Playing Both Sides

It is beginning to look like the Republicans miscalculated. Apparently, they expected the bail-out bill to pass but be unpopular, and had planned to run AGAINST Democratic incumbents using it as ammunition.

In specific, Monday morning, before the vote, this ad was sent out to several stations to be aired that evening:



It clearly attempts to call the bailout plan "Barack Obama's plan", even though it originated with Secretary Paulson and was claimed as an achievemnt by John McCain.

But, as of today, McCain and the Republican Party are running at least two different ads blaming Obama for the failure to pass the bill (while saying in stump speeches that "now is not the time for laying blame"). There have been several attempts to link Obama to the failure, such as this:



and the RNC fundraising e-mail that went out with the subject line "Obama Stood By, Did Nothing, And Showed No Leadership On The Bailout Negotiations."

So apparently the Republican party and John McCain were and are prepared to use ANY outcome against Barack Obama.

Which sort of calls into question the veracity of anything they say on the subject.

Liam.

More on the Debate

I had two more thoughts on the debate.

First, remembering all the kerfuffle about lapel flag pins during the primary, I would point out that Senator McCain was not wearing one. Senator Obama was. It's stupid, pointless symbolism, but it was damned important and showed a lack of patriotism when Obama didn't wear one. I wonder what it means when McCain doesn't?

Also, I mentioned the recycled stump speech lines that McCain used, but I was re-watching the debate and I noticed that one of them he didn't even use CORRECTLY.

He has been saying for weeks now that the solution to pork barrel spending is his pen, and that in office he will veto every spending bill that comes with earmarked spending.

The quote he's been using has been this:

"I've got a pen, my friends, and the first pork barrel-laden earmark,
big-spending bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it. You will know their
names. I will make them famous and we’ll stop this corruption."

But in the debate, he said that he would veto "every single spending bill that comes across my desk" followed by the "You will know their names" threat.

It's a small thing, but I think the government would grind to a halt if he vetoed every single spending bill.

Liam

Bailing Out of the Bail Out

As we've all heard by now, the bail out package failed to pass the House of Representatives.

This, alone, may not be a bad thing. I have begun to have serious doubts about the bill and its size. (Note, I am not an economist, I have taken exactly one basic economics course over 20 years ago, so this is all based on what I'm reading, not based on any expertise!)

The truth is that economists do not seem to agree on this bill. This isn't surprising, it seems like if you get N economists in a room, you end up with at least N+1 opinions on any situation.

Nevertheless, there are some who seem pretty convinced that:

1. This package won't work particularly well.
2. With the high price tag, this package will further damage the economy.
3. There are cheaper things we could do that might have a better chance of working.

I don't know if any of this is true, but it seems like an awfully big gamble of a lot of money, a lot of additional national debt and a lot of weakening of the dollar on a gamble.

However, I'm getting really annoyed at the partisanship. The vote was called when Nancy Pelosi said she could deliver a certain number of democrats, and John Boehner said he could deliver a certain amount of republicans. Those two numbers together added up to enough to pass the bill, but after the votes were cast, the democrats came through, the republicans did not.

Rep. Boehner immediately pointed the finger of blame at Nancy Pelosi for a supposed partisan speech she gave before the vote. Even assuming that's true, it does not make me feel any better about the republicans that they would base their vote on what some have said the most important financial legislation in our lifetimes on hurt feelings, and if they did, it says a lot (all bad) about their willingness to throw the country and its economy under the bus.

Far more likely, of course, is that Boehner needs an excuse why he can't even control the people he's supposed to lead, because it doesn't look good for a party's leadership in the Congress to be that weak.

Also, Senator Obama has been very quiet on the whole matter, enough so that John McCain has accused him of doing nothing, showing no leadership in the whole matter. But the truth is that what that really means is that Obama isn't playing politics with it.

Today, just a bit after 5pm, McCain held a press conference in which two of his statements, back to back, were to talk about how shameful it was that "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress" had injected "unnecessary partisanship into the process", followed by "Now is not the time to affix blame, it's time to fix the problem."

Essentially "It's all Obama's fault. But it's not time to assign fault."

The entire handling of this affair has smacked of raw partisan politics on the McCain side, and it's making me sick.

Liam.

Financial Crisis Spin

Oh, the spin is starting. A right wing friend of mine just sent me an e-mail claiming that although they're trying to spin it otherwise, John McCain actually WAS vital to the process last week, and really DID put country above campaign, even though the story about him essentially screwing up the works has come from both ends of the political spectrum.

This was essentially my response to him, reformatted and with identifying information removed.

* * *

McCain tried too hard to make political hay out of this. Forget for the moment let's assume that everything you say is true (which I doubt, because it's only the McCain camp that's saying so). He keeps trying to tell us he puts country before his campaign. If you're going to do that, Senator, just go ahead and friggin DO it. The way he did it was akin to a really bad actor's death scene in a movie. You know, stumbling about the set with huge melodramatic moves, announcing "Oh! The Pain! I'm dying!" repetitively, in a loud, strong, healthy voice. This impression was made all the more appropriate by the fact that although he announced he was "suspending his campaign", he continued to do interviews and campaign events.(*)

There are two ways it could have been handled and ACTUALLY gotten him some credit. First, he could have just done it and quietly fed a talking point or two to someone loyal but sufficiently distant from the core campaign that the message was "Hey, this guy is risking his campaign to work on the crisis" rather than "Hey, this guy is loudly telling us that he's risking his campaign to work on the crisis".

Or he could have ACTUALLY just done it quietly, not fed a talking point to anyone. Chris Dodd got similar plaudits and a bump in his polling (granted, it was from 1% to about 4%) when he suspended his campaign and went back to Washington to fillibuster the... I think it was the telecom immunity portion of the FISA bill.

But Dodd didn't wave his hands and say "Ooooh, look at me! See what I'm doing! I'm the big hero! I'm showing leadership! I'm doing my G-D job!"

Also, McCain's running back to do his damn job would ring a lot less hollow if he'd voted EVEN ONCE since early April. McCain has missed more votes this year by far than any other Senator, even more than Tim Johnson, who was out for months with a damned brain hemmorage. He's missed almost half again as many as Obama and Clinton, the #3 and #4 offenders.

(Which doesn't look good on Obama or Clinton either, it's the only profession in which you can spend full time interviewing for a new position while still drawing your old salary but not really doing your old job).

But neither Obama nor Clinton has tried to make a big show of how they were going to take a few seconds and actually do their job for the first time in very close to half a year!

So, you want to reject the story that says McCain was responsible for the collapse of the deal on Thursday? Fine.

You want to ignore that twice he was caught not really rushing to help out (first when he said he was rushing right there to Letterman, and then didn't show up in DC for about 20 hours, second when he was supposedly working hard on the bill but was caught out at a four star restaurant with his wife and the Libermans), fine. You want to ignore how he wasn't on the committee that was working on it, so really couldn't even be in the room while they were working on it, and could only express support or lack there of? Fine.

You want to ignore that reportedly he got home and then did most of his work BY PHONE FROM HOME (aka, he DID phone it in)(**)? Fine.

And you want to ignore the political grandstanding move of feinting towards the minority alternate plan that shook up the initial deal before switching back to the main one, all to look like he had some great influence on the process? Fine.

But don't try to tell me that he (or Obama, for that matter, who also skipped a couple of things to make his way back to Washington for the meeting) are somehow heroes because they have been drawing a salary all year on a job they've barely attended.

* * *

(*) I am not one who complains overmuch about the continued running of ads. Although technically it's not a suspended campaign if there are ads still being run, the fact is that it can be reasonably assumed that by "suspending his campaign" he meant "suspending his campaign activities". In other words, there's no real reason why his staff couldn't continue the normal day-to-day activities of the campaign in his absence, he just wasn't going to be available to personally participate... It's that he then proceeded to go on Katie Couric's show followed by a campaign event in the morning before "rushing" back to the capital. Also, the absurdity of the "suspending his campaign" line was brought into stark relief when his Vice Presidential running mate Sarah Palin announced that she might be suspending hers as well rather than stepping up and taking over for McCain, as will be her job if they win and he is otherwise unable to handle his day to day tasks.

(**) As part of his talking points, my friend had suggested that McCain deserved credit for going back to Washington instead of just "phoning it in", which would make sense except that when he got caught sitting at home in Washington instead of going in to the office, the campaign's reaction was "He's doing the job he needs to do, and most of that can be done over the phone." Translation, he literally was phoning it in.

Liam.

Kissinger Changes His Story

From FactCheck.org...

As of the debate, Henry Kissinger's public statements on discussions with Iran were largely based on this quote from a few days before at a forum for current and former secretaries of state:

Kissinger: Well, I am in favor of negotiating with Iran. And one utility of negotiation is to put before Iran our vision of a Middle East, of a stable Middle East, and our notion on nuclear proliferation at a high enough level so that they have to study it. And, therefore, I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level so that we -- we know we're dealing with authentic...

