Such joy to find a great piece of writing to share with you all, in the tradition of Swift, Wilde and Twain. Nothing that I've read so far in the blogosphere has more wit, humor and bite than this, and you'd be hard pressed to find one. Enjoy.
Report from the Socialist International Conspiracy
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Pattern of John "I screwed up" McCain
On the day when the most eligible-and-qualified-to-be-president statesman of our time announced his official endorsement of Barack Obama on "Meet The Press", a new take on the reasons why Obama is better suited to be president over McCain congealed and solidified in my mind. They are based in McCain's past history and pattern of poor judgments, choices, missteps, decisions and circumstances which add up to serious doubts regarding his aptitude for being a responsible and steady president who will lead us in these dangerous and uncertain times. Colin Powell made the points of questioning McCain's judgment and the necessity of a "transformational figure" for our nation and the world. McCain does not score well on both points.
Let's start with McCain's class rank at the Naval Academy--sixth from the bottom. From what I've read, most of that was intentional by being one of the Bad Bunch--screw-ups. Next, I've heard that as a pilot he crashed his plane five times. The last one of which led to his imprisonment by the North Vietnamese. OK, I'm not saying that the crash was entirely his fault, but I am alluding to a pattern in his life, albeit this one may be a stretch.
Soon after he came home from captivity in the Hanoi Hilton, he divorced his wife who waited for him while he was a POW. His ex-wife was quoted as saying that McCain did not want to grow up and be mature. His own memoir unequivocally places the blame on himself for why his first marriage failed--yet another screw-up.
Only a few years into his senate career, McCain was involved in the Saving and Loan scandal as one of the Keating Five. Senate Ethics Committee specifically mentioned that he "exercised poor judgment." He apologized for his conduct saying essentially that "I screwed up; please forgive me." To his credit, his senate career since the scandal earned him his now-questionable "maverick" moniker.
It is well-known that his 2000 presidential campaign lost steam due to unethical tactics by the Dubya supporters in South Carolina primaries, but before folding his campaign he accused the extreme left and right wingers as the "agents of intolerance," naming Farrakhan, Sharpton, Robertson and Falwell. A screw-up and a political miscalculation for which he would eat his words, after he agreed to speak at Falwell's Liberty University. He realized that he has to kowtow to the extreme conservative base in his party if he is to become the leader of GOP, and it took a while for that base to warm up to him and some still do not like him at all.
McCain announced his 2008 run on the Letterman show in February 2007. He neglectfully embarked on a bloated, money-leaking campaign that relegated him to a non-factor even before the 2008 primary season began. Once again McCain took full responsibility for not overseeing his campaign more closely--a screw-up. But he ended up winning New Hampshire and the maverick was back, even earning the tag "Comeback Kid."
Through belt-tightening campaign strategies, town hall meetings and a certain amount of luck, McCain became the GOP nominee, but then picked an unknown Sarah Palin as his VP running mate. Both liberals and conservatives have stated how unqualified Palin is to be VP, let alone president. He has yet to apologize and take full responsibility for the pick, but I would guess that that will come in a matter of time.
Then comes Powell's point that McCain's economic policy approach was unstable and erratic. "The fundamentals of the economy is strong" to "We're facing an economic crisis" to "Fire the SEC chairman" to "Let's halt our campaigns and postpone the debate to workout the rescue plan" to "The government shouldn't just bailout Wall Street" to "The government needs to buy up all the bad mortgages." During the financial crisis, he cancelled the Letterman appearance and just recently came back on the show and said, "I screwed up." Calling this a screw-up doesn't fully describe his roller coaster approach and thought process to his policies and intentions.
I realize that what I've laid out is a mixture of McCain's personal, public and professional lives, but they all count especially to conservatives who love to harp on character. His pattern reminds me of a Steve Martin routine many years ago when he said that there are two words that can get you out of any trouble, like poor performance on the job or an IRS audit: "I forgot. Just say, I forgot." And if that doesn't work, then he would tie it into his patented line, "Well, excuuuuse ME!" In McCain's case it's three words: I screwed up. "I'm the one at fault. I hope you can forgive me, again and again." How many screw-ups will it take before the country turns him away?
If the electorate will not accept his apology this time, then perhaps his infamous temper will fire back, "Excuse ME!" (ironically, he did jokingly say "excuse me" at a Wisconsin rally when an angry supporter wouldn't sit down and told him sternly, "Please let me finish." You can find it on YouTube) No, I suspect he will again say, "I screwed up." Is this the quality we want in our president? Can we afford to accept this pattern of behavior in our president at this time? No way, no how, no McCain. Didn't mean to end with a Hillary line, but I like that one. Oops, I don't mean "that one." I screwed up.
Let's start with McCain's class rank at the Naval Academy--sixth from the bottom. From what I've read, most of that was intentional by being one of the Bad Bunch--screw-ups. Next, I've heard that as a pilot he crashed his plane five times. The last one of which led to his imprisonment by the North Vietnamese. OK, I'm not saying that the crash was entirely his fault, but I am alluding to a pattern in his life, albeit this one may be a stretch.
Soon after he came home from captivity in the Hanoi Hilton, he divorced his wife who waited for him while he was a POW. His ex-wife was quoted as saying that McCain did not want to grow up and be mature. His own memoir unequivocally places the blame on himself for why his first marriage failed--yet another screw-up.
Only a few years into his senate career, McCain was involved in the Saving and Loan scandal as one of the Keating Five. Senate Ethics Committee specifically mentioned that he "exercised poor judgment." He apologized for his conduct saying essentially that "I screwed up; please forgive me." To his credit, his senate career since the scandal earned him his now-questionable "maverick" moniker.
It is well-known that his 2000 presidential campaign lost steam due to unethical tactics by the Dubya supporters in South Carolina primaries, but before folding his campaign he accused the extreme left and right wingers as the "agents of intolerance," naming Farrakhan, Sharpton, Robertson and Falwell. A screw-up and a political miscalculation for which he would eat his words, after he agreed to speak at Falwell's Liberty University. He realized that he has to kowtow to the extreme conservative base in his party if he is to become the leader of GOP, and it took a while for that base to warm up to him and some still do not like him at all.
McCain announced his 2008 run on the Letterman show in February 2007. He neglectfully embarked on a bloated, money-leaking campaign that relegated him to a non-factor even before the 2008 primary season began. Once again McCain took full responsibility for not overseeing his campaign more closely--a screw-up. But he ended up winning New Hampshire and the maverick was back, even earning the tag "Comeback Kid."
Through belt-tightening campaign strategies, town hall meetings and a certain amount of luck, McCain became the GOP nominee, but then picked an unknown Sarah Palin as his VP running mate. Both liberals and conservatives have stated how unqualified Palin is to be VP, let alone president. He has yet to apologize and take full responsibility for the pick, but I would guess that that will come in a matter of time.
Then comes Powell's point that McCain's economic policy approach was unstable and erratic. "The fundamentals of the economy is strong" to "We're facing an economic crisis" to "Fire the SEC chairman" to "Let's halt our campaigns and postpone the debate to workout the rescue plan" to "The government shouldn't just bailout Wall Street" to "The government needs to buy up all the bad mortgages." During the financial crisis, he cancelled the Letterman appearance and just recently came back on the show and said, "I screwed up." Calling this a screw-up doesn't fully describe his roller coaster approach and thought process to his policies and intentions.
I realize that what I've laid out is a mixture of McCain's personal, public and professional lives, but they all count especially to conservatives who love to harp on character. His pattern reminds me of a Steve Martin routine many years ago when he said that there are two words that can get you out of any trouble, like poor performance on the job or an IRS audit: "I forgot. Just say, I forgot." And if that doesn't work, then he would tie it into his patented line, "Well, excuuuuse ME!" In McCain's case it's three words: I screwed up. "I'm the one at fault. I hope you can forgive me, again and again." How many screw-ups will it take before the country turns him away?
If the electorate will not accept his apology this time, then perhaps his infamous temper will fire back, "Excuse ME!" (ironically, he did jokingly say "excuse me" at a Wisconsin rally when an angry supporter wouldn't sit down and told him sternly, "Please let me finish." You can find it on YouTube) No, I suspect he will again say, "I screwed up." Is this the quality we want in our president? Can we afford to accept this pattern of behavior in our president at this time? No way, no how, no McCain. Didn't mean to end with a Hillary line, but I like that one. Oops, I don't mean "that one." I screwed up.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Letterman Grills McCain
For one night at least, The Late Show turned into Meet The Press. Good ol' Dave really dug into McCain, and I fighting my own sleepiness was not the only one who sensed it. I feel it's necessary to link to all of the cyber reactions to the program on Blogrunner:
McCain gives Letterman his biggest audience in years
The blog headline doesn't do justice, I'm afraid. I think it was on the caliber of Murrow vs. McCarthy--ironic that it's another McPolitician. All right, don't go knee-jerking now, saying that I'm comparing McCain to McCarthy, but I'd be remiss if I didn't say that there are some echos of McCarthyism in the Ayers accusation, wouldn't I? "Are you or have you ever been associating with terrorists?"
McCain gives Letterman his biggest audience in years
The blog headline doesn't do justice, I'm afraid. I think it was on the caliber of Murrow vs. McCarthy--ironic that it's another McPolitician. All right, don't go knee-jerking now, saying that I'm comparing McCain to McCarthy, but I'd be remiss if I didn't say that there are some echos of McCarthyism in the Ayers accusation, wouldn't I? "Are you or have you ever been associating with terrorists?"
Friday, October 17, 2008
More Conservative Dissent a la CTB
Kathleen Parker's column defending Christopher Buckley and other dissenting, thinking conservatives in the Rep party. Will the real conservatives please stand up and take back the GOP? The days of the ignorant, anti-intellectual, intolerant extreme right calling the shots cannot end fast enough:
WFB Would Be Proud
Parker writes:
"The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing -- the "kooks" the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right -- have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.
Instead, as Christopher Buckley pointed out in a blog post on thedailybeast.com explaining his departure from National Review, eight years of "conservatism" have brought us "a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance."
I'm telling ya, that last line from CTB has staying power.
WFB Would Be Proud
Parker writes:
"The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing -- the "kooks" the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right -- have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.
Instead, as Christopher Buckley pointed out in a blog post on thedailybeast.com explaining his departure from National Review, eight years of "conservatism" have brought us "a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance."
I'm telling ya, that last line from CTB has staying power.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The George W. Bush Presidential Library
The George W. Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages.
The Library will include:
The Hurricane Katrina Room , which is still under construction.
The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything.
The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't even have to show up.
The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.
The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has been able to find.
The National Debt Room, which is huge and has no ceiling.
The 'Tax Cut' Room with entry only to the wealthy.
The 'Economy Room' which is in the toilet.
The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tour.
The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.
The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty.
The Supremes Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.
The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.
The 'Decider Room' complete with dart board, magic 8-ball, Ouija board, dice, coins, and straws.
The museum will have an electron microscope to help you locate the President's accomplishments.
The Library will include:
The Hurricane Katrina Room , which is still under construction.
The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything.
The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't even have to show up.
The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.
The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has been able to find.
The National Debt Room, which is huge and has no ceiling.
The 'Tax Cut' Room with entry only to the wealthy.
The 'Economy Room' which is in the toilet.
The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tour.
The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.
The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty.
The Supremes Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.
The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.
The 'Decider Room' complete with dart board, magic 8-ball, Ouija board, dice, coins, and straws.
The museum will have an electron microscope to help you locate the President's accomplishments.
Joe the Plumber (Rumor Control)?
