September 17, 2008, And for our next trick...
While John McCain, listening to advice from his economic advisors he'd be better served to ignore (if not take out and shoot) tells us "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" and other self-evident piffle... reality has set in, and the market has not accepted that the nationalization of insurance giant AIG will solve the financial market's woes... and the Dow Industrial Average fell nearly 450 points more today. Among other attributes of the 449 point decline is that Morgan Stanley (whose shares fell by around 25%) is talking about a merger with Wachovia, and other institutions are talking about buying up Washington Mutual.
When the dust settles, lenders will stop lending, businesses will stop expanding, people will lose their jobs and both individuals and businesses will default on their loans, causing further tightening in lending, lather, rinse, repeat. We are only at the front end of this cycle now, which will in turn impact other businesses, not to mention tax revenues for all levels of government at a time they are starting with budgetary problems (including already record federal deficits thanks to insanely stupid non-stimulative tax cuts for the super-rich).
All told, while the nearly 900 point drop this week (btw, the DJIA included AIG as a component stock, IIRC... that will have to change...) is spectacular, it's around 8% of market value, well below financial-bloodbaths-past. Of course, we're not done yet. And of course, the market started this decline at levels well under the level (Dow of around 11,700) when Dubya took office.
So... while there has been a massive shin-dig to which none of us were invited for which the bill just came due... the benefits of the party have gone neither to workers whose real wages have declined during the last eight years nor even to ordinary investors. Who in their right mind would continue the governance of any party that oversaw such miserable results?
Of course... Barack Obama is still Black. And did I mention that many men believe Sarah Palin is hot? I hear she can see Russia from her house...
September 16, 2008, Insuring the insurer
In their continued acts of financial improvisation, after another Weekend at Bernanke's that I discussed here, Lehman Bros. was regarded as "not too big to fail", Merrill Lynch's management didn't need to wait and see if the Fed and Treasury felt that it was too big to fail and quickly accepted a shotgun wedding with Bank of America, and the behemoth world's-largest-insurer (I think they are, anyway) American International Group, better known as AIG, tried to remain afloat amidst the financial meltdown.
Today, after some market turmoil (the Dow was down over 500 points yesterday, but rebounded a bit, a little over 100 points today on news that the Fed was holding a key rate around 2%... as if it had a choice)... AIG's situation has convinced the improvising government officials that, like Bear Sterns before it, is, in fact, too big to fail, and hence, the Fed loaned AIG $85 billion (think of it as around 6-8 weeks months cost of the Iraq war), in exchange for, among other things, convertible warrants that it can use to take a 79.9% equity stake...
Assuming that the Fed manages to effectively manage AIG onward into continued solvency, expect it to dump the company at a humongous loss (to taxpayers), but a humongous gain to the happy insiders who get to eventually profit from it.
When the government is owned by business and corporate interests, we call that Republicans' fondest hopes and dreams "fascism;" when, by contrast, business and corporate interests are owned by the government, we call that "socialism." Fascism is a misunderstood term with an unfortunate Italian connection; the fact is that Americans have enjoyed having their government dominated by business interests for decades now. Socialism, by contrast, is always evil...an affront to God. This makes Fed Chair Bernanke and SecTreas Paulson... apostates... if not outright traitors.
I'm at a loss for words. This is the first time I have ever been so ashamed of this country.
September 15, 2008, Separated at birth?
First, be sure and check out Al Giordano's take (who else?) on "Tanning-bed-gate" (try putting lipstick on that one)!
And check out the rest of Al's goodies, including the fact that Barack is now ahead in Virginia. Cause for panic? Maybe for McCain-Palin, there is...
And then, we compare and contrast the following:
... with ...
Just saying.
September 14, 2008, What really matters...
Is the health and well-being of people you care about. We wish godspeed and a speedy recovery to our friend Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
September 14, 2008, Solvency Prosperity is just around the corner
And so talks continue in the shadow of Ground Zero over at the New York Federal Reserve Bank over the fate of beleaguered financial giant Lehman Brothers. Apparently, the taxpayer-backstopped interventions to deal with Bear Sterns and of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have wiped out the U.S. Treasury's reserves to do similar deals involving taxpayer money (solution: lower taxes for the rich... more), and so the leading proposals involve a break-up, and a disposal of Lehman's "bad" assets to a consortium of banks, who would themselves absorb the risk.
Needless to say, some of those banks are balking, and the chicken game goes on as to whether SecTreas Paulson will make the appropriate phone calls (presumably to Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul... and possibly Riyadh and Dubai) for the necessary infusion of capital to... get yet another taxpayer supported bailout here for Lehman, which will clearly not be the last such; if the line is drawn now, that "the market" must bail itself out from here on in, then we will start to see just how deep the current financial crisis is.
