Hullabaloo

Thursday, October 23, 2008

 
An Offer They Can't Refuse

by digby

The bigots allegedly doing the Lord's work in California are getting really nasty. Now they are extorting money from companies that support gay marriage:

Leaders of the campaign to outlaw same-sex marriage in California are warning businesses that have given money to the state's largest gay rights group they will be publicly identified as opponents of traditional unions unless they contribute to the gay marriage ban, too.

ProtectMarriage.com, the umbrella group behind a ballot initiative that would overturn the California Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage, sent a certified letter this week asking companies to withdraw their support of Equality California, a nonprofit organization that is helping lead the campaign against Proposition 8.

"Make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error," reads the letter. "Were you to elect not to donate comparably, it would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage. ... The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to ProtectMarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published."

The letter was signed by four members of the group's executive committee: campaign chairman Ron Prentice; Edward Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference; Mark Jansson, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and Andrew Pugno, the lawyer for ProtectMarriage.com. A donation form was attached. The letter did not say where the names would be published.

Is that even legal? More importantly, considering the context, is that supposed to be moral?

These people have every right to boycott businesses that support No on 8. It's disgusting that they refuse to allow their fellow citizens the right and privileges afforded by marriage, but they have a right to their beliefs. But I find it hard to believe they have a right to extort money from people who believe differently than them and threaten them with "exposure" if they refuse. When did that become SOP?

And naturally, these are the same people who have run the most dishonest campaign in my memory. I've never seen anything like it:

THE LIE: Four activist judges ignored four million voters.
THE TRUTH: Voters were far from ignored. Proposition 22, which originally made same-sex marriage illegal, was at the center of the court case. The California Constitution has not been this carefully examined since interracial marriage was made legal in 1959. Three of those four judges were appointed by Republicans.

THE LIE: Churches can lose their tax-exempt status.
THE TRUTH: Churches have the right to preach whatever they believe, and deny marriage to anyone on any grounds. This does not affect their tax-exempt status at all. Prop 8 would do nothing to protect this right any further.

THE LIE: Schools will have to teach about gay marriage.
THE TRUTH: The State of California does not control curriculum about marriage. They mandate that children are taught about the financial responsibilities of marriage, but not about what marriage is; that is completely up to the school and the parents. Parents have the right to remove their children from class any time they would be taught something about health and families that the parents disagree with. Prop 8 would do nothing to protect this right any further.

THE LIE: Prop 8 ensures religious freedom.
THE TRUTH: Considering some churches allow same-sex marriage, Prop 8 would actually take away a religious freedom. The judges in the court ruling took extra steps to ensure that freedom of religion was preserved. Prop 8 would do nothing at all to ensure religious freedom.

THE LIE: Prop 8 ensures free speech.
THE TRUTH: The court ruling did nothing to free speech, and neither would Prop 8.

THE LIE: Prop 8 means less government.
THE TRUTH: Prop 8 is an amendment to the California Constitution that dictates what a marriage is. It actually means that the government is more involved in our lives.

These people are pulling out all the stops and there is no guarantee this amendment is going to fail. California is in the bag for Obama and there's no real campaign going on here. But the "No on Prop 8" campaign is fierce and if you feel like getting involved, there are ways to do it:

Donate. The Mormons are pouring money into this thing.

Volunteer at a local campaign office. Or phone bank from your home.

One of the big problems is that many people still don't understand that voting NO is the way to support gay marriage. The least we can all do is make sure we are explicit in our conversations about that part of it.


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digby 10/23/2008 07:00:00 PM |

 
On The Trail Of The Real Stories

by digby

The ever reasonable "conservative" Jon Swift has collected the most important, overlooked Pulitzer level stories emanating from the rightwing blogpshere during this election season. If the liberal media weren't so in the tank for teh gays and the you-know-whats, these stories would be in screaming headlines in every newspaper in the land.

Here's just one:

Michelle Obama attacks “American white racists” in an interview with obscure online news site

I bet you probably didn’t know that Michelle Obama gave an exclusive interview to the obscure online journalism site African Press International in which she said that “American white racists” are trying to derail her husband's candidacy by claiming that Obama was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather, which would make him ineligible to be President under one of the secret, little-known provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Mrs. Obama was apparently so disturbed by these charges that she decided to call this press agency, which most people have never heard of, and vent Martha Mitchell-like, even though her words might scuttle her husband’s chances of becoming President. Although the mainstream media hasn’t yet picked up the story, and the Obama campaign denies the interview took place, Gateway Pundit, Protein Wisdom, Right Pundits, Stop the ACLU, Maggies Notebook, Death by 1000 Paperecuts, Strata-Sphere, News Busters, World Net Daily, Jim Treacher, Townhall and a number of other conservative blogs and news sites ran with it. Although some cynical bloggers were skeptical of the story for some reason and demanded more proof, API assured them that it had tapes of the conversations and was just waiting for the right moment to release them. Although API still hasn’t managed to work out the logistics yet, and several deadlines have already come and gone, conservative bloggers are very patient and understanding and just hope that API can work everything out before the election. “We will know soon enough,” writes Gateway Pundit. “It is amazing how the media will believe a hoax that some Republican yelled ‘kill him’ at a Palin rally with no evidence but will disregard a harsh story on Michelle Obama from the start. It's interesting how that works.”

More like this at the link. No wonder the newspaper business is on its last legs. they have no nose for the news. luckily for Americans these good folks are picking up where they left off.
digby 10/23/2008 06:00:00 PM |

 
Oh Well, Another Handful Of Afghanis Dead

by dday

Digby was talking about Afghanistan earlier, in the context of Obama seeking to see "the big picture" in allocating resources. I hope events like this fit into the edge of the frame.

Nine Afghan soldiers were killed and four others injured by a U.S. airstrike on an Afghan army checkpoint Wednesday in an apparent friendly-fire incident in eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan and U.S. military officials.

The pre-dawn airstrike occurred after a convoy of coalition troops came under fire as they returned to their base in Khost province, according to a statement released by the U.S. military. Coalition soldiers called for air support after exchanging fire with Afghan troops near an Afghan army checkpoint in the Sayed Kheil area in what military officials said could be "a case of mistaken identity on both sides." [...]

Arsallah Jamal, governor of Khost province, said coalition and Afghan troops had been engaged in operations in the area for about 10 days before the strike occurred. Jamal said the army checkpoint was relatively new but was well-known and on a main road. "They knew it was there. They made a mistake," Jamal said.

There was another airstrike in the region today that hit a Pakistani school and killed at least eight. And you can just read these stories with a sense of deja vu throughout the past seven years. We've been bombing Afghanistan for so long, as a band-aid to make up for the lack of troops, that I'm not sure if you asked an Afghan civilian that they would tell you that the Taliban is the real enemy and not the guys in the airplanes in the sky. Right now popular support for a foreign presence is almost even with opposition, and declining.

Russ Feingold spoke up today with one of those statements that isn't allowed in the polite company of the foreign policy establishment in Washington - maybe we shouldn't just transfer our military strength from one country to the next.

But few people seem willing to ask whether the main solution that's being talked about– sending more troops to Afghanistan – will actually work.

If the devastating policies of the current administration have proved anything, it's that we need to ask tough questions before deploying our brave service members – and that we need to be suspicious of Washington "group think." Otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

For far too long, we have been fighting in Afghanistan with too few troops. It has been an "economy of force" campaign, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff put it. But we can't just assume that additional troops will undo the damage caused by years of neglect.

Sending more US troops made sense in, say, 2006, and it may still make sense today. The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated badly over the past year, however, despite a larger US and coalition military presence.

We need to ask: After seven years of war, will more troops help us achieve our strategic goals in Afghanistan? How many troops would be needed and for how long? Is there a danger that a heavier military footprint will further alienate the population, and, if so, what are the alternatives? And – with the lessons of Iraq in mind – will this approach advance our top national security priority, namely defeating Al Qaeda?

How dare he try to ask questions, using such trifles as reason and logic. How dare he consider that massive military might can be anything but glorious. How dare he suggest that an international problem has something other than a military solution.

The very nerve.


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dday 10/23/2008 04:30:00 PM |

 
Et Tu Petraeus?

by digby

Joe Klein has published a very informative interview with Obama on foreign policy on Swampland and it's worth reading from beginning to end. Even where I disagree with him, I can't help but feel relieved and overjoyed at Obama's impressive intelligence (which makes it more laughable than ever that Sarah Palin has the nerve to diss his readiness in foreign policy.)

Anyway, there's a lot to digest in the interview, but the long passage about General Petraeus stuck out at me because of an article I'd read just prior to reading Klein's piece. Here's Obama in the Klein interview:

[Q] I have been collecting accounts of your meeting with David Petraeus in Baghdad. And you had [inaudible] after he had made a really strong pitch [inaudible] for maximum flexibility. A lot of politicians at that moment would have said [inaudible] but from what I hear, you pushed back.

[BO] I did. I remember the conversation, pretty precisely. He made the case for maximum flexibility and I said you know what if I were in your shoes I would be making the exact same argument because your job right now is to succeed in Iraq on as favorable terms as we can get. My job as a potential commander in chief is to view your counsel and your interests through the prism of our overall national security which includes what is happening in Afghanistan, which includes the costs to our image in the middle east, to the continued occupation, which includes the financial costs of our occupation, which includes what it is doing to our military. So I said look, I described in my mind at list an analogous situation where I am sure he has to deal with situations where the commanding officer in [inaudible] says I need more troops here now because I really think I can make progress doing x y and z. That commanding officer is doing his job in Ramadi, but Petraeus’s job is to step back and see how does it impact Iraq as a whole. My argument was I have got to do the same thing here. And based on my strong assessment particularly having just come from Afghanistan were going to have to make a different decision. But the point is that hopefully I communicated to the press my complete respect and gratitude to him and Proder who was in the meeting for their outstanding work. Our differences don't necessarily derive from differences in sort of, or my differences with him don't derive from tactical objections to his approach. But rather from a strategic framework that is trying to take into account the challenges to our national security and the fact that we've got finite resources.

[Q] But you didn't have to make that point.

[BO] No well I think that I did, I felt it necessary to make that point even though I tried not to talk about it publicly, not knowing sort of what the terms of our discussion were. Precisely because I respect the Petraeus and [inaudible], precisely because they've done a good job and because my job as a candidate is preparing myself to be commander in chief. And I want to make sure that I'm taking their arguments seriously, they understand I'm taking their argument seriously. I want our military brass and our mid level officers to all feel that I am going to be listening to them. This notion that I'm not paying attention to them is nonsense. I'm listening to them very carefully and I take their advice with great seriousness. I just want them to know that I've got a, I potentially will have a broader task at hand.

[Q] Right.

[BO] And I want to make sure that we establish a relationship of respect early on. Again not just with the joint chiefs but also with folks who align responsibly on the ground.

[Q] Now I've heard that conversation characterized as everything from angry to spirited to agreeable. And I kind of took it as

[BO] I would say it was between spirited and agreeable. That's how I would characterize it.

[Q] And after you made that point, [Petraeus] said I understand now.

[BO]He did.

Obviously I wasn't there and have no way of interpreting that exchange, but I wouldn't be so sure it means what it appears to mean. I certainly respect Obama for making it clear that he will be Commander in Chief and that his view is, by definition, more global, in every sense of the word. But I have a sneaking suspicion that The Man Called Petraeus may not be as sanguine about that interaction as Obama might wish.

The article I had just read was also about Petraeus and Andrew Bacevich quotes him saying that he no longer votes because he "thought senior leaders should be apolitical." Bacevich points out that this used to be common among the higher reaches of the officer corps, but changed in recent decades when the military became much more overtly Republican. He questions Petraeus' meaning, however:

... if Petraeus's statement that "senior leaders should be apolitical" reflects the beginnings of a retreat from the partisanship that has infected the officer corps, that will be all to the good. Indeed, General Petraeus will perform a signal service to the military profession and to the nation if he genuinely honors that commitment.

Still, one wonders. Since he burst upon the scene during the invasion of Iraq back in 2003, Petraeus has displayed a political sophistication and savvy not seen in any senior officer since Colin Powell himself left active duty. Among other things, the general possesses and does not hesitate to deploy (as did Powell) a remarkable aptitude for courting politicians and members of the press. Rather than seeing war and politics as distinctive spheres, with soldiers confined to the former and civilian leaders dominating the latter, Petraeus understands (correctly) that the two spheres are inextricably linked. To restrict soldiers to a specific arena of activity -- to limit their role to issues directly related to war fighting -- makes little sense and would be self-defeating. This is especially true in an era when the United States remains committed to waging an open-ended global war against the forces of violent Islamic radicalism.

The so-called "Long War" is a political war par excellence, with "politics" here having a domestic as well as an international aspect -- a reality apparent in the way that the Bush administration suppressed doubts about the "surge" in Iraq by employing Petraeus as its de facto spokesman. To criticize the policy became tantamount to criticizing the general, which few members of Congress or the media were willing to do.

Was Petraeus the administration's willing dupe? Or was he shrewdly pursuing his own game that just happened to coincide with the administration's? Who exactly was playing whom?

The question still to be determined is this: what role does Petraeus foresee himself playing as this deeply politicized war extends beyond the Bush presidency? Will he confine himself to rendering disinterested professional advice? Should Barack Obama win the election, will the apolitical soldier bow to the wishes of his new civilian master -- despite Obama's opposition to the war in which Petraeus built his reputation? We should hope so.

Yet by claiming to be apolitical -- someone who stands "above" mere politics -- Petraeus might also be positioning himself to assert a role not only in implementing policy but in shaping policy to suit his own agenda, in Iraq and elsewhere. In that event, General Marshall just might end up turning over in his grave.

I think there is nearly zero chance that Petraeus is apolitical and I would bet good money that he is positioning himself for a role in shaping policy. His willingness to be used by the Bush administration proves it in my mind. in fac, his recent protestations of being above politics are actually very cunning --- if the country devolves back into angry partisanship, which it will (it always does), TMCP will be positioned to be the apolitical outsider with the leadership experience to lead us out of the darkness. There is no doubt in my mind that when he looks in the mirror he sees President Petraeus.

Obama had better watch his back. As Bacevich mentions in the article (and Lucian Truscott IV wrote in my comment section last night) there is a pretty recent example of another ambitious General who stabbed his president in the back. This is the one area where Obama should cultivate Powell's advice. He's an expert.



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digby 10/23/2008 02:00:00 PM |

 
Wealthy Parasites

by digby

Apparently, it never occurred to the great guru that wealthy people would be greedy enough to destroy the system. It didn't show up in his "models."

Greenspan, who called the current financial crisis a "once-in-a-century credit tsunami," said that he remained "in a state of shocked disbelief" that banks and investment firms did not do a better job of analyzing the risks involved with investing in home mortgages extended to less creditworthy borrowers.

Under questioning from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee chairman, Greenspan acknowledged that the failure of that expected self-regulation represented "a flaw in the model" he used to analyze economics. "I was going for 40 years or more on the perception that it was working well."

This is the fundamental problem with Randian thinking. They really do believe that capitalism is a moral system in which the people become wealthy because they are morally and intellectually superior to those who don't. Why, it would be wrong for them to not self-regulate and endanger the whole economy, right? It wouldn't make any sense.

Except, well, there's this:

"Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters," wrote [an analyst] in an email obtained by Waxman's committee.

Being able to pass on all your risk to someone else while personally coming out on top is a pretty glaring and obvious flaw in the system unless you think that wealthy people are too wise and moral to ever do such a thing. The only people who believe that are Randians and Joe the Plumber. Everybody on Wall Street certainly seemed to know the score and acted accordingly.

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.

—Ayn Rand, “What Is Capitalism?” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Update: like Rand, Greenspan probably operated from the premise that "businessmen" were all moral agents. This is from an essay called An Answer for Businessmen, written by Rand in 1962.

The world crisis of today is a moral crisis—and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American revolution. We must fight for capitalism, not as a practical issue, not as an economic issue, but, with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue. That is what capitalism deserves, and nothing less will save it.

I should like to suggest that you begin by applying to the realm of ideas the same objective, logical, rational criteria of judgment that you apply to the realm of business. You do not judge business issues by emotional standards—do not do it in regard to ideological issues. You do not build factories by the guidance of your feelings—do not let your feelings guide your political convictions.

You do not count on men’s stupidity in business, you do not put out an inferior product “because people are too dumb to appreciate the best” do not do it in political philosophy; do not endorse or propagate ideas which you know to be false, in the hope of appealing to people’s fears, prejudices or ignorance. You do not cheat people in business—do not try to do it in philosophy: the so-called common man is uncommonly perceptive.

See, capitalists are all as honest as the day is long. The only problem with our capitalistic system is that these superior beings are overtaxed and over regulated, and restricted by the parasites from exercising their superiority. They are entirely rational and moral and should be trusted to do the right thing because it is who they are.

Uncle Alan is in his 80s and he's just learned that his heroes aren't what he thought they were after all. No wonder he's in a state of "shocked disbelief." It's a wonder he didn't keel over.



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digby 10/23/2008 11:00:00 AM |

 
Values

by digby


It's sort of "comforting," as Karen Hughes would say, to know that the far right is the same the world over:

The successor of the Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider was dismissed yesterday after he revealed a “special” relationship “far beyond” friendship with his former mentor.

In emotional interviews with the national broadcaster and a tabloid newspaper Stefan Petzner spoke openly about his affair with Haider, who died at the age of 58 in a high-speed car crash after heavy drinking session at a gay club this month. Haider’s party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria, captured 11 per cent of the vote in national elections last month .

Mr Petzner’s appointment as party leader was widely seen as a fulfilment of Haider’s last wish, as he had frequently said in public that he would like his young protégé to take his place one day. Mr Petzner dropped out of university when he met Haider at a party. At that time he was working as a journalist, writing about cosmetic treatments.

Outraged by the interviews, the party felt compelled yesterday to dismiss its leader amid reports of his alleged role in Haider’s tragic death. Local papers said that, on the night of his accident, Haider and Mr Petzner had a row at a magazine launch party. Haider left in a hurry and drove to a gay club in Klagenfurt, his home town, where he drank vodka with male escorts. The reports said that he was hardly able to walk to his car.

He was such a lovely fellow:

Haider, in leading a revival of the Austrian Far Right, set out to say what is rightly unsayable in modern Europe. He praised the employment practices of the Nazi era, said that the SS should be honoured and called concentration camps “punishment camps”. He distanced himself from those remarks later, sort of, but many doubted a real change of heart. The war years appeared to arouse his passion more than anything in current policy, but he also launched an assault on immigration. He took his critics’ loathing as proof of his courage, as he did the diplomatic sanctions slapped on Austria in 2000 by the European Union in protest at his party’s role in government.

Nobody says that every gay person has a sweet and gentle heart. But in a world with less hostility toward gay people there would probably be fewer of these psychologically damaged closet cases seeking to prove their macho bonafides to the world by being Nazis.