Okay, who the hec is Joe the plumber, anyway? A Republican plant? Lot's of rumors floating around the internet. What kind of Plumber makes $250,000 dollars a year? Or, put in another way, what kind of plumber can afford to pay the million plus dollars it would take to buy a business that he claims would earn him $250,000-270,000 dollars a year? Joe the plumber, that's who.
So, what do we know?
So, what do we know?
Well, apparently he does not have a plumber's license. He considers himself a Republican. He owes back-taxes. Other unsubstantiated rumors include, his connection to the Keating Five. He is not listed in the phone book (probably not good for business). He is not registered to vote. He has been convicted of domestic violence on multiple occasions? And yes, he is a single dad-what a surprise.
SAT Question - Politicians:Voters::
Full of shit:Getting shit on
Courtesy of BRM. Where do PACs fit in this picture? ;-)
Courtesy of BRM. Where do PACs fit in this picture? ;-)
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Real McCain?
Want to share a perspective I had not really considered which occurred to me while watching "Frontline: The Choice 2008", and it has to do with why McCain picked someone like Palin. Obviously, the pick is to appease the extreme right, but I think it also shows his disdain for the right as well. Remember his "agents of intolerance" line, referring to Farrakhan, Sharpton, Robertson and Falwell?
McCain is trying to shore up the right-wing conservative base, but he really is a moderate, especially on social issues. Instead of looking at Palin as his final conversion to the right, I think it says more about his actual opinion of the extreme right; i.e. “I don’t agree with you, my friends (as he likes to say), but here’s someone to make you feel better and support me during the campaign." If McCain becomes president (God forbid and that’ll be the day I look for work in Canada), I would bet that Palin will become your typical VP, hard to locate and seldom heard from, much like Dan Quayle was to Bush 41 (see, he wasn’t really a social conservative, either. Quayle was just there for window dressing and that’s what she is--a Quaylin). I'd also bet that Palin will have ZERO influence on any administration policies or initiatives; she'll practically be the Second Lady. Am I being sexist? Perhaps, but I'll leave it to the Reps to herald the first uninfluential, token female VP ever. Clarence Thomas, anyone?
Unfortunately for McCain, I believe his best chance to win is if he acts more like a moderate than an angry conservative, and it’s too late because the battle for the center is most certainly going to Obama.
McCain is trying to shore up the right-wing conservative base, but he really is a moderate, especially on social issues. Instead of looking at Palin as his final conversion to the right, I think it says more about his actual opinion of the extreme right; i.e. “I don’t agree with you, my friends (as he likes to say), but here’s someone to make you feel better and support me during the campaign." If McCain becomes president (God forbid and that’ll be the day I look for work in Canada), I would bet that Palin will become your typical VP, hard to locate and seldom heard from, much like Dan Quayle was to Bush 41 (see, he wasn’t really a social conservative, either. Quayle was just there for window dressing and that’s what she is--a Quaylin). I'd also bet that Palin will have ZERO influence on any administration policies or initiatives; she'll practically be the Second Lady. Am I being sexist? Perhaps, but I'll leave it to the Reps to herald the first uninfluential, token female VP ever. Clarence Thomas, anyone?
Unfortunately for McCain, I believe his best chance to win is if he acts more like a moderate than an angry conservative, and it’s too late because the battle for the center is most certainly going to Obama.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
McCain Rally "Fear and Trembling" and the Conservative Backlash
It is rather fascinating trying to understand where the extreme conservative anger is coming from. For what it's worth, I do commend McCain for wanting to keep the campaign dialog "respectful" in this Minnesota "town hall meeting" and the associated TPM article (Hey, our first embedded YouTube video!):
The unfortunate reality is that he should be telling his campaign operatives and the more extreme Reps to keep things respectful. Apparently, there have been letters sent out that says Obama is an Arab. I do feel sorry for the woman who called Obama an Arab, Gayle Quinnell, as she should not be the focal point of this campaign exchange; she is only relaying the fear and misinformation coming from the McCain camp, given her limited knowledge and comprehension ("He's got Muslim in him"), but it is frustrating how some people just can't let go of false information: Post-rally conversation with Gayle Quinnell
Then, there's this from a Michelle Malkin, apparently a regular on Fox. Here's her defense of the McCain rally rage, basically that the left wing crazies do the same or worse about McCain/Palin/Bush all the time. Somehow that justifies the name-calling from the McCain supporters and the right in general, justifying intolerance with more intolerance, hate with more hate; has she heard of "two wrongs don't make a right"? Seems to me a typical conservative rebuttal, not exactly denounce the attacks from your side but point out the equally abhorrent venom from the other side, albeit none of them from an actual campaign rally or a town hall meeting.
Fair warning that some images on this blog are very crude and offensive; I did not bother to verify that they all came from the left wing extremists and are valid. Take a gander at some of the comments to the post, also (kinda my homage to Palin's frequent "also"). It indicates how far apart many of us are in how we view the world and how we should go about changing it:
Crush the Obamedia narrative: Look who’s “gripped by insane rage”
Why such vehement opposition to even a hint of socialist policy? That typifies the knee-jerk conservative reaction, doesn't it? Is free-market capitalism what makes America great? Is that why we're having a global financial crisis? The Europeans and Canadians have instituted socialist policies; are their societies crumbling because of socialism? Do they have people who must go bankrupt to pay for cancer treatments?
What is THE conservative creed? Isn't it really about "I get to keep what I make" because those liberal, hippie nutjobs have no respect for the money that I earn and the personal property that I possess? I saw an image on a conservative blog of two stick figures; a red figure holding a gun to the head of the blue figure holding a bag of goods/money, with the caption "Socialism". That attitude is the ugly root of class warfare, not the liberals looking for redistribution of wealth for the greater good of the nation. This is how conservatives incite class warfare, but then blame the liberals for starting it. Tax the crap out of the rich! Karl Rove was quoted as saying that under Obama's plan the top 5 percent will pay an increase of $131 billion in taxes, according to the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. And the bad news is? I say that's friggin' patriotic; they should be happy to pay more taxes because, as Palin would put it, "America has so blessed and privileged us"!
And, what is the point of laundering all of the mugshots of leftist activists/extremists, let alone whether they were justly arrested in all cases? That the liberals should be marginalized as rabid America-haters, like Limbaugh, Hannity and their ilk brainwash their audience every single day? That there are crazies of equal numbers on the left and right? That America has become a fascist state where dissenting opinions cannot be tolerated? That the status quo is indeed biased to the right so that only the leftist actions are criminalized? Who holds the trump cards in this society? Is a fascist oppression preferable over a socialist one?
There's so much to glean from the Malkin blog, especially this comment that somewhat reflects our earlier discussion on how conservative opinion can be dismissed, except that the writer misses the point that prejudice goes both ways (copy/pasted as posted):
On October 12th, 2008 at 1:52 pm, feebiebabe said:
THE GREAT HYPOCRACY OF OUR TIMES: Anytime a conservative enters into a debate with a liberal the first given is when said liberal realizes you are conservative…liberal will find some way to throw out any one or ALL of these tired phrases;”White Trash, Uneducated, Ignorant, Racist, Warmonger, Neocon or Redneck”. This happens to me ALL the time in California, and most often times I have done absolutely zero to warrant it, most times all I say is, “I’m a conservative” – and let the tongue lashing begin. Its creepy. I live in a blue state and work for a company where most people are unabashedly “Socialist”.
The other day I had a man walk up to me because he overheard my conversation I was having with a co-worker about a Herman Melville novel (Bartleby) and Atlas Shrugged by Ann Rand. When he approached me later he said I must “NOT be voting Republican because you are obviously an elitist who reads”. AND he meant this as a compliment - creeeepppyyyyy!!! My answer, “Why I do read, but what do you mean by elitist?” “Oh, Republicans are so uneducated; people who read literature I most often find to be liberals and intellectuals and are never ever Republicans”. I imagine I am the ONLY red vote on the floor (as usual) so I bit my tongue and just said “Is that so?” Does anyone else see the absolute irony in his thinking?!
Oh yes, and then there is the violence. Yes, the “Peace, love and happiness hippies” are only spreading “Peace Love and Happiness” selectively, to those who agree with them. And their Love-O-Meter always seems to go off the charts the more someone bashes this country or says they want to kill us. Talk about an abusive relationship!!!
Now, Madonna (“Hi, I name myself after the Virgin Mary to be irreverent, feed my delusions of grandeur, because I suffer from inadequacy and because I think no one will notice I have no talent”) . “Im gonna kick Palin’s ass!?” ROFLMAO. This coming from a woman who has been living full time in England and developed the WORST fake Brit accent next to her pal Gwennie –She couldn’t look Palin in the face let alone kick her ass (aside from the fact I am pretty sure one of her brittle body parts might just fall off her crusty frame by the impact of such an event). This woman is insufferably arrogant, ignorant and is bitter- she has NO talent and has to show her boobs to sell her records. Give me a break….what is Madonna three years old? What a loser. I think it really gets to Madonna that Palin is a REAL Woman and comfortable with herself, while Madonna is a hateful, malnourished, washed-up, ex-pat who has absolutely zero talent.
Rant off/
Happy Sunday.
------------
It's rather amusing but sad how her anecdote/argument quickly deteriorates into a rant bashing Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. This is an example of why I would not want our blog to be open to the Internet public for comment (actually, I did open it up to registered users of the blog world, but obviously we're not exactly in a high-traffic area nor worthy of it, and that suits us just fine all the same).
My hope is that our small speck in the blog universe can provide a more thoughtful dialog and work to achieve a better understanding and a common ground in the midst of the left-vs.-right, liberal-vs.-conservative echo chamber noise.
The unfortunate reality is that he should be telling his campaign operatives and the more extreme Reps to keep things respectful. Apparently, there have been letters sent out that says Obama is an Arab. I do feel sorry for the woman who called Obama an Arab, Gayle Quinnell, as she should not be the focal point of this campaign exchange; she is only relaying the fear and misinformation coming from the McCain camp, given her limited knowledge and comprehension ("He's got Muslim in him"), but it is frustrating how some people just can't let go of false information: Post-rally conversation with Gayle Quinnell
Then, there's this from a Michelle Malkin, apparently a regular on Fox. Here's her defense of the McCain rally rage, basically that the left wing crazies do the same or worse about McCain/Palin/Bush all the time. Somehow that justifies the name-calling from the McCain supporters and the right in general, justifying intolerance with more intolerance, hate with more hate; has she heard of "two wrongs don't make a right"? Seems to me a typical conservative rebuttal, not exactly denounce the attacks from your side but point out the equally abhorrent venom from the other side, albeit none of them from an actual campaign rally or a town hall meeting.
Fair warning that some images on this blog are very crude and offensive; I did not bother to verify that they all came from the left wing extremists and are valid. Take a gander at some of the comments to the post, also (kinda my homage to Palin's frequent "also"). It indicates how far apart many of us are in how we view the world and how we should go about changing it:
Crush the Obamedia narrative: Look who’s “gripped by insane rage”
Why such vehement opposition to even a hint of socialist policy? That typifies the knee-jerk conservative reaction, doesn't it? Is free-market capitalism what makes America great? Is that why we're having a global financial crisis? The Europeans and Canadians have instituted socialist policies; are their societies crumbling because of socialism? Do they have people who must go bankrupt to pay for cancer treatments?
What is THE conservative creed? Isn't it really about "I get to keep what I make" because those liberal, hippie nutjobs have no respect for the money that I earn and the personal property that I possess? I saw an image on a conservative blog of two stick figures; a red figure holding a gun to the head of the blue figure holding a bag of goods/money, with the caption "Socialism". That attitude is the ugly root of class warfare, not the liberals looking for redistribution of wealth for the greater good of the nation. This is how conservatives incite class warfare, but then blame the liberals for starting it. Tax the crap out of the rich! Karl Rove was quoted as saying that under Obama's plan the top 5 percent will pay an increase of $131 billion in taxes, according to the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. And the bad news is? I say that's friggin' patriotic; they should be happy to pay more taxes because, as Palin would put it, "America has so blessed and privileged us"!
