she had been severely hurt in a car accident.

How is John McCain's Affair Different from John Edwards'?

It certainly isn't the circumstances, because none of them make McCain's affair look more excusable than Edwards':

On Christmas Eve 1969, while she was driving alone in Philadelphia, Carol McCain’s car skidded and struck a utility pole. Thrown into the snow, she broke both legs, an arm and her pelvis. She was operated on a dozen times, and in the treatment she lost about 5 inches in height.

After John McCain was released in March 1973 and returned to the U.S., he told friends that Carol was not the woman he had married.

McCain’s Broken Marriage and Fractured Reagan Friendship

As the Los Angeles Times article suggests, McCain's behavior alienated him from the Reagans for many years:

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

Until McCain filed for divorce, the Reagans and their inner circle assumed he was happily married, and they were stunned to learn otherwise, according to several close aides.

McCain’s Broken Marriage and Fractured Reagan Friendship

By any stretch of the imagination, McCain's affair was no less tawdry than Edwards'. If anything, the opposite is true - Edwards apologized to his wife and stayed with her. McCain left his and never looked back.

It's certainly not because Edwards is a more important political figure. McCain is the Republican nominee. Edwards has been out of the running for months.

So let's see what the real reason might be. Could it have anything to do with this?

It is not an accident that the government of the United States cannot function on behalf of its people, because it is no longer our people’s government – and we the people know it.

This corruption did not begin yesterday – and it did not even begin with George Bush – it has been building for decades – until it now threatens literally the life of our democracy.

While the American people personally rose to the occasion with an enormous outpouring of support and donations to both the victims of Katrina and 9/11– we all saw our government’s neglect. And we saw greed and incompetence at work. Out of more than 700 contracts valued at $500,000 or greater, at least half were given without full competition or, according to news sources, with vague or open ended terms, and many of these contracts went to companies with deep political connections such as a subsidiary of Haliburton, Bechtel Corp., and AshBritt Inc.

And in Iraq – while our nation’s brave sons and daughters put their lives on the line for our country – we now have mercenaries under their own law while their bosses sit at home raking in millions.

...

The long slow slide of our democracy into the corporate abyss continues unabated regardless of party, regardless of the best interests of America.

We have a duty – a duty to end this.

John Edwards Speech St. Anselm’s College, Manchester, New Hamphshire

[That quote is a copy from an article of mine, but it's a complete copy of the transcript.]

The huge news corporations that run the TV news today are part of that system. Edwards, like no other major candidate, called out their corrupt system.

That's the reason they're enjoying this so much.

Inevitably, some raving fuckwit will read what I just wrote and assume I'm excusing Edwards' behavior. I'm not. But, as Cenk Uygur pointed out, there have been many leaders throughout history who have had affairs. John Kennedy had affairs. Allegedly, so did Martin Luther King. No one doubts that they were great leaders or good people. They just weren't perfect. Go figure.

The news is covering this so much because the people who own the news, and the corrupt "stars" they've given the job of speaking on their behalf, hate Edwards' guts. It's that simple.

Still Further Proof That John McCain Is Crazy

Today's proof that John McCain is crazy is that the Wall Street Journal caught him ignoring the facts - twice:

On ABC's "This Week" Sunday, Mr. McCain was asked to draw distinctions between his and the current Administration's economic policy. Given an easy opening, the Senator came back with his usual hodgepodge of new child-tax credits, promises to "veto every single pork barrel bill" and close wasteful government agencies, cut dependence on foreign oil and introduce a gas-tax holiday.

Then host George Stephanopoulos raised Social Security. "You're a longtime supporter of the private accounts, as President Bush called for them." Wishing to further distance himself from President Bush, when he could have drawn an equally useful contrast with Barack Obama, Mr. McCain didn't even own up to his support for private retirement accounts, simply saying, "I am a supporter of sitting down together and putting everything on the table and coming up with an answer."

Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed, "So that means payroll tax increases are on the table, as well?" Here came the words that have caused the McCain campaign well deserved grief: "There is nothing that's off the table. I have my positions, and I'll articulate them. But nothing's off the table."

McCain's Tax Blunder

Before you reply that the WSJ is actually a pretty good newspaper, it's just their editorial board that's insane, take note. This came from the editorial section. That's the section they give away because they know that no one is foolish enough to pay to read it. Those are the guys who caught McCain out this time.

So, what are the two misstatements? The first is the first bit of emphasized text. This is pretty well known.

The second is that not more than a six weeks earlier, McCain's campaign had professed his undying aversion to increasing the payroll tax. The Guardian UK notes:

When Obama announced his plan June 13, McCain's top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, told reporters that as president McCain would not consider a payroll tax increase ``under any imaginable circumstance.''

