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Earlier this week, Andrew Coyne introduced a lengthy article on the “cult of personality” surrounding Stephen Harper thusly:
On the Conservative party website, it’s all about “Harper Leadership 08.” Tory campaign ads show us Sweater Steve, shyly revealing a fondness for veterans, immigrants and his kids. Party message-trackers hammer home the point at every turn: this election is all about “leadership.” Or as an early campaign slogan has it: “Strong leadership on your side.”
As the federal political leaders wrap up their first full week of campaigning this weekend, a new poll indicates their performances during the early days may have caused them more harm than good.
The Ipsos Reid poll, conducted for Canwest News Service and Global Television between Sept. 9 and 11, shows Canadians’ impressions of the leaders slipped instead of strengthened, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the worst week of them all.
Thirty-six per cent said their impression of Harper had “worsened” since the start of the campaign on Sept. 7, compared with 32 per cent for his main opponent, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.
[...]
“For a campaign that’s supposed to be about leadership, this one’s heading in the wrong direction,” said Darrell Bricker, president and CEO_of Ipsos Reid.
[...]
“The prime minister believed that his perceived leadership strengths on the big issues that were facing the country would be enough, and they still may be. But at this stage of the game, this doesn’t seem to be an election about leadership,” said Bricker. “To the extent they are talking about leadership, it’s about gaffes, gotchas, slips of the lips either by the principles or their staff, which is a bad campaign for anybody trying to campaign on ideas.”
Perhaps Uncle Steve meant to say Canadians were more cynical these days, rather than ‘conservative’ (hey, honest mistake–both words start with ‘C’).
This just in–lauding his commitment to “strengthen the military and cut taxes” and crediting him with the restoration of Canada’s “international prestige by demonstrating political courage on Afghanistan”, the reactionary, right wing Wall Street Journal editorial page gleefully anticipates the reelection of reactionary right winger cuddly, sweater-clad change-agent Stephen Harper.
In other n00z, bears: still defecating in forest areas.
In the interest of science, I decided to conduct a little experiment involving me, Hannity, and a case of Stella (ZOMG imported liquid elitism!) Based on preliminary results, I gotta tell ya, it don’t look good for Sean (and, by default, conservative ‘humourists’ everywhere).
Maybe hard liquor fed intravenously is the difference maker.
For those keeping score at home, the McCain campaign has, in its official adverts, obliquely called Obama uppity, a wild animal, a pedophile, and a sexist (on dubious grounds) this week alone.
And McCain, that maverick stalwart of fauxtegrity, put his personal seal of approval on each and every one of them.
Update 09/11: Since the GPC has apparently tried to SLAPP Leftdog in a grammatically incoherent fashion (all your slander are belong to us!), and in light of transplants’ comment, I thought it best to include a link to the full quote in proper context. Judge for yourselves. Bottom line: If anyone feels I should remove the imbedded video, I shall do so.
Regardless, I regret any unintentionally slanderous implications.
Long the scourge of progressive Catholics, Opus Dei, with an estimated 80,000 members worldwide, has enjoyed a close relationship with the church’s conservative hierarchy, serving, as one writer put it in the mid 1980s, as a “holy mafia” to promote far-right views on “culture war” issues.
[...]
Opus Dei does not publish a directory of members but is known for its interest in targeting the rich and powerful. Over the years, rumors have surfaced that certain high-profile Catholics might be members. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito have been fingered as possibilities. There is no proof in either case, but Newsweek magazine reported in 2001 that Scalia’s wife has attended functions at the Catholic Information Center, and his son Paul, a Catholic priest, has spoken there.
[...]
[Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer]’s critics were less than pleased with his fast-track to sainthood, noting that in 1958, Escriva had written a fawning letter to Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain, congratulating him for extending official recognition to the Catholic Church.
The May 28, 1953, missive reads, “Although alien to any political activity, I cannot help but rejoice as a priest and Spaniard that the Chief of State’s authoritative voice should proclaim that, ‘The Spanish nation considers it a badge of honor to accept the law of God according to the one and true doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church, inseparable faith of the national conscience which will inspire its legislation.’”
The letter asks God to bestow on Franco “abundant grace to carry out the grave mission entrusted to you.”
Opus Dei members subsequently ingratiated themselves into important positions in the repressive Franco government. Alberto Moncada, a Spanish journalist who has researched the period, says Opus Dei operatives were entrusted with turning around Spain’s anemic post-war economy, but the effort collapsed after numerous scandals.
The group also flourished under dictatorships in Chile and Argentina during the 1950s and ’60s.
Now, I don’t want to erroneously drop the other ‘F’ bomb on former Opus Dei spokesperson (and current “active” OD member) turned Conservative Party candidate Nicole Charbonneau Barron. But even someone normally allergic to tinfoil (such as yours truly) can recognize how some might say this ideological marriage of convenience between far-right-and-even-further-right positively screams “hidden agenda” (in a number of different languages, including Latin). Oh, and re: historical parallels between Franco and Harper: draw your own conclusions, true believers.
I just hope the phrase “holy mafioso” enters the Canadian political lexicon sometime before October 14th.
