McCain scuttles bipartisan deal to save the economy

Well, it now looks like John McCain has singlehandedly scuttled any chance for a resolution of the credit crisis.

The deal, as it came together, was not the $700,000 blank check to Secretary Paulson that had originally been proposed by the Bush Administration, but was instead a deal that would see the money dispersed over time, with significant oversight to make sure it was actually doing and being used for what it was supposed to do. It gave the taxpayers some equity in the corporations it helped, and it limited extravagant pay packages for the executives of those corporations.

All things were moving toward an agreement, until McCain stuck his nose in where it didn't belong. By trying to take credit for a solution he had absolutely nothing to do with, McCain has apparently driven the deal into the ground.

I haven't witnessed such a selfish, petulant, pious, but ultimately wildly destructive act in my entire life. "Country first" my ass. John McCain has never been about anything but John McCain.

John "LOOK AT ME" McCain: Narcissus reborn.

“Do Nothing” McCain seeks to delay the election?

With his poll numbers in freefall, and with his debate preparations not going well at all, John McCain yesterday announced he would skip the debate to return to Washington because of the economic crisis.

In his speech yesterday morning, Mr. McCain said the “crisis calls for all hands on deck.” He “formally suspended his campaign” (whatever that means), and confirmed he intended to skip the debate. “With so much on the line, for America and the world, the debate that matters most right now is taking place in the United States Capitol — and I intend to join it,” McCain piously claimed.

This despite the fact that McCain is not on any of the relevant committees -- not Finance, not Banking, and not Joint Economic – and thus has nothing to do with the government’s response to the credit market meltdown. (McCain is on the Armed Services; Indian Affairs; and Commerce, Science & Transportation committees).

Because McCain is not on any of the relevant committees, and because all the work is being done in committee, behind closed doors, McCain is returning to Washington DC to do nothing. He is not allowed to attend those committee meetings. None of the Republican finance folk have any respect for him. He returns to Washington with nothing to do but hope somehow he gets credit for whatever result the relevant committees come up with.

Though McCain trumpeted his immediate return to Washington DC yesterday morning, he did not in fact arrive back in the capital until noon today. He cancelled his appearance on David Letterman’s show at the very last minute yesterday, telling Dave he was needed immediately at the Capital, and then proceeded to remain in New York and give an interview to Katie Couric. Letterman was rightfully pissed off, and his show last night was extremely funny.

McCain says the crisis (which he has no roll in addressing) demands that he suspend his campaign and skip the first presidential debate. And he piously demanded that Obama do the same. But we’re not going to dely the election, are we? It’s clear McCain is just grandstanding – something he does whenever he gets flustered, which is often – trying to shift attention away from the fact that the whole crisis is his fault, at least in part, because he was one of the main backers of banking deregulation.

McCain fretted: “It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration’s proposal to meet the crisis. I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.” Well, it looks like, once again, McCain had no idea what he was talking about. Consensus has emerged, entirely without his input or help, and McCain’s whole gambit is being seen for what it is – a desperate move by a flustered old fool. Ridiculous!

McClatchy Still the Best

I have said it before and I'll say it again, pound for pound, the McClatchy news organization is by far the best in the political business.

While everyone else is falling back on their heels in hopes of avoiding the Republican attack machine, if not already in the pocket of the RNC (that means you Fox News, Tom Brokaw, Matt Lauer, and the like), McClatchy is consistently hard-hitting and no nonsence. Keep up the great work!

“How many times do you have to be hit on the head before you figure out who's hitting you?”

One can’t help but think of Harry Truman’s famous question in light of the rise of the McCain/Palin ticket in the polls. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that distinguishes the policies (economic, education, taxation, warmongering, religion-pushing, damn the infrastructure, damn the people) of the McCain/Palin ticket from the same old Republican Party approach to government that has driven this country into the ground over the past eight years.

John “Country First, Damn the People” McCain and Sarah “Let Them Eat Moose-Turd” Palin offer nothing but further economic decline, further reduction in opportunities for a good education, further decline in scientific and medical research, ongoing wage stagnation, continued outsourcing, increasing inflation, further reduction of a woman’s right to chart the course of her own life, ever-higher health care costs, ongoing lies and disinformation and secrecy and bullshit ... in essence, the ongoing dumbing down and highway robbery of the American people.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” Obama said today, “It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.” And so it is with the Republican Party’s approach to government. They appeal to ignorance and hate, suggest the best way to get ahead is to hurt the competition, grab hold of power and line their own pockets, all the while leaving life a little more difficult for the citizens of this country. The standard-bearers may change, but the rotten fish underneath still stinks.

Unless you are a narcissistic, spite-filled, mega-millionaire (like McCain), you’d have to be a damned fool to vote for McCain/Palin.