Thankfully, SecTreas Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have an attribute sorely lacking in the rest of the Bush Administration: competence. It's not hard to explain why, of course: in the area of money, stability in the system is "in sync" with the interests of the Bush Administration's "client," big business, in a way that, oh, environmental or workplace safety or other government involvement is not. Still, they can only work with what they have, and a sufficient hash has been made of government finance (which has spilled over to the economy writ large), that one wonders if they'll be able to prevent a broader financial meltdown.
Well, time will tell. We'd probably be looking at the stock market circuit breakers coming into effect pretty early tomorrow (from dramatic losses) should there be no resolution of the Lehman situation by tomorrow morning. As to the broader implications? Who knows. The economy is softening, unemployment and inflation are up, the sub-prime and mortgage-backed crises continue to roll on, Lehman's problems have spilled over to insurance giant AIG and to investment giant Merrill Lynch, and as it was clearly the party atmosphere of the Grand Old Party for the last nearly 8 years that has helped bring us to this moment.
Of course, Barack Obama is Black.
Update: The events of the day have led to this: Lehman Bros. will probably file for bankruptcy protection, and be ultimately liquidated, and Merrill Lynch will likely go the way of Bear Sterns and Lehman Bros., i.e., disappear, probably by being absorbed into Bank of America. Pressure mounts on insurance giants AIG, and Washington Mutual as well... and stock futures are already well down.
I understand that former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan was on ABC's "This Week," saying this is the worst crisis he's seen in his career. He should know, of course: he largely caused the current crisis, with his imprimatur on the Bush tax cuts coupled with his irresponsible money-management under both Clinton and Dubya alike, always stepping on the accelerator, never on the brakes. While in the annals of our time, Bush, Cheney at al. will get their just place as super-villains... but Greenspan surely deserves a special place there as well. Just saying.
Fortunately, Bernanke is in and Greenspan is out, but we got trouble right here in New York City and that starts with t and that rhymes with e, which stands for economic collapse. I understand that none of this is as important as Sarah Palin, of course, but... just saying.
September 12, 2008, Eyes on the Prize
Any decent sailor will tell you that a key way to get to where you're going (not to mention to avoid seasickness) is to focus on a point on the horizon, and keep heading for it--not to be thrown off course by the wind, or the waves, or other distractions... just as Al Giordano keeps telling us to banish "chicken littles" who keep insisting the electoral sky is falling. This piece is a case in point of why I check his site at least daily: Al knows what the f*** he is talking about.
Let me summarize: Sarah Palin? Distraction. Joe Biden? Distraction? Barack being Black? In the end... a distraction. The number crunching of what actually matters... state by state polling, of which Al is a master, backed up by Al actually opening his window and listening to what is happening on the ground... tells me the most comforting thing I have yet seen about this race: the map. The map is... wait for it... the same map that Gore and Kerry faced, with one humongous and all-critical exception. That being, Obama is ahead in Colorado... if he can add New Mexico-- a state Gore won-- Barack wins...
One state that isn't Ohio or Florida... and we win. And OH, VA, FL, NV, IN and maybe MO and a Congressional district in Omaha... are all in play and McCain must still defend them, or he can't win... and this time, the "House tie-breaker" in case of a 269=269 electoral vote tie favors Democrats.
In short, as grim as many people who (wrongly) believe that the 44-year old Governor Palin possesses electoral superpowers want to believe it is... Obama appears to be in better shape than either Kerry or Gore, having changed the board just enough to allow a possible win without having to win either FL or OH, which, for Democrats, are both the equivalent of that football Lucy is holding for Charlie Brown. And we have a path to win and tell both states to go f*** themselves if they insist on voting for McCain. If that's not encouraging... I don't know what is. To paraphrase the late John F. Kennedy, "my Dad told me that if he was going to be buying this election, he'd be damned if he paid for a landslide."
September 11, 2008, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Well, if you're Dick Cheney, that is. And Rudy 91uliani has an entire second career because of today. For those roughly 95, 96% of Americans who don't live in a city targeted on 11 Sept. 2001, and the roughly 85-90% of Americans who don't live in a city likely to be targeted at all, we who live in those cities that were say "get the f*** over it already; God knows we have."