A Conservative candidate running in a Montreal South Shore riding is a past spokeswoman and current member of Opus Dei, a secretive Catholic organization.
Nicole Charbonneau Barron, who is running for the Tories in Saint-Bruno-Saint-Hubert, is an active member of the ultra-orthodox society.
The Conservatives were not aware of her affiliation when she was chosen as a candidate, the party’s Quebec campaign spokesman Jean-Luc Benoît told newspaper La Presse.
[...]
Barron granted media interviews in 2006 as Opus Dei’s Montreal spokeswoman, at a time when a controversial film inspired by Dan Brown’s worldwide bestseller The Da Vinci Code was released in movie theatres.
The South Shore resident told francophone TV network LCN the movie was a caricature of the Catholic institution, and only a portion of Opus Dei members practised self-mortification, which features prominently in the film.
Referring to the discovery that Nicole Charbonneau Barron, the Conservative candidate for St. Bruno-St. Hubert, a riding on Montreal’s south shore, was the former spokesperson for the group, Duceppe called Opus Dei a “secret society” with a “narrow ideology” that doesn’t fit with a modern Quebec.
“Those people are against a lot of things that are generally accepted in Quebec,” he told reporters in Quebec City. “That candidate said very openly that self-whipping is a sacrifice they have to make. I question such practices.”
Hmm. Not to defend everybody’s favourite shadowy ultra-orthodox papal sect, but, um, what’s wrong with a little self (or *ahem* mutual) whipping every now and then (between consenting adults, of course)? One hopes the Quebec BDSM community respectfully requests further clarification from M. Duceppe.
For most of the day on Monday, the front page of Progressive Bloggers was absolutely dominated by one topic: the decision rendered by the consortium of Canadian broadcasters to deny Green Party leader Elizabeth May a spot in the national leadership debate. The consortium, a coalition of 5 Canadian broadcasters that controls participation in the debate, claims that despite the Greens having reached the bar set last election (having a sitting MP, controversial former Liberal candidate, Blair Wilson, in Parliament), 3 of the 4 other parties have threatened to pull out of the debate if May is allowed to participate. The Globe quotes NDP spokesperson Brad Lavigne as stating “[The NDP] said we would not accept the invitation to participate because the Greens did not have an elected [emphasis mine] member of Parliament and that Ms. May had endorsed [Liberal leader Stephane] Dion as prime minister”.
The Conservatives offered a similar line of spin: May is running in Nova Scotia (specifically, in star cabinet minister Peter MacKay’s riding) unopposed by a Liberal candidate, and, according to the Globe, “could throw her support to [the Liberals] at the end of the campaign.” Indeed, as noted by the Globe, May has already raise some eyebrows by sending out a mass email in which she pledged support to a Liberal candidate running against Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Regardless, the Greens are, obviously, fuming at what they see as the latest round of Calvinball on the part of Canada’s broadcast gatekeepers, with May calling yesterday’s announcement “anti-democratic, closed door, backroom decision making” while astutely pointing out that the other national party leaders and broadcast executives involved “are all men”–a sharp jab at the blatant disparity in gender on display among the principles involved, optics that may play more of a factor in today’s post-Clinton/Palin political landscape than in recent electoral contests.
Yours truly has in the past been critical of May and the Greens’ own arguably ‘anti-democratic’ maneuvers to gain a foothold in Parliament, be it by courting Wilson or via friendship arrangements made with Dion and the Liberals. With that said, the other national leaders (including Stephane Dion, who, despite his party’s claim of support for the Greens’ inclusion, said yesterday that “I would like her to be there, but I will not participate if Stephen Harper is not there”–not exactly a ringing endorsement for “fairness”) are betraying obvious fear of what may be the wild card party of the 2008 election campaign. Support for the Green Party has been steadily increasing in key ridings, and could provoke a split on the left (and, thanks to the Greens’ classical liberal economic platform, potentially bleed Conservative votes in environmentally-conscious BC) if the party can successfully court Canadian voters beyond the Greens’ standard constituency.
As former Liberal strategist Scott Reid observes, “[i]f [May] successfully assembles a coalition that adds disaffected voters to her environmentalist basse, she could become a green Ross Perot–stealing support from others, altering the campaign’s core narrative and unpredictably affecting the result.” May claims that she doesn’t care who Canadians vote for, as long as they vote, but it goes without saying that she is going to fight to get as many votes cast her way; it makes sense, then, that the 4 other party leaders want to limit May’s national exposure as much as possible. However, by placing May and her party front and centre in what has fast become the first media firestorm of the 2008 election campaign, the scheme seems to have backfired spectacularly.
Whatever happens, it seems apparent that Elizabeth May has emerged as a serious political player, and, come October 14th, may indeed prove to be, in the words of Reid, “the most dangerous woman in Canada.”
Is McCain’s VP choice bad? Sure. But we don’t need her to go to the penalty box in order to win the game. McCain threw the elbow, now the American public is going to referee the follow-up. Now that their attention is drawn to that corner of the rink, they’ll be watching to see what happens next. Frankly, most Americans don’t give a rat’s ass about Troopergate, or any of the other scandals surrounding McCain’s VP pick. Should they? Probably. But the fact is they don’t.
