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Does Obama Want Edwards Gone?If the MSM is pro-Obama, that means ...

By Mickey Kaus
Updated Monday, July 28, 2008, at 4:28 AM ET

BHTV 50 Seconds of Truth! The Usual Media Thing regarding the "n"-word, explained. ... 1:31 A.M.

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On This Week, McCain endorses Ward Connerly's Arizona Civil Rights Initiative.

STEPHANOPOULOS: "Opponents of affirmative action are trying to get a referendum on the ballot here that would do away with affirmative action. Do you support that?"

MCCAIN: "Yes, I do. I do not believe in quotas. But I have not seen the details of some of the proposals. But I've always opposed quotas."

STEPHANOPOULOS: "But the one here in Arizona you support?"

McCAIN: "I support it, yes."

McCain at first tried fo fudge, then got bullied into a "yes"--the same thing that basically happened with his answer on immigration at the Reagan library debate. McCain's clumsiness may indicate that his endorsement isn't exactly bankable--his spokesman was unprepared to defend it when Obama immediately brought up McCain's characterization of an earlier anti-affirmative action measure as "divisive." ("I do not have a firm enough grasp on the historical and relevant context of McCain's remark in 1998 to give you the pushback that this question deserves," the spokesman said, in a formulation that may become the Universal Punt in the idiotic daily news-cycle war.)

Yet maybe McCain has stumbled on to a strategic masterstroke. He's behind, after all. His big issue--Iraq--has just been seemingly defused. He's no expert on the economy. He's old and his formerly winning personality is starting to grate. He could do worse than make the election a national referendum on Connerly's initiative to ban affirmative action, which tends to win by large margins whenever it is actually placed on a ballot. Does Steve Schmidt have a better idea? ...

P.S.: In a precious moment of calm, Andrew Sullivan posts a sensible analysis of how Obama might respond. [Sullivan's away. Item was written by Chris Bodenner--ed I finally know what they mean by "the exception that proves the rule."]

P.P.S.: Weekend chat shows were bloated with talk of the McCain campaign's recent general incompetence. I know that Mike Murphy's comeback bid is over, finished, he "will not be reboarding the Straight Talk Express," and "the matter is now been resolved." Politico told us! But at this rate don't you think Murphy will be running the campaign by August? ... 10:42 P.M. link

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More evidence of the new realism about Edwards on the left. Alex Koppelman in Salon:

I know what you're thinking: Why even bother with anything printed by the Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid you probably think of as the kind of "newspaper" that focuses on rumors that Elvis Presley is alive -- and leading a band of rampaging space aliens? ...[snip] That's not really the Enquirer's niche, though. It gets confused with publications like the defunct Weekly World News, but in fact the Enquirer is surprisingly good at reporting on these kinds of stories, and it has a decent track record with them. It was the Enquirer that published the photo of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart's lap. It was the Enquirer that broke the story of Rush Limbaugh's addiction to painkillers. And new information about the Edwards story makes the Enquirer's reporting on it look more solid.

Not all of Koppelman's commenters are on board! (Sample: "J.D. Rockefeller, back in the 1900's sent hired guns into a camp of striking mine workers. ...When you threaten the power base in this country, watch out.") But he has more support than you'd expect. ... 9:46 P.M.

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Blog Post of the Day: Lee Stranahan, an Edwards fan and Obama supporter, wakes up--

The truth is that I believe anyone who looks into the John Edwards / Rielle Hunter affair story will see that Edwards has, at best, acted in a very suspicious manner for over a year now. ...

Let's go with the assumption that Edwards is innocent for a moment; he didn't have the affair so the baby isn't his. If he didn't do anything wrong then it seems like he'd have good reasons to stop the rumors. A DNA test months ago would have ended all speculation about the paternity of the baby. Isn't that a better, less suspicious move than pulling down all the videos that Rielle Hunter helped produce about him for his campaign? And if there are rumors and you're innocent, WHY go visit the subject of those rumors at a hotel and leave at 2:45 in the morning? Why hide in the bathroom when reporters catch you leaving? These actions don't make any more sense to me than Craig's 'wide stance / dropped my toilet paper' defense did. ...

The mainstream media is fairly quiet but the most ominous silence right now is from the progressive blogosphere.

Stranahan goes on and on. I wouldn't cut a word. (Sample: "A blog by John McQuaid said that there's no 'physical evidence a la Bill Clinton.' Well, there's a baby.") ... 2:00 A.M. link

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Saturday, July 26, 2008

Sleaze Scuppers Democrat Golden Boy": Sometimes a foreign perspective is clarifying. Effective photo. ... 2:47 P.M.

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Will the Pro-Obama Bias Turn Anti-Edwards? At this point, does Barack Obama want John Edwards to even show up in Denver, much less give a prime time speech? Even if the Love-Child saga progresses no further than it already has, an Edwards Denver appearance will inevitably be accompanied by renewed speculation about his seemingly scandalous and politically toxic behavior. Obama's in what looks like a surprisingly close race. He doesn't need to carry Edwards' baggage. He needs a positive convention. And Obama has previously shown a willingness to bury troublesome associates without much fuss (ask Jim Johnson).

If you're an Obama strategist, mightn't you conclude that the best thing for your candidate would be if the press weighs in quickly and definitively concludes that Edwards is guilty, with the result that he and his whole sordid story go away until after November? ...

Of course, if that was the Obama camp's desire, you'd expect Obamaphilic Web sites like Huffington Post to suddenly start billing Love Child stories on their front pages, even if they come from FOX News, and that's not about to ... Oh, wait. ...

If Edwards has lost Arianna's crowd (which only recently was sneering at the scandal with embarrassing, heavy-handed, unfunny satires**) we can't be far away from the Flipping Point at which Liberal Media Bias, to the extent it exist, starts working against Edwards. ...

P.S.: HufPo has even finally begun to boast, accurately, that:

The Huffington Post was the first to report on Edwards' relationship with Rielle Hunter in September 2007 .

**--Update: Greg Mitchell, author of the embarrassing, unfunny satire, emails to say: "Within minutes of posting yesterday, I recognized that it was, indeed, 'heavyhanded' and had it 'unpublished.'" OK. (But it's still there.) ... 2:44 A.M. link

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Friday, July 25, 2008

Here's some MSM. ... Update: Rod Dreher writing on the Dallas Morning News blog--

Still, the Enquirer, as sleazy as its tactics strike many people, has a better reputation on stories like this than you might think. Frankly, I believe them here -- Edwards refuses to comment -- but I do want to see photos.

He couldn't say that at the rockin' L.A. Times! ... Meanwhile, Fox News manages to do what the L.A.T.'s reporters are apparently unable to do, namely find some independent corroborating eyewitness evidence that Edwards was present at the hotel when the Enquirer says he was. ...

Update 2: From a WaPo online chat with reporter Jonathan Weisman:

Dunn Loring, Va.: Does the Post have any political reporters investigating the legitimacy of the Enquirer's stories about John Edwards?

Jonathan Weisman: Yes, and to be quite honest, we're waiting to see the pictures the Enquirer says it will publish this weekend. That said, Edwards is no longer an elected official and is not running for any office now. Don't expect wall-to-wall coverage.