We have greater reason to fear the loss of loved ones from more mundane homicides... or illnesses... or accidents... than we do now, or ever really have, from terrorism. But it's so much more politically satisfying to have this bogeyman out there against whom we can launch our [kickback heavy] military forces. Of course, it's the wrong tool, insofar as OBL and AQ aren't and weren't going to launch columns of tanks at anyone or otherwise make themselves vulnerable to simple military attacks like naval or airstrikes; they will "fight dirty" using seemingly invisible saboteurs and murderers that are best combatted using intelligence (in every sense of the word), and those other dirty words, "law enforcement." So naturally, after seven years of military deployment, and seven years of improvising on our most fundamental values (that would be "torture")... the specific perps of 9-11 are, as far as we know, still out there. And even those such as KSM who may be in custody are actually beyond "justice" because, of course, they were tortured, and hence, cannot be tried, even in the kangaroo kourts we have set up to try them. Nuff said, I suppose.
In 9-11's past, I have highlighted some of the unsung heroes of 9-11; last year I added to my usual commemoration of volunteer paramedic Richie Pearlman (who heroically rushed into the WTC to assist people, despite not being paid to do it) with a commemoration of Morgan Stanley security director Rick Rescorla, who saved many Morgan Stanley employees with his good sense to train for a 9-11 type emergency and then on the day, get people the f*** out (while sadly, he and three others went back in to rescue unaccounted for personnel).
My own story is more mundane: my then-office was across the street, so I watched events through my window, until, at roughly 9:20 am, I headed to court for a trial scheduled that day (which, of course, did not happen that day), and then walked home, watching the North tower finally implode while walking in the automobile lanes of the upper deck of the Manhattan Bridge (something I did for the first time; I repeated that in the August 2003 blackout... on 9-11, as on other occasions, New Yorkers largely saved themselves, without thanks to "people" like Rudy 91u1iani). Later the same week, I learned that on top of that, I lost my job, as the law firm was displaced. The toxic pall in the air hung for months over not just lower Manhattan, but over our Brooklyn neighborhood. On "the day," a friend lost his brother in law in one of the planes; one of my law clients was a fireman; and someone with whom I rowed freshman crew was a Port Authority employee. All were killed in an instant, along with thousands of others.
And so here we are now... seven years later. I have every confidence that today, as usual, will be exploited for its political hay (even as the major candidates declare "truce for a day.") "Ground Zero," which both McCain and Obama will visit today, is still a hole in the ground (kind of like much of later-ravaged New Orleans). Our national can-do and get-up-and-go spirit has, of course, amidst the fantasy of unbridled capitalism, plain old gotten up and left. And at this point, I realize that our own national vigilante/revenge fantasy has been... pretty much pointless. Thousands of heroic Americans are dead or physically maimed or otherwise scarred for life from combat in irrelevant theaters (which these days include Afghanistan as well as Iraq). OBL and company have gotten us to overreact, just as they wanted, in a scale beyond their wildest fantasies. And, as we try to put yet more lipstick on the pig of our nation's never-ending stupid response lo these seven years later... I see every indication that, as with everything else, the American people have learned nothing.
Assuming New York City isn't a nuclear wasteland by this time tomorrow, here's hoping I'll see you here this same time next year.
September 10, 2008, PygPALIoN
Oddly enough, I am not referring to "pig gate," that asinine flap (or is it a kerfuffle?) developing between the two battling political camps over Barack's remark about the McCain program being "putting lipstick on a pig"... the Democrat apparently failing to recognize that Governor Sarah Palin using her stupidmean-spirited adorable joke noting that the difference between a soccersecurity hockey mom and a pitbull was lipstick imbued the Republican Party with an all-time trademark on the word lipstick and its use in any subsequent joke, which will instantly be called a sexist attack on that nice young perty Governor Palin (did we mention she has five children, all of whom are off-limits even if Governor Palin herself issues a press release about them?)
Anyway, I realize I'm violating my own rule ("first rule about Sarah Palin is that we don't talk about Sarah Palin")... but Maureen Dowd suckers me in, as she wrote her column today "My Fair Veep," helping the Republicans as always (it seems to be Maureen's job) in a further attempt to lower expectations for the Governor's soft-ball interview this Friday with the soft-ball hurling Charlie Gibson of ABC News. The conceit of her piece is that, like Eliza Doolittle in Shaw's Pygmalion (later "My Fair Lady"), the otherwise inarticulate, illiterate charwoman Sarah must prepare to appear well-informed on issues of the day. Maureen appears to mock Palin, while reinforcing the lowered expectations. Thanks Maureen.
