Lehman Brothers = Marx Brothers -- Now That Worked

By Keith R. Schmitz

There will be a flurry of conservative hair-splitting and excuses, but the disaster that is happening right now on Wall Street with the collapse of Lehman Brothers thanks to the subprime mess should among rational thinking people put a stake into the heart of the right wing notion of hands off when it comes to the market. 

John McAdams, for example, might want to can go back and erase off his site those posts where he proclaimed the concern over the subprime blow-up as "a fad." One can think of less deadlier fads, like bungee jumping.

Those of us who thought "letting the economy do what it does best" would fatten our portfolios and hasten our retirements are learning otherwise.

There is a long line of people to thank for this disruption, but let's hustle to the front of the line John McCain's actual economic advisor Phil Gramm. The Angry Snapping Turtle as Molly Ivins liked to call him, was responsible for dismantling many of the post-depression fire walls that kept things stable. Keep that in mind when contemplating support for this ticket.

Like HL Mencken once said, "democracy is a form of government that promises that the people get what they want, and they get it good and hard."

Nuff said.  

He's John McCain, and he approves this mess.

Stop Me if You Heard This One Before Part III

By Keith Schmitz:

Q:  How come unlike many female politicians, Sarah Palin doesn't wear pantsuits?

A:  Because her pants are on fire.

McCain, Keep the Change

By Keith R. Schmitz

Admittedly I'm not totally on top of things when it comes to politics (Jay leaves me in the dust on that account) but I believe I am better than average when it comes to following this contact sport.

So when I subjected myself to that form of torture known as the GOP convention, I kept hearing references by the parade of white people about John McCain's bold Congressional initiatives, standing up to special interests, program of reform, etc.

What was nagging was there was no there, there. Give us a laundry list of accomplishments. Hell, give us one thing. They certainly couldn't of course risk a rain of boos by mentioning McCain-Feingold, which would bring out the true colors of this "change" party.

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter raises, and answers, this point as well, poking some holes in the notion that John McCain is this dynamic force under the National Dome by comparing the record to that of Barack Obama:

Obama served eight years in Springfield, and has been in Washington nearly four so far. In the Illinois state Senate, he authored about a half-dozen "major laws" on issues ranging from ethics to education. The best example of his leadership style was bipartisan legislation to require the videotaping of police interrogations, which is now a national model. Obama brought together police, prosecutors and the ACLU on a win-win bill that simultaneously increased conviction rates and all but ended jailhouse beatings. In Washington he has his name on three important laws: the first major ethics reform since Watergate; a much-needed cleanup of conventional weapons in the former Soviet Union, and the "Google for Government" bill, an accountability tool that requires notice of all federal contracts to be posted online. Besides that, Obama hasn't been around long enough to get much done.

McCain served four years in the House and has been in the Senate almost 22 so far. But he, too, has authored fewer than a half-dozen major laws. Trying to fix immigration counts for something, but nothing passed. So while McCain deserves credit for the landmark 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, the only other major law on which his office says his "name appears" (Palin's standard) is the "McCain Amendment" prohibiting torture in the armed forces. But that has little meaning because of a bill this year, supported by McCain, that allows torture by the CIA. Under longstanding government practice, military intelligence officers can be temporarily designated as CIA officers ("sheep-dipped" is the bureaucratic lingo) when they want to go off the Army field manual. In other words, the government can still torture anyone, any time. McCain caved on an issue he insists is a matter of principle.

Alter questions the vaunted crusade against earmarks, in this case earnicks because "account for less than 2 percent of the budget." If you think symbols are sexy then you may get turned on by the bridge to nowhere, but Alter points out the project "is offensive but amounts to the cost of a few hours in Iraq (now THAT's pork!)."

Alter charges that "given his claims of two decades of "making change," his record of legislative achievement is surprisingly thin. Nothing big on the economy, education, health care, law enforcement or other major issues."

That has been the problem with this campaign all along, one with seven, long, weeks ahead -- a political eternity -- that could take a big mouthful out his behind. They have scored a lot of political points against Obama with largely scurrilous charges and we keep hearing about "what has Obama done, what has he passed" and every time we offer something up it gets minimized or dissed. But where's the beef from McCain? Try to think of one thing that he has done. His campaign has done nothing to remind you what those things are.

Based on the record, to compare McCain's to Obama's. McCain defenders need to come up with roughly one fairly decent Congressional measure based for every year in the Senate. Can they do that?

The Obama campaign is fittingly getting aggressive. Despite the scurrying and worrying of some Obama supporters and the concern trolling both by concern trolls and the media, there was nothing that this campaign could constructively do with Palin being the new shiney object for the press.

Now that the two week penalty box time is over, the Obama campaign is hopping over the rink wall and ready to hit the ice. With all the garbage McCain and Palin has thrown out there in the typical style of GOP hubris, there is no need for high sticking. Just unreel the facts and crack the bottle of bubbly on a fleet of YouTubes. In four weeks this past two weeks will be far in the rear view mirror.

The fun part will be watching McCain simmer as the lid on him builds the pressure inside. You could see it on Friday when Joy Behar on The View was charging the McCain campaign with lying. You could imagine him wanting to lunge at her..

For anyone smug or sweating over the election, bear in mind November is a long way away.

I wonder

by folkbum

If any families in, say, Cairo woke up yesterday morning to find a hate-filled DVD called "Obsession: The Reactionary West's War Against Islam" included among the ads and coupons in their Sunday paper? And I wonder of they had, whether the newspaper that delivered the DVD to their front porches would cover the story?

Your Liberal Media

by folkbum

Because it sure ain't mine:

Over the five-day period from September 5 through September 9, Fox News spent far more time airing unfiltered clips -- that is, clips of the candidates talking at campaign events uninterrupted by journalists' voice-overs -- of the Republican presidential ticket and its surrogates than of the Democratic presidential ticket and its surrogates, also airing a far greater number of Republican clips. Moreover, all three cable networks devoted more airtime (significantly more in the cases of Fox News and MSNBC) to, and broadcast a significantly greater number of clips of, the Republican candidates and their surrogates campaigning than of the Democratic candidates and their surrogates on both Fridays after the two national conventions.

Of the total time Fox News devoted to unfiltered campaign clips between September 5 and September 9, 78 percent was of the Republican candidates and their surrogates, with 22 percent devoted to the Democrats. Moreover, of the total number of these clips aired on Fox News, 81 percent were of Republicans. [. . .]

On Friday, September 5, all three cable networks -- MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News -- devoted more time to airing unfiltered clips of the McCain-Palin campaign than of the Obama-Biden campaign, with Fox News and MSNBC skewing significantly in favor of the Republicans. Fox News devoted 81 percent of its unfiltered clip time to Republicans and MSNBC 64 percent. CNN devoted 53 percent of the total clip time length to the Republicans.

Of the total number of clips run on the three cable channels on September 5, 93 percent on Fox News, 77 percent on CNN, and 68 percent on MSNBC were of Republicans.

Stop Me If You Have Heard This One (Part II)

By 3rd Way

Q: How can you tell Sarah Palin is lying?

A: Her lipstick is moving.

It all makes sense now

by folkbum

Clif at Sadly, No! explains it all:

• The reason that McCain wears $520 Ferragamo loafers is because he can't tie his shoes.


• The reason that his Senate office tried to cover-up Cindy McCain's drug addiction problem was because, if she went into treatment, there wouldn’t be anyone around to comb his hair.


• The reason that McCain campaign aides took away his unlimited cell phone privileges is because he dialed too many wrong numbers on the cell phone keyboard

Look, I actually think that of all the attacks on McCain, the one that he doesn't use email is perhaps the weakest. I prefer things like, he wants to raise taxes on the 60% of Americans whose health care is provided by their employers or that he doesn't actually know who we're fighting in Iraq or that his campaign has deteriorated into a series of outright lies and schoolyard bullying.

In fact, I think Obama has sadly fallen for the right's Indignation Defense--the art of taking every single thing a liberal says and being offended by it as a personal attack. (We must remember, of course, that liberals are not allowed to be offended, or so says one of Charlie Sykes's 50 Rules.) The lipstick thing, the houses thing, and even the email thing are not personal attacks (McCain's lack of interest in the technology that drives contemporary American commerce and society is a disturbing artifact of his being out of touch, not of his being a POW). But the right has perfected the swoon and faint.