Now, do we spend our energy trying to make them care? When most of them are trying to pay mortgages, pay for college, or just simply eat a decent meal?
Or do we put our focus on the puck?
Let’s make sure that what happens next keeps our focus where it should be.
Republican vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin is offering her first televised interview to ABC News in the coming week in Alaska.
[...]
A McCain-Palin adviser says an interview was offered to ABC’s Charlie Gibson several days ago and that they expect it to happen in the latter part of the week in Alaska.
$10 bucks sez the Gibson interview takes place on September 11th, complete with all the hagiographic fixins.
The August jobs report seemed to suggest that the deterioration in the economy is accelerating. The unemployment rate has risen1.4 percentage points over the last yearand is now at itshighest level since September 2003, when the economy was just beginning to emerge from a jobless recovery.
What’s more, those who swelled the unemployment rolls last month were adults, many over the age of 45, and not teen-agers, who were the main contributors to the jump in unemployment in May, when the rate rose to 5.5 percent from 5 percent in April. The nearly 600,000 people added to the unemployment roles in August included almost as many college graduates as those with only a high school degree.
Manufacturing companies shed the most jobs last month, 61,000, mostly at auto plants and in housing-related industries. There were also sharp cutbacks in the use of temporary workers, and across most of the work force hourly and weekly wages once again failed to keep pace with inflation.
The McCain campaign’s thoughtful strategic response to this latest economic body blow?
Hoping for a poll bounce out of the Republican convention at St Paul, Mr McCain, accompanied by Governor Sarah Palin, his vice-presidential running mate, hit the campaign trail in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, with a populist message.
“John McCain doesn’t run with the Washington herd,” Mrs Palin said, introducing the Republican nominee.
Mr McCain declared: “It’s over. It’s over. It’s over for the special interests. We’re going to start working for the people of this country.“
He mentioned the jobless figures and said that these were “tough times” for Americans and promised to “stand on your side and fight for you”, cutting government spending and opening up new markets abroad. He vowed to “shake up Washington and get things done for you”.
The McCain campaign has dubbed their new tour, through many economically deprived areas, as the “Change is Coming” tour.
Yep, nothing boosts voter confidence and stirs the soul quite like hollow rhetoric (”Shake up Washington!” “We’re going to start working for the people of this country!”) from shameless political shills cynically and contemptuously treating the whining electorate like dolts unable to read between the lines of their monthly credit card statements.
The Republican brand is deeply tarnished. The opposition is running on “change” in a change election. So McCain gambled that he could steal the change issue for himself — a crazy brave, characteristically reckless, inconceivably difficult maneuver — by picking an authentically independent, tough-minded reformer. With Palin, he doubles down on change.
The problem is the inherent oddity of the incumbent party running on change.Here were Republicans — the party that controlled the White House for eight years and both houses of Congress for five — wildly cheering the promise to take on Washington. I don’t mean to be impolite, but who’s controlled Washington this decade?
Gee, damn good thing this election isn’t about the issues (nor, apparently, accountability).
Pentagon leaders have recommended to President Bush that the United States make no further troop reductions in Iraq this year, administration officials said yesterday.
The plan, delivered this week, calls for extending a pause in drawdowns until late January or early February — after the Bush administration has left office. At that point, up to 7,500 of the approximately 146,000 troops in Iraq could be withdrawn, depending on conditions on the ground there.
“Just from what little I’ve seen of [Michelle] and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity… . Uppity, yeah.”
Thank you, Rep. Westmoreland (R, GA), for saying what you really mean.
In the spirit of, ahem, bipartisan comity (h/t Joe “Benedict” Lieberman), I’d like to extend a sincere and heartfelt thank you to America’s Mayor™, Rudy Giuliani, for going off-script and overlong with his opportune (if disturbingly vicious) red meat feeding frenzy of a stemwinder.
If the Obamas had a 17 year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if that they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.
Gee, ya think?!
Related:Elle and Kev both have must-read posts on conservatives, teenage pregnancy, and racial/class-related double-standards. What are you waiting for? Go! Go!
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that not only am I aware of the series premiere of the new 90210 tonight, but I’m planning on having a little viewing party. I’m sure the new version won’t come close to the original series (For one thing, the bodies have become more streamlined and unattainable. FlowTV has a pretty good article about the shrinking bodies of the new cast, the increased sexualization, and the new emphasis on designer labels here), but I feel compelled to give it a chance anyway. I was a big fan of the first few seasons of the original.
Last week, while the media focused almost obsessively on the DNC’s spectacle in Denver, the country’s most influential conservatives met quietly at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis to get to know Sarah Palin. The assembled were members of the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.
CNP members have included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Grover Norquist, Tim LaHaye and Paul Weyrich. At a secret 2000 meeting of the CNP, George W. Bush promised to nominate only pro-life judges; in 2004, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told the group, “The destiny of the nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement.” This year, thanks to Sarah Palin’s selection, the movement may have finally aligned itself behind the campaign of John McCain.
[...]