CNN's Frank Sesno: Put at a very high level right out of the box?

Kissinger: Initially, yes.But I do not believe that we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations.

There's also this bit, also from factcheck:

Later, McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, was asked about this by CBS News anchor Katie Couric, and Palin said, "I’ve never heard Henry Kissinger say, ‘Yeah, I’ll meet with these leaders without preconditions being met.'" Afterward Couric said, "We confirmed Henry Kissinger’s position following our interview."

To me, this is clearly in the spirit of what Obama has been saying for months, that we (the United States) need to be open to talking with countries such as Iran without preconditions, not necessarily that it has to be the President meeting directly with the leaders of Iran, and in fact he even said (I think it was in the debate, but I might be misremembering where I saw it) that the Presidential level meeting would follow preparations including lower level diplomacy, when the situation warranted.

This has all been in a clear response to the Bush Administration policy of not talking to Iran period, until they give up their nuclear ambitions. That's not "No Presidential discussions with President Ahmadinejad", that's no diplomatic contact at all.

Anyway, Kissinger has decided that he's a Republican at heart after all, and has decided to take the McCain interpretation of Obama's statements and has issued this statement:

Kissinger: Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain.

But McCain has advocated the Bush line of no discussions with Iran *AT ALL* without preconditions. And so in spite of his partisan statement of support here, it is fairly clear that Kissinger's opinion when not clouded by party line message is more in line with the Obama position than the McCain.

Liam.

The Third Fact Check

Finally got the one from FactCheck.org. I like it.

It also seems to be much more comprehensive than either of the previous two I linked to. Go Fact Check go!

The link.

Liam.

Another Debate Fact Check

The Associated Press has a fact check of the basic assertions of the debate (I found it on the Huffington Post, but it is sourced to AP, not HP).

I find it interesting reading as well. Here's the link.

By the way, I note that they take a position much closer to mine with regard to the Kissinger statement.

Liam.

The Debate part two

OK, now that I got the official bit out of the way, some impressions.

I liked the debate format, it's the closest thing we've had to an honest debate in years. Both candidates are to be applauded for agreeing to a give-and-take format that allowed them to pose questions to each other, and also for not abusing that overmuch by interrupting each other.

I thought it was telling, I'm just not sure of what, that McCain (who asked for this style of meeting when he asked for a series of "town meeting" campaign events) almost never looked directly at Senator Obama, and referred to him in the third person, as though he were not in the room. When McCain was speaking, it was "Senator Obama wants this" or "My opponent wants that".

Obama on the other hand stayed truer to the proposed format, speaking TO Senator McCain. "John, you know that's not true", "John, you said (x) and you were wrong", and he looked at McCain when he was speaking to/about him.

To me, that looked more Presidential. McCain tried to sow seeds of doubt about Obama's abilities by repeating some version of the phrase "Senator Obama doesn't get it" over and over, but Obama looked more comfortable. He looked prepared to take challengers head on, while McCain looked like he'd rather have applied that "don't talk to them until they already agree with you" tactic on Obama.

McCain also seemed to rely on his stump speech line and his carefully packaged image far more than Obama. I got home a little bit late, and the first thing I heard when I turned it on was McCain using his stump speech laugh line about how he wasn't sure if the money to study the DNA of bears was a paternity or criminal matter, and he used the "I was never voted Miss Congeniality" line multiple times. He also brought up his war bona fides several times, while conveniently ignoring the facts that:

A) there is no evidence that he's any better a tactician or strategist than anyone else (he's only been directly involved in one war, we "lost" that one and he spent most of his time during it in a cell), and

B) there is still a lot of unanswered evidence that "war hero" McCain may actually have actively worked to cover up things that happened during his POW years, to the detriment of other POW/MIAs of that era, and

C) veterans groups continue to rate him very low, so while he claims he's the one who will support our vets the most, it doesn't seem they feel his history on the topic has been much to crow over.


I plan to re-watch the debate sometime this weekend, and I'll probably cover some more things as they come into my head, but I wanted to get these out there, while I was thinking about them.

Liam.

The Debate

I know a couple of people have been waiting to hear my take on the debate last night, so I guess it's time I sat down to write something.

The truth is, I didn't write before this on the topic because I'm not sure there was a clear winner. Of course, there's all the old wisdom about how "a tie goes to the current leader", or the argument that "The topic this time was McCain's professed strong suit, so for Obama to hold his own makes it a win for him", but that all seems like spin to me.

In my opinion, someone watching the debates who hasn't paid all that much attention up until now and isn't terribly well versed in the facts of the world, it was pretty even. They both had their "um, ah" moments, McCain perhaps came across as a bit more snarky and condescending, but neither one either hit the ball out of the park, nor tripped over their own feet.

There are several sites I like to go to for "truth tests". My favorite (for political things) is factcheck.org, and of course for everything else my favorite is snopes.com.

But up there on my list is politifact.com. I like them a tad less, because they rate every statement on a "Truth-o-meter", ranking everything as "True, mostly true, half true, barely true or pants on fire", which loses some nuance.

That said, their writeup on the statements in the debate can be found here.

Some of the instances where nuance changes the meaning are the "half true" when talking about whether Henry Kissinger's statement was more in line with Obama's position or McCain's. I've heard Obama talk about "meetings without preconditions" many times, and I've always gotten the sense that he was not necessarily talking about Presidential level meetings, but Administration meetings. When he said "I would not require preconditions before meeting with other nations" I've always taken that as the conceit that the man is the office and the office is the entire administration.

Because my impression of the Bush Administration policy for most of the last 8 years has been "We will not talk with Iran until they give up their nuclear ambitions", meaning "No one in my administration will have any official contact with anyone in their government until they accede to our wishes in the negotiations". And so to me, Obama's reaction has been "That's ludicrous, that's what negotiation is all about, of course I wouldn't deny talks with other nations until they'd given in to our demands."

So calling that "half true" buys into the McCain perpetuated impression that Obama is saying he'll personally, as President, meet with anyone and everyone.

But, and here's the kicker, I also dislike the "half true" for this reason: Even if you buy into the idea that Obama is claiming he would personally meet with any world leader without preconditions and McCain is holding firm to the Bush policy of no official negotiations until they meet our preconditions, then to me Kissinger's statement is still much closer to the Obama position than the McCain position.

All in all, though, I believe that for those who don't pay attention to the news, McCain and Obama more or less tied. I believe for those who DO pay attention, there was a lot more falsehood and unfair innuendo on the McCain side than on the Obama side.

Liam.

A Break From Politics...

I ran into an interesting site today that I thought I'd pass along.

It has a video that purports to display every commercial airline flight in the world in a 24 hour period.

I have no idea whether it's factual or not, but it's an interesting thing to watch and very pretty, even if it isn't factually accurate. And if it is, it's also quite interesting to see just how much air traffic we humans generate on a daily basis.

Here's the site link.

Liam.

McCain Wins Debate! Prematurely!

In case you ever wondered if it was possible for a candidate to do SO poorly that even their own campaign would admit that they didn't win it, I submit to you exhibit A.

This article from the Washington Post's "The Fix" column, which notes that the McCain campaign already has banner ads up proclaiming him the winner... and the first debate is not even scheduled until tonight (and we only just learned moments ago that McCain would even be attending, after his theatrics of the last couple of days).

Click through, check it out. They've got screen captures of the Wall Street Journal and the "McCain Wins Debate! (paid for by McCain-Palin 2008)" banner ad.

Liam.

More Proof McCain is Playing Politics

As you might have guessed from how much I've got to say early this morning, I didn't sleep well last night, and as a result, I saw quite a bit of television.

I ran into yet another bit of politics John McCain is playing with the current crisis.

It was a short statement that McCain made during an interview. The words that struck me were: "I think that we've made progress, and I'm confident we will have a deal. How much I had to do with that, I'll let you and others be the judge."

Now picture McCain as your 3 year old brother and you're working on a puzzle. You have a puzzle you've been working on for a week and you're 95% done and you're looking forward to looking down and seeing it completed when said little brother comes along and messes up all the pieces. He then says "Look! I helped! You're going to finish the puzzle, and I helped!"

The interview is a pure political trick.

"I have a record of putting my country first. I see that we did not have a deal, and unfortunately we STILL don't have a deal."

See, if it was really about country first, it wouldn't be the first word out of his mouth at every turn. If it was really about the good of the country, he wouldn't be thinking of spinning his actions to his own gain. By touting this particular supposed record he makes it painfully clear to everyone that this WASN'T country first, this was "Oooh, I can make it LOOK like I put country first, and that will help me!". He also neglects to mention that we were reportedly within inches of having a deal... until he got involved.