For Christ's sake, Governor Sarah Palin was elected governor of a state: she's been vetted by her opponents in that race. She has parlayed no apparent family connections and no money into high office, and has now managed to get herself in the national spotlight. In short: this is a smart cookie. Yes, I realize Barack and I both graduated Coumbia in 1983, which is, indeed an Ivy League college... but that doesn't make us any smarter than Sarah Palin (who, younger than I am, is governor of a state!) Enough of the lowered expectations: Sarah Palin is a competent politician. Ironic that the very party who made hay running ads that accused Barack of basking in celebrity worship are now wholly dependent on... Sarah Palin celebrity worship! But there you go.
Lookit: this election is going to be about one thing, and one thing only: race. The race of Barack Obama's Kenyan father, to be quite specific. The feckless media can pretend its about other things (NEVER, NEVER, EVER THE ISSUES, BY THE WAY)... but this one's about... RACE. Period. Because the Republican policies of deliberately failed governance have reached a high water mark right now: we have a government failing wonderfully both domestically and in international matters. Our deficit and debt are at record highs, our international prestige at record lows, unemployment and inflation are up, as are bank failures (including the largest federal takeover of financial instiutions in history just this week), and of course, we are bogged down in not one, but two pointless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, when the real enemies (that would be OBL and AQ) are in Pakistan, where we are not engaged. So naturally, we get to hear dueling accusations and denials that Barack Obama somehow insulted Sarah Palin by calling one of the best-looking women in American politics "a pig". Good one, there. But you get the idea.
Anyway, let's get down to it. If I were Barack (and Barack, man, I'd pay at least some attention to me, because if nothing else man, IIRC, I got a higher grade than you in the one class we had in common, back when you were to my left politically... we've since shifted places a bit, of course... but then, you got million dollar book advances and I didn't... but I digress...!) Anyway, I'd deliver a speech, or run an ad, or something, that went something like this:
I've gone around this great country, speaking directly to some of the many people who feel personally connected and involved in this campaign like no other, and who, like me, believe that it's time we changed the way we do things in Washington so that the government works for the benefit of people like you, and not only for people like me, who do quite well thanks to Washington, thank you very much.And you've been very candid with me. So let me be candid with you. You told me things like "Barack, we're afraid you'll take our guns away," or "Barack, we're afraid you'll raise our taxes," or "Barack, we're afraid you're a Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer" or "Barack, we're that afraid you'll appoint Al Sharpton as Secretary of Labor and Jesse Jackson as, well, anything and that all your other Black friends will get the good jobs."
This is a picture of my parents. And this is a picture of me with my beautiful wife and beautiful daughters. This is who I am, and where I come from. I couldn't be prouder of my heritage, and my family, than you are. I have an "only in America" story, how my mother, who gave birth to me when I was 18 and raised me herself, often with the help of programs like food-stamps, managed to send me to top schools, including ultimately with the help of student loans and scholarships to Columbia University and Harvard Law School. In case you haven't figured it out, my mother happened to be a White woman, from Kansas. My father happened to be a Black man, from Kenya. That's who they are. I carry each of them in me-- in every cell of my body. It's the year 2008, and yet, I have no doubt that there are still some of you that feel they cannot vote for me for that reason, and that reason alone. To you I say, I'm sorry you feel that way. Whether you support me or not, I wish you could move past that, and as a young preacher said, that you could judge others by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin, But this is a free country, and you have the right to your beliefs, whether I agree with them or not.
As for the rest of you, I suppose those of you who have already embraced my message of change and hope are probably already going to vote for me. To you, I say, thank you, and for those of you who doubt we can go all the way, I say "yes we can." Look how far we've already come! To those who still have doubts about me, but have moved past the point of not being able to listen and understand, it is to you this message is directed. As to why you should vote for me, you have heard my story-- an "only in America" story, really, where a man like me could stand on the cusp of the highest office in the land-- really the only time a person of color has ever been this close to the leadership position of a country as powerful as ours ever. And you know my policies and philosophy, which, basically, amount to "the government is here to help you" is not some kind a joke, to be derisively laughed at, but is a simple fact. It was programs like the New Deal, and the GI Bill, and the Great Society, that made this country as great as it is today. Simple as that.
So... if you're still listening, and you're not afraid of me because of who I am (which, you know, neither of us can change!), then it's time that I persuaded you about why you should be afraid of John McCain and Sarah Palin.