Imagine, for example, a group of liberals selling boxes of John McCain rice ("McCain's answer to every question is 'For five years I ate nothing but rice--as a POW!' "), decorated with pictures of a whiter-than-white elderly McCain coming down the stairs of his wife's private jet in front of one of their estates, at a conference attended by Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid. We wouldn't hear the end of it; the bloggers would post a hundred times a day, the radio squawkers would devote weeks of programming to it, FOX News would ask why liberals hate America and if the next step was ritual sacrifice of goats to Baal.

Of course, no such thing happened; instead, it was conservatives selling Barack Obama waffle mix, full of racist imagery and exploiting the stereotypes the right's been spreading all year. Democrats, unfortunately, have not mastered the Indignation Defense, and so such things will go on and on and on. Which leaves Obama in a quandary: Republicans and the media won't talk about the issues and don't care when Obama does, but Obama can't say anything that generates press except things the right can swoon and faint over.

(Similar situation: Remember the right's swooning and fainting when a conservative Wisconsin blogger was threatened by a petty, power-abusing mayor? Think they give a crap that Governor Palin did the same thing?)

There's no good way to win this, and I don't have an answer. The best I can do, I guess, is keep pointing out how stupid the right looks when it mounts the Indignation Defense.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

by bert
Flipping around the dial on the radio while driving yesterday, I heard Michael Savage seriously ask (it was more like a yell) why Hillary Clinton was never subjected to the kind of scrutiny that Sarah Palin is now suffering under.

Saturday YouTube-ing: That Lyin' McCain

by folkbum

More iPod blogging

by folkbum

So I haven't spent a lot of time tooling around the internetoblogosphere, but a couple of things about the mini version of Safari that I surf with have already popped up to bug me. For example, the little pop-up keyboard lacks directional arrows, which can make it tricky to navigate through the text I type.

There's also this annoying feature that when I have multiple windows open in Safari (there seems to be no such thing as tabs) it seems to want to re-load the content every time I switch back and forth.

Anyone have any ideas?

Chapstick on a weasel

by folkbum (NOTE THE UPDATE BELOW!)

And yes, I am talking about someone--John McCain.

We can talk all we want about the outright lies he propagates in his ads. We can talk about the fact that he seems to have taken a page straight out of the Sarah Palin playbook, hiding from the media who might just be tempted to ask about all the lies and the ooze seeping from his campaign. We could even talk about issues--like The Tax Hike That Dare Not Speak Its Name--though I doubt that would generate any comments at all.

Instead, I think we should talk about how he is a power-abusing weasel. After all, if reasonable conservatives--some might even call themselves "fairly" conservative, think they can lie with impunity about Barack Obama and take Obama's words out of context and twist them, then we ought to be able to talk about documented facts that show how McCain is, in fact, a weasel.

In 2000, and in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the run-up to the 2004 election, I really, really lamented that John McCain had not beaten George W. Bush. "At least," my enfeebled Democratic brain told itself, "John McCain wouldn't be quite such a weasel." In fact, one of the most compelling what-ifs of the whole President McCain scenario was that, all other things being equal, at least a President McCain would not have a Vice President Cheney, Dick Cheney being being worse than a weasel (a stoat? a radioactive mink with laser-beam eyes and musk glands that can shoot a guy in the face?). Cheney has made an art out of lying to our faces, stymying investigations, and pushing his agenda in the face of contradictory facts.

But it turns out that I didn't know Dick, or, rather, John: McCain has been revealed to be exactly the same weasel the rest of the Republican Washington establishment is. Where to start? Why not Troopergate?

Butwaitaminnit, you say, Troopergate is Sarah Palin's problem! Well, yes and no. It's true that some of the most recent revelations (a pre-governor judge smack-down, and governor-era ethics advisor telling Palin to apologize for "overreaching" because the situation was "grave") make it look worse for Palin that it looked in August, but the right keeps dutifully explaining to us that there's no there there. And that may very well be true, and given that Palin was more than willing to agree to a unanimously-approved bipartisan legislative investigation as recently as a few weeks ago suggests that Palin had no fear that she'd be shown to be in the wrong. (Or, to rephrase and borrow from conservative dismissals of, for example, warrantless wiretaps: If she didn't do anything wrong, she should have nothing to worry about.)

However, just seconds after McCain, perhaps without really understanding what happened in Troopergate, tapped Palin to be VP, the cover-up started in earnest. Palin lawyered up and sued to stop the investigation. The star witness got cold feet, citing the bogus suit. Seven other cooperative witnesses also lawyered up and canceled their scheduled depositions. If there's no there there, the McCain campaign sure seems to be doing an awful lot of water-muddying to keep the world from learning just how much there there is not.

Then there are the rape-kit revelations. I can think of no other investigative technique that requires the victim of a crime to pay the investigation. The fingerprint lifting, the witness interviewing, the dumpster searching--that's all covered by the taxes we pay that lead us to expect the police to do a through job and find the perpetrator. Yet in the 1990s, as DNA technology was still new, it was a not-uncommon practice to charge rape victims for the rape kits.

In 1994, as a follow-up to the acclaimed and bipartisan Violence Against Women Act, Joe Biden--yes, that Joe Biden--worked hard to get legislation passed the required states not to charge for rape kits if those states wanted funds under VAWA. Among the "no" votes to this again-biparisan legislation? John McCain. And it would seem to me that one of the things a guy with a a history of verbal and physical abuse against women, particularly a guy with aspirations for higher office, ought to do is support the idea of not forcing women to pay for rape kits, but again just last year, McCain voted against funding that legislation.

I suppose we should not have expected anything positive on rape from a weasel who thinks women being raped by gorillas is funny.

Which brings us back to Palin. You have probably read by now that Alaska was the last state in the union to comply with Biden's 1994 rape kit legislation, finally passing a state law in 2000 to bring Alaska into compliance. The sole reason Alaska was out of compliance? The city of Wasilla (mayor at the time: Sarah Palin) was the only city left in Alaska that still charged women for their rape kits. Which means, as Alaska was the last state to come into compliance, Wasilla was likely the last city in the entire United States of America charging women for their own rape exams.

Now, that was a policy that pre-dated Palin. UPDATE: Turns out I was given Palin the benefit of a doubt she didn't deserve. New information today is that this was not the Wasilla policy before Palin was elected--charging for rape kits began under her watch, in a budget she signed! But she did not change it when she took office; she did not even change it during the legislative discussion about how Wasilla was out of compliance. The police chief she had installed (she fired the one who was in the office when she was elected, because he wanted to crack down on drunk driving--I know! And now she's set to be become VP!) was quite vocal about what a burden free rape exams would be on the taxpayer. Never mind what a burden it is to be raped and then to have to pay to collect the evidence of your rape. New slogan idea: "McCain-Palin '08: Pay For Your Own Damn Rape Exam."

And now the weaseling: A campaign spokesman is now running around saying Palin "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test." Another weasel statement belied by the facts!

(Aside: Apparently some of Alaska's women's rights organizations are quite vexed by Palin's firing of Walt Monegan, the Public Safety Commissioner whose ouster is at the heart of Troopergate. Monegan was a staunch advocate for women who were victims of crime and abuse like rape, and Palin's original pick to replace Monegan, who lasted all of two weeks in the job, was a man who'd been fingered, so to speak, for sexual harassment in his previous position. But women are supposed to love Sarah Palin!)

And to the last item, for today, anyway. I was not aware that in the 1990s Cindy McCain was addicted to painkillers until just this week. Which is fine by me--I don't think that drug abuse by a candidate's spouse should necessarily disqualify the candidate. (A possible addiction to gambling on the candidate's part might disqualify him, but that would require the press to investigate. Not gonna happen.) But here's the thing: Apparently, John McCain lied about it then (despite Cindy's having been in treatment in 1991 and 1992, McCain was saying that he had just learned of it in 1994 when the story broke in Arizona), and he also may have used the power of his Senate office to stifle any investigation. And then he and his wife leaned hard, for more than a decade, on a potential whistleblower to keep the guy quiet.

As I said, I used to think that McCain in 2000 was an explicit rejection of the politics of the weasel, a rejection of what we've come to know lately as Karl Rove politics. As it turns out, all that was simply a result of the fact that George W. Bush had managed to hire the likes Rove, Steve Schmidt, and Tucker Eskew first. This year, all of those men are working for McCain. Eskew, responsible for the "McCain had an illegitimate black baby" smear that sealed the deal in South Carolina in 2000, is now working for Ste. Sarah of Wasilla, so is it any wonder now that she as well, the next (and, presumably better, though she doesn't believe in evolution) generation of Republican leadership has started, since she was tapped for McCain's ticket, to act the weasel, too?