I learned of the get-together only through an online commentary by one of its attendees, top Dobson/Focus on the Family flack Tom Minnery. (Watch it here) Minnery described the mood as CNP members watched Palin accept her selection as John McCain’s Vice Presidential pick. “I was standing in the back of a ballroom filled with largely Republicans who were hoping against hope that something would put excitement back into this campaign,” Minnery said. “And I have to tell you, that speech by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin — people were on their seats applauding, cheering, yelling… That room in Minneapolis watching on the television screen was electrified. I have not seen anything like it in a long time.”
Minnery added that his boss, Dobson, has yearned for a conservative female leader like Margaret Thatcher to emerge on the American scene. And while Palin is no Thatcher, “she has not rejected the feminine side of who she is, so for that reason, she will be attractive to conservative voters.”
The members of the Council for National Policy are the hidden hand behind McCain’s Palin pick. With her selection, the Republican nominee is suddenly — and unexpectedly — assured of the support of a movement that once opposed his candidacy with all its might.
Ask, and ye shall receive. Once again, Sarah Palin isn’t on the ticket to pick up Clinton voters; her unexpected nomination is nothing but a blatant pander to the religious right and an undeniable affirmation of its continued power within the contemporary GOP. And now that Dobson has his low-rent Thatcher mock-up (if the Iron Lady weren’t still among the living she’d be doing a 720 in her grave) as requested, he suddenly seems to be considering a change of heart with regards to McCain’s acceptability.
I have heard some of the news on [Bristol Palin] and so let me be as clear as possible. I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits.
The more I think about it, the more I think McCain probably did know [about Bristol Palin's pregnancy]. The timing is simply perfect to release the news: You wouldn’t want to do it on Friday, lord knows, when she’s getting her intro to the country, and you wouldn’t want to do it later in the campaign when it’s closer to Election Day or even later this week when it’d distract from her convention speech. Now’s the time to do it, when it’ll be no higher than the third-most important story of the day.
If I’m right, then the nutroots’s smears about Palin’s own pregnancy gave McCain an amazingly fortuitous pretext here. Now he gets to play the victim — “we had to do it to stop those dastardly left-wing bloggers from hurting the family” — instead of just someone making an embarrassing admission.
In comments at ObWi, Ugh observes that the McCain campaign has taken full advantage of the aforementioned pretext served on a silver platter to reinforce the integrity of Sarah Palin’s (and, thus, by default, John McCain’s) pro-life creds, insulate their VP nom from further criticism, and get a few partisan shots in on Obama:
If the point of releasing this information was to “knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.” We only need to know one thing: Bristol is five months pregnant. We don’t need to know:
(i) that “Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.”
(ii) that’s she’s decided to have the baby.
(iii) that’s she’s decided to raise the baby.
(iv) that she’s decided to marry the father.
(v) the father’s name is Levi.
Further, the McCain camp sure as fncking [sic] hell doesn’t tar Obama with this, such as with this nonsense like: “The despicable rumors that have been spread by liberal blogs, some even with Barack Obama’s name in them, is a real anchor around the Democratic ticket, pulling them down in the mud in a way that certainly juxtaposes themselves against their ‘campaign of change,”‘ a senior aide said.
So, we get to sit here and let the McCain campaign make at least three significant political points with this story, throw out a blatant lie that “the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates“, and also accuse Obama of starting the rumors. Plus, they get an all purpose club to beat off any mistakes Palin makes from now until November.
I’m sure lots of people will take their shots at the pro-life Christian woman but hold on a moment. If you think Evangelicals are going to ditch her for this, you’re totally misreading the situation. As a matter of fact, they are ready to fire back at any potential critics…
Look, this development will actually be positive for the most part with Evangelicals. First they hear that Sarah Palin chooses the life option even though she had a Downs Syndrome baby and once again the family (and Bristol) has chosen the life option in this recent case. That’s a double “ca-ching”. Let’s call this the Evangelical daily double. If anything, this whole situation will probably make more people around the country relate to her and her family. It makes them more real. Will there by some turned off by the whole pre-marital sex thing? Of course but this type of story doesn’t sink her at all with Evangelicals.
Sarah Palin apparently lied about abusing her powers as governor, firing a capable Public Safety Commissioner without cause. Campaign reporters find that mildly interesting, but during a lengthy interview between John McCain and Chris Wallace yesterday, the subject didn’t even come up.
But now that John McCain’s running mate’s teenage daughter is having a baby, now reporters are swarming around Steve Schmidt, demanding answers.
I suppose news outlets might justify their prurient interests, arguing that Palin’s family may have a Jerry Springer-like quality, but as the day as unfolded, I can’t help but find the whole thing ridiculous. Bristol Palin is not a candidate for public office. Her pregnancy is none of the political world’s business.
The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.
Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.
“We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us,” the Palins’ statement said.
“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support,” the Palins said.
The Palins asked the news media to respect the young couple’s privacy.
“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media, respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates,” the statement concluded.
Look, no one knows how to turn lemons into bitter whine quite like perpetuallyaggrievedwingnuts. I’m of the opinion that these sorts of salacious fishing expeditions are courting a backlash from voters who don’t believe that digging into a politician’s private life re: his or her family should be political fodder. Frankly, it’s equivalent to casting aspersions on Obama’s citizenship, or trying to out John Edwards as an adulterer.
