Tag: 2008_election

A roll-the-dice commander

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Yikes, when even the Financial Times excoriates John McCain and his damn-the-torpedos mentality, one has to wonder.

Mr McCain will not run a “safe” foreign policy. He adores rolling the dice. His decision to select Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate typifies the man. It is a big risk. It could turn out to be inspired. Or it might turn out to be a disaster. But it is not “safe”.

Mr McCain approaches international affairs in the same spirit. His instinct is always to take the radical option and to march towards the sound of gunfire.

…

The Georgian crisis also looks, at first sight, like a vindication for Mr McCain. He has been a longstanding critic of the Russian government. He saw the crisis in Georgia coming a long time ago.

When I visited Georgia last April I discovered that President Mikheil Saakashvili counted Mr McCain as one of his closest friends and allies. Mr Saakashvili told me (with a laugh) that the South Ossetians – whose rebel enclave he later attacked, with such disastrous consequences – had even shot a missile at a helicopter carrying Cindy McCain, the Senator’s wife. And the Georgian president told me proudly that Mr McCain had given him a gift – a bullet-proof vest.

Even at the time, this struck me as an ambiguous present. Was it saying, I’m behind you all the way; or was it saying, best of luck, I’ll be cheering for you – from a safe distance? Now that Georgia has been so severely mauled by Russia, the dangerous ambiguities in the policies pushed by Mr McCain and the Bush administration are even clearer. The Georgians were flattered, hugged and trained by the Americans. But when the Russian tanks rolled in, there was little the west could do.

Mr McCain says that President Teddy Roosevelt is one of his heroes. But Mr McCain’s proclamation in the aftermath of the Russia’s invasion – that “we are all Georgians now” – was the opposite of Roosevelt’s famous advice to “speak softly and carry a big stick”. It was tough talk, with very little to back it up.

Mr McCain’s failure to spell out the implications of his strong rhetorical support for Georgia may mean that he has failed to think things through – or just that he does not want to alarm voters. But the Republican needs to answer some difficult questions.

Is the US really prepared to fight Russia to protect Georgia and Ukraine – as Mr McCain’s firm support for swift Nato membership for these countries implies? Are we entering a new cold war, as his determination to isolate Russia suggests? If the tough talk is not backed up by tough action, what does that do to American credibility?

Mr McCain’s instinct certainly is to confront Russia – and indeed China. Even before the conflict in Georgia, he was arguing for throwing Russia out of the Group of Eight and forming a new League of Democracies.

Mr McCain’s confrontational instincts are even more to the fore when it comes to Iran. He has said that the only thing worse than a war with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran. Taken at face value – and given what we know of Iran’s nuclear programme – that sounds like a commitment to attack Iran within the first term of a McCain presidency.

[From FT.com / Columnists / Gideon Rachman – McCain: A roll-the-dice commander]

I don’t the world’s leaders are very gung-ho for a McCain presidency: too much is at stake for the United States to be helmed by a belligerent and impetuous Commander in Chief.

Half-Assed Vetting Process

Seth Anderson2 Comments

John McCain and his impulsiveness is not what the country needs. He couldn’t even wait until the RNC finished vetting Sarah Palin before announcing her as his VP. Not good judgement, not good judgement at all.

A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin.

[From Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process – NYTimes.com]

One day before announcing her, and moments after meeting her the first time? That’s pretty pathetic.

Evilution
[Evilution, Seattle, Washington]

Also worth noting1 is that John McCain wanted to select Joe Lieberman2 but was told by his bosses, Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh, that an wasn’t acceptable choice. Who is really making the decisions in the McCain campaign? Who would make the decisions if by some weird circumstance3 McCain snuck into the White House? Can the country afford another 4 years of a Karl Rove/Rush Limbaugh presidency?

Up until midweek last week, some 48 to 72 hours before Mr. McCain introduced Ms. Palin at a Friday rally in Dayton, Ohio, Mr. McCain was still holding out the hope that he could choose a good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, a Republican close to the campaign. Mr. McCain had also been interested in another favorite, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania.

But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates.

Perhaps more important, several Republicans said, Mr. McCain was getting advice that if he did not do something to shake up the race, his campaign would be stuck on a potentially losing trajectory.

