It's almost hard to believe, with all the GOPers out there demanding that President Obama demand a recount in Iran (as Rep. Mike Coffman, embarrassing my former state of Colorado, suggested tonight on "Hardball") that there are any non-Iranians out there with much to say about Iran that isn't completely idiotic. The idea that the American president should demand a recount in a country that isn't the United States is at minimum ironic, given what happened in our presidential elections in 2000, complete with five of our very own Republican mullahs putting their thumb on the scale on the side of their political compatriot. It's also insane. Watch Chris Matthews try to explain as much to a stumbling Coffman tonight:
Luckily, there are a few sane people left with access to the mainstream media. From TIME Magazine's Eben Harrell (in London):
So why has Europe, so often cast as the more timid side of the transatlantic partnership, responded more vigorously this time? The answer, according to Robin Niblett, director of the London-based international-relations think tank Chatham House, lies in the low-rumbling crisis in the background of the disputed election: Iran's nuclear program.
"The United States is the only country that can convince Iran that it is not as threatened as it thinks it is, and that's crucial to the negotiations [over Iran's disputed enrichment program]," Niblett says. "The Obama Administration is playing it absolutely right: it is determined to convince the Iranians that its goal is not regime change. Any public denunciations could damage Obama's efforts to coax Iran out of its defensive posture."
Meanwhile, over in Europe:
Domestic politics is also playing into the strong rhetoric on the part of European leaders like Sarkozy and Merkel, according to Niblett. "It is in Sarkozy's nature to be plain-speaking and tough, and that's played well domestically. His popularity has dropped recently, so his stance on the importance of free elections plays well. It does for Merkel too, as it distinguishes her from [Social Democrat Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor] Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has been more measured in his response."
Yeah, domestic politics is playing a big role here, too. It seems some of our Republican/neocon friends are more interested in attacking the president of the United States than in pursuing an intelligent foreign policy that benefits America's national security.
Next up, real, live Republican grown-up Peggy Noonan (who unlike the neocons, is a conservative Ronald Reagan actually bothered to listen to):
Stifling and corrupt religious autocracy has seen its international standing diminished, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is among other things a Holocaust denier, has in effect been rebuked by half his country, and through free speech, that most painful way to lose your reputation, which has broken out on the streets. He can no longer claim to speak for his people. The rising tide of the young and educated seems uninterested in reflexively hating the West and deriving their meaning from that hatred.
To refuse to see all this as progress, or potential progress, is perverse to the point of wicked. To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous. The ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week. John McCain and others went quite crazy insisting President Obama declare whose side America was on, as if the world doesn't know whose side America is on. "In the cause of freedom, America cannot be neutral," said Rep. Mike Pence. Who says it's neutral?
This was Aggressive Political Solipsism at work: Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else's delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.
And she adds this:
Should there at this point, more than a week into the story, be a formal declaration of support from the U.S. government? Certainly it's time for an indignant statement on the abuses, including killings and beatings, perpetrated by the government and against the opposition. It's never wrong to be on the side of civilization. Beyond that, what would be efficacious? It must be asked if a formal statement of support for the rebels would help them. And they'd have a better sense of it than we.
The current policy, much criticized by prominent Republicans, vindicated Barack Obama's boast in his Cairo speech that he is a "student of history." The student in him knows that the worst thing the United States could do at the moment is provide the supreme leader and the less supreme leaders with the words to paint the opposition as American stooges -- or, even worse, suggest to the protesters that some sort of help is on its way from Washington.
Cohen then delivers a nice splash of cold water to Paul Wolfowitz's (surprise, surprise!) TOTALLY WRONG ANALOGY in his recent column comparing Ronald Reagan's intervention with a former colony with Barack Obama's positition vis-a-vis a government WITH WHICH WE HAVE NO FORMAL RELATIONS... (sigh)
Some of Obama's critics have faulted him for not doing what Ronald Reagan (belatedly) did following the fraudulent election in the Philippines in 1986. After some dithering, Reagan virtually forced President Ferdinand Marcos into exile. How neat. How not a precedent for Iran.
Marcos was, to exhume a dandy Cold War phrase, an "American lackey." The Philippines itself was a former American colony. We knew the country. Hell, at one time, we virtually owned it.
In contrast, not a lot is known about how Iran is actually governed. If, for instance, the White House asked the State Department to send over someone with on-the-ground experience in contemporary Iran, the car would arrive empty. The last American diplomats left Iran in 1979. The United States has to rely on foreign diplomats and journalists for its information.
Yet according to some of the dumbest elected persons I've ever heard on television, our president should take to the airwaves and ... wait for it ... demand a recount in Iran. Brilliant.