John McCain says he won't raise taxes

Two days later, as the Los Angeles Times reports, he repeated the pledge:

Across the country, in Nevada, Republican John McCain engaged in a similar bit of political fence-mending. Appearing at a town hall meeting in Sparks, he flatly ruled out raising taxes if elected president.

"I think the worst thing that could happen to America in these very tough economic times is to raise someone's taxes," McCain said in response to a question. "I won't do it."

Obama meets with key women

From an article dated tomorrow, WebCPA adds:

However, McCain's camp has now backed away again from the notion of putting payroll taxes on the table. McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds told Fox News, "There is no imaginable circumstance where he could raise taxes."

To Hike or Not Hike Payroll Taxes

So he was against raising payroll taxes before and after he was for raising them.

If he'd just said something like "I've reconsidered, it's not possible to fund Social Security without increased revenues", then I'd be saying good for McCain. I'm not sure if that's true, but it sounds like an honest change of opinion or a clarification. Instead, now that he's reiterated his old position, he's merely looking like someone who can't grasp what the subject is really about.

When you're a Republican and the WSJ editorial section disses you, you're not doing very well.

Why Does John McCain Hate Our Freedoms?

Image credit: National Archives

You can't make this stuff up. Well, you could, but no on would believe it. Steve Benen gives us the outline:

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday, in a narrow 5-4 decision, to extend access to the federal courts to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. When reporters asked John McCain for his reaction a few hours later, he struck a disappointed note, but seemed pretty level-headed about the case. “[I]t is a decision that the Supreme Court has made,” McCain said. “Now we need to move forward. As you know I always favored closing Guantanamo Bay and I still think we ought to do that.”
...
Apparently, though, moderation didn’t poll well overnight. Today, McCain quickly embraced the far-right line and denounced the ruling in the strongest of terms.

John McCain weighed in on the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the rights of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to challenge their detention in U.S. courts at a town hall meeting Friday, calling the 5-4 decision “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

McCain said he that while he has been a vocal opponent of torture and advocated closing Guantanamo, he does not believe prisoners deserve the same rights as U.S. citizens.

“These are enemy combatants, these are people who are not citizens, they are not and never have been given the rights that the citizens of this country have,” he said. “Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation and the men and women who defend it.”

Remember the good ol’ days? Before John McCain became a shameless hack? Good times, good times.

McCain sees detainee ruling as ‘one of the worst decisions in the history of this country’

[links from original]
Of course, this article might have been entitled "Even More Proof That John McCain Is Crazy", but I'm sure I'll get to use that title before too long. This sort of about face is hardly new. The about faces usually take a little longer, though.

Of course, the other reason it's crazy is that, instead of lauding this as a victory for civil rights in times of trouble, he called it "one of the worst decision in the history of this country". Let's review some of the decisions that the Supreme Court has made in the past, and some of the consequences:

• Korematsu v. United States -- 1944 - Japanese-Americans had to stay in concentration camps, even though they did nothing wrong. Many lost their land and property while the were interned. A few were killed.


• Plessy v. Ferguson -- 1896 - A.K.A. "Separate but equal". The Reconstruction went on for decades.


• Dred Scott v. Sanford -- 1857 - A.K.A. "You got a problem with slavery?" The Civil War.

That list came courtesy of an e-mail I received from People For The American Way this morning, but I'm sure you can add a few others, like Schneck vs. the United States, or Bush Vs. Gore.

Yet when this Supreme Court stood up for freedom and limited government, which are supposedly what conservatives are all about, John McCain called it one of the worst decisions ever.

So, I repeat, why does John McCain hate our freedoms?

(h/t to Dana Hunter whose article pointed to the Steve Benen article.)

UPDATE: On a whim, I searched for the string "worst supreme court decisions" and came up with several lists. One interesting one, from a libertarian complaining about the conservative nature of a list at Human Events cited Bush Vs. Gore as one of the worst. He wrote that the Court should have known better than to decide it. He's got a point there. In his honor, I've added it to my own list, for his reasons plus my own.

Of course, the list at Human Events mentioned Roe Vs. Wade as one of them. While I don't agree with that, it was certainly a decision that you'd think John McCain would have in mind when he was talking about how the SCOTUS has screwed up.

Juan Cole On The Democrats

Juan Cole hit the nail on the head today at Informed Comment:

I have been dismayed by the prominence of identity politics in the Democratic primaries. Working class men supported John Edwards, who sprang from their ranks (though I suspect he hasn't had a callus lately). African-Americans swung behind Barack Obama as soon as they were convinced that he had a chance of winning. According to opinion and exit polls, middle-aged and older white women disproportionately favored Clinton.