With time running out — and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable — he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain’s list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months.

“They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,” said a Republican close to the campaign. “This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.”

Dont Bring Yer Guns to Town
[Don’t Bring Yer Guns to Ketchikan, Alaska, at least to Trident Seafoods]

Footnotes:
  1. explicitly, that is, we did mention this in passing previously [↩]
  2. Whiny Joe, the former Democrat who has since been married to John McCain – a civil union, of course [↩]
  3. Diebold related perhaps [↩]

Experience Muh Arse

Seth Anderson0 comment

Don’t know who either of these people are, but Tucker Bounds is unembarrassed to lie and evade the question about Sarah Palin’s vast experience taking over the Alaskan National Guard:

Campbell Brown interviews Tucker Bounds on Sarah Palin’s national security experience

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYYiw_y2qDI

Via TPM

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds on CNN with a new line on Gov. Palin’s foreign policy experience: McCain and Palin have more combined military command experience than Obama and Biden put together.

Palin And The Alaska Independence Party

Seth Anderson1 Comment

The unfunny Palin is chummy with a super right wing group of separatists who want Alaska to secede from the Union. She’ll fit right in when touring the Deep South.

This seems worth digging into a bit. The Alaska Independence Party, which was formed with the goal of seceding from the union and establishing Alaska as an independent state, says that Palin addressed their 2008 convention.

The AIP has posted video of what it claims is her address on its Web site.

It’s hard to gauge how fringe the group is. Its Website features this quote from one of its founders:

“The problem with you John Birchers’ is that you are too damn liberal!”
— Joseph Vogler, Founder Alaskan Independence Party

[From TPM Election Central | Talking Points Memo | Sarah Palin And The Alaska Independence Party]

via Greg Sargent who has an excellent roundup of this weekends bad news for McCain/Palin, including the fact that there is a team of 10 lawyers being dispatched to Alaska by the Republican Party to cover-up as much scandal as possible, and do a proper vetting of Palin, presumedly before she is officially nominated. I bet the RNC is happy they had a good excuse to cancel their speeches scheduled for today. Might have been awkward for Republican Party regulars to mention Palin so many times before cutting her loose ala Thomas Eagleton in 1972.1

The faux-pregnancy story turned out to be just a family affair, and perhaps a Rovian play for sympathy.

Bush and his buddy McCain celebrate Hurricane Katrina

Bush and his buddy McCain celebrate Hurricane Katrina

Regardless, heck of a job on selecting your VP, McSamey.

Footnotes:
  1. Eagleton wasn’t thoroughly vetted by George McGovern’s staff, and the press had a field day discussing Eagleton’s mental hospital visits [↩]

Palin backed Bridge To Nowhere Before She Opposed It

Seth Anderson0 comment

Sarah Palin and John McCain haven’t had the smoothest transition into running mates. Compared to Obama and Biden, especially, the selection of Palin as VP seems impulsive, poorly planned, and suspect.

Bridge Milwaukee IR2
[A Milwaukee bridge to somewhere]

For instance, Palin’s mantle of being anti-corruption has already been stripped:

In her nationally televised speech accepting the job as John McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she “championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress” and opposed federal funding for a controversial bridge to a sparsely populated island.
“I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that bridge to nowhere,” Palin said Friday in Ohio, using the critics’ dismissive name of the project. “‘If our state wanted a bridge,’ I said, ‘we’d build it ourselves.'”

While running for governor in 2006, though, Palin backed federal funding for the infamous bridge, which McCain helped make a symbol of pork barrel excess.

And as mayor of the small town of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002, Palin also hired a Washington lobbying firm that helped secure $8 million in congressionally directed spending projects, known as earmarks, according to public spending records compiled by the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste and lobbying documents.

[From Palin backed ‘bridge to nowhere’ in 2006 – USATODAY.com]

So much for being a reformer, though Republicans obviously don’t care too much if their candidates engage in crony capitalism, as long as everyone gets a taste.

Alaska and Russia

Seth Anderson0 comment

This might be the funniest1 talking point I’ve seen in years.

