Category: politics

News of US politics

Fake memes and Obama

Seth Anderson0 comment

Jamison Foser dissects some recent anti-Obama press, including a reporter named Amy Chozick’s ridiculous Wall Street Journal article about Obama being too skinny for anyone to vote for.

Chozick apparently had some trouble finding people to support the crackpot premise that Obama’s physical fitness might cause voters to question his fitness for office, so she turned to trolling Internet message boards in desperate search of someone — anyone — she could quote. As the blog Sadly, No! revealed, Chozick posted a Yahoo! Message Board thread on July 15, asking, “Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his ‘no excess body fat’? Please let me know. Thanks!”

About three-and-a-half hours later, Chozick got her first response — a post ridiculing her for her focus on “totally meaningless drivel.” Nearly an hour after that, Chozick finally got the response she was looking for. A user posting under the name “onlinebeerbellygirl” wrote, “Yes I think He [sic] is to [sic] skinny to be President. … I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.” Chozick quoted the post in her article — one of only two quotes agreeing with the premise of the article. She did not, however, disclose that the quote had come only after she started a thread encouraging people to make such comments. After she got caught, the Journal acknowledged: “The article should have disclosed that the reporter used the bulletin board to elicit the comment.”

There may be more to it than that. A post in a subsequent Yahoo! Message Board discussion thread devoted to Chozick’s article noted that “[n]either Chozick nor ‘onlinebeerbellygirl’ has made any other posts on Yahoo before or since, and both profiles appear to have been created on 7/15, the day Chozick started the topics. It certainly looks like Amy Chozick constructed the whole thing.”

Another post wondered: “Do WSJ reporters make up fake IDs and make up fake quotes?”

Chozick’s original thread has been deleted (a cached copy is available here). Even more curiously, a search of the Yahoo! message boards for “onlinebeerbellygirl” comes up empty. Whether “onlinebeerbellygirl” ever really existed at all or was a Chozick invention, running a 1,300-word article suggesting Obama is too skinny to be president, based upon a random Internet message board post, is insane. As Slate.com’s Tim Noah noted, “In the vastness of cyberspace, you can always find somebody who will say whatever you want.”

[From Media Matters – “Obama coverage finds dark lining around silver clouds”; by Jamison Foser]

Obama is Plugged In to the Nation

No wonder newspaper circulation keeps dropping. Mr. Foser continues on to more serious, but equally insane fake memes, like that Obama is “too Presidential” to be President, or too well-educated. Ummm, yeah.

Drug Legalization 1970

Seth Anderson8 Comments

Was reading a Gore Vidal polemic (Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace), and ran across a mention of a published New York Times op-ed piece from September 26, 1970. With some trepidation, but a belly full of wine and thus courage in the realm of copyright matters, I reproduce the article in full. 1970 was thirty-eight years ago after all. Please forgive any typos: the New York Times digital archive only goes back as far as the 1980s, previous articles are available only as image scans, and the OCR contained in my copy of Adobe Acrobat is somewhat anemic. Better than typing it myself, but not perfect.

It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect-good and bad-the drug will have on whoever takes it. This will require heroic honesty. Don’t say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know-unlike “speed,” which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which is addictive and difficult to kick.

For the record, I have tried-once-most every drug and liked none, disproving the popular Fu Manchu theory that a single whiff of opium will enslave the mind. Nevertheless many drugs are bad for certain people to take and they should be told about them in a sensible way.

Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each man has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbor’s pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor’s idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit).

This is a startling notion to the current generation of Americans who reflect on our system of public education which has made the Bill of Rights, literally, unacceptable to a majority of high school graduates (see the annual Purdue reports) who now form the Unsilent majority”-a phrase which that underestimated wit Richard Nixon took from Homer, who used it to describe the dead.

Now one can hear the warning rumble begin: if everyone is allowed to take drugs everyone will and the GNP will decrease, the Commies will stop us from making everyone free, and we shall end up a race of Zombies, passively murmuring “groovie”1 to one another. Alarming thought. Yet it seems most unlikely that any reasonably sane person will become a drug addict if he knows in advance what addiction is going to be like.