The abuses of power, the stifling of investigations, the flat-out denials that clearly contradict indisputable facts in evidence, and he's spread it to Palin in just three weeks. That's not "maverick." That's corrupt. And no amount of Chapstick will uncrack those lips. Or something.

The Hack Van Hollen

Update: MJS - There is a strong whiff of partisan politics from state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s lawsuit on Wisconsin's voter list.

It was all of one week ago that Attorney General Van Hollen was making a speech to Wisconsin GOP delegates extolling the virtues of Sarah Palin, saying she will help expand the Republican Party (MJS, Greg J. Borowski, Sept. 4, 2008).

Now this McCain Co-Chair, Van Hollen, says with a straight face that he has no conflict of interest and that he does not act for partisan or political reasons.

Borowski's MJS piece notes that, "Van Hollen stressed Palin's pro-life credentials, terming her 'somebody who believes in God, who believes in family, who believes in life.'"

Van Hollen also called the Republican Party a "family".

C'mon, is this not at the very least an appearance of a conflict of interest?

Privitize the Profit and Socialize the Losses

By Keith R. Schmitz

Another one bites the dust.

Thanks to the regulations yanked away by the hard work of McCain advisor Phil Gramm, the walls are collapsing on yet another financial firm. This time the once venerable Lehman Brothers.

Bad on so many levels, but of course the worst is that the perpetrators of this debacle will trot out of there with multi-million dollar packages while others eat dirt and us taxpayers may get a piece of the reaction.

So oh please Charlie and the rest of you. I'd rather not hear your sermons on personal responsibility that bubble up when a poor person or a minority transgresses or acts abhorant. I'm am waiting for the denouncements that will never come against those corporate types who screw up and are royally compensated.

Yeah, us liberals dig that ethos of tending to our own houses and we use it on ourselves -- and our kids. But we also like to apply it to those at that level who can most afford it, though there are no punishments or lessons applied.

What's wrong with you people? Is it they can get away with these things because they are white and wear suits?

Is there something in the 50 Rules about this?

Perscription for Wasting Our Time

By Keith R. Schmitz

Would McCain rather lose our future to win an election?

We've all had eight years of our lives wasted with what you could call a pointless administration in charge. Pure ideologues who were out of touch with reality, and the recent scandal involving the Animal House over at the Denver office of the Minerals Management Service is yet another example of this smash and grab administration.

With McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for veep, it is obvious that this was not done with us in mind. No one in their right brain could argue that she was the best available person, but it is a wonderful gimmick isn't it?

Want evidence of the cynicism of the pick? The campaign is steering clear of any serious press probing that a real candidate would handle except for swatting at softballs to be pitched by the affable Charlie Gibson.

This is essentially what John Nichols calls putting her in a witness protection program. So the question is, so what if she could kill and dress a moose if she can't handle Meet the Press? There will be world leaders far formidable than this.

Former Bush speech writer David Frum puts its well on the NRO web site:

A question I am often asked when I give talks or lectures is: Why did the Bush communication effort end so badly? How did an administration that once commanded such public support end by losing all ability to make its case?

My answer is that the ultimate failure was encoded into the initial success. The president's communication team - of which (McCain team member) Nicole Wallace was an important part - shared the same disdain of "elites" that permeates so much of my pro-Palin correspondence. It was not just the media elite that they disregarded. (Who could blame them for that?) It was the policy elite too. When the president wished to advocate, eg a tax cut, he did not argue his case before the Detroit Economic Club or send a surrogate to Jackson Hole. He made a rally speech before cheering supporters. That made for effective soundbites and exciting images. But it abdicated any effort to make an argument that could convince people who were not predisposed to be convinced.

Here's the payoff pitch:

At first, this abdication did not much matter. The president was popular, the public was united. But once the administration encountered trouble and adversity, it discovered - it found itself disarmed. It had no advocates other than its own in-house communicators and the most committed partisans. There were pitifully few respected independent voices ready to join the discussion on behalf of the administration's policies. They could not convince, because they had not been convinced.

Speaking directly to the people works when the people are intensely engaged. But big publics pay only intermittent attention to politics and policy. When that attention is diverted, specialists and enthusiasts reclaim their usual disproportionate impact.

By that time however the argument may well have been lost among that portion of the public that is still paying attention.

In essence what Frum is talking about is we have been wandering around for all this time because the Bush administration never had the faith in its policies to defend them publicly.

I don't know about you, but I am getting too old for more nonsense like this. John McCain used to be a serious Senator after he got religion following the Keating Five. Now he is in the clutches of his ambition and it looks like from advice from Karl Rove on who to have as his running mate.

Cute and clever speeches may charm the disengaged voter and fire up the rabid base and bring a win in November. But this very unserious pick makes me worry about McCain's competence in other areas.

In Memoriam

by folkbum

Take some time to reflect today.

iPod Blogging

by folkbum

I had one of those birthday thingies last week ("old enough" is all you get). My lovely and thoughtful wife got me an 8gb iPod Touch, complete with WiFi connectivity and the App Store and all that jazz. In short, I totally could be typing this out on the laptop in front of me, but I'm pecking it out on the iPod just because I can. This is not likely to replace my computer anytime soon.

Earnicks

By Keith R. Schmitz

The McCain campaign is making a big deal about how he is going to stand up to federal earmarks to save us from economic oblivion, conveniently forgetting the pounds of juicy, delicious pork requested by Sarah Palin (at least now we know her name as he said in the Twin Cities).

What's the big benefit? None according to John Cole:

The total national debt, as I write this, is $9,679,000,000,000.00 (nine and a half trillion).

The Budget for 2008 is close to $3,000,000,000,000.00 (three trillion).

Our budget deficit for this year is going to range in between $400-500,000,000,000.00 (four hundred to five hundred billion, give or take a few billion).

The total value of wasteful earmarks in 2008 (according to CAGW) will be approximately $18,000,000,000.00 (eighteen billion).

In other words, when McCain talks about earmarks, he is talking about 3% of our annual budget deficit, .6% of our annual budget, and a number too small to even report when discussing our national debt. Or, put another way, he is talking about two months in Iraq, something he wants to keep going indefinitely (or -- per me -- tax cuts for the wealthy).

In other words, let's roll up our sleeves and start pricking the budget.

Congrats to Sandy Pasch

By Keith R. Schmitz

Open seats always make for interesting elections, and in the 22nd we sure had that. We weren't lacking for attention this summer. Four people campaigning hard to take over the Assembly seat from Sheldon Wasserman who hopes to move up in the State Senate.

Very much neck and neck last night between candidates Sandy Pasch and Andy Feldman in the Milwaukee northshore as returns came in between 9:00 and 11:00. In the end Sandy squeaked by. She will go on to face the Republican in November.

Sandy will bring her great experience in health care to Madison, particularly in the area of mental health. No doubt she will do a good job representing us.

Tough loss for Andy, but he has a packed resume and will be a fine addition to our local politics.

Bridge to Nowhere Update

By Keith R. Schmitz

Talking Points Memo has a nice wrap-up of the Palin lie that she continues to beat:

Actually, Congress put the kibosh on the Bridge to Nowhere back in November 2005. Since Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was then head of the Senate Appropriations Committee he was able to force a compromise in which the earmark for the bridge was killed but Alaska got to hold on to the money -- some $442 million of federal tax dollars.

Fast forward to November 2006. That's when Sarah Palin was running as a staunch supporter of the Bridge to Nowhere -- that is, after the feds had themselves already said 'No Thanks.'

In 2006, the Democrats took over both houses of Congress. So by the time Palin got into office it was clear that not only was the first Bridge earmark killed but that Congress was not going to be ponying up any more money. That meant that Alaska was going to have to pick up the tab all on its own. So since she couldn't pay for it with the federal pork barrel, in September 2007, Palin officially halted the project which was then a state project since Congress had said 'Thanks. But no thanks' two years earlier.

She couldn't say 'No Thanks' because Congress had already said 'Forget It'.

Still with me?

So the money Palin sent back to Washington? Well, she didn't. She kept the money for other bridges and roads in Alaska.