According to the Republican Party, Sarah Palin has foreign policy experience because Alaska is so close to Russia. Uhh, yeah, I guess it does border on the eastern tip of Siberia.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zP8uFPWxaA

By this reasoning, I am an expert on Japan2 because I lived in Guam for six months, even though I was only ten!

Footnotes:
  1. albeit unintentionally funny [↩]
  2. perhaps I should claim foreign policy experience regarding North Korea, that’s more sexy [↩]

McCain and his Baked Alaska

Seth Anderson0 comment

Gail Collins on the surprising Sarah Palin VP pick:

Wrong Bus
[Wrong Bus, Juneau, Alaska]

John McCain has a low opinion of the vice presidency, which he’s frequently described as a job that involves attending funerals and checking on the health of the president. (Happy 72nd birthday, John!) There’s a lot we don’t know yet about Palin, and I am personally looking forward to deconstructing her role in the Matanuska Maid Dairy closing crisis. But at first glance, she doesn’t seem much less qualified than Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota who most people thought was the most likely pick. Unlike Joe Lieberman, Palin is a member of the same party as the presidential candidate. And unlike Mitt Romney, she has never gone on vacation with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.

However, I do feel kind of ticked off at the assumptions that the Republicans seem to be making about female voters. It’s a tad reminiscent of the Dan Quayle selection, when the first George Bush’s advisers decided they could close the gender gap with a cute running mate.

The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong. When the sexes have parted company in modern elections, it’s generally been because women are more likely to be Democrats, and more concerned about protecting the social safety net. “The gender gap traditionally has been determined by party preference, not by the gender of the candidate,” said Ruth Mandel of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

[From Gail Collins – McCain’s Baked Alaska – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com]

I don’t think there are many women who will vote a certain way just because the anatomy of a candidate resembles their own. Women I’ve known are more intelligent than that.

Ms. Collins also manages to work in the famous Lloyd Bentson line:

If she’s only on the ticket to try to get disaffected Clinton supporters to cross over, it’s a bad choice. Joe Biden may already be practicing his drop-dead line for the vice-presidential debate: “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine, and governor, you’re no Hillary Clinton.”

Since I had to look up the Matanuska Maid Dairy reference too, here’s what RobertoW of TPM Muckraker wrote about the topic:

Matanuska Maid was a failing, state-run dairy that had lost about $600,000 over two years when the state Creamery Board finally decided to shut it down in the spring of 2007.

Sarah Palin felt so strongly that Matanuska Maid should continue operating that she fired the entire state Board of Agriculture and Conservation, which appoints the Creamery Board, just to install new members who would reverse the Creamery Board’s decision and keep Matanuska Maid alive.

Sustaining a money-losing state-run business certainly doesn’t sound like fiscal responsibility. But neither does increasing the price the hemorrhaging enterprise pays for milk, which is precisely what the Creamery Board did, making it even more likely Matanuska Maid would not be able to continue as a viable entity.

and

The Anchorage Daily News reported May 31st that Matanuska Creamery “got off the ground with help from a $643,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant and a lot of support from Stevens and from state Senate President Lyda Green, R-Wasilla”. Stevens and Don Young even turned out for a big ribbon-cutting ceremony, their presence testifying to the uncorrupt, newly responsible way things now work in Alaska, thanks to Sarah Palin’s vigorously cleaning house.

But while Dairygate looks definitely sleazy to me, maybe I’m taking a parochial, Lower 48 view. To an Alaskan, what Sarah Polin did just looks like an innovation in fiscal management. After all, what happened here, aside from a little deception, insider-dealing and rank hypocrisy?

A failing state-run enterprise supported by Alaskan taxpayers ends up reborn as a private enterprise, run by a struggling local businessman and subsidized by Federal taxpayers.

To the locals, what a win/win: why should Alaskans have to support the local dairy farmers that bring them fresh milk and cheese, after all, when they have Uncle Ted and Uncle Don (and Aunt Sarah) around to make sure Uncle Sam picks up the tab?