And, what is the point of laundering all of the mugshots of leftist activists/extremists, let alone whether they were justly arrested in all cases? That the liberals should be marginalized as rabid America-haters, like Limbaugh, Hannity and their ilk brainwash their audience every single day? That there are crazies of equal numbers on the left and right? That America has become a fascist state where dissenting opinions cannot be tolerated? That the status quo is indeed biased to the right so that only the leftist actions are criminalized? Who holds the trump cards in this society? Is a fascist oppression preferable over a socialist one?
There's so much to glean from the Malkin blog, especially this comment that somewhat reflects our earlier discussion on how conservative opinion can be dismissed, except that the writer misses the point that prejudice goes both ways (copy/pasted as posted):
On October 12th, 2008 at 1:52 pm, feebiebabe said:
THE GREAT HYPOCRACY OF OUR TIMES: Anytime a conservative enters into a debate with a liberal the first given is when said liberal realizes you are conservative…liberal will find some way to throw out any one or ALL of these tired phrases;”White Trash, Uneducated, Ignorant, Racist, Warmonger, Neocon or Redneck”. This happens to me ALL the time in California, and most often times I have done absolutely zero to warrant it, most times all I say is, “I’m a conservative” – and let the tongue lashing begin. Its creepy. I live in a blue state and work for a company where most people are unabashedly “Socialist”.
The other day I had a man walk up to me because he overheard my conversation I was having with a co-worker about a Herman Melville novel (Bartleby) and Atlas Shrugged by Ann Rand. When he approached me later he said I must “NOT be voting Republican because you are obviously an elitist who reads”. AND he meant this as a compliment - creeeepppyyyyy!!! My answer, “Why I do read, but what do you mean by elitist?” “Oh, Republicans are so uneducated; people who read literature I most often find to be liberals and intellectuals and are never ever Republicans”. I imagine I am the ONLY red vote on the floor (as usual) so I bit my tongue and just said “Is that so?” Does anyone else see the absolute irony in his thinking?!
Oh yes, and then there is the violence. Yes, the “Peace, love and happiness hippies” are only spreading “Peace Love and Happiness” selectively, to those who agree with them. And their Love-O-Meter always seems to go off the charts the more someone bashes this country or says they want to kill us. Talk about an abusive relationship!!!
Now, Madonna (“Hi, I name myself after the Virgin Mary to be irreverent, feed my delusions of grandeur, because I suffer from inadequacy and because I think no one will notice I have no talent”) . “Im gonna kick Palin’s ass!?” ROFLMAO. This coming from a woman who has been living full time in England and developed the WORST fake Brit accent next to her pal Gwennie –She couldn’t look Palin in the face let alone kick her ass (aside from the fact I am pretty sure one of her brittle body parts might just fall off her crusty frame by the impact of such an event). This woman is insufferably arrogant, ignorant and is bitter- she has NO talent and has to show her boobs to sell her records. Give me a break….what is Madonna three years old? What a loser. I think it really gets to Madonna that Palin is a REAL Woman and comfortable with herself, while Madonna is a hateful, malnourished, washed-up, ex-pat who has absolutely zero talent.
Rant off/
Happy Sunday.
------------
It's rather amusing but sad how her anecdote/argument quickly deteriorates into a rant bashing Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. This is an example of why I would not want our blog to be open to the Internet public for comment (actually, I did open it up to registered users of the blog world, but obviously we're not exactly in a high-traffic area nor worthy of it, and that suits us just fine all the same).
My hope is that our small speck in the blog universe can provide a more thoughtful dialog and work to achieve a better understanding and a common ground in the midst of the left-vs.-right, liberal-vs.-conservative echo chamber noise.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Finally, a sane conservative case on doubts about Obama
Looks like my trolling for views from the right has paid off, since BRM hasn't been gracing us with his conservative posts. Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, makes a good case of conservatives' doubts about Obama: Who is the Real Barack Obama?
Crux of the column, if you can get past the not-so-subtle condescending remarks, seems to be, "Is Obama a leftist radical or a cautious pragmatist able to reach out to the center and the right?" My personal opinion is that he is a mix of and capable of both, and given the current state of the nation, the economy and the world, I hope that he is more of a pragmatist in the tradition of FDR. My liberal preference also hopes that he will bring much needed socialist policies to reign in the runaway-greed capitalism, to enforce a loophole-less progressive tax code and to institute a healthcare system closer to a universal, single-payer model. Without a pragmatic approach, he will not get much done through legislation or achieve much in military objectives and diplomatic initiatives, if/when he is president.
Unfortunately, given McCain's campaign I have no confidence in how he would run the country as president. In other words, the liberal case on doubts about McCain will take some time to write down, so I'll save it for another post. To be fair, I have yet to find a good case for the McCain presidency that explains his policies and tendencies, beyond direct attacks and negatives on Obama.
Crux of the column, if you can get past the not-so-subtle condescending remarks, seems to be, "Is Obama a leftist radical or a cautious pragmatist able to reach out to the center and the right?" My personal opinion is that he is a mix of and capable of both, and given the current state of the nation, the economy and the world, I hope that he is more of a pragmatist in the tradition of FDR. My liberal preference also hopes that he will bring much needed socialist policies to reign in the runaway-greed capitalism, to enforce a loophole-less progressive tax code and to institute a healthcare system closer to a universal, single-payer model. Without a pragmatic approach, he will not get much done through legislation or achieve much in military objectives and diplomatic initiatives, if/when he is president.
Unfortunately, given McCain's campaign I have no confidence in how he would run the country as president. In other words, the liberal case on doubts about McCain will take some time to write down, so I'll save it for another post. To be fair, I have yet to find a good case for the McCain presidency that explains his policies and tendencies, beyond direct attacks and negatives on Obama.
Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama
Just after reading and seeing how McCain did his best to stomp out the flames of anger and fear against Obama fanned by him and his campaign, I came across this article. Christopher Buckley says that he's voting for Obama. Yes, Virginia, there are sensible and reasonable conservatives out there in America. Come on, this has got to move BRM to action and post something here, don't it (Buckley even sprinkles in some choice Latin like rara avis)? We are sorely missing the right-of-center viewpoint on OUR blog.
From The Daily Beast:
Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama
Some choice excerpts:
I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”
As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.
......
John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?
......
As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.
......
Obama has in him—-I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—-the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.
-----------
Not exactly a glowing endorsement, but "we are all in this together" and "God save America", indeed. Unfortunately, some of the comments on his column at the website still show that bipartisanship has a long, long way to go.
From The Daily Beast:
Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama
Some choice excerpts:
I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”
As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.
......
John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?
......
As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.
......
Obama has in him—-I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—-the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.
-----------
Not exactly a glowing endorsement, but "we are all in this together" and "God save America", indeed. Unfortunately, some of the comments on his column at the website still show that bipartisanship has a long, long way to go.
Laughing at America - - A European Perspective
Hi, All--
This is perhaps the last thing that needs to be said about the Biden/Palin debate. I think the British Press has nailed it!
Flirting her way to victory Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse
Friday October 3 2008, The Guardian
At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.
By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.
And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.
It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.
In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan . The criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.
There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary Schoo l , you get extra credit for watching the debate.
Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection to the heartland of America . Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how
are we going to pay those tuition bills?"
None of Palin's children, it should be noted, are heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq , and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but afarce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008
If you have any questions about this email, please contact the guardian.co.uk user help desk: userhelp@guardian.co.uk.
-------------
Also, in this months Reader's Digest, there is an article on if the world could vote. To list a few for Obama: Netherlands 92%, Germany 85%, Taiwan 81%, Brazil 78%, Australia 76%, Spain 76%, France 75%, Finland 71%, Mexico 70%, Poland 65%, Canada 64%, etc.
This is perhaps the last thing that needs to be said about the Biden/Palin debate. I think the British Press has nailed it!
Flirting her way to victory Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse
Friday October 3 2008, The Guardian
At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.
By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.
And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.
It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.
In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan . The criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.
There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary Schoo l , you get extra credit for watching the debate.
Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection to the heartland of America . Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how
are we going to pay those tuition bills?"
None of Palin's children, it should be noted, are heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq , and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but afarce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008
If you have any questions about this email, please contact the guardian.co.uk user help desk: userhelp@guardian.co.uk.
-------------
Also, in this months Reader's Digest, there is an article on if the world could vote. To list a few for Obama: Netherlands 92%, Germany 85%, Taiwan 81%, Brazil 78%, Australia 76%, Spain 76%, France 75%, Finland 71%, Mexico 70%, Poland 65%, Canada 64%, etc.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
NYT's blogrunner
Say what you will about the New York Times, but I am thoroughly enjoying their Politics site and their blogrunner. The blogrunner especially displays a long list of both left and right-wing blogs plus other non-political topics. Hope you enjoy them. The Yahoo election site is a good place to get a broad range of news and op-eds from left, center and right, also.
blogrunner|Politics
NYT Politics
Yahoo 2008 Elections
blogrunner|Politics
NYT Politics
Yahoo 2008 Elections
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Reinhold Niebuhr
Call it synchronicity or whatever, but I have come across the name Reinhold Niebuhr more than once this week, first from the PBS American Experience program on Jimmy Carter (with whom I share the same birthday, BTW) and now today from David Brooks who asked Obama about him in an interview. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a progressive Christian thinker. I'm still learning about him myself. From Wikipedia:
Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr Quotations
You have probably come across different versions of his prayer in many circles; I just didn't know until now that it was from him:
The Serenity Prayer (ca. 1942)
This has often been attributted to others, including St. Francis of Assisi but without sources. Though similar prayers may have existed, the work seems to be Niebuhr's. He never copyrighted the prayer and it has been used in many variants.
One of the most famous variants:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Niebuhr's preferred form as declared by his widow:
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed, courage
to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Full version of the original (c.1942):
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr Quotations
You have probably come across different versions of his prayer in many circles; I just didn't know until now that it was from him:
The Serenity Prayer (ca. 1942)
This has often been attributted to others, including St. Francis of Assisi but without sources. Though similar prayers may have existed, the work seems to be Niebuhr's. He never copyrighted the prayer and it has been used in many variants.
One of the most famous variants:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Niebuhr's preferred form as declared by his widow:
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed, courage
to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Full version of the original (c.1942):
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Post Turtle Joke; Down-home humour
Subject: Post Turtle
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President.
The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle."
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.
The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."
The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with."
While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid to be a heartbeat away from being President.
The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a post turtle."
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.
The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."
The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with."
Obama Has Won Every Debate; But, will it matter?
Okay, Obama and Biden have won every debate hands-down, not even close. McCain and Palin have only excelled in clichés. Unfortunately, clichés are enough for many people. The debates remind me of the wife who finds her husband in bed with another woman and the man says, "What, are you going to believe what I tell ya, or what your eyes see?" Republicans want us to belive what they tell us, not what we know to be true, and what we can check as facts. McCain says something like, Americans are the best workers in the world. What a load of crap. The only question now is, Are Americans going to believe what they can see? Or, are Americans going to believe what the neo-cons tell them to believe?
Remember, September 15, 2008:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Addressing today’s news of upheaval in America’s financial markets, McCain said this morning that, despite fears over the "turmoil" on Wall Street, “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
Remember, September 15, 2008:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Addressing today’s news of upheaval in America’s financial markets, McCain said this morning that, despite fears over the "turmoil" on Wall Street, “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
No Gaffes? How about "that one"?