This entire teapot tempest will, I fear, only serve to promote sympathy among–and continue to fire up–the GOP faithful. All this rumour-mongering and armchair investigation has accomplished is increased media visibility for McCain and Palin and a choice opportunity for GOP operatives and their enablers in the MSM to stoke a sense of false grievance among party activists and low information voters.
For these reasons, any discussion that puts Palin at the centre is, I feel, going to backfire. What needs to be focused on is what this VP pick says about McCain’s judgement. After spending an entire campaign cycle placing experience at the top of the debate, John McCain did a complete 180 and made a reckless decision to place an inexperienced, largely unqualified far-right ideologue one heartbeat away from the presidency.
It’s clear that Republicans believe that what made Hillary Clinton such a good candidate was her gender, not her political experience or positions on the issues. And McCain’s decision to pick Palin shows he took this message to heart and chose to add her to the ticket primarily because of her gender. In so doing, McCain has turned the idea of the first woman in the White House from a true moment of change to an empty pander.
The Biden pick was seen by many as a shrewd acknowledgment that Obama was willing to compensate for any deficiencies he might bring to the Oval Office (eg, a lack of foreign policy acumen; few connections on the Hill); with Palin, McCain seems to have been merely gunning for a game-changing short-term campaign spike. In other words, a wholly political decision entirely divorced from the best interests of the country should he become president.
I believe we should hammer McCain’s state of health, his questionable judgment, his utter lack of seriousness with regards to the office of the President–and leave Sarah Palin herself out of the equation as much as possible. Investigative hit pieces on Palin’s “baby bump” (or lack thereof) only serves as a distraction from the real issues at stake: who is better prepared to govern the nation and serve as Commander-in-Chief come January. A view that, apparently, puts me in the minority at CFLF, a position I am by now quite used to occupying.
In 2005, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), now chair of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, introduced legislation that would have increased veterans’ medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006. He also introduced another bill that would have set aside $10 million for “readjustment counseling services” — a program to provide a wide range of counseling, outreach and referral services for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, to ease their readjustment back into society. (This program was started in 1979 for Vietnam veterans, so one would think McCain is quite familiar with it.)
But McCain — and other Republicans who are more concerned with using government funds for tax cuts for multimillionaires or for corporate subsidies to oil and gas companies — voted this effort down.
The following year, Akaka requested $1.5 billion for veterans’ medical care and an additional $430 million for the Department of Veteran Affairs for outpatient care and treatment for veterans. But, once again, McCain voted against these proposals, while offering no measures of his own, and without pushing his party to help U.S. veterans.
In 2005, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) saw their respective veteran amendments killed. These amendments would have funded additional medical care and readjustment counseling for Iraq veterans with mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder or substance abuse disorder. McCain voted “no” on both.
In 2005, and again in 2006, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) proposed legislation that would have indexed veterans’ healthcare benefits to take into account the annual changes in inflation and veterans’ population. She proposed paying for the indexing by restoring the pre-2001 top tax rate for income more than $1 million, closing corporate tax loopholes and delaying tax cuts for the wealthy. One guess as to how McCain voted.
In early 2006, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) proposed an amendment for additional funding to shore up the collapsing infrastructures at veterans’ hospitals around the country. The bill would have mandated a minor rollback in the capital gains tax cuts that the Bush administration has given to the richest one-fifth of 1 percent of Americans. McCain, presumably more concerned about the 100-plus lobbyists associated with his campaign than the health of veterans, opposed this amendment.
Not long after, in February 2007, the Washington Post exposed horror stories about the crumbling infrastructure at Washington, D.C.’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
In February 2006, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) sponsored an amendment that would have rolled back capital gains tax cuts so that much-needed equipment for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan could be purchased. McCain and the Republican leadership made sure those tax cuts stayed in place, and, as a result, the troops didn’t get what they needed.
Finally, in June 2006, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) authored a bill — S. Amdt. 4442 — “to require the redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq in order to further a political solution in Iraq, encourage the people of Iraq to provide for their own security, and achieve victory in the war on terror.”
It received 13 votes. Needless to say, McCain’s wasn’t one of them.
McCain was also noticeably absent on two measures that members of both parties should be able to embrace.
The Homes for Heroes Act — which Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) introduced in April 2007 — would have helped provide housing for low-income veterans and helped tackle the problem of homelessness among America’s military veterans. The bill died, though the House overwhelmingly passed a similar bill in July; its companion version still awaits a new vote in the Senate.
The Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007 — introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) — restores the old GI Bill and provides returning troops with the more robust educational benefits enjoyed by the men and women who served in the three decades following World War II. Although this bill did not initially make it to vote, it was incorporated into the new GI bill that the Senate — absent McCain, who was at a fundraiser in Caliornia — passed in May.
Now, wait a minute. I’ve got news for you and your lyin’ eyes–John McCain loves veterans more than a rap kid loves breaks (and they crush on him MSM stylez, too):
Today is a day of days. It’s the first day of a new era. It’s a day that you don’t want to miss. Come to Guelph today. There are tectonic forces at work in Canadian politics.