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digby 10/23/2008 10:05:00 AM |

 
They Don't Want You To Vote

by dday

Josh Marshall found this gem from a news item about the early voting sites in the heavily African-American Lake County in Indiana:

CROWN POINT, Ind. (AP) — A judge weighing whether to close down early voting sites in Lake County’s Democratic strongholds questioned local officials about the absentee voting process during visits to the disputed sites.

Lake County Superior Court Judge Diane Kavadias-Schneider toured the Gary, Hammond and East Chicago satellite voting sites Monday and heard hours of testimony and arguments on whether they are legal and fair.

Republicans want to shut down the centers in the largely Democratic county on the grounds that they will increase the likelihood of vote fraud in the Nov. 4 election.

Kavadias-Schneider, who was appointed a special judge in the case by the Indiana Supreme Court, questioned county elections board director Sally LaSota on Monday about the process of early voting and safeguards against vote fraud.

LaSota assured the judge that the elections board staff ensures voters are registered and don’t vote more than once.
When Kavadias-Schneider asked, “What of those who have already voted?” R. Lawrence Steele, a GOP lawyer, replied, “Maybe those votes should be discarded.”

And well, there you have it. For decades this has essentially been the Republican strategy, since they can't run the country the way they'd like with all these pesky voters running around. From 1980 when Paul Weyrich famously said "I don't want everybody to vote...our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up, as the voting populace goes down, right up until today.

So this is, ultimately, why the right is making ACORN famous, calling for defunding and investigations and the like. It's to cover their real agenda of trying to disenfranchise voters. It's been the GOP ground game for a long time. And every time you think you've got it tamped down, it rises up somewhere else. Particularly slippery this year has been the "lose your house, lose your vote" effort to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters. Even after it was revealed and part of a lawsuit in Michigan, where the GOP was forced to surrender its effort, it has popped back up around the country. This is in Volusia County, Florida:

Thanks to a new law passed by the Florida Legislature, she explained, groups interested in challenging voters now may do so up to 30 days before an election.

Once a voter's right to cast a ballot is challenged, McFall's office must attempt to notify the voter, and must flag the voter's name in the statewide database.

If the problem can't be straightened out at the supervisor's office before Election Day, the challenged voter will be required to vote a provisional ballot, then visit the Elections Office within 48 hours after the election to disprove the allegations of the challenge.

"One party, that we know of, is going to challenge every voter that's being foreclosed on," McFall said.

Foreclosure-related caging is just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, they don't want you to vote.


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dday 10/23/2008 08:00:00 AM |

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

 
Still Headlining

by digby

I saw this story this morning and the footage was all over the TV. In all the reporting, everyone talked about how the mortgage convention featured a lot of protesters and that one of them tried to "arrest" Karl Rove on the stage. But nobody explained why in the hell Karl Rove was speaking to a convention of mortgage bankers in the first place. Doesn't that seem like an extremely bad choice considering the current situation?

Apparently, these people still think he's got something relevant to say to them. And that's actually pretty scary.



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digby 10/22/2008 09:00:00 PM |

 
CYA

by digby

I mentioned the other day that I had to cast a provisional ballot in 2006 and I got a number of emails from readers telling me about their problems with voter registration and voting. It pays to check it out ahead of time and make sure you haven't been caged or purged.

Here's an excerpt from a helpful post from Steve Rosenfeld at Firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette:

What Should Voters Do?
Voters need to be sure they are properly registered. They can do this by calling their county election office and verifying their voter registration information is in their county database and is current.

Anyone who registered with the help of a voter drive this year should check to see that their form has been processed, as those applications have to be entered by local officials. If there are data-entry errors, many states still allow voters to fix those, so their right to vote is not jeopardized. In some locales, officials are still processing voter registration applications turned in weeks ago.

While on the phone, voters should ask where their polling place is located and what form of ID is required. First-time voters must show more specific forms ID when checking in to vote.

Voters can also ask about early voting options. There generally are two choices, although every state has its own laws. The first is called in-person early voting, where a voter will go to a county office or designated site and fill out a ballot. If there are any questions or mistakes made when voting, election officials can correct those. The second option is to get an absentee ballot, which is taken home and mailed. The downside of voting absentee is any mistakes in filling it out the ballot cannot always be corrected. In every election, a number of absentee ballots are disqualified for errors that could otherwise be fixed.

Here are charts that describe each state's early voting options and absentee ballot options. (This is voting by mail with an absentee ballot, which is not the same as in-person absentee voting, where voters fill-out and submit an absentee ballot at a county office before Election Day.

Voter Challenges
One of the big unanswered questions about the 2008 election is will the GOP try to contest the credentials of new voters as they show up at polling places.

Voter challenges are a deliberate tactic to discourage voting. In most cases, these involve a party representative challenging an individual's registration as that voter checks in at their polling place. A typical partisan challenger would claim that voter lives at a different address than what is in their voter registration record. The challenged voter then must produce an ID or a utility bill proving otherwise to vote. This tactic could not only delay that person from voting, but would also slow down others in line. The goal of voter challenges is both to victimize new voters and to prompt others to leave without voting.

The solution to voter challenges is to call your local election office now to ensure that your registration is current. If your information is correct, you cannot be successfully challenged and you will vote. If a problem arises while voting, the challenged voter should call the nation's largest election protection hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, where they will reach an election lawyer or law specialist to help them solve the problem. That hotline is now being staffed during East Coast business hours.

The prospect of partisan challenges in 2008 has been enhanced by a bureaucratic snafu that is not the fault of most voters. Government databases that are now being used for the first time in some states to verify voter registrations have had numerous "no matches" due to data-entry problems. The GOP is using this problem to suggest that Democrats are illegally padding voter rolls with fabricated voter registrations.

Republicans have said, in lawsuits and public statements, that the only response to these mismatches is to recertify all new voters -- which they know is not going to happen before Election Day. Secondarily, the GOP has argued that these voters should get a provisional ballot, which must be verified after Election Day before it is counted.

Virtually all of the Republican-filed litigation -- notably in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania -- has sought to invalidate voter registrations where a 'no match' has occurred. So far, the GOP has lost every case in court on this issue, including one at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Ohio Supreme Court dismissed a similar suit late on Tuesday.

The Democratic National Committee, which is coordinating election protection efforts for the Obama campaign, also said that voters should not be intimidated by GOP voter suppression efforts.

I would imagine that most people who read blogs think they are up on all of this. But yours truly had to vote provisionally last time out --- and I have voted in every election at the same precinct for over a decade. If you haven't voted recently or have moved or have changed your name or just aren't sure, check anyway. It can't hurt.

And if you have relatives who might find this information helpful, send it to them too. It's quite a shock to discover that you aren't registered. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be challenged. (They wouldn't dare here in the People's Republic of Santa Monica.) It's best to make sure everything's in order ahead of time.


H/T to SB
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digby 10/22/2008 07:30:00 PM |

 
Who Cares What She Thinks?

by digby


The NY Times magazine has a fascinating feature about the McCain campaign in this week-end's edition. The inside look at the Palin choice is really interesting. Republicans have become so enraptured by their hype about "marketing" and "branding" that they've forgotten that you need to have something in the package you're selling besides air:

On Sunday, Aug. 24, Schmidt and a few other senior advisers again convened for a general strategy meeting at the Phoenix Ritz-Carlton. McInturff, the pollster, brought somewhat-reassuring new numbers. The Celebrity motif had taken its toll on Obama. It was no longer third and nine, the pollster said — meaning, among other things, that McCain might well be advised to go with a safe pick as his running mate.

Then for a half-hour or so, the group reviewed names that had been bandied about in the past: Gov. Tim Pawlenty (of Minnesota) and Gov. Charlie Christ (of Florida); the former governors Tom Ridge (Pennsylvania) and Mitt Romney (Massachusetts); Senator Joe Lieberman (Connecticut); and Mayor Michael Bloomberg (New York). From a branding standpoint, they wondered, what message would each of these candidates send about John McCain? McInturff’s polling data suggested that none of these candidates brought significantly more to the ticket than any other.

“What about Sarah Palin?” Schmidt asked.

[...]

After that first brief meeting, Davis remained in discreet but frequent contact with Palin and her staff — gathering tapes of speeches and interviews, as he was doing with all potential vice-presidential candidates. One tape in particular struck Davis as arresting: an interview with Palin and Gov. Janet Napolitano, the Arizona Democrat, on “The Charlie Rose Show” that was shown in October 2007. Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, “I’m undecided.” What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”

[...]

After McCain’s speech brought the convention to a close, one of the campaign’s senior advisers stayed up late at the Hilton bar savoring the triumphant narrative arc. I asked him a rather basic question: “Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?”

The senior adviser thought for a moment. Then he looked up from his beer. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”

This is where Karl Rove's politics hit the wall. Indeed, it's where the conservative movement hits the wall. They run their campaigns like car commercials and they govern with concepts like this:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

It works for a while. They put on a good show. Then reality bites. Hard.


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digby 10/22/2008 05:50:00 PM |

 
Visigoth!

by digby

From Dan at Pruning Shears:

Have you noticed they keep reaching farther and farther back for terms of derision? First terrorist, then communist and socialist. Today, "running dogs".

By Friday Obama will be an anarchist, by this time next week a Royalist and by election day a Pharisee.

Heh indeedie.


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digby 10/22/2008 04:30:00 PM |

 
No One Could Have Known

by tristero

Wadda surprise.

Saying early voting cost too much money with rules that weren't uniform, Republican legislators led a charge three years ago to set new statewide standards limiting the number of polling sites and their hours of operation.

Those revamped rules trimmed early voting from 12 hours per workday to eight.

During the first presidential election since Gov. Jeb Bush signed the bill in 2005, the new law's impact can be seen throughout South Florida: exhausting lines at polling sites in Miami-Dade and Broward that led voters to miss work, senior citizens to beg for chairs and voting advocates to question whether some are being disenfranchised.

From Miami City Hall to the Southwest Regional Library in Pembroke Pines, voters on Monday and Tuesday -- the first two days of early voting -- sweated out waits of two to five hours. Broward reported record turnout for early voting, which ends Nov. 2.

Now, the debate over those achingly long lines has turned political. Some Democratic leaders contend the bill intentionally slowed down a process that has historically benefited the party.

There are two ways to look at this:

1. The Republicans were sincere about saving money by trying to make voting rules more uniform. By failing to take into account how this would mess up the people's right to vote, they have proven they are - once again - totally incompetent at everything they touch.

2. The Republicans truly wanted to suppress Democratic votes by making the process of voting so onerous many people, especially Dems, would give up.

Personally, I see no reason why both can't be true. They're being both incompetent and malicious.

tristero 10/22/2008 02:30:00 PM |

 
It's Not That He's Anti-American, Just That His Views Are Against America

by dday

These wingers really don't like it when we pay attention to their words.

It's been 5 days and Michelle Bachmann is still trying to explain her little McCarthyist rant from Hardball. The first explanation was that she didn't say it. Videotape got her on that one. The second was that Tweety tricked her. Look, if you get into an intellectual war of words with Chris Matthews, and you lose, that's a disqualifying event for public life.

Chris Matthews laid a trap, and I walked into it. […]

Chris Matthews was using the term over and over, and I should not have used it. […]

This was Chris Matthews. I made a big mistake by going on the show. I never should have. […]

I just didn’t recognize — I never watched the Chris Matthews show before. I should have before I went on. I didn’t recognize that he would lay a trap the way that he did.

He laid this trap by allowing you to say what you were saying instead of cutting you off. And by taping it.

And now, in friendlier media outlets, she's just rearranging the words.

BACHMANN: All I did on Chris Matthews is I questioned Chris Matthews and said, “look, if John McCain had friends like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and Father Pfleger, you’d be all over him Chris, but you’ve laid off of Barack Obama.” And so, he was using the word “Anti-American” and I told Chris, what I question are Barack Obama’s views. Because Barack Obama’s views are against America. They won’t be good for our country.

It's all so simple. All she did is say that Obama's views are against America. Now if that makes him anti-American, well, you must be one a' them liberal elitez.

The D-Trip has an ad on the air in the district now, hitting her CONTINUED love of deregulation and the Wall Street cash she's taken for her campaign. I'm a little befuddled why they're not hitting the McCarthyism, but maybe the free media is doing that job for them. The idea that "hyper-regulation" caused the crisis is nutty, too. I hear that the NRCC might not save her from this one.

Bye bye Bachmann.

...the NRCC pullout is confirmed. She's on her own.


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dday 10/22/2008 01:48:00 PM |

 
Win By Losing

by digby


Paul Rosenberg lays it out:

Anyone who remembers the Clinton years knows what this means. The Republicans never accepted Clinton as President, and the Democrats failed to crush the Republicans for this outright disloyalty to the democratic process. The media, in turn,normalized this state of affairs. Unlike any other President, Clinton had no "honeymoon" period, and was subjected to a continual witch-hunt designed to cripple him and drive him from office. They came very close to acheiving their ultimate goal, and were quite effective at keeping him hamstrung. One consequence of this may well have been 9/11, as their demonic politicization of everything under the sun impeded the full-scale focus on combatting terrorism generally and al Qaeda in particular. And, of course, the impeachment of Clinton significantly damaged Gore's chances of winning the presidency in 2000, hardening the media's hostility against him for failing to join in their witch-hunt.

So this is what we're fighting against now: the pre-emptive undermining of everything we're fighting for in this election.

This is correct. It's true that the Republicans are on the run and their movement is crippled by the epic failure of the Bush administration. But they have a permanent character assassination apparatus, funded by extremely wealthy aristocrats, devoted solely to the destruction of liberalism. They aren't closing up shop and taking up needlepoint. Indeed, they are much more active when the Republicans are out of power than when they are in.

It's not inevitable that Obama will not have a honeymoon or that the press will become the willing love toys of the rightwing as they did in the 1990s. But it pays to remember that the media were quite in love with Bill Clinton during the last half of that campaign and they turned on a dime once the wingnuts started working the refs in earnest. (You see, as with John McCain, the conservatives didn't care for Bush Sr and were actually quite happy that Clinton won so they could purge the party of its moderates and focus on its "revolution." For them, the way to real power is in being a ruthless opposition.)

So, as Rosenberg writes, this voter fraud nonsense is about legitimacy. Regardless of whether Obama wins a clear victory, the story doesn't stop the day of the election. Indeed, they will be recycling the left's complaints from 2000 almost verbatim making us sputter in rage about the absurdity of such a comparison. And they'll build a powerful myth of victimhood around the phony belief that Democrats steal elections. Lack of faith the in the electoral system serves conservatives far better than it serves liberals.

Here's a great movie by ACORN and Brave New Films which you should send around to any skeptics you know and keep bookmarked for future use. you may need it.

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digby 10/22/2008 12:00:00 PM |

 
To Hell With Aunt Millie: part deux

by digby

Remember this?

This is Bob Badeer (a trader at Enron's West Power desk in Portland, CA, where all these tapes were recorded) and Kevin McGowan (in Enron's central office in Houston, TX, as he mentions in the transcript):

KEVIN: So,
BOB: (laughing)
KEVIN: So the rumor’s true? They’re fuckin’ takin’ all the money back from you guys? All those money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?
BOB: Yeah, grandma Millie, man. But she’s the one who couldn’t figure out how to fuckin’ vote on the butterfly ballot.
KEVIN: Yeah, now she wants her fuckin’ money back for all the power you’ve charged right up – jammed right up her ass for fuckin’ 250 dollars a megawatt hour.
BOB: You know – you know – you know, grandma Millie, she’s the one that Al Gore’s fightin’ for, you know? You’re not going to –
BOB: Grandma Millie –

Ah those were the days.

The whole Enron business was a bit of an embarrassment what with Kennyboy Lay being Bush's strongest supporter and all, but it was blamed on a few bad apples and quickly swept under a rug. Bush was such a brilliant leader that we couldn't afford to taint him with that unpleasantness. But the ethos, unsurprisingly, lived on:

The top dogs of the big three credit rating companies made $80 million in compensation while their firms gave bogus high ratings to trillions in dubious mortgage-related investments which led to the world's current financial meltdown -- and a hearing before bitter lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning.

"The story of the credit rating agencies is a story of colossal failure," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will tell the men when they appear before his committee this morning, according to a draft of his prepared comments. "The result is that our entire financial system is now at risk."

The top executives -- Moody's Corporation CEO Raymond W. McDaniel, Standard & Poor's president Deven Sharma, and Fitch Ratings' president and CEO Stephen Joynt -- are expected to say the meltdown of mortgage-backed securities was "unanticipated" and "unprecedented."

But confidential documents obtained by Waxman's investigators show that the firms' executives anticipated much of what has happened, and were aware that their ratings were quite possibly shaky, according to the chairman.

"It could be structured by cows and we would rate it," one Standard & Poor's employee wrote in a company email cited by Waxman. "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters," wrote another in an email obtained by Waxman's committee.

I'm sure a lot of them are more than wealthy enough to be able to retire quite comfortably. And from the looks of things, nothing will be done about that. The big boys are all taking care of one another and making sure that their social class isn't badly impacted by this unfortunate turn of events.

As for us grandma Millies well ... in the immortal words of the Enron traders:

KEVIN: They’re so fucked and they’re so, like totally
BOB: They are so fucked.

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digby 10/22/2008 10:30:00 AM |

 
Investigate The Firefighters!

by tristero

More anti-Americans.



tristero 10/22/2008 10:28:00 AM |

 
We're Tied With Bosnia. But We Beat...Uruguay!

by tristero

The US is number 36 on the Press Freedom Index. (My pals in Finland have the 5th freest press in the world, btw.)

Joking aside, this is a disgrace. It's one of the major reasons why the American liberal blogosphere screams bloody murder at the media, of course. Our media is more than lousy (and boy is it ever lousy). It also does not have the freedom to report the news enjoyed by nearly every other democracy of note.

But hey, when it comes to the skinny on Paris Hilton, the US press totally rules. Maybe.

UPDATE: Some detail on the US ranking:

The United States rose twelve places [!] to 36th position. The release of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj after six years in the Guantanamo Bay military base contributed to this improvement. Although the absence of a federal “shield law” means the confidentiality of sources is still threatened by federal courts, the number of journalists being subpoenaed or forced to reveal their sources has declined in recent months and none has been sent to prison. But the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey in Oakland, California, is still unpunished a year later. The way the investigation into his murder has become enmeshed in local conflicts of interest and the lack of federal judicial intervention also help to explain why the United States did not get a higher ranking. Account was also taken of the many arrests of journalists during the Democratic and Republican conventions.

tristero 10/22/2008 08:28:00 AM |

 
An Un-useful McCain Endorsement

by tristero

True, McCain's campaign is, apparently and hopefully, in such deep water he needs as much support as he can dredge up. But the endorsement of this group creates two problems. First, not too many of their members are eligible to vote. Second, they're, you know, al Qaeda.