I feel your pain, Sen. McCain (henceforth referred as "This One"), and your frustrations (in my best Bill Clinton voice).
Despite all of his efforts to win the election--picking Palin, accusing That One of lying and associating him with radicals and terrorists--This One has to continue to debate That One. How outrageous! Don't people know that This One deserves to be president over That One? Why don't they realize that That One is not like This One or Us? I can hear This One saying, "That One is one of Them, not Us. Come on, America! Pull your head out of That Butt. Real change is coming. I'm a reformer and a maverick. I'll get Osama bin Laden. I'll get him. I know how to get him. I'll get him no matter what. But I have to get That One first." Such poetry in prose.
Stick a fork in McBush, or at least a thermometer. I believe he's done. How long before we hear "you people" coming from This One? Some Reps are even happy to use "That One" to refer to That One, saying that This One came up with a great line in the debate. Incredible! This is what "grasping at straws" looks like in political campaign terms, but I'm not even close to celebrating until all the votes have been counted.
-----------
Here's a post from the Huff Post and our panelist Mike's response:
TruthSpeaker (wrote:)
John McCain has shown us what kind of conciliatory figure he would be - making dismissive derisionary comments like "that one" whenever he disagrees with someone. I think McCain put it best when he said "I'm not the most popular person in my own party let alone the Democrats." If you've alienated yourself from both sides, how exactly is it that you are going to bridge divides and get things done?
Posted 02:16 PM (ET) on 10/08/2008
MisterB46 (replied:)
Anyone else remember that old McDonald's TV ad with the boxing trainer trying to get his guy fired up to win the bout?
The trainer says (words to the effect), "Remember when you were seven years old...and someone stole your French Fries and you never found out who it was?" Well, it was him (gesturing to the opponent on the other side of the ring)."
After two debates, I'm convinced that someone told McCain that Obama stole his French Fries.
Posted 02:43 PM (ET) on 10/08/2008
-----------
Were those Freedom Fries that That One stole from This One? Sorry, Mike, I wish I could remember the commercial so I could enjoy your comment more.
Despite all of his efforts to win the election--picking Palin, accusing That One of lying and associating him with radicals and terrorists--This One has to continue to debate That One. How outrageous! Don't people know that This One deserves to be president over That One? Why don't they realize that That One is not like This One or Us? I can hear This One saying, "That One is one of Them, not Us. Come on, America! Pull your head out of That Butt. Real change is coming. I'm a reformer and a maverick. I'll get Osama bin Laden. I'll get him. I know how to get him. I'll get him no matter what. But I have to get That One first." Such poetry in prose.
Stick a fork in McBush, or at least a thermometer. I believe he's done. How long before we hear "you people" coming from This One? Some Reps are even happy to use "That One" to refer to That One, saying that This One came up with a great line in the debate. Incredible! This is what "grasping at straws" looks like in political campaign terms, but I'm not even close to celebrating until all the votes have been counted.
-----------
Here's a post from the Huff Post and our panelist Mike's response:
TruthSpeaker (wrote:)
John McCain has shown us what kind of conciliatory figure he would be - making dismissive derisionary comments like "that one" whenever he disagrees with someone. I think McCain put it best when he said "I'm not the most popular person in my own party let alone the Democrats." If you've alienated yourself from both sides, how exactly is it that you are going to bridge divides and get things done?
Posted 02:16 PM (ET) on 10/08/2008
MisterB46 (replied:)
Anyone else remember that old McDonald's TV ad with the boxing trainer trying to get his guy fired up to win the bout?
The trainer says (words to the effect), "Remember when you were seven years old...and someone stole your French Fries and you never found out who it was?" Well, it was him (gesturing to the opponent on the other side of the ring)."
After two debates, I'm convinced that someone told McCain that Obama stole his French Fries.
Posted 02:43 PM (ET) on 10/08/2008
-----------
Were those Freedom Fries that That One stole from This One? Sorry, Mike, I wish I could remember the commercial so I could enjoy your comment more.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
H.L. Mencken "Bayard vs. Lionheart"
Some wisdom from the pre-Great Depression era, as we are now mired in the second one. Here's the full Mencken article (and the link) that contains the famous quotation "As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." I'm pasting the entire article in case the link stops working at some point. Enjoy!
BAYARD vs LIONHEART
July 26, 1920
One discerns in all the current discussion of MM. Harding and Cox a certain sour dismay. It seems to be quite impossible for any wholly literate man to pump up any genuine enthusiasm for either of them. Each, of course, is praised lavishly by the professional politicians of his own party, and compared to Lincoln, Jefferson and Cleveland by the surviving hacks of the party press, but in the middle ground, among men who care less for party success than for the national dignity, there is a gone feeling in the stomach, with shooting pains down the legs. The Liberals, in particular, seem to be suffering badly. They discover that Harding is simply a third-rate political wheel-horse, with the face of a moving-picture actor, the intelligence of a respectable agricultural implement dealer, and the imagination of a lodge joiner, and that Cox is no more than a provincial David Harum with a gift for bamboozling the boobs.
These verdicts, it seems to me, are substantially just. No one but an idiot would argue seriously that either candidate is a first-rate man, or even a creditable specimen of second-rate man. Any State in the Union, at least above the Potomac, could produce a thousand men quite as good, and many States could produce a thousand a great deal better. Harding, intellectually, seems to be merely a benign blank—a decent, harmless, laborious, hollow-headed mediocrity perhaps comparable to the late Harrington, of Maryland. Cox is quicker of wit, but a good deal less honest. He belongs to the cunning type; there is a touch of the shyster in him. His chicaneries in the matter of prohibition, both during the convention and since, show the kink in his mind. He is willing to do anything to cadge votes, and he includes in that anything the ready sacrifices of his good faith, of the national welfare, and of the hopes and confidence of those who honestly support him. Neither candidate reveals the slightest dignity of conviction. Neither cares a hoot for any discernible principle. Neither, in any intelligible sense, is a man of honor.
But it is one thing to yield to virtuous indignation against such individuals and quite another thing to devise any practicable scheme for booting them out of the synagogue. The weakness of those of us who take a gaudy satisfaction in our ideas, and battle for them violently, and face punishment for them willingly and even proudly, is that we forget the primary business of the man in politics, which is the snatching and safeguarding of his job. That business, it must be plain, concerns itself only occasionally with the defense and propagation of ideas, and even then it must confine itself to those that, to a reflective man, must usually appear to be insane. The first and last aim of the politician is to get votes, and the safest of all ways to get votes is to appear to the plain man to be a plain man like himself, which is to say, to appear to him to be happily free from any heretical treason to the body of accepted platitudes-to be filled to the brim with the flabby, banal, childish notions that challenge no prejudice and lay no burden of examination upon the mind.
It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the United States; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there. That negative merit is simply disvulnerability. Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men. Well, what are more likely to arouse those suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, principles? The plain people are not hostile to shysterism, save it be gross and unsuccessful. They admire a Roosevelt for his bold stratagems and duplicities, his sacrifice of faith and principle to the main chance, his magnificent disdain of fairness and honor. But they shy instantly and inevitably from the man who comes before them with notions that they cannot immediately translate into terms of their everyday delusions; they fear the novel idea, and particularly the revolutionary idea, as they fear the devil. When Roosevelt, losing hold upon his cunning at last, embraced the vast hodgepodge of innovations, some idiotic but some sound enough, that went by the name of Progressivism, they jumped from under him in trembling, and he came down with a thump that left him on his back until death delivered him from all hope and caring.
It seems to me that this fear of ideas is a peculiarly democratic phenomenon, and that it is nowhere so horribly apparent as in the United States, perhaps the nearest approach to an actual democracy yet seen in the world. It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. The fundamental concept, of course, was not original. The theologians embraced it centuries ago, and continue to embrace it to this day. It appeared on the political side in the Middle Ages, and survived in Russia into our time. But it is only in the United States that it has been extended to all departments of thought. It is only here that any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men. It is only here, so far as I have been able to make out, that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the beverages one drinks with one's meals, and the way children ought to be taught in the schools, and the manner in which foreign alliances should be negotiated, and what ought to be done about the Bolsheviki.
In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this dread of novelty and originality, it is obvious that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life. He may slide into office once or twice, but soon or late he is bound to be held up, examined and incontinently kicked out. This leaves the field to the intellectual jelly-fish and inner tubes. There is room for two sorts of them—first, the blank cartridge who has no convictions at all and is willing to accept anything to make votes, and, secondly, the mountebank who is willing to conceal and disguise what he actually believes, according as the wind blows hot or cold. Of the first sort, Harding is an excellent specimen; of the second sort, Cox.
Such tests arise inevitably out of democracy—the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions. In private life no man of sense would think of applying them. We do not estimate the integrity and ability of an acquaintance by his flabby willingness to accept our ideas; we estimate him by the honesty and effectiveness with which he maintains his own. All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental—men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, of self-respect, it is cruelly hard. But if he is, like Harding, a numskull like the idiots he faces, or, like Cox, a pliant intellectual Jenkins, it is easy.
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
BAYARD vs LIONHEART
July 26, 1920
One discerns in all the current discussion of MM. Harding and Cox a certain sour dismay. It seems to be quite impossible for any wholly literate man to pump up any genuine enthusiasm for either of them. Each, of course, is praised lavishly by the professional politicians of his own party, and compared to Lincoln, Jefferson and Cleveland by the surviving hacks of the party press, but in the middle ground, among men who care less for party success than for the national dignity, there is a gone feeling in the stomach, with shooting pains down the legs. The Liberals, in particular, seem to be suffering badly. They discover that Harding is simply a third-rate political wheel-horse, with the face of a moving-picture actor, the intelligence of a respectable agricultural implement dealer, and the imagination of a lodge joiner, and that Cox is no more than a provincial David Harum with a gift for bamboozling the boobs.
These verdicts, it seems to me, are substantially just. No one but an idiot would argue seriously that either candidate is a first-rate man, or even a creditable specimen of second-rate man. Any State in the Union, at least above the Potomac, could produce a thousand men quite as good, and many States could produce a thousand a great deal better. Harding, intellectually, seems to be merely a benign blank—a decent, harmless, laborious, hollow-headed mediocrity perhaps comparable to the late Harrington, of Maryland. Cox is quicker of wit, but a good deal less honest. He belongs to the cunning type; there is a touch of the shyster in him. His chicaneries in the matter of prohibition, both during the convention and since, show the kink in his mind. He is willing to do anything to cadge votes, and he includes in that anything the ready sacrifices of his good faith, of the national welfare, and of the hopes and confidence of those who honestly support him. Neither candidate reveals the slightest dignity of conviction. Neither cares a hoot for any discernible principle. Neither, in any intelligible sense, is a man of honor.
But it is one thing to yield to virtuous indignation against such individuals and quite another thing to devise any practicable scheme for booting them out of the synagogue. The weakness of those of us who take a gaudy satisfaction in our ideas, and battle for them violently, and face punishment for them willingly and even proudly, is that we forget the primary business of the man in politics, which is the snatching and safeguarding of his job. That business, it must be plain, concerns itself only occasionally with the defense and propagation of ideas, and even then it must confine itself to those that, to a reflective man, must usually appear to be insane. The first and last aim of the politician is to get votes, and the safest of all ways to get votes is to appear to the plain man to be a plain man like himself, which is to say, to appear to him to be happily free from any heretical treason to the body of accepted platitudes-to be filled to the brim with the flabby, banal, childish notions that challenge no prejudice and lay no burden of examination upon the mind.