So, to boil it all down, Congress pulled the plug on the Bridge to Nowhere in 2005. Palin was still for it in 2006. And when she finally ended the project because Congress had cut off funding, instead of saying 'No Thanks' she actually said 'Thanks!' because instead of sending the money back to Washington she kept it all in Juneau.

So what does this all mean and why the todo?

Conservatives, if you truly want someone who is going to hold down spending this is but one example of where Sarah is not your gal. Leaving Wasilla $20 million in debt after getting buckets of pork is another example.

We are not talking concern trolling because us folks on the other side of the aisle don't like wasteful spending either. That's just one reason why we are against the money pit in Iraq (remember that issue?)

Yeah, politicians stretch the facts all the time but this one is so transparent and blatant it stands out as a major league insult to our collective intelligences.

So to paraphrase John McCain, would you rather win the election instead of cut spending?

McCain Ministry of Funny Walks

By Keith R. Schmitz

In an example of inadvertent hilarity, the McCain campaign has now opened the Palin Truth Squad.

What next? The Rush Limbaugh Drug Rehab Clinic?

Sarah Palin -- Welfare Mother

By Keith R. Schmitz

Finally some sign that the press might be prying open the lid on the Pandora's Box known as Sarah Palin.

Today Michael Kinsley on the TIME site takes a look at the job Sarah Palin as governor. She may have been runner up as Miss Alaska but she is the Queen of Pork.

Alaska also ranks No. 1, year after year, in money it sucks in from Washington. In 2005 (the most recent figures), according to the Tax Foundation, Alaska ranked 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434) but first in federal spending received per resident ($13,950). Its ratio of federal spending received to federal taxes paid ranks third among the 50 states, and in the absolute amount it receives from Washington over and above the amount it sends to Washington, Alaska ranks No. 1.

And for those of you who long for a tax cutter and turn red at every move from Jim Doyle, how would you like to have this kind of state government:

Alaska ranks No. 1 in taxes per resident and No. 1 in spending per resident. Its tax burden per resident is 21/2 times the national average; its spending, more than double. The trick is that Alaska's government spends money on its own citizens and taxes the rest of us to pay for it. Although Palin, like McCain, talks about liberating ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, there is no evidence that being dependent on Alaskan oil would be any more pleasant to the pocketbook.

And over the conservative blogs and among the pundits that are against the windfall profits tax:

One thing Barack Obama and McCain disagree on is an oil windfall-profits tax. McCain is against it, on the theory that it is a tax and therefore bad and also on the theory that it would discourage domestic production. Obama is for it, on the theory that if oil companies can make a nice profit when oil sells for $50 per bbl., they can still make a nice profit when it sells at more than $100, even if the government takes a bit and spreads the money around to those who are hurting from higher oil prices.

Although Palin's words side with McCain in this dispute, her actions side with Obama. Her major legislative accomplishment has been to revamp Alaska's windfall-profits tax in order to increase the state's take. Alaska calls it a "clear and equitable share" tax. The state assumes that extracting oil from the tundra costs about $25 per bbl. and takes as much as 75% of the difference between that and the sale price.

So conservatives, maybe you should rethink your choice. Sure politicians lie, but she has become the Babe Ruth of untruthfulness.

You all scream and clap when she blears out her lines about planes and bridges and chefs, but these are all fabrications and Barack Obama sponsoring nothing in the Senate. She would be a heartbeat away from the presidency, and it turns out she is not only lying to us but she's lying to you.

Plane Lying

By Keith R. Schmitz

Mayday, mayday, incoming BS!

Among the not one true thing said by Sarah Palin, is the howler about selling the state of Alaska's "luxury jet."

From the Daily Howler:

The jet was purchased by unpopular Republican governor Frank Murkowski; it had become a major issue in Alaska politics years before Palin’s ran for governor in 2006. (The jet was already an active issue in the 2004 state campaign.) During her gubernatorial campaign, Palin did pledge to sell the plane—but so did the other major candidates, in both major parties. (Murkowski finished a distant third in the 2006 GOP primary, behind Palin and John Binkley. Binkley had also pledged to sell the plane. In the general election, Palin’s Democratic opponent, Tony Knowles, had pledged he would sell the plane too.) Meanwhile, trying to sell the plane on eBay wasn’t a hockey mom’s savvy idea; it was standard practice in Alaska. According to Nexis, the first mention of eBay in this context came after the campaign was over, when Palin formally put the jet up for sale. This was part of Kyle Hopkins’ report in the Anchorage Daily News:

HOPKINS (12/13/06): The state's chief procurement officer, Vern Jones, said it's not unusual for Alaska to sell big-ticket items on eBay because the site is cheap and has a big audience.

It cost the state a few hundred dollars to sell an old state ferry, The Bartlett, for $389,500 in 2003, he said. "They got more for that then they expected."

Tuesday night, the state was auctioning 38 items on the site, including three aircraft—two Super Cubs and a Cessna. Two of the planes have already reached the minimum bids set by the state, meaning Jones expects them to sell for sure.

Selling assets on eBay was standard practice for the state; it wasn’t the hockey mom’s kitchen-table-in-a-small-town idea. And uh-oh! In this case, the eBay gambit turned out to be a bad idea for the state. No suitable bid came in for the jet, and Palin changed course in April 2007, putting the plane up for sale through a conventional airplane broker. The plane was finally unloaded in August 2007—at a substantial loss. (Murkowski had purchased the plane for $2.6 million. McCain’s latest howler to the side, it sold for $2.1 million.)

Meanwhile, the state had continued to pay a $62,500 quarterly note on the plane during the months when Palin’s eBay gambit failed. Using eBay had sometimes worked in the past, but it failed when the hockey mom tried it for this major asset; the “pitbull in lipstick” forgets to say that when she pimps her brilliant maneuver. And McCain misstated the basic facts when he pimped Palin’s brilliance last week. No, she didn’t sell it on eBay. And no, it wasn’t sold at a profit.

And this is where I tell MPS to be wary about taking free money

by folkbum

So mark the day on your calendars, if you will. And I should also qualify my title, in that the money would not actually be headed to MPS:

The Kern Family Foundation will provide $1 million to help bring college graduates involved with Teach for America into Milwaukee Public Schools classrooms by next fall, the foundation announced today. [. . .]

Teach for America leaders have given an initial approval to opening operations in Milwaukee with the goal of putting 30 teachers in MPS classrooms by next fall and 30 more by September 2010. But that is contingent on other pieces of the plan falling into place, including approval by the School Board and raising enough money by early October to pay for the first three years of the program.

Under normal circumstances, I would celebrate anyone willing to invest in MPS and invest in new, quality teachers in MPS. But I think something like The New Teacher Project is a much better way to go than Teach for America. MPS currently partners with several local universities to offer post-grad internships to people whose majors were not education, and to career-switchers who want to fight the good fight--those I also support. But TFA is, in fact, decidedly bad for schools. Anna, a New York City math teacher blogging at Feministe, explains why, in a post unambiguously titled "Why I Hate Teach for America":

At my school, a small public high school in Brooklyn, New York, well over half of the teachers at the school are Teaching Fellows, and, at least in the three years I have been at the school, the longest any of us has stayed (yet) is three years. A few of us are starting our fourth.

And this sucks for our students. I mean, it really, really sucks. It sucks to come back to school and have to have yet another first-year-teacher as a teacher. It sucks to have six different advisory teachers in four years (the case with my old advisory). It sucks to have no continuity from year to year. It sucks for the ninth grade math teacher you really liked to disappear by the time you are in eleventh grade and wanted to ask for some extra help before the PSATs. It sucks to slowly get the impression that teaching anywhere else, or doing anything else for a job is better than staying here and working with you. It sucks to get abandoned year after year after year by young, enthusiastic teachers who saw teaching in the inner city as something great to put on that law school application. [. . .]

Which is why I hate Teach for America. [. . .] TFA members are not required by Teach for America to pursue a masters in education (which, especially if you do not have an undergraduate degree in education is required to become permanently certified in most states), although some of the states where TFA has program sites require teachers to at least begin taking graduate courses as part of their alternative certification requirements. They don’t require teachers to take the steps to become permanently certified because there is no expectation that their teachers will stay in teaching once their two-year resume-building experience is over. How do I know? Because it’s on their website!