Is everyone reasonably sane? No. Some people will always become drug addicts Just as some people will always become alcoholics, and it is just too bad. Every man, however, has the power (and should have the right) to kill himself if he chooses. But since most men don’t, they won’t be mainliners either. Nevertheless, forbidding people things they like or think they might enjoy only makes them want those things all the more. This psychological insight is, for some mysterious reason, perennially denied our governors.

It is a lucky thing for the American moralist that our country has always existed in a kind of time-vacuum: we have no public memory of anything that happened before last Tuesday. No one in Washington today recalls what happened during the years alcohol was forbidden to the people by a Congress that thought it had a divine mission to stamp out Demon Rum and so launched the greatest crime wave in the country’s history, caused thousands of deaths from bad alcohol, and created a general (and persisting) contempt for the laws of the United States.

The same thing is happening today. But the government has learned nothing from past attempts at prohibition, not to mention repression.

Last year when the supply of Mexican marijuana was slightly curtailed by the Feds, the pushers got the kids hooked on heroin and deaths increased dramatically, particularly in New York. Whose fault? Evil men like the Mafiosi? Permissive Dr. Spock? Wild eyed Dr. Leary? No.

The Government of the United States was responsible for those deaths. The bureaucratic machine has a vested interest in playing cops and robbers. Both the Bureau of Narcotics and the Mafia want strong laws against the sale and use of drugs because if drugs are sold at cost there would be no money in it for anyone. If there was no money in it for the Mafia, there would be no friendly playground pushers, and addicts would not commit crimes to pay for the next fix. Finally, if there was no money in it, the Bureau of Narcotics would wither away, something they’re not about to do without a struggle.

Will anything sensible be done? Of course not. The American people are as devoted to the idea of sin and its punishment as they are to making money-and fighting drugs is nearly as big a business as pushing them. Since the combination of sin and money is irresistible (particularly to the professional politician), the situation will only grow worse.

Gore Vidal, playwright and novelist, is the author of the newly published “Two Sisters.”


“Two Sisters” (Gore Vidal)

The more things change…

Actually, some things have changed, mostly the names of the drugs in question, and the repressiveness of the federal government. Hundreds of thousands of people are still in jail for the crime of using or selling a weed, and the word “groovie” is only used ironically2.

Footnotes:
  1. sic – I’ve never seen the word spelled this way, but hey, it was published in the New York Times, so maybe a variant spelling? [↩]
  2. even when spelled groovy, it still is only used ironically [↩]

Trolls For McCain

Seth Anderson0 comment

Quite amusing, really.

You knew somehow it would come to this. John McCain’s campaign is offering their supporters redeemable points to troll websites and write pro-McCain comments. It’s the professionalization of astroturfing. Because it’s a conservative effort, they give them the exact words and invite them to cut and paste them onto the sites.

[From Hullabaloo -Trolling For Fun And Profit]

Apparently, the McCain campaign was finding it difficult to generate much enthusiasm without paying for it.

Wrong Bus

[Wrong Bus McCain]

The Washington Post adds:

Spread John McCain’s official talking points around the Web — and you could win valuable prizes!

That, in essence, is the McCain campaign’s pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of “AstroTurf” campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper.

On McCain’s Web site, visitors are invited to “Spread the Word” about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor’s screen name. The site offers sample comments (“John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .”) and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into “conservative,” “liberal,” “moderate” and “other” categories. Just cut and paste.

Paucity of ideas, indeed.

McCain and His Fake Energy Plan

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Never Fear
[Never Fear! Fuelman is Here!]

Buried in an article about Obama’s call for releasing oil from the Strategic Oil Reserves is a succinct summary of McCain’s nonsensical energy plan.

Obama emphasized on Monday that using reserves is a temporary fix and that drilling is not “a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution.” McCain has said that drilling would have a “psychological” benefit for consumers; his proposal to suspend the 18-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax was ignored by lawmakers on Capitol Hill and criticized by economists, who said it would not lead to a noticeable change in prices.

On the stump, McCain talks frequently about electric power, a subject that energy experts say will do little to affect gas prices. His plan to build 45 nuclear power plants, which he will highlight with a visit to a Michigan plant Tuesday, would take decades.