It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the United States; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there. That negative merit is simply disvulnerability. Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men. Well, what are more likely to arouse those suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, principles? The plain people are not hostile to shysterism, save it be gross and unsuccessful. They admire a Roosevelt for his bold stratagems and duplicities, his sacrifice of faith and principle to the main chance, his magnificent disdain of fairness and honor. But they shy instantly and inevitably from the man who comes before them with notions that they cannot immediately translate into terms of their everyday delusions; they fear the novel idea, and particularly the revolutionary idea, as they fear the devil. When Roosevelt, losing hold upon his cunning at last, embraced the vast hodgepodge of innovations, some idiotic but some sound enough, that went by the name of Progressivism, they jumped from under him in trembling, and he came down with a thump that left him on his back until death delivered him from all hope and caring.
It seems to me that this fear of ideas is a peculiarly democratic phenomenon, and that it is nowhere so horribly apparent as in the United States, perhaps the nearest approach to an actual democracy yet seen in the world. It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. The fundamental concept, of course, was not original. The theologians embraced it centuries ago, and continue to embrace it to this day. It appeared on the political side in the Middle Ages, and survived in Russia into our time. But it is only in the United States that it has been extended to all departments of thought. It is only here that any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men. It is only here, so far as I have been able to make out, that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the beverages one drinks with one's meals, and the way children ought to be taught in the schools, and the manner in which foreign alliances should be negotiated, and what ought to be done about the Bolsheviki.
In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this dread of novelty and originality, it is obvious that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life. He may slide into office once or twice, but soon or late he is bound to be held up, examined and incontinently kicked out. This leaves the field to the intellectual jelly-fish and inner tubes. There is room for two sorts of them—first, the blank cartridge who has no convictions at all and is willing to accept anything to make votes, and, secondly, the mountebank who is willing to conceal and disguise what he actually believes, according as the wind blows hot or cold. Of the first sort, Harding is an excellent specimen; of the second sort, Cox.
Such tests arise inevitably out of democracy—the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions. In private life no man of sense would think of applying them. We do not estimate the integrity and ability of an acquaintance by his flabby willingness to accept our ideas; we estimate him by the honesty and effectiveness with which he maintains his own. All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental—men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, of self-respect, it is cruelly hard. But if he is, like Harding, a numskull like the idiots he faces, or, like Cox, a pliant intellectual Jenkins, it is easy.
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Worse Than The Republican Great Depression?
Why This Could Be Worse Than The Republican Great Depression
Flickr: Creative Commons by Tony the Misfit
At its core, the problem with the banks today is twofold. First, we don’t make anything anymore. Which means we don’t “create real wealth.” More on that in a minute, but the bottom line is that we don’t have any sort of bottom line – there’s nothing to catch us as we fall, because we don’t have a manufacturing base to fall on like we did in the 1930s.
Second, all our cash is either gone or in a very, very few hands. If the former, we’re really screwed. If the latter, and those people decide their interest trumps that of the nation, we’re also screwed, but probably not quite as badly. It looks, though, like all our cash is gone.
Let’s take these one at a time. The British knew that manufacturing was the core strength of a nation, which is why they forbade the Colonists in 1770 from manufacturing most items that could be imported from Britain, and famously forbade the good people of India from even turning their own cotton into cloth and clothing (those processes had to be done with Indian cotton shipped to England, woven and sewn, then sold back to India as finished clothes).
The colonists of America overthrew the economic tyranny of the British, and in short order (1791) Alexander Hamilton presented to Congress a detailed and specific plan to turn America from an agricultural backwater to a manufacturing giant. We should discourage the import of foreign made products and promote the manufacture of American made goods by taxing imported finished goods (a tax called an “import tariff”). We should encourage the import of foreign raw materials, and the export of finished goods, with low tariffs on these items. We should invest government money – extensively – in infrastructure that would build our monetary and industrial base. We should be protectionist, hard-working, and refuse to cede to anybody our right to make whatever we damn well wanted.
Hamilton was so successful that 100% of the income of the federal government from our founding to the Civil War came from tariffs – and we learned to manufacture just about everything we needed in this country as a result. His policies were continued after the Civil War – tariffs represented two-thirds of all federal revenues from Reconstruction to WWI, and as government exploded in size to fight WWII still represented a third of all federal income.
Import tariffs on manufactured goods averaged – from 1791 until the 1980s – around 35-40 percent. As a result, we made things here. The benefit of “making things” is that you add value more rapidly than is possible in any other way. You get richer – both individually and as a nation – faster than by any other means. Turning a $50 ton of raw cotton into $5 million worth of designer clothing can be done with only a few tens of thousands of dollars worth of labor and a million dollars worth of machinery/factories. Turning a few dollars worth of iron ore into millions of dollars worth of luxury cars is incredibly profitable.
But the Reagan Revolution changed all that. Conservatives didn’t think making things was the most important consideration of an economy – instead the goal should be for “individual incentives” and “greed” to drive companies and individuals to “maximize profits” regardless of the impact on the nation as a whole. Labor was cheaper in China and India, so after a few hundred dollars worth of lobbying and a few cheerleading (but deeply flawed) books like Thomas Friedman’s “Olive Tree and the Lexus,” we dropped our average import tariffs into the realm of 2 to 3 percent, where they remain today.
The result was easily predicted. Most of our manufacturing was shipped overseas, while the profits from the sale of foreign-made goods concentrated in a few hands (think the Walton family and General Electric, the respective companies that first and most proudly drove China and India respectively into our manufacturing and service sectors).
While we didn’t make anything here any more, we still had a lot of cash and other “real assets” – real, physical wealth – left over from the two centuries when we made everything here. The share of that wealth in the hands of the middle class was mostly in the equity in our homes, cars, and pensions/savings.
And so the predators among us turned their sights on these last reservoirs of wealth in America. Phil and Wendy Gramm (he is McCain’s chief economic advisor) pushed through both a deregulation of banks and investment companies, but also a deregulation of how commodities (real things) were traded on margin (using money borrowed against the value of the commodities).
Alan Greenspan enthusiastically jumped into the game, dropping interest rates so low they were below the rate of inflation for the biggest institutional borrowers – giving the Masters Of The Universe all the cash they needed to gamble with, thus driving up the cost (but not the value) of commodities from houses to oil to food.
In the process, the American middle class got into the act by borrowing in a slightly similar fashion, but instead of billions they only borrowed against the value of their houses and cars and the line of credit on their credit cards.
But then we began to run out of wealth – real wealth. Because we didn’t make anything any more, about all we could sell to the world were IOUs, debt-based “instruments” made up of bundled mortgages. And when the world stopped wanting to buy them, looking instead to put their money into real assets like gold or oil or manufacturing plants, it all began to unravel.
The last time things unraveled like this was during the Republican Great Depression of 1929-1938. That, too, had followed a series of Republican administrations that had radically deregulated banking and securities rules, leading to wild speculation and asset bubbles, starting with a real estate explosion in Florida in the early 1920s. That Florida real estate bubble burst in 1927, and by 1929 it had spread to Wall Street. What we are witnessing today is the death of neoliberalism (e.g. Friedman/Greenspan/Thatcher/Reaganomics), although few in the corporate media will call it out.
The recent semi-nationalization of Freddie and Fannie were, in fact, clear demonstrations of the failure of privatization of institutions essential to the commons (a primary purpose of government), but at the time it seemed that none of the corporate media would dare refer to it as such.
Today we're seeing the logical culmination of deregulation; steps recommended by Friedman/Greenspan and started in the last years of the Carter administration, put on steroids by Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush, reaching a peak with Phil and Wendy Gramm's rollback in 1999 of Glass-Steagall allowing "investment" companies to behave like "banks" without regulation (making them, in reality, neither, but instead merely financial schemes).
"Roosevelt is dead," Limbaugh famously intoned at the appointment of GW Bush as President, "but his programs remain, and we're in the process of doing something about that, as well." Indeed.
Let's start calling this what it is - the total discrediting of the economic theories of Von Hayek, Milton and Thomas Friedman, Alan Greenspan, and borrow-and-spend Reaganomics/Bushnomics. The failure of "globalization," deregulation, and privatization. And let's begin to honestly identify today's events as a clear and clarion call for a return to the common-sense policies FDR put into place that saved capitalism from itself and its predators (and led to four decades of sustained growth of both the economy and the middle class) three generations earlier.
Now we are again "rediscovering" the lessons of the last Republican Great Depression...and if we don’t QUICKLY begin to move manufacturing capacity back into this country (and have it owned by American companies so the profits don’t just end up in Japan or Germany) we will be, within five years, far worse off than Americans were in 1934.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Obama & McCain in Reverse
I guess everyone's busy these days, but kinda disappointed that there's not that much posted after a presidential and a vice presidential debates already. Come on, guys. I am working on some posts...
Mike forwarded me this thought-provoking, albeit pro-Obama, set of questions that allude to the various issues regarding how the electorate views these two candidates:
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said 'I do' to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5*?
* The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election
numbers would be as close as they are?
With America facing historic debt, 2 wars, stumbling health care, a weakened dollar, all-time-high prison population, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc.; which team would you hire?
Educational Background:
Obama:
Columbia University- B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in
International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
Biden:
University of Delaware- B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor(J.D.)
vs.
McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho- 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College- 1 semester
University of Idaho- 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism
Now, which team are you going to hire?
Mike forwarded me this thought-provoking, albeit pro-Obama, set of questions that allude to the various issues regarding how the electorate views these two candidates:
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said 'I do' to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5*?
* The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election
numbers would be as close as they are?
With America facing historic debt, 2 wars, stumbling health care, a weakened dollar, all-time-high prison population, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc.; which team would you hire?
Educational Background:
Obama:
Columbia University- B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in
International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
Biden:
University of Delaware- B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor(J.D.)
vs.
McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho- 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College- 1 semester
University of Idaho- 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism
Now, which team are you going to hire?
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Whither Tolerance
Don't know if you guys recall my anecdote about sending office email about the 2000 election, but maybe I was just ahead of my time. ;-) An interesting NYT article given our past discussions on tolerance, etc.
Talking Politics in the Office
Talking Politics in the Office
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Obama Gets Chewed Out By Bartlet
This is a fun read that Mike forwarded to me. Maureen Dowd has Sorkin down pat (or did he actually write it? If he did, she shouldn't get a byline on that, should she?). Maybe she should've helped him on that promising-but-ultimately-awful "Studio 60". I miss "The West Wing"...:
Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet
Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet
Monday, September 22, 2008
Move Over, Greenspan, for Prophet Roubini
Nouriel Roubini seems to be the man generally credited as the first prominent economist/soothsayer to foresee the current Wall Street collapse. An NYT profile article on him: Dr. Doom
And here's the link to his blog full of information:
RGE - Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor (registration required for full text)
And here's the link to his blog full of information:
RGE - Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor (registration required for full text)
Tax the #$%@ Out of the Rich!
Here's more complete BS as perpetrated by the so-called investment bankers and executives:
Last Year's Big Five Wall Street Bonuses
So many people are worried about "How are we going to pay for this bailout of investment banks, etc?" I'll tell you how. Fleece the crap out of those rich people who got big fat salaries and bonuses. Obama says increase taxes for people making $250K or more. Fine. I'd say anyone making a million or more gross should pay 50% income tax or more, especially if you worked in any of these firms that are getting bailed out. Sounds simple to me. Socialism? So what? Class warfare? Why not? It's time we put an end to this 30-plus years of deregulation bullshit and start re-distributing the wealth to people who can manage it properly--the responsible middle class. No more of this rich-get-richer; it must end now! Pay for the freakin' mess you created, Wall Street and DC! There should be a financial martial law enforced by the IRS, FBI and the Federal Reserve!