In the end, the Nation's Washington editor Chris Hayes got it right on Rachel's show tonight. The neoconservative movement is fundamentally about this weird, preening desperation to make every world event, every happening in every culture, even ones we fundamentally don't understand -- All About Us. Thus, the Iranian uprising is about Us (not about the economy, or joblessness, or frustration with the strictures of religious law, or the things the Iranians say it's about. Silly brown people -- they just don't get that it's really all about them wanting Us to guide them to freedom!) The protesters are speaking to Us (not to the Europeans who used to run the place, or to other English-speaking people, just Us. The color green is so close to the color blue that even THAT must ... MUST be About Us. This desire to jam the United States and our inflated self-portrayal as The World's Greatest/Only Defender of Liberty Everywhere into the center of every conceivable conflict is actually starting to look like a mental affliction, and it's one that I, for one, am very glad was not visited on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue last November.
Not only is Newt Gingrich a rank hypocrite -- imagine, the disgraced former speaker of the House, who was fined $300,000 and sanctioned by his own party for ethics violations back in the days before he himself had to resign as speaker (for having a sexual affair with an aide at the same time he was pushing for the impeachment of President Clinton ... for having a sexual affair with an intern ...) he is also a man of shallow principle. Newt, who claims that Nancy Pelosi has "disqualified herself" as speaker, and thus, should make like a Newt and resign, got caught with his proverbial pants down by Diane Sawyer this week, abba-abba-abba'ing over the various Republicans, including some of Pelosi's accusers, who've also called the CIA a bunch of liars.
The fact is that Newt, in the end, is not all that significant (except to the credulous press corps, which insists on giving him air time.) What is significant is the fact that he, and his attacks on Nancy Pelosi, and those of his party, are not actually serous. They don't represent some genuine outrage over something Pelosi has done (after all, they're accusing her of not opposing torture -- a sentiment they share.) What this is about, is the GOP persuing a strategy dating back to January, of using any opportunity to brand and attack members of the Democratic leadership, as a proxy for attacking the way too popular President Obama.
Let's travel back in time, to January, in the weeks after the inauguration, when Republicans were trying to figure out how to respond to the popular president's economic stimulus plan. ABC News noted on January 29:
Two weeks ago, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., hired GOP pollster John McLaughlin to conduct a poll on the stimulus plan to define the most effective ways to frame Republican concerns.
ABC obtained a copy of a PowerPoint presentation prepared based on that poll, available HERE.
The GOP poll showed that Obama is popular (71 percent approval) and that an overwhelming majority (64 percent) approve of “Barack Obama's economic recovery plan.”
But it showed that Pelosi, D-Calif., (34 percent favorable) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., (20 percent) are far less popular. And when asked about the specifics of the stimulus plan without Obama's name attached, the plan loses its appeal.
The result: Congressional Republicans held together and voted unaminously "no." And the GOP has carried that strategy forward ever since. It's "Operation: Get Nancy," mostly because Harry Reid is so dull (and besides, El Rushbo usually takes care of him.) What is incredible, is not that the GOP is deploying a months-old strategy to satiate their base and in their minds, take down the Democratic Party by attacking the leadership -- while, they hope, unnerving Democrats out of really investigating torture or the other abuses of the Bush administration in the process. What is stunning is how willing the Washington press corps has been to go along with the program.
As John Nichols of The Nation pointed out recently:
I.F. Stone used to joke that what passed for investigative journalism in Washington was actually just the restating of what was already in the public record at the appropriate time.
Indeed, and it turns out that Nichols was among the reporters who "exposed" the fact that Pelosi was briefed on torture. Only he did it in 2007. In other words: the fact that senior Democrats were compliant with the Bush administration when it came, not just to torture, but also to Iraq and overall national security policy is no new revelation. And the media has, almost to a man (or woman) failed to ask a single, quite relevant question: let's just say that Nancy Pelosi IS lying, and she WAS fully briefed about the fact that we were torturing people. What does that mean? The answer is, it would mean that Pelosi was aware of the commission of war crimes (though she claims that because her knowledge was classified, she couldn't have done anything about it) and it would mean that, ipso facto, war crimes were committed at the behest of the previous administration, with the quizzling assent of Democrats. Again, nothing new. Besides, if Pelosi's involvement is a 5 on the war crimes scale, then Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush and the CIA are at about a 12, right?
So ... does that mean Republicans, and the media, at long last, are ready to see those crimes investigated? Here's the funniest part of all: Democrats outside the Beltway are ready. And so is Nancy Pelosi.
Conservative direct mail guru Richard Viguerie spells out the bottom line for the GOP and its many, many problems:
"The 'Rushification' of the GOP is the natural and inevitable result of the fact that those who are supposed to provide leadership -- Republican elected officials and party officers -- are doing little to bring the party back," said Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com. "Nature abhors a vacuum, and there is no vacuum in nature as empty as the leadership of the Republican Party today."
Ouch. And the air head currently standing at the mouth of the vacuum is none other than our good friend Michael Steele, who is quickly turning out to be almost as golden for Democrats as El Rushbo himself. Steele has quickly gone from the Great Brown Hope of the GOP (oh, sorry, that was Bobby Jindal...) the Great Black Hope of the GOP, to a national punch line (even Morning Joe got at him on Wednesday.) And Politico reports that besides providing endless hilarious sound bites for the ankle biters online, such as myself, and on late night TV, Steele isn't even getting his organization together. So much for the logic in making him RNC chair just because he's not white ...