Watch the video:



He ruined the puzzle and he's crowing about how much good he's doing for the country. Naked politics of the very worst kind.

Liam.

Church and State

The New York Times has an article about a planned protest by 33 churches in which the ministers plan to endorse a Presidential candidate from the pulpit this weekend.

I am a firm believer that they should lose their tax exempt status. We have reasons for the separation of church and state in this country, and if you're going to participate in state, you should not be considered a church, simple as that. Anything less is a slippery slope to theocracy.

This is not, as those who disagree with me will likely say, an attack on Christianity. Our rules are set up that way because we are a nation in which people are free to be whatever religion they choose to be, and that freedom becomes ashes on the tongue if that freedom comes along with rules and customs from another religion being made law. If that happens, this country becomes no better than the Taliban era Afghanistan or than Iran.

And who decides WHICH biblical rules become laws? Is it just the reasonable ones, like not stealing, not killing, etc? Or does someone try to mandate Christianity? Keeping the Sabbath holy? Honoring our parents? And what is the punishment if we don't? Who decides what is and isn't a violation of "honoring" your parents?

Or to step away from the "Big 10", who is to say someone doesn't decide to enforce the rule against wearing clothing made of different fibers? Or not being near a woman during her cycle? Or stoning to death those who cheat on a spouse, or are a witch (another religion, by the way), or a number of other crimes?

And I'm sure the next question is "Liam, do you really see no difference between letting religious leaders endorse candidates and the total theocratic nightmare you describe?" Well, sure. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and small steps. Starting down the path, every little step seems reasonable until you're too close to the end to turn back, and then it's too late.

The rules are there for a reason. Violate them, and we take away your tax exempt status.

Liam.

Ethics Reform You Can Believe In

According to the Washington Post, after cracking down on state officials accepting gifts as part of her touted "ethics reform" in Alaska, state records show that in 20 months in the Governor's office, Sarah Palin has accepted over $25,000 in gifts from industry executives and others.

Way to set an example for your state there, Governor Palin!

Liam.

Alternate Plan

OK, I've gotten some tentative information on the "alternate plan" proposed by the conservative Republicans.

Not a lot of detail, but it apparently calls for:

1. Mortgage insurance on many of the mortgage-backed securities.
2. A temporary repeal of the Captal Gains tax (which they will almost certainly spin as a "tax increase" if it is not made permanent next year)
3. Regulatory relief for businesses.

So basically, we bail out the people who bought these risky securities hoping to make a huge profit, because their gamble went south. We give tax breaks predominantly to those who can afford to have significant savings and almost nothing to the people who are falling victim to these predatory loans and who thus have almost nothing they can afford to put away in savings. And we repeal yet more regulations on business, because of course there's no possible way that insufficient regulations could come back to bite us.

Makes perfect sense that McCain would support this. It also makes perfect sense if he really wants to postpone this debate (obviously, if there had been a deal made today, there'd be no reason to justify that postponement).

And in typical Republican fashion it bails out the people who stood to BENEFIT had those securities NOT gone south and nothing to help the people at the bottom who are really just struggling to keep their homes.

As one friend of mine put it, it does make a weird sort of sense if you look at it the right way: If you want to stop people from illegally breaking and entering, one way to do it is to repeal the law that makes breaking and entering illegal. Boom, problem solved, no more illegal breaking and entering.

Liam.

More Political Theater

As with most Americans, I'm not overly happy about the Wall Street bailout. As with most, I don't fully understand the issues, but I know it feels like we the taxpayers are being asked to support socialism for big corporations that have already wrung huge profits out of the behaviors that now have them in trouble, and we're being asked to support this by the same people who tell us how evil socialism is when we want to support a higher minimum wage or support for the homeowners who are facing foreclosure or to find a way to help more families afford health insurance.

As with most Americans, I'm in the awkward position of trusting leaders whom I inherently do not trust to do what is in my best interest.

And today, it seems like John McCain is playing politics with that.

Democratic and Republican members of both houses of Congress have been working together, long hours, for a week in order to hammer out a bipartisan solution quickly. John McCain recently said "If we don't have a solution this week, this country could slide into a Depression by next Monday" and face "12% unemployment".

So, this afternoon, as leaders of both parties have reached a tenuous agreement as to how best to try to solve the crisis, in swoops McCain and announces that he's supporting a different plan, put forth by a small group of conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, throwing the whole process into disarray, and most likely delaying the approval of any plan at all for a week or more.

So according to McCain, we need something by Friday or we very well might be in a Depression by Monday, but I guess it's worth that risk if he can show up at the eleventh hour and try to show decisive leadership by hijacking the process.

Where was McCain for the last week, if his input was so vital? Come to think of it, when he announced yesterday that he was suspending his campaign to rush back to Washington, and cancelling his appearance on David Letterman, why did he instead go to be interviewed by Katie Couric?

I do not believe there was any need for McCain to rush back. He has as much as said he's no expert on the economy, he's said it in several interviews over the past year. He is trying to look Presidential, but is instead merely gumming up the works, upsetting the careful work done by everyone who has actually been at work on the problem for the last week.

You can read more about this from Reuters.

That McCain would stoop to political theater, especially political theater that undermines the hard work of better informed and more involved people, and which at worst delays legislation that may be incredibly time sensitive, is entirely unforgivable.

If you need an example of why I'm so convinced John McCain would be a horrendous mistake for this country, I can't think of a better one than this.

An admitted novice at economics, stays out of the whole thing until the eleventh hour, and then rides in on his horse at the final moment to disrupt the whole thing to attempt to look like a maverick in charge, ultimately delaying legislation he himself claimed was vital to avoiding a Depression in this country.

Self serving at best, treasonous at worst. If you still support him, I can't imagine why. If he wins, may God have mercy on all of our souls.

Liam.

Two Things You Need To Know

There are two things you need to know about the current "bail out".

The first is that the number $700 billion keeps being thrown around, but that's actually not the limit (at least in the initial proposal, no one yet knows what will be on the final version passed). In fact, the $700 billion number is the amount the Treasury Secretary can spend "at one time". In other words, he (or she, we are going to have a new one fairly soon) could spend up to $700 billion now and then next month decide he or she needs another $700 billion, etc...

Second, understand that this $700 billion does not solve all of our problems. There are still lots of people struggling under the weight of predatory loans (up to 80% of whom were given high interest, high risk "subprime" mortgages when they in fact could have qualified for less risky mortgages) who stand to lose their homes as payments swell and interest rates rise on them. And there's the FDIC. According to this article in Bloomberg News, the FDIC coffers are nearly depleated with the failure of the IndyMac bank.

As of June 30th, Bloomberg reports that FDIC had about $45 billion in assets, and is currently projecting $200 billion in insurance payouts by the end of the year. According to the article, FDIC and other failures could cost the government more than $400 billion ON TOP of the $700 billion "bail out". And according to Bloomberg, that number could swell to $2.5 trillion (yes, trillion) if the government decides to bail out investors in accounts which are not officially covered by the FDIC (for instance, the recent promise to cover money market accounts).

So it's quite possible the $700 billion (or whatever value the final plan comes in at) may be just the tip of the iceberg.

Liam.

Suspending? Really?

David Blaine suspending himself upside-down for 60 hours I understand, he's really got nothing except his publicity stunts.

John McCain suspending his campaigning for President I understand, although I think it's largely a publicity stunt rather than a legitimate need, he at least can make a credible SOUNDING argument as to why it should happen, and so it's yet another "hail mary" play (as others have said) in a long series of them in this campaign.

But Sarah Palin suspending her campaigning as well? What, is the governor of our fourth smallest population state suddenly vital to solving the financial crisis?

She's already far less accessible to the press than any of the other three (and as by far the least well known, arguably needs to be the MOST open), and now instead of keeping the campaign going she's suspending as well?

It makes one wonder, if John McCain dies or becomes disabled will she decide to die or become disabled as well? Her job as his VP is to step in when he can't. Which means she really should be stepping up in his absence. If she's really qualified to be President, this is the campaign's chance to prove that she's really got what it takes by stepping up to fill the gap in the campaign while McCain is handling other things.

Instead, the campaign has decided to take it's pandering "hail mary" pass and throw the pass through the end-zone and into the stands. If this doesn't make it clear that this move on the McCain campaigns part is politics rather than necessity, I don't know what does.

Liam.

What Happened Today...

[UPDATE: I found this link of Obama's statement yesterday. Says pretty much what I'd read elsewhere. --Liam]

From what I've been able to piece together, John McCain has chosen to play politics with the financial scandal, and it's really making me angry.

The timeline, as I've pieced it together...