I'm eliding some of the best parts, and there is much much more after I left off. But the point is simple: Teach for America parachutes temps into schools instead of finding long-term, committed teachers. TFA is, as she suggests, much more a line on the resume or an entry in the vitae than it is a way to solve the teaching shortage in the country's most needy districts. (I was surprised--astounded, really--to read that MPS is claiming to have only 68 long-term subs in full-time positions this year, out of probably close to 6,000 spots.)

Statistics for urban districts are not much more encouraging for teachers trained the traditional way--something like half of all new teachers bail for the suburbs or different careers in five years. But TFA makes such impermanence explicit.

One of the things that sticks with me from my teacher training came not from the college classroom at all, but from some besuited motivational speaker hired to entertain the troops on the organizational day before school started the year I did an internship at Beloit Memorial High School. I remember nothing of the man's talk except this idea: In my career, I will teach thousands of students. But each one of those students will have only one 9th-grade English teacher (to pick something from my current roster). How do you think the students feel to know that their sole 9th-grade English teacher is doing the 00's equivalent of bumming around Europe, slumming a bit until taking on the MBA?

So my message to the Board, which will have to approve all of this before the TFA temps can parachute in for a year or two of "experience," is this: Be careful. Is an investment in such a transparently temporary band-aid going to do anything to address the educational distress in this city? I suspect not--though the prospect of some more warm bodies will likely be too tempting to pass up.

Audience Participation Time

By Keith R. Schmitz

Yeah, I am an unabashed liberal and Obama supporter who cannot find a single redeeming quality about Sarah Palin.

With that out of the way, as much as I strain and grunt, I cannot find a single morsel of truth in her speech in the Twin Cities and now on the trail.

Help me out. Could any one of you out there give me one single bit of fact beyond the five kids that is emanating from her lipsticked mouth?

Maybe. But my bet is that for any tidbit of veracity there were at least five outright lies.

You might think it's cute. You might think the ticket is getting away with something.

But it is pretty sad when a campaign cannot play straight with the voters and instead has to offer up this distraction. This really indicates a huge lack of respect for the voters.

Mark Your Calendars

by capper

All Politics is reporting the schedule for three upcoming public hearings regarding the county budget:

The budget hearings will be Sept. 10 at Franklin City Hall, 9229 W. Loomis Road; Sept. 16 at Kosciuszko Community Center, 2201 [S.] Seventh St.; and Sept. 18 at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, 1531 W. Vliet St. All hearings run from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

This is the opportunity for the citizens to make their opinions heard before the County Board. County Executive Scott Walker already held his non-listening sessions and doesn't give a fig about what the people wants. He is only interested in what he thinks would help him as he gears up for another run for governor.

The budget battle will be fought the same way it has for the past six years. At the County Board level. You know the County Board. They're the people that have had to fix all of his previous budget proposals. They're the ones that gave the county a $7 million surplus.

I encourage everyone to attend, and let the board know that Walker's political interests aren't in the best interest of the county, and that they need to preserve the vital services the county provides, like burying the indigent, public transportation, and support for the disabled, the elderly and the poor.

Cross posted at Cognitive Dissidence.

Abstain from This Policy

By Keith R. Schmitz

A chart in yesterday's New York Times proves what a dismal failure the right wing's fairy tale abstinence only policy in particular and opposition to birth control in general has been to our country and to the young girls who have to live with the consequences.

Click here to access the piece by Charles Blow and pull up the chart under multimedia on the left.

With some graphic help the chart show lists countries of the world sorted under columns for teen births per 1,000 for 1970 and 1998, teenage abortions per 1,000 and teen sex by percentages.

The US has a high percentage of teens having sex, but there are some with higher.

It's the other columns that point up to the failure of our approach. In all countries births per thousand have fallen since 1970. In the US they have fallen by about 75%.

But look down the list. In almost all countries the rate of teen pregnancy fell by half or more, except in Catholic countries. Granted the numbers are smaller but in Ireland they actually rose.

These numbers tell us a lot. They tell us that as a country we have to thing more pro-actively about birth control and sex education. I know what's going on in many little heads. "We already shove birth control down kindergarteners' throats." We obviously are doing a bad job of it or no job. In the more open Danish society with kids having more sex than here, the teen birth rate is a minescule 8.1 per 1,000. Heck, many of these kids could be married.

These numbers also tell us about yet another failed conservative policy. In this case we have to do more than just tell kids to keep their knees together.

Yet another failed policy that joins the trash pile of others -- the Iraq invasion, deficit spending, tax cuts for the wealthy, mindless tax cutting. On top of that they want us to go to so-called "consumer-based health care," another faux-populist lame-brained idea that has worked no where on a mass scale and is simply another means to transfer wealth upward.

Yet another failed policy that tells us what this election is all about -- taking away the keys of government from conservatives and letting folks from the reality based side drive.

Trifecta

by folkbum

We all know that the Republican ticket of McCain-Palin lies (the jet lie, the bridge lie, the taxes lie, and on and on). We all know that they they steal, such as using the music of Jackson Browne and Heart against the expressed wishes (and politics!) of the artists. We all know that they question Democrats' patriotism pretty much every time they open their mouths.

But today we got the trifecta--lying, theft, and questioning patriotism all at once:

Days before September 11, on the same morning that John McCain and Barack Obama released a joint statement pledging to avoid politics in light of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, McCain's campaign accused Democrats of throwing away 12,000 American flags.

"The campaign says the flags were recovered from Invesco Field after the Democrats concluded their convention there," Fox News reported, "and they are going to be used as part of the warm-up ceremonies before McCain takes the stage" for a rally in Colorado Springs, Col.

But according to a senior official involved in organizing the Democratic convention, the McCain camp is simply lying about the flags.

"All of the flags at Invesco were picked up and put in bags and into storage, along with the unused flags and campaign signs. The flags were going to be donated, and the signs were going to be sent out to be used elsewhere," the official said.

Amazing, isn't it? The McCain campaign stole the Obama campaign's flags, lied about where they came from and what Obama's campaign was going to do with them, and by doing so implied that Obama hates the flag and American.

That is shameless. More than shameless, really--base, crass, and criminal. But then again, this is your modern Republican Party. Congrats, my conservative readers--you're about to vote for a ticket with worse ethics than Nixon or your average carjacker.

UPDATED to add that the FOXNews reporter running with this story is Carl Cameron, who famously was reprimanded for just making stuff up about John Kerry in 2004.

A Big Cedarburg Welcome to the National Media

By Keith R. Schmitz

Don't know why this didn't make it into the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but the national media got a real taste of Ozaukee County hospitality, intelligence and self preservation.

According to the Washington Times (of all people!):

Hundreds of angry people in this small town outside Milwaukee taunted reporters and TV crews traveling with Sen. John McCain on Friday, chanting "Be fair!" and pointing fingers at a pack of journalists as they booed loudly.

On the first leg of the "McCain Street USA" tour -- which will take the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to small towns across the heartland -- the 30 or so reporters and crew were walking back to their buses to join the McCain motorcade when hundreds of townspeople started yelling.

"Stop lying! You are all liars! Tell the truth!" one woman yelled from the front of the pack.

The crowd was not menacing or threatening, but was clearly angry.

How ironic. After just being treated to about 15 minutes of non-stop lying by Caribou Barbie about how she stopped the bridge to nowhere when she didn't, and how she fought pork but gobbled it down to point of elevated cholesterol, the crowd demanded that the press should stop doing the job that the McCain didn't do in the first place. Don't forget that McCain as well was serving up whoppers (do you want fries with that?) in front of the Chocolate Factory.

News to you folks. As much as you desperately want to love these two the lies won't clean up the economy, make Washington run better or get us an energy policy. Yeah, politicians can stretch things but this duo does hits prevarication homers while others just bunt.

There is this freedom of the press thing in the Constitution. It can be threatened by more than just the government, and that includes a sector of the population that demands their right to not know.

Abortion and Palin: She hath loosed the fateful lightning

by bert
OK, fine, let’s mock the “above my pay grade” statement by Barack Obama and then coo and awe at Sarah Palin’s Down syndrome baby that she chose to raise. But, then, let’s get real.

The Republicans cater to those who are devoted to the cause of making abortions illegal for everyone. That devotion is a force the GOP can harness for their own interests. So, of course, from the St. Paul convention these abortion opponents were fed jokes about the “pay grade” line. That attacks the belief that questions about the nature of life are profound and deserve some awe and humility.