4:07 A.M.

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LAT Gags Blogs: In a move that has apparently stirred up some internal discontent, the Los Angeles Times has banned its bloggers, including political bloggers, from mentioning the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story. Even bloggers who want to mention the story in order to make a skeptical we-don't-trust-the-Enquirer point are forbidden from doing so. Kausfiles has obtained a copy of the email Times bloggers received from editor Tony Pierce. [I've excised the recipient list and omitted Pierce's email address]:

From: "Pierce, Tony"

Date: July 24, 2008 10:54:41 AM PDT

To: [XXX]

Subject: john edwards

Hey bloggers,

There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask

Keep rockin,

Tony

That will certainly calm paranoia about the Mainstream Media (MSM) suppressing the Edwards scandal. ...

P.S.: Is the Times' edict a) part of a double-standard that favors Democrats (and disfavors Republicans like Rep. Vito Fossella and John McCain)? Or does it b) simply reflect an outmoded Gatekeeper Model of journalism in which not informing readers of certain sensitive allegations is as important as informing them--as if readers are too simple-minded to weigh charges that are not proven, as if they aren't going to find out about such controversies anyway? I'd say it's a mixture of both (a) and (b). This was a sensational scandal the LAT and other MSM papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate, and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again. ...

P.P.S.: The Times apparently failed to get word of the ban to one of its bloggers in time to prevent her from shocking readers by saying she hoped the allegations against Edwards weren't true. ... 2:55 A.M. link

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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Always trust women named Emily (and Rachael and Bonnie): Good discussion of whether the Edwards story is "news" on Slate's XX Factor. ... Are we in the truth business or the "protect Saint Elizabeth" business? ... Anyway, if the National Enquirer's story is true, Elizabeth Edwards' public role as a popular and effective spokesperson will not be undermined--even though maybe it should be a bit (given her complicity in the coverup). ... P.S.: Melinda Henneberger argues that "the Edwards family should be left alone." But didn't Henneberger write a piece purporting to take readers "inside the Edwards' marriage," according to the headline? Wasn't that a breach of privacy? It was just a breach of privacy that Elizabeth Edwards approved of. ... P.P.S.: It was a good piece--effectively countering the attacks on Edwards for having an expensive house. But it did not tell readers what was going on "inside the Edwards marriage." ( "I still don't want to know," Henneberger initially blogs--though she eventually admits: "I may be identifying with [Elizabeth] a little too closely, as an oversharing cancer survivor and all.") ... 3:24 P.M.

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Nibbling at the edges of the MSM: Imus laments that the Edwards L.C. story is "starting to become news." ... And there's always the late-night comics' rabbithhole into public consciousness. ...

But the MSM wants photos: Dallas Morning News' Rod Dreher, like many, complains about the lack of photographs. ... Kf says the night is young! ... Would video do? ... 1:01 P.M.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

"At least 10 Eyewitnesses": Death By 1000 Papercuts interviews David Perel, editor of the National Enquirer, about the Edwards/Rielle Hunter scoop (excerpt):

Mondo: You have more updates planned on this latest installment?

DP: We'll be updating the story several times. We're not finished yet.

Mondo: Any other comments?

DP: We were looking for the "smoking gun": time, place, day and date. Edwards could always "deny, deny, deny". Now, Edwards can't deny being at the Beverly Hilton and visiting Rielle Hunter. There were at least 10 eyewitnesses to the affair of Edwards running on the stairs and ducking into the restroom.

There were seven reporters on the story, according to Perel. DBKP adds that Edwards ran into "at least one Enquirer photographer" when "trying to make his escape." ... So will one of the "updates" include photos? Did the photographer forget to take off the lens cap? 11:53 P.M.

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"Get it first, but first get it second." The old Newsweek rule! I hope that's the rule the MSM is following. If so, here's an MSM mention! And here. Business Week is what, chopped liver? And doesn't Jack Shafer count? ... I fear there is a new rule: "We don't want to get it at all. Not even just a mention of the 'allegation.' Not even second." Why? Jon Fine's Business Week piece summarizes some likely reasons. A couple of points:

--Fine notes that "Edwards isn't considered a likely vice-presidential candidate by the press." That's true. But he is a likely Obama cabinet official. Many Dems would like to see him as Attorney-General. That's what's at stake in the love-child coverage. The Enquirer has killed him as a VP candidate. But if the MSM goes into full "protect Elizabeth" mode the damage might yet not quite be enough to stop his confirmation by a Democratic Senate next year. "Protect Elizabeth" = "protect A.G. John."

--If the Enquirer story is true, Edwards didn't just cheat on his sick wife after making a big deal of his loyalty to her in the campaign. He also presided over an elaborate cover-up, involving lies and duplicitous lobbying of the MSM. What is it the CW says about cover-ups? Eliot Spitzer looks like a Boy Scout in comparison.

P.S.: If the MSM can discuss the charges in meta form ("It's so easy to jump to conclusions---and I admit, this looks bad") in blogs, chat rooms, and in press commentaries, why not on the front page in political commentaries? As things stand, here's a rundown of media performance on the John Edwards front:

--The New York Times doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--The print edition of the Washington Post doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Newsweek doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Time doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Katie Couric didn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Brian Williams didn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Charlie Gibson didn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--RealClearPolitics doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--HuffingtonPost doesn't tell you what happened yesterday (and it's their story!). I blame the commenters.

--Mark Halperin doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--Mark Ambinder doesn't tell you what happened yesterday.

--One Roger Simon tells you what happened yesterday--but the other Roger Simon doesn't!

Has the gap between what the MSM lets you know and what happened--and what you can easily find out happened--ever been greater? ...

Update: John Tabin argues: "If the account of him being caught in a hotel rendezvous with Rielle Hunter was false, Edwards wouldn't be changing the subject, he'd be suing."

Jim Treacher emails: "Which story gets a bigger audience: A story the blogs run with but the mainstream news ignores, or a story the news runs with but the blogs ignore? I'm thinking the news comes out ahead, but just barely. And at this rate, not for much longer." ...

More: Rielle Hunter just appeared on camera on Extra, talking about what a wonderful man John Edwards is. Not sure this helps him. ... 5:17 P.M. link

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If McCain is doing so badly, why isn't that showing up here? Or here? ... 8:25 A.M.

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Edwards, Rielle Hunter, Busted: HuffPo 's Sam Stein, who got the story rolling, appears to be vindicated. ... P.S.: Always trust content from kausfiles! Never trust content from Jerome Armstrong. ... P.P.S.: Will this be the first presidential-contender level scandal to occur completely in the undernews, without ever being reported in the cautious, respectable MSM? That's always seemed an interesting theoretical possibility--a prominent politician just disappears from the scene, after blogs and tabloids dig up dirt on him, but nobody who relies on the Times, Post, network news or Mark Halperin has the faintest idea why. If this is that case, it will have come along sooner than I would have thought. ... P.P.P.S.: But it's hard to believe the MSM can ignore the story now. Don't think Obama will! ...

Update: Nothing yet. You'd think MSM reporters would resent being played for chumps by Mudcat Saunders, et al. ... 8:09 P.M. link

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Monday, July 21, 2008

You Can't Drill Your Way Out of This Problem! Have you seen former Energy secretary Bill 'I-was-vetted' Richardson on any of the well-sourced Obama VP lists? I haven't. ... 2:03 P.M.