Last Year's Big Five Wall Street Bonuses
So many people are worried about "How are we going to pay for this bailout of investment banks, etc?" I'll tell you how. Fleece the crap out of those rich people who got big fat salaries and bonuses. Obama says increase taxes for people making $250K or more. Fine. I'd say anyone making a million or more gross should pay 50% income tax or more, especially if you worked in any of these firms that are getting bailed out. Sounds simple to me. Socialism? So what? Class warfare? Why not? It's time we put an end to this 30-plus years of deregulation bullshit and start re-distributing the wealth to people who can manage it properly--the responsible middle class. No more of this rich-get-richer; it must end now! Pay for the freakin' mess you created, Wall Street and DC! There should be a financial martial law enforced by the IRS, FBI and the Federal Reserve!
Sorry to be away...
It's been a busy time in the last few weeks. First, I was focused on organizing my grandmother's 90th birthday in MN...a rather challenging feat to do event planning from 750 miles away for a 115 person party at a site you've never seen. Then I drove to MN (and spent an evening with James Kim and his kids...just spent a couple minutes with wife Lisa when she got home from a pottery class before I took off), did some family research at the state historical society with my mom on my grandfather's weekly newspaper column "Outdoors in Minnesota" (running from the mid-40's into the 50's), and had on-site party prep to do. After the party, I planned to drive home in one day, but ran into the wake of Ike's pillage of the Great Lakes states and had to stop when I-94 was flooded out between Chicago (IL) and Gary (IN). Finally made it home late the next day, but found the internet out. Cox Communications made it out to our place at the end of the week, diagnosing the problem as squirrels having chewed the cable on our house and on the street, which left them (the cables, not the squirrels) prone to flooding in Ike's rains. Now I'm back on line and can read what's going on again.
Meanwhile, another distraction has been efforts to make the most of my involvement as we get through the last weeks of the campaign. Among the things I "cling to" is political participation, and I've found myself in the middle of an effort to supplement activity in northeast Ohio by starting a PAC...new means of participation for me, but very interesting to be involved with it and experience firsthand the relationship between unaffiliated PACs and campaigns - what we can do to achieve our ends and what we have to do / can't do to keep the FEC happy. Busy times. I'll keep chiming in as time permits. Meanwhile, keep it up! My kids are into scary stories these days, so it makes for good bedtime reading for them when I can give them shivers with accounts of what the mean oooooollllllllldd troll McCain and his evil witch partner Palin would do if they ever got past the castle walls.
Cheers!
BRM
Meanwhile, another distraction has been efforts to make the most of my involvement as we get through the last weeks of the campaign. Among the things I "cling to" is political participation, and I've found myself in the middle of an effort to supplement activity in northeast Ohio by starting a PAC...new means of participation for me, but very interesting to be involved with it and experience firsthand the relationship between unaffiliated PACs and campaigns - what we can do to achieve our ends and what we have to do / can't do to keep the FEC happy. Busy times. I'll keep chiming in as time permits. Meanwhile, keep it up! My kids are into scary stories these days, so it makes for good bedtime reading for them when I can give them shivers with accounts of what the mean oooooollllllllldd troll McCain and his evil witch partner Palin would do if they ever got past the castle walls.
Cheers!
BRM
Friday, September 19, 2008
The Motley Fool Explains the Financial Chaos
The Motley Fool always explains matters financial well for people like me who didn't go to business school nor is an investment banker. I haven't gone through all of the links, but they look like great sources and insights to understand the current Wall Street scramble. For your edification:
The Biggest Financial Story of the Past 50 Years
The Biggest Financial Story of the Past 50 Years
It's the healthcare, Sicko!
Watched "Sicko" for the first time last night. Michael Moore does it again. He knows how to pull the audience's strings, and I'm not sure about the dramatic license he took on the sequence where he megaphones toward Gitmo and the siren blares, but the whole healthcare in Cuba part was awesome.
I repeat his best question in the piece when he captures patients who are literally dumped on homeless shelters by other hospitals, "Who are we?" Why is it that this superpower nation of ours cannot afford the healthcare needs of its citizens (and aliens, guests, visitors)? It is beyond me. Universal healthcare, NOW! Do something! Support H.R. 676 (single-payer system)! Is this still being debated, or has it died already? The level of greed in the insurance, medical and pharmaceutical industries should be made a crime.
You gotta see "Sicko" if you haven't, regardless of your opinion of Moore. Sometimes, I just feel like quitting my job and get out there to fight for some real change and to make a difference. But I'm just a mortgage-paying, debt-ridden coward, like millions of us.
I repeat his best question in the piece when he captures patients who are literally dumped on homeless shelters by other hospitals, "Who are we?" Why is it that this superpower nation of ours cannot afford the healthcare needs of its citizens (and aliens, guests, visitors)? It is beyond me. Universal healthcare, NOW! Do something! Support H.R. 676 (single-payer system)! Is this still being debated, or has it died already? The level of greed in the insurance, medical and pharmaceutical industries should be made a crime.
You gotta see "Sicko" if you haven't, regardless of your opinion of Moore. Sometimes, I just feel like quitting my job and get out there to fight for some real change and to make a difference. But I'm just a mortgage-paying, debt-ridden coward, like millions of us.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
McCain the Next Nixon?
This op-ed by Elizabeth Drew, author of “Citizen McCain”, certainly brought up images of Nixon for me, especially in the sections below. This hadn't occurred to me, but I've come to realize more and more that many Rep conservatives are shaped in the mold of Nixon instead of Reagan: How John McCain lost me
"In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” he wrote, revealingly, “I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I’d had the ambition for a long time.”"
............
"There’s an argument that all this compromise wasn’t necessary: some very smart political analysts believed from the outset that McCain could win the nomination by sticking with his old self. And they still believe that McCain won the nomination not because he gave himself over to the base but as a result of a process of elimination of inferior candidates who divided up the conservative vote, as these observers had predicted. (These people insisted on anonymity because McCain is known in Republican circles to have a long memory and a vindictive streak.)
By then I had already concluded that that there was a disturbingly erratic side of McCain’s nature. There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges."
"In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” he wrote, revealingly, “I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I’d had the ambition for a long time.”"
............
"There’s an argument that all this compromise wasn’t necessary: some very smart political analysts believed from the outset that McCain could win the nomination by sticking with his old self. And they still believe that McCain won the nomination not because he gave himself over to the base but as a result of a process of elimination of inferior candidates who divided up the conservative vote, as these observers had predicted. (These people insisted on anonymity because McCain is known in Republican circles to have a long memory and a vindictive streak.)
By then I had already concluded that that there was a disturbingly erratic side of McCain’s nature. There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges."
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Brief Reflection on 9/11, Then and Now
Never forget the fallen of September Eleven
Seven years ago our nation was hijacked
Never again a day like any other day
Not since the Day of Infamy 60 years before.
Unreal images of fireball and smoke
Attack on plutocratic twin monoliths
Attack on a wall of the Pentagon defense
Tearing down our pride, might and arrogance.
Crashed remains strewn on a green field
To save the hallowed institutions of DC
Heroes of United 93 immortalized.
Could I have been as brave in their place?
Necessitating a swift and firm response
Chased the evil-doers to Tora Bora caves
As near to the gates of hell but
Mission remains unaccomplished.
Bearing false witness and
Distracted by uncertain intelligence
We moved lockstep toward Babylon
Marveling the shock and awe
Ignoring the innocent lives lost and fleeing
Proclaiming mission accomplished
As the death toll rises while
The nation turns to issues domestic.
Now at the precipice of a historic election
Looking for solutions at home and abroad
Same old politics reign again
Accusations of dishonesty and distortion.
One promising change for our future
Other now re-branding maverick change.
Follow the aging senator with POW past?
Or believe in the new face of audacious hope?
Who will honor the fallen of 9/11 and hence
Without mendacity, demagoguery and hypocrisy?
Without reckless zero-sum-game machinations?
Americans and the world watch and wonder
As we remember the eleventh of September.
Seven years ago our nation was hijacked
Never again a day like any other day
Not since the Day of Infamy 60 years before.
Unreal images of fireball and smoke
Attack on plutocratic twin monoliths
Attack on a wall of the Pentagon defense
Tearing down our pride, might and arrogance.
Crashed remains strewn on a green field
To save the hallowed institutions of DC
Heroes of United 93 immortalized.
Could I have been as brave in their place?
Necessitating a swift and firm response
Chased the evil-doers to Tora Bora caves
As near to the gates of hell but
Mission remains unaccomplished.
Bearing false witness and
Distracted by uncertain intelligence
We moved lockstep toward Babylon
Marveling the shock and awe
Ignoring the innocent lives lost and fleeing
Proclaiming mission accomplished
As the death toll rises while
The nation turns to issues domestic.
Now at the precipice of a historic election
Looking for solutions at home and abroad
Same old politics reign again
Accusations of dishonesty and distortion.
One promising change for our future
Other now re-branding maverick change.
Follow the aging senator with POW past?
Or believe in the new face of audacious hope?
Who will honor the fallen of 9/11 and hence
Without mendacity, demagoguery and hypocrisy?
Without reckless zero-sum-game machinations?
Americans and the world watch and wonder
As we remember the eleventh of September.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Quindlen: "The GOP Finds Feminism"
Didn't seem right to bury this Anna Quindlen article as a comment to another post. This one deserves another post in that Palin is to feminism as Clarence Thomas was to affirmative action. THIS is the sort of "doublespeak" and political truth-twisting at which the Reps excel. All the coddling and kid gloves used by the McCain camp to prevent any gaffes by Palin is an insult to feminism and is by itself a practice of sexism. Cue the Thompson Twins' "Lies": The GOP Finds Feminism
Monday, September 8, 2008
Liberal Media Bias?
From: Brian Adamson
Subject: Liberal Media Bias?
Date: Monday, September 8, 2008, 11:37 AM
Hi: Really agree with this article. Let me know what you-all think?
We're Gonna Frickin' Lose this Thing (Adam McKay: The Huffington Post)
"Stop saying that!" my wife says to me. But this is not a high school football game and I'm not a cheerleader with a bad attitude. This is an election and as things stand now, we're gonna frickin' lose this thing. Obama and McCain at best are even in the polls nationally and in a recent Gallup poll McCain is ahead by four points.
Something is not right. We have a terrific candidate and a terrific VP candidate. We're coming off the worst eight years in our country's history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R's have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we're going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That's not odd as a difference of opinion, that's logically and mathematically queer.
It reminds me of playing blackjack (a losers game). You make all the right moves, play the right hands but basically the House always wins. I know what you're going to say " But I won twelve hundred dollars last year in Atlantic City!" Of course there are victories. The odds aren't tilted crazy, but there is a 51%-49% advantage. And in the long run, the house has to win. The house will win.
So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.
Think this is some opinion being wryly posited to titillate other bloggers and inspire dialogue with Tucker Carlson or Gore Vidal? Fuck that. Four corporations own all the TV channels. All of them. If they don't get ratings they get canceled or fired. All news is about sex, blame and anger, and fear. Exposing lies about amounts of money taken from lobbyists and votes cast for the agenda of the last eight years does not rate. The end.
So one side can lie and get away with it. Now let's throw in one more advantage. Voter caging and other corruption on the local level with voting. Check out the article here on HuffPost about Ohio messing with 600K voters. If only five thousand of those voters don't or can't vote that's a huge advantage in a contest that could be decided by literally dozens of votes. That takes us to about a 52 to 48% advantage.
I'm not even getting into the fact that the religious right teaches closed mindedness so it's almost impossible to gain new voters from their pool because people who disagree with them are agents of the devil. I just want to look at two inarguable realities: A) we have no more press and B) the Repubs are screwing with the voters on the local level.