For one thing, "it's the Supreme Court, stupid." John McCain has promised to appoint what he calls "judges who support the Constitution," and when asked for specifics, he says "like Roberts and Alito." Yes, this certainly means that, given the ages of the current justices of the Supreme Court, there will almost certainly be at least one vacancy, and possibly several, in the next presidential term. More judges like Roberts and Alito will mean more decisions from the Supreme Court that undermine or ultimately eliminate women's rights to reproductive choice, that would undermine limits on the President's authority to do everything from spy on you to hold you (forever) without charges to torturing you (in the name of national security of course) to anything else the President can dream up, that undermine the government's (state, federal or local, by the way) abilities to protect the environment... and numerous other rulings, which would make this look like a very different country, one that I'm sure many of you would not be pleased to live in.
On foreign policy, John McCain has suggested that we may be in Iraq for 100 years or more. Even the Bush Administration is now talking of withdrawal within months, now that we have achieved our goals there, and it appears the Iraqi government, which unlike ours, is running over a $50 billion surplus, has achieved enough stability to handle its own sovereign affairs itself. But John McCain has always supported the Iraq war, even as our real enemies continue to mock us from their hiding places in Pakistan, now seven years since their massive crimes against us, while he throws around words like "victory" (to try, of course, to accuse me of wanting "defeat") without himself knowing the meaning of either in this context.
John McCain wants to privatize, that is to say, end, social security. He has similar feelings toward virtually every social program, from Medicaid and Medicare, to food-stamps, to education funding, to you name it. He probably would prefer we no longer had a minimum wage; he has certainly done his best not to raise it. I do not question that we have a legitimate policy disagreement on these, but it is so much more: it is a vision about what kind of a country we live in. Do we want a country where every man, woman and child has dignity, the ability to know that if they do a fair day's work they'll get a fair day's pay, that they are not one illness from destitution, that every child in America will have the same chance to advance himself or herself the way I have through world class educational opportunities widely available? Or do we want a country where everyone is at the mercy of whatever the free market can get away with paying them or doling out-- and if it's no more than a starvation wage, so be it? I stand for one vision... John McCain for a clearly different one. The choice couldn't be clearer.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is the challenge before us. You can elect the party that says it's for "change" because it has changed the gender of its vice-presidential candidate even as it touts the failed policies of its own party in the White House for the last 8 years and in Congress for 14 of the last 16, only because it nominated a bright articulate, attractive young woman as its vice-president (who also stands for the same failed policies), or you can vote for actual change. A man who was also once privileged enough to be a Democratic nominee for President once said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Well, I think he was wrong: I think we also have to fear an endless repetition of policies and approaches and philosophies that we know are just wrong and don't work. You can be afraid of me because of who God made me, or you can be afraid of what our opponents want to make of America. I think enough of you share my vision to know the kind of nation we can be. To you I say, yes, YES, WE CAN.
To all of you, whether you support me or not, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
September 8, 2008, Why?
On Saturday afternoon, I was driving down Atlantic Avenue, and turned onto Adams Street in downtown Brooklyn, intending to drive over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan to pick up Mrs. TD. It became quite clear traffic wasn't moving at all because Adams Street had been taped off by the police. I turned around and found an alternate route, grumbling about it.
Today, to my horror, I learned why the street was blocked, and it had nothing to do with the tropical storm rolling on in. Instead, it concerned a special kind of tragedy: an 8-year old boy on a bicycle was struck and killed by a turning postal truck.
And Zander Toulouse happened to be an 8-year old boy and a member of a family that I and my family happened to know. A sweet boy: the pride and joy of his parents' lives. And just like that, he's gone in an instant. And for what? The immediate (and most meaningless and unsatisfying) answer, of course, is that traffic in New York City is just extraordinarily dangerous intrinsically, and many of us pretend otherwise. Some might find satisfaction in finding fault with someone, somewhere, but it seems this was an absolute freak accident: a truck driver, not moving all that fast, simply failed to see a child crossing a street. Just like that.
Immediate reactions from children are that they simply shouldn't ride their bikes in the streets of New York at all. And I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss this. Even by American standards of bicycle unfriendliness, New York is peculiarly unfriendly, especially given the volume of its traffic and limited accommodations given to bikes. Though over here in Brooklyn, despite this still being true (though there are bicycle lanes, they compete with a vast array of other traffic, and are certainly not set off or protected from traffic)... people still bicycle, and indeed, the site of a family arrayed on their bicycles in a line, from parents in front to children in back, is a common one most weekends.
But these are not the real questions one wants to, or needs to, wrestle with over this kind of pointless tragedy. As I asked about when I talked about the death of my friend Norman (just a few months after the birth of his young son), we know none of this is "fair," but just why is fair just not a concept with which this universe is familiar? Here was a sweet, bright child, just out for a God damned bike ride with his dad.