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Dónde está Juan? ... 1:36 P.M.

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Paul Begala, Friend of Angelo! ... Plus: Holbrooke saved $15,000. ... Suggested title for either man's memoirs: "Dodd is my Co-Pirate!" .... [stolen from P. Krassner's The Realist] 11:20 A.M.

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Here's Spiegel's transcript of Prime Minister al-Maliki's comments on when U.S. troops might withdraw from Iraq:

As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes. [E.A.]

And here's the NYT's own translation of the tape:

"Obama's remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq." [E.A.]

There's a not inconsequential difference between the two, no? The Times version specifically does not "endorse" the timetable of 16 months (no matter what some bloggers claim). It says 16 months isn't crazy. ... P.S.: Hot Air has a third translation, which is somewere in between, ... P.P.S.: Maliki does seem to endorse Obama's general approach over McCain's, though. ("Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.") ... [via Insta, Yglesias] 12:41 A.M. link

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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Why did star blogger Matt Yglesias really defect from The Atlantic to the Center for American Progress? It can't have been the money: The Atlantic is the last journalistic gravy train in town. Were the ideas at the Aspen Ideas Festival not up to snuff? ... P.S.: What's CAP getting in the deal? Gravitas! ... 11:49 P.M. link

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Maybe we should pay more attention to the issues on which Obama hasn't noticeably shifted to the center. For example, 1) health care and 2) tax increases. In each case, the relevant question would seem to be: Is he sticking to his guns because a) that's what he really believes his presidency should be about, or b) the issue is so central to his coalition that changing his position would disrupt his election strategy? ... My guess: Issue 1# is both a and b. But some moderate moderation** on Issue #2, taxes, wouldn't really hurt Obama politically--he could still be for raising taxes on the rich without proposing hikes that add up to marginal rates in the over-50% range on the coasts. His failure to do that suggests that soaking the rich in myriad ways is what he really believes in.

It's a big insufficiently remarked-on vulnerability. You don't have to be against high taxes to be against high marginal tax rates, which threaten to produce a boom in unproductive tax shelters. The tax-raising alternatives are to broaden the tax base (i.e. the sorts of income that are taxed) and to broaden the range of taxpayers who face increases (instead of soaking only the very tip of the income pyramid, those making over $250,000 or $300,,000 a year). ...

**--Obama does seem to have watered down his tax position a bit, fudging what seemed to be an inclination to impose the Social Security payroll tax of 12.4% on high earners. Now aide Jason Furman says

[W]e are looking at a range of plans, think Congress might like to have rates that are in the neighborhood of 2% to 4%."

Good climbdown, Jason! But was Obama just winging it before? And never mind what "Congress" wants. What does Obama want? ... Are Obama's own aides already invoking Congressional Democrats as a valuable check on their candidate's leftish instincts? ... 11:20 P.M. link

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And they say investigative journalism is endangered: Driving to the 7-11, I passed a strange, ugly car/truck vehicle I'd never seen before. All the badges and identifying lettering had been removed. It turned out to be a SsangYong Actyon. But of course. ... Or ... wait ... did it just look like a SsangYong Actyon? Yes, that's what they wanted us to believe! But Autoblog Green penetrates the mask of the phenomenal world to uncover the hidden truth. ... 2:11 P.M. link

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Friday, July 18, 2008

So when Obama opposes the surge it's potential "chaos" and "disaster," according to John McCain. But when Chuck Hagel opposes the surge it's an "informed decision"? "I respect his views," says McCain. ... GetDrunk asks: "Will McCain 'respect' Obama's views once Obama has 'studied the issue'?" ... Maybe Obama was relying on Hagel's deep knowledge! Does that make it better? ... If an "informed decision" leads to chaos and disaster, what does that say about the value of the process by which U.S. Senators go about becoming "informed"?... P.S: You'd think McCain could just say, "I think Sen. Hagel is wrong"? What is it about Hagel that has the power to fog not just his own mind but the minds of others? Does he tell great dirty stories? Is he so gloomy that his friends worry that dissing him will send him over the edge? ... 5:10 P.M. link

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Thursday, July 17, 2008

If I see one more hip twentysomething man reading a book of high-class poetry (Rilke, Larkin) I'm going to report a trend (or, rather, check to see if the Trend has been Declared already). ... Update: I suspect these people are somehow mixed up in this. ... 2:52 A.M.

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"Security First"--McCain's One-Step Two-Step: Ramesh Ponnuru admits that John McCain has given "mixed signals" as to whether he intends to a) secure the borders through an enforcement bill, wait until the borders are secure, and only then try to pass a second bill to legalize illegal immigrants or to b) try to pass one big "comprehensive" bill that includes both enforcement and a provision that automatically triggers legalization once certain statutory conditions are met. It's a crucial issue, since the statutory conditions are likely to be easy to meet--e.g., four pro-legalization border state governors certifying that "security" has been achieved, a "trigger" McCain has suggested in the past--and there will be tremendous pressure to either declare them satisfied or water them down.

Even admitting McCain's flailing, semi-confused contradiction--sorry, strategic ambiguity--is a concession some McCain supporters won' t make. But think about it: President McCain takes office in 2009, along with a heavily Democratic Congress. A commitment to legalization is one of the few things McCain will have in common with those Democrats. What's he going to do--pass a tough "enforcement" bill his first year, despite opposition from Dem leaders, then wait a year or two, and then try to pass a second mostly-amnesty bill either in a mid-term election year or in the second half of what is likely to be his single term in office? Or will he try to pass both parts quickly, while he's still popular, in one big bill with whatever "triggers" are needed? Answer: He'll do (b). I can't believe Ponnuru thinks otherwise. ... 2:46 A.M. link

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When I tell my liberal friends that "card check" is one of the big issues in the 2008 campaign, they tend to roll their eyes. But when I tell my conservative friends that "card check" is one of the big issues in 2008 ... they roll their eyes too. Apparently the words "card check" are not enough, in themselves, to convey the fundamental shift in industrial organization that might result if workers could trigger unionization under the Wagner Act without a normal secret-ballot election.

Mike Murphy's initial anti-card check ads, using actor Vincent Curatola who played Johnny Sack in The Sopranos (and who also appeared in the Clintons' parody), attempted to bring the issue down from the eye-roll level. They seemed effective to me, but I'm pre-convinced. Murphy's new follow-up ads--example here--will be a test of whether support of card check can actually be used against individual candidates. I'm less convinced of that. ... P.S.: The target of this particular ad is Al Franken. It's hard for me to believe that Franken, who's always struck me as a sensible yuppie neolib type underneath, actually cares that much about card check (whatever his Web site says). ... 1:40 A.M. link

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The Chandra Story Is Back: Fred Barnes said the most discouraging words in the English language are "first of a series." But the Chandra Levy case actually deserves a 12-part series, and I'm eager to read WaPo's effort. (I admit I may wait until it's all published and I can peek at the conclusion). Here's a complicated mystery, with a real victim and all sorts of sociological and political lessons, that never got the coverage it deserved after self-righteous media scolds who mainly work for MSM organizations that are now going broke used it to symbolize the allegedly trivial, tabloidy coverage before 9/11! ... Maybe I'll even "skip" it. ... Bonus: Now Howie Kurtz can try to boost his CNN ratings with a tabloidy show re-denouncing tabloidy coverage of the Levy case! ... 4:34 P.M. link

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Can't Get Enough Fannie Mae: V-helpful op-ed by Lawrence Kudlow

a) makes it clear that Fannie's involvment in the subprime market comes not from repackaging subprime loans as securities but from buying those securities after they'd been repackaged by others (which still helped fuel the subprime lending crisis, pace Krugman):

The main mission of Fannie and Freddie is to provide liquidity into the mortgage markets by purchasing loans made by local lenders and repackaging them into bond-market security pools that are sold to investors with the U.S. government's stamp of approval. You might call this the good-cop function.