More details and links to primary sources here

Worse Than Quayle

Seth Anderson0 comment

Sarah Palin does seem to be an odd pick for McCain’s Number 2. But, worse than Dan Potatoe Quayle, that’s pretty damn bad…

Another Second Choice

But she’s fantastically inexperienced, far more so than Quayle was when he was tapped. And she possesses an attribute far worse than Quayle’s stupidity – she’s a big corrupt wheel in Alaska’s big corrupt Republican Party, arguably the most corrupt political apparatus in the United States.

We’re told that McCain really wanted to pick his old friend Joe Lieberman to run with him, but that Karl Rove and the rest of the elite Republican politburo nixed the idea, and told McCain that he had to take a conservative. And as he has at every step of his campaign, the one-time “maverick” sold out to the venal, icy core of the Republican leadership, and acquiesced by selecting Palin. Palin is really a Republican after Rove’s heart – she’s a product of the party that produced the indicted Ted Stevens and ethically tarred Don Young, and she’s embroiled in a Troopergate scandal of her own, with state investigators looking at serious allegations that Palin abused her office by pressuring the state Public Safety Commissioner to fire “an Alaska state trooper involved in a rough divorce from Palin’s sister.” Sounds like a woman after Karl Rove’s heart.

In addition to further associating McCain with the Republican culture of corruption, the Palin pick undermines one of his main anti-Obama narratives. It’s going to be laughable to hear McCain assail Obama’s supposed lack of experience after naming the first-term governor — only one-and-a-half years into her term — of the 47th largest state to be his running mate. Palin lacks any foreign policy experience, and is bereft of even the two core areas of policy expertise that governors are supposed to bring to a ticket — ag policy (Alaska doesn’t have much in the way of traditional agriculture) and urban affairs (Anchorage is the 65th largest city in the US, behind giants such as Corpus Christi). She’s easily the least experienced running mate in recent memory, which is pretty scary, given McCain’s age and his history of cancer.

By picking Palin, McCain revealed his desperation to make a splash to rival the genuine excitement generated by the Obama campaign. But desperation leads to poor decisions — and McCain’s Hail Mary, like most last second desperation moves, is destined to fail miserably. He’s smeared himself with the pungent mud of Alaska Republican corruption, while cutting the legs out from one of his most reliable attacks against Obama. And he’s presented Americans with the prospect of electing a dangerous neophyte to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, behind a man whose life expectancy is less than two presidential terms.

[From Daily Kos: Worse Than Quayle]

Must have been her anti-evolutionary beliefs that tipped her over other vetted candidates.

Kerry Hits It Home

Seth Anderson0 comment

Kerry gave one of the best speeches of the convention, in my estimation. I’m not alone in noticing1. Kerry made points that might have helped him win election in 2004, if he hadn’t listened to his centrist-leaning advisors.

Now, if Mr. Kerry had stopped there this would have been an effective partisan speech — memorable in the moment but likely soon forgotten. But what John Kerry said at the end of his remarks took a very good speech into the pantheon of great speeches.

For more than two generations, one of the dominant narratives in American politics has been the notion of Democratic “weakness” on foreign policy. Democrats, the stereotype goes, do not love their country; they are not patriotic, they are as Jeane Kirkpatrick famously declared at the G.O.P. convention in 1984, blame America-firsters. And for years, Democrats have struggled to fight back; often choosing political artifice over impassioned persuasion. But, last night in Denver, John Kerry fought back:

How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy, doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first.

Pathetic, insulting and desperate are not the words that Democrats frequently use on the campaign trail and particularly not in the context of national security. As for the idea that community service belongs in the same lexicon as military service … well that’s something you are even less likely to hear.

[From Kerry Hits It Home – Campaign Stops – 2008 Elections – Opinion – New York Times Blog]

Crooks and Liars has video of the speech.

Its About Judge Ment

For a good laugh, check out James Taranto’s analysis. I’m not sure what planet Mr. Taranto is from, especially when he writes sentences like: Kerry: President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo, respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all, the United States of America does not torture, not now, not ever.

President Bush has repeatedly said that America does not torture. Can we really afford four more years of the same?

Right, the waterboarding and stress positions are only enhanced interrogation techniques, and not torture. Why? Well, because we’ve just redefined the meaning of the word, torture, to be whatever we are not doing to prisoners. If we do it, it is no longer defined as torture2 Taranto continues in this vein:

In his 2004 speech Kerry did discuss terrorism at length, but he said not a word about global warming, and he mentioned AIDS only in the context of demanding federal funding for stem-cell research. If these things are so important, why is he only getting around to telling us now?