Sometime early this morning, Barack Obama places a call to John McCain suggesting that they put their heads together and issue a joint statement on the crisis, putting aside politics for the good of the nation.

Something like six hours later, McCain returns the call, and says "Sure, sounds good" while simultaneously issuing his own unilateral statement on the crisis.

As part of his statement, McCain decides to request that Friday's debate be postponed "so he can do his job".

So essentially, when Obama calls to suggest they put aside politics, McCain takes the opportunity to try to make himself look essential to the solution (which makes some sense, in as much as the policies he's supported and some of his top advisors were essential to CAUSING it) while at the same time getting out of the tricky spot of having to actually debate Obama on Friday.

McCain also states that he's "suspending campaign activities" until the crisis has passed, which is clearly designed to look Presidential, as this crisis, though important, is not something that two Senators will have that much to do with solving.

The post script to the whole thing, though, is that Obama has essentially come out and said "I plan to keep campaigning, because a President has to be able to focus on more than one thing at a time."

Please be aware of this. See it for what it is, McCain playing politics and taking Obama's olive branch and trying to strangle him with it.

It is not Presidential, it is politics as usual.

The McCain of 2000 would be so ashamed.

Liam.

McCain's POW Problem?

I was just sent this link by a friend. It contains an interesting video (see below), in which a number of current and former Senators and Congressmen (predominently Republican) chastise John McCain for his obstructionism on POW issues and his behavior as a POW.

I'm hoping to find some more information about this video, where it comes from, and whether the people in it stand by it as a fair representation of the things they said or not.

However, the video is pretty damning unless it turns out that it was cut together deviously, and it doesn't show most of the hallmarks of that sort of editing, so I wanted to share it.

Liam.

Playing Politics

In the next couple of days, I predict you're going to start seeing charges by Republicans that Democrats are "holding up the financial bailout" and "playing politics with the country's financial future".

Why? Because President Bush has already done so.

Included in the legislation that Bush has asked Congress to sign is the following section:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

This was entered for one of two reasons: To further push the balance of power towards the executive branch and away from the other two branches of federal government, or to be caught and force the Democrats to hold up the bill, thus opening themselves up to criticisms in the days before the election.

Probably both, for the Administration and the Republican Party, it's a win-win.

But read that section very carefully. In plain English, it says "Secretary Paulson has sole discretion over the disbursment of $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money, and he may be overseen by no one, nor may he be sued for it".

Understand that if the bill passes into law including this section, Secretary Paulson could write checks to himself and six top Republicans for $100 billion each and there'd be no one who could even call him on it.

While that outcome is highly unlikely, the fact that that would be possible means that it would also be possible for him to make really poor decisions, buying bad mortgages out at face value instead of at whatever bargain rate would be sufficient to save the companies in question without totally absolving them of any of their losses, or without any sort of punitive repercussions for the leaders of those companies.

And, to my mind, it says that we should trust implicitly the problem solving skills of the guys who were in charge when the problem happened, the guys who should have had sufficient oversight to stop it from happening in the first place.

I don't think so.

Just remember this little gem when someone tells you that "the Democrats" played politics with the bill and delayed this vital legislation.

Liam.

Interesting Q&A About Bailouts

I found this interesting link:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/21/business/21qanda.php

It's from the International Herald Tribune, the "Global Edition" of the New York Times.

It's essentially the bailout plans for the financial industry in a nut shell.

Enjoy.

Liam.

Support The Troops

According to several sources, including this article, the Bush Administration is blocking American former POWs from the first Gulf War (Desert Storm) from suing Iraq for damages after being tortured there.

Their treatment was a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, to which Iraq was and is a signatory, but the Administration is claiming that to allow the lawsuits to go forward would threaten Iraq's stability.

Much has been made on other sites about the fallaciousness of this argument, from the numbers involved (representing according to one site, about 1% of the interest that Iraq currently earns on money it has on deposit within the United States) to the fact, according to another site, that the Bush Administration is actively supporting foreign companies to recover damages from Iraq in the amounts of billions of dollars, far more than the POWs collectively could ever win in their case.

The thing is, 17 of those former POWs were in fact awarded damages in U.S. Federal Court in this case five years ago, said award having been subsequently blocked by the Administration.

This item isn't getting enough coverage, in my opinion, in as much as it's been going on more or less since 2002 and I hadn't heard of it until recently, but I especially wanted to weigh in because I have a theory I have not seen expressed elsewhere.

I believe that the Administration isn't blocking this suit because they do not believe it is meritorious, and also not because they honestly believe that any such award could seriously damage Iraq or U.S./Iraqi relations.

I believe that ultimately it comes down to their own complicity in violations of the Geneva Convention. If they allow this lawsuit to go forward, they lose a leg, however tenuous, in our own government's defense if/when some of our own held POWs in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ultimately bring suits against the United States for their own treatment at our hands.

And thus does illegal and immoral treatment of prisoners lead to unconscionable treatment of our veterans at the hands of the group that continues to successfully sell themselves as the ones who "support the troops".

It makes me just sick.

Liam.

[UPDATE: In doing some more research, I learned a couple of interesting facts. First, as a signatory to the Geneva Convention ourselves, we are forbidden from absolving any nation of responsibility for torturing a POW. Also, much of the torture in question happened in Abu Ghraib, which isn't germane to anything, but an interesting footnote and an embarrassing reminder for the Administration.

Rumors of Its Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

According to the Huffington Post, not only did Governor Palin NOT kill the "Bridge to Nowhere" project, but in fact the project is still proceeding, with Governor Palin's tacit approval.

Consider the source, but definitely an interesting update, if true. Let's watch the news over the next few days.

The New McCain

It turns out I'm not the only one who thinks McCain has changed, and not for the better.

Check this out...

Secretive Government

If you, as I, are tired of secretive government and would like to return to the days when government tried to be transparent whenever reasonably possible, consider this:

When Sarah Palin first became John McCain's Vice Presidential running mate, she welcomed the investigation into the "trooper-gate" situation (why must every scandal end in "gate" since Watergate?). So why is it, only two weeks later, the campaign has said she will not participate and is suing to stop the investigation?

And more shades of the last 8 years, apparently Sarah Palin and her senior staff all got Yahoo e-mail accounts, outside of normal channels, under the believe that any business they conducted there would be immune from Freedom of Information Act requests.

And shades of the cronyism of the last 8 years, apparently her High School class yearbook could double as a government directory, as she has systematically replaced qualified people in her administration with friends, some of whom are woefully unqualified for their positions.

Someone needs to remind these politicians that the Presidency (or the Governorship) is not a personal playground, that the business of running the country is serious business and we need competant people in the positions, not cronies and loyalists.

One more reason why I like Barack Obama. He plans to surround himself with all viewpoints, not merely those who are loyal to him. As President, he will hear all sides of each argument and will weigh them and come to a conclusion, rather than only hearing the side he wishes to hear and punishing or removing anyone who dissents.

Haven't we had enough secretive government? Haven't we had enough incompetant cronyism? Haven't we had enough?

There are so very many reasons not to vote for McCain/Palin, and with each new story it becomes ever more apparent that between them, they are Bush/Cheney all over again.

We've made that mistake twice. Do we really want to make it again?

Liam.

A Bridge Over Trouble Water

[Thanks to Ross for pointing out my typo. Liberals in my example are like those who live in DESERT areas, not in areas populated by banana splits and hot fudge sundaes. --Liam]

I've been trying to find a good analogy regarding government regulation, to illustrate the "either extreme is bad" aspect of it, and I think I've finally come up with it: water.

To me, the conservative argument on regulation is like people who have had a family member drown declaring that water is bad, and anything we can do to reduce the amount of water is to the positive.

The liberal argument is more like people who have lived in desert areas, watching people die of dehydration or of insufficient food due to insufficient water, who then go on to declare "water is good, more water is better, any chance you get to increase the amount of water you should take it."

The truth is somewhere in between, people in Galveston, TX aren't likely to buy the "liberal" argument right now, and those is the drought stricken midwest aren't likely to buy the "conservative" one.

So the problem isn't that regulation is "too onerous" or "absolutely necessary always", it's more nuanced than that. The problem is that SOME regulation is necessary, too much is onerous.

But the key is that after years of Republican control, we're much closer to drought than to flood. The browning, crumbling decay of the mortgage and financial industries shows that.

Is more regulation ALWAYS the key? No, just like more water during flood season will just wash the seeds away. But when your crops are dying and your throat is parched, it's not time to be stocking up on dehumidifiers.

Liam.

Just a Quickie...

Last time Republicans were in charge for years in a row, the S&L industry melted down. This time they were in charge years in a row, the Mortgage banks melt down. Coincidence?

And who should we put in charge of solving the problem, John "Keating 5" McCain, who was PART of the S&L meltdown, and whose main financial advisor was a huge proponent of the deregulation that directly led to the current problems? Or someone else?