But then there's the bad-cop function: Fannie and Freddie purchased some of these mortgage pools for their own portfolios, essentially setting up a high-risk internal hedge fund. It was the sinking credit quality of this hedge fund that drove last week's shareholder run. Think sub-prime mortgages and other shaky and exotic loans.

b) suggests, startlingly, that the government has agreed to back only Fannie's "good cop" function, not the bad-cop securities purchases that are the source of Fannie's financial troubles;

c) hints that left and right are converging on the desirability of de-privatizing Fannie and Freddie, at least temporarily. When even an AEI expert calls for talking profit-making shareholder owned organizations and "making them tightly controlled government agencies," maybe they should be made tightly controlled government agencies! Letting Jim Johnson politico types build profit-making empires with taxpayer-supported credit is just too risky. (For how Johnson operated, see this 2006 WaPo piece [via NewsAlert].)

P.S.: When toting up the costs and benefits of Fannie Mae, shouldn't Slate's Daniel Gross have taken into account the cost of dragging down the whole economy in a subprime crisis which Fannie and Freddy helped fuel maybe not as a primary but as an important secondary factor? Just asking! .... I smell Kool Aid! ... 2:58 P.M. link

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Chart of the Day: What happened to the number of people on public assistance in New York City after the 1996 welfare reform. ... 2:52 A.M.

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Embedded Error: Here's NPR's Mara Liasson, covering the candidates' appearance before Last Week's Latino Group:

Both these candidates are for the same thing: a path to citizenship--that doesn't reward people who come in illegally--but McCain did change his emphasis ...

Liasson is being very careful not to overemphasize or underemphasize the difference between the candidates. She doesn't exhibit any tilt toward Obama or toward McCain. It's all exquisitely fair--except that she almost unconsciously embeds a bit of ludicrous BS that is common to both candidates: the idea that their legalization plans wouldn't "reward people who come in illegally."

Of course they would. When you hear the candidates talk about sending illegals to the "back of the line," remember that there are two lines: 1) An initial, typically very long line in which foreigners patiently wait years, sometimes decades, to get green cards or other documents that enable them to live and work here legally, and 2) a shorter second line of people who have green cards and want to become citizens. Neither Obama nor McCain would send illegals to the back of the first line--that would, in many cases, be tantamount to deporting them. On the contrary, the illegals who are already here get to pay a not-huge fine and skip Queue #1 entirely. They may go to the back of Queue #2, but that's a queue they can wait out while working legally in the richest country on Earth--a reward the poor suckers who obeyed the law and are still lining up outside U.S. consulates abroad don't get. ...

Just because both candidates say something doesn't mean it's not crap! ... 2:33 A.M. link

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kf seems to have reappeared on Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo blogroll after a mysterious absence. Thanks! ... 12:34 A.M.

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Monday, July 14, 2008

Asymptotically approaching ... damage control: Calculated Risk has what seems like a judicious assessment of Krugman's Fannie Mae column.

Fannie and Freddie had about as much to with the "explosion of high-risk lending" as they could get away with. We are all fortunate that they couldn't get away with all that much of it. ... [snip]

But they didn't like losing their market share, and they pushed the envelope on credit quality as far as they could inside the constraints of their charter: they got into "near prime" programs (Fannie's "Expanded Approval," Freddie's "A Minus") that, at the bottom tier, were hard to distinguish from regular old "subprime" except--again--that they were overwhelmingly fixed-rate "non-toxic" loan structures. ...

Furthermore, both GSEs [Government Sponsored Enterprises--e.g. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] were major culprits in the growth of the mega-lenders. Over the years they were struggling so hard to maintain market share, they were allowing themselves to experience huge concentration risks. As they catered more and more to their "major partners"--Countrywide, Wells Fargo, WaMu, the usual suspects--they helped sustain and worsen the "aggregator" model in which smaller lenders sold loans not to the GSEs but to CFC or WFC, who then sold the loans to the GSEs. ...

I think we can give Fannie and Freddie their due share of responsibility for the mess we're in, while acknowledging that they were nowhere near the biggest culprits in the recent credit bubble. [E.A.]

In a post-column mop up operation, Krugman cites Calculated Risk's analysis and glibly says, "That's not really in contradiction to what I said ..." Really? What Krugman said was:

Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago ....

My turn: But didn't I say that "Fannie Mae was a huge buyer of subprime mortgages"? I did. How does this jibe with Calculated Risk's assertion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed the envelope but that the envelope still constrained them at least somewhat? I don't know the answer ... at least not yet... but at least part of it seems to be that Fannie Mae mainly purchased subprime mortgage securities--i.e. mortgages that had been aggregated and repackaged as bonds--but that it didn't buy actual subrime mortgages directly. In theory buying the bonds backed by lousy mortgages might have been safer than buying the mortgages, although this 2007 Fortune article seems to argue that the protection was largely illusory, and that through the bond purchases

over the past five years [Fannie Mae] became exposed to mortgages that were made to people with poor credit - subprime mortgages.

Is there any doubt that by purchasing bonds backed by subprime mortgages Fannie Mae helped enable the "explosion of high-risk lending"? I wouldn't think so. Indeed, expanding subprime lending seems to have been the goal. But then why doesn't Calculated Risk emphasize that aspect of Fannie's culpability? If anyone wants to explain this to me, I'll repackage it and sell it to my readers. ...

Answers! a) Yes, the explanation seems to be that Fannie Mae bought securities backed by subprime loans, not the loans themselves; b) Even Tantu says these securities purchases were "supposed to be about supplying some 'needed' capital to the subprime market." If you're providing "needed" capital aren't you thereby enabling the "explosion of high risk lending," as Conn Carroll charges? Doesn't that leave Krugman--"Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion"--looking like he's drunk some kind of Fannie Mae Kool Aid? ...[Thanks to readers R and S] 11:57 P.M. link

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Curious passage in Paul Krugman's half-defense of Fannie Mae today:

But here's the thing: Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with the explosion of high-risk lending a few years ago, an explosion that dwarfed the S.& L. fiasco. In fact, Fannie and Freddie, after growing rapidly in the 1990s, largely faded from the scene during the height of the housing bubble.

Partly that's because regulators, responding to accounting scandals at the companies, placed temporary restraints on both Fannie and Freddie that curtailed their lending just as housing prices were really taking off. Also, they didn't do any subprime lending, because they can't.