It panders to the type of Christian who embraces the religion because it gives him or her the opposite of awe and humility: it supplies a clippable, refrigerator-door recipe for quick Truth. Nothing is profound, unless you are going to hell. And life begins when sperm hits egg. Next question.

The overweening praise of a party leader who is raising a Down syndrome baby also throws a bone to the anti-abortion movement. Not as nice as merely mocking their sinful enemies with the ‘pay grade’ thing, this praise in effect thumps an accusing index finger in the chest of any other couple who did not do this when they learned their fetus was not healthy. We all know the unspoken accusation: murder.

The reason this anti-abortion movement is exploited is that the movement is impassioned. Those who don’t believe as they do – many would personally not choose or have not chosen an abortion themselves – are not as hot-blooded. The choice people might be unsure about what’s right in all situations, given all the other factors at play. Why don't we give the poor people faced with these awful decisions the freedom to do so privately, they say. I’m like that.

We can all imagine a couple with a pregnancy that learns after those early tests that there is something wrong with the woman’s fetus. Picture them around a kitchen table or talking while lying in their dark bedroom at night. They might even be in the rectory of a liberal church struggling for an answer with a minister. Why God? Is it right to call any human defective? Can I pay for a decent level of care? Can I handle this? Adoption? Is it fair to my other children?

Republicans are telling us our government should use its power to arrest those pregnant people if and when their struggling produces a decision to abort. Get the government in there with its wiretaps and tasers around that kitchen table too. These people are plotting a murder. At the very least, this couple should be arrested and prosecuted like every other murderer if they act on this decision. Once the woman does the perp walk on TV with the orange jail suit, the AM radio shows should also work their listeners into outrage about her. Fire up the base.

If a Republican rolls their eyes at this and says that is not what all these messages mean, they are nevertheless happy that "the base" mistakenly thinks that is what they mean.

Remember the folks who invaded and attacked that poor family of the irreparably vegetative Terry Schiavo? I only now see that throughout this campaign the Republicans have been telling us this is what government itself should do. It is only since Sarah Palin arrived that they started having such a good time in telling us. Her truth is marching on, and all that.

McCain Campaign -- Loaded with Lobbyists Part 3

By Keith R. Schmitz

Last night we heard John McCain explain how the disaster of the past eight years must of been perpetrated by someone else other than the Republicans. Kind of like the plot of Fight Club, where Ed Norton's character finds out he is really beating himself up, it will be Republicans vs themselves saying they promise they won't screw up another four years. The first rule of fight club is not to talk about fight club.

Charlie Black doing business in the back of
the StraightTalk Express

Here is yet another example of how John McCain's promises of last night ring hollow. Meet:

Charlie Black

Charlie Black of BKSH & Associates, a Bush Pioneer in 2004, is perhaps the most experienced and respected Republican lobbyist in Washington, D.C. He is a close friend of former president George H.W. Bush and has served as an adviser to presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as working as official spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Recent reports about his work for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) observed that, prior to taking a leave of absence, he did a lot of his lobbying work from the back of McCain's campaign bus. He certainly has had a lot of clients to manage, many of whom have pressing business in Washington.[1] Over the years his client list has included Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress[2], Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party[3], the China National Off-Shore Oil Corp[4], Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi.[5]

Black has also said that he sees great opportunities for lobbyists in Iraq and has considered opening up a branch of his office there. "Is there too much cronyism?" he asked, referring to Iraq. "I just wish I could find the cronies."[6]

For a complete look at Charlie Black's lobbying activities, please visit the non-partisan Center For Responsive Politics' money-in-politics database.

[1] Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, "The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists," The Washington Post, February 22, 2008.

[2] Kate Zernike, "'Steady Hand' Helps McCain On a New Path," The New York Times, April 13, 2008.

[3] Jim McElhatton and Jerry Seper, "McCain Advisers Tied to Foreign Lobbying," The Washington Times, April 11, 2008.

[4] Tory Newmyer and Kate Ackley, "K Street Files," Roll Call, July 18, 2005.

[5] Wheeler, Tim, "Corporate Lobbyists Drive McCain's Campaign," People's Weekly World, March 1, 2008.

[6] Jane Mayer, "Contract Sport," The New Yorker, February 16, 2004.

From McCain's Lobbyists

Pallin Pick -- Too Clever by Half

By Keith R. Schmitz

One could imagine the gnome from hell Karl Rove rubbing his fat paws over his ingenuity in getting war hero John McCain to pass on buddy Joe Lieberman for the circus clown Sarah Palin. In retrospect one could ponder the missed opportunity however, of if the idea is to pick a woman to sop up Hillary voters while Rove didn't pick Condie. That could have been a two-fer.

But no there is evidence that the election Rove needs to win to avoid prison time may be slipping away and that the Hillary herd is not turning in McCain's direction:

Sandy Goodman was deeply disappointed when Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't get the Democratic nomination, then again when she was bypassed for the VP spot. So Goodman, a longtime Florida Democrat, flirted with thoughts of shunning Barack Obama, and perhaps even voting Republican.

Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, and suddenly things became clear to Goodman: The Republicans had no place for her.

What? The evil genius is loosing his magic?

Evidence so far shows that Palin is not drawing a lot of support from voters outside the Republican base.

An ABC News poll released Friday found the selection of Palin makes people likelier to vote for McCain by just 6 percentage points _ half the 12-point margin by which Sen. Joe Biden makes them more likely to support Obama.

And as for Clinton supporters, eight in 10 said they'd vote for Obama in November, according to a Gallup Poll conducted last weekend after McCain announced his selection of Palin.

Sorry Karl. Women are not dumb. Well, maybe we can think of one.

Something political, but not really.

by folkbum



I believe I have previously mentioned my slight crush on Peter Mulvey. I mean, how could you not?

Loaded with Lobbyists Part 2

By Keith R. Schmitz

Coming up to bat next in the McCain all-star K-Street Team and batting right (they all bat right) is the recently renowned -- thanks to the muck up in the Republic of Georgia -- Randy Scheunemann (nice pose to the right by the way). The problem here is our State Department should be conducting foreign relations, not hired guns like Scheuemann -- as last month's events prove.

From McCain's Lobbyists
A foreign policy advisor to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign who heads Scheunemann & Associates, has worked on behalf of numerous high profile clients, including the National Rifle Association, Lockheed Martin and BP. However, it is his work for Texas businessman Stephen Payne that has garnered the most attention.

Two of Payne’s firms, Worldwide Strategic Partners Inc. and the Caspian Alliance, paid Scheunemann to lobby Congress, the State Department and the National Security Council on their behalf in connection to energy issues.[1] According to The Sunday Times of London, Payne offered to give the former president of Kyrgyzstan access to President Bush and Vice President Cheney in exchange for a $250,000 donation to Bush’s presidential library and a $450,000 payment to his lobbying firm.[2]

Payne was recorded as saying that Scheunemann had been on his payroll for five of the past eight years.[3] His work with Baltic countries has also included efforts on behalf of Georgia, which paid another Scheunemann firm, Orion Strategies, to help the former Soviet republic win admission to NATO. The firm met or spoke to McCain and his staff dozens of times between 2001 and 2008, and made regular political contributions to McCain’s campaign and PAC.

The hard work apparently paid off: In 2006, McCain co-sponsored legislation encouraging Georgia’s admission to NATO, and he has been a vocal supporter of the country during his presidential campaign.[4] Scheunemann was also a prominent supporter of invading Iraq, having served as a board member of the Project for a New American Century and a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.[5]

For a complete look at Randy Scheunemann’s lobbying activities, please visit the non-partisan Center For Responsive Politics’ money-in-politics database.

[1] Pete Yost, “McCain adviser lobbied for Stephen Payne,” The Associated Press, July 21, 2008.

[2] Daniel Foggo and Steven Swinford, “President Bush Lobbyist Stephen Payne In ‘Bribes’ Row Quits,” The Sunday Times Of London, July 20, 2008.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Mark Benjamin, “McCain: To Russia, Without Love,” Salon.com, June 9, 2008, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/09/mccain/print.html.

[5] Peter Slevin, “Randy Scheunemann: McCain Adviser Campaigned for War,” Washingtonpost.com, June 17, 2008, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/06/17/randy_scheunemann_mccain_advis.html

We Are in a Quandry

By Keith R. Schmitz

Jim Rowen points out that the successful Karl Rove tactic has been to go after a Democratic candidate's strength.