I imagine it’s like being in Berlin the day the Berlin Wall fell. It’s like being in South Africa when Nelson Mandela was liberated from jail — or the day he was inaugurated as President. Imagine being in Berlin or South Africa while history was shifting . . .
We are in such a moment. Funny thing is not everyone sees or feels the moment in terms of how profound it is until later — when history books are written. Carpe Diem! Seize the day — today is the day we all get to be part of history. It’s the day we’ll tell our grandchildren about — I was there when . . .
Meet Canada’s first Green MP in Guelph today (Sunday, August 31)! Blair Wilson, the former independent MP who is now the Green Party’s first MP in Parliament, comes to Guelph with Elizabeth May to support Mike Nagy’s campaign.
To quote Johnny Rotten, “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” After a rousing buildup like that, I was expecting a bigger pay off than “meet Blair Wilson!” If the superfluity of parody was ever in doubt…
Self-described “card-carrying Green” Stuart Hertzog is none too pleased that Blair Wilson is now Canada’s first Green MP:
Why don’t I see this as good news? Because in accepting Blair Wilson into its ranks, Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May has shown that she’s prepared to throw out fundamental Green political principles just so she can be included in the nationally-televised leadership debate. Put simply, that sucks.
[...]
[W]hat effect will this appointment from ‘on high’ of a fallen Liberal star as Canada’s history-making first ‘Green’ MP have on local Green Party members? Were they consulted about this, or did they learn about it from the media?
I’m not living in that riding, but as a card-carrying Green I’m disgusted with this display of old-style, back-room political thinking that believes that secret negotiations to persuade star candidates to run under the Green Party banner is the way to open, democratic politics and ecological security.
Such shenanigans may create a brief flurry in the media — but at what cost? Blair Wilson MP has done well in the past by toeing the Liberal Party line, but the Liberal party’s environmental record is not good. Canadians saw little genuine progress in environmental enforcement during the decades it was in power.
Has Blair Wllson suddenly discovered a new ecological consciousness as a newly-minted Green? Or is his greening as pale as the current attempt to paint the Liberal Party green after its decades of environmental neglect? What are his Green credentials? He may call himself a Green MP — but is he really one?
[...]
Green politics was supposed to be different, an alternative to the moral and financial corruption of old-style politics. But Canada’s Green parties seem to have drifted away from these Green ideals. As the Green ‘brand’ grows in popularity, a new wave of political opportunists are hopping aboard the Green Party wagon as it trundles slowly but seemingly inevitably towards Ottawa.
Make sure to read the whole thing. I think pogge nails it when he says (in comments; scroll down) “[t]he way to fix a broken electoral system isn’t to game it even more by exploiting whatever loopholes you can find. That’s a recipe for making voters [and, apparently, ideological partisans--mb] even more cynical than they already are.”
I can’t help but be, oh, a little bit skeptical of Republicans’ sudden interest in the glass ceiling. After all, this is the party that threw women like Lilly Ledbetter under the bus, in favor of businesses that practice wage discrimination. The party that stymied the Equal Rights Amendment. The party that not only wants to force women here and abroad to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, but also wants to deny them access to a range of contraception options.
[...]
It’s clear that Republicans believe that what made Hillary Clinton such a good candidate was her gender, not her political experience or positions on the issues. And McCain’s decision to pick Palin shows he took this message to heart and chose to add her to the ticket primarily because of her gender. In so doing, McCain has turned the idea of the first woman in the White House from a true moment of change to an empty pander.
Why is this a pander? Because Palin is not a woman who has a record of representing women’s interests. She is beloved by extremely right-wing conservatives for heranti-choice record (fittingly, she’s a member of the faux-feminist anti-choice group Feminists for Life). Palin supports federal anti-gay marriage legislation. She believes schools should teach creationism. Alaska is currently considering spending more on abstinence-only sex education. And when it comes to a slew of other issues of importance to women, such as equal pay, she’s not on the record.
Of course, I’m of the belief that more women in politics — across the ideological spectrum — is always a good thing. On a superficial level, nominating a woman to the Republican presidential ticket is indeed a milestone. But the real reason many women were excited about Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is that she was the whole package — a politician with a solid record on issues like choice and fair pay, and with a lot of experience, who was also a woman. Even feminists I disagreed with during the primary made the compelling point that it wasn’t just about Hillary’s gender. It was about her record, too.
The day that Mr. Emerson “crossed the floor” to the Conservative party was a dark day for Canadian democracy… He has betrayed his supporters and the entire electorate in Vancouver Kingsway. He has put his personal goals ahead of those of the electorate.
The Green Party has wooed Independent MP Blair Wilson to its ranks, giving the party its first politician in the House of Commons and as a result, a spot in the televised election debates.
Because the party now has a MP, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May will be entitled to participate in the televised leaders’ debates in the election that is expected to be called within days.
[...]
“Democracy is threatened when legitimate national leaders are barred from what is arguably the single most important political event in an election – the televised debates,” Wilson said in the release issued by the Green Party.
“It is shocking that the Green Party was excluded from the debates in the past, but by joining the Green Party, I can help guarantee that this travesty will not be repeated in the next election,” he said.