I'm telling you, we're going to lose this thing. And afterwords we'll blame ourselves the same way we did with Gore and Kerry (two candidates a thousand times more qualified to lead than W Bush.) Just watch.. McCain wins by a point or two and we all walk around saying things like "Obama was too well spoken." "Biden wasn't lovable enough." "I shouldn't have split those eights." "Why did I hit on 16? Why?!"
So what do we do?
1) We give definitive clear speeches like Biden and Obama gave the other day about how no one talked about any issues at the Republican Convention and how they outright lied. But we do them over and over again. 2) We use the one place where it's still a 50-50 game -- the internet -- as much as we can. 3) But most importantly we should bring up re-regulating the media and who owns it and what that conflict of interest is a lot more. By pretending there's no conflict of interest we're failing to alert the public that they're being lied to or given a looking at a coin at the bottom of a pool slanted truth. Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. Disney, GE, Viacom, and Murdoch -- all want profits and the candidate and agenda that will get in their way the least.
Obama and Biden should also create a "master sound bite sentence" and repeat it hundreds of times. It should be so true that even the corporations can't screw with it when it makes the airwaves. Here's my attempt: "Katrina, four dollar gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment, deregulated housing market, global warming...no more."
This race should be about whether the Republican Party is going to be dismantled or not after the borderline treason of the past eight years. But instead it is about making the word "community organizer" a dirty word and a beauty queen who shoots foxes from a plane. Someone is not in any way doing their job and it's the press. Or more specifically, that job no longer exists.
Probably the worst offenders are the pundits who take the position that it's all just a game and say phrases like "getting a post-convention bump" or "playing to the soccer Moms." This isn't a game of Monopoly or Survivor. There are real truths that exist outside of the spin they are given and have an effect on lives. 250,000 Iraqi civilians are dead because we let our reality be distorted by the most effective propaganda machine in fifty years, the corporate American press. Money and jobs are flying out of this country as our currency becomes worthless and we're talking about the fact that McCain is a veteran. If someone busted into your house and robbed you would you then forgive them if you found out they were a veteran? Of course not. So why are we forgiving McCain for selling out his country by supporting the Bush agenda?
This is it folks. If McCain takes power we fade and become Australia in the seventies: a backwoods country with occasional flashes of relevance. Except we've got a way bigger military and we're angrier. People will get hurt and we'll pay the bill for the bullets. I'm telling you, unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing.
Subject: Liberal Media Bias?
Date: Monday, September 8, 2008, 11:37 AM
Hi: Really agree with this article. Let me know what you-all think?
We're Gonna Frickin' Lose this Thing (Adam McKay: The Huffington Post)
"Stop saying that!" my wife says to me. But this is not a high school football game and I'm not a cheerleader with a bad attitude. This is an election and as things stand now, we're gonna frickin' lose this thing. Obama and McCain at best are even in the polls nationally and in a recent Gallup poll McCain is ahead by four points.
Something is not right. We have a terrific candidate and a terrific VP candidate. We're coming off the worst eight years in our country's history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R's have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we're going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That's not odd as a difference of opinion, that's logically and mathematically queer.
It reminds me of playing blackjack (a losers game). You make all the right moves, play the right hands but basically the House always wins. I know what you're going to say " But I won twelve hundred dollars last year in Atlantic City!" Of course there are victories. The odds aren't tilted crazy, but there is a 51%-49% advantage. And in the long run, the house has to win. The house will win.
So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.
Think this is some opinion being wryly posited to titillate other bloggers and inspire dialogue with Tucker Carlson or Gore Vidal? Fuck that. Four corporations own all the TV channels. All of them. If they don't get ratings they get canceled or fired. All news is about sex, blame and anger, and fear. Exposing lies about amounts of money taken from lobbyists and votes cast for the agenda of the last eight years does not rate. The end.
So one side can lie and get away with it. Now let's throw in one more advantage. Voter caging and other corruption on the local level with voting. Check out the article here on HuffPost about Ohio messing with 600K voters. If only five thousand of those voters don't or can't vote that's a huge advantage in a contest that could be decided by literally dozens of votes. That takes us to about a 52 to 48% advantage.
I'm not even getting into the fact that the religious right teaches closed mindedness so it's almost impossible to gain new voters from their pool because people who disagree with them are agents of the devil. I just want to look at two inarguable realities: A) we have no more press and B) the Repubs are screwing with the voters on the local level.
I'm telling you, we're going to lose this thing. And afterwords we'll blame ourselves the same way we did with Gore and Kerry (two candidates a thousand times more qualified to lead than W Bush.) Just watch.. McCain wins by a point or two and we all walk around saying things like "Obama was too well spoken." "Biden wasn't lovable enough." "I shouldn't have split those eights." "Why did I hit on 16? Why?!"
So what do we do?
1) We give definitive clear speeches like Biden and Obama gave the other day about how no one talked about any issues at the Republican Convention and how they outright lied. But we do them over and over again. 2) We use the one place where it's still a 50-50 game -- the internet -- as much as we can. 3) But most importantly we should bring up re-regulating the media and who owns it and what that conflict of interest is a lot more. By pretending there's no conflict of interest we're failing to alert the public that they're being lied to or given a looking at a coin at the bottom of a pool slanted truth. Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. Disney, GE, Viacom, and Murdoch -- all want profits and the candidate and agenda that will get in their way the least.
Obama and Biden should also create a "master sound bite sentence" and repeat it hundreds of times. It should be so true that even the corporations can't screw with it when it makes the airwaves. Here's my attempt: "Katrina, four dollar gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment, deregulated housing market, global warming...no more."
This race should be about whether the Republican Party is going to be dismantled or not after the borderline treason of the past eight years. But instead it is about making the word "community organizer" a dirty word and a beauty queen who shoots foxes from a plane. Someone is not in any way doing their job and it's the press. Or more specifically, that job no longer exists.
Probably the worst offenders are the pundits who take the position that it's all just a game and say phrases like "getting a post-convention bump" or "playing to the soccer Moms." This isn't a game of Monopoly or Survivor. There are real truths that exist outside of the spin they are given and have an effect on lives. 250,000 Iraqi civilians are dead because we let our reality be distorted by the most effective propaganda machine in fifty years, the corporate American press. Money and jobs are flying out of this country as our currency becomes worthless and we're talking about the fact that McCain is a veteran. If someone busted into your house and robbed you would you then forgive them if you found out they were a veteran? Of course not. So why are we forgiving McCain for selling out his country by supporting the Bush agenda?
This is it folks. If McCain takes power we fade and become Australia in the seventies: a backwoods country with occasional flashes of relevance. Except we've got a way bigger military and we're angrier. People will get hurt and we'll pay the bill for the bullets. I'm telling you, unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
How the Republicans Win
A quite thorough article about the roots and schemes of the Reps to win the presidency over the last 40 years, by Robert Parry of Consortium News: How the Republicans Win.
I found it educational and accurate. I blame the Reps, but I also blame the Dems for their choosing indirectly complicit silence over cries of outrage. I also blame all of us for blindly accepting the state of the nation as it was and is. This is how long the country has been on the wrong track. Wake up, America! The Revolution WILL BE TELEVISED!
I found it educational and accurate. I blame the Reps, but I also blame the Dems for their choosing indirectly complicit silence over cries of outrage. I also blame all of us for blindly accepting the state of the nation as it was and is. This is how long the country has been on the wrong track. Wake up, America! The Revolution WILL BE TELEVISED!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Sarah's Big Night Palin Comparison to Obama
It's beyond laughable that the Reps insist on comparing Palin to Obama (ok, so I've been dying to use the "pale in comparison" pun ever since she came on the scene). She's hardly qualified to be VP, and they claim Obama does not have any experience to be president (O those haunting refrain of "Zero, zero, zero"!). It's also ridiculous how the media are now fawning all over her barely mediocre speech of no substance or content. And there's no doubt where the "fair and balanced" mouthpieces stand: see Politico article Media swoons over Palin's fiery speech. An AP article even has the headline, "Palin delivers star-turning performance at RNC". To be sure, there's no substitute for low expectations. Giuliani even said the presidency is decided not by the elite or Hollywood celebrities but by the American people. The elite and celebs who live in this country are not Americans? Yet another example of infrahumanization by the Reps. America doesn't want some Ivy League-educated president? That should've disqualified the entire Bush family by default. The Reps love to bash the liberal elite and the Hollywood celebs, but they love a lying political performance even more.
It was difficult to watch the typical elite-hating, media-bashing, liberal-baiting, flag-waving circus the Reps like to put on. I did love the part where she took credit for Alaska's budget surplus (boy, that's feat in pipeline country) and how she put the state jet for sale on eBay (this here Internet is somethin' else). As I've heard other people say, we are the laughing stock of the world. But, hey, the GOP will never apologize for America! Yeah, good luck with that.
At the Politico site above, I particularly enjoyed this rundown of RNC myths vs. facts by a Democratic responder:
PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."
PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform _ not even in the state senate."
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."
THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded. Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families. He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.
MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.
THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state _ by population.
MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.
THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.
FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.
FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right _ change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington _ throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."
THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John McCain...is this the best the fascists on the right can do?
That last line is from the blogger, not me. It's the same ol' negative campaigning from the right. How could it be anything else, regardless of what Obama and even McCain try to do to keep it on the issues? Oh, right, I forgot:
"This election is not about issues," Davis told The Washington Post this week. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."
It's time for "It's the economy, stupid", part II.
It was difficult to watch the typical elite-hating, media-bashing, liberal-baiting, flag-waving circus the Reps like to put on. I did love the part where she took credit for Alaska's budget surplus (boy, that's feat in pipeline country) and how she put the state jet for sale on eBay (this here Internet is somethin' else). As I've heard other people say, we are the laughing stock of the world. But, hey, the GOP will never apologize for America! Yeah, good luck with that.
At the Politico site above, I particularly enjoyed this rundown of RNC myths vs. facts by a Democratic responder:
PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."
PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform _ not even in the state senate."
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."
THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded. Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families. He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.
MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.
THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state _ by population.
MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.
THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.
FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.
FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right _ change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington _ throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."
THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John McCain...is this the best the fascists on the right can do?
That last line is from the blogger, not me. It's the same ol' negative campaigning from the right. How could it be anything else, regardless of what Obama and even McCain try to do to keep it on the issues? Oh, right, I forgot:
"This election is not about issues," Davis told The Washington Post this week. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."
It's time for "It's the economy, stupid", part II.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Beware of Rove-ellian Trojan Horse
Here's a very interesting article from The New Republic I found. As I have mulled over the Palin pick in my head over the last few days, I believe the Dems and liberals are falling over themselves into the Rove-ellian political trap:
The Case Against the Case Against Palin
The article ends with this:
"Sarah Palin is a living reminder that the ultimate source of political power in this country is not the Kennedy School or the Davos Summit or an Ariana Huffington salon; even now, power emanates from the electorate itself. More precisely, power in 2008 emanates from the working class electorates of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Sooner or later, the Obama camp will realize that the beauty pageant queen is an enormously talented populist in a year that is ripe for populism. For their own sake, it had better be sooner."
The McCain camp has managed to re-define the theme of this election once again by re-invigorating the Culture War: Palin reignites culture wars
This is why they picked someone like her. She represents a lightningrod, a liberal flystrip, if you prefer, that will make all those left-wing liberals who attack her look like they're elitists alienating the working-class, heartland 'Mericans. Obama camp had better watch out and step around this political excrement-in-a-flaming-paper-bag that the Rove Sith-apprentices have put down on their doorstep. This is like "Bob Roberts" politics where an assassination (a character assassination in this case) is faked, and liberals are all too easy targets to fall for it.