[From Obama Urges Opening Up Oil Reserves – washingtonpost.com]

Gas costs update

gas price breakdown

Psychological benefit? Really? I’m not sure consumers would worry less about high gasoline prices knowing that oil corporations have the ability to drill for oil sometime in the future. And nuclear plants to be completed long after Senator McCain is deceased will help lower gas prices how exactly? Any specifics about where these plants are going to be located? In a convenient location that nobody would complain about, I’m sure. Show me these 45 new locations on a map, please.

(H/T a letter in Altercation by Ben Miller)
Gas At Last
[Gas At Last – Alaskan Service Station]

Iraq and al-Qaida

Seth Anderson0 comment


“The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” (Ron Suskind)

Despite what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi might think1 misleading Congress is an impeachable offense.

Ron Suskind is really good at burying a lede.

Diligent, linear-minded readers will have to ford through 370 pages of his alternately incisive and gauzy book, “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism,” to reach the accusation that has set the nation’s blogs abuzz. In September 2003, according to Suskind, CIA officials — at the direct command of then-CIA director George Tenet and at the behest of the White House — deliberately forged a backdated letter from Iraqi security chief Tahir Jalil Habbush to Saddam Hussein. The phony letter claimed that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had trained for his mission in Iraq and that al-Qaida had facilitated mysterious shipments from Niger to Iraq. The letter was the “slam dunk” the Bush administration had been seeking so desperately: evidence of a direct operational link between al-Qaida and Saddam’s regime.

Leaked to conservative British journalist Con Coughlin, the letter was made public just as Saddam was captured in his spider hole near Tikrit. In the course of a single news cycle, the war against Saddam had been “vindicated,” Saddam himself had been flushed from hiding, and the Bush administration’s war had seemingly reached its triumphal and foregone conclusion. Or had it?

To further refine the question: Did nobody think it remarkable that an intelligence chief would commit such damning information to paper and then sign it in his own hand?

[snip]

Since then, that narrative has unraveled thread by thread — as has the Habbush letter. That it was a forgery can no longer be doubted; that it originated with the White House may be harder to prove. Two former CIA officials — Rob Richer and John Maguire — have gone on record as saying they were personally charged with carrying out the forgery, but their marching orders, if they existed, came directly from Tenet (who has fiercely denied the story). The closest thing Suskind has to a smoking gun is Richer’s memory, five years later, of “looking down at the creamy White House stationery on which the assignment was written.” But here, too, a skeptic’s antennae begin to quiver: Why would an operation so patently illegal be printed on official stationery? It’s worth placing Richer’s and Maguire’s charges, too, in the context of the often-rancorous relations between White House officials and CIA veterans, who have seen their sphere of influence severely curtailed in post-9/11

[From Louis Bayard reviews “The Way of the World” by Ron Suskind | Salon Books]

Impeach the bastards, haul them in criminal court for the murder of thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis!

Footnotes:
  1. she famously stated “Impeachment is off the table”, and allows no real discussion of the topic [↩]

Corruption, a Chevy and McCain

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Yes, a champion of campaign finance reform, indeed.

Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain’s decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.

The donations, first traced by Campaign Money Watch last week, were part of $1.2 million in oil industry contributions to McCain’s Victory ’08 Committee, 73 percent coming after McCain reversed his long-held opposition to offshore oil drilling.

[From McClatchy Washington Bureau | 08/06/2008 | Did New York couple give $61,600 to McCain, GOP?]

Even though this couple just bought (in Feb, 2008) a 1993 Chevy (estimated to be around $3,000, if in good shape), they could afford to donate $61,600 to McCain and the RNC. Hmmmm, smells a little fishy to me.

Of the $57,000 the Rocchios donated in June, $4,600 went to McCain’s general election “compliance committee,” to pay for campaign lawyers and auditors, and $52,400 went to the RNC, which devotes nearly all of its money to supporting McCain’s presidential bid

The Washington Post has more on the same topic:

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton.

[From Bundler Collects From Unlikely Donors – washingtonpost.com]

The bundler in this territory is Harry Sargeant III, owner of an oil-trading corporation that recently procured a $1,000,000,000 Defense Department contract. Unrelated, I am sure.