Pretty weak, Mr. Taranto, pretty weak. Let us count the number of mentions of global warming and AIDS in John McCain’s convention, shall we?

Tom Schaller of Salon briefly interviewed John Kerry yesterday morning:

Thursday morning outside the Brown Palace Hotel where he and his wife are staying, John Kerry was helping get Teresa’s stuff packed into a car for her departure today from Denver — she’s leaving, but he says he “isn’t going anywhere.” The Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee is fresh off his widely hailed evisceration of John McCain in a speech last night to the delegates — arguably a better speech, given the relative expectations for the two men, than Bill Clinton’s. (The sad part is that the networks and even MSNBC didn’t run it in its entirety, live.)

Kerry was generous enough to take a few moments of time while extracting his very snappy bike out of the trunk — apparently, he is planning to stretch those long legs today — to speak with Salon. He showed more of that fire from last night, leavened with some self-effacing critiques of his own failures in 2004. And though I can’t be sure who he had in mind as referents when he mentioned “some partisans” unable to get over Hillary Clinton’s defeat, I could swear between the lines I heard the names Paul Begala and James Carville.

I liked this answer to the question, “Where was this fiery Kerry in 2004”3

Well, I feel like — no, on the contrary, I was that John Kerry four years ago … particularly in the last six weeks I was. I won three debates against the sitting president. And I think that I’m proud of what we did. We should have taken those Swift boat attacks on more directly earlier. We just made a miscalculation. The calculation was that we had put the truth out and people saw through that kind of attack. The miscalculation is that if you put a lot of money behind a lie, there are some people who don’t [see through it]. And that’s where we made a mistake. We should have put more money behind the truth.

And I think the Obama campaign has learned that, and they’re not going to give any quarter on these smears, lies and attacks. And I think that’s what’s important. You know, there are plenty of places where I let fire and let loose, like I did last night — believe me. If you go back and look at my convention speech it was a strong speech, well received at the time. But people tend to blur that and they don’t see it in the context of the attacks that came out afterwards. Yeah, we could have done a better job at making certain that we absolutely murdered those [attacks]. Believe me, part of the message I was sending last night was I learned that lesson — and never again.

More reactions to Kerry’s speech compiled by Chris Suellentrop: The Kerry Surprise

Footnotes:
  1. though, apparently none of the major networks carried the speech, only CSPAN [↩]
  2. which is ridiculous, of course [↩]
  3. paraphrased [↩]

Historic Event for the Democratic Party

Seth Anderson1 Comment

I too was moved despite myself. I realize the whole Democratic convention1 is scripted within inches of its life, but witnessing the Democratic Party actually nominate a black man for President was something I never would have expected happen, at least in my life time.

This evening, though, I watched something happen that I was solid sure would never happen in my lifetime, or probably my children’s lifetimes: A major American political party just nominated an African American as its candidate for the presidency of the United States — the big job, the Leader of the Free World, the whole enchilada.

Watching it on C-SPAN, I saw a closeup shot of an African American delegate after Nancy Pelosi banged the gavel down. She was hugging the delegate next to her (a white woman) And the tears were pouring down her cheeks.

I dunno, I guess that’s when it hit me — the enormity of what I’d just seen. It may not mean as much to you youngsters (get off my lawn!) but for someone of my age, who grew up in the dying days of segregation, who still remembers the colored and white drinking fountains and the monochrome lunch counters, who saw Washington DC burn the night Martin Luther King was killed — who, in some sense, has essentially spent his whole life living in the shadow of American racism, it was completely mindblowing. The party of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace (but also of FDR and Bobby Kennedy) had just chosen a black man as its standard bearer — and the Gods willing, as the country’s next leader.

[From billmon at Daily Kos: Really Proud]

I’m not quite old enough to remember colored and white drinking fountains, but I did live in Burkeville, Texas2 so witnessed first-hand plenty of vestiges of the Old South (the bone-crushingly racist South, if you don’t know)). I’m similar to billmon also in that I have conflicted feelings towards the Democratic Party: I am much more left than most party leaders, and yet I was proud of the Democrats last night.