Huh? Does Krugman not know that Fannie Mae was a huge buyer of subprime mortgages, including mortgages from Angelo Mozilo's Countrywide? David Smith's eerily prescient AHI blog noted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reportedly bought $35 billion in subprimes in the first quarter of 2007 alone.

On his blog, Krugman casts the Fannie problem in ideological terms:

What you need to know here is that the right — the WSJ editorial page, Heritage, etc. — hates, hates, hates Fannie and Freddie. Why? Because they don't want quasi-public entities competing with Angelo Mozilo.

"Huh?" again. Conn Carroll responds:

The problem is that Fannie was Countrywide's No. 1 enabler. ... When he was CEO of Fannie, former Barack Obama campaign adviser Jim Johnson worked personally with Mozilo to streamline the two companies' business relationship.

Could Mozilo have done his subprime thing without Johnson and Fannie Mae as a backup to purchase his junky mortgages?

P.S.: Krugman suggests Fannie's problem is that it wasn't a true government agency, but rather a hybrid public/private partnership that privatized profits and socialized losses.

Liberals like Fannie the way it was for the first 30 years — a purely public enterprise.

Good point--according to Smith Fannie seems to have been using all sorts of tricks to turn profits using its implicit government credit guarantee. But if Fannie had been a pure government enterprise, would it really have refrained from supporting Mozilo-style subprime lending? I'm not so sure. Providing "affordable housing" was a policy crusade of Johnson, among others, and a popular goal on Capitol Hill (where Mozilo had done so much to ensure that his "friends" would be receptive to his particular method of pursuing affordability).

P.P.S.: Krugman also writes, boldly:

You could say that the Fannie-Freddie experience shows that regulation works.

You could say that--unless you read the remainder of Krugman's column, which notes the inadequate capital requirements imposed on Fannie-Freddie because

the companies' management bought off the political process, systematically hiring influential figures from both parties.

P.P.P.S.: Is this risk of corruption any less with a) "purely public enterprise" than with b) a public-private hybrid like Fannie Mae or c) a purely private enterprise (like, say, the Blackstone Group)? Interesting question. I would think well-connected liberal operatives like Johnson would be capable of at least perverting a regulatory regime even if they headed a 100% federal, civil-servicized Fannie Mae. (Most "regulation" is in category (c) of course, where the risk of corruption seems somehow undiminished by the triumphant "Fannie-Freddie experience.") ...

Update: See semi-clarifying semi-correction. ... 2:00 P.M.

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Didn't subprime poster villain Angelo Mozilo do Barack Obama a big favor by compromising Obama's initial VP vetter, Jim Johnson, with favorable loans, causing Johnson to step down from his position? How bad would today's headlines be for Obama if Fannie Mae fatcat Johnson was still heading up his vice-presidential search effort? ... 10:45 P.M.

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A reader emails:

People seem to think it's somehow a stroke of political genius that Sen. Obama is taking Sen. Hagel with him on his trip to Iraq. But why doesn't this highlight Obama's lack of judgment on the surge, by bringing along the man who considered it a catastrophically bad idea?

Actually, Hagel called the surge "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam." ... Is Obama cannily trying to demonstrate why Hagel would be a horrifying VP pick? Is he trying to deflect attention from his own poor surge judgment ("the surge has not worked") by bringing along as a lightning rod someone whose judgment was even worse than his? ... Imagine how embarrassing it would be if Obama went with an antiwar Republican like Gen. Zinni, who supported the surge, with what now looks like contrarian wisdom. ... 1:40 A.M.

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Saturday, July 12, 2008

BMW 3 series needs a Seven Level DeBangling, gets minor tweaks. Now slightly less ugly. ... 12:41 P.M.

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William Bradley on why Schmidt might be a good fit: He helped Schwarzenegger move to the center in 2006. A beat sweetener, but that doesn't make it wrong! ... 12:28 A.M.

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Friday, July 11, 2008

I must admit, I don't quite understand why Obama appears to have lost ground in two of three recent polls. ... My working theory was roughly this:

Moving to a more responsible position on Iraq: Valuable.

Having Jesse Jackson say he wants to cut your nuts out: Priceless

Maybe the Newsweek poll is off (always a good bet). Maybe Obama's rapid-fire--and, therefore, seemingly calculated--pivots on a series of issues really have hurt his image, as Halperin suggests. Maybe there will be a delayed Jackson bounce. ... Or maybe Obama needed to respond to Jackson more forcefully, given that Jackson implicitly, but rather graphically, raised the "wuss" meme. ... 4:40 P.M. link

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

According to Rasmussen, voters reject Obama's Scarsdale Bien Pensant Dinner Party Lecture about bilingulalism by, oh, 83% to 13%. ... See also Gateway, Clegg, and Maguire. ... Maguire makes the seemingly obvious point about having a common language: that it allows America to welcome and integrate immigrants from all over the world, whose native tongues may be Vietnamese, Chinese, or Polish, etc. ... Clegg:

If a fat, rich American goes to Paris and can't speak French, that's too bad but it is no tragedy. When a child growing up in America, or anyone who wants to live here and get ahead, doesn't learn English, that IS a tragedy.

7/11 Update: Does Obama really want to make this a two-day story? ... 4:06 P.M. link

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McCain makes what, in other circumstances, might be a candidacy-crippling Social Security gaffe,** but few except Josh Marshall notice. ... I don't know if this means that the new Schmidt regime is already floundering or that it's working brilliantly. ...

**--A Category II Kinsley Gaffe, to be precise, in that it accurately reflects what the candidate really thinks. ... 3:45 P.M. link

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Reader D.L. emails:

Jackson may be right. Let us assume for argument's sake that Obama is condescending and arrogant etc. I am black but I am not so sure that really matters. All I can say is close your eyes and look at the damned statistics. We in the black community need to face up to the fact that we are the primary cause of our own demise. That may only be partly true but, by golly, it is better than thinking it is someone else's fault. One of these days white people are going to wake and realize that they do not have to respond to black guilt anymore. Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and their ilk are dying and we need to start looking inward. What Obama says might only be partly true but in this case I will take it to heart. Arrogant, condescending, who cares? We need to start hitting the books (yea, learning to speak Spanish is not a bad place to start), taking responsibility for our children (I am aware that welfare is not a "black" problem, but I guarantee you that the majority of white people think it is which, in some respects, makes it our problem). Maybe we need to hear more of that, not less.

Fair enough. But Steven Waldman helpfully links to a Father's Day talk in which Obama gets this point across without any downtalking that I can discern. Effective! The biggest problem with Obama's occasional "I'm a big success and I'm telling you losers what to do" tone, in other words, may be that's it's not effective. My guess is it's likely to eventually produce a non-trivial, intense anti-Obama movement within the black community that will partially undermine the message D.L. wants delivered. ... P.S.: Of course, Obama's effectively non-condescending Father's Day talk my be what really annoys Rev. Jackson, as Waldman, Jack White, Eric Easter and Kathleen Parker have all suggested. ... See also Daniel Finkelstein, who employs a Shelby Steele-ish template, but whose argument dovetails with Easter's description of blacks worrying that whites want Obama to bring "a change in the racial dynamic." I know I do! ... 2:57 P.M. link

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Didn't Jesse Jackson Sr. have a point? There is something condescending, or arrogant, in Obama's lecture to a town hall meeting in Georgia:

"You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Lil' Wayne, but probably not, in which case you need to stay in school," Obama, D-Ill., told a cheering crowd, brought to a standing ovation at a town hall meeting in Powder Springs, Georgia.