Those who believe in any kind of a just and merciful God, or in any kind of order in the universe other than the craziest of hazards and random occurrences, if you ask me, get the burden of explaining the reason for insanely horrible random tragedies like this and how they fit in their orders or schemes. Because I sure as hell can't fit it into any orderly or meaningful universal scheme.
This, of course, is because there really is no explanation: this just happens. All we can do-- or at least so we tell ourselves-- is shrug, pretend our lives are not hanging on the outcome of some cosmic dice roll, and go about our lives as if there were universal truths and orderliness and meaningful principles and that our quotidian toils and tribulations were not simply larger versions of hamsters spinning their exercise wheels in terms of cosmic significance... as if in the face of such a reality, politics, or economics, or culture, or religion, or anything at all has any weight compared to the simple reality that we live in a world where sweet, wonderful eight year old boys can be killed in the space of a heartbeat-- and not in the context of war in Iraq or Afghanistan, not in some far off neighborhood, and not perhaps nearby but involving some random kid I don't know... but right where you are, any time, maybe even right now. And it can be a friend, a loved one, a neighbor... or you.
The only thing I can suggest-- the only thing I suggest-- is that the only universal truth of relevance is that no act of kindness is without meaning or significance. It does not change the brute ultimate outcome or random horribleness of it all-- but maybe it's all we have.
Beyond that? Just damned if I know.
September 5, 2008, You don't know where your interests lie
That S&G; title sounds almost like a message right out of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, or the usual conundrum of how the interests of the rich and powerful, as embodied by their temporal representative on Earth, the Republican Party, are sold to the working stiffs of America who, though not forming a majority of the electorate, form a sufficiently strong plurality to keep voting for a party that has the interests of the few at heart...
Of course, it might also be a reminder to those wishing well to the Obama-Biden ticket to stop wasting time with the brilliant diversion otherwise known as Sarah Palin, and continue equating John McCain with what and who he has decided to be: a principal Congressional enabler of the Bush Administration, even after spending the first part of it opposing many of its signature dishes and the last few years propping up the Bush Administration.
And it might be an excellent time to trot out this key statistic: the "misery index" of adding unemployment (6%) plus inflation (5.7%) is, at 11.7, now at the highest level since 1991. Remember who was President then? Somebody named George Bush... a celebrated naval aviator, now that I think about it. That misery index statistic would be an excellent surrogate for demonstrating that economic times ain't good, and as the same party has controlled the presidency for the last eight years, and both houses of Congress and the White House for 6 of the last 8 years... John McCain has some kind of stones to be telling us he is running to shake things up. His laundry list last night, when parsed, included basically the usual Republican talking points including offshore drilling, school vouchers and ever-more-tax-cuts-for-the-rich... sure doesn't sound like shaking Washington up to me, unless you believe doing the same thing is "change".
In the end, while there are always plenty of people who will forgive their beloved Republican Party anything, fortunately, a healthy majority of Americans actually have expectations that their political parties might do something for them, and not merely for "their betters," and actually demand results. Or so I wishfully think. Anyway, it does seem incongruous that the electorate would vote for a party to retain power in the face of a rather miserable record, as demonstrated by "the misery index." Of course... Barack Obama is still Black.
We'll see which matters, ultimately in this, the greatest. election. ever!!!
September 4, 2008, A Most Peculiar Man
Senator John McCain accepted the Republican party's nomination this evening, delivering a speech almost entirely out of place among Republicans for its near total lack of pettiness and hate and its expressing actual humility, making all of us wonder, once again, which side might ultimately receive the inevitable "pay-back" that will be the defining sentiment of any potential John McCain Administration should such come to pass.
Governor Palin's speech last night, written as it was by Rove's political team for any generic vice-presidential candidate, contained the usual red-meat falsehoods, hatred and incoherence we've come to expect from Republicans of the kind who mocked purple-heart winners with purple-heart band-aids at their New York based convention in 2004. Naturally, that sort of pettiness, hatefulness and incoherence... not to mention an amzing number of outright lies... is precisely what the overwhelmingly old, White, male, and I'm guessing, rich, crowd of Republican delegates wanted to hear. She was duly rewarded with ecstatic applause and overwhelming adulation.
While not at Obama's level of almost other-worldly-at-times rhetorical brilliance, McCain's speech appeared to be straightforward, from the heart, and reminded me of why he is the kind of decent, principled man who I have always admired (and still do, though I will not, of course, vote for him). Naturally, the crowd was polite, but hardly enthusiastic in its light clapping (and occasional incoherent chants of "U S A!") McCain made a reference to "some Republicans giving into corruption" and blaming Obama for passing a corporate welfare bill for oil companies! Even as McCain touted freaking offshore drilling! Amazing... but, of course, Jack Abramoff was sentenced to four years imprisonment today.) McCain, of course, powerfully told of his own 5 1/2 years as an abused prisoner of war in Hanoi in a humble way that no one could question.