Meanwhile, the elected leaders of the GOP can't stop themselves from racing to join Steele's genuflection in Rush Limbaugh's general direction (Brer Jindal included), afraid to step away from him but also afraid of the polls showing Obama sky high and El Rushbo rock bottom low, and seemingly oblivious to the trap they've fallen into. And Rush? He thinks the president of the United States has time to call in to his radio show and debate him.
It would be sad if it weren't so funny.
BTW, if you'd like to join Michael Steele and the rest of the GOP in saying sorry to El Rushbo -- and I mean for ANYTHING ... click here for a handy apology generator, courtesy of the DCCC.
If you’re baffled why the G.O.P. would thrust Jindal into prime time, the answer is desperation. Eager to update its image without changing its antediluvian (or antebellum) substance, the party is trying to lock down its white country-club blowhards. The only other nonwhite face on tap, alas, is the unguided missile Michael Steele, its new national chairman. Steele has of late been busy promising to revive his party with an “off-the-hook” hip-hop P.R. campaign, presumably with the perennially tan House leader John Boehner leading the posse.
At least the G.O.P.’s newfound racial sensitivity saved it from choosing the white Southern governor often bracketed with Jindal as a rising “star,” Mark Sanford of South Carolina. That would have been an even bigger fiasco, for Sanford is from the same state as Ty’Sheoma Bethea, the junior high school student who sat in Michelle Obama’s box on Tuesday night and whose impassioned letter to Congress was quoted by the president.
In her plea, the teenager begged for aid to her substandard rural school. Without basic tools, she poignantly wrote, she and her peers cannot “prove to the world” that they too might succeed at becoming “lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president.”
What such G.O.P. “stars” as Sanford and Jindal have in common, besides their callous neo-Hoover ideology, are their phony efforts to portray themselves as populist heroes. Their role model is W., that brush-clearing “rancher” by way of Andover, Yale and Harvard. Listening to Jindal talk Tuesday night about his immigrant father’s inability to pay for an obstetrician, you’d never guess that at the time his father was an engineer and his mother an L.S.U. doctoral candidate in nuclear physics. Sanford’s first political ad in 2002 told of how growing up on his “family’s farm” taught him “about hard work and responsibility.” That “farm,” the Charlotte Observer reported, was a historic plantation appraised at $1.5 million in the early 1980s. From that hardscrabble background, he struggled on to an internship at Goldman Sachs.
Read the whole thing. It's more than worth it, and contains some sober warnings for President Obama, too.
The Daily Beast delves into the background of the GOP's Brown Guy Rising (hokey, Barney Fife speech the other day notwithstanding...)
... as the country gets acquainted with the Bayou’s boy wonder, the stranger details of Jindal’s religious or personal background remain largely unknown, even among the Republican grassroots. How many Americans know that Jindal boasted of participating in an exorcism that purged the spirit of Satan from a college girlfriend? So far, Jindal’s tale of “beating a demon” remains behind the subscription wall of New Oxford Review, an obscure Catholic magazine; only a few major blogs have seized on the story.
Born in Baton Rouge in 1971, Jindal rarely visited his parents’ homeland. His birth name was Piyush Jindal. When he was four years old, Piyush changed his name to “Bobby” after becoming mesmerized by an episode of The Brady Bunch. Jindal later wrote that he began considering converting to Catholicism during high school after “being touched by the love and simplicity of a Christian girl who dreamt of becoming a Supreme Court justice so she could stop her country from ‘killing unborn babies.’” After watching a short black-and-white film on the crucifixion of Christ, Jindal claimed he “realized that if the Gospel stories were true, if Christ really was the son of God, it was arrogant of me to reject Him and question the gift of salvation.”
So ... "Bobby" is so influenced by the teevee that he changed his name because of "The Brady Bunch" and came to Jesus because of a movie??? Yeesh. ... Okay, moving on. About that exorcism!
During his years at Brown University, Jindal pursued his Catholic faith with unbridled zeal. Jindal became emotionally involved with a classmate named Susan who had overcome skin cancer and struggled to cope with the suicide of a close friend. Jindal reflected in an article for a Catholic magazine (called “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare”) that “sulfuric” scents hovered over Susan everywhere she went. In the middle of a prayer meeting, Jindal claimed that Susan collapsed and began convulsing on the floor. His prayer partners gathered together on the floor, holding hands and shouting, “Satan, I command you to leave this woman!”
While under the supposed control of satanic demons, Susan lashed out at Jindal and his friends. “Whenever I concentrated long enough to begin prayer, I felt some type of physical force distracting me,” Jindal reflected. “It was as if something was pushing down on my chest, making it very hard for me to breathe… I began to think that the demon would only attack me if I tried to pray or fight back; thus, I resigned myself to leaving it alone in an attempt to find peace for myself.”