Palin symbolizes the return to "God, guns and gays" political game at which the Reps are experts. This is a Simpsons' episode where the townfolk chant "Monorail!" in the Music Man cadence; a South Park episode where the townfolk misplace their anger shouting, "Dey took 'r jobs!" The Dems cannot compete in this game because the 'Merican public will never accept liberals as the defenders of their beliefs, values or culture. And don't forget the good ol' conservative whipping boy, the liberal media. McCain camp knows this and knows that this is the only way that the Reps can stranglehold the presidency.
It is truly despicable that they are going down this road again, but will the third time be the charm? I can officially declare that I have zero respect for McCain. Maverick? Hardly, just another opportunistic politician who will do and say anything to be president. Maverick McCain died a quick death prior the 2008 election season. It is also quite sickening to see the Reps pat themselves on the back for putting Palin on the ticket, as if they have accomplished something new and progressive, as if she somehow can even be a torchbearer for the "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling" that Hillary created.
The best course of action for Obama-Biden is to stay away from the culture war trap (as I saw Biden say repeatedly on C-SPAN tonight, "Children are off-limits!"), and let Palin be Palin. Looks like she's got a lot of political loose ends with which to fashion a noose for herself: See Campaign money hurts Palin's outsider image. I realize it'd be highly unlikely and a political suicide, but I'll go out on a limb to say that Palin's VP nominee days may be numbered.
Plus, the latest Gallup poll says Obama has hit the 50% mark. Mere post-convention bump perhaps, but thank the Lord at least half of the country is able to see through the Rove-ellian politics-as-usual smokescreen.
The Case Against the Case Against Palin
The article ends with this:
"Sarah Palin is a living reminder that the ultimate source of political power in this country is not the Kennedy School or the Davos Summit or an Ariana Huffington salon; even now, power emanates from the electorate itself. More precisely, power in 2008 emanates from the working class electorates of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Sooner or later, the Obama camp will realize that the beauty pageant queen is an enormously talented populist in a year that is ripe for populism. For their own sake, it had better be sooner."
The McCain camp has managed to re-define the theme of this election once again by re-invigorating the Culture War: Palin reignites culture wars
This is why they picked someone like her. She represents a lightningrod, a liberal flystrip, if you prefer, that will make all those left-wing liberals who attack her look like they're elitists alienating the working-class, heartland 'Mericans. Obama camp had better watch out and step around this political excrement-in-a-flaming-paper-bag that the Rove Sith-apprentices have put down on their doorstep. This is like "Bob Roberts" politics where an assassination (a character assassination in this case) is faked, and liberals are all too easy targets to fall for it.
Palin symbolizes the return to "God, guns and gays" political game at which the Reps are experts. This is a Simpsons' episode where the townfolk chant "Monorail!" in the Music Man cadence; a South Park episode where the townfolk misplace their anger shouting, "Dey took 'r jobs!" The Dems cannot compete in this game because the 'Merican public will never accept liberals as the defenders of their beliefs, values or culture. And don't forget the good ol' conservative whipping boy, the liberal media. McCain camp knows this and knows that this is the only way that the Reps can stranglehold the presidency.
It is truly despicable that they are going down this road again, but will the third time be the charm? I can officially declare that I have zero respect for McCain. Maverick? Hardly, just another opportunistic politician who will do and say anything to be president. Maverick McCain died a quick death prior the 2008 election season. It is also quite sickening to see the Reps pat themselves on the back for putting Palin on the ticket, as if they have accomplished something new and progressive, as if she somehow can even be a torchbearer for the "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling" that Hillary created.
The best course of action for Obama-Biden is to stay away from the culture war trap (as I saw Biden say repeatedly on C-SPAN tonight, "Children are off-limits!"), and let Palin be Palin. Looks like she's got a lot of political loose ends with which to fashion a noose for herself: See Campaign money hurts Palin's outsider image. I realize it'd be highly unlikely and a political suicide, but I'll go out on a limb to say that Palin's VP nominee days may be numbered.
Plus, the latest Gallup poll says Obama has hit the 50% mark. Mere post-convention bump perhaps, but thank the Lord at least half of the country is able to see through the Rove-ellian politics-as-usual smokescreen.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Who is Sarah Palin?
Hey check this out.
Dear MoveOn member,
Dear MoveOn member,
Yesterday was John McCain's 72nd birthday. If elected, he'd be the oldest president ever inaugurated. And after months of slamming Barack Obama for "inexperience," here's who John McCain has chosen to be one heartbeat away from the presidency: a right-wing religious conservative with no foreign policy experience, who until recently was mayor of a town of 9,000 people.
Huh?
Who is Sarah Palin? Here's some basic background:
- She was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.1
- Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.2
- She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. 3
- Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.4
- She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change.5
- She's solidly in line with John McCain's "Big Oil first" energy policy. She's pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won't be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.6
- How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.7
This is information the American people need to see. Please take a moment to forward this email to your friends and family.
Friday, August 29, 2008
McCain-Palin Ticket
I'll give McCain one thing; I didn't see this pick coming AT ALL! I only heard of her last night on C-SPAN as they ran down a list of speakers at the RNC. I think he's really going out on a limb.
First thing I mentioned to Michelle when I heard the pick: They want to make Biden look like he's attacking women when they get in a debate.
Second: Does this really woo the unhappy Hillary supporters or women in general?
Third: The ol' "heartbeat away from the presidency" question. If the Reps think Obama is inexperienced, does Palin have the creds to backup a 72-year-old presidential nominee? Major stumbling block here, I think.
Fourth: I guess the evangelicals and conservatives like Palin's stance on issues, but anti-abortion isn't the way to get the women vote.
Forces some tactical adjustments for Obama-Biden in the short term (I bet they didn't see her coming, either), but in the long run VP picks end up being neutral. However, Biden backs up Obama much, much better than Palin does McCain. She seems hollow, token and purely a move in political campaign terms, not at all about how qualified she is to lead the second-in-command position. Too bad for Mitt Romney, but Hillary didn't get the VP nod, either.
First thing I mentioned to Michelle when I heard the pick: They want to make Biden look like he's attacking women when they get in a debate.
Second: Does this really woo the unhappy Hillary supporters or women in general?
Third: The ol' "heartbeat away from the presidency" question. If the Reps think Obama is inexperienced, does Palin have the creds to backup a 72-year-old presidential nominee? Major stumbling block here, I think.
Fourth: I guess the evangelicals and conservatives like Palin's stance on issues, but anti-abortion isn't the way to get the women vote.
Forces some tactical adjustments for Obama-Biden in the short term (I bet they didn't see her coming, either), but in the long run VP picks end up being neutral. However, Biden backs up Obama much, much better than Palin does McCain. She seems hollow, token and purely a move in political campaign terms, not at all about how qualified she is to lead the second-in-command position. Too bad for Mitt Romney, but Hillary didn't get the VP nod, either.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Obama-Biden Ticket
The VP gauntlet has been dropped from the Dem side, so what do you all think? I think it is a good and perhaps safe pick. McCain camp has already started to spin on the lack of foreign policy experience and going against the change agent message of Obama, but I think Biden is a good bulldog against Rep attacks. McCain camp is also courting seriously the disaffected Hillary voters, but those (some say up to 25% of her supporters who would now vote for McCain), I would argue, were not really core Dems, mostly independents and maybe some Reps who are Bush-haters.
Anyway, let's chime in, as the Dem convention is now rolling...
Anyway, let's chime in, as the Dem convention is now rolling...
Monday, August 11, 2008
Fwd: Continuing on Edwards et al.
From BRM via googlegroups...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Brian Menard" <brian_men...@hotmail.com>
Date: Aug 11 2008, 1:06 pm
Subject: Continuing on Edwards et al.
To: AMoMaI Group
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Brian Menard" <brian_men...@hotmail.com>
Date: Aug 11 2008, 1:06 pm
Subject: Continuing on Edwards et al.
To: AMoMaI Group
Glad we agree, and that's with bipartisan culpability. (My beef with
Larry Craig is not the orientation of his activity, but the hypocrisy
factor. As for Gingrich, I respect the heck out of his great brain,
diagnostic ability, and strategizing, but he'll never be President
because he can't - or at least couldn't - keep his pants on. To his
credit though, he admitted things and resigned where others have not.)
As for Europe, I would argue that in fact, there IS a big difference
in moral expectations between the USA and Europe, not only with public
figures, but perhaps BECAUSE there is so much more toleration of such
things in many European cultures generally. Religion does figure in,
but not in the sense of right wing control of U.S. politics; I believe
it's more a matter of religion NOT playing so much an active part in
European culture.
As for damning politicians for sleeping around, I think John Edwards
said it best himself when he finally started to admit to a teeny-
weenie little part of what I suspect he will ultimately have to admit
to despite continuing to deny it (as he lied with a straight face just
a few months ago about the fact that any infidelity at all took
place). In his ABC interview, he said essentially that there is a
hubris that comes from a sense of invincibility and all-powerfulness
that seduces one into thinking that he can do anything that he wants
without culpability. THAT is very dangerous in public office,
especially the most powerful office in the world.
BRM
Saturday, August 9, 2008
RE: Politics: Edwards Admits Affair to ABC News
Well, he's definitely a huge heel here, but I think we can also all agree that neither party has the upper hand in matters of virtue, morals or family values. :)
MLB
From: brian_menard@hotmail.com
To: b.adamson@comcast.net; misterb_46@hotmail.com; yhkpenguin@yahoo.com
CC: yhkpenguin.amomai@blogger.com
Subject: Re: Politics: Edwards Admits Affair to ABC News
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 10:22:54 -0400
And, I would add, also a shame that Edwards took such advantage of his wife's health circumstances for political gain while he was otherwise involved with extracurricular activity. Any agree?
BRM
MLB
From: brian_menard@hotmail.com
To: b.adamson@comcast.net; misterb_46@hotmail.com; yhkpenguin@yahoo.com
CC: yhkpenguin.amomai@blogger.com
Subject: Re: Politics: Edwards Admits Affair to ABC News
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2008 10:22:54 -0400
And, I would add, also a shame that Edwards took such advantage of his wife's health circumstances for political gain while he was otherwise involved with extracurricular activity. Any agree?
BRM
Re: Politics: Edwards Admits Affair to ABC News
And, I would add, also a shame that Edwards took such advantage of his wife's health circumstances for political gain while he was otherwise involved with extracurricular activity. Any agree?
BRM
BRM
----- Original Message -----From: Young H. KimCc: amomai blogSent: Friday, August 08, 2008 7:20 PMSubject: Fw: Politics: Edwards Admits Affair to ABC News
Well, well, the other shoe drops...but no admission of fathering the child. Boy, he's learned a few things from Clinton, I suppose. What a shame that I have to admit that Fox and the Enquirer were right. Ugh!
Young
--- On Fri, 8/8/08, NYTimes.com <nytdirect@nytimes.com> wrote:
----------------------------------------
The Caucus
Edwards Admits Affair to ABC News
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
In an interview, former Senator John Edwards said he had an
extramarital affair but did not father a child out of
wedlock.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/abc-news-edwards-admits-to-extramarital-affair/index.html?nl=pol&emc=pol
Friday, August 8, 2008
Fw: Politics: Edwards Admits Affair to ABC News
| Well, well, the other shoe drops...but no admission of fathering the child. Boy, he's learned a few things from Clinton, I suppose. What a shame that I have to admit that Fox and the Enquirer were right. Ugh! Young --- On Fri, 8/8/08, NYTimes.com <nytdirect@nytimes.com> wrote: ---------------------------------------- The Caucus Edwards Admits Affair to ABC News By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE In an interview, former Senator John Edwards said he had an extramarital affair but did not father a child out of wedlock. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/abc-news-edwards-admits-to-extramarital-affair/index.html?nl=pol&emc=pol |
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