The cynic in me, of course, says that while Palin speaks to the base, McCain, with his pitch to his old bi-partisan efforts at reform, is pitching to independents and crossover Democrats-- precisely the people Palin's speech was designed to piss off. Don't know: McCain has always been someone who is better than the rest of his party, but has had to lower himself in order to secure its nomination... and having so sold out (just as he sold out on the ultimate core value of civilized human beings, torture) really isn't to be trusted. Well, who knows? [Of course, given McCain's age and health, we're probably talking about "President Sarah Palin" somewhere along the line... may as well admit it.]
Fortunately, we have a once-in-a-lifetime candidate in Barack Obama on our side who isn't tainted with having had to be part of the ruling party against whom McCain now seems to be running... and won't continue insane fiscal policies or hopefully our absurd foreign policy. But then, the Republicans may well still have a once in a lifetime candidate on their side as well, seemingly running against his own party, though in many ways, McCain reminds me of Bob "tax collector for the welfare state" Dole, another decent man and war hero whose own party never really got enthusiastically behind!
Oh well. The best election campaign ever (certainly that I'm aware of) just keeps rolling... and rolling! And we have two full months to go!!!
September 4, 2008, Blessed
Another day, another Sarah Palin scandalette... today: Governor Palin attended a church service where David Brickner, the founder of "Jews for Jesus," a group that Jews certainly regard as at a minimum crackpot (some believe it is a hate-group) was the guest speaker, and during his talk, he suggested that Israeli Jews were suffering from Palestinian terrorist attacks in punishment for their failure to accept Jesus as their savior. For those wondering, the time frame is around two weeks ago, during the period, one would think, that she was being vetted for consideration for the vice-presidential nomination.
Most people won't give this another thought. However, for Jews, particularly in Florida for whom Israel (and the American government's relationship to Jews) is significant, some of whom may have bought the originally-Hillary-generated-claptrap about Obama being Muslim or otherwise hostile to interests of Israel, Governor Palin's attendance knowing that this speaker would even be there, smacks of the kind of poor judgment reminiscent of Tony Zirkle, a candidate for a Congressional seat in Indiana who attended a meeting of neo-Nazis. While there is no evidence that Governor Palin endorses any of Brickner's... controversial... views... there's no evidence that she doesn't either. That's the nature of tabulae rasae, is it not?
Anyway, I'm violating a key rule that Team Obama would like enforced: the first rule of Sarah Palin is that we don't TALK about Sarah Palin. This election is about John McCain and his selling out to George W. Bush and his misguided and destructive policies... period. To the extent that Gov. Palin's speech offered nothing of substance in a policy area to separate McCain-Palin from Bush-Cheney, by which, we can reasonably surmise that Obama-Biden are absolutely right: the Republicans have said this race is about "personality and not issues," so we can safely assume that they have no interest in "issues"... because they intend to continue what they regard as the successful policies of Bush-Cheney, that the base demands. In other words, McCain = Bush, and his choice of Sarah Palin only reinforces that.
Well, Jews in Florida, Governor Palin has done something about which you should all be remarkably offended, and come out and vote for that Obama guy about whom you have less enthusiasm than you should; McCain could have stuck to his guns and picked Lieberman... but Limbaugh and Dobson now control the GOP, and so, Palin it is. Just keep all of that in mind. McCain = Bush, and we don't talk about Sarah Palin. Good night, Shalom, and God bless us, every one. [Gov. Palin has been good for fundraising, though for Obama,who raised over $10,000,000 overnight.]
September 4, 2008, Last night I had the strangest dream
Another day, another Sarah Palin related scandal, today evidently the good old National Enquirer's reporting that Palin had an affair with her husband's business partner. All of this is, of course, infinitely more important than, say, the break-off of the giant Markham ice shelf in Northern Canada (around the size of Manhattan)... probably as a result of human-caused climate change, which Sen. McCain used to believe in until he secured his party's nomination.
None of this, of course, is as important as Sarah P.'s (1) unwed teenage daughter, and (2) possible own affair.
BTW, there is relevance to this in terms of the seriousness that McCain took his vetting process (i.e., not at all), or McCain's actual control of this process (having picked Rush Limbaugh's favorite candidate-- not his own.) McCain is, of course, famously a gambler... but can the rest of us afford to keep paying off losing bets made by Republicans who disrespect us by inflicting unqualified "leaders" on us?