The presumptive Democratic nominee was speaking about high school drop out rates and the need for people to be committed to working hard in school so they can get a job after school.

Obama said he knows some young men think they can't find a job unless they are a really good basketball player.

"Which most of you brothas are not," Obama, who played basketball in high school, a sport he continues to play to this day, said jokingly. "I know you think you are, but you're not. You are over-rated in your own mind. You will not play in the NBA." [E.A.]

Isn't there a better way to phrase it that doesn't set up Obama as a commanding know-it-all--something along the lines of, "I urge you all to stay in school. I've seen what happened to friends of mine. I know what would have happened to me. The odds against people who drop out of high school are not good." (Something along the lines of this, in fact.) ... P.S.: If you were a conscientious African-American parent who carefully rationed your kids' TV time, how would you feel if Obama came to town and told you, "So turn off the TV set, put the video game away." ... Even Bill Cosby is less condescending, I think. He's just a pissed off old geezer comin' right at ya. He doesn't claim to venerate Lil' Wayne and then put down kids who aspire to live the life Lil' Wayne boasts about. ...

P.P.S.: Obama's lecture to parents about how "you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish"? Also condescending! Especially since, as Abe Greenwald points out, Obama doesn't speak Spanish.*** ... He's insultingly missing the point about the need for a common language, of course. If we want a common language, and the common language of Americans is English, then learning Spanish, however beneficial, is not going to achieve that goal. It's perfectly reasonable for native English speakers to worry if enough new immigrants whose ethnic leaders demand bilingual education will learn English. They probably will, but Obama's saying it's wrong to even worry about it. ... [via Corner] ... And then there's the whole embarrassed-by-boorish-Americans-who-don't-know-French riff. A provien vote-getter! ... P.P.P.S.: He also seems really tired! ...

P.P.P.P.S.: Is the lecturing style one that wears well in a President? I think the answer is so obviously "no" that it's never been tried. Mayhill Fowler tried to warn us. [I had a snide comparison to Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech here, but that was unfair to Jimmy Carter. The "malaise" speech was an exercise in self-loathing--and if it insulted voters it insulted them by attributing to them the same flaws and failures Carter attributed to himself.] ...

***: From a Jorge Ramos interview with Obama--"Obama studied Spanish in high school and for two years in college. "My Spanish used to be OK," he said. Now, however, he has all but forgotten it." ... 12:44 A.M. link

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Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Even kf is not this paranoid. ... 2:35 P.M.

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From WaPo's bio of new Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli:

He is married to Los Angeles Times reporter Maggie Farley, who is the paper's U.N. bureau chief.

The Los Angeles Times has a U.N. bureau chief? More layoffs please! ... [Thks. to alert reader E.] 2:27 P.M.

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First say "First": McCain's speech before the Latino Organization of the Day makes sure to include the word "first."

"Many Americans, with good cause, didn't believe us when we said we would secure our borders, and so we failed in our efforts. We must prove to them that we can and will secure our borders first, while respecting the dignity and rights of citizens and legal residents of the United States of America." [E.A.]

Byron York is impressed. I hate to be picky, but even if you think McCain actually believes his constantly-shifting formal position, the statement remains ambiguous. Is McCain saying he first must actually secure the borders or that he first must prove to the voters that he can secure the borders? I don't think it's crazy to believe the second interpretation is the correct one--or at least that McCain's drafters left it open to potentially give him wiggle room later (i.e., "We wouldn't be passing this historic comprehensive reform today, with the help of my Democratic friends, if we hadn't convinced the voters that we can and will secure the borders.") ... The ambiguous formula also leaves open the more obvious possibility of quickly passing a bill that contains a future "trigger"--with semi-amnesty automatically taking effect after, say, the four Mexico-adjacent governors sign some sort of artful finding that the borders are "secure." ...

On to La Raza! ... 2:05 P.M. link

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Murphy is through! Finished! There is noone named Mike Murphy. I don't quite see how Mike Allen of the Politico can write sentences like this:

Mike Murphy, a political consultant who helped Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) mastermind his 2000 campaign, will not be reboarding the Straight Talk Express. ... [snip].

With Steve Schmidt taking over operations last week, the matter is now resolved. Murphy will be seen on television and may offer McCain private counsel. But he won't be in the bubble. [Emphasis on overly definitive statements added.]

Yes, Murphy isn't coming on board in the current shakeup. But if McCain is still behind and flailing at the end of the summer, is he really going to say, "We resolved that matter of my campaign's structure back in July." Or is he going to panic and bring in Murphy? I don't know, but neither does Allen. (Or the NYT fool who titled Nagourney's item "Count Murphy Out for McCain Campaign.") ... Murphy certainly didn't close the door. ("I do not expect to join the campaign.") He had to say something to tamp down overheated reports of his imminent arrival.) ... Backfill: Zengerle refines his position. Search for "knife." ...

Update: Nor am I convinced that this brings "full closure" to the issue. Would NBC really not let Murphy out of his contract if he said he wanted to go run McCain's campaign? ... 1:23 P.M. link

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Jim Johnson's Legacy Builds: Politico gravy-train Fannie Mae in trouble despite its massive implicit government subsidy, because new accounting rules would apparently require it to list billions of dollars of now off-the-balance-sheet mortgage guarantees as liabilities. Of course, the agency formerly headed by Obama's ex-veep-vetter will probably wriggle out of the new rule thanks, as always, to political pressure:

"I would bet my firstborn that they will be excluded from the accounting change. It would bankrupt them," said Paul Miller of the investment firm Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group.

So everything's OK then! ... Backfill: Eerily prescient David Smith post here. See also this E-Z-2-Follow post on Fannie Mae's balance sheets. Cheap visual devices are used, and also the word "Augean." ... 12:35 P.M. link

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Monday, July 7, 2008

Getdrunkandvote4mccain.com The Republican base comes home, plastered. ... 1:49 A.M.

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PearSneak of the Day-- "Employers Fight Tough Measures on Immigration": Robert Pear is the acknowledged master at sneaking not-as-important-as-they-sound policy stories into the lead position on the NYT front page on slow news days. These Pear pieces are often leaks from liberal interest groups, who then benefit from the prime placement. But it was Julia Preston who pulled a Pear yesterday, with a lead A-1 piece that seemed to be mainly a press release for Tamar Jacoby's new lobbying organization, ImmigrationWorks USA.

1) Some of Preston's evidence of an employer fight-back against the immigration crackdown is ludicrously weak. "Unhappy California business won the support of Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who wrote a letter" protesting immigration raids. Yes, a letter! From a mayor! Meanwhile:

Arizona businesses rallied behind a bill to create what would have been the first state guest worker program in the country. Their advertising campaign used the slogan "What part of legal don't you understand?"—a tweak of the battle cry of their opponents, who use the same phrase with the word "illegal." ...[snip]

Although the bill never came to a vote, employers said the debate helped make their views known in Washington.