A successful, progressive Democratic Party has to be based on principles, not on voting for people who look like you. The principles can unify. Everyone needs health care. Everyone needs social justice. Everyone needs peace and prosperity. The general public, including independents and even some Republicans will vote for these principles. In a presidential contest based on principles, Senator John McCain has disadvantages.

But if we admit the principle that people should vote on the basis of their self-ascribed identity, well, people who consider themselves "white" are still a majority in this country. (Whiteness in American history is not a 'natural' given based on skin color; it is a social status constructed over time in people's minds. Irish Catholic working-class immigrants to the US were not considered white by WASPs in the mid-19th century. The Irish had to work hard to get in.)

The Real Question is, Would a President McCain be good for Women?

[the link is from the original article]

Anyone who has read this blog for a while will recognize the drift of this subject. I hope no one is in any doubt on this, but I think if you're voting for someone because of gender or ethnic identity, you're a moron. What should count is what that person stands for, and whether he (or she) can deliver on that stance. Nothing else matters. Why would getting screwed by a woman or a black man, instead of a white man, help anyone?

If John Edwards had been a black woman, I still would have supported him, umm, John Edwards. It was who he was that was important, not what he looked like.

Professor Cole goes on to make the seemingly obvious point that a McCain Presidency would be bad for women, at least those who value their equality and their reproductive rights:

McCain has an appalling track record on issues of global women's reproductive rights and health. McCain has also steadily moved toward an absolute anti-choice position, as he attempts to appeal to the Religious Right. A President McCain may well appoint the successor to Ruth Bader Ginzburg on the Supreme Court, and his nominee will be anti-choice. The court is nearing a majority of anti-choice judges, and the long dream of the American religious Right, of overturning Roe V. Wade, is in reach for them. A McCain court could overturn reproductive rights perhaps within a year of its formation.

The Real Question is, Would a President McCain be good for Women?

[except for "the Religious Right", all links are Cole's]

As a white man, I can tell you that a McCain Administration wouldn't be too good for white men, either. Lots of white men can't afford medical insurance, can't find a job, and are groaning whenever we fill our gas tanks. Lots of white men are dying in Iraq, and are being neglected when they come home wounded. Plenty of us worry, as Edwards did, that the world we leave to our children will be worse than the one we inherited. It doesn't mean jack to me that the current President is a white man. For all the damage he's done this country, he might as well be an Arab terrorist.

Frankly, just about any random black woman over the age of 35 could have done better.

So, if you want to continue to be screwed by politicians, keep voting based on identity. Then get back to me about how much better the country is because you did.

UPDATE: In my response to One Fly in the comments, I wrote:

I'd love for an atheist or agnostic to be a serious candidate for President, but if I thought he was a con artist or would turn the country in the wrong direction, I wouldn't vote for him. I know that without having to resort to much introspection, because if John McCain were an avowed atheist it wouldn't make a bit of difference. I still wouldn't vote for him. Yet many people don't feel that way, and on an intellectual level I just can't understand why.

I'm sure it's true that some folks will read that I'm a white guy and assume I have no idea what it is to be a minority. I do, because I'm part of the last minority in this country that it's OK to hate. I still feel that way - I'll vote for a dyed-in-the-wool evangelical Christian who mostly wants to run the country the way I think it ought to be run over an atheist who wouldn't. That's what I consider a no-brainer. Sadly, many people wouldn't feel that way if they were in my place.

UPDATE (Jun. 14): Thanks to a commenter, corrected the spelling of "dyed-in-the-wool".

Further Proof That John McCain Is Crazy

If you need any additional ammunition when you're arguing that John McCain is batshit crazy, consider this:

McCain's speech was interrupted several times by anti-Iraq war protestors, prompting McCain to restate his pledge to remain in Iraq until the U.S. achieves victory there.

"And by the way, I will never surrender in Iraq, my friends, I will never surrender in Iraq," he added.

McCain Urges Stemming Spread of Nuclear Weapons

Video here.

I'll let Patrick Lang do the honors:

What the hell is he talking about? Surrender to whom? To Al-Qa'ida? (alkayda) They have been beaten to a pulp by the Sunni rising against them and Patraeus' new-old tactics. McCain would have to find Al-Qa'ida before he could surrender to them and then everyone else in the country would have to go along with the idea. This is unlikely. Surrender to Muqtada al-Sadr? Have I missed something? "Mooky" is now the leading Shia factional leader in the country? I guess you never know... Maybe the Mahdi has anointed him. Surrender to Maliki and actually let him run the country? I have had a couple of people (American) say to me recently things that reflect a reflexive idea that we are going to "call the shots" in Iraq indefinitely. Is that what McCain means?