This sudden elevation of the Green Party and of Elizabeth May’s status isn’t the result of a choice by voters. It’s the result of one guy who was, rightly or wrongly, kicked out of the party he originally chose and couldn’t get back in. On a rational basis I don’t believe that qualifies Elizabeth May to participate in a debate where she’ll be the only leader arguing that some other party’s leader ought to be Prime Minister.
When I think of the current state of Canadian Federal politics, the word that almost immediately springs to mind is cynicism. Maneuvers like this–to say nothing of Harper’s opportunistic jettisoning of his own fixed election reforms–do little to increase voter confidence in the health of our Parliamentary system. No wonder, as noted in today’s Halifax Chronicle Herald, some eligible voters (including yours truly) may have felt a little “campaign envy” this week as history unfolded before our eyes south of the border:
Americans are being dared to dream; Canadians hardly dare to eat luncheon meat.
If an election does come, there are no gripping issues, merely the end of the game of who triggers it and when.
The likely outcome is another minority government requiring the same sort of bipartisan compromises that supposedly can’t be made now. Not exactly the stuff of mile-high enthusiasm.
There are practical reasons electoral energy cycles are out of sync across the 49th parallel.
Canadians have nothing like the historic choice of electing the first black president, or the first woman vice-president now that John McCain has boldly picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Well, I wouldn’t quite go that far. Since this editorial was published, Canada has boldly made a small-town cheap contribution to the annals of political history. Yep–watching a tainted ex-Liberal hitch his political fortunes to a party dedicated to, um, electing Liberals certainly gives me hope for this fall’s homegrown electoral festivities; finally, a little bit of change that we as Canadians can, if not outright believe in, at least feign indifference towards.
Now, before you get all ZOMG glass ceiling shattered!!1 at the prospect of a female veep (which begs the question: why didn’t McCain vet Senator Clinton, hmm? No. Re. Spect.) keep in mind that Palin is, by and large, a Trojan hammer, as NARAL president Nancy Keenan outlines in the following press release:
Washington, D.C. – Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said that Sen. John McCain’s selection today of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate is further evidence that a McCain presidency will be just another four years of the same old Bush-style anti-choice policies. Just like McCain, Palin opposes a woman’s right to choose. Palin has also stated her opposition to abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
“John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate proves just how rigid and extreme his administration would be when it comes to a woman’s right to choose,” Keenan said. “For 25 years, McCain has opposed a woman’s right to choose, and we know that he will continue to push anti-choice policies in the White House. McCain’s pick of anti-choice Sarah Palin is further evidence that his White House will be just another four years of Bush-style policies. Any remaining doubts about McCain’s extreme anti-choice position should be put to rest when voters learn about the combined anti-choice records of Sarah Palin and John McCain.”
Palin, a member of the anti-choice group Feminists for Life, said during her campaign for governor that she is opposed to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. [Juneau Empire, "Abortion Draws Clear Divide in State Races," accessed 8/29/08 and Anchorage Daily News, "Governor’s Race: Top contenders meet one last time to debate," 11/03/06.]
“Americans are tired of the kind of divisive anti-choice policies that Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin have pledged to continue to support. The contrast between pro-choice Sen. Obama and anti-choice Sen. McCain is clear. Voters are looking for a leader who respects women’s freedom and privacy. Barack Obama is that leader.”
Sen. McCain’s selection of Palin as his vice-presidential running mate is especially troublesome for the unique audience of women voters NARAL Pro-Choice America is targeting: Independent and Republican pro-choice women in suburban and exurban swing districts. These women play a pivotal role in the presidential election. Recent polling confirms how, once these voters know McCain’s extreme opposition to a woman’s right to choose and family planning, they will switch parties to support Sen. Barack Obama.
NARAL Pro-Choice America, which tracks all choice-related votes in Congress and ranks all 50 states on the status of women’s reproductive rights, classifies Sarah Palin as anti-choice.
According to its tastefully designed website, FFL — describing itself as a “nonsectarian, nonpartisan, grassroots organization … shaped by the core feminist values of justice, nondiscrimination, and nonviolence” — “recognizes that abortion is a reflection that our society has failed to meet the needs of women.” The goal of the group: “systematically eliminating the root causes that drive women to abortion — primarily lack of practical resources and support — through holistic, woman-centered solutions.”
Well, that’s refreshing. No railing against the ladies for making selfish choices, no little pictures of tiny feet. A commitment to non-violence, a focus on the “root causes” — they use the word ” holistic,” for God’s sake. It all sounds entirely reasonable, doesn’t it?
Try radical. The group believes abortion is an act of violence that is unacceptable under any circumstances. Unacceptable under any circumstances. Including rape, incest, major fetal defects, and danger to the mother’s life. This position — “holistic solutions” aside — puts [FFL] to the right of their sister organization, Attila the Hun for Life.
Not only that, but FFL is sketchy about birth control. “Preconception issues, including abstinence and contraception, are outside of our mission,” reads their website. “Some FFL members and supporters support the use of non-abortifacient contraception while
others oppose contraception for a variety of reasons.” So it’s not clear precisely how FFL would go about reducing unwanted pregnancies. Or, for that matter, rape and incest.