At least they're not socialists.

tristero 10/22/2008 06:39:00 AM |

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

 
How Helpful

by digby

Nothing like deploying a bunch of cops on the streets of American cities, looking for marauding African Americans to help get out the vote:

Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest.

Public safety officials said in interviews with The Hill that the election, which will end with either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president, demanded a stronger police presence.

Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas (following professional sports events) and also on Internet rumors.

Democratic strategists and advocates for black voters say they understand officers wanting to keep the peace, but caution that excessive police presence could intimidate voters.

Sen. Obama (Ill.), the Democratic nominee for president, has seen his lead over rival Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) grow in recent weeks, prompting speculation that there could be a violent backlash if he loses unexpectedly.

Cities that have suffered unrest before, such as Detroit, Chicago, Oakland and Philadelphia, will have extra police deployed.

In Oakland, the police will deploy extra units trained in riot control, as well as extra traffic police, and even put SWAT teams on standby.

“Are we anticipating it will be a riot situation? No. But will we be prepared if it goes awry? Yes,” said Jeff Thomason, spokesman for the Oakland Police Department.

“I think it is a big deal — you got an African-American running and [a] woman running,” he added, in reference to Obama and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. “Whoever wins it, it will be a national event. We will have more officers on the street in anticipation that things may go south.”

The Oakland police last faced big riots in 2003 when the Raiders lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Super Bowl. Officials are bracing themselves in case residents of Oakland take Obama’s loss badly.

Political observers such as Hilary Shelton and James Carville fear that record voter turnout could overload polling places on Election Day and could raise tension levels.

Shelton, the director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau, said inadequate voting facilities is a bigger problem in poor communities with large numbers of minorities.

“What are local election officials doing to prepare for what people think will be record turnout at the polls?” said Shelton, who added that during the 2004 election in Ohio voters in predominantly black communities had to wait in line six to eight hours to vote.

“On Election Day, if this continues, you may have some tempers flare; we should be prepared to deal with that but do it without intimidation,” said Shelton, who added that police have to be able to maintain order at polling stations without scaring voters, especially immigrants from “police states.”

Yeah, that'll work. Between the long lines because of obscure voter ID requirements, GOP lawyers buttonholing anyone who looks even slightly like they might not be a Real American and the cops hovering all over the place, it's just possible they'll be able to keep a lot of those new voters from casting a vote. And hey, if they get out of line, they can always taser them into submission.

My favorite thing about this is that they assume it's going to be Aftrican Americans rioting in the streets if they don't get their way.

Here's who they should be worried about:

Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.

Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.

As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama's acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word "terrorist." They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.

The first video closes with Roger Farina (who won NHL fan of the year in 2003) going into detail about why he was heckling the voters.

I sent Stephen Dinan a quote from Farina about former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's endorsement of Obama yesterday. Read his story wrapping up that news and Sen. John McCain's reaction here.

At the voting site, I asked a local sheriff monitoring the scene if the protesters were allowed. "They're fine," he said. I asked if he'd ever seen anything like that and he said he'd never seen Sunday voting.

The only people who sound like they're are ready to start shooting things up on election day are the Republicans.


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digby 10/21/2008 10:00:00 PM |

 
Welfare Queen

by dday

Why is the nanny state, in the form of the state of Alaska, caring and feeding for Sarah Palin and her family? Doesn't she know she has to WORK for that money instead of taking a handout?

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

Actually, $21,000 is chump change compared to what the hockey mom is charging the RNC for her duds:

The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

John Edwards got a haircut, though.

Talk about your redistribution of wealth. I'll tell you, we can't afford Sarah Palin as Vice President. I mean we literally can't afford it.


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dday 10/21/2008 08:00:00 PM |

 
The Poo-Flinging Campaign

by dday

Looking back on the McCain campaign's narrative throughout the election looks a bit like the narrative through-line from Tristram Shandy. The lack of discipline to find a line of attack or a compelling reason for voters to choose McCain, and stick with it, is probably the most surprising element of this campaign. In place of an actual strategy, McCain walks out every day with a different set of cards, and he lays them down and says "Whaddya think about that?!"

This is a great strategy for 24-hour news, and given that McCain is most suited to the role of hothead pundit, it fits. But it's a terrible strategy when you're trying to convince people that you're best equipped to handle the office of the Presidency. Flailing about incoherently from one attack to the next does not inspire confidence. Because the traditional media is obsessively moving from one news cycle to the next, without the time to take a step back and consider anything in context, McCain probably figured he could sneak by and take the advantage by keeping his opponent off-balance. But the Obama campaign actually provided the context in this very perceptive ad.



Above all, this is why McCain's boxed in right now. When the financial crisis overtook the campaign, he treated it the same way he treated the attacks on Obama - suspending his campaign, supporting the bailout, then opposing certain elements of it, coming out with a mortgage plan, changing the mortgage plan, thinking about adding additional economic steps, postponing the announcement, going forward with it... watching McCain's campaign is like babysitting a hyperactive child. There's always something new and it's exhausting to take in.

There were BRAND NEW lines of attack today. McCain has seized on comments by Joe Biden that the next President will be tested in a crisis, touting that he has "already been tested" - not the POW card this time, but that he was on the USS Enterprise before the Cuban Missile Crisis. So "already been tested" means "awaiting an order," I guess. But of course, McCain and Obama were tested just a few weeks ago in the economic crisis, and McCain acted like a nut. When he later today suggested that the election is all about the economy (wringing a bit more out of the "Joe the Plumber" nonsense), Joe Biden pounced:



And then there's this idea that Obama is plotting with those evul librul Democrats and we have to preserve gridlock in the federal government or they'll just run wild. Yes, I'm sure the whole country has been thrilled with the gridlocked and divided government of the past two years. In a time where the economy needs massive intervention, making sure NOTHING HAPPENS is definitely an argument for its time.

Obama kind of laid this all out in his ad and again today:

"While President Bush and Sen. McCain were ready to move heaven and earth to address the crisis on Wall Street, the president has failed so far to address the crisis on Main Street, and Sen. McCain has failed to fully acknowledge it," Obama said at a jobs summit his campaign staged in economically precarious and politically significant Florida [...]

"Instead of commonsense solutions, month after month, they've offered little more than willful ignorance, wishful thinking, outdated ideology," he said in a steamy gymnasium at Palm Beach Community College, where 1,700 people sat cheering in the stands and at least that many if not more gathered outside to cheer Obama's appearance.

It comes down to the word that is the name of the ad: erratic. While any Republican nominee faced serious headwinds, one that acted like an adult throughout the campaign would probably fare much better.

The other thing, of course, is that McCain managed to find the only bigger liability than Bush to run with him as Vice President.


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dday 10/21/2008 05:30:00 PM |

 
Railing

by digby

Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution catches a perfect illustration of Village mores:

From a recent profile of Seymour Hersh:

It was Tina Brown, formerly of Tatler and Vanity Fair, who brought [Hersh] to the New Yorker. 'What's-her-name... yeah, Tina. She gave me a lot of money, and she said: "Just go do it!" But she used to worry. She'd call me up and say, "I sat next to Colin Powell at dinner last night and he was railing about how awful you are." So I would say, "Well, that's good." And she'd say, "Is it?" And I'd tell her, "Yes, it is."'

Tina Brown was the editor of the New Yorker from 92 through 98, so it's not like Powell was just being a good soldier for the Bush administration. Indeed, he was probably upset at Hersh's My Lai expose and his indictment of the military over Gulf War Syndrome.

Hersh is an old guy with a long established reputation, so he has nothing to fear from villagers like Powell. Any other journalist might have seen what Tina was saying as a warning. And, indeed, it would have been. Tina and Sy weren't peers. Tina and Colin were.


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digby 10/21/2008 04:00:00 PM |

 
Here's To Doing The Right Thing

by digby

Apparently, Obama's grandmother is very ill and he will take a couple of days off from campaigning to spend some time with her. He lost both of his parents at a relatively young age and his grandmother is the last of his parental figures --- it's a sad irony that she should be so ill when her grandson is on the cusp of achieving the most powerful job in the world.

Here is an excerpt from a lovely thoughtful post from Ta-Nehesi Coates about Barack's grandmother.

... I was looking at this picture of Obama's grandparents and thinking how much he looks like his grandfather. And suddenly, for whatever reason, I was struck by the fact that they had made the decision to love their daughter, no matter what, and love their grandson, no matter what. I'd bet money that they never even thought of themselves as courageous, that they didn't give much thought to the broader struggles in the the world at the time. They were just doing what right, honorable people do. But the fact is that, in the 60s, you could be disowned for falling in love with a black woman or black man. There is a reason why we have a long history of publicly biracial black people, but not so much of publicly biracial white people.

We often give a pass to racists by noting that they were "of their times." Fair enough, and I know Hawaii was a different beast, but still, today, let us speak of people who were ahead of their times, who were outside of their times. Let us remember that Barack Obama learned the great lessons of life from courageous white people. Let us speak of those who do what normal, right people should always do when faced with a child--commit an act love. Here's to doing the right thing.

Bravo. There were always people who weren't racists in America, going all the way back to the beginning. And those people don't get enough credit and aren't held up as examples of people of courage and integrity, almost as if we want to hide them away because they prove that people always had a choice.

Madelyn Dunham is a good woman who produced a good and open minded daughter and helped raise a good and inspirational grandson. Let's hope she recovers and can see him get elected and sworn in to the presidency.


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digby 10/21/2008 02:00:00 PM |

 
Good For Rachel Maddow

by dday

She is officially a force on the cable scene, and I can hardly wait for the Maddow imitators to pop up. Imagine, someone that can hold an intelligent conversation on cable news. The other thing about this is that Maddow's beliefs were extremely well-known at the outset - there's no need to read the tea leaves of her statements desperately searching for validation or anything. This isn't some accidental liberal making his or her way onto the teevee.

It's still a pretty lonely outpost, of course. Maddow isn't a Villager.

But I do hope that, after the election, Maddow puts her intellect to good use and starts dissecting the actual issues facing the country. She has a strong grasp of them, but I imagine the MSNBC "Place for Politics" personality is constricting her. Obviously the election is going to swamp coverage for the next two weeks, but I hope that afterwards she presents a picture of what can be possible in cable news.


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dday 10/21/2008 12:34:00 PM |

 
Restarting The Clock

by digby


If you ever wanted to know what a legal system in hell would look like, this is it:

The Pentagon said Tuesday it has dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor in their cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defense.

None of the men will be freed, and the military said it could reinstate charges later.

America's first war-crimes trials since the close of World War II have come under persistent criticism, including from officers appointed to prosecute them. Some of the harshest words came this month from the very man who was to prosecute the five men against whom charges were dropped.

Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld said during a pretrial hearing for a sixth detainee this month that the war-crimes trials are unfair. Vandeveld said the military was withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense in that case, and was doing so in others. He resigned over his concerns.

But the chief Guantanamo prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said Tuesday's announcement was unrelated to Vandeveld's accusations. He said the charges were dismissed because evidence "is being more thoroughly analyzed." He would not elaborate on the nature of the evidence but said the review began before Vandeveld's testimony.

"Rather than refine the current charges, it was more efficient and more just to have them dismissed and charge them anew," he told The Associated Press.

In addition, dismissing the charges allows to Pentagon to avoid deadlines set by the Military Commissions Act to bring the men to trial.

"The way to stop the clock and get a new clock is to dismiss the charges and start again," said Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor who quit in October and later testified about alleged political interference in the military trials.

This is turning from Franz Kafka into Joseph Heller.

They actually expect people to believe it's coincidence that these five cases are the same cases vandevled resigned over and then just say right out that they are circumventing the spirit of the law to keep these men imprisoned indefinitely --- even though the big question that is interfering with their trials is the question of their actual guilt.

I don't know what the eventual disposition of these cases will be. But I'm going to make a prediction today that if a president Obama tries to end this inhumane regime, it will be "don't ask, don't tell" all over again. And I also predict he'd be sandbagged by members of his own party (and perhaps even by Colin Powell, who was responsible for that earlier monstrosity.) It won't matter that McCain also said he would close Guantanamo. After all --- it always takes Nixon to go to China. Perhaps Obama knows this and has a cunning plan to get around it.

This is going to be a problem:

A poll by the Military Times newspaper group suggests that there is overwhelming support for John McCain among U.S. troops in every branch of the armed forces by a nearly 3-1 margin.

According to the poll, 68 percent of active-duty and retired servicemen and women support McCain, while 23 percent support Barack Obama. The numbers are nearly identical among officers and enlisted troops.

The Military Times, which publishes the Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times, polled 80,000 subscribers from Sept 22 to Sept. 29. The non-scientific survey gathered 4,300 respondents -- all of them registered and eligible to vote.

A racial divide was immediately evident among the respondents. Nearly eight in 10 black servicemembers chose Obama, while McCain captured 76 percent of white voters and 63 percent of Hispanic voters.

Numbers among men and women respondents were also visibly different. Men overwhelmingly said they would vote for McCain, 70 percent to 22 percent. But among women the margin was much closer: 53 percent support McCain, while 36 percent support Obama.

U.S. troops also said in the poll that they prefer McCain to handle the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- 74 percent said McCain would perform better, while just 19 percent said Obama would.

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digby 10/21/2008 11:00:00 AM |

 
McCain Concedes The Race To The Lawyers?

by dday

I know we're all supposed to be somber and work like we're 10 points down, but I don't know how else you can characterize this strategy, if it's accurate:

Most people top in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.

So they are now finishing with a very risky strategy. Win Florida. Win Nevada ... And here is the biggest risk of all -- yes they have to win North Carolina, yes they have to win Ohio, yes they have to win Virginia, trailing or dead-even in all those states right now. But they are betting Wolf on coming back and taking the state of Pennsylvania. It has become the critical state now in the McCain electoral scenario. And they are down 10, 12, and even 14 points in some polls there. But they say as Colorado, Iowa and other states drift away, they think they have to take a big state. 21 electoral votes in Pennsylvania, Wolf, watch that state over the next few weeks.

New Mexico and Iowa were always done; it's fine for McCain to concede those. But it doesn't leave him much of a path to victory, and giving up on Colorado leaves him with basically one path. The Upper Midwest is fine for Obama, and the Pacific Coast is fine. He's really sinking everything into Pennsylvania.

Despite polls showing him trailing Democrat Barack Obama by double digits in Pennsylvania, John McCain continued to treat the state as if the whole election depended on it.
Yesterday, his wife, Cindy, made four stops in Philadelphia and Yardley, speaking at two rallies, visiting a hospital, and meeting the mothers of men and women in the military.

Today, the Republican nominee has three appearances in Pennsylvania, starting with a morning rally in Bensalem. He made two visits to the Philadelphia suburbs last week, and running mate Sarah Palin was in Lancaster over the weekend.

"It sure doesn't sound like a campaign that's pulling up stakes," said Chris Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.

All the McCain activity is happening in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 1.2 million, double from four years ago; where Obama, flush with cash, is outspending McCain on television by several orders of magnitude; and where the Democrats have an organizational advantage.

(Irrelevant note: I grew up in Bensalem)

And not only Pennsylvania. McCain has to in addition pull off wins in SEVEN states that are tight right now:

Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia

If he took Pennsylvania he could afford to lose one or maybe even two of those - but the idea that McCain's going to come back in Pennsylvania doesn't seem plausible. The polling is extremely static:



I'm just not seeing what makes Pennsylvania the firewall state, other than process of elimination. But perhaps it's this:

The state Republican Party filed an injunction Friday against Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes and ACORN, alleging a fair vote on Nov. 4 is impossible because of rampant voter fraud.

The injunction signals a step up in action against ACORN, which for weeks has been the recipient of attacks from the state GOP and John McCain's presidential campaign.

At a press conference in the Capitol, state GOP Chairman Bob Gleason Jr. said the sheer number of registrations submitted by ACORN has overwhelmed many county election offices and the state department has not provided the local bureaus with enough support.

"I am not confident we can trust the results of this election," Gleason said.

We all know this is absurd, completely absurd. But maybe it's the last thing McCain can cling to. Consider that:

• Pennsylvania does not have early voting, and absentee voting is restricted.
• Unlike Minnesota and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania doesn't have same-day registration.

So voting is concentrated on Election Day, and the state GOP is trying to make the election illegitimate.

Not much of a glimmer, but perhaps all they've got.

...Alternatively, the McCain campaign could be banking on racism.

...Chris Bowers says there's less than meets the eye here. Giving up on Colorado would be insane.


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dday 10/21/2008 08:00:00 AM |

 
Georgia: Some Background

by tristero

For those interested, here's an excellent article by Robert English on the history behind the recent Georgian war. As usual, the reasons are far more complicated than the US public is permitted, by their mainstream media and leaders, to consider when trying to become informed about our world.

Essentially, "Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia's first post-Soviet president, from 1991 to 1992," whipped Georgians into a state virulent nationalism, not as bad as what Milosevic did, but still pretty nasty. This led to the inevitable persecution of minorities such as the South Ossetians and the Abkhazians who turned back to Russia for protection.

This wasn't inevitable, but it underlies the reasons why these two regions wish to break away:

ll this is especially tragic because it could have been avoided. Many Russians, including then-president Boris Yeltsin, were sympathetic to the non-Russian republics' desire for independence from the USSR. And many Abkhazians and Ossetians were initially hopeful of their prospects in a free, democratic Georgia. "We could have left the [Soviet] Union together, as brothers," one Ossetian leader told us in Tskhinvali in 1991. But Gamsakhurdia's aggressive nationalism and strident denunciations of "devil Russia" and its "traitorous" allies within Georgia pushed moderate Abkhazians and Ossetians into support of outright secession and of an unholy alliance with reactionary elements in the Russian military (who began arming them behind Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's backs as they struggled with their own hardliners between 1991 and 1993).[10] By the time of Putin's rise in 1999, Gamsakhurdia's rhetoric had long since become a self-fulfilling prophecy—both the Abkhazians and Ossetians had voted overwhelmingly for secession.[11] And by 1999, of course, Russian policy toward Georgia, and the broader Caucasian-Caspian region, had also become part of a larger contest for influence with the West.

None of this is to defend Moscow's manipulation of post-Soviet conflicts to dominate its neighbors—though it is vital to discern the difference in motives behind an offensive, "neo-imperial" strategy and a defensive, "anti-NATO" tactic. Nor is it to justify the devastating attack on Georgia—though Moscow was also clearly lashing out at the West, with pent-up fury for what it sees as an American strategy of isolating and encircling Russia (the attack was also, in effect, a preventive strike against two NATO bases-in-the-making in Georgia). What is important, however, is to highlight the Georgians' own initial victimization of others in a tragedy in which they ultimately became victims themselves.