I didn't write much about the CPAC conference today because ... well ... it's so darned irrelevant. What's to say about a hotel ballroom full of right wing zealots, angry white guys, gun nuts, neocon leftovers and ... Joe the Plumber... (Sigh.) Yes, he's still hanging around (and he's still not a plumber) ... not selling many books, though... (Where is Human Events when you need them to buy in bulk??? Oh, right... they're having financial troubles because the evil conspiracy of the Commie Postal Service.) From an email appeal today entitled "We're in Trouble, We Need Your Help":
It pains me terribly to write a letter like this, but a crisis that threatens the very existence of HUMAN EVENTS forces me to ask for your help.
Let me explain...
You may recall that, just over a year ago, the federal government's taxpayer-subsidized mail-delivery monopoly -- aka the United States Postal Service -- hit us with a whopping 20 percent rate increase that drove up our annual delivery costs by more than $120,000. [Emphasis added]
Well, believe it or not, they've just done it again.
That's right: the USPS is hitting us with yet another postal increase that will jack up our annual delivery costs by an additional $51,568.
Together, this one-two punch of rate hikes amounts to more than $170,000 in increased annual delivery costs -- a staggering sum that we simply can't afford.
Now, it's outrageous enough that the USPS can continually jack up our rates without fearing any loss of our business to more cost-efficient competitors -- something it can do ONLY because federal law effectively protects it from private competition.
But what really burns me up is that these increases are part of a new rate system that was designed in part by lobbyists for liberal media giant Time Warner and other large publishers to benefit themselves at the expense of smaller competitors such as HUMAN EVENTS. ...
...Please send as large a gift as you possibly can. Our readers have never let us down in the past. We appreciate all your support over the years -- and thanks in advance for your generous assistance today.
Sincerely, Tom Winter President and Editor in Chief, HUMAN EVENTS
And of course, Joe was the biggest star at CPAC because the brown guy, since George W. Bush wasn't invited, Sarah Palin couldn't be bothered and Bobby Jindal ... is now persona non grata. Aw, shucks, fellers!
So CPAC was down to jokes about Obama not being a citizen, jokes from The Moustache about blowing up Chicago, and oh, yeah, the increasingly lonely intellectual, Newt Gingrich. Maybe they could get Michael Steele to come down and perform some hip-hop???
UPDATE: Check out this pretty nasty dis of Karl Rove and Dubya during the CPAC conference:
For all the sarcasm and accusations of socialism directed at President Obama, their immediate anger is focused on party purging before rebuilding. “Why is ‘the architect’ [Karl Rove] giving free advice, even as people like us crawl from the rubble of the collapsed structure built from his blueprints?” asks National Review contributing editor Deroy Murdock. “Imagine clicking on the TV and catching a show called Cooking with Typhoid Mary.”
Punkdified: Rick Santelli blames his wife for fearing Robert Gibbs
The former derivatives trader, who Gibbs pointed out, probably doesn't live anywhere near the "losers" who are going under after losing their jobs and homes, is what many wealthy Wall Street wags are: a punk who's better at sniping on television than answering questions. Watch Matt Lauer take him down, and catch him in a lie, as Santelli throws his poor wife under the bus; denying he accused the president's spokesman of threatening him, and then pawning the fear of a pudgy press secretary of on her:
Santelli, I think you're on about minute 14. Enjoy the last one.
Kenneth Blackwell -- who gained infamy as Ohio Secretary of State in 2004, when the state threw the presidential race to George W. Bush -- has officially jumped into the race for Republican National Committee chair, according to a letter he's circulating among committee members.
"After prayerful consideration, I have decided to become a candidate for Chairman of the Republican National Committee," Blackwell writes in the letter, which was forwarded to us by a Republican operative. "I write today to ask for your vote and endorsement."
And to make his case, Blackwell, who's more closely associated with the religious wing-nut faction of the party than Mr. "Drill Baby, Drill" is, lists his qualifications for all the right to peruse:
"I've survived interviews with Keith Olbermann, testified before Congress, prevented voter fraud from overturning the results of a U.S. presidential election and fought the left in federal court more times than you can imagine," Blackwell writes in the letter. "I have been tried and tested, though I'll admit that I've never been called `mavericky' by Tina Faye."
Well, let's see: he's obsessed with "voter fraud," stole Ohio in 2004 mainly by disenfranchising black people, and he's "tested," especially in matters of failure at running for office, just like Rudy Giuliani. And he can't spell "Tina Fey." Sold!
MSNBC this morning gave some airtime to a new ad campaign, which simply "thanks Sarah Palin," for all she's done. No, it's not from a group of late night comedians, stand up comics or liberal talk show hosts (or Democratic strategists.) It's from a group of faithful Palinites who, well, just think she's gotten a raw deal. Watch their first ad:
There's also a Thanksgiving version ... which might not have been so advisable, given that whole, unfortunate turkey massacre incident...
A political action committee called “Our Country Deserves Better” is raising money to air a series of TV advertisements voicing support for Gov. Palin. The group is headed by Howard Kaloogian, a California Republican and former state legislator.
All three versions of the ad — which are being streamed on the PAC’s website for now — feature group members complimenting Gov. Palin over her role in the 2008 campaign. Lloyd Marcus, a singer-songwriter and spokesman for the group, says to the camera, “Thank you, for the grace and dignity you showed even when some tried to smear and destroy you.”