Katha Pollitt disputes FFL’s appropriation of the ‘feminist’ moniker:
It is indeed feminist to say no woman should have to abort a wanted child to stay in school or have a career–FFL’s line is thus an advance on the more typical antichoice position, which is that women have abortions to go to Europe or fit into their prom dress. You can see why their upbeat, rebellious slogans–”refuse to choose,” “question abortion,” “women deserve better”–appeal to students. (But what do those students think when they find that the postabortion resources links are all to Christian groups and that FFL’s sunny pregnancy-assistance advice includes going on food stamps or welfare?) Exposing the constraints on women’s choices, however, is only one side of feminism. The other is acknowledging women as moral agents, trusting women to decide what is best for themselves. For FFL there’s only one right decision: Have that baby. And since women’s moral judgment cannot be trusted, abortion must be outlawed, whatever the consequences for women’s lives and health–for rape victims and 12-year-olds and 50-year-olds, women carrying Tay-Sachs fetuses and women at risk of heart attack or stroke, women who have all the children they can handle and women who don’t want children at all. FFL argues that abortion harms women–that’s why it clings to the outdated cancer claims. But it would oppose abortion just as strongly if it prevented breast cancer, filled every woman’s heart with joy, lowered the national deficit and found Jimmy Hoffa. That’s because they aren’t really feminists–a feminist could not force another woman to bear a child, any more than she could turn a pregnant teenager out into a snowstorm. They are fetalists.
All of which makes me wonder if, by picking Palin as his running mate, McCain is actually making a play for pro-life Evangelicals and Catholics, rather than disaffected Clinton voters. By tapping a socially conservative abortion foe, the McCain campaign may be attempting to once again make the Christian Right vote a factor in November, after many believed religious conservatives didn’t trust McCain enough to wholeheartedly support him. David Waters of WapO’s On Faith points to a recent CBSNews.com interview with Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission:
CBSNews.com: Who’s on the list of people mentioned for VP that you think would most excite Southern Baptists and other members of the conservative faith community?
Richard Land: Probably Governor Palin of Alaska, because she’s a person of strong faith. She just had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome child. And there’s a wonderful quote that she gave about her baby, and the fact that she would never, ever consider having an abortion just because her child had Downs Syndrome. She’s strongly pro-life.
She’s a virtual lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She would ring so many bells. And I just think it would help with independents because she’s a woman. She’s a reform Governor. I think that, from what I hear, that would be the choice that would probably ring the most bells… .
And, true to Land’s prediction, (church) bells are ringing in exultation, as noted by Waters:
Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council:
“Sarah Palin clearly addresses the issues so many conservatives are concerned about. It balances out the ticket,” said Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council. “She’s also really a checkmate for the Democratic Party because folks who were looking to make history for Barack Obama can make history by voting for John McCain in seeing the first woman elected to the vice-presidency. It was a very strategic move by John McCain.”
Pro-life advocates and website were buzzing Friday about McCain’s choice.
“Sarah Palin is the whole package. There couldn’t be a better vice presidential pick,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an influential pro-life PAC. “By choosing the boldly pro-life Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has taken his stand as the one true, authentic pro-life ticket.”
“[T]he one true, authentic pro-life ticket.” I have a feeling McCain’s [deliberately ambiguous] latter day pro-life branding effort has completely answered any lingering doubts conservative Christian voters may have held regarding his commitment to key socon issues. Instead of an ‘out of the box’ decision, choosing Palin as his VP nominee amounts to more of the same from John McCain: “a classic, Rovian appease-the-base choice.”
A police officer was videotaped Tuesday shoving a CodePink protester hard to the ground without any apparent sign of provocation.
Footage of the incident prompted the city’s independent monitor to call for a review and the police department’s Internal Affairs Bureau to request a copy of the tape.
Police arrested Alicia Forrest, 24, a Los Angeles resident whom CodePink representatives identified as the woman involved in the altercation, shortly afterward as she was addressing reporters just outside Civic Center.
The arrest - in which Forrest was grabbed and hauled away from reporters - also was caught on camera, and CodePink legal liaison Sally Newman said Forrest was doing “nothing violent at all” to incur either the shove or the arrest.
“Horror, shock and total support of Alicia,” said CodePink spokeswoman Jean Stevens, describing the reaction when she and other members of the antiwar group viewed the video for the first time. “We wish we could help. We wish we could be with her.”
Three guesses what the police spin is:
Lt. Ron Saunier, a Denver police spokesman, said the 30-second clip was “kind of jumpy” on his computer and that it doesn’t provide enough context.
“Just shown in that context, you don’t get what the whole dynamics or the full situation is,” he said.
Yeah, who are you gonna believe — a sniveling PR flack, or your lyin’ eyes?
[Forrest]…is tired from the ordeal, but “she’s optimistic for further CodePink action and progress for the week,” her organization said in a statement.
“I was standing up for my free speech rights, showing support for a fellow activist,” Forrest said in the statement. “If anything, this has showed me how powerful standing up for your beliefs can be, and how necessary it is for the truth to get out even in the face of resistance.”
Powerful and, therefore, as far as those who are empowered to demand obedience at all costs are concerned, a threat (to their authority, their ego, their apparently fragile manhood).