Of course it is "unfair" that Georgians today reap the bitter fruits of what Gamsakhurdia sowed in years past—just as it is unfair that today's Serbs still pay for the sins of Milosevic. And certainly Gamsakhurdia was far from the coldblooded killer that Milosevic was. Yet consider the roughly one thousand South Ossetians who died resisting efforts to impose central Georgian control in 1991 and 1992; for a population of under 100,000 this represents a per capita death toll over twice as high as that which Milosevic inflicted on Kosovo. (Milosevic's Kosovo savagery took some 10,000 lives, out of a Kosovo Albanian population of nearly 2,000,000.)

Consider, too, that one of Saakashvili's first acts as president in 2004 was to ceremoniously rehabilitate Gamsakhurdia, hailing him as a "great statesman and patriot." Many in the West criticized Saakashvili's 2007 crackdown on opposition politicians and the press, but few noted this earlier insult to Georgia's restive minorities. Nor are most aware of the continuing tensions between the Tbilisi government and the country's Armenian, Azeri, and other non-Georgian peoples—many of whom sympathized with the Ossetians, not the Georgians, in the recent war—over ongoing linguistic, economic, and even religious discrimination. Certainly Saakashvili is not the extreme nationalist that Gamsakhurdia was. And along with some provocative steps, he has also made notable efforts toward reconciliation. But his purge of senior Georgian officials from the previous government, and his replacement of them by ministers and ambassadors who in some cases were barely in their teens during the Gamsakhurdia era, seems also to have purged valuable assets of experience, caution, humility, and even recent memory.

We must hope that urgent diplomatic and economic support from abroad, together with some self-critical reflection by Georgians at home, will yet help this proud, long-suffering people escape the humiliation and the debilitating cult of "innocent martyrdom" that has plagued post-Kosovo Serbia. But the Western media that blindly follow the Georgian nationalist line in discounting Ossetian and Abkhazian grievances—viewing their separatist aspirations as largely illegitimate or a Russian invention and casting the entire conflict as the Georgian David vs. Russian Goliath—serve neither the cause of truth nor reconciliation. And American officials who embrace this simplistic narrative—and who reflexively call for Georgia's rapid rearming and accelerated accession to NATO—risk further inflaming confrontation with Russia to the grave detriment of both Western and Georgian interests.

In short, the situation is complex, the politics convoluted, and a subtle, firm, and intelligent diplomacy will be needed to address the situation. A good guys vs. bad guys attitude is no way to address the problems the people of this region face, let alone America's self-interest in the region. But one thing is certain:

We are not all Georgians now. That was a remarkably stupid remark that, if made by an American president, had the potential to make a bad situation immensely worse. That is not to excuse Russian aggression, of course. But oversimplifying a complicated reality and tying it to American's own ugly nationalism is far worse. It is blundering into a china shop with the dumbest, clumsiest bull imaginable.

tristero 10/21/2008 06:57:00 AM |

 
Anyone Have A Job For Doug Prasher?

by tristero

Here's a very sad story:

In a couple of months, Roger Y. Tsien and Martin Chalfie will head to Stockholm to collect the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and $450,000 each in prize money in recognition of their development of a revolutionary technique that lights up the inner workings of living cells.

Meanwhile, the scientist who provided the essential piece that made Dr. Tsien’s and Dr. Chalfie’s work possible — a jellyfish gene that produces a fluorescent protein — is out of science.

Douglas C. Prasher, who conducted his research on the Aequorea victoria jellyfish while at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts in the early 1990s, now drives a courtesy van for a car dealer in Huntsville, Ala., earning $10 an hour. He said he was not bitter or jealous of this year’s winning chemistry Nobelists: Dr. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, Dr. Chalfie of Columbia and Osamu Shimomura, the original discoverer of the jellyfish protein in 1961.

Trained as a biochemist, Dr. Prasher, 57, was interested in the chemistry of how certain animals are able to glow. In the late 1980s, he applied to the National Institutes of Health for a five-year grant to track down the fluorescent protein gene.

Dr. Prasher said his proposal included speculation on how the fluorescent protein might be used as a beacon to light up structures in cells. “That would have certainly been part of my research program,” Dr. Prasher said. “I knew it could serve as a genetic marker and it would be really, really useful, which it has turned out to be.”

That application was turned down. A parallel proposal to the American Cancer Society succeeded, giving Dr. Prasher only two years of financing, enough time to isolate the gene, but not pursue any applications.

By then, however, Dr. Prasher had decided that Woods Hole was not the place for him. Instead of going through the tenure process — he thought he would be turned down, anyway — he looked for a new job. Dr. Chalfie and Dr. Tsien independently contacted Dr. Prasher asking about the jellyfish gene. Dr. Prasher generously shared the gene with both of them.

Dr. Prasher then worked for the United States Department of Agriculture, first on Cape Cod and later in Beltsville, Md., developing methods for identifying pests and other insects. Again, he was not happy, experiencing the beginning of bouts of depression. “I was not happy with management there, so I looked for another position,” he said.

His next move was to Huntsville, where he worked for a NASA subcontractor that was developing mini-chemistry laboratories, which would be needed as health diagnostic tools for a potential human flight to Mars. Dr. Prasher loved that job, but NASA eliminated the financing for the project. For family reasons, he stayed in Huntsville, which restricted his opportunities. “The amount of life science done here is very limited,” he said.

The depression returned. “That’s been a serious problem off and on, but anyone who doesn’t have a job has that problem,” Dr. Prasher said. “If they don’t, there’s a problem with them. Or they’re independently wealthy.”

After a year of unemployment, he started driving the van for Bill Penney Toyota, his job for the last year and a half.

There are many tragic details in this story, not the least being the serious toll depression can levy on someone's life. I have no idea whether Dr. Prasher is even interested in doing science anymore or whether he can tolerate the pressure. But there's something very wrong when someone this talented falls through the safety net. He clearly deserves better.

tristero 10/21/2008 05:02:00 AM |

Monday, October 20, 2008

 
Reliable Sources

by digby

Here's Bob Shrum telling the Democrats not to go wobbly, which is fine and I don't have a problem with it. Don't go wobbly, Dems!

But this was a little bit disconcerting:

Democrats, scarred by the stolen election of 2000 and the near miss of 2004, privately worry, wring their hands and, traveling cyberspace’s vast expanse, trip over a discouraging word, poll, or prediction. Generally, they needn’t look farther than the Drudge Report, which shamelessly selects information—and disinformation—in order to stereotype Barack Obama and denigrate his prospects.

With genuine anguish, one Democrat said to me Sunday, “Did you see Drudge has Obama only 2.7 percent ahead?”

It wasn’t actually Drudge, but a poll by Zogby, which Drudge had cherry picked for its pessimism. (Unlike Drudge, Zogby isn’t biased; he famously elected Kerry in 2004.) Rasmussen’s poll used to be Drudge’s favorite, but on Sunday it showed Obama leading by six, so Drudge swept it under the rug.

It was good of Shrum to point out that Drudge is biased, but apparently his Democratic friends read him religiously anyway. It's just a crying shame there aren't any liberal sites that Democrats could read instead. Somebody ought to start one.



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digby 10/20/2008 10:00:00 PM |

 
Deadbeat Nation

by digby

Dday and I wrote about this earlier and I've been hearing this trope all day coming from various wingnuts on TV, so I assume it's a new conservative article of faith:

OBAMA [audio clip]: I want to give all these folks who are, you know, bus drivers, teachers, autoworkers, who make less -- I want to give them a tax cut.

QUINN: Wait a minute. Let -- hold on a second. He wants to give them a tax cut. Most of those people he just mentioned, if they fall into the average-income category that we're talking about here, don't pay any taxes. So how do you give them a tax cut? You give them a tax cut by taking away Joe's money and redistributing the wealth to them.

They are seriously trying to convince people now that Obama wants to take the money from "hard working Americans" and hand it to deadbeats. As dday explained earlier:

I think Atrios makes the salient point.

Basically everybody pays taxes. So you when you're talking about giving free money to people who don't pay any taxes, that must be somebody else because, you know, I pay taxes.

But bus drivers, teachers and auto workers? They're deadbeat lucky duckies too? Retail salespeople? Truck drivers? Office workers? Nurses? Cops? All of them?

The dissonance is getting so bad I think their heads may literally start to explode. I realize that the true dittoheads like Joe the Plumber actually believe that they will be better off if rich people don't have to pay taxes because he's sure he's going to be rich one day too and wants to preserve the privileges he doesn't yet have. But does Joe believe that everyone but he and the rich guys aren't paying any taxes at all?


Update: it's a virus.
digby 10/20/2008 08:30:00 PM |

 
No Choice

by digby


Poor McCain. Since John Lewis spoke out about the ugly behavior at Republican campaign events, St John has been left with no choice but to do what he really didn't want to do:

John McCain's campaign manager says he is reconsidering using Barack Obama's relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue during the election's closing weeks.

In an appearance on conservative Hugh Hewitt's radio program, Davis said that circumstances had changed since John McCain initially and unilaterally took Obama's former pastor off the table. The Arizona Republican, Davis argued, had been jilted by the remarks of Rep. John Lewis, who compared recent GOP crowds to segregationist George Wallace's rallies. And, as such, the campaign was going to "rethink" what was in and out of political bounds.

He'd been "jilted?" Huh?

Clearly, McCain has no choice but to fight back. The Obama campaign has gone too far (well, John Lewis has anyway, and he's close enough *if you know what I mean*) and it's time to take off the gloves. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm sure it will be as classy as the rest of the campaign has been.

I don't know where that John Lewis got his crazy ideas:

“I’m afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over. He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?”

“When you got a Negra running for president, you need a first stringer. He’s definitely a second stringer.”

“He seems like a sheep - or a wolf in sheep’s clothing to be honest with you. And I believe Palin - she’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she’s gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House.”

“He’s related to a known terrorist, for one.”

“He is friends with a terrorist of this country!”

“He must support terrorists! You know, uh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And that to me is Obama.”

“Just the whole, Muslim thing, and everything, and everybody’s still kinda - a lot of people have forgotten about 9/11, but… I dunno, it’s just kinda… a little unnerving.”

“Obama and his wife, I’m concerned that they could be anti-white. That he might hide that.”

“I don’t like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash… because we’re not!”

Wait until they find out he's gay too!


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digby 10/20/2008 07:00:00 PM |

 
Let Them Eat Cakewalks

by digby

Boo Yah....

Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself.

Adelman and I exchanged e-mails today about his decision. He asked rhetorically,

Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible—dare I say, Clintonesque—than his liberal record indicates, than his cooperation with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid portends. If not, I will be even more startled by my vote than I am now.

I don't know what to say. Whenever I think of Ken Adelman I think of him crying happily in Cheney's arms after the invasion of Iraq:

On April 10, 2003, Ken Adelman, a Reagan administration official and supporter of the Iraq war, published an op-ed article in The Washington Post headlined, " 'Cakewalk' Revisited," more or less gloating over what appeared to be the quick victory there, and reminding readers that 14 months earlier he had written that war would be a "cakewalk." He chastised those who had predicted disaster. "Taking first prize among the many frightful forecasters" was Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the first Bush administration. Adelman wrote that his own confidence came from having worked for Donald H. Rumsfeld three times and "from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz for so many years."

Vice President Cheney phoned Adelman, who was in Paris with his wife, Carol. What a clever column, the vice president said. You really demolished them. He said he and his wife, Lynne, were having a small private dinner Sunday night, April 13, to talk and celebrate. The only other guests would be his chief adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Wolfowitz, now deputy secretary of defense. Adelman realized it was Cheney's way of saying thank you, and he and his wife came back from Paris a day early to attend the dinner.

When Adelman walked into the vice president's residence that Sunday night, he was so happy he broke into tears. He hugged Cheney for the first time in the 30 years he had known him. There had been reports in recent days of mass graves and abundant, graphic evidence of torture by Saddam Hussein's government, so there was a feeling that they had been part of a greater good, liberating 25 million people.

"We're all together. There should be no protocol; let's just talk," Cheney said when they sat down to dinner.

Wolfowitz embarked on a long review of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and what a mistake it had been to allow the Iraqis to fly helicopters after the armistice. Hussein had used them to put down uprisings.

Cheney said he had not realized then what a trauma that time had been for the Iraqis, particularly the Shiites, who felt the United States had abandoned them. He said that experience had made the Iraqis worry that war this time would not end Hussein's rule.

"Hold it! Hold it!" Adelman interjected. "Let's talk about this Gulf war. It's so wonderful to celebrate." He said he was just an outside adviser, someone who turned up the pressure in the public forum. "It's so easy for me to write an article saying, 'Do this.' It's much tougher for Paul to advocate it. Paul and Scooter, you give advice inside and the president listens. Dick, your advice is the most important, the Cadillac. It's much more serious for you to advocate it. But in the end, all of what we said was still only advice. The president is the one who had to decide. I have been blown away by how determined he is." The war has been awesome, Adelman said. "So I just want to make a toast, without getting too cheesy. To the president of the United States."

They all raised their glasses. Hear! Hear!

Adelman said he had worried to death that there would be no war as time went on and support seemed to wane.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said, the president understood what had to be done. He had to do Afghanistan first, sequence the attacks, but after Afghanistan -- "soon thereafter" -- the president knew he had to do Iraq. Cheney said he was confident after Sept. 11 that it would come out okay.

Adelman actually jumped ship some time ago. And while I certainly agree that all votes are welcome, everyone is going to have to pardon me for not rushing to welcome war criminal enabling scumbags like Ken Adelman into the big tent. They tend to pollute every place they go.


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digby 10/20/2008 05:00:00 PM |

 
The New Lucky Duckies

by dday

It is remarkable to see McCain play the socialism card on Obama, days after voting for a $700 billion dollar bailout of the banks and the largest government intervention of the last 100 years. The institutional memory doesn't even go back three weeks anymore? Furthermore, he characterizes Obama's refundable tax credits as "welfare," neglecting the fact that his own refundable tax credits, the centerpiece of his entire health care plan, which go to the same low-income members of society who supposedly "don't pay taxes," are not welfare but "reform".

It's silly, but this is very powerful stuff. And I think Atrios makes the salient point.

Basically everybody pays taxes. So you when you're talking about giving free money to people who don't pay any taxes, that must be somebody else because, you know, I pay taxes.

I suppose that works.

Yes, I suppose it does.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — When Sen. Barack Obama entered a barbecue joint here to greet dozens of people eating lunch after church services on Sunday, Diane Fanning, 54, who works at a Sam's Club, began yelling, "Socialist, socialist, socialist — get out of here!"

Plumbers and Joe Sixpacks may make out better under Obama's plans, and McCain is peddling lies. But the way Republicans have historically won elections is by getting some members of the working class to think that other members of the working class are getting away with a free lunch. I don't know if it'll work, but the pull is undeniable and will last well past the election. Wait for the statistics to come out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth about how big a tax cut Obama has given to black people.

After all, this is the type of code they use. And it works.

Herbert reminds us about the Southern Strategy -- and famed GOP strategist Lee Atwater's candid admission: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger. By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

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dday 10/20/2008 03:30:00 PM |

 
The Other

by digby

Call me crazy, but I think the Politico just published a story implying that Obama is gay.

The talk radio gasbags will have a field day with this one. Now he is not only a black, foreign, Muslim, socialist terrorist, he's a gay black, foreign, Muslim, socialist terrorist.

What's left? Child molester?


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digby 10/20/2008 02:30:00 PM |

 
Disqualified For Doping

by digby

I think it's just terrific that Colin Powell has come over from the dark side and all. And I'm sure he's very, very, very sincere even though he waited until the last possible moment, when it probably would have been much more meaningful if he'd come out last summer when nobody could talk about anything but national security. But hey, there's no need to dwell on Powell's endless capacity to play both sides at a time like this.

And neither would I think there was a need to dwell on Powell's past errors in judgment, except for this:

Colin Powell will have a role as a top presidential adviser in an Obama administration, the Democratic White House hopeful said Monday.

"He will have a role as one of my advisers," Barack Obama said on NBC's Today in an interview aired Monday, a day after Powell, a four-star general and President Bush's former secretary of state, endorsed him.

"Whether he wants to take a formal role, whether that's a good fit for him, is something we'd have to discuss," Obama said.

Maybe that's just campaign talk. It would hardly be decent for Obama to slap Powell in the face after Powell's effusive praise yesterday. But I would assume that Obama realizes that his opposition to the war was the single issue that separated him from the other candidates in the race and animated his most ardent and energetic supporters. To name one of the war's architects to a role in his administration would cost him credibility among people he needs to be his strong and enduring base as he attempts to do big things.

It's politically unnecessary. Powell has blown his cred with the neanderthals and brings nothing with him now:

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh said that the only reason Gen. Colin Powell endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was because they’re both African-American. “Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race. OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed.” On his show today, Limbaugh went a step further and shouted his accusation against Powell:

Let me say it louder, and let me say it even more plainly. IT WAS TOTALLY ABOUT RACE! The Powell nomination — or endorsement — totally about race.

So much for the right wing's insistence that they judge solely on the content of one's character, eh?

Having Powell by his side for the rest of the campaign is good for Obama, especially among the villagers, who are starting to get very, very nervous about a Democratic win. But there's no need to actually follow through and welcome Powell into the administration in any role other than guest at state dinner.

As David Sirota says:

I don't fault Obama for trying to capitalize on those fabricated memes about Powell, and use them in the context of the campaign. He's got 15 days until the election, and any short-term boost is a good thing.

What I worry about is the day after the election. I am concerned about a President Obama internalizing that Establishment fantasy about Colin Powell the Serious and Credible Voice - and ignoring the actual fact-based story about Colin Powell, the Most Discredited Foreign Policy Voice In Contemporary American History. We don't need another president who refuses to live in the "reality-based world" - we need a president who matches his campaign promises on critical issues like the Iraq War with an understanding of which voices will be the most reliable in making those promises a reality.

This is the legacy of Colin Powell:

For 80 minutes in a hushed U.N. Security Council chamber in New York, the U.S. secretary of state unleashed an avalanche of allegations: The Iraqis were hiding chemical and biological weapons, were secretly working to make more banned arms, were reviving their nuclear bomb project. He spoke of "the gravity of the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to the world."

It was the most comprehensive presentation of the U.S. case for war. Powell marshaled what were described as intercepted Iraqi conversations, reconnaissance photos of Iraqi sites, accounts of defectors and other intelligence sources.

The defectors and other sources went unidentified. The audiotapes were uncorroborated, as were the photo interpretations. No other supporting documents were presented. Little was independently verifiable.

Still, in the United States, Powell's sober speech was galvanizing, swinging opinion toward war. "Compelling," "powerful," "irrefutable" were adjectives used by both pundits and opposition Democratic politicians. Editor & Publisher magazine found prowar sentiment among editorial writers doubled overnight, to three-quarters of large U.S. newspapers.