"It's a message to the federal government," said Joe Sigg, director of government relations for the Arizona Farm Bureau ... [E.A.]

Then, a cautionary note:

Employers' groups have not succeeded everywhere.

They can't all be as successful as in Arizona, where their bill never came to a vote. ...

2) Does the employer resistance help or hurt the cause of "comprehensive immigration reform"? The "comprehensive" deal, after all, is supposed to be a) a guest worker program and b) semi-amnesty for existing illegals coupled with c) tough enforcement measures to make future amnesties unnecessary. That's why it's "comprehensive." To the extent powerful employers are fighting those enforcement measures--like "the federal system to check the working papers of new hires"--that would seem to undermine the "comprehensive" rationale and support the anti-comprehensivist claim that we'll end up with the amnesty but not the enforcement (as happened with the 1986 immigration reform).

And how is President John McCain going to plausibly claim he's "secured the borders first" if the chamber of commerce is suing in federal court to poke holes in that security? ...

P.S.: Preston's article seems to be part of a "series" titled "Getting Tough" and introduced by the NYT as follows:

This is the second article in a series that explores efforts by the government and others to compel illegal immigrants to leave the United States.

Isn't that description more than a bit tendentious? You can support enforcement efforts for lots of reasons other than a desire to have "illegal immigrants leave the United States." You might want to discourage further illegal immgration by those not yet in the U.S. for example, but not be especially bothered if current illegals continue to live "in the shadows" for many more years. That's basically my position. ... It's true that Mark Krikorian and others explicitly advocate a strategy of "attrition." Yet it's tendentious to describe even their position as being an effort to "compel" illegals to leave. If the government changes the desirability of staying in the U.S.--by requiring employers to check Social Security numbers or by simply failing to pass McCain's reform bill, thereby increasing "uncertainty about obtaining legal resident status any time soon"--many illegals will decide to leave. Many won't. That doesn't seem like compulsion. ... 1:22 A.M. link

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Sunday, July 6, 2008

More than two weeks ago the New York Times mentioned that the Iraqi city of Mosul was " in the midst of a major security operation" against one of the last bastions of Al Qaeda in Iraq. So how's that going? Should we have to read the London Times (or Belmont Club) to learn about its success or failure? (It looks like relative success, Juan Cole notwithstanding.) ... If the NYT has reported the outcome, I missed it. (A June 1 story only went so far as to say that "hopes" had been "raised" and that the "Iraqi Army may soon have tenuous control." ) ... P.S.: Sorry to be crude, but does the NYT realize that we may be at the point where reports of military success in Iraq help Obama (because stability enables the rapid pullout he seeks) while reports of contiuing turmoil and difficulty help McCain (by raising doubts that U.S. forces can be safely withdrawn in the next few years)? ... [via Insta]11:56 P.M. link

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Saturday, July 5, 2008

Hey, I thought Leon decides what's anti-Semitic around there! ... 4:01 P.M.

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Out-of-Context Dingalink of the Week: NSFW. But true. ... 3:04 P.M.

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Carbon/Silicon's "The News" would make a good Obama campaign song. You could skp the crunchy verse about people "caring about what they eat." ... [Unrealistically sunny?-ed Happy days are here again] ... 3:02 P.M.

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Thursday, July 3, 2008

The difference between Bill Clinton's "pivot" and Obama's "pivot". ... P.S.: Clinton's is better! ... 11:02 P.M.

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Aims at False Modesty, Misses: You'd think and Obama's Conceit-o-meter would have sounded the alarm before he let this sentence ship:

"I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience." [E.A.]

At least he fudged it with "mainly." ... [Quoted by Dominic Lawson] ... 8:26 P.M.

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Instapundit does a much more effective job clearing Obama on the issue of home mortgage favoritism than Obama's own clumsy web site. ... 2:06 P.M.

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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Klein Delendus Est: Another day at The Corner and Contentions and no mention of Joe Klein's imminent punishment. ... It must be a very long abject statement of apology he's working on. ... 3:35 P.M.

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I tried to cause Hugh Hewitt at least some momentary pain over McCain's renewed commitment to illegal immigrant legalization. I failed. Transcript:

MK: ... It was a terrible week for McCain, because he made it clear, Hugh, to people like you, that he's still for some form of amnesty, and he's much more likely to produce it than Obama. That's why I'm not for McCain. That's your problem.

HH: Well actually, I like where he is, since he's gone security first. Glenn, what do you think about the week? ...

He is such an apparatchik. ... P.S.: The whole point of last week is that McCain's dropping the "first" from "security first." ... 3:39 A.M.

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TNR's Jason Zengerle analyzes the McCain campaign shake-up:

[I]'s hard to see how or why McCain would bring back Mike Murphy--as has been rumored for a little while now--since [Steve] Schmidt's now playing the role McCain would have presumably wanted Murphy to fill.

So wrong! McCain has plenty of time to bring back Murphy by the end of the summer if/when whatever Schmidt does between now and then doesn't seem to be working. ... Backfill: Chait made the same point. ... Update: Zengerle doubles down! "I don't think McCain can afford to do any more major reshuffling without running the risk of key Republicans concluding that he's hopeless and abandoning him en masse ..." Really? McCain has a shakeup before Labor Day and that's it, he's through? (Certainly voters won't care about it in November. By October even Mark Halperin will have forgotten about it.) ... Zengerle must be a) suffering from a clinical bubble-insider's loss of perspective and b) oblivious to the implications of the Feiler Faster Principle. ... It seems to me McCain has enough time to fire Schmidt, hire Weaver, fire Weaver, hire Murphy, fire Murphy, bring back Rick Davis, re-demote Davis and hire Schmidt again before the final debate. ... 2:58 A.M.

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Obama's campaign has posted a response to that Boston Globe article on the failure of the "public private" housing partnerships Obama and his allies championed. The response seems weak and amateurish to me--with some good points (one housing project, for seniors, is a success) mixed with ineffective responses. For example:

RHETORIC: Obama translated that belief into legislative action as a state senator. In 2001, Obama and a Republican colleague, William Peterson, sponsored a successful bill that increased state subsidies for private developers. The law let developers designated by the state raise up to $26 million a year by selling tax credits to Illinois residents. For each $1 in credits purchased, the buyer was allowed to decrease his taxable income by 50 cents.

REALITY: SB 1135 WAS A BIPARTISAN BILL THAT HOUSING ADVOCATES SUPPORTED

Well, that settles it! Because bipartisan bills that housing advocates support always produce more clean, safe afforadable housing, and never enrich developers who wind up managing slums. ... P.S.: In general, it's hard to believe that Obama's fact-check site, heavy with pro-forma testimonials from other pols, will convince anybody who's not already a firm supporter. ... 2:51 A.M.