Some of the most prolific givers in Sargeant’s network live in modest homes in Southern California’s Inland Empire. Most had never given a political contribution before being contacted by Sargeant or his associates. Most said they have never voiced much interest in politics. And in several instances, they had never registered to vote. And yet, records show, some families have ponied up as much as $18,400 for various candidates between December and March.

Both Sargeant and the donors were vague when asked to explain how Sargeant persuaded them to give away so much money.

“I have a lot of Arab business partners. I do a lot of business in the Middle East. I’ve got a lot of friends,” Sargeant said in a telephone interview yesterday. “I ask my friends to support candidates that I think are worthy of supporting. They usually come through for me.”

Sargeant’s business relationships, and the work they perform together, occur away from the public eye. His firm, International Oil Trading Co. (IOTC), holds several lucrative contracts with the Defense Department to carry fuel to the U.S. military in Iraq.

Not everyone is a fan:

The work has not been without controversy. Last month, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) initiated a review of IOTC’s contract to determine whether it was overcharging the military for jet fuel, and to learn how the company, which did not submit the lowest bid, landed the contract to supply the fuel. The Pentagon has said that IOTC won the contract because it was the only company with a “letter of authorization” from the Jordanian government to move the fuel across its territory to Iraq.

and the folks who contributed seem a little removed from the political process. For instance:

Ibrahim Marabeh, who is listed in public records as a Rite Aid manager, at first denied that he wrote any political checks. He then said he was asked by “a local person. But I would like not to talk about it anymore.” Neither he nor his wife is registered to vote

or

At the Twilight Hookah Lounge, owned by Nadia and Shawn Abdalla, patrons smoke tobacco flavored with honey and fruit from a menu that includes the strawberry-flavored Sex on the Beach and the strong, orange-flavored Fuzzy Navel.

The Abdallas, who are not registered to vote, said in an interview that they recalled writing a check to an organization in Miami, because a person with that organization was a friend of their mother’s. They said they could not remember his name.

or a Taco Bell supervisor:

Nader, 39, and Sahar Alhawash, 28, of Colton, Calif, who at one point ran the Avon Village Liquor store, donated a total of $18,400 to Giuliani, Clinton and McCain between December and March. About 80 people in the country made such large contributions to all three, and most were wealthy business executives, such as Donald Trump. The Alhawashes declined to comment about the donations. Abdullah Abdullah, a supervisor at several Taco Bell restaurants in the Riverside area, and his wife have donated $9,200 to McCain.

Reached at work, Abdullah said he knows little about the campaign. “I have no idea. I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I’m involved in the restaurant business. My brother Faisal recommended John McCain. Whenever he makes a recommendation, we do it.”

Faisal Abdullah, 49, said he helped organize all of the contributions from members of his family. When he was asked who solicited the contributions from him, he said: “Why does it matter who? I’m telling you we made the contribution. We funneled it through the channel in Florida because that’s the contact we had. I was responsible for collecting it.”

Right, these people have so much extra cash laying around that they can afford to contribute the maximum amount to political candidates whose name they barely can remember. I’d speculate there is some money laundering going on. How much does the contributor keep? Ten percent? Twenty percent?

Vote for Fear

Seth Anderson0 comment

Speaking of Terrorism Theatre1, PSoTD catches a bit of fear mongering soft-shoe, Republican style. Vote for Fear, vote Republican!

I think it was CNN was showing a bit of a McCain fundraising/publicity stop. McCain was taking questions from the audience, and some 18 year old woman grabbed and microphone, and one of the first things she said was something like this:

I hope you win this. Obama, whew, he terrifies me! Whew!
and she kind of paused, and then…

the crowd applauded.

And I thought, there it is, in a nutshell. Republicans. Cheering for fear. Are you afraid? Yes? Hooray!!!!! Vote for Republicans then.

[From PSoTD Wuss Nation]

Whenever I think of Fear, I think of beer. Or more beer.


“More Beer” (Fear)

Footnotes:
  1. with my Canadian schooling, I am never sure how theater is spelled [↩]

O’Hare’s toll taker

Seth Anderson0 comment

Corruption? In Chicago? Surely1 you jest.