The problem for us is if we wanted to go the route, we have nothing to work with.

We interrupt the Sarah Palin bashing ...

by folkbum

... to remind you what actual sexism looks like. (Yes, it's the same guy.)

McCain Campaign -- Loaded with Lobbyists

By Keith R. Schmitz

While listening to the snarky, classless, braying of Sarah Palin talking about John McCain fighting for you and standing up to the special interests, let's take a look at who in fact is serving on the McCain campaign staff. 

As you read through the bio, connect the dots and color in the hypocrisy of the speech.

h/t -- McCain's Lobbyists
Rick Davis

Partner in the lobbying firm Davis Manafort (and Jeffery Dahmer look-alike), currently serves as Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) campaign manager. (He managed McCain's 2000 campaign as well.) A former aide in the Reagan administration and the deputy manager of Sen. Bob Dole's (R-KS) 1996 campaign, Davis' dual role as a political operative and as a lobbyist has caused controversy. During the 2000 campaign, critics noted that two of the companies his firm represented, SBC Communications and Comsat, had controversial mergers pending at the Federal Communications Commission. The Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain chaired at the time, oversees the FCC. Davis tenure as head of the McCain-affiliated Reform Institute, where he solicited tens of thousands of dollars in contributions for the Institute from communications companies, has also come under scrutiny. Davis earned $110,000 a year from the Institute while still serving as McCain top political advisor.[1]

Davis has faced other controversies as well. During the current campaign, rivals accused him of self-dealing, noting that the McCain campaign had hired a company he partly owns, 3eDC, to provide Internet services.[2] Davis did not initially disclose his interest to McCain.[3] Davis also came under fire recently when it was revealed that he had arranged a 2006 meeting between McCain and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska.[4] Deripaska, critics noted, is not only one of the richest men in Russia and an ally of Vladimir Putin, but has also been linked to organized crime and had his American visa revoked. Nevertheless, Deripaska is not the only shady figure to benefit from close relations with Davis. Davis Manafort has also done political consulting for former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, who had close ties to Putin and was defeated in that country's 2004 Orange Revolution. Other recent lobbying clients include Verizon, GTECH, and Airborne Express.[5]

For a complete look at Rick Davis' lobbying activities, please visit the non-partisan Center For Responsive Politics' money-in-politics database.

[1] Lisa Lerer, "Ex-Reformer McCain Depends on Lobbyists," Politico, July 11, 2007.

[2] Michael Cooper, "Savior or Machiavelli, McCain Aide Carries On," The New York Times, October 23, 2007.

[3] Edward T. Pound, "Troublesome Resumes," U.S. News & World Report, May 28, 2007.

[4] Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and John Solomon, "Aide Helped Controversial Russian Meet McCain," January 25, 2008.

[5] U.S. Secretary of the Senate Lobbying Disclosure Database, accessed May 13, 2008.

No Room on McCain Bus for Press

By Keith Schmitz

There is evidence that Navy Captain McCain is turning into Captain Queeg.

For someone who was famously cozy with the press, the GOP presidential nominee is starting to lash out at his friends in the press, largely through surrogate attack hounds. But sometimes when you take up with a woman, you break up with your buddies because they don't approve of your current squeeze. That woman in question is of course Sarah Palin.

And shockingly, per the Joe Klein piece on the Time magazine blog, they are on to her:

(I)t is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God.

I'm actually pulling from the end of Klein's post. He starts it off talking about how the McCain campaign staff is getting awfully testy about the press committing (to throw back at Sykes) flagrant acts of journalism.

No wonder McCain's posse is mad. The wonderfully hardwired Republican party as they always do during elections keep repeating the lines about Palin being a tax cutter, a maverick and a pork fighter. They are good at boiling down things to simple and effective talking points.

But it turns out she not only can bring home the bacon, she can fry it up in the pan. She could let her husband let him not forget he's a man, but Palin is having a feud with his mother.

Soon the press will get around to telling us that Palin is nothing but a typical burrow and spend Republican.

The GOP can't have their talking points derailed. More and more we are learning the Staighttalk Express runs on methane. My God, then they'd have to talk about the issues and we can't have that.

They will do all they can to entreat to the American public about how mean the media is, and with any luck the good folks in the press will stand their ground and do their jobs.

UPDATE -- CNN has more on the bullying by the GOP. Also, one of the 20 years olds from the McCain is getting snippy right now with Chris Matthews on Hardball. And Matthews is calling out him and a Utah congressman on the politics of the pick. This is going to get interesting to watch the McCain self-immolation.

Well THAT explains it

by folkbum

Via TPM, McCain campaign chief muckety-muck Rick Davis:

This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.

179 to go

by folkbum

I survived day one. How was everyone else's first day of school? Consider this a directed open thread.

RIP, Jerry Reed

by folkbum

If you only knew Jerry Reed from the Smokey and the Bandidt movies, then you don't know Jerry Reed. Two videos:

Psssst: Whispered Hint to Charlie Sykes

from bert


Um, just thinking Charlie, if it is really terrible that the J-S and all those other guys covered a “family problem” of a candidate, then should you at the same time be doing five blog posts and “open up the phone lines” on this private matter within a half-hour of starting your high-wattage program this morning?


Have you heard the suggestion -- what was it again? -- from the opposing candidate for the sake of this family. Oh yea, I remember now. Back off.

Obama in GOP Dreamland

By Keith R. Schmitz

Nobody seems to do hubris like conservative Republicans. David Frum, on the other hand, cautions why they'd better get some perspective (I'd rather they wouldn't).

"Can we conservatives please stop kidding ourselves about Barack Obama's "qualifications"? Yes, if I had been a Democratic donor back in 2006, I'd sure worry about whether Barack Obama had what it took to be president. That was before he took on the toughest political operation in America, before he beat Bill and Hillary Clinton, before he won 18 million primary votes.

Obama's nomination was not handed to him. He fought hard for it and won against the odds. "Qualifications" predict achievement. Once you have achieved, it doesn't matter what your qualifications are. Who cares whether the guy who built a big company from nothing didn't have much of a resume when he started? But if you are applying to run a big company built by somebody else, the resume matters ...
The worst mistake in any fight is to under-estimate your opponent's abilities. Look what happened to the people who under-estimated Reagan.

If conservatives are to have any hope in the coming weeks, we should wake up to the fact that we face in Barack Obama a formidable man, who appeals to something important and deep in the American electorate. He's not a superman, he has vulnerabilities, he can be beaten. But he won't be beaten until we who are trying to beat him understand why and how he has come so far."

For conservatives, as we know, perspective is not their long suit. More goodies in that post.

Wrong-O

by folkbum

Cindy Kilkenny:

Mike Huckabee’s on Fox News right now. The takeaway? Palin received more votes as a mayoral candidate in Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden did for President. Shazam!

That's a clever talking point, but it is sadly false.

In New Hampshire alone this year, Biden pulled in 638 votes, even though he had already dropped out before the contest. Palin was elected as mayor in 1996 with 616 votes.

Go further in the primaries, and you see that in the second non-caucus state, South Carolina, Biden got even more votes--694 of them. I could go on: Just here in Wisconsin, a full month after Biden dropped out of the race, he got 755 votes.

I guess that's just one of many, many lies being circulated now about Sarah Palin.

Blowing up the Bridge to Nowhere Myth

By Keith R. Schmitz

Mommy, why do they lie?

One of the central themes of the Sarah Palin pick from the McCain camplaign and the people that love it is that Gov. Sarah Palin is a bold reformer, who said "thanks but no thanks" to the celebrated bridge to nowhere.

Turns out the last point is a big fat lie, as laid out by the sagely Bob Somerby:

Palin was elected governor in November 2006. One year earlier, in November 2005, the “bridge to nowhere” earmark ceased to exist. The New York Times ran a news report by Carl Hulse under the headline, “Two 'Bridges to Nowhere' Tumble Down in Congress.” (There had actually been two “bridges to nowhere,” though one had gotten the bulk of the mocking publicity). Here’s how Hulse began:

HULSE (11/17/05): Two 'Bridges to Nowhere' Tumble Down in Congress
Congressional Republicans decided Wednesday to take a legislative wrecking ball to two Alaskan bridge projects that had demolished the party's reputation for fiscal austerity.