Footnotes:
  1. like all conventions, just wait till the Republican show starts! [↩]
  2. Jasper, Texas was the nearest town, yes, that Jasper, Texas [↩]

Kerry on McCain Judgement

swanksalot1 Comment

From John Kerry’s speech at the Democratic National Convention today.

So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better. And time and again, Barack Obama has been proven right.

When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, “Next up, Baghdad!”, Barack Obama saw, even then, “an occupation of “undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences” that would “only fan the flames of the Middle East.” Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When Barack Obama promised to honor the best traditions of both parties and talk to our enemies, John McCain scoffed. George Bush called it “the soft comfort of appeasement.” But today, Bush’s diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said: talking with Iran.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When democracy rolled out of Russia, and the tanks rolled into Georgia, we saw John McCain respond immediately with the outdated thinking of the Cold War. Barack Obama responded like a statesman of the 21st century.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When we called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it “cut and run.” But today, even President Bush has seen the light. He and Prime Minister Maliki agree on guess what? a timetable.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues. So, the candidate who once promised a “contest of ideas,” now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first.

[click to read more of Remarks of John F. Kerry to the Democratic National Convention – Boston.com]

McCain is too trigger-happy to make a good Commander-in-Chief, we don’t need an aggressive, militaristic response to every world situation.

Will Congress Extend Wind, Solar Tax Breaks

Seth Anderson0 comment

Would seem as if this should be bigger news: McCain would rather devote alternative energy tax credits to the poor, poor oil corporations who are underwriting his campaign instead of renewing or expanding tax credits to new green-collar industries.

Windy Day Just Like Any Other Day
[Windy Day Just Like Any Other Day]

The whole clean-energy ecosystem, from investors to manufacturers to developers, is on tenterhooks to see what will happen with the credits.

Of course, that’s not necessarily the fault of the Democrats who control Congress. Sen. John McCain famously missed the decisive vote on renewing the tax credits earlier this year, and missed another vote after that.

But it does explain why, as California senator Barbara Boxer said last night in Denver, “In the Senate, 60 is the new 50!”. Sixty Demcratic senators is a filibuster-proof majority. That means policy ideas turn into policies. Which is why some observers, like the WSJ edit page, figure the most important votes this election season won’t necessarily come at the top of the ticket—Obama versus McCain—but at the Congressional level.

With 60 Democratic senators, clean-energy advocates like Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell may just get their wish: permanent tax credits for renewable energy.

[From Environmental Capital – WSJ.com : Pay Me: Will Congress Extend Wind, Solar Tax Breaks?]

1. Renewable resources like wind and solar, or 2. petro-dollar dictators like the Saudi princes. Hmmmm, let us collectively noodle on that choice for a second. Gee, let’s choose door number 1, Alex!

Does the WSJ Hate Michelle Obama?

Seth Anderson0 comment

I meant to note a similar complaint regarding this front page1 of the Wall Street Journal from August 26, 2008:

Because -seriously- this is the worst photo ever:

Her tongue is sticking out for Christ’s sake. And poor Sasha just looks bored. Cute, but bored.

[Click to see a photo of the front page: The Conventional Thinker: Does the WSJ Hate Michelle Obama?]

I wondered more about the headline itself. A shaky (Bush-created) economy challenges Obama Agenda. Umm, seems like it would be just the opposite, no? A shaky Bush-McCain-McSame economy would seem to be ripe for some ‘change’.

Corrections & Amplifications:

Sen. Barack Obama says he would raise the tax rate for married couples with taxable income of more than $200,300 to 36% from 33%. This page-one article incorrectly said the trigger level would be $165,000. In addition, Douglas Brinkley is Rice University’s presidential historian. The article incorrectly gave his name as Alan Brinkley, who is a Columbia University historian.

Footnotes:
  1. strangely enough, the archived version at the WSJ.com website has a entirely different photo of Ms. Obama, perhaps there were complaints? [↩]

Ayers and Obama

Seth Anderson0 comment

Are the Republicans so bereft of ideas that this is the best they can come up with? Linking Obama to someone who did some crazy stuff when the country was in upheaval in the late 1960s, and Obama was eight? Wait, don’t answer that. Apparently, if you are considering running for office, you need to vet every person you ever meet or work with before you talk to them.