Within the past year, three businesses donated money to Alderman Patrick Levar’s campaign fund shortly before or after getting backing for potentially lucrative airport leases from the Chicago City Council committee he oversees. Mr. Levar, 57, is the longtime chairman of the Aviation Committee, a necessary stopover for many companies looking to cash in on the throngs of travelers at O’Hare and Midway airports. A range of concessionaires, from McDonald’s franchisees to Nuts On Clark, have sought the blessing of his panel recently.

The 45th Ward alderman’s campaign fundraising records show numerous donations from airport vendors, some with a keen interest in how his Aviation Committee votes. What’s more, Mr. Levar solicits some of these vendors for campaign fundraisers, although he insists he puts them on his mailing list only if they give him a business card and ask to be included.

[From Chicago Business News, Analysis & Articles | O’Hare’s toll taker | Crain’s ]

Alderman Levar, predictably, has no idea why these companies are singling out his campaign to donate money to, and furthermore claims that Daley is the real decision maker.

Mr. Levar says he doesn’t really hold much power, since the Daley administration chooses contractors before submitting them to his committee, which decides whether to forward things on to the full City Council for final approval.

“They go through a process — I don’t pick them,” Mr. Levar says.

Still, he plays a central role in determining whether businesses get to tap passenger pocketbooks at city-owned O’Hare and Midway.

Footnotes:
  1. and stop calling me Shirley. I’m obligated to type that or I’ll lose my Airport pun license [↩]

McCain: The Most Reprehensible Of The Keating Five

Seth Anderson0 comment

John McCain was the subject of this article written by Tom Fitzpatrick, published in 1989 in the Phoenix New Times.

You’re John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to The Joker.

Obviously, Keating thought you could make it to the White House, too.

…

They say that if you put five lobsters into a pot and give them a chance to escape, none will be able to do so before you light the fire. Each time a lobster tries to climb over the top, his fellow lobsters will pull him back down. It is the way of lobsters and threatened United States senators.

And, of course, that’s the way it is with the Keating Five. You are all battling to save your own hides. So you, McCain, leak to reporters about who did Keating’s bidding in pressuring federal regulators to change the rules for Lincoln Savings and Loan.

When the reporters fail to print your tips quickly enough–as in the case of your tip on Michigan Senator Donald Riegle–you call them back and remind them how important it is to get that information in the newspapers.

The story of “the Keating Five” has become a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate. The outcome will be decided, not in a courtroom, but probably on national television.

Those who survive will be the sociopaths who can tell a lie with the most sincere, straight face. You are especially adept at this.

[From McCain: The Most Reprehensible Of The Keating Five, page 1 – News – Phoenix New Times – Phoenix New Times]

No kidding, John McCain hasn’t needed to improve his liar’s face in many years, as it was quite polished already. Unfortunately for him, being a media celebrity for all these years has dulled his edge a bit.

Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

swanksalot0 comment

Glenn Greenwald recaps the anthrax scare, and lays the blame quite convincingly right at the breathless reporting of ABC News. Would we be mired in a never-ending war in Iraq without a government employee sending anthrax to public figures? Maybe, maybe not.

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks

[From Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com]

[snip]

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since — as ABC variously claimed — bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.”

ABC News’ claim — which they said came at first from “three well-placed but separate sources,” followed by “four well-placed and separate sources” — was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It’s critical to note that it isn’t the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News’ “four well-placed and separate sources” fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where — according to Brian Ross’ report on October 28, 2001 — these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.

Lots more here. Corrupt bastards. For all we know, Bruce Ivins might just be a convenient fall guy, a sacrificial goat so that inconvenient questions can never be answered.

Running While Black

swanksalot0 comment

Welcome to the Dark Side

Welcome to the Dark Side


Bob Herbert is wise to the John McCain strategy – campaign not on ideas, but on insinuations and falsehoods. A typical Karl Rove disciple, in other words.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown

[From Bob Herbert- Running While Black – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com]

and

John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he — Senator Obama — would not have to lose an election.