Just sayin....

Why It Matters

There's been a lot of brouhaha in the news today because even Karl Rove says that John McCain has crossed the line when it comes to his untruthful campaigning, and little of that coverage on the liberal side mentions that Rove had similar things to say about Obama.

Here, however, is why that matters. Karl Rove is a hard core Republican. He was going to say Obama was lying regardless. Obama could be the Mother Theresa of politics, and Rove would have bad things to say about him, both in his roles as Fox News pundit and also in his role as "unofficial" campaign advisor to the McCain campaign.

As such, it is not news that he would say such things about Obama, it's like Paris Hilton referring to something as "hot" or Alan Greenspan speaking about the economy, it's to be expected.

However, when Rove comments that McCain has crossed the line, that means that to everyone else he has so FAR crossed the line that even Rove does not feel he can convincingly or reasonably deny it.

That is why it is news, that is why it's reasonable to point to that half of Rove's statement and ignore the other half.

Quick Warning!

Apparently, voters in predominantly Democratic and Independent leaning districts are receiving "absentee ballots" in the mail which are not legitimate. They aren't official, they have the wrong mailing address on them, and if they are used they will NOT be counted.

Talk about voter suppression, it appears someone is trying to convince large numbers of Democratic voters that they've voted while preventing them from actually casting a valid vote.

BEWARE! If you ask for an absentee ballot, make sure you've got the official one. And if at all possible, vote in person.

Liam.

John McCain's Family Values

One interesting facet we've started to see is people adding the text "Snopes confirms this" to an e-mail forward, but if you go to Snopes.com, you find that just the opposite is true.

So before I get to the heart of the matter, here's a link to the Snopes page, on which they say that the basic facts presented in it are true.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/carol.asp

It was forwarded to me by my mother for comment (someone had sent it to her), and according to Snopes, originally appeared in June 2008 in the Daily Mail, a UK newspaper.

The tone is decidedly anti-McCain, but the facts are basically correct, and as such, I would say the facts sort of justify the tone.

Leave a comment, let me know what you think...

Liam.

John McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of- war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children. But there is another Mrs. McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator's presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain's three eldest children. She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam's infamous 'Hanoi Hilton' prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news. But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering. For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later. 'My marriage ended because John McCain didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.'

In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage. Some of McCain's acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centered womanizer who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to 'play the field'. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons. Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans' rights, said: 'I have been following John McCain's career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit. "When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he
thought was better." 'McCain is the classic opportunist. He's always reaching for attention and glory,' he said. After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.'


Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, and a former presidential candidate, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by today's standards of modern politics.

Thoughts for the Evening...

I sat down to write about the new FBI rules and how they're rolling back the safeguards that were put in place after Watergate, which doesn't seem like a good idea.

But what's running through my head are several arguments I've had recently with those on the right, and I want to talk about them.

First, there's that per diem that Sarah Palin has supposedly claimed for nights when she was in her own home, and the answer to that is that it's legal and that others do it. And that's a valid reason... if you're talking about whether she should be arrested for it or not. Clearly she should not.

But for me, that story isn't about whether she did anything wrong, it's about the whole image they're selling for her of maverick reformer and fighter of government waste. THAT'S what makes that story mean something to me.

It's not that she did anything wrong. But it's like the ad I saw today that said "He reformed Washington, she reformed Alaska, together....blah blah blah". Excuse me, but when was this big reformation of Washington? Because other than the inevitable swing of the pendulum back and forth between the parties, I haven't seen all that much reforming going on over the course of my life. Lots of TALK of reforming, but not much actual change.

If you want to sell yourself as something, you open yourself up to criticism for things you've done that don't match the image you're selling.

The history just does not match the story. She campaigned in favor of the Bridge to Nowhere but points to the fact that she "turned it down" as evidence of her fiscal reformation of government.

The other one that's been rattling around in my head today is this: There was an ad from the Obama camp a few days ago that points out that by McCain's own admission, he doesn't really know how to get online, doesn't use e-mail or computers in general. Clearly the intent is to focus a spotlight on McCain's age, and we can debate whether that's fair or not (I certainly think advanced age CAN BE a factor in fitness to govern, where as race and gender are not, but I suppose it all depends on whether it really HAS affected his ability to govern effectively).

But in talking with some of my friends on the right, they're claiming this claim about the computer is "a lie" because McCain was so badly injured during his POW days that he can't really type or use a computer, so it has nothing to do with his age, it has to do with his physical disability.

And at first blush, this sounds reasonable... until you think about it for a while. And then you realize that once again, McCain or his supporters have gone to the "go to" argument for anything leveled against their candidate, his time in the Hanoi Hilton. It's beginning to be difficult to take that seriously any more, when it's become McCain's version of Giuliani's "9/11", the trump card he uses in any situation.

"How many houses do you own, Senator?" "Well, you know, for five and a half years I didn't HAVE a home..."

But on top of that, I'm trying to figure out what kind of disability would prevent you from being able to use a computer, given that Stephen Hawking uses one and all he has to use is his mouth. I had a friend back in the DC area who had lost his eyesight to diabetes, and he was able to navigate his way pretty effectively around a computer (his own, obviously modified, but still).

Computers are ubiquitous in our society, they are increasingly how politicians keep their constituents apprised of the goings on. Personally, I couldn't do my job without e-mail. Sure, if I was a Senator I might have someone to handle most of my e-mail for me, but I think I'd want to at least get a sense of what they were and how they worked and make sure I had the ability to check my e-mail if my aide called in sick one day.

As one friend put it, the kind of disability which would preclude the use of a computer would have to be something on the order of brain damage, and I think we have a right to know about any brain damage in someone we're going to elect to steer our country for four years or eight years.

Come to think of it, McCain and his campaign go to great lengths to minimize any coverage of his medical condition. Access to his medical record has been spotty at best, I recall a few months back when, with great fanfare, they allowed some small number of reporters in to look at them, not allowed to copy anything or even take any notes, and the number of pages of documents, divided by the number of reporters and the amount of time they were given meant that they'd each have had to go through each page in just a few seconds to get through it all.

So we really only have his word that he has any disability at all that would preclude his use of a computer. I would think that maybe, if he's going to start throwing around terms like disability, that perhaps we should be asking him to clearly spell out just what his disabilities are and whether there are any of them that preclude his being able to carry out the duties of President of the United States.

And in my view, any that he does not see fit to mention should not be able to sit in a reserve somewhere, to be pulled out as convenient to garner sympathy or fight off on charge or another.

Liam.

"Disrespectful"

Here's a clip from C-Span highlighting one of John McCain's latest ads.

The thing is, I can't decide if it's racist or sexist, but it's at least one, possibly.

The voiceover says that Obama and Biden "dismissed" her as good looking. This is based on Joe Biden's comment "What are the difference between me and Senator McCain's VP pick? Well, for one thing, she's much better looking." It wasn't dismissive at all, it was self deprecating humor.

Then it says "they accused her of being a liar". Well, those are shoes which fit both Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain quite well, thank you.

But the voiceover goes on to say "How disrespectful."

This is the part that I can't decide as to whether it's racist, sexist or both. First, the argument for racism: Can you see this same ad being leveled at a white male candidate? Or would they have used a different word, like "rude" or "condescending"? "Disrespectful" is something a lesser is to their superior. A child is disrespectful to a parent. A subordinate is disrespectful to a boss. And dare I say it, a slave is disrespectful to the master. To claim disrespect, you are essentially claiming that one is DUE respect from the other.

Now, why do I say it may be sexist? Because if it is honestly not racist then it is playing on our belief that men should be "respectful" to women, based on the assumption that women are too delicate or weak to handle the full force of the male personality. So if the ad is not claiming disrespect because he is black and she is white, then it is claiming it because he is male and she, female.

All in all, I find the ad very distasteful to watch.

Take a look and tell me if you disagree.

Liam.

McCain vs Obama: The Accomplishments

Someone has taken the time to compare and contrast the accomplishments of Senator Obama vs Senator Clinton during the 109th and 110th Congresses (the only two for which both men were Senators) and I found it interesting, in light of the accusation by the McCain campaign that Senator Obama hasn't really accomplished anything in his time in government.

Check it out here.

Liam.

Warfare vs Diplomacy

And now to the second topic for today: Warfare.

I've been thinking about the shape of the world today, and our response to it. In many ways, the world is poised on a razors edge today, and I fear we need the rationality of diplomacy far more than we need the hot-headed testosterone of a war hero (especially one who is by all accounts subject to "rages").