Mark Williams, a conservative commentator, says, “We thank you for your passionate, hopeful and articulate advocacy of common sense, conservative values.”
During the presidential campaign, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC conducted “The Stop Obama Tour,” with a bus that traveled from the West to the East Coast to promote the Republican ticket.
The latest campaign includes a special Thanksgiving ad, which highlights Gov. Palin’s penchant for moose stew as an alternative to turkey.
Doh! Don't say "turkey..." puhleeeze...!
The above-mentioned "commentator" Mark Willians was also the guy angrily flacking for the ad (and for Palin's fight to stop the "anti-American policies of our in-coming president." More of this crowd's greatest hits ... er, misses ... here...) with the light-questioning, giggly Norah O'Donnell this morning. Commentator is such a vague term. In fact, he's an out of work talk show host. From a posting in the "news" section on an industry website called AllAccess this morning:
Look for former KFBK-A/SACRAMENTO, WWDB/PHILADELPHIA, and WROW-A and WGY-A/ALBANY talker MARK WILLIAMS on MSNBC this morning at 11a ET. WILLIAMS will be at the studios of NBC affiliate KCRA-TV/SACRAMENTO to appear on the cable network defending the "Thank You SARAH PALIN" ads he produced for his OUR COUNTRY DESERVES BETTER political action committee.
WILLIAMS is available for fill-in and full-time talk gigs and has a full ISDN studio at his home; call him at (XXX) XXX-XXXX or e-mail mark@marktalk.com.
Hey, it's a recession. Everybody needs a gig. But since "Our Country Deserves Better" (an ironic name if I've ever heard one...) isn't actually HIS PAC, does the actual chairman, the Gingrichite Mr. Kaloogian, know that Williams -- listed as just a spokesman on the PAC's website -- is grabbing the credit for the ads on a radio site that just also happens to offer job and gig listings? Either way, this is a rather pathetic band of left behinders, also including Mark Steyn, apparently.
Oh, and in case you're wondering who the high-voiced black guy in the cowboy hat is, his name is LLoyd Marcus, and apparently, he sings, too! Even tried to write Florida's state song (poor dear.) From his PAC bio:
Lloyd Marcus is a passionate and patriotic American who has been a leader in the fight for common sense conservative values.
Lloyd Marcus has touched the hearts of Americans across this great land with his powerful songs “United We Stand” and “Sarah Smile” - a tribute to Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. You can learn more about Lloyd at his personal website: www.LloydMarcus.net.
The Alaska governor said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that she would be willing to help if Obama asked her for assistance on some of the issues she highlighted during this year's campaign, such as energy or services for special-needs children.
"It would be my honor to assist and support our new president and the new administration," said Palin, whom Sen. John McCain chose as his running mate in August.
"I speak for other Republicans and Republican governors, also," she said.
"They would be willing also to seize this opportunity that we have to progress this nation together, in a united front."
... and talking in the exact opposite manner as she was just talking:
BLITZER: Because, you know, during a campaign, every presidential campaign, things are said, it's tough, as you well know, it gets sometimes pretty fierce out there. And during the campaign, you said this, you said: "This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America."
And then you went on to say: "Someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."
PALIN: Well, I still am concerned about that association with Bill Ayers. And if anybody still wants to talk about it, I will, because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol. That's an association that still bothers me.
And I think it's still fair to talk about it. However the campaign is over. That chapter is closed. Now is the time to move on and to, again, make sure that all of us are doing all that we can to progress this nation.
Hey! Sarah! That thing ... that Wolf handed you there ... it was a SHOVEL. Stop using it!
In the wake of yesterday’s bruising result, the Republican party faces an excruciating and divisive choice between two very different futures.
The first choice is the choice on display at the excited rallies that cheered Sarah Palin all through the fall. This is a choice to fall back on the core base of the Republican party. The base is almost entirely white, almost entirely resident in the middle of the country, moderately affluent, middle-aged and older, more male than female, with some college education but not a college degree. Think of Joe the Plumber and you see the core of the Republican party. ...
... There’s another. It’s the path that begins by facing up to the arithmetic that says – Joe is no longer enough. God bless him, he’s the GOP base, and no Republican wants to lose him. But he needs reinforcements.
For Frummy, those reinforcements are not Latinos or Black folk ... they're long gone for the GOP. For Frum, the reinforcements are, in two words, smart people:
College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. And there are more and more of these college-educated Americans all the time.
So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? To do so will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. And it will involve potentially even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues. That’s a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin – but the only hope for a Republican recovery.
Yeah, good luck with that, Dave. The GOP has made a conscious decision to reject smart people, in favor of blunt-edged jingoism, social issues, and convincing less educated, low income white voters to cheerlead for wealth hoarding by rich people who wouldn't let those same lower income white voters mow their lawns. That's their thing, and they're most likely going to stick to it. ... That and saying "Ronald Reagan" a lot...
Meanwhile, National Review misses the point on the Prop 8 win in California (and the Amendment 2 win in Florida, if they were paying attention to it.) The actual lesson is, when record numbers of Black voters go to the polls, they take their conservative religous values with them. Most Americans could give a damn whether gay people get married.