So what can we do? Well, we need to make sure Obama/Biden have the resources to get the message out. And we need to get that message out too. In his final complete book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan (the great American scientific educator) warned of the dangers of mixing ignorance with power:

“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces... I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

Sagan challenged us all to not sit quietly in the face of ignorance, falsehood and bluster, particularly when coming from persons seeking power, but to speak out in favor of truth, to vocally correct false theories and unsupportable assertions, to insist on intellectual honesty.

Bob Herbert gets into this mind-set in his column today: “Hold Your Heads Up.” Liberals have done a hell of a lot to make this country better. Name one thing the current strain of Republicanism has done. The only thing you could possibly say is “cut taxes”, but lets be honest, you’re paying for those tax cuts ten times over with higher education costs, higher health care costs, higher gas prices, lower home values, lower savings rates, dirtier skies, dirtier water, less-safe products, and that’s just the start of that list.

So donate, volunteer, write, speak out, do whatever you can.

Presidential Ages

Lots of muttering this week about Obama's age. So here are some interesting facts:

George W. Bush was 54 when he became president.
Bill Clinton was 46
Jimmy Carter was 52
Nixon was 56 (and he had been vice at 40)
LBJ was 55
John F. Kennedy was 43
FDR was 51
Calvin Coolidge was 51
William Howard Taft was 52
Theodore Roosevelt was 42
Grover Cleveland was 48
Chester Arthur was 49
Ulysses S. Grant was 47
Lincoln was 52

So, don’t buy the bull that Barack Obama’s 47 years of age is some unusually young age. It isn’t. He’s right in the same age bracket as our very best presidents (and some others who weren’t so hot). On the flip side, no president has ever been over 70 at the start of his term. Reagan came the closest, at 69. And in our entire history, only three have been over 65 (Reagan, Harrison and Buchanan).

Apples and Moose-Turd

The line of attack keeps coming up that Obama is inexperienced. It continues to be false. As I mentioned in an earlier post (March 5, 2008), Obama has twenty two (22) years of relevant experience: five (5) years as a community organizer dealing with voting rights, three (3) years as an associate at a big law firm, ten (10) years as a constitutional law professor, and twelve (12) years now as an elected official.

Also for those who compare Obama’s community organizing experience to the largely ceremonial duties of the Mayor of Wasilla. Here are the duties of the Mayor of Wasilla, as defined by the Wasilla Municipal Code:

2.16.020 Power and duties of mayor.

A. The mayor is the chief administrator of the city, has the same powers and duties as those of a manager under AS 29.20.005, and shall:
1. Preside at council meetings. The mayor may take part in the discussion of matters before the council, but may not vote, except that the mayor may vote in the case of a tie;
2. Act as ceremonial head of the city;
3. Sign documents on behalf of the city;
4. Appoint, suspend or remove city employees and administrative officials, except as provided otherwise in AS Title 29 and the Wasilla Municipal Code;
5. Supervise the enforcement of city law and carry out the directives of the city council;
6. Prepare and submit an annual budget and capital improvement program for consideration by the council, and execute the budget and capital program as adopted;
7. Make monthly financial reports and other reports on city finances and operations as required by the council;
8. Exercise legal custody over all real and personal property of the city;
9. Perform other duties required by law or by the council; and
10. Serve as personnel officer, unless the council authorizes the mayor to appoint a personnel officer.
B. The mayor may appoint a person to the position of administrative assistant and deputy administrator. If appointed, the positions may not be eliminated during the mayor’s term of office without prior consent of the mayor.

So there you have it, the sum total of Palin’s pre-2007 experience. No trade or foreign policy or economic issues dealt with, no laws written or even considered, no public policy to set. Nothing. A figurehead. Now does anything really think that being a United States Senator is also a figurehead position? Or that the two are in any way comparable?

Also note that when Obama was community organizing, Palin was still in college, and then working as a sportscaster on some small local station. Palin didn’t start serving as governor until after Obama had already announced his run for for the Presidency. Apples and oranges. Or rather, apples and moose-turd.

Gas-Bag Palin’s Underwhelming Speech

Well, I have to admit, I was one of those 37 million people who tuned in to watch Gov. Palin give her speech last night. And I must say, I was underwhelmed. It was really not very good – long-winded, snarky, filled with empty boasts and outright lies and yet still managing to drag and lose focus.

If you have read all the stuff about Palin’s rise, you know that she got to where she is today by applying the republican formula: guns, abortion, oil, born-again Christianity, paint the other person as unpatriotic (thus also tarring anyone that votes for them with the same label).

Wedge politics – devoid of meaning. Empty, vacuous, petulant and cruel. It continues to stun me that so many people in such different parts of the land can apply that formula and be elected no matter how big a moron they are. But it happens over and over, again and again: people who really have no expertise at all, nothing to offer their constituents in the way of solutions, keep getting elected.