First, there are the two wars we know about. Afghanistan, which has been festering as we've ignored it pursuing other wars, and the red herring Iraq, which is "doing much better since the surge", but about which General Petraeus said two days ago "I don't think I will ever declare Victory in Iraq", and which by some reports is poised to flare back up again, leading the Bush administration to announce that the number of troops in Iraq on the day he leaves office will still be at higher than pre-surge numbers.

Then there are the ones we've talked about, like Iran, a country which I'm fairly certain we would already have attacked were it not for the strained state of our military. When you can barely get enough soldiers to keep the existing wars from spiraling into chaos, only an extremist or a moron starts a third fight. There are similar rumblings about South Korea and Venezuela, of course, but as long as Kim Jong Il and Hugo Chavez confine themselves to inflammatory statements, the same logic holds true as for Iran.

Then there's the recent Georgia/Russia conflict, which is setting up to start another cold war between us and Russia. Right now, Putin and Bush are in the "strut and display" phase of conflict, where neither is quite ready to commit to anything, but both are puffing out their chests and beating on them in an attempt to intimidate the other, and if neither backs down, if cooler heads do not prevail, if diplomacy is not at least attempted, that could easily lead to more fighting, especially if Georgia joins NATO and the U.S. becomes bound by treaty to get involved in their wars. Add to this mix the self-styled military hero and (as I mentioned) hot headed McCain and you're throwing a lit match into a dynamite factory.

Finally, there are lots of countries out there who are not happy with us or with the Bush administration, and per the article that I read (and as I recall, posted) a few days ago, the election of John McCain may well send the message to the rest of the world that rather than a basically good country with one questionable leader, we've actually become a nation of belligerent, preemptively-striking bullies, and many of them may decide "the heck with them". There's also newly ascendant superpower China, with no real reason to hit us right now, but no real reason to fear us either. Any of these could look at the state of our armed forces, particularly here at home, and decide that the time is ripe for an attack. Admittedly the chance of that at this moment is probably small, but a few more years of weakening of our military, a few more years of bluster and BS in place of diplomacy, a few more countries insulted by "our way or the highway" posturing and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone (or heaven forbid, some combination of someones) decides that we're ripe for the plucking.

I think it's very possible that with this election, we face the choice between a peaceful next several years and one which stretches our military beyond the breaking point, and who knows what happens then? The draft? We start losing wars?

I'm not really exaggerating much at all when I tell you I am literally terrified of the prospect of a McCain administration to follow up the last 8 years.

Liam.

Secrecy and Loyalty

I have two fears today, so two blog posts I plan to write today.

The first (actually, the second, but the first one I want to write) is typified by this article from the New York Times (you may have to sign up for a free account to view the whole thing).

It talks about Sarah Palin's governing style in Alaska, and there are several things there to be wary of, but the sentence which frightens me the most is this one:

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy.

Loyalty and Secrecy. Two hallmarks of the Bush/Cheney administration, and potentially two of the most damaging parts of it. Also, I believe, two of the biggest reasons for the extremely low Bush approval rating. In 8 years, we've gone from a fairly transparent government with qualification being the primary factor in hiring to an unreasonably secretive one in which loyalty is prized above even basic competence (Heck of a job, Brownie!).

To quote John McCain from his speech in front of the green screen the night Obama took the Democratic nomination, "That's not change we can believe in."

Liam.

Tired

[I just want to add a note to this, which was written last night when I couldn't sleep. I don't disagree with most of what I said, but I didn't mean to dismiss everyone who agrees with McCain. I'm sure there are people out there who honestly agree with him on the issues, or on what they believe the positions are on the issues. My frustration is largely with the so-called independents who seem to have swung to McCain. If you agree with McCain, and if you've taken some time to verify that the things you agree with are real and not just lip service, I have no problem with you voting for McCain. But I believe that number of people is relatively small, and it's the ones who are supposedly the independent thinkers who aren't bothering to think critically that are really getting under my skin. --L]

I'm about ready to give up on this nation's citizenry.

How incredibly stupid do we have to be, when one political candidate can successfully convince us that even the most basic questions about his (or more specifically, his running mate's) experience and credentials are partisan smears and not worthy of response, while at the same time successfully painting his opponent with lie after lie after lie?

I'm absolutely sick of it, and based on the polls our electorate is eating it up.

Keith Olbermann picked up a topic today I've talked about before: McCain has often used the phrase "I'd rather lose the election than lose the war", trying to paint himself as an uber-patriot who puts love of country before personal gain, and yet... He's been talking for months about his secret plan to get Osama bin Laden. He sells himself as the one guy who knows how to get bin Laden, a plan which he will reveal to us after we elect him.

I wrote about this weeks ago, but how do these two statements jive? If McCain honestly knows how to get bin Laden, why is he holding on to this information until after the election? Arguably the single most important enemy the U.S. has right now, and he's playing politics with it, which suggests to me either that McCain doesn't actually put country before personal gain, or that he's lying.

And if he's lying about having this great plan, this great knowledge of how to get bin Laden, you have to ask yourself why. And the obvious answer is that he's not got anything else. For all of his bluster, McCain has no more executive experience than Obama or Biden, and so instead of providing any real plans, he goes on about "secret" plans, and hopes that we, the electorate, will be too stupid to separate out "was a soldier in war" (a topic McCain keeps saying he doesn't want to talk about and yet magically manages to bring up, tourette's like, nearly as often as Giuliani invokes 9/11) from "is an expert on war".

And, it seems, he's right. I'm sick of it. Sick of every bit of it. In what intelligent world can a political campaign refuse to answer any but the most inconsequential of questions and manage to turn that lack of forthrightness into POSITIVE poll numbers? Meanwhile, Mr. Obama, who is not perfect, is at least trying to speak on the issues, trying to give specific answers and running a much cleaner campaign, and where is it getting him? Ever eroding poll numbers.

We're officially a society that does not think critically any more, and we actually buy the notion that the free press doing it's job is a BAD thing.

Or take the taxation issue. If I had I dime for every time someone has repeated to me that Obama was going to raise our taxes, I'd have enough to be in the top 5%, the only class of people for whom the assertion is true. In fact, for the vast majority of the lower and middle class, the Obama plan cuts taxes more than the McCain plan does. And yet the popular common knowledge is that Obama will raise all of our taxes. It's a lie, but it's winning.

Or take McCain's three latest attacks.

One, he claims that Obama's use of the phrase "lipstick on a pig", a phrase which McCain himself used in referring to a Hillary Clinton plan during the primaries, is now a sexist smear against his running mate, presumably because she happens to have used the term "lipstick" in her convention speech. How hypocritical, to use the same line to attack a woman, but when it is used against HIM, to conflate it INTO an attack on a woman.

Two, he has an ad out claiming that Obama supports comprehensive sex education for kindergartners. The truth is that Obama supported a bill to combat sexual abuse of children, and the extent of the training in kindergarten was to raise awareness of "stranger danger". Can you IMAGINE the McCain attacks had Obama come out AGAINST this bill.

Three, McCain has another attack ad out which lists a number of negative press articles about Obama, but... virtually every one of those articles is actually far more negative about McCain himself than about Obama. Really. How you can read an article that says your opponent isn't great, but you're far worse, and reference that article to say "See? The so-and-so newspaper says my opponent isn't great" and get away with it...

I'm tired, and I'm running out of patience.

I'll leave you with this article from the U.K.'s Guardian. It talks about just how much we risk in worldwide esteem (y'know, the stuff we had quite a bit of under Clinton, a huge amount of immediately after 9/11, but which we have record low amounts of today) if we vote in McCain.

The article posits, and I agree, that the world will see a McCain choice as America giving tacit approval to the finger George W. Bush has given to the rest of the world for the last eight years, and so instead of beginning to repair our standing in the world, we will hasten the point beyond which the free world stops accepting OUR president as THEIR de facto leader.

The choice at this moment could not be more clear. And we're on the verge of blowing it.

What a proud day to be an American citizen.

Liam.

Oh, One Last Thing

Once again, time for a defense of someone I don't personally support.

This time, Sarah Palin.

Folks, it's time to stop hammering her for supposedly saying that the Iraq war was "God's plan".

I do not have the video in front of me at the moment, so my quote will be paraphrased, but what she clearly says in the video is "That's what we have to pray for, that there is a plan and that it's God's plan".

And yet everyone on the left seems to have picked up on this and is flinging it around as though she had asserted that God endorsed our plan in Iraq.

In that same video she definitely said some things not becoming of a VP. She was scattershot, jumping from topic to topic and giggling like a schoolgirl at times. And she did assert that the parishoners should pray for God's plan for the pipeline she wanted to build.

But she never said that Iraq was God's plan, she said we should pray that there was a plan and that that plan was God's plan.

I continue to disagree with Senator McCain and Governor Palin on most issues, I continue to think both would be disastrous for our country at this juncture of our history.