Powell's "thick intelligence file," as he called it, had won them over. Since 1998, he told fellow foreign ministers, "we have amassed much intelligence indicating that Iraq is continuing to make these weapons."

But in Baghdad, when the satellite broadcast ended, presidential science adviser Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi appeared before the audience and dismissed the U.S. case as "stunts" aimed at swaying the uninformed.

Some outside observers also sounded unimpressed. "War can be avoided. Colin Powell came up with absolutely nothing," said Denmark's Ulla Sandbaek, a visiting European Parliament member.

Six months after that Feb. 5 appearance, the file does look thin.

Nearly six years later, it's been completely obliterated.

For more than 20 years, by word and by deed Saddam Hussein has pursued his ambition to dominate Iraq and the broader Middle East using the only means he knows, intimidation, coercion and annihilation of all those who might stand in his way. For Saddam Hussein, possession of the world's most deadly weapons is the ultimate trump card, the one he most hold to fulfill his ambition.

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not some day use these weapons at a time and the place and in the manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond?

The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.

And then there was this, regarding his participation in meetings at the White House where torture techniques were acted out by CIA employees for the approval of the "principles committee:":

Powell said that he didn't have "sufficient memory recall" about the meetings and that he had participated in "many meetings on how to deal with detainees." Powell said, "I'm not aware of anything that we discussed in any of those meetings that was not considered legal."

I would imagine that the village believes such things should not disqualify him from ever being close to power again. But they do. No president should ever take advice from this man again.


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digby 10/20/2008 01:00:00 PM |

 
The Dog Won't Eat The Dog Food

by dday

If the Iraq debate wasn't over in this country, you would think that this new pact giving the US a pretty firm deadline for withdrawal from the country by the end of 2011, only slightly less accelerated than Barack Obama's own withdrawal plan, would be significant. After all, it's a complete repudiation of the deeply held strategy of the Bush Administration and John McCain, that firm deadlines would be disastrous for America because the terrorists will "wait us out." There's also the matter of giving the Iraqis jurisdiction over their own country, by taking the military out of the prison business and subjecting US soldiers to prosecution, which at one time was anathema to the Bushies.

Iraq said it had secured the right to prosecute U.S. soldiers for serious crimes under certain circumstances, an issue both sides had long said was holding up the pact [...]

On the immunity of U.S. forces, Dabbagh said: "Inside their bases, they will be under American law. Iraqi judicial law will be implemented in case these forces commit a serious and deliberate felony outside their military bases and when off duty."

None dare call it treason except maybe all conservatives.

But the bigger story here is that the Iraqi Parliament, who unlike the Congress actually gets a chance to ratify this thing, appears to be balking:

BAGHDAD — Hopes that a security agreement between Iraq and the United States could be concluded swiftly receded Sunday as several of the leading Iraqi political parties, including some that had negotiated the agreement, appeared to back away from quick approval.

In a public statement posted on semiofficial government Web sites, the United Iraqi Alliance, which represents several powerful Shiite parties that back the government, said it could not endorse the pact as written and wanted amendments. It formed a committee on Saturday to survey alliance member opinions.

“The alliance asked the prime minister to reopen the negotiations with the Americans and try to modify the pact until it becomes acceptable to us,” said Sami al-Askari, a leader in Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s Dawa Party, which is a member of the Shiite alliance.

Whether the agreement will be signed “will depend on the American side,” he said [...]

The largest Sunni bloc in Parliament, Tawafiq, also hesitated to endorse the agreement. The hesitation came as a surprise because until recently Sunnis had been supportive of the American presence since they viewed the troops as a bulwark against a repetition of the sectarian violence that forced many from their homes in and around Baghdad.

Can we face facts? The Iraqis don't want the Americans there. Maliki might, because he's using the US military to project power against his enemies. But the other parties really don't. The Sadrists really don't. The Sunnis, sensing Maliki's use of the military to crush them, also don't. And the Iraqi people are massively opposed. This is reflected by every single representative of the people hesitant to do anything in concert with the Americans.

Political analysts agree that the elections are making it difficult for Mr. Maliki to stand with the Americans, especially on an agreement that allows troops to stay. The election is likely early next year, and Mr. Maliki is worried about maintaining power.

“I think the main thing is that Maliki is worried about the provincial elections, and he doesn’t want to be seen as making concessions to the Americans,” said Joost Hiltermann, a senior Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group office in Istanbul, which oversees Iraq. The Iraqi resistance “is positioning,” he said. “But what is the endgame?”

This is also why Maliki criticized the top US general very strongly for suggesting that Iran played a role in the security agreement. It is positioning, but of course you have to recognize that all the positioning demands a move away from any American occupation presence.

So the national security functionaries can peddle around some draft document all they want, and very serious Villagers can talk about 6 more months to dig in for the big victory, but at some point you have to take a glimpse at reality: we are being told, politely, to leave Iraq, by pretty much everyone who matters. And so leave we must. With a far bigger disaster looming in Afghanistan, a country where the Taliban can behead dozens on any roadway, it's just completely absurd to hang on in Iraq where every major player is rejecting the occupation. I don't believe in "surging" into Afghanistan, for the record, and that's another failure of not heeding the truth of the situation on the ground. But nobody wants to see the truth in Iraq that is plainly visible - it's time to go.


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dday 10/20/2008 11:00:00 AM |

 
There They Go Again

by digby

It's jarring to hear shouts of "socialist!" at these McCain rallies like it has some specific, current meaning. Who talks this way anymore? Well, in right wing circles, the sweat inducing, night terror of creeping socialism is as alive and well as it was 20 years ago.

To commemorate the moment the NY Times republished this yesterday:

December 31, 1989

We Have Socialism, Q.E.D.

Milton Friedman is senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

By Milton Friedman

Conventional wisdom these days can be summarized in the form of a syllogism.

Major premise: Socialism is a failure. Even lifelong Communists now accept this proposition. Wherever socialism has been tried, it has proved unable to deliver the goods, either in the material form of a high standard of living or in the immaterial form of human freedom.

Minor premise: Capitalism is a success. Economies that have used capitalism - free private markets -as their principal means of organizing economic activity have proved capable of combining widely shared prosperity and a high measure of human freedom. A private market system has proved to be a necessary though not a sufficient condition for prosperity and freedom.

Conclusion: The U.S. needs more socialism. An obvious non sequitur, yet there is no denying that many apparently reasonable people - including most members of Congress and of the Bush Administration - accept all three propositions simultaneously.

What is socialism? In its purest form, socialism is government ownership and control of the means of production. Ownership of anything implies the right to the income produced by that thing.

All means of production in the United States - people, land, machines, buildings, etc. - produce our national income. Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.

[...]

Socialism has proved no more efficient at home than abroad. What are our most technologically backward areas? The delivery of first class mail, the schools, the judiciary, the legislative system - all mired in outdated technology. No doubt we need socialism for the judicial and legislative systems. We do not for mail or schools, as has been shown by Federal Express and others, and by the ability of many private schools to provide superior education to underprivileged youngsters at half the cost of government schooling.

Airlines have had no difficulty in acquiring the planes and personnel to handle the increased traffic produced by deregulation. What has been the bottleneck? Airports. Why? Because they are government owned and operated.

We all justly complain about the waste, fraud and inefficiency of the military. Why? Because it is a socialist activity - one that there seems no feasible way to privatize. But why should we be any better at running socialist enterprises than the Russians or Chinese?

By extending socialism far beyond the area where it is unavoidable, we have ended up performing essential governmental functions far less well than is not only possible but than was attained earlier. In a poorer and less socialist era, we produced a nationwide network of roads and bridges and subway systems that were the envy of the world. Today we are unable even to maintain them.

Yet what are the loudest complaints? Government should be doing more; government is strapped for funds; taxes should be raised; more regulations should be imposed; build more prisons to house more criminals created by socialist legislation. Child care? Program trading? Earthquakes? Pass a law. And every law comes with a price tag and is cited as a reason for higher taxes.

Can we learn only from our own mistakes? Or not even from them?

It's such a soothing and comfortable rant, isn't it? It fits like a soft, well-worn old workshirt. You can see why the insult falls off the lips of guys like Joe the plumber without the slightest hesitation. But is that what Joe means when he claims that Obama is a socialist? I don't think so.

It entered the campaign a few weeks back in an unusual and forceful way. The wingnut radio hosts resurrected it to describe the financial bailout --- for which both Obama and McCain voted:

"When the government fails to pass a socialism bill and the market goes south, let it go south. I don't want to pass a socialism bill just to protect the stock market," said Limbaugh, by far the most popular host on U.S. radio.

That's what passes for principle on the right. They reflexively rebelled against the bailout not because it created a moral hazard or rewarded the malefactors of great wealth when they had screwed the pooch. They were upset that the government was spending money on something other than killing or incarcerating people, period.

Now, however, the phrase morphed into an insult aimed not at the government's bailout of banks and financial entities. In fact, it's just the opposite. Here's the other Limbaugh, with an screed that is a far cry from the elegant argument of Milton Friedman's:

Maybe I'm being too much of an alarmist, but I'm worried for the first time in my life that the election of a presidential candidate could lead to a fundamental change in our system of government. Just listen to the comments of post-debate focus group members expressing a knowing willingness to accept Obama's socialism, such is their angst at the subprime mortgage mess.

Already some 38 percent of Americans do not pay income taxes, and Barack Obama wants to increase that percentage dramatically. How ironic that he and other Democrats pretend to be targeting their message to "working-class" people when many of their constituents aren't working. But such is class warfare that the upper-middle class and wealthy are demonized as not earning an honest living.

Do you suppose it has registered with class warfare-receptive Obama voters that Obama is deliberately turning the American dream on its head? Could it be any clearer that his message to the middle class is: Don't aspire to achievement, success and wealth because a) it is immoral to have more than others, b) the government will take your wealth away from you and give it to others, and c) why bother to bust your rear end to make more when you can vote yourselves money from the public trough?

That's right. Obama wants to eliminate income taxes for many Americans, but that's a form of socialism because those people aren't wealthy. And these socialistic policies will make everyone stop working and the government won't have any money. Which is bad (or good?) I'm not sure.

So, you have right wingers inveighing against socialism based upon the idea that government can't do anything right, that it's government propping up the undeserving rich, and simultaneously that it's government being harmful to the deserving rich who are the backbone of the American Dream. It pretty much covers all the bases.

McCain hasn't actually used the word. But he came much, much closer to the heart of the real argument. He let it all hang out:

John McCain sharpened his economic attack Friday by accusing Barack Obama of plotting to turn the tax code into a tool for redistributing wealth, an idea he equated to welfare.

"When politicians talk about taking your money and spreading it around, you'd better hold on to your wallet," Mr. McCain told a raucous crowd in Miami, where he debuted the tougher rhetoric. "His plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don't pay taxes. That's not a tax cut, that's welfare."

Ah, finally. The Big "W". I think we all know what that alludes to, don't you? I'll reprise an oldie but a goody:

Sociologist Nathan Glazer of Harvard, who has long been interested in the question of America’s underdeveloped welfare state, answers a related question --- “Why Americans don’t care about income inequality” which may give us some clues. Citing a comprehensive study by economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth called, "Why Doesn't the United States have a European-Style Welfare State?" (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2/2001) he shows that the reluctance of Americans to embrace an egalitarian economic philosophy goes back to the beginning of the republic. But what is interesting is that both he and the economists offer some pretty conclusive evidence that the main reason for American “exceptionalism” in this case is, quite simply, racism.

AGS [Alesina, Glazear and Sacerdote] report, using the World Values Survey, that "opinions and beliefs about the poor differ sharply between the United States and Europe. In Europe the poor are generally thought to be unfortunate, but not personally responsible for their own condition. For example, according to the World Values Survey, whereas 70 % of West Germans express the belief that people are poor because of imperfections in society, not their own laziness, 70 % of Americans hold the opposite view.... 71 % of Americans but only 40% of Europeans said ...poor people could work their way out of poverty."

[…]

"Racial fragmentation and the disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities among the poor played a major role in limiting redistribution.... Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society, and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault, and because the political system is geared toward preventing redistribution. In fact the political system is likely to be endogenous to these basic American beliefs."(p. 61)

"Endogenous" is economics-ese for saying we have the political system we do because we prefer the results it gives, such as limiting redistribution to the blacks. Thus the racial factor as well as a wider net of social beliefs play a key role in why Americans don't care about income inequality, and why, not caring, they have no great interest in expanding the welfare state.

So, while Milton Friedman may have had his own reasons for perpetuating the myth of inefficient socialist government, this is the worldview that informs the conservative obsession with "socialism." (The positively weird finger pointing at racial and ethnic minorities as the cause of the home mortgage meltdown is a perfect case in point.) For their next trick they will undoubtedly scream bloody murder when the government is forced to intervene more in the economy in order to keep average people like themselves from ruin. Until it hits them personally, they will be sure that no matter what happens, this government "interference" is designed to help the undeserving poor (minorities) at the expense of hard working people like themselves. They'll say this even as they stand in line to receive help for their own failing mortgage or extended unemployment benefits.

The difference, you see, is that unlike these other parasites, they work for a living and therefore, will be among the rich someday. (The American Idol Dream says that wealthy people got rich because they were very special and they worked harder than anyone else --- just like you.) Therefore, the prerogatives of the rich must be maintained for all the hard workers who will pull themselves up from their boot straps and became plumbing magnates. Don't rain on their parades by suggesting that they may just remain middle class Americans (which in global terms puts them in the top five percent of all humans who've ever lived.) How disappointing. If Britney can do it, why not me?

A commenter at the Human Events site, where David Limbaugh expressed his terror at the impending socialist takeover, distills the problem down to its essence:

Obama is not a Communist. He is a Liberal, which is far worse, and further to the left than Communism. Under Communism, there is this underlying philosophy:

From each according to his ability.
To each according to his need.

That’s in a Communist society. In a Liberal society, we do not demand that each person work. And then we give them far more than they need.

Liberals are worse than Communists.

There you have it.



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digby 10/20/2008 09:30:00 AM |

 
Penguin Logic

by tristero

You do know what Penguin Logic is, don't you?

PENGUIN: Will you think about that a moment, my friends? Whenever you've seen Batman, who's he with? Criminals! That's who. You look in the old newspapers, every picture of Batman shows him with thugs and with thieves and hobnobbing with crooks. Whereas my pictures show me always surrounded by whom? By the police! I am an associate of the law!

And now, courtesy Bill Kristol comes a near-perfect meatworld example of Penguin Logic:

Most of the recent mistakes of American public policy, and most of the contemporary delusions of American public life, haven’t come from an ignorant and excitable public. They’ve been produced by highly educated and sophisticated elites.

Well, yes, that's quite true when you think about it. And did you know most baseball spectators pitch a perfect game every time? That's because, let's have some straight-talk here, most of the recent runs and walks allowed are made by players who are actually pitching.

Amazing what you can learn from conservatives. Such smart, mature commentators.

tristero 10/20/2008 04:22:00 AM |

Sunday, October 19, 2008

 
Gadflying

by digby

Not that anyone cares, but in case you find yourself wanting to know even more about the endlessly uninteresting moi, here's a little Q&A; from this month's LA Times Magazine. I must say that while the answers were somewhat dull, I did think the questions were quite entertaining.


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digby 10/19/2008 09:00:00 PM |

 
Another View On Creeping Neo-Hooverism

by dday

I see that Donna Brazile signed up for neo-Hooverism on the Sunday chat shows this morning, seeking to constrain a potential Democratic Administration by suggesting we have to tighten our belts in the middle of a recession, which is nothing short of economic suicide. I can tell you that this is not a unanimous view inside the Democratic inner circle, based on what I experienced yesterday.

I was fortunate enough to see Bill Clinton at a small-group discussion in Century City for a group of entertainment industry professionals. This was not a campaign event, and indeed the President was somewhat constrained by campaign finance laws to really advocate for any candidate. But aside from Clinton announcing his preference for Gray's Anatomy and Boston Legal, what was most notable was his discussion of the hypothetical "first 100 days" for a new President. This is from my notes:

The next President is going to face much different challenges than what I faced in 1993, and he can't do the same things... he shouldn't try to fix the deficit right away, but he's going to have to stimulate the economy by paying for things that are useful... we have had too much risk and not enough legislation... we need a government strong enough to prevent the market from devouring itself... I was happy to see Senator Obama call for a moratorium on foreclosures, and we also need to do what we did in the 1930s by buying up these mortgages and giving homeowners the ability to stay in their homes, to minimize disruption and maximize confidence... so let's stimulate the economy, and give birth to a new economy based on old-fashioned financing and modern products. It cannot be based on finance.

Obviously Clinton is part of a different side of the Democratic Party than Senator Obama. But there's a significant amount of overlap, and to hear the President who ushered in deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility in the 1990s recognize very clearly the need for stimulus, in the areas of infrastructure, job creation and the new energy economy, makes me very much reassured and hopeful. And indeed, in the last debate Obama pushed back on the idea of reinstituting PAYGO during a time of recession. This idea of helping state and local governments, putting money into infrastructure and green energy and jobs is very much a part of Obama's stimulus policies. They need to be bigger, but there's no trace of neo-Hooverism there.

Obviously we have to get the surrogates back on the reservation (thanks Donna Brazile). I suggest that everyone gets put into a room with James Galbraith and they memorize this entire passage:

An amazing debate at National Journal. The journal asked, is there room for fiscal stimulus to respond to the crisis caused by the mortgage mess. David Walker, who’s been preaching the need to rein in entitlements, treated the crisis as a chance to push his favorite line:

My concern is, when will Washington wake up and start doing something to defuse the potential “super sub-prime crisis” associated with the federal government’s deteriorating finances and imprudent fiscal path?

And Jamie (Galbraith) let loose:

What is Mr. Walker’s approach to subprime crisis today? His comment above makes his approach clear. It is to use the crisis as a rhetorical springboard, in order to divert the conversation back to what he calls the “super sub-prime crisis associated with the federal government’s deteriorating finances…”

But the fact is, the subprime crisis is real. The collapse of interbank lending is real. The collapsing stock market is real. The disintegration of the financial system is real. The collapse of the housing sector is real. The credit crunch and the recession are real. You can see this in the interest rate spreads and in the credit that is unavailable at any price.

Mr. Walker’s “super subprime crisis” of the federal government is not real. It is a pure figment of the imagination. It is something Mr. Walker sees in his mind’s eye. He sees it in his budget projections. He sees it in his balance sheets, which are the oddest balance sheets I’ve ever seen, because they have all liabilities and no assets.

We have a progressive infrastructure now that wasn't there in the past, able and willing to help drown out the neo-Hooverists as long as our leaders are on the same side. You can look no further to what the Wall Street Journal considers the nightmare of a new Democratic Administration than to see that this moment is entirely possible. And also, of course, necessary.