When I heard the story about the McCain volunteer who was supposedly attacked (by a "tall, black man," no less) and had a "B" carved into her face just because she had a McCain sticker on her car, my BS detector definitely went off. First off, the old "big black guy attacked me" meme is always shady. Second, was the attacker using a mirror to do his handiwork? Because the "B" is "B"ackwards. How did that happen? Well, as it turns out, the old BS detector is working just fine:
A McCain campaign volunteer who reported that a tall black man robbed her and then cut a "B" onto her cheek after seeing a McCain bumper sticker on her car has been given a polygraph test because of "inconsistencies" in her story, police said.
Among other things, police said photos and bank card information from an automated teller machine where the college student claimed she was robbed do not show her using the machine at the time, police said.
Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard wouldn't release the polygraph results, but said, "we're still looking at some inconsistencies" in the woman's story.
Police said the student, Ashley Todd, of College Station, Texas, who is white, told them she was attacked by a 6-foot-4 black man Wednesday night.
Richard said police have not ruled out that the woman was attacked as she claimed, and said inconsistencies deal primarily with how she described the attack.
"We're just trying to judge the validity of some of the information we received from her," Richard said. "We understand when you are under duress that sometimes you can't recollect things. We're just looking at all the angles."
Mm-hm...
Among the differences in her accounts are whether she lost consciousness, whether she remembers handing over money and how the man assaulted her, police said.
The report of the attack Thursday prompted the Republican presidential candidate and his running mate, Sarah Palin, to call Todd expressing their concern. Barack Obama's campaign also issued a statement wishing Todd well and hoping the attacker would be swiftly brought to justice.
And speaking of people seeking their 15 minutes of fame, how about that Joe the Plumber?
Joe Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. "Joe the Plumber," said Friday he may consider running for Congress in 2010, challenging longtime Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D) in the Toledo-area district.
"I'll tell you what, we'd definitely be in one heck of a fight," Wurzelbacher said during an appearance on the Laura Ingraham show Friday, "but, you know, I'd be up for it."
"There is a movement afoot to draft you to run for Congress," Ingraham said. "Joe, let me tell you something: you decide to run for Congress, and I'll help you with your PR, I'll help you do your ads, I mean, I'll volunteer to help you."
Ingraham's producer, Brian Feldman, said that during the break after the segment, Wurzelbacher told Ingraham that his statements today represent the first time he has acknowledged considering a bid for Congress in public.
Wurzelbacher said he did agree with Kaptur's vote against the bailout, and touted his support for a flat tax on income.
And his run-up on Barack Obama was toooootally spontaneous, right? Riiiiiight...
Shop-a-haulogate shows no signs of letting up, as the McCain campaign careens to an ugly finish.
First up, the tarted up hockey mom's $150,000 makeover: it's now the subject of several complaints, one anonymous and damning from a Republican insider:
A senior Republican strategist, speaking with authority about the view of the party’s establishment, issued a wide-ranging critique of the McCain high command: “Lashing out at past Republican Congresses, … echoing your opponent's attacks on you instead of attacking your opponent, and spending 150,000 hard dollars on designer clothes when congressional Republicans are struggling for money, and when your senior campaign staff are blaming each other for the loss in The New York Times [Magazine] 10 days before the election, you’re not doing much to energize your supporters.
“The fact is, when you’re the party standard-bearer, you have an obligation to fight to the finish,” this strategist continued. “I think they can still win. But if they don’t think that, they need to look at how Bob Dole finished out his campaign in 1996 and not try to take down as many Republicans with them as they can. Instead of campaigning in Electoral College states, Dole was campaigning in places he knew he didn’t have a chance to beat Clinton, but where he could energize key House and Senate races.”
ORMOND BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A private watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over Sarah Palin's new wardrobe.
The complaint alleges that the purchase of clothing for Palin and her family violates the Federal Election Campaign Act.
It was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, and it names Palin, the Republican National Committee and several political operatives.
The watchdog group notes that the regulations clearly apply to clothing -- but not to items donated by the candidates to charity. The group says that exception might apply to Palin's clothing, but doesn't appear to apply to clothes for her family.
And now, for something completely different: John McCain has yet another new strategy: attack George W. Bush. No, seriously. Maybe he should drop Sarah and run with his obsessive love object, Joe the Plumber? Or he can do like this guy and just support Obama himself.
Oooh, George Will... are you gonna let that crinkly old has-been Robert Duvall talk to you like that? (On a related note, Tommy Thompson is kind of dull...)
How sick am I of this silly Bill Ayers shtick coming out of the McCain campaign and their new "my friends" on the right? VERY. And yet, I'm writing another post about it...
John McCain went on the radio with a very solicitous talk show host and responded to Barack Obama's "say it to my face" challenge. McCain said that Obama's comments had pretty much ensured he'll bring Ayers up at the next debate (it's kind of a macho thing, apparently.) Please do, Senator. That should be good for another 5 or 6 points for Barack in the polls!