But I also continue to believe that we should discuss the issues, not make them up by twisting someone's words.

On EITHER side.

Liam.

Corporate Welfare

And finally for tonight, another quickie.

In discussing the bailout by the Federal Government recently of a number of institutions which got themselves into trouble largely because those industries were deregulated unsafely, one of my friends made an interesting comment.

It seems that in this country we've moved to a policy of privatizing profits and socializing losses. The argument we hear in favor of deregulation is always that the regulations are "excessive" and "unfairly restrict profits". The thing is, they also attempt to enforce ethical behavior.

So it's really true, we deregulate industries so those industries can go off and make even more obscene amounts of money, but when someone inevitably misbehaves without the enforced restraint of oversight, who steps in to bail them out? Our government, brandishing a fist full of our dollars.

The next time some Republican tries to tell you that only they have your interests as a business person at heart, because only they want to make sure you are free to behave in as money-grubbing a fashion as you so choose, realize just how much of your tax money has been spent cleaning up the mess left by previous deregulation. Enron. The Savings & Loans. The oil speculators. The mortgage industry. The list goes on and on.

Privatize profits, but socialize losses. What a sweet deal for the corporations.

Liam.

Just Because You Didn't Vet Her Doesn't Mean You Can Refuse To Let Us Do It

We're getting down to the end, two more topics for tonight.

Since when do the media in this country answer to our political candidates instead of the other way around?

I do not understand why there isn't more uproar over the McCain campaign's decision not to make Sarah Palin available to the media until, according to campaign manager Rick Davis, "[the] point in time we feel like the news media is going to treat her with some level of respect and deference."

Deference? This is a previously unknown person! Unlike the names Obama and Biden and McCain, which most members of the American public have at least heard repeatedly, until two weeks ago I venture to guess almost no one outside of Alaska knew who Sarah Palin was and fewer still knew anything about her.

This is a woman who is running to be a Vice President with a statistically much higher chance of ascending to the Presidency than most. In a very real sense, she's campaigning to be President. I think we have a right to know more about her, and I think expectations of deference are entirely unreasonable.

Case in point, the ABC interview with Charles Gibson, the one interview for which she's been made available since having been named. This will not be a hard hitting interview, and I can prove it:

This will not be one of those hard hitting "we sit down together and I ask a batch of tough questions and hold the candidate's feet to the fire" sort of interviews.

No, Charles Gibson will follow her around for two days, snapping up scraps from the table whenever Mistress Palin deigns to let some ort or crumb fall from her plate. The interview will take place whenever Governor Palin or her team decide, for as long or as short as they decide. This means that Mr. Gibson has essentially handed them a leash tied around his nethers. He has to behave, or those question times will be few and far between. Far from holding anyone's feet to the fire, if he asks a question she doesn't wish to answer, the time available for this question session will magically dissipate and the next one will be longer in coming.

Of course, I'm playing right into the campaign's hands, because I'm quite certain that if there is more of an uproar, they'll trot her right out (after having had a few days to cram as much foreign policy and other knowledge into her head as possible) and then make "tsk tsk" noises casting her in the light of victim again. "Those damn liberal bullies, picking on a woman," they'll imply.

Still, it's a fair complaint. She's a candidate for the second (and potentially the first) highest office in the land. We, the people, have a right to vet her as thoroughly as we possibly can, through our agents, the free press.

But then, what do you expect out of the campaign when manager Rick Davis has declared "this election is not about issues but about personalities." If that's true, it speaks not well for us, the American electorate.

Liam.

A Tale Of Two (missing) Flag Pins

This one is a quickie...

Barack Obama has taken a lot of flak for his sporadic wearing of the lapel flag pin, and I've said before that patriotism is in your deeds, not in your symbols.

But I'd just like to point out, in case this one comes back again, that during the Republican convention, neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin was wearing a flag lapel pin during their speeches.

Is this a bad thing? Not to me. But if you were one of those loudly condemning Obama for his failure in accessorizing, you might consider whether that's really a valid differentiator between the candidates.

Liam.

Good Deeds Make The Saint

[UPDATE: I've edited the last paragraph. My sister-in-law was kind enough to point out to me that it doesn't exactly say what I intended. Thanks, Cindy! --Liam.]

Next up: I was having a discussion with a friend at work today, and he said something that I thought was kind of profound, so I thought I'd repeat it here:

One of the differences between liberals and conservatives seems to be the way in which they view American greatness.

Liberals view America as great because of the great things we do.

Conservatives seem to view the things we do as great because of America's innate greatness.

As such, it seems contradictory to liberals that John McCain could support torture (tacitly, by voting against the bill banning it). President Bush seems perfectly comfortable casting us as the 'good guys' and the other guys as the 'evil doers', and thus has no moral compunction against doing things which, were they done to us or our citizens, would to him be further proof of their evil. Waterboarding as one example, but more recently, all of the high minded lectures to Russia about how in the 21st Century, nations simply do not invade other nations.

Meanwhile, liberals see evil acts as tarnishing America and noble acts enhancing her, and so they fight against improper behavior. They want us to follow our principles even when not doing so might be safer. They see wisdom in the words of Ben Franklin that those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither.

If this is an adequate description of the mindset of liberals vs conservatives, then in this, at least, I am clearly a liberal. I do not buy into the idea that there are people so good that evil acts done by them are forgivable and others so evil that even the most minor infraction is vile and heinous.

To think otherwise is to ensure there will always be warfare, because I guarantee you in any conflict between human beings, each side sees themselves as the good guys and the other guys as the bad guys, and if both sides hold the "my goodness justifies my behavior", then both sides will have atrocities committed against themselves and will perpetuate the battle, unwilling to let the "evil" other side get away with things they themselves have done.

And, I might add, I believe it's pretty clear that in this regard, Jesus held the "liberal" view. Turn the other cheek. Judge not lest ye be judged.

Any behavior which you have to know who initiated it before you decide how you feel about it should be a red flag for you.

On last example from the news tonight: If you, like Bill O'Reilly, loudly condemned Jamie Lynn Spears' parents for not raising her properly when she got pregnant last year, but consider that the pregnancy of Bristol Palin is a personal family matter, or even a blessing for the family, then you need to look again at your opinions.

Ultimately, to me, behavior defines a person. Virtuous behavior defines a good person, immoral behavior defines a bad person. It may be easier to forgive bad behavior in an otherwise virtuous person, but that doesn't mean the bad act suddenly becomes a good act, it simply makes it an anomaly.

Liam.

Sarah Palin: Not Building Bridges

I've had a series of thoughts today, so there will be a series of posts.

First up... I'd like someone to explain to me how you can lobby strongly for something, reject it only when it becomes overwhelmingly unpopular in the rest of the country, still keep the money but spend it on something else, and claim that as evidence that you're "fighting pork" and a "fiscal reformer".

To me, that's like if I lobby my wife for months to be allowed to take $5000 of our savings and buy a large flat panel TV. I wheedle and I whine and I beg and finally she relents, so I go into the savings and withdraw $5000, but before I can buy the television, my parents or my friends get wind of the purchase and say "Look, I know you want this, but it really doesn't make good financial sense, that's the only $5000 you have in savings, you really shouldn't spend it on a TV". So I decide not to buy the TV, but I also don't put the $5000 back in savings, I just spend it on other stuff.

Can I then claim to be the guy that saved the family $5000 by not buying the TV, even though I still used the $5000?

That's what this Bridge to Nowhere fiasco is all about. The McCain campaign and VP candidate Sarah Palin are trying to sell her as this great spending reformer and as the one who personally killed the "Bridge to Nowhere" project, and yet she's on the record supporting it. She CAMPAIGNED in favor of it when running for the Governor's seat. And when it became abundantly clear that it was going to reflect poorly on her state (and only then) did she say "No, I don't think we're going to build that bridge", but her state kept the $200 million anyway.

What did they spend it on? No one seems to know. But I think we can fairly safely assume it was not other funded projects from the Congress (thus saving taxpayer's money by not requiring separate funding for those programs) or the campaign would be touting the specifics.

This is Sarah Palin's reformer legacy. Alaska got $200 million of our money, but because she didn't spend it on the bridge to nowhere, she's our fiscal protector. But she still kept our money.

Liam.

Constitutional Rights. Again.

[UPDATE: It appears Barack Obama was thinking the same thing I was, but as always, more eloquently. Click here for an article about a campaign discussion of this very topic. --Liam]

Watching some of the Republican speeches, it occurs to me this bears repeating...

One of the speakers (I forget who at the moment, I think it was Rudy Giuliani) commented that Obama just wanted to make sure the terrorists got their Constitutional rights.

This bothered me, because it showed the attitude the current crop of Republican leadership have towards the Constitution: As a sometimes inconvenient set of laws to be applied or ignored as befits the situation. I, on the other hand, view it as the foundation upon which our country is built, erode it at your peril.