Voters will be registered. Workers organized. Banks regulated. Health care provided for all. Government investment will drive a green revolution that generates millions of jobs. The wealthy will pay more in taxes. Guantanamo will be shut down; torture will end. Net neutrality will be mandated. Citizens may even be able to sue corporations that negligently do them harm. They don’t even mention the war in Iraq ending.

The horror of it all. Can the Republic survive? The editors hold out one slim hope. Perhaps Democrats will divide. Perhaps he entrenched lobbies, the interest of the corporations and the wealthy will buy enough support to stand in the way of the tumbrels.

And that defines our job pretty clearly: to organize engaged citizens to hold Democrats accountable to the promises that have been made and the agenda the country needs.

We work now until Election Day. But on November 5, the real work begins.


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dday 10/19/2008 04:00:00 PM |

 
Kristol's Heartthrob

by tristero

You simply can't exaggerate how thoroughly immature the rightwing can be:

The other journalists who met Palin offered similarly effusive praise: Michael Gerson called her “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” [!!! See this post by Digby.] The most ardent promoter, however, was Kristol, and his enthusiasm became the talk of Alaska’s political circles. According to Simpson, Senator Stevens told her that “Kristol was really pushing Palin” in Washington before McCain picked her. Indeed, as early as June 29th, two months before McCain chose her, Kristol predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fantastic,” saying that she could go one-on-one against Obama in basketball, and possibly siphon off Hillary Clinton’s supporters. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The moderator, Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”

The next day, however, Kristol was still talking about Palin on Fox. “She could be both an effective Vice-Presidential candidate and an effective President,” he said. “She’s young, energetic.” On a subsequent “Fox News Sunday,” Kristol again pushed Palin when asked whom McCain should pick: “Sarah Palin, whom I’ve only met once but I was awfully impressed by—a genuine reformer, defeated the establishment up there. It would be pretty wild to pick a young female Alaska governor, and I think, you know, McCain might as well go for it.” On July 22nd, again on Fox, Kristol referred to Palin as “my heartthrob.

Dear Bill Kristol,

She's out of your league. Trust me on this. It's not gonna happen. Ever.

love,

tristero

tristero 10/19/2008 03:00:00 PM |

 
Newtie's Allies

by digby

On Stephanopoulos this morning:

Newt Gingrich: If Obama won and had a moderate House and a moderate Senate, he would probably be a moderate president. His temperament would lead him to be much more like Richard Daley than like Eeverend Wright. He's not gonna have that. he';s gonna have card check to take away your right to a secret ballot. He's going to have an effort to eliminate freedom of speech for Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. He's going to have a congress that wants to raise taxes, that wants to increase government --- is he really going to veto and fight with Pelosi and Reid? ... As the Wall Street Journal said on Friday, here is what their promising their allies they're going to do.

Donna Brazile: Yeah, but they're not in office Mr. Speaker. Senator Obama wil inherit a 10 trillion dollar deficit and he's going to have to put things on the table that perhaps many of us would not like to see a Democratic president put on the table in terms of cutting back on spending, freezing hiring and making some real tough decisions. So, I think he will be constrained by the deficit and also by the fact that we're still in two major wars.

That's a relief. No need for anyone to worry that Obama isn't going to govern like a Republican. Except, you know, Republicans are really unpopular.

Gingrich is playing for 2010, here, preparing his troops to run against the already unpopular congress. He's calling Obama a wimp for being unable to stand up to his crazed, radical base. It's a natural move for the Republicans.

But there is no excuse for Brazile to fall into the rhetorical fetal position and help him. My God, we are in the final two weeks of a presidential campaign which is taking place in the middle of an economic crisis and is this the best she can do? He gave her the most perfect opening in the world --- "the Republicans are more worried about a non-existent free speech threat to multi-millionaires like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity than they are about the real threat to average Americans financial security. Obama is going to be dealing with real problems of average people and will do what it takes to get this country back on the right track after the Republicans drove it off the rails over the last eight years."

This defensiveness is going to kill any mandate Obama gets before he even gets in office. I realize they don't want to try to unprogram the American people from 30 years of supply-side, trickle down brainwashing in the last month of a presidential campaign, but explicitly saying that he's going to be "constrained by the deficit" and forced to cut back and freeze hiring (!) in the middle of a recession isn't just bad politics, it's really, really bad economics. The Democrats should be pushing the idea that government spending right now is going to be necessary to fix the economy --- because it is!

No wonder Gingrich looked like a very happy fatcat with a mouthful of yellow feathers when she said that. He's winning even as he's losing.


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digby 10/19/2008 01:00:00 PM |

 
One More Unit, Stat

by digby

Luckily he's never been right about anything, so he's probably not right about this.

Today on ABC’s This Week, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said that as president, Obama would abandon the hunt for Osama bin Ladan and actually decide that the U.S. could “win the war” in Iraq by staying another six months:

FRIEDMAN: I think everything we believe could be wrong. That is Iraq could turn out — that Osama — sorry, not searching for Osama bin Laden could be not the biggest issue for Obama. I think you could actually find out that Obama can win the Iraq war and he will want to actually continue our presence in Iraq for — until 2011.

When host George Stephanopoulos noted that even Gen. David Petraeus refuses to use the terms “victory” or “winning” for Iraq, Friedman walked back his comments slightly, saying Obama would bring Iraq to a “decent ending” but ultimately, “they will conclude that Afghanistan is a loser.”

I keep hearing a lot of rumbling about how Obama isn't going to withdraw from Iraq as promised. Indeed, Muqtada al-Sadr just made a statement about permanent bases yesterday and urged his fellow Shiites to reject the new US-Iraq security deal because of it. But I've never heard that he would conclude he can "win" in Iraq -- and that he would withdraw from Afghanistan because it's "a loser."

Friedman clearly believes that these wars are irrelevant on the merits. They are simply check marks to be put in a president's win and loss column. If that's the case, then perhaps Obama should invade Iceland in his first term. He could probably "win" it with no problem and then he's have a nice little victory right off the bat.

It's hard for me to believe that Friedman still frames these wars in such puerile terms after all we've seen these last few years. First, there was the famous idea that the US had to stick guns in the faces of average Iraqis and say "suck on this" to prove that bad guys couldn't mess with us. As for Afghanistan, well, it's all in how you define "loser." Friedman has always believed that we "won" that war, but the "losers" refused to acknowledge it:

We have won the war. We have not won the hearts and minds of the Arab-Muslim world at all. There's still a lot of people there quietly rooting for bin Laden. Some of that is related to their own frustration with their own governments, we know. A lot of it is related to what we just saw as well. This is their way of getting a little bit of revenge on us for what is perceived to be our unwavering support for Israel. By not granting us our victory, in a sense, by not acknowledging that victory, this meat grinder of people that is being... whose lives are being destroyed every day in this conflict is aired across the Arab world every night in news footage in a very tendentious way to be sure, in a way that often doesn't show the Palestinian provocation only the Israeli reaction, but it has an enormously corrosive effect on American standing in that part of the world. That's just a fact.

Damn those bastards for refusing to acknowledge our great victory. It's rally screwed us up.

Meanwhile, here's Peter Galbraith on the prospects for a so-called victory in Iraq.

The idea of these two cock-ups in Iraq and Afghanistan ever being called "winners" is delusional. Nobody's ever won a war in Afghanistan and the US presence in Iraq is only exacerbating the problems. There are no winners, only losers. Which is, in fact, the case with every war. If Americans recognized that instead of thinking of them like a Friday night football game (or in Friedman's case, a bad episode of NYPD Blues) maybe we'd have fewer of them.


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digby 10/19/2008 11:00:00 AM |

 
Socialism: Is That, Like, MySpace For Muslims Or Something?

by tristero

There are two problem with McCain's attempt to smear Obama as advocating socialism:

1. No one anymore knows what "socialism" is. Oh, sure, you and I know what socialism is, but the days when the right could point to the Soviet Union or some other giant example are history - hell China itself is moving towards turbo-capitalism. So normal people hear "sharing the wealth is bad" and it's like, huh? They don't think Stalin, they think that since we're sharing our wealth with these schmucks, maybe we, too, could use a piece of that. The argument misfires because it has no substantive object anymore. "Share the wealth," "redistribution of wealth," and "socialism" talk only to a rightwing base: it is an historical argument, stirring up fears about something that, except in Cuba and a couple other places, simply doesn't exist. And that neatly seques into:

2. Normals know Obama is no communist, excuse me, socialist, not by a long shot, The charge is totally off the wall, dishonest, really weird with a beard. Worse, it ratchets up hateful, fearful rhetoric to McCarthyite levels when the last thing this country needs is another completely vacuous distraction from the very real problems we simply must confront. So, to the youngsters amongst us who don't remember the Soviet Union:

Trust me, dear friends, Obama is no commie, not even close. I was behind the Iron Curtain and it bore not the slightest resemblance to anything any mainstream American politician would propose, let alone do.

Come to think of it, I need to make an exception to that.

When Ari Fleischer, Bush's first press sec'y, warned us all to watch what what we say, watch what we do, I was reminded of Czechoslovakia in the 80's, when, due to widespread wiretapping and spying, we really did have to watch what we said and did even in our hotel rooms or private houses.

Actually, now that I think more about it, I've heard and read a lot about other things this REPUBLICAN administration has done that reminded me of Soviet-style communism - the torture and murder of prisoners, the subversion of a free press with plants and misinformation, the obsession with ideological purity, the corruption of the justice system - I don't need to go on. But, just to make the point clear, here's a recent example that's all-but-flown under the radar because we're all focused on the election and the economy:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently issued new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use a range of intrusive techniques to gather information on Americans — even when there is no clear basis for suspecting wrongdoing.

Under the new rules, agents may engage in lengthy physical surveillance, covertly infiltrate lawful groups, or conduct pretext interviews in which agents lie about their identities while questioning a subject’s neighbors, friends or work colleagues based merely on a generalized “threat.” The new rules also allow the bureau to use these techniques on people identified in part by their race or religion and without requiring even minimal evidence of criminal activity.

These changes are a chilling invitation for the government to spy on law-abiding Americans

Does all this make Bush and his rightwing acolytes Communists? No. Of course not. Just as Obama is no communist, excuse me, socialist. But if you want to talk about which politicians act more like totalitarian dictators, Republicans and their rightwing acolytes really fucking shouldn't be trying to go there.

So stop the baseless, distracting bullshit about "socialism" or, to quote St. John Himself, we just might take the gloves off.

UPDATE: Discussion of point 1 edited for (hopefully) more clarity.

tristero 10/19/2008 09:31:00 AM |

 
Palin's White America

by tristero

Nate Silver has an utterly brilliant post which analyzes, by race, where recent Palin events are held versus Obama's. The conclusion: Palin is speaking to a far whiter swath of America than Obama. But that's not all. Palin is speaking to a whiter-than-average swath of America. (Obama, in general, is speaking to a more representative sample of the population). This places, perhaps, her already notorious "pro-America places" quote in a very disturbing context:

We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.

Nate concludes with admirable caution that this is not necessarily a racist election strategy. It could be simply pragmatic:

Since white voters have historically turned out at higher rates than minorities, and since there are probably proportionately more swing voters among whites than among minority groups, one can argue that Palin's choice of locales reflects optimal strategy. Still, the difference between her geography and Obama's is fairly striking.

Equally striking are the stunning charts Nate has at his post. Go on over and give them a look.

tristero 10/19/2008 08:30:00 AM |

 
Colin Powell and $150 Million

by dday

Colin Powell walked into the Beltway's St. Patrick's Cathedral, Meet the Press, and endorsed Barack Obama today. Hopefully that'll turn out better than the vials of anthrax. This is devastating for McCain, of course, because Colin Powell was John McCain before John McCain became John McCain, if that makes any sense at all. He was the Very Serious GOP Daddy who everybody in the media establishment fell all over admiring. Heck, even Oliver Stone gives him a wet kiss in "W." And so Powell's rejection of McCain shows that the GOP nominee is no longer worthy of admiration.

But rather than one man's endorsement, I'm more impressed with the 3.1 million endorsers who have supported Barack Obama, with an average contribution of under $100, from retirees to students, and who donated $150 million dollars in the 30 days of September.

Those are endorsements I can get behind.


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dday 10/19/2008 07:26:00 AM |

Saturday, October 18, 2008

 
Saturday Night At The Movies



W: Stone looks back… and to the Right

By Dennis Hartley















Two of America’s finest actors



No one has ever accused Oliver Stone of being subtle. However, once audiences view his highly anticipated film concerning the life and times of George W. Bush, I think the popular perception about the director, which is that he is a rabid conspiracy theorist who rewrites history via Grand Guignol-fueled cinematic polemics, could begin to diminish. I’m even going to go out on a limb here (gulp!) and call W a fairly straightforward biopic.

Stone intersperses highlights (is that the right word?) of Bush’s White House years with episodic flashbacks and flash forwards, ostensibly beginning in the late 60s (when Junior was attending Yale) and taking us up to the present day. I don’t think a full plot summary is necessary; if you are a regular Hullabaloo reader, you know the story all too well: Alcoholic son of Texas oil millionaire stumbles through early adulthood, gets into Yale (and eventually Harvard) through the back door, marries a librarian, then discovers his Special Purpose after helping Poppy become President. Thanks to the savvy guidance of a homunculus sidekick whom he dubs as “Turdblossom”, he is elected as the governor of Texas (twice) and then finds God, who informs him personally that he is destined to become President, because He has a Special Mission for him. Turns out that his Special Mission is to fight the Evil Doers where they live, after they stage a terrorist attack on America. Trouble is, there seems to be some confusion as to exactly where they live. In the meantime, he’ll need to bitch slap that Bill of Rights (just a little), for our protection.






















Best supporting performance?



I’m not saying that Stone doesn’t take a point of view; he wouldn’t be Oliver Stone if he didn’t. He’s already catching flak in some corners for the amount of screen time spent dwelling on Bush’s battle with the bottle (I will say that the manufacturers of Jack Daniels must have laid out some serious bucks for the ubiquitous product placement throughout the film). Bush’s history of boozing is a matter of record. It’s part of his story (and could explain a lot of things). Some are taking umbrage at one of the underlying themes of Stanley Weisner’s screenplay, which is that Bush’s angst (and the drive to succeed at all costs) is propelled by an unrequited desire to please a perennially disapproving George Senior. I’m no psychologist, but that sounds reasonable to me.















Live, from New York…It’s Saturday Night!



As usual, Stone has assembled a massive cast with a bazillion speaking parts (I daresay he matches the late Robert Altman in this department). His choice of Josh Brolin for the lead initially struck many people as an odd selection (including yours truly), but now that I have seen the film, I have to say it was a smart move. Brolin is nothing short of brilliant. He doesn’t go for a cartoon caricature, which would have been the easy route to take; I think he pulls off a Daniel Day Lewis-worthy “total immersion” quite successfully. It is interesting to note that Brolin (tangential to Junior) has been accused of riding into a Hollywood career on the coattails of his dad (James Brolin) and stepmother (Barbara Streisand); if Stone chose his leading man with this in mind, he is a very canny operator.

Some of the other standouts in the cast include Toby Jones (Infamous) as Karl Rove, James Cromwell and the great Ellen Burstyn as President and Mrs. Bush Sr., Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell and Richard Dreyfuss (perfect!) as Dick Cheney. Wright and Dreyfuss play off each other beautifully while recreating Cheney and Powell’s tiffs. Scott Glenn isn’t given an awful lot to do as Donald Rumsfeld, but he has the evil squint down. The only misfire is an overly mannered Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice; it is like she dropped in unexpectedly from a Saturday Night Live sketch. Perhaps it is not entirely her fault, because they put so much prosthetic on her face, she can barely move her lips.

Perhaps I should qualify something. When I called this a “straightforward” biopic at the top of the review, I was speaking in relative terms. You have to keep in mind that in one respect, Stone is boldly going where no filmmaker has gone before. PT 109 aside, this is the only biopic about a president to be released while he is still sitting in the Oval Office; and since the former film dealt with JFK’s WW2 exploits, and not his actual presidency, I believe that makes Stone’s film even more unique. Another hurdle to consider is the fact that the Bush administration has probably been satirized, parodied and ridiculed (via print, blogosphere, TV, film, theater, comedy club, YouTube, T-shirt, billboard, semaphore, smoke signal and conversations around the water cooler) more than any other presidency in my lifetime (not that they haven’t asked for it in every way imaginable). My God, all I have to do is see the president’s mug on CNN; within moments he is bound to say something that will have me biting through my lower lip and passing coffee through my nose (hey, even grim laughter qualifies as levity, in these dark times). This zeitgeist makes it virtually impossible for someone to make a “serious” biopic about George W. Bush. By playing it straight, Stone is really being subversive (clever boy!).

If the Bush administration had never really happened, and this was a completely fictional creation, I would be describing Stone’s film by throwing out superlatives like “A wildly imaginative look at the dark side of the American Dream!” or “A vivid, savage satire for our times!” But you see, when it comes to the life and legacy of one George W. Bush and the Strangelovian nightmare that he and his cohorts have plunged this once great nation into for the last eight years, all you have to do is tell the truth…and pass the popcorn.


Watch it and weep: Bush Family Fortunes , Bush's Brain, K Street (TV series), That's My Bush!(TV series), Recount, Unprecedented - The 2000 Presidential Election , Unconstitutional - The War On Our Civil Liberties, Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, Iraq in Fragments, No End in Sight, Fahrenheit 9/11, Uncovered - The War on Iraq, Rush to War, Body of War , In the Valley of Elah, Grace Is Gone, Taxi To the Dark Side, Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing .

Previous posts with related themes: War, Inc. Standard Operating Procedure, Harold and Kumar Go to Guantanamo Bay/Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Stop-Loss, Military Intelligence and You! Lions for Lambs, Red State.



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Dennis Hartley 10/18/2008 06:30:00 PM |

 
Dim Bulb

by digby

You can't make this stuff up:

How many members of Congress does it take to change a light bulb? Americans may soon find out, courtesy of a contrarian piece of legislation introduced this month by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

Titled the "Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act," the bill seeks to repeal the nationwide phase-out of conventional light bulbs, the kind that have been used for more than a century -- pretty much since the invention of the incandescent light bulb.

Bachmann, a first-term Republican, is challenging the nation's embrace of energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights, saying the government has no business telling consumers what kind of light bulbs they can buy.

"This is an issue of science over fads and fashions," Bachmann said in an interview Tuesday.

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digby 10/18/2008 04:00:00 PM |

 
2 Things To Remember

by tristero

Even though the great Nate Silver projects 347 electoral votes for Obama versus 191 for Bush/Palin -I'm sorry, I meant McCain/Palin, an honest slip - there is no reason to celebrate yet.