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So the Fourth of July newspapers will have John McCain in ... er, Mexico plotting how to achieve comprehensive immigration reform with Felipe Calderon. ... And some people say the McCain Team has a tin ear! ... 1:16 A.M.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Klein Lives: Have the rules changed? Last Tuesday, Time's Joe Klein wrote:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

Max Boot, Pete Wehner, Jennifer Rubin, Paul Mirengoff and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League all wrote confidently outraged responses to Klein's raising of the "divided loyalties" possibility--and, indeed, it's not the sort of assertion that has typically gone unpunished in the past. When Klein stubbornly failed to back down in a second post, Wehner somewhat smugly anticipated his near-certain demise:

It's like watching a movie that you now know is going to end very badly, and very sadly.

But here's the thing: It's now a week later, and as far as I can tell Klein still has his job. He's still blogging (wondering "why Lieberman is so fixated on Iran"). He hasn't been publically rebuked by his employer. He hasn't been forced to issue a groveling apology.

Can it be that the rules have changed? I suspect they have. And I think this is progress, for reasons outlined here and here. It should be possible to publicly debate whether some "Jewish neoconservatives," among others, too easily convinced themselves that America's and Israel's interests happily coincided in the prosecution of the war. Meanwhile, Foxman's view that

Neoconservatives have the right to make their case without having their religion brought up. ... [snip] Religious beliefs are personal, and matters of faith belong in the heart, in the church and in the home

seems preposterously artificial. Note to Foxman: I worked at The New Republic! The magazine supported the war. I consider its editor, Martin Peretz, to be a friend and mentor. But if you think Marty's views are uninfluenced by his affinity for Israel--and that the views of many of the eminent neocons who visited our offices were uninfluenced by "matters of faith" and/or religious identity--then you don't know Marty and you don't know The New Republic. In fact, you're more than a bit clueless. But you are not clueless.

This isn't to say that the decision to go to war in Iraq was necessarily wrong or right. It's not to say that "Jewish neoconservatives" were more than what Klein calls a "subsidiary" source of support for the war. It's not to say that anyone is more patriotic than anyone else. The influence of pro-Israel sympathies (or pro-wherever sympathies) invariably takes the form of encouraging the belief that what you think is right for the United States is also what is right for Israel (or wherever), and vice-versa. But that only begins the discussion of whether this belief is itself distorted by those sympathies. It doesn't end it. At least it doesn't seem to any more. ...

Update: M.J. Rosenberg at TPM on Klein's "chutzpah." ...1:52 A.M. link

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Monday, June 30, 2008

Just Don't Hire Bangle: Schwarzenegger steals the new Tesla plant from New Mexico (and its governor, Bill Richardson). Tesla will now apparently attempt to build electric sedans in the S.F. Bay Area. ... P.S.: It's one thing to build a fast $100,000 two-seat sports car--the car nuts who buy it are probably willing to overlook a few flaws (as long as it goes from 0-60 in 3.9 seconds). It's another to build "a mid-size sports sedan for $60,000, a competitor to the BMW 5-series and Jaguar XF " by the "end of 2009." Tesla is going up against decades of expertise in, for example, achieving both a supple ride and good handling. They'd need to set up a network of high-quality parts suppliers. Plus they need to sell in volume to bring the price down. Seems a longshot. But I'm all for them trying. ... 3:43 P.M. link

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Dana Stevens' Unified Semi-Contrarian Theory of M. Night Shyamalan ... 3:45 A.M.

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Obama's Katrina: The most damaging article about Barack Obama I've read. ...

P.S: A friend emails: "Obama's KATRINA. A little dramatic?" Maybe. Obama's record on "affordable housing," as described in the Globe story, isn't a case of gross ineptitude in a catastrophic regional emergency. It's not even a symbol of endemic governmental dysfunction. (Although: Is there a bigger Petri dish for corrupt incompetence than the "public-private partnership"? Think cable TV franchises.) But the Globe account does seem to capture what's most likely to be wrong with an Obama administration. After all, Obama's career has been unusually limited for a presidential contender. Housing and "community development" has been a big part of it. If the result has been a disaster in which Obama's friends made lots of money while his poor constituents lived in dangerous squalor, that seems like a big warning sign, no? At least an expectations-lowerer! George W. Bush, in contrast, hadn't dedicated a large chunk of his life to FEMA. ... P.S.: Plus Valerie Jarrett, one of the people who comes off poorly in the article, remains a central Obama advisor. It's as if Brownie had Karen Hughes' job. ... 3:16 A.M. link

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Bring Back Bode: Why not bring back Ken Bode to host Meet the Press? His Washington Week in Review was just getting really good when he was fired to make room for the anodyne Gwen Ifill. ... Bode's about as far away in style from Keith Olbermann as you can get, something that seems to be important to MTPers who see their show as a holdout against creeping cable culture. ... 2:43 A.M.

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Where's the "First"? McCain appears before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, as reported in Politico:

McCain, speaking first, promised the approximately 700 attendees that resurrecting the bipartisan immigration bill he helped shape last year would be at the forefront of his agenda as president.

"It would be my top priority yesterday, today and tomorrow," McCain said in response to a question about whether he would pursue a comprehensive approach beyond his campaign promise to secure the border in his first 100 days in office.

Seeking to win some points for his initial support for a comprehensive immigration bill, McCain noted that his position "wasn't very popular ... with some in my party."

And, in remarks that could inflame those Republican border hawks, the Arizona senator made clear he would not just seek to secure the border first, as he promised in the primary.

"We have to secure our borders — that's the message," McCain said. "But we also must proceed with a temporary worker program that is verifiable and truly temporary."

1) It looks as if the folks at The Corner are no longer in denial on whether McCain's "I got the message" talk during the primaries was a sincere shift to to a tougher stand on immigration. It wasn't.

2) Note that in the above remarks, and the remarks highlighted by McCain campaign bloggerr Michael Goldfarb, the candidate says "we have to secure our borders" rather than "we have to secure our borders first." [E.A.] The missing "first" matters. With it, McCain's position sounds like Lou Dobbs'. Without it, McCain's position threaten to shade into full immediate support of semi-amnesty, with the inconsequential notation that of course reform wouldn't pass unless the public is convinced the borders are sufficiently "secure." Comprehensivists have always claimed their legislation would secure the borders, remember. It's the "first" that made the difference for McCain, or seemed to.

3) Is there any convincing evidence that actual Latino voters care as much about illegal immigrant legalization as Latino elected offiicials (or the journalists who cover them)?

4) Won't McCain's expedient abandonment of his expedient primary position produce loud conservative protests at the GOP convention? Does McCain worry about this--on the theory that discordant conventions make for losing presidential campaigns? Or does he welcome it, on the grounds that a noisy fight with his right wing would effectively distinguish him from his unpopular party (even though McCain's side in this fight would also be President Bush's)? ...

Update: Mark Krikorian argues Obama is goading McCain into emphasizing "in increasingly strident terms his commitment to legalizing all the illegal aliens," which further inflames anti-legalization Republicans. McCain seems to be taking the bait, which would seem to make sense only if he hopes to win over, not just swing Latinos but also swing centrists of all ethnicities who've become allergic to the GOP. But is immigration the issue on which Mike Murphy's "white females and ticket-splitting independents" crave a break from Republican dogma? Aren't they equally uneasy about rushing to a Grand Comprehensivist Solution? You'd think there would be more promising Souljah-esque, anti-base battlefields for McCain: Congressional corruption, excessive deregulation, stem cells and even abortion, no