But here's the key to the whole "maintaining terrorists rights" argument: It's not ABOUT the terrorists. Oh, sure, as Christians we're supposed to show mercy, even to those who have wronged us, but that's not why we do it. And we're supposed to be morally better than the bad guys, but that's also not why we do it. Heck, there's even that whole "as you treat the least of these" argument, but that's also not why we do it.

We do it because human beings make mistakes, and not everyone we capture is actually a terrorist. If they were, we would not have released large numbers of people previously held at Guantanamo Bay. To hear President Bush tell it, everyone there is a terrorist. But the problem is that our "wide net" method of picking people up clearly picked up a lot of people who were NOT terrorists, and it is for THEM that we maintain basic human rights, Constitutional rights, Geneva Convention rights, etc.

If there was a way to know, with 100% certainty, the guilt or innocence of an accused person, and to know with 100% certainty that there is no ameliorating factor to why they did what they did, there'd be a lot less hew and cry over rights.

But we take care to maintain those rights for even the most obviously guilty person so that we can feel confident that those wrongly accused have their fair opportunity to prove their innocence and go free. THAT is why criminals' rights are so important. It's not about coddling terrorists, it's about making sure that the non-terrorists who get swept up in our zeal get THEIR fair deal, and about giving us the moral high ground to protest if one of our guys is in their custody and is not afforded his or her rights.

Liam.

A Theory

I know, I'm as guilty as anyone for repeating the things I've heard, but I want to get this theory out there and posted, so that if I turn out to be right (as so rarely happens when I prognosticate), I have some proof.

I'm beginning to think some of the more outlandish claims about Sarah Palin may be an orchestrated campaign... by the Republicans. (This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's Rovian politics 101, I'm just trying to see if I've figured out the playbook, tell me if you don't think this is at least POSSIBLE).

Think about it.

First rumor: Trig Palin isn't actually Sarah Palin's son, but Bristol Palin's son, Sarah's grandson. Plant a few faked seeds, conspiracy lovers will go nuts finding other corroborating "evidence".

Second rumor: Sarah Palin had an affair with her husband's business partner. Don't even need to plant much evidence, just have someone leak something to the Enquirer, fresh off of their victory in the Edwards case they look pretty credible, but they're still the same old Enquirer, so it shouldn't be too difficult to make them think they have a story.

Latest rumor: Trig Palin actually IS Sarah's baby... with that business partner. Yes, I heard this one earlier tonight (well, late yesterday, technically). Supposedly (per the rumor) going to be part of the Enquirer article next week. Again, if it actually is in the article, not terribly hard to get the Enquirer to print it.


So now go back a few weeks. You're the Republican party / McCain campaign, and you have a good candidate for up-and-coming star that you want to nominate as VP, but you know she's low on experience, something you've been hammering your competitor for, and that there may be one or two little ethical violations or perhaps her provenance as a cutter of pork barrel spending isn't as solid as you'd like it to be.

What do you do? Manage expectations. Make her the victim. Start a few rumors like these. Let it sit for a couple of weeks to really marinate (including all of the people who will start to believe it all because "if it wasn't true, they'd at least bring out the birth certificate and show it to us").

Finally, come out with some perfect bit of evidence that destroys most of the extreme rumors you've created. In this case, a DNA test proving that Sarah Palin's husband Todd is Trig's biological father and Sarah is Trig's biological mother.

But since the three rumors have been allowed to reach maximum volume, now Governor Palin looks like the victim of an organized smear campaign (which she was, just not by her opponents), and thus all criticism of her becomes suspect, even the more reasonable (and perhaps true) ones, such as that she really doesn't have any more experience than your main competitor (whom you continue to slam for it) or that she's still under an investigation (that you're trying to squash) for certain unethical behaviors as Mayor and Governor or that she lobbied FOR the bridge to nowhere before she was against it (and even though she was against it, somehow the state of Alaska still kept the money... just spent it on other things).

I have no proof of this, of course. I'm not even sure I believe it. It's a theory, and one the veracity of which we'll probably never know for sure. (Heck, I'm not even sure if modern DNA tests can differentiate between a parent and a grandparent. I believe they could, because if the baby was fathered by anyone other than another child of Sarah and Todd, there would be elements of the DNA not contributed by either Sarah or Todd, but I don't know for sure).

But you have to admit, it sounds like the sort of slick politics that MIGHT be played.

So I'll tell you what: If the campaign addresses these rumors within the next week or so, I'll buy that they did it quickly and decisively and it probably wasn't them behind it. But if they wait until the end of September and then swoop in with their proof and try to turn her into Saint Sarah of Arc, political martyr, I'll assume that I was right.

Liam.

Sarah Palin: Racist?

Here's an interesting article that claims that Sarah Palin is overtly racist (as, apparently, is much of white Alaska towards blacks, aboriginals and anyone else not of European descent).

It also includes some additional information about her REAL experience as mayor of Wasilla and Governor of the state.

Of course, you also have to consider the source, so it'll be interesting to see whether it turns out to be verified or just random rumors.

Still, it's worth reading, I think.

Liam.

Double Talk

I mentioned the difference between Karl Rove's analysis of Tim Kaine and his analysis of Sarah Palin, who have essentially the same resume, but as always, the Daily Show did it so much better than I could have. Here's their take:

Sexism

[UPDATE: I thought of a perfect counter example to the "A man wouldn't have had to go through this" argument: Bobby Jindal. He went through this to a lesser extent when he was simple on the McCain list of possibles. I recall one report in which it was claimed that he once performed an exorcism on a girlfriend without her consent, because he felt she was in the grip of evil forces. Didn't put much stock into it, but it's a perfect example of similar tactics used against a man. --Liam]

Anyone who knows me knows that philosophically, I'm a feminist, except that I don't use the term because as with so many human endeavors, the term has been hijacked by a small group of extremists to mean something uglier than "men and women have equal value and should have equal rights and equal pay".

Nevertheless, I am getting really sick of the sexism in politics, but it's not where the common meme says it is.

The sexism I'm talking about is the subtle and not-so-subtle use of a woman's gender to convey special priviledges and protections in an arena where they are not needed.

(By the way, I'm not averse to special protections where they are needed, as we've seen before. I understand that sexism, like other biases, can be so ingrained in a society that for a while special protections are needed in order to wipe it out. This is not one such example.)

The latest example is a quote from Dick Morris talking with Sean Hannity, talking about how those attacking Sarah Palin are sexist, and as proof he trots out the same dirt-digging and mud-slinging that goes on with EVERY new candidate and asserts that "if this were a man, none of this would be brought up".

It's ludicrous. In this age of the internet and conspiracy theories and mud slinging, there's nothing I've seen so far about Sarah Palin that would not also have been said had McCain picked a relatively inexperienced ex frat boy governor instead of a relatively inexperienced ex beauty queen governor.

The same charges were brought up by the Clinton campaign, and it's insane. The sexism isn't in how Palin (or Clinton) was treated by and large, it's in trying to use their gender and charges of sexism to shield themselves from the normal process. The normal process is dirty and ugly, and it could stand to be changed, but nevertheless, it is the normal process. Live with it.

Liam.

Rove on...

...Tim Kane, but it might as well be Sarah Palin...




(Just remember this, as the McCain smear machine starts insisting that it's unfair and unprecedented for Democrats to be questioning her qualifications... Rove already did it. Just swap the names.)

Liam.

One Tiny Ray Of Light

In everything I watched tonight (see my previous post), Mike Huckabee deserves a little bit of a cheer.

I saw speeches from Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Huckabee and Sarah Palin, and the only one of the group that came across as polite, genuine and nice was Huckabee. The only one of the crowd that I can imagine liking as a person or enjoying socializing with (after we agreed to disagree on politics, which I have done with quite a few of my friends and co-workers, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility), the only one who stuck for the most part to the truth... I don't agree with all of what he said, but he stuck to the issues, and if you agree with him on the issues, then his argument held water. If you don't, it didn't.

On the other hand, if you agree with the other three (particularly Romney and Giuliani) politically, you still have to recognize, if you're being honest with yourself, the extent to which they were using lies, spin and half truths.

And Palin, something about her has rubbed me the wrong way since I first heard her speak. She reminds me of a certain type of person that I never got along with in my school days. I get the distinct sense that were I to meet her in person, she'd end up in the same pile of "people I never really want to associate with" as, well, Romney and Giuliani. And McCain. And, to name some from the other side, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman.

But I have to give it to Huckabee. He's either a far smoother politician than any of the rest of them, or he's that rarity in politics, the guy who's doing what he does because he actually believes in it, instead of because he believes it's what will get him elected.

Mike Huckabee, my hat is off to you tonight.

Liam.