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

…

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

Of course, political campaigns are blood sports, nonetheless McCain is just slime of the worst Republican variety.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHXYsw_ZDXg

Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win

Seth Anderson0 comment

Whoa, scary unions! I thought Wal-Mart was going to turn into a warm fuzzy, green company? I guess that was only a marketing strategy, and not anything based in facts.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they’ll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies — including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

[From Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win – WSJ.com]

[Non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

The irony of course is that Wal-Mart workers could do with a little wage increase, the kind of wage increase that unions often can negotiate for its members. A majority of Wal-Mart workers live below the poverty line.

A Substantial Number of Wal-Mart Associates earn far below the poverty line

  • In 2001, sales associates, the most common job in Wal-Mart, earned on average $8.23 an hour for annual wages of $13,861. The 2001 poverty line for a family of three was $14,630. [“Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?”, Business Week, 10/6/03, US Dept of Health and Human Services 2001 Poverty Guidelines, 2001]
  • A 2003 wage analysis reported that cashiers, the second most common job, earn approximately $7.92 per hour and work 29 hours a week. This brings in annual wages of only $11,948. [“Statistical Analysis of Gender Patterns in Wal-Mart’s Workforce”, Dr. Richard Drogin 2003]

If there was an actual Justice Department, instead of a puppet, politicized Bush-loving agency, somebody might actually investigate Wal-Mart for violating the law.

Wal-Mart may be walking a fine legal line by holding meetings with its store department heads that link politics with a strong antiunion message. Federal election rules permit companies to advocate for specific political candidates to its executives, stockholders and salaried managers, but not to hourly employees. While store managers are on salary, department supervisors are hourly workers.

and re: Wal-Mart’s warm, fuzzy side, there are nearly as many corporate-loving Democrats as Republicans, right? I doubt the liberal Democrats (all ten of them) are getting much Wal-Mart cash.

Wal-Mart has been trying to burnish its reputation by improving its worker benefits and touting its commitment to the environment. On the political front, it’s hedging its bets, spreading its financial contributions on both sides of the political divide.

Twelve years ago, 98% of Wal-Mart’s political donations went to Republicans. Now, as the Democrats seem poised to gain control in Washington, 48% of its $2.2 million in political contributions go to Democrats and 52% to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political giving.

Some other fun Wal-Mart facts:

Wal-Mart closes down stores and departments that unionize

  • Wal-Mart closed its store in Jonquierre, Quebec in April 2005 after its employees received union certification. The store became the first unionized Wal-Mart in North America when 51 percent of the employees at the store signed union cards. [Washington Post, 4/14/05]
  • In December 2005, the Quebec Labour Board ordered Wal-Mart to compensate former employees of its store in Jonquiere Quebec. The Board ruled that Wal-Mart had improperly closed the store in April 2005 in reprisal against unionized workers. [Personnel Today, 12/19/05]
  • In 2000, when a small meatcutting department successfully organized a union at a Wal-Mart store in Texas, Wal-Mart responded a week later by announcing the phase-out of its in-store meatcutting company-wide. [Pan Demetrakakes, “Is Wal-Mart Wrapped in Union Phobia?” Food & Packaging 76 (August 1, 2003).]

Wal-Mart has issued “A Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union Free,”

  • This toolbox provides managers with lists of warning signs that workers might be organizing, including “frequent meetings at associates’ homes” and “associates who are never seen together start talking or associating with each other.” The “Toolbox” gives managers a hotline to call so that company specialists can respond rapidly and head off any attempt by employees to organize. [Wal-Mart, A Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union Free at 20-21]

Wal-Mart is committed to an anti-union policy

  • In the last few years, well over 100 unfair labor practice charges have been filed against Wal-Mart throughout the country, with 43 charges filed in 2002 alone.
  • Since 1995, the U.S. government has been forced to issue at least 60 complaints against Wal-Mart at the National Labor Relations Board. [International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), Internationally Recognised Core Labour Standards in the United States: Report for the WTO General Council Review of the Trade Policies of the United States (Geneva, January 14-16, 2004)]
  • Wal-Mart’s labor law violations range from illegally firing workers who attempt to organize a union to unlawful surveillance, threats, and intimidation of employees who dare to speak out. [“Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart,” A Report by the Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, 2/16/04]

Small Business Status For Blackwater

Seth Anderson0 comment

“Huh? How could that have happened? Oh well” seems to be the only response by the Small Business Administration officials. Just taxpayer money, that’s all.