I'd best stop now... I'm depressing myself.
September 3, 2008, Hazy Shade of Winter
And so, I listen to Governor Sarah Palin's speech, and try to live-blog this one, such as it is. We're starting to hear about the family... Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper... Track on his way to Iraq, let's not talk about the girls, and young Trig the baby boy. No, let's not talk about the girls. No. Let's not.
Well, I guess there's the bio-part. Soon, policy and attack, from the candidate for national office with the least quantitative experience in a serious position of any candidate for high national office that anyone I know can remember (Edwards and Dubya each had six years). It's just that after inflicting Dubya on us, haven't we had enough sick jokes from this party? Still more bio-stuff... soon, the policy, and the hit-pieces... Ah... Yes... hockey-mom who signed up for the PTA!!! YES! With a shocking resemblance to Bat Girl's secret identity...
Ah... the attacks on Barack's "community organizing" from the mayor of Wasilla, AK, and mocking Barack's "clinging to religion and guns" line. Jeez, Sarah, keep this up and we might forget he's Black.
Ah. Battling the "entrenched special interests" up in Alaska (doubtless such as her husband's employer, BP). Ah. She put the luxury jet on e-bay; we'll see if Air Force Two gets auctioned off. Ah... abuses of earmarks. And the great natural gas pipeline... because we can drill our way out of all most of our problems... doesn't everyone know that?
[Liveblogging... I don't know...] Ah... back to attacking Barack... a man who authored two memoirs but not a single major law. Check. Mocking the stadium. Check. What is our opponent's plan... after turning back the waters and healing the planet... to make gov't bigger, reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world... ALASKA FIRST! Sorry... victory in Iraq in site he wants to fortune; terrorists seeking nuclear weapons... ALASKA FIRST! Sorry... terrorists won't have their rights read. (Those of us who went to law school tend to be sticklers on this... why is stupid so popular in the Republican party? Does former POW McCain really want to campaign on our military violating the laws of war? Charming, no?)
Big government; tax and spend...blah blah blah. Raise taxes... blah blah blah... Consistency makes this party... on message. It never gets old, even as poor people pay payroll taxes for the benefit of Blackwater and KBR...
Oh what's the point... I give up. I'll read about the rest in the Times or the Post!!!
Look: we were all hoping for a "fresh face"... this looked an awful like the good old Karl Rove attacks, delivered by "the hockey mom"... While her little joke (What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pig pit bull? Lipstick.) Standard stuff; some might call it "juvenile". And the appeal is at the most awful, superficial level. If her job was to psyche up the base, she did so. If it's to secure crossover Democrats, independents, Hillary-folks, she has not changed the basic dynamic, and the fact is, a nice speech from her (and it was a small, mean-spirited speech of the kind we expect from her small, mean-spirited party) doesn't give her the necessary basic qualification... and the GOP is doing it to us again.
The basic dynamic remains the same: Barack is still Black, isn't he? THAT, boys and girls, is what this election is about. The Republican brand is sullied beyond the base; and Barack... is Black. How will this (greatest ever!) election campaign play out? We'll just have to see...
September 3, 2008, The Only Living Boy in New York
Good old Rudy 91u1iani addresses the Fascist Party Republican Party convention tonight, on the attack, as I listen to him as I sort of live-blog it. The mantra, of course, is "Obama has never run anything." Obama is, sayeth Rudy, "the least experienced candidate"... "never led anything, nada".
Naturally, the only way to overlook the fact that Sarah Palin has even less experience is to praise her experience as mayor of a town around 1/1000 the size of NYC (Rudy's bailiwick). Anyway, poor Barack, it seems, never had the opportunity to order the police to brutalize citizens, or to try to suppress protest, or to have the police chauffeur around his girlfriend or announce his divorce in a press conference before telling his jilted wife or ultimately, to cause the needless deaths of hundreds of firefighters and countless others thanks to graft-driven equipment contracting and disorganization, and then pretend to be a national hero as a result of his own homicidal incompetence (and still have Bernie Kerik as your BFF). Poor Barack.
And Rudy raises the strawman that Palin is being attacked for "not having time to spend with her children-- a charge that wouldn't be leveled against a man." Well, Rudy, when you're own children don't talk to you, and at least one of whom supports Obama... what can you say?
Frankly, the one indispensible result in this cycle was to be sure that Rudy was eliminated from contention (a result thankfully achieved, with a great deal of strategic help from... Rudy Giuliani.) Why don't you do us all a favor, Rudy, and die very soon. Thank you, and God bless America.