Straining to show new dedication to lower spending, House and Senate negotiators took the rare step of eliminating a requirement that $442 million be spent to build the two bridges, spans that became cemented in the national consciousness as ''bridges to nowhere'' because of the remote territory and small populations involved.

The change will not save the federal government any money. Instead, the $442 million will be turned over to the state with no strings attached, allowing lawmakers and the governor there to parcel it out for transportation projects as they see fit, including the bridges should they so choose.

Palin had nothing to do with this act by the Congress, which occurred thirteen months before she took office. (Palin was elected in November 2006, took office the following month.) But this congressional action, in November 2005, cancelled the original earmark, which had directed the state of Alaska to use those particular federal funds to build that particular bridge. Under the terms of this new act, the state would still receive the funds—but the state could now use the money as it pleased. It could use the money to build the bridges. Or it could spend it on something else.

Again, this all happened thirteen months before Palin became governor. And let’s make it very, very clear: Congress stopped playing a role in this matter that day, in November 2005. From that point on, no one had to “tell Congress” anything about the Bridge to Nowhere, because Congress had removed itself from decision-making about the project. Congress had stopped directing how those funds should be used. In November 2005.

Two years later, in September 2007, Palin finally decided to use those funds for other state projects, not for the Bridges to Nowhere. But this had absolutely nothing to do with “telling Congress” anything. With her baldly deceptive, self-glorying statement, Palin is making voters think that she somehow stood up to the Congress—put a stop to their wasteful spending, told them to take their bridge and shove it. In fact, she did nothing of the kind. As best, she’s baldly misleading the public. At worst, she’s lying through her teeth.

Sorry, but Palin “told Congress” nothing at all about the Bridge to Nowhere. Today, she’s telling the public a lie, about her own moral greatness. But this is the way our brightest liberal site explained this latest act of deception.

Stuff like this makes one wonder how well the McCain campaign vetted Palin, and if, is he ready to lead?

Happy Labor Day

by folkbum

Phil Ochs singing "Joe Hill."

First Big Test: McCain = FAIL, Obama = WIN

by folkbum

One of the reasons why people suggest that candidates for president ought to have experience is so that we can judge what they will do in some other situation based on what they have done in previous, similar situations. The first big decision any nominee makes is to select a running mate. Now that both major-party candidates have made their choices, let's see what that says about the way they will govern.

1. Who wants all the information before making a decision? Perhaps the single most damning thing about John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin is that she was not fully vetted. In the six months since he wrapped up the nomination and developed his first list of possible second fiddles, no one from McCain's team, apparently, ever visited Alaska until this weekend, and we know McCain spent only about 15 minutes with Palin prior to Thursday when he offered her the job. On the other hand, we know that Obama's vetting was so thorough that Virginia Sentaor Jim Webb opted out of the tedious process. Chet Edwards describes the nature of the vetting here. McCain of course has a tendency to make decisions first and ask questions later--it's part of his personal philosophy--and we may well see him grow to regret making this one without enough though. Winner? Obama.

2. Who's willing to go against the party? John McCain, who claims to be a "maverick," wanted to select former Democrat Joe Lieberman to be his vice president. It's pretty clear from the available evidence that Lieberman was Plan A, but the Republican Party was basically having none of it. McCain had a number of good options as Plan B, but McCain bent to the will of his Party in abandoning Lieberman. Barack Obama, on the other hand, got a ton of pressure from all over the Democratic Party--the party that, in many ways, is still the party of Bill Clinton--to go with a "unity" ticket by selecting Hillary Clinton. Obama knew he wouldn't be able to work with her, so he made a choice that was good for him--Joe Biden--and bucked the party. In future decisions, we could expect Obama to go against the party when necessary, and McCain to whither in the face of pressure. Winner? Obama.

3. Who's reaching out to the middle? There's the story going around that Barack Obama is "the most liberal senator." What a coincidence, Obama clinches the nomination and gets graced with that title, just like John Kerry in 2004. Do you really think that, on balance, Obama is more liberal than, say, Wisconsin's Russ Feingold? Vermont's (Socialst Party!) Bernie Sanders? Ted Kennedy? Regardless, Obama did move toward the center with his choice of Joe Biden. McCain, on the other hand, after being denied the choice of Lieberman, picked an extremist instead. Palin is at the far right of the Republican Party, and there is little doubt that her selection is designed to appease the Dobson-loving mouth-foaming social conservative wing of the party. This suggests that in the future Obama would look toward the center when appropriate, while McCain feels the need placate the extremist wing of his party. Winner? Obama.

4. Who puts politics ahead of country? Everyone knows that one of the most coveted voting blocs this fall is Clinton voters. Even McCain's advisors have been saying that if they can win Hillary's voters they win, and if they don't, they lose. It seems clear that candidates bearing similar qualifications to Sarah Palin--such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who apparently thought he had it in the bag enough to cancel his events for the weekend, and is now, consequently, pretty angry--are all male. There seems little about Palin that Pawlenty doesn't have, except in terms of gender. Even conservatives, as in the ubiquitous Ranesh Ponnuru quote ("Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man?"), have noted the cynical nature of a Palin pick. (Others have pointed out that both the recent tenor of the McCain campiagn--from the negative ads to the candidate bound to a few strict talking points to the Palin pick--all bear the dirty-politics stamp of Karl Rove's protégé Steve Schmidt.) Palin's record as governor--according to Republicans who know her best--is someone uninterested in the hard work of governing, but she might sway Clinton voters. The historians have questions, too, but, hey, she might sway Clinton voters. And the initial plan was to send Palin into places in Ohio and Pennsylvania that voted heavily for Clinton in the Democratic primary--a plan that had to be abandoned because those oh-so-tolerant Republican audiences were booing Palin's mentions of Clinton in her speeches. Obama didn't make an obvious ploy for the Clinton bloc, in favor of someone he would work better with--and who has the depth and expertise required in the job. So in the opening months of the next administration, McCain will try for the expedient and popular, while Obama will take the smart choice. Winner? Obama.

5. Who's really looking for clean government? Twenty years ago, one of the times Joe Biden quoted British MP Neil Kinnock, he didn't credit the man. No question, it was plagiarism, and he was rightly run out of that primary. Since then, Biden has gaffed his way through two more decades of campaigns and pressers. But no one has ever tried to claim that Biden abuses power. Sure, he stands up for the home-state credit-card industry over the little guy (grrrr!), but you can't say he's not relatively--to use one of Biden's choice words--clean. Palin was, as noted, not fully vetted and remains in the middle of a scandal with active and open investigations going on. I encourage you to read Josh Marshall's piece on what all that entails and why it matters. McCain could have picked someone without the whiff of scandal about her (though Carly Fiorina, the next woman on the list, is not scandal-free either). So in years to come, we can imagine the McCain will be unafraid to install the scandal-plagued in the highest offices in the nation, while Obama will not. Winner? Obama.

6. Who wants the best that's out there? I know that one of the rationales or narratives being floated about the Palin pick is that Joe Biden has to be very careful in his debate with her not to come off as a bully. Personlly, I think it's ridiculous to claim that a woman can't compete head-to-head in a debate with a man--it's not only insulting to women, but it was proven decidedly false this spring when Hillary Clinton more than held her own against Barack Obama. Problem is, Sarah Palin may really not be the sharpest crayon in the box. Of course she's not going to have the depth of knowledge that the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee does on certain matters, but she also apparently thinks the Pledge of Allegiance was written by the founding fathers (see question 11). If McCain's people didn't even turn up this Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schlafly's group) questionnaire during the vetting--I suppose McCain has expressed trouble over doing a Google before--that's one bad thing. If they did see this, and still opted for Palin, then that really says something about McCain's standards. Winner? Obama.

In the end, we have to look back on what both candidates said about who they wanted as vice president. Obama was clear that he wanted someone who would not just win him an election but who could help him govern by challenging him, debating him, and working through the issues of the day with him. Biden fits that bill. McCain always said he wanted someone who was qualified to take over, given that he is "older than dirt." Even conservatives are noting that "McCain is essentially telling the world that he doesn't really need a Vice President. [. . .] McCain has thus made a purely political play without regard for the governance concerns." He's clearly not showing the judgment and seriousness a president needs.

McCain has failed the first test. There's no way we can reward him with the presidency.

Also, bonus video that perhaps explains McCain's choice:



I didn't want to give it any credence, but I watched it--pay attention to the way he fiddles with his wedding ring while appraising Palin's, er, assets.