"I will never surrender in Iraq! Never! Never!" McCain

Of course, we've been hearing and reading variations of this insane theme from the current administration, so stuff like this almost gets lost in the noise. Still, as Col. Lang points out, there are so many absurdities implicit in this declaration of McCain's that it really does deserve a special place in our Presidential political rhetoric.

It makes the goofiest things Clinton and Obama have said seem positively scholarly.

How Stupid Is Chris Matthews?

How preternaturally stupid is Chris Matthews? You don't have to answer right away. Consider this:

On the March 24 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews asserted: "We're stuck in Iraq; 4,000 people are dead now because of decisions made by politicians like the Clintons." Matthews did not explain how "politicians like the Clintons" were responsible for the deaths of "4,000 people" in Iraq, nor did he mention President Bush, who actually made the decision to invade Iraq. Sen. Hillary Clinton herself has accused Bush of "misus[ing]" the authority given him by Congress.

Matthews: "4,000 people are dead now because of decisions made by politicians like the Clintons"

Nor did he mention that John McCain could be considered one of those politicians. Here's what he had to say on the day of the vote for the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) against Iraq:

"Giving peace a chance only gives Saddam Hussein more time to prepare for war on his terms, at a time of his choosing, in pursuit of ambitions that will only grow as his power to achieve them grows," McCain said.

Senate approves Iraq war resolution

McCain repeated the lie that Hussein was prepared to fight the United States after he voted for the resolution. All of the Republican Senators save one voted for the resolution. The vote was 77 to 23. Why were "politicians like the Clintons" responsible for this, when politicians like John McCain, who was a cheerleader for this disastrous war from the start, and is one of the few willing to expand it, were not? Yet Matthews never misses a chance to fluff McCain's reputation. Here's what he had to say about McCain that morning:

I think McCain, although we all agree he's a good man, has left it up to the Iraqi politicians how long we stay. It's not their call. It's our foreign policy. and we should re-establish control of our own foreign policy. The american people should decide on american foreign policy and war policy, not the iraqi politicians. I don't know why the Vice President is able to get away with saying our opinion doesn't matter, but iraqi politicians' misbehavior matters. we have to reassert our control over our forces, I think.

Chris Matthews: Victory means 'Americans get to come home'

[capitalization corrected]

Matthews talked as if McCain was just not quite getting the idea, not that McCain was one of the principle cheerleaders for this war from the beginning. Yet he's a good man and Hillary Clinton is especially responsible for the carnage.

John Kerry voted for this resolution, as well. If anyone should have known better, it was he.

Hillary Clinton deserves criticism, perhaps even scorn, for her vote. To say that somehow she belongs to a class of politicians who bear a special responsibility for this war that does not include McCain or Bush, which is what Matthews was clearly implying, is absurd.

OK, now you can answer. How much of a fucking moron is Chris Matthews? Why does he have a job as a political reporter, when there are so many people who are far more qualified?

Yes, I know - the same reason that Joe Klein has a job.

A Must Read For Brain Fans

Image credit: WriterHound at Wikipedia.

Oh, OK, I'm having trouble with titles today. Over at Firedoglake, Dr. Kirk Murphy provides a tutorial on brain trauma:

We all like to think we're special. And we are - we're all unique individuals. So we all believe our brains and even our assholes are special. On the individual level, our brains and assholes are indeed special - and disease that affects my brain (or my asshole) will affect me in a unique and special way. Yet as biological organisms, we humans are pretty similar to one one another. As a species, our brains appear to share the same stucture and function ...

Every politician - even Dan Quayle - has a brain. Senator McCain has a brain, too. And Senator McCain would take his brain along with the rest of him to the Oval Office were he to win election (or 5 votes from the Supremes).

McCain’s Brain - How’s It Doin?

Then he touches on something I've been wondering about, but hadn't mentioned for obvious reasons:

And - sadly - torture can also predispose victims to brain disease. The resulting impairments can take the form of psychiatric disease (especially PTSD), cognitive impairments, or both. The experience of being a POW has - in WWII POW's - also been shown to be associated with neuropsychiatric impairment (although the same study found the difference between POWs and non-POW's from the same combat theatre was realtively small).

McCain’s Brain - How’s It Doin?

I've written about PTSD a time or two, so I certainly had wondered whether there might be some PTSD in McCain's past. I'll just add, for emphasis, that if Kirk Murphy isn't qualified to give a diagnosis about this condition, then I certainly am not. It's possible that he functions at a high enough level that he could manage as President. I'll just say that this gives extra meaning to who ends up being McCain's running mate.

Click on the links and read. It's a fascinating article, dosed with a bit of humor.