1. The lead is narrowing. Poll-freaks will tell you that this is normal as the election grinds into its final weeks. I say poppycock. Especially after the last debate, this election should be a rout. I see no reason to deem a "normal" tightening of the race as "acceptable." It is not. Admittedly, Nate's latest posted analysis of the slip in the polls for Obama provides reason for my left brain not to be concerned, my right brain is starting to worry.

2. Even if you believe that 1, above, is silly, unsophisticated, and unrealistic - a not unreasonable position, says my left brain - I hope you will agree with this: It is not enough for Obama to win. Republicans must lose. Big time. The more the merrier.

Therefore, it is important that we do what we can, donate (through progressive groups) to Obama and other worthy candidates, participate in GOTV efforts and, of course, vote ourselves. As previous races have demonstrated all too clearly, Democrats are extremely gifted at wresting defeat from the jaws of victory. This time, let us take nothing at all for granted.

For my money, Obama has not won until he is sworn in and Bush has boarded the plane for his trophy ranch and sea-ment pond in Crawford.

tristero 10/18/2008 03:04:00 PM |

 
Inflationary Numbers

by digby

Man, that ACORN sure is despicable with it's underhanded registration practices. Something should be done about it:

Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

"I am not a Republican," insisted Karen Ashcraft, 47, a pet-clinic manager and former Democrat from Ventura who said she was duped by a signature gatherer into joining the GOP. "I certainly . . . won't sign anything in front of a grocery store ever again."

It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party -- a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states -- has been accused of using the tactic across the country.

Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties say they are investigating complaints about the company.

The firm, which a Republican Party spokesman said is paid $7 to $12 for each registration it secures, has denied any wrongdoing and says it has never been charged with a crime.

The 70,000 voters YPM has registered for the Republican Party this year will help combat the public perception that it is struggling amid Democratic gains nationally, give a boost to fundraising efforts and bolster member support for party leaders, political strategists from both parties say.

Those who were formerly Democrats may stop receiving phone calls and literature from that party, perhaps affecting its get-out-the-vote efforts. They also will be given only a Republican ballot in the next primary election if they do not switch their registration back before then.

Some also report having their registration status changed to absentee without their permission; if they show up at the polls without a ballot they may be unable to vote.

Golly, I'd bet if they look into it further they'll find out that in spite of what we've been told, it was the Republicans who were responsible for the housing meltdown too. Shocking stuff.

But here's the kicker:

Some also report having their registration status changed to absentee without their permission; if they show up at the polls without a ballot they may be unable to vote.

Oddly enough this happened to me in 2006. I did not request an absentee ballot and I didn't turn one in. But they had me down as an absentee voter and I had to cast a provisional ballot. It's a hassle to do it and if people are in a hurry, they may not bother. They told me to call back in a month to find out if my vote counted. I did and they didn't know what I was talking about.

I have no idea how it happened. In my case it was probably some kind of computer glitch because I certainly didn't change my registration or fill out any paperwork. But it was something of a shock and made me wonder if someone wasn't playing around with my registration.

The good news is that if it happens, you can vote provisionally. But it's the kind of this that's designed to screw up the process and make people think twice about whether or not it's worth it.


Update: FDL had more earlier this week on similar GOP shennanigans in California.

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digby 10/18/2008 02:00:00 PM |

 
Hack For Hack

by digby


One of the most sickening things we have had to endure during this election season has been the sight of Wolf Blitzer sitting across a desk from Glenn Beck and "interviewing" him as if he weren't a cretinous, mouth-breathing, talk radio hack. So, it's good news that Beck is leaving for the far more lucrative wingnut welfare ghetto at Fox, where he belongs.

Sadly, CNN has decided it's a good time to elevate the unctuous blowhard William Bennett and they've given him a truly terrible show laughably called "Beyond The Politics." Check this out:

BENNETT: Once again, I'm joined by four exceptional thinkers from very different fields. Bill Galston is with the Brookings Institution, Tara Wall with "The Washington Times", Cornel West, professor at Princeton University, and Andrew McCarthy with "The National Review". [West is the only liberal of the bunch.]

This week, a federal judge ordered the release of 17 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Why do I bring that up? "The New York Times" headline said, "In Blow to President, Judge Orders 17 Detainees at Guantanamo Freed."

On Wednesday, a federal appeals court halted that plan for at least a week. Were we conveying more rights to alleged terrorists while government is growing? And while it's growing, does it lose focus? This is one of the things we conservatives worry about that we say we like limited government, the government that does a few things and a few things well. As we're seeing the expansion of this government, we're wondering about whether government's doing its first job.

MCCARTHY: And we're also seeing that when you allow your national security issues to be delegated to courts, which is a vast departure from our founding idea, which is that national security decisions are the most decisions made by a political community, they're made to be made by the political branches, not by the courts, this is what you see when you have your most unaccountable officials making these very important decisions.

And it actually seamlessly, I think, fits into a lot of our other discussion because here you have government colliding with itself to fairly well. We have a treaty that says that you can't send people back to a country where you have reason to believe that they'll be persecuted, which is why we can't send these - repatriate these guys back to China.

We have two statutes that say if you have received paramilitary training, or you have been involved in the promotion of terrorism, which there is indication that these guys have, the government says they're a threat to the Chinese, not to us. But under our law, they shouldn't be allowed to be brought into the United States. It's actually a violation of congressional statutes. And you have a federal judge who thinks he's not limited by any law whatsoever. So you have all these things combining in a perfect storm. And what it means to the American people is less security.

[...]

WEST: But I think we can't deny, though, that as we approach the end of the age of Reagan, the end of conservative rule, in addition to the economic catastrophe, you've got...

BENNETT: You're sure it's over?

WEST: I think it's - I think we're reaching an end. I mean, I think it's a good thing, but we're reaching the end.

BENNETT: Well...

WEST: But let's be honest about it. I mean, we know torture is a mark of uncivilized behavior. Any country associated with torture will have their image besmirched around the world. That's part of our challenge, too.

In addition to that, we had Katrina. So you got these three pillars, as it were. So that when we're talking about strong government, tapping people's phones, strong government, promoting torture under some kind of other language, this is something that can never be morally justified.

BENNETT: Was there torture at Guantanamo?

WALL: Yes, I mean...

WEST: From what the evidence...

WALL: There's - what evidence? There's no...

WEST: There's no evidence, no torture has ever taken place whatsoever?

BENNETT: Guantanamo?

WEST: Is there any evidence, any torture taken place in the last ten years by American authority?

MCCARTHY: What are you talking - what do you mean by torture? I mean, are you talking about water boarding? We've water boarded three guys so far as we know.

WALL: I also think the...

MCCARTHY: I don't think it's trivial at all.

WALL: (INAUDIBLE) water board these detainees.

WEST: Torture is taking place.

WALL: ...is astonishing, the liberties we afford these detainees. We had...

WEST: With no...

WALL: We had...

WEST: No habeas corpus.

WALL: We had...

MCCARTHY: Do you want no intelligence?

WALL: Our board actually had some of these military experts, our editorial board had some of these military experts and that - that oversee these military courts and the due process. And it is astonishing to hear the liberties that are afforded to these.

I mean, they get more liberties quite frankly than American citizens who are represented. And in fact, when what has happened with the Supreme Court, I think not only does it put in balance or it weakens our own security as a nation...

BENNETT: Right.

WALL: ...I think it sends a message to terrorists, particularly in a time - and Homeland Security experts will tell you, particularly -- this is a time that these terrorists, al Qaeda, and others, are paying very close attention to what is happening during the election.

It goes on like this for quite some time, with Cornell West ever more incredulous as these people look him square in the eye and contend that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. There is no torture. In fact, these detainees have been treated like kings! Better than American citizens!

William Bennett is a conservative operative, no different than Glenn Beck. And CNN has given him his own show from which to launch and validate right wing talking points. Fox doesn't do this. There are no equivalent shows on their network. They have no Joe Scarboroughs or Bill Bennetts.

So, while I celebrate the departure of Beck from CNN, it's pretty clear that CNN is still angling for their fair and balanced share of that mean, older, conservative male audience that everyone values so highly. Bennett ought to fill Beck's shoes quite nicely.

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digby 10/18/2008 01:00:00 PM |

 
The Shame Of Johnstown

by dday

As we head into the home stretch of the election, the disturbing examples of racism has risen. But for me, this one is personal:



My mother is from Johnstown. My grandmother and my aunt still live there. I spent many weeks and months there as a kid. The people in this video are people with whom I have probably eaten in the same restaurants, shopped in the same stores, walked down the same streets. They are working people who haven't had much economic opportunity in their Western Pennsylvania steel town in their lives. To see the racism somewhere that you have spent time is much more impactful. I always knew it was in the background, and I must admit that I've seen it at times in my own family. But a video like this with its countless examples is depressing.

I'm not concerned about Pennsylvania - the leaps forward in voter registration will make a difference. And both of my Pennsylvania resident grandmothers are voting for Obama. Neither were on board but I managed to convince them. But as we've been saying here for a while, the election is merely a part of the fight - then there's governing. And the poison that has been injected into the discourse is going to be a strong deterrent.

But of course, it's no different than the demonization of liberals and Democrats that has been a hallmark of the Republican noise machine for decades. One of the best ways to combat this is to reveal it - to create moments of recognition, moments of shame, moments of revulsion. Johnstown needs to know about Johnstown.

...I should add that this doesn't appear to be the prevailing opinion.




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dday 10/18/2008 11:34:00 AM |

 
Tell Them To Mind Their Own Business

by digby

It looks like the amendment to ban gay marriage in California is going to be a squeaker, unfortunately. And since Obama is way ahead here, it may be that we don't get the turnout that's needed. (That youthquake needs to be a 9.0.)

So, there are a few things to be done in these last two weeks if you care about civil rights and think it's outrageous that anyone believes they have the right to interfere in the marital arrangements of other consenting adults.

1) They need money. You can donate here.

2) If you live in California, volunteer. The Mormons have decided to make this their pet project and have flooded the Yes campaign with money and volunteers. The no campaign needs help.


Here are some links:

Campaign's latest ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHeTVAE4ZkY

Hello, I'm No On Prop 8 (great Mac ad spoof): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9T7ux8M4Go

Volunteer to Make History http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxHWB6eZ2JY

Ellen Urges Californians to Vote No on Prop. 8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_ai2LrgJ0

Logos, buttons, graphics: http://www.noonprop8.com/action/downloads


In this historic year it would be a shame if California couldn't muster the votes to knock down yet another barrier to civil rights.


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digby 10/18/2008 10:00:00 AM |

 
Tinklenberg Closing In On OVER $125,000!

by tristero

$116,000 as of the time of this post. Give, baby, give! Why? To defeat this asshole:



UPDATE: Up to $122,000 Keep going!

UPDATE: Goal met! Why stop now?

tristero 10/18/2008 08:25:00 AM |

 
¡Perfora, bebé, perfora!

by tristero


Now, here's a game changer:

If confirmed, it puts Cuba's [oil] reserves on par with those of the US and into the world's top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba's state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.

"It would change their whole equation. The government would have more money and no longer be dependent on foreign oil," said Kirby Jones, founder of the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association. "It could join the club of oil exporting nations."

"We have more data. I'm almost certain that if they ask for all the data we have, (their estimate) is going to grow considerably," said Cupet's exploration manager, Rafael Tenreyro Perez.

Havana based its dramatically higher estimate mainly on comparisons with oil output from similar geological structures off the coasts of Mexico and the US. Cuba's undersea geology was "very similar" to Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field in the Bay of Campeche, said Tenreyro.

PS If I got the Spanish wrong in the title, please correct me. UPDATE: Title corrected. Gracias, Plucky Underdog.

h/t, Atrios.

UPDATE: Special note to rightwingers, Republicans, and others plagued with severe cognitive distortions or poor English: This post is not "pro-Castro." I'm a longtime critic of The Beard. Being opposed to Castro doesn't mean I support the current US policy, of course, which I don't.

tristero 10/18/2008 07:02:00 AM |

 
Meet America's Deciders: The Undecideds

by tristero



tristero 10/18/2008 05:31:00 AM |

 
Bachmann In Trouble

by tristero

Bachmann was in trouble even before her disgusting rant on Matthews. And for those of you who haven't seen it, here it is again:



Let's try to push the ActBlue page of Bachmann's opponent, El Tinklenberg to $100,000 today. We're less than $7,000 $3,000 away .

Goal met! New goal. $125,000! Give now!

tristero 10/18/2008 03:32:00 AM |

Friday, October 17, 2008

 
Newtie's New Contract

by digby

A reader received this from Newt Gingrich's group "American Solutions for Winning The Future" this morning. This is the refined version of his earlier "plan" to bail out the economy. (Click on the image to enlarge.)




I particularly like the amazing chutzpah of suggesting that repealing mark to market and Sarbanes-Oxley will solve the problem. See, what caused the financial crisis was too much regulation which made the companies less accountable than they were before. You just have to love the stubbornness with which these guys cling to their delusions even in the face of stone cold reality.

The "make America more like Singapore and Ireland" are unusual for the exceptionalist crowd, but maybe this is a sort of progress... The rest is a hodgepodge of wingnut wet dreams and traditional pitchfork populist war cries.

Don't underestimate the political power of foolishness like this, however. It's all got a certain intuitive logic even if it is completely incoherent. Complicated problems are often subject to this kind of manipulation and Newtie is very good at finding that particular sweet spot of illogic that will appeal to average Americans who have absorbed just enough conservative propaganda to feel that what he says just "makes sense."


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digby 10/17/2008 08:30:00 PM |

 
Squeezing Every Last Drop

by digby

... of power.

Somebody needs to tell the twits at CNN about this. They've been flogging this ACORN story as if it features fellatio or something. It's been totally wild and irresponsible. And, naturally, they've missed the real story.

From TPM:

A former top Department of Justice voting rights official -- who once worked with John McCain in defense of the senator's campaign-finance reform bill -- has added his name to the growing chorus that is denouncing the department's investigation of ACORN as a shameful and inappropriate politicization of Justice along the lines of the US attorney firings.

Speaking to TPMmuckraker, Gerry Hebert described the investigation, word of which was leaked off the record to the Associated Press less than three weeks before the election, as "a continuation of injecting DOJ into what has clearly become a political issue."

He continued: "That's really not the proper role for the DOJ, and why their policies counsel otherwise."

To demonstrate that point, Hebert provided TPMmuckraker with a copy of the department's Manual on Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses.

Under a section headlined "Investigative Considerations in Election Fraud Cases", the manual reads:

When investigating election fraud, three considerations that are absent from most criminal investigations must be kept in mind: (1) respect for the primary role of the states in administering the voting process, (2) an awareness of the role of the election in the governmental process, and (3) sensitivity to the exercise of First Amendment rights in the election context. As a result there are limitations on various investigative steps in an election fraud case.

In most cases, election-related documents should not be taken from the custody of local election administrators until the election to which they pertain has been certified, and the time for contesting the election results has expired. This avoids interfering with the governmental processes affected by the election

Another limitation affects voter interviews. Election fraud cases often depend on the testimony of individual voters whose votes were co-opted in one way or another. But in most cases voters should not be interviewed, or other voter-related investigation done, until after the election is over. Such overt investigative steps may chill legitimate voting activities. They are also likely to be perceived by voters and candidates as an intrusion into the election. Indeed, the fact of a federal criminal investigation may itself become an issue in the election.

I'm sure CNN could call this fellow and get him on the air. And there are others:

... House Judiciary chair John Conyers, and, in an interview with TPMmuckraker, former US attorney David Iglesias, have ... also connected the FBI's ACORN investigation to the kind of politicization exposed in the firings saga.

And finally, (thank you!) the Obama campaign has engaged on this:

"With this voter fraud [investigation], we're seeing an unholy alliance of law enforcement and the ugliest form of partisan politics," Bob Bauer, an elections lawyer with the Obama camp, said on a conference call with reporters just now. Bauer compared the decision to launch the investigation with the US attorneys scandal, in which several US attorneys were fired for their unwillingess to pursue politically charged cases, including voter fraud, with sufficient aggression to satisfy the Bush administration.

Bauer released a letter sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling on him to have the issue taken on by Nora Dannehy, the prosecutor he appointed to investigate the US attorney firings.

Maybe now the media will take a closer look at what's going on here. They have been actively helping the Republicans breathlessly frame this election as illegitimate based on nothing more than right wing propaganda. Events are driving the election to a possible big win in a couple of weeks, but this is the sort of thing that could deny Obama a much needed mandate to do what needs to be done. That's part of the plan.


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digby 10/17/2008 06:30:00 PM |

 
Biden Gets It Exactly Right

by tristero

There was a time quite recently when Democrats would stupidly ignore disgusting remarks like this:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told a fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Thursday night:

"We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in the wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," she said.

Now, Democrats aren't taking it anymore:

At a rally in Mesilla, New Mexico, on Friday, Biden responded to those comments in a vociferous tone.

"I hope it was just a slip on her part and she doesn't really mean it. But she said, it was reported she said, that she likes to visit, 'pro-American' parts of the country," he said to loud boos.

"It doesn't matter where you live, we all love this country, and I hope it gets through. We all love this country," he said. "We are one nation, under God, indivisible. We are all patriotic. We all love our country in every part of this nation! And I'm tired. I am tired, tired, tired, tired of the implications about patriotism."

Note to conservatives: Indeed, Palin later clarified those remarks. She had to, but only because Democrats, liberals, and others strongly objected. However, the past eight years were filled with Republicans impugning the patriotism of Democrats and liberals. Here, for example, is Steve Dunleavy, only weeks after the 9/11 attacks:

It is amazing how liberals, whom I regard as traitors in this time of crisis...

I have no illusions that Republicans will stop questioning the patriotism of Democrats and liberals any time soon. It will start to happen only when a nationally respected Dem goes on the offense, and says publicly, for example, that the scoundrels who outed Valerie Plame actually were traitors who deliberately, with malice aforethought, imperiled the safety of their country.

UPDATE: Listen to this asshole. This has to stop. Some people think Chris Matthews tore her apart. Not true. He was far too polite. He didn't challenge her: he just asked a few pointed questions and let her rant and rant and rant.



One hopes that her Democratic colleagues in the House would call her on this bullshit. Fat chance.

UPDATE: If you'd like to help get rid Bachmann, perhaps you might consider a donation to her opponent. If you don't want to donate directly to Democrats - highly suggested, as it increases liberal influence if we can package donations - I'll try to locate a liberal group to fund a donation through and post it as another update.

UPDATE: Here's a link to an ActBlue site that supports Tinklenberg

tristero 10/17/2008 05:30:00 PM |

 
Saving The Fabric of Democracy

by digby

This was inevitable. After all, McCain himself accused them of destroying the fabric of democracy on national television:

An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group's Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.

Attorneys for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now were notifying the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division of the incidents, said Brian Kettenring, a Florida-based spokesman for the group.

Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have verbally attacked the group repeatedly in recent days, alleging a widespread vote-fraud scheme, although they've provided little proof. It was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is examining whether thousands of fraudulent voter-registration applications submitted by some ACORN workers were part of a systematic effort or isolated incidents.

Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended."

A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said.

Meanwhile, Congresswoman Michelle Bachman appeared on Hardball today and pretty much openly called for new McCarthy hearings to root out "unamerican" liberals in the government.

This was predicted.


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digby 10/17/2008 03:30:00 PM |

 
Cuckoo Birds

by digby

Many of us have been girding ourselves for the inevitable emergence of the fiscal responsibility scolds, who pop up like stinkweed whenever Democrats take office. It was clear they were preparing a full frontal attack on government spending, but after the events of the last month I would have thought they'd stick their heads back down and wait for a little bit to see if their case would now endanger the entire economy.

No such luck. They are still flogging their obsession with entitlement spending uber alles. But some economists aren't taking this lying down. Here's James Galbraith:

Excuse me for asking an impolite question.

But did David Walker, Eugene Steuerle -- or Peter G. Peterson himself -- devote even five percent of the vast resources that they have lavished in recent years on the supposed "entitlement crisis" to warning about the impending mess on Wall Street?

Did they write anything about it? Did they speak out against the Bush administration's abandonment of supervisory responsibility in the financial system? Did they protest the massive abuse of unsophisticated home buyers by the loan originators in the subprime sector? Did they comment on "liars' loans," "neutron loans" and "toxic waste"? Were they heard about the risks involved in securitizing subprime loans? Did they foresee that credit default swaps could collapse like a house of cards? Did they caution that the stock market might crash, ruining the private retirements of millions of Americans?

If they did, I must have missed it.

Peter G. Peterson is one of the leading figures on Wall Street. Isn't it reasonable to ask, that if he and his team wish to be taken seriously on matters of public finance, that they should have shown some leadership, some wisdom, some insight and some foresight on the disaster brewing in their own backyard?

As the disaster on Wall Street developed, George Soros was heard from. Warren Buffett was heard from. Was Peter G. Peterson heard from? Was David Walker heard from? Was Eugene Steuerle heard from? I think they were not.

What is Mr. Walker's approach to subprime crisis today? His comment above makes his approach clear. It is to use the crisis as a rhetorical springboard, in order to divert the conversation back to what he calls the "super sub-prime crisis associated with the federal government's deteriorating finances..."

But the fact is, the subprime crisis is real. The collapse of interbank lending is real. The collapsing stock market is real. The disintegration of the financial system is real. The collapse of the housing sector is real. The credit crunch and the recession are real. You can see this in the interest rate spreads and in the credit that is unavailable at any price.

Mr. Walker's "super subprime crisis" of the federal government is not real. It is a pure figment of the imagination. It is something Mr. Walker sees in his mind's eye. He sees it in his budget projections. He sees it in his balance sheets, which are the oddest balance sheets I've ever seen, because they have all liabilities and no assets.

But the financial markets do not see it. How can we tell? Because those markets are willing, today, to lend unlimited sums to the Federal Government on supremely favorable terms. What is the 20 year Treasury bond rate? Last month, it was 4.32 percent. That is almost exactly what it was in December 1959, in the last month of the Eisnehower administration. The United States Government wasn't going bankrupt then and it isn't going bankrupt now.

The point is directly relevant to the question posed by National Journal: "is there room for fiscal stimulus?" Of course there is.

Not only that, sustained fiscal expansion (I dislike the term "stimulus" because I do not think that a short-term policy will work) will be essential in the next administration if the financial rescue just undertaken is to succeed. It will be necessary to stabilize the housing sector. It will be necessary to stabilize state and local government spending, undercut by falling property tax revenues. It will be necessary to stabilize the incomes and expenditures, in the aggregate, of the elderly. It will be necessary to finance new capital spending at the federal, state and local levels.

Failure to do this will cause the housing crisis to get worse. And that will cause the losses in the financial sector to multiply, overwhelming all efforts to stabilize finance.

I was at the Peterson Institute the other day. There I heard a very good panel discussion of the financial crisis, featuring Fred Bergsten, Adam Posen, Morris Goldstein and others. All agreed that the deficit would exceed one trillion dollars next year. All agreed on the need for the expansionary and stabilizing steps outlined above. Nobody was defending, in any serious way, the Walker-Steuerle line.

I found this greatly encouraging.

I would find it encouraging too if the Village CW wasn't gelling around the idea that the government is going to have to "tighten its belt" at a time when it most needs to take the belt all the way off. It's almost as if they are those little birds on cuckoo clocks popping out every hour on the hour during a Democratic presidency, squawking about deficit reduction and entitlements. Even in the middle of an economic crisis they maintain that the government is going to have to tackle the deficit right this minute despite the fact that it is, as Galbraith points out above, a disastrous policy.

I don't know how much pressure these people can bring to bear on an Obama administration, but so far, he hasn't taken this on directly. I'm inclined to cut him some slack in these last few weeks simply because it's too difficult to reeducate the American public in such a short time. But he's going to have to start doing it at some point or risk the success of his administration for outmoded Republican cant.

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digby 10/17/2008 02:30:00 PM |

 
Don't Blame The Rubes

by digby

More calumny:

Among the images that greeted visitors to the John McCain campaign office in Pompano Beach this week was a sign headlined "Barrack Hussein Obama” that compared the Democratic presidential candidate to Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro.

Shown a picture of the sign Thursday night, Broward Republican Chairman Chip LaMarca said he was "disgusted" by it and would immediately go to the office and remove it.

"I'm speechless at the ignorance," LaMarca said. "It's not something we can condone.

I wonder if they have considered who it is that might be condoning this type of thinking:

Tom Delay is on a book tour...The book, “No Retreat, No Surrender,” has generated a bunch of press, but it’s clear that Jewish Democratic activists haven’t read it. Or else they would have jumped all over this graff…

"I believe it was Adolf Hitler who first acknowledged that the big lie is more effective than the little lie, because the big lie is so audacious, such an astonishing immorality, that people have a hard time believing anyone would say it if it wasn’t true. You know, the big lie — like the Holocaust never happened or dark-skinned people are less intelligent than light-skinned people. Well, by charging this big lie” — that DeLay violated campaign-finance laws in Texas — “liberals have finally joined the ranks of scoundrels like Hitler.”

He's funny ...

Or this, from wingnut welfare queen, Brent Bozell:

Obama's communist connection adds to mounting public concern about a candidate who has come out of virtually nowhere, with a brief U.S. Senate legislative record, to become the Democratic Party frontrunner for the U.S. presidency. In the latest Real Clear Politics poll average, Obama beats Republican John McCain by almost four percentage points.

AIM recently disclosed that Obama has well-documented socialist connections, which help explain why he sponsored a "Global Poverty Act" designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, in order to meet U.N. demands. The bill has passed the House and a Senate committee, and awaits full Senate action.

But the Communist Party connection through Davis is even more ominous. Decades ago, the CPUSA had tens of thousands of members, some of them covert agents who had penetrated the U.S. Government. It received secret subsidies from the old Soviet Union.

This stuff is nothing unusual among the right. All Democrats are considered communists of some sort among these folks. (Bill Clinton traveled to Russia as a college student --- OMG!) But there is something deliciously frightening in their minds about a black communist. They may not even know who Paul Robeson was, but they've absorbed the message into their tiny lizard brains.

Recall this one recently from National Review's Lisa Schiffrin (of "W makes me so hot when he wears that tight jumpsuit" fame) who wrote:

Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics. (During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier — also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby.)

I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama's family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual. And, according to what Obama wrote in his first autobiography, the man in question — Frank Marshall Davis — appears to have been Barack's own mentor, and even a father figure. Of course, since the Soviet Union itself no longer exists, it's an open question what it means practically to have been politically mentored by an official Communist. Ideologically, the implications are clearer.

Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student. Love? Sure, why not? But what else was going on around them that made it feasible? Before readers level cheap accusations of racism — let's recall that the very question of interracial marriage only became a big issue later in the 1960s. The notion of a large group of mixed race Americans became an issue during and after the Vietnam War. Even the civil-rights movement kept this culturally explosive matter at arm's distance.

It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution. To be sure, there was much to be discontented about, for black Americans, prior to the civil-rights revolution. To their credit, of course, most black Americans didn't buy the commie line — and showed more faith in the possibilities of democratic change than in radical politics, and the results on display in Moscow.

Time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family's background, now that his chances of being president have increased so much.

(Belle Waring does a masterful deconstruction of this ugly, multi-faceted smear, here.)

Why blame some obscure Republican citizen for putting up a sign comparing Obama with famous communists and Hitler down in Florida? This stuff is coming from well known movement conservatives and featured in their respected publications and websites. Of course people are picking it up around the country. They're doing exactly what they're supposed to do.


H/T to BB
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digby 10/17/2008 12:30:00 PM |

 
Oh Who Cares

by digby

Is there any value in an endorsement that comes in the last two weeks of a campaign where the endorsee is substantially ahead? It wouldn't hurt to have General Luke Warmwater come out for Obama, but I don't see why anyone but the Villagers will give a damn.


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digby 10/17/2008 11:00:00 AM |

 
Hot Potato

by digby

The Supremes wisely (and unanimously) refused to get burned by Republican election fraud shennanigans before the election. (No guarantees about after...)

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in favor of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, overturning a lower-court order that she provide to county elections boards by today details of discrepancies discovered with new voter registrations.

The court ruled 9-0 that the Ohio Republican Party, which sued Brunner for the information, was unlikely to succeed in its arguments that Brunner legally could be sued on this issue and that the courts had the authority to issue the order.

But the court expressed no opinion about whether federal law was being followed properly.

At issue is what should be done when personal information from newly registered voters doesn't match state motor vehicle and federal Social Security records after an automatic computer check is done.

The ruling settles for now a dispute that had worked its way through the lower federal courts in recent days, with district and appellate judges taking different sides on the issue.

I love the theory of this conspiracy. People are registering voters with names, addresses, ages, drivers' license numbers or last four digits of their Social Security numbers, which are very close to real voter's information. (So close they appear to be data entry typos.) And then these 200,000 fraudulent voters, all of whom are in on the secret plan, vote under their own names and later come back and vote again under the closely matched phony information. (Either that or they all have an elaborate second identity which includes phony ID and social security numbers.)

If the Democrats can pull this off, I think it's clear they should win the election just for their supernatural ability to get hundreds of thousands of people to keep such a secret.
digby 10/17/2008 10:00:00 AM |

 
Obama vs. McCain On Science And Innovation

by tristero

As this NY Times guide makes clear, there are points of agreement between Obama and McCain when it comes to the government's role in science and innovation issues. But the differences are stark and for anyone who cares about America's role in advancing science and technology, the choice is a no brainer. Let me not keep you in suspense. Obama's positions are far superior to his opponent's.

In the area of "research spending" for example, McCain is full of stunts. One of them is just plain stupid political nonsense: McCain would "freeze research spending for at least a year." Now, this "idea" is not something reasonable people discuss. No. Reasonable people laugh uproariously and change the subject. Why? Because if you discuss this crackpot notion and earnestly try to debunk it, you fall into the exact same trap that was set by the proposal to invade Iraq. You elevate its status and make it appear plausible when it is simply as batshit crazy as proposing a space mission to rendezvous with the alien spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.

Slightly less screwy is McCain's proposal for a $300 million prize for battery technology innovation. Sure, why not? I suppose it can't hurt and the publicity stunt will focus the public's attention on an important issue in the development of the electric car and other new gadgets. But that is essentially all it is: A publicity stunt.

Finally, McCain resorts to those cure-all tonics Republicans swear by: tax cuts and deregulation. That's not a program that engages the US government in serious research. That's a program that elevates neglect, corruption, and mismanagement to official government policy. With an attitude like that, McCain will create precisely the kind of government he and his party claim to despise.

Obama on the other hand will "double spending on basic research over 10 years." Since there is no hoo-hah from Obama on deregulation, we can assume that he expects to provide appropriate oversight. (Needless to say, those who are close to the specific issues will need to make sure this actually happens.) That is smart. In numerous sciences, from computing to physics to biology, technological advances are proceeding at an accelerated pace. By doubling the money available (and naturally, spending it wisely), Obama will help prevent a brain drain to other countries. This does have the potential to significantly advance America's lead in innovative science and technology.

Obama would go further, creating " a public-private network of business incubators and establish a fund to advance manufacturing technology." These are specific policy proposals, not publicity stunts. Sure, a fund to "advance manufacturing technology" could create a prize for battery innovation, but Obama, quite rightly, doesn't insist upon a mere publicity stunt. Rather he insists upon finding, and funding, programs that have a chance to work.

With Obama, you find a seriousness of purpose in erecting a framework to spend government money responsibly. With McCain, you find gimmicks and total nonsense. If you go through the guide, this pattern repeats itself. Both candidates address stem cell research. Obama, relying upon the authority of the scientists who actually work with stem cells, simply supports "federal financing for research on human embryonic stem cells." This is a support based not on ideology, but knowledge gleaned from experts. McCain, the guide notes, "has supported federal financing for embryonic stem cell research; lately has suggested that other kinds of stem cells may make the use of embryonic cells unncessary." In other words, under pressure from the lunatic right, which puts ideology above competence, McCain is prepared to waste money pursuing esoterica if his rightwing backers think it is politically correct to do so. This is kind of like funding abstinence-only education. Yes, I'm aware that potential alternatives to embryonic stem cells have been developed. But, from what I can tell, they all have problems that embryonic stem cells don't. McCain, in the interest of ideological purity, is prepared, apparently, to bet taxpayer's money merely on the hope that these alternatives may work out rather than follow the advice of experts.

And finally, we get to space exploration. Obama's approach is a conservative response to the conventional wisdom of experts in the field. But note the nod towards a utilitarian purpose for exploring space: it could actually yield some important insights into "addressing global challenges like climate change." McCain wants more star wars coupled with wildly expensive and dangerous flyboy-style publicity stunts that reflect "national power and pride." As for economic development, he is surely joking.

In short, one candidate - Obama - has put forth a proposal for a sensible role for the US government to play in 21st Century scientific innovation. The other - McCain - has proposed, with very few differences, a continuation of George W. Bush's ignorant, ideologically stained strategy. Obama has been serious, McCain frivolous.

While I am no scientist, simply an outside observer with an intense interest in it, I suspect that no rational scientist can, in all seriousness, support McCain's proposals for government's role in science over Obama's.

tristero 10/17/2008 07:34:00 AM |

 
The Voices Of Bryan And Taft

by tristero

If you have the slightest interest in American history, then this is incredibly cool. A CD company, Archeophone Records has released Debate '08. That's 1908, dear friends, the master debaters being Williams Jennings Bryan, Democrat, and William Howard Taft, Republican.

But this actually isn't a debate in any sense of the word. Essentially, both guys made 2 minute long records that were sold for the whopping price of $ .35 (about eight bucks today). Bryan made ten recordings, Taft twelve. Taft won, duh. Whether these recordings had anything to do with that win is...debatable.

These are fascinating documents. William Jennings Bryan, of course, was an early bete noire for anyone who cares about science. He was the celebrity lawyer for the prosecution in the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, the most iconic trial regarding the teaching of evolution.* (I would argue, however, that the Dover Panda Trial was far more decisive and just as enjoyable a story.)

What is less well known - and hard to square with modern intellectual/political alliances - is that Bryan also had a reputation as a populist and liberal. The recordings available at the first link bear that out. Bryan makes the case against imperialism and for guaranties of bank deposits. Taft, on the other hand, favors keeping troops in the Philippines and believes that "enforced insurance of bank deposits" will crash the American economic system and is deeply unfair. To bankers, of course. Even then, people, even then.

Also extremely interesting are the voices of the two men. They are speaking in a modified version of what must have been their crowd voices, a strident tone necessary so that they could be heard using no, or extremely primitive, amplification. This sound, combined with the monotonic inflection with which both men read their texts, is rarely heard today. But it provides some insight into how early orators sounded in the pre-phonograph era (oh, what I would give to hear Lincoln read the Second Inaugural!).

Even more interesting to my ear are the accents, which are different from any modern American one I know. I detected a very unusual "o" sound and a subtly different inflection of the "r" from contemporary speech, for example. Your mileage may vary, but I don't think these accents exist anymore. Even my father, born 1909 and about to celebrate his centennial, sounds quite different.

Great stuff. I ordered my copy, and some early women blues. Take a listen and you may, too.

h/t, Alex Ross.

*Despite the fact that parts of it were broadcast quite widely (perhaps nationwide), I don't believe recordings of the Scopes Monkey Trial exist. If that is not the case, PLEASE let me know immediately!

UPDATE: Voices of the presidents going back to Harrison can be heard here. Thanks to Michael in comments.

tristero 10/17/2008 06:24:00 AM |

 
Thanks Josh

by digby

This is one guy who has some credibility to talk about this.

From TPM:

David Iglesias says he's shocked by the news, leaked today to the Associated Press, that the FBI is pursuing a voter-fraud investigation into ACORN just weeks before the election.

"I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again," Iglesias told TPMmuckraker. "Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic." In 2006, Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney thanks partly to his reluctance to pursue voter-fraud cases as aggressively as DOJ wanted -- one of several U.S. attorneys fired for inappropriate political reasons, according to a recently released report by DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.

Iglesias, who has been the most outspoken of the fired U.S. attorneys, went on to say that the FBI's investigation seemed designed to inappropriately create a "boogeyman" out of voter fraud.

And he added that it "stands to reason" that the investigation was launched in response to GOP complaints. In recent weeks, national Republican figures -- including John McCain at last night's debate -- have sought to make an issue out of ACORN's voter-registration activities.

As we noted earlier, last year, Sen. Diane Feinstein publicly highlighted changes made to DOJ's election crimes manual, which lowered the bar for voter-fraud prosecutions, and made it easier to bring vote-fraud cases close to the election.

Speaking today to TPMmuckraker, Iglesias called such changes "extremely problematic."

The way in which the news was revealed today -- Associated Press sourced its report to two "senior law enforcement officials" who "spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election" -- is also raising eyebrows.

Both Iglesias and Bud Cummins -- another of the U.S. attorneys who, according to the IG report, was also fired for political reasons -- told TPMmuckraker that DOJ guidelines do allow US attorneys to speak publicly about an investigation, even before bringing an indictment, if it's to allay public concern over an issue.

But that certainly wouldn't cover anonymous leaks. "If you can't say it with your name on it, it's fair to say you should not be saying it," Cummins told TPMmuckraker.

Earlier this afternoon, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI) released a letter he sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI director Robert Mueller, which connected today's news to the U.S. attorney firings, and to recent GOP efforts to stoke fears over voter fraud.

It's way past time for the mainstream media to start connecting some dots here. The US Attorney scandals and this ACORN nonsense are pieces of the same story.


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digby 10/17/2008 04:00:00 AM |