"Bill Ayers is a professor of education who once served with Obama on a school reform board, a board funded by conservative Republicans tied to McCain," says the ad's narrator. "When Ayers committed crimes in the '60s, Obama was 8 years old. Obama condemned those despicable acts. Ayers has had no role in Obama's campaign, and will have no role in his administration."
"And John McCain? With no plan to fix our economy, smears are all he has left," says the narrator.
The ad is airing in Wisconsin, Colorado, and likely other states.
In 1995, Bill Ayers was part of a team that helped create the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education reform project that worked with half of Chicago's public schools. Barack Obama, then working as an attorney and law school professor, was elected chairman of the eight-member board of the CAC. The board included individuals of diverse political backgrounds, including Ray Romero, the President of Ameritech; Stanley Ikenberry, the former President of the University of Illinois; and Republican Arnold Weber, who had served in the Nixon White House.
In their best efforts to portray Barack as out of the mainstream, some on the right have tried characterizing the Chicago Annenberg Challenge as a dangerous fringe organization. What they do not discuss is the fact that the CAC was funded by a foundation belonging to Walter Annenberg, the billionaire Republican philanthropist who served as Richard M. Nixon's ambassador to the U.K. Annenberg and his wife, Leonore, gave the CAC $50 million in the 90's.
But Walter and Leonore weren't just giving money to educational foundations started by William Ayers. They were also giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee and various other Republican groups, as well as to a whole host of Republican candidates, including the following:
George W. Bush $4000
Mitt Romney $5000
Strom Thurmond $1000
Fred Thompson $500
Rick Santorum $3000
In other words, most of the people "palling around" with this particular terrorist were ... wait for it ... Republicans, and some darned prominent ones, too! Time to send Rick Santorum to Gitmo! (Oh, sorry, did I type that out loud...?) And by the way, guess which terror loving anti-American flag pin hater endorsed John McCain for president earlier this year?
Thanks, but no thanks, to Uncle Sam buying the mortgage
A lot of people on the right are howling mad about John McCain's $300 billion housing buy-up idea, which he tossed into the ring during Tuesday's debate (his latest "razzle-dazzle.") And while I'm loathe to agree with the likes of Michelle Malkin on ANYTHING, she and her kind are right about one thing: you don't want the federal government getting involved in your mortgage. In fact, if you're facing foreclosure, and Uncle Sam offers to buy up your loan, slam the door, pack your grip, and let the sheriff come on and get the keys. Then wait ten years, rebuild your credit and start over. You'd be better off.
Why?
Think about your federal student loans. They follow you for the rest of your life (until you pay them off.) You can't even use bankruptcy to escape them (just to delay them a bit.) And if you don't pay up, the federal government can garnish your wages AND appropriate your income tax refund. You want the feds to have the same power to enforce a $300,000 mortgage note? Also, particularly in states like Florida, bankruptcy offers you not just a second chance, but also the protection of a judge, and the ability to remain in your home. Why would anybody in their right mind throw out that protection and place themselves at the mercy of the federal government? Also, under such a plan, if you sold your home, you'd have to hand over the proceeds from the sale to the Treasury Department, and probably pay a capital gains tax, too.
What's the point???
But enough from me. Here's the latest word from McCain's friends at Politico: John McCain’s surprise policy offering Tuesday night to have the government buy bad mortgages is bold, sweeping and, well, a bit perplexing to nearly everyone.
From economic experts to political pundits, from liberals to conservatives, the proposal has been greeted with a collective sense of puzzlement that is raising questions not only about the substance of the plan, but of the seeming hastiness surrounding its rollout.
The few details available about McCain’s American Homeownership Resurgence Plan give the impression the plan is “half-baked,” according to Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“If you’re launching a major new initiative, usually you blitz the cable networks and really try to penetrate the public consciousness. I didn’t see that today,” he said Wednesday.
“It would really frighten me if he actually thought this was good policy,” said Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. “I assume that it’s nothing but a desperation ploy” to show they are doing something “big and bold,” he said.
“It seems hastily put together … given the lack of detail, specificity and overlap with existing programs,” added a Republican financial services lobbyist.
Indeed, McCain’s announcement was accompanied by a fact sheet that raised almost as many questions as it answered. The campaign did post and e-mail a background document Tuesday night following the debate describing the plan, but it lacked specifics about how the program would work, exactly who would be eligible and how many people would be helped.
... The McCain campaign said the plan did not change and they merely edited out “language [that] was mistakenly included in the initial draft.”
Nonetheless, with the sentence gone, the plan morphed into a shifting of $300 billion worth of losses to the taxpayers. It became clear Wednesday as the campaign talked about the plan that McCain is proposing that the Treasury purchase bad mortgages at face value even though sliding home prices mean many homes are worth far less than what the government would pay for original mortgages.
The plan is to retire the original mortgage and issue the homeowner a new, 30-year fixed-rate loan at interest rates just above 5 percent from the Federal Housing Administration. The shortfall between the new mortgage and the cost of the older, more expensive one would come from taxpayers.
The new detail caused many experts to question whether the $300 billion price tag is too low.