Palin is a perfect example. As far as I have seen, read and heard, Palin has not come up with a single interesting idea in her entire brief political career. She studied “communications” in college - widely seen as one of the less rigorous majors. No graduate work. No deep thought about anything. Just all surface. Typical gas-bag republican. Nothing really to see.

I am stymied as to why the media thought that was such a great speech. Do they feel obligated to say so? Chris Matthews statement that “The Republicans have found their Obama” strikes me as particularly tone deaf. Maybe they saw a different speech than I did. Or maybe (and this is more likely) substance and thoughtfulness do not matter at all to them (it seems not to matter to Matthews).

But all of this shows that we need to keep the pressure on, keep getting the message out, the race is going to be close, and we have a way to go. Keep up the good work.

McCain throws another temper tantrum

John McCain has thrown another temper tantrum. This one over a particularly good bit of questioning of McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds by CNN's Campbell Brown. Here's a link to the video.

Bounds was extolling the vast experience of McCain's V.P. pick, Governer Sarah Palin as "commander in chief" of the Alaska National Guard. So Brown put it to him "Can you tell me one decision that she made as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard, just one?"

Bounds responded by trying to duck the question: "Any decision she has made as the commander of the National Guard that’s deployed overseas is more of a decision Barack Obama’s been making as he’s been running for president for the last two years."

Normally, CNN anchors don't go in for the kill. Wolf Blitzer is perhaps a worst offender at refusing to pursue the obvious follow-up. But Brown (who is now unquestionably the BEST newsperson on CNN), persisted: "So tell me. Tell me. Give me an example of one of those decisions." Of course, Bounds was not able to give any example at all, and the whole thing devolved from there.

The matter might have died with little attention, but McCain decided instead to throw another conniption fit, and cancelled a long-scheduled interview with Larry King to "punish" CNN for its surprisingly excellent reporting. Here's the link.

Campbell Brown kicks ass. CNN earns its reputation (perhaps briefly) Republican bullshit is exposed. The ever-petulant McCain throws another temper tantrum. Good stuff indeed!

Republican V.P. Pick’s 17 Year Old Daughter Pregnant (Again?)

The media is abuzz with the fact that the 17 year old daughter of Republican V.P. pick Sarah Palin is pregnant, and intends to marry the 18 year old father.

This follows on the heels of a report about Sarah Palin’s most recent child. Gov. Palin is 44 years old, and recently had her fifth child, who suffers from downs syndrome. Reports out of Alaska were that Palin never showed with this most recent pregnancy, nor did she announce it at the customary times. Add to this the report that Palin’s eldest daughter (the one who is pregnant now) was out of school for five months leading up to the birth with an “extended case of mono.” Questions arise, do they not?

Now, Barack Obama has emphatically stated that family members should be off limits, and I agree to an extent. They should be off limits as targets for the rival party’s political machinery. And it is really never appropriate to attack someone’s kids. But that doesn’t mean the family lives of the candidates are also off limits, particularly when the issue is what it says about the candidate themselves.

Everyone who is over 17 (and most of those who still are that age) know what a serious mistake it can be to become a mother or father at such a young age. People live with their mistakes all the time, and it certainly doesn’t make the daughter out to be some kind of bad person. She was young and careless. Now she and her family will have to live with the repercussions of that carelessness.

But there are several aspects of this that go directly Gov. Palin’s character and wisdom (or rather lack thereof). The first is this: Gov. Palin is a staunch anti-choice advocate. Her stance on choice and contraception is a big part of why she was chosen over McCain’s preferred picks, Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge. Because Gov. Palin herself has made her stance on these issues so public, her actions bear scrutiny where the country otherwise might agree that the matter remain private.

Were Gov. Palin given the choice, she would forbid women the right to obtain an abortion, even in the extreme event where a pregnancy results from rape and even if the victim is a minor. As Richerd Cohen suggests in today's Washington Post, Gov. Palin is trumpeting her daughter's "choice" to have the baby, but would deny that "choice" to all other such similarly situated children, requiring them to have the baby no matter the cost.

Gov. Palin is also against contraception, and strongly advocates an “abstinence only” education program for our nation’s children and teens. Some would call her stance hypocritical, but I think what it really points out is that Gov. Palin’s approach to teen pregnancy is just plain wrong. It doesn’t work. Pure and simple. It is a fool’s approach, requiring equal parts wilful blindness and embittered nastiness.

If something doesn’t work, and repeatedly doesn’t work, you have to reject as a failure. To refuse to recognize the failure in your own actions, to refuse to engage in that most basic level of self-analysis or soul-searching, is a fundamental character flaw. It prevents growth, and indicates a petulant ignorance. And to advocate a failed program that you know is a failure, to seek to guarantee such failure through the legal system, is the absolute worst form of government imaginable. Is that what the nation really wants in a Vice President? I think not.