Private military contractor Blackwater and its affiliates may have wrongly received more than $100 million in contracts that were supposed to be set aside for small businesses, according to an inspector general’s report released today.

At issue was a November 2006 determination by the Small Business Administration that a Blackwater affiliate, Presidential Airways, was a small business with less than 1,500 employees.

Blackwater contended, and the agency agreed, that its more than 1,000 workers providing security for the State Department overseas were not employees, but independent contractors. That made the company appear smaller on paper than it actually is.

[From TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Small Business Admin. Couldn’t Explain Why It Approved Small Business Status For Blackwater]

Corruption, corruption, and more corruption. Kudos to Henry Waxman for discovering (PDF) and publicizing the erroneously awarded contract.


“Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Revised and Updated]” (Jeremy Scahill)

Jeremy Scahill is going to have to update his book again.

McCain and his day job

Seth Anderson0 comment

Sometimes known as being a member of The Senate. John McCain is too busy losing a campaign to bother showing up in Washington to vote or otherwise participate in the nations business. And as was pointed out elsewhere on the internet tubes, McCain has collected $51,345 in salary since last voting.

Any way you measure it, McCain’s performance in the Senate during the last year has been abysmal. He has missed 400 votes, far more than any other Senator (including Tim Johnson, who’s recuperating from a brain hemorrhage). In May Ronald Hansen of the Arizona Republic referred to “his chronic absence in the Senate” as if the problem is well known in McCain’s home state. Earlier this month he was the only Senator to skip the vote on the Medicare bill. At the time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid publicly criticized McCain for his regular absences.

Here are some numbers:

63% – How many votes in the Senate McCain has skipped during the 110th Congress (since January 2007).
96 – The number of Senate votes McCain has missed since his last recorded vote on April 8.
111 – The number of days since McCain last attended a committee hearing (of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on April 9).
25% – How many full SASC hearings McCain has attended during the 110th Congress.
89% – How many full SASC hearings McCain has skipped since April 2007 (32 out of the last 36 hearings).
2007 – The last year in which McCain attended any Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee hearings or subcommittee hearings.
The League of Conservation Voters noted in February that McCain has skipped every one of the 15 Senate votes on environmental issues that it deemed critical during this Congress.

McCain has so far abandoned his duties in the Senate that when he traveled to Colombia and Mexico 4 weeks ago to discuss trade and commerce, he felt obliged to treat it as a campaign rather than a congressional trip. Did I mention that he serves on the Senate Commerce Committee?

It’s normal for Senators campaigning for president to spend a lot of time away from the Senate, of course. Barack Obama has been on the road too and missed 20 votes in the Senate since July 9 (many related to a single bill, S. 2731). Yet throughout the campaign Obama generally has not been absent from the Senate for any more than a couple weeks at a time.

Quite extraordinarily, however, McCain has all but checked out of his Senate job for all of 2008 and indeed for most of 2007 as well. This comes at a time when the country is facing both domestic and foreign crises that two of McCain’s committees have needed to act on.

[From Daily Kos: State of the Nation]

McCain is following in the footsteps of George Bush a little too closely, methinks. Noted also, McCain isn’t polling so well in his own state, Arizona. Wonder why?

Liberal Bias Bogus

Seth Anderson0 comment

Of course, we already knew the claim of liberal bias in the media was bogus, but noted nonetheless

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.

You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.

During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

[From In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias – Los Angeles Times]

Odds are, though, that the claim of liberal bias will continue to be parroted by the McCain supporters in corporate media up until November.

Now, if we are discussing the new media (blogs, web-zines and related), there certainly is a bias. There are very few non-partisan blogs of note. Also, one could even plausibly argue that blogs rebalance the slant of corporate media1 – blogs pick out the small stories that conform to the interest and bias of the site and its readers. For instance, glancing through B12’s archives, there are lots of negative McCain stories. What percentage of the day’s news are these stories? A small percentage, I’m sure, but they are nonetheless a large percentage of B12’s topics.

Footnotes:
  1. at least, to the few brave souls who actually read blogs [↩]