The University of Illinois at Chicago on Tuesday released more than 1,000 files detailing the activities of an education reform group in which both Barack Obama and former 1960s radical William Ayers played key roles.

The release of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents turned the sterile special collections room at the university’s Daley library into a media frenzy. Television crews hovered at the room’s entrance. Librarians scurried to copying machines to fulfill the requests of a roomful of reporters. Two security officers stood guard.

On a typical day, one or two scholars may conduct research there. The library director laughed when asked whether it has had security before.

A partial examination of the documents did not reveal anything startling about the link between Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, and Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground, a Vietnam-era anti-war group that claimed responsibility for several bombings. Ayers, who spent years in hiding, is now a UIC education professor

[From Files linking Obama to ’60s radical a hot commodity — chicagotribune.com]

Haymarket Riot memorial, old version.

The Republicans whined that Obama responding to the false smears is harassment. They would much rather Obama just ignored the mindless allegations, and let them be repeated on endless loop.

With threats of legal action, boycotts and a response ad launched quietly to avoid publicity, the Obama campaign has put conservative donors and television stations on notice that 2008 will not be 2004, when Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, waited weeks to respond to attacks on his Vietnam War record and ultimately did so ineffectively. Christian Pinkston, a spokesman for the American Issues Project, which is airing the anti-Obama ad, called the response intimidation and harassment.

Obama campaign lawyer Robert F. Bauer replied: “If someone rides up to a convenience store with a sawed-off shotgun and a prior record, I’m not intimidating anybody by calling the cops. . . . If this [Republican] campaign is going to be run in McCarthyite fashion by lawbreakers in an illegal way, they are going to pay a price.”

and the Republican operatives again have a problem with using copyrighted material:

Efforts to stop the Ayers ad have not come only from the Obama campaign. A film company in Berkeley, Calif., that made an Oscar-nominated documentary in 2004 [sic, 2002, per IMDb] on the Weather Underground group has issued a cease-and-desist letter to the American Issues Project, saying that it illegally appropriated copyright images from the film for the ad. Brook Dooley, an attorney for the Free History Project, said shots of Ayers speaking into a camera in an interview and the aftermath of a Weather Underground bombing were copyrighted. The group has informed about 150 stations in Ohio and Michigan of its objection, but Dooley said no decisions have been made about legal action.

Haymarket Memorial in snow

Just such a stupid line of attack: it wouldn’t be difficult to find somebody who McCain met with who was somehow linked to some nasty act. Not difficult at all, but would it be relevant? No, of course not. And yet, there was a media frenzy at the UIC anyway. Can’t they look into the Keating Five documents? Those are more recent, and more relevant to the person John McCain is than any tenuous Ayers-Obama connection. Or how about having a media frenzy about McCain’s mobbed-up father-in-law?

Hillary Diehards in the Media

Seth Anderson0 comment

Slightly more on the Hillary-Heads, from today’s Altercation:

this story from Scott Lindlaw at the Associated Press was headlined “Pelosi admits Democrats not yet united.” Here is the entirety of Pelosi’s quotes in the ensuing story:

  • Asked by reporters about female voters’ comfort level with Obama, Pelosi said women show a strong preference for Obama in public opinion polls. A “gender gap” in Obama’s favor had emerged “even before the convention, and even before the complete reconciliation that we need,” she said.
  • “The nomination is decided, we have a vice president, we’re going to work together and go forward,” she said.
  • “But to stay wallowing in all of this is not productive,” she said. “So we can talk about this forever, or we can talk about how we’re going to take our message to the American people, to women all across America, to see the distinctions” between Obama and Republican candidate John McCain.”
  • “You know what? This is like a yesterday room,” she told the reporters. “We are going into the future. What did I walk into, a time capsule?”

[From Media Matters – Altercation by Eric Alterman]

Seems as if the Hillary Diehards are either a Republican concoction, a media concoction, or both. I love the final Pelosi response, I hope it becomes a meme for this election season.