And while the McCain campaign pitched the plan as a fast-acting solution, some experts said that the administration of a homeowner-by-homeowner program would be extremely complicated — and therefore likely slow-moving — and much more cumbersome than dealing with larger institutions.
A campaign conference call with reporters Wednesday morning revealed that the campaign still doesn’t have all the details worked out.
When asked how many people the plan would help, McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin responded that it could aid “literally millions” but they didn’t have a precise estimate. “The question is how many people are going to pick up the phone.”
Holtz-Eakin offered only broadest description of who would qualify for the refinancing program.
“They need to be in a position where they’re going to be unable to stay in the mortgage,” he told reporters, saying that includes a homeowner who is “underwater” in their mortgage — owing more than the home is currently worth — or facing a future rate reset that would make their payments unaffordable.
“We’re going to roll out the specific criteria. We’re trying to get sign-offs from the senator on all the details,” Holtz-Eakin told Politico in a later interview. ...
I guess they'll just have to get those details and bring 'em to ya!
Apparently the McCain team is vetting Sarah Palin, having dispatched a team to Wasila. Better late than never...
If they'd done so BEFORE nominating her, they might have turned up her directorship of disgraced Alaska Senator "Uncle Ted" Stevens' 527 organization...
Or maybe they'd have polled her hometown newspapers and fellow elected officials, none of whom seem to believe she's fit to hold the second highest office in the land...
They might have looked more closely into Troopergate, a scandal for which our fair maiden is currently lawyering up, and about which she may have to testify before the election.
They might have found out that when it comes to cronyism, her record doesn't quite match her maverick reputation...
And they might have stopped her from making that "I said thanks, but no thanks to the bridge to nowhere" line to her stump speech, since apparently, it isn't true. And they would have discovered that as mayor of tiny Wasila, she hired Ted Stevens' former chief of staff to lobby for more than $8 million in federal earmarks.
And they might have discovered that, even if the "Desperate Housewives" style rumors that her 17-year-old daughter is the real mother of baby Trig aren't true, the rumors about Miss Bristol being pregnant at all are very much true indeed. And yes, she's keeping the baby and having a shotgun wedding, which delights the religious nuts, but doesn't exactly do wonders for Sarah's family values image ... or her championship of abstinence...
Okay, the Britney and Paris Hilton thing was stupid, but this is just pathetic:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — John McCain's campaign Thursday accused Barack Obama of playing the "race card" after the Democratic White House candidate complained Republicans were trying to scare voters away from him.
"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong," said McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis in a statement.
Davis was referring to comments by Obama in Missouri on Wednesday, in which he said McCain's campaign was mounting personal attacks against him to divert attention from what he said was a dearth of solutions to America's problems. "Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said in Missouri.
"You know, 'he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name. You know he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know, he's risky,'" Obama said mocking supposed attacks against him.
What's worse, is that Bill Burton and company reacted to the charge as if it's actually serious:
In a later statement, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said Obama had not intended to suggest McCain was introducing race into the campaign.
"This is a race about big challenges -- a slumping economy, a broken foreign policy, and an energy crisis for everyone but the oil companies.
"Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they're using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign."
Burton, love you man, but don't dignify this silly stuff. The proper response to a charge this desperate would have been "give me a break." Actually, Barack had the tone just right earlier today when he said, "is this the best my opponent can come up with?"
Next, the McCain people will be accusing Obama of ... um ... cheating at Scrabble! Wearing tight pants! He's got a crooked index finger! He's got too many pets! He eats dessert before dinner...! Grow up, McCainiacs. Attack a policy, why don't you.
I'm almost sad for the right. They were turned into a neocon cult, worshipping the person of George W. Bush after 9/11, and then when that went sour, they've been forced to kiss the very old bottom of John McCain. Pitiful.
I agree with Joshua Marshall when he says that the Obama campaign can't afford to get dragged into an argument about race. As bumbling as it is, the McCain campaign has managed to set the narrative for the race day after day, just as Hillary Clinton did during the primary. Of course, in Hillary's case, it ultimately didn't help her win, which leads me to Marshall's second point, to which I also subscribe:
It was always clear that it was going to be hard for John McCain to emerge from this campaign with his reputation and the presidency, simply because of the rough terrain any Republican faces this year. At this point, it's clear that by the end of this, the reputation is going to be shot. There's just been too much demonstrable lying on the candidate's part, too much sleazy campaigning, too much outsourcing his campaign to Karl Rove. More and more editorialists and even some of the prestige pundits are starting to see it.
So that means, he has to win. Because if he doesn't, he's got nothing left. All he is a four term senator from a medium-sized state with no legislative record. It's an eminently worthwhile task to chronicle his descent.
To stop him, the Obama team has to develop an offensive message (offense as in football, not as in O'Reilly.) They need to go up with ads proclaiming McCain to be the last desperate gasp of neoconservatism and the Bush administration, and they need to hit him hard -- but fair. They should do so sooner rather than later, because everyone knows that a desperate man is a dangerous man, and John McCain at present, is a very, very desperate man.
