My Fellow Prisoners

You know, when I first read the headline that McCain had used “my fellow prisoners,” instead of “my fellow Americans” on the campaign trail, I figured he must have been speaking to a group of inmates and what was the big deal. But then I began to think, “why would he be talking to prisoners?” After all, they usually can’t vote, and with McCain trailing in the polls, why would he be going anywhere but to battleground states, speaking to voters?

Yes, it’s true, McCain really did say “my fellow prisoners” instead of “my fellow Americans,” and he wasn’t anywhere near a prison as far as I can tell.

I’ll leave it to you to figure out what he meant by that. Obviously it was a Freudian slip, but what does it mean? And funny how his very next words were, “and the same standards of clarity…”

Clarity? When’s the last time John McCain had clarity of any kind? Obama’s use of the word “erratic” to describe McCain has been more fitting than any other adjective I’ve heard used to describe the man, at least since the election cycle began.

I could probably devote at least a week’s worth of postings analyzing McCain’s slip. But then, I’m not a psychologist. Perhaps if there’s one reading, he or she can offer some comment? This here blog hit a humble 1000 unique readers for the first time last month. Surely one of you has some background in this? I’d love to have a guest posting. Just let me know.

McCain’s Bad Memory?

In last night’s presidential debate in Tennessee, John McCain accused Barack Obama of wanting “to announce that he’s going to attack Afghanistan,” and went on to quote his “hero,” Teddy Roosevelt, about how we should speak softly and carry a big stick. Earlier in the evening, of course, McCain said Ronald Reagan was his hero. I guess he has a lot of heroes.

In response, Senator Obama noted that it was McCain who sang a song about bombing Iran and called for the annihilation of North Korea.

McCain explained that “I was joking with a veteran — I hate to even go into this. I was joking with an old veteran friend, who joked with me, about Iran.”

Let’s take a look at the video, shall we? Does this seem like a joke between a couple veterans, or a reckless comment made at a VERY public stop on the campaign trail?

Most pundits on the left are saying Barack won by a considerable margin, and most on the right are saying McCain won. The way I saw it, it was closer to a tie. Each party is probably correct in saying its candidate won. I certainly felt Obama was much more cool and collected than McCain, and actually seemed to be listening to people in the audience instead of wanting to answer the question before it was asked. McCain appeared condescending to one of the young undecided voters sharing the stage with him when he noted, “I’ll bet you, you may never even have heard of [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] before this crisis.”

Also, I haven’t seen too many “town hall” style debates, but it seems to me that in all I have seen, when you’re not answering a question, you show some common courtesy and yield the floor to your opponent by SITTING DOWN. When McCain was answering a question, Obama was seated, paying attention to McCain’s answers. When Obama was answering a question, McCain was pacing about on the debate floor. Why?

But perhaps the most shocking moment of the night was when McCain referred to Senator Obama as “that one.”

By the way, my friends, I know you grow a little weary with this back-and-forth. It was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies, and it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney.

You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me.

Excuse me? THAT one? Um, you mean the accomplished Senator from Illinois? Some thought the comment was racist, but I won’t speak to that. Others — including news outlets and the blogosphere alike — are dissecting its meaning.

I happen to agree with Ezra Klein of the American Prospect:

I didn’t think the moment came off as racist. Rather, it was tone deaf. It was Grandpa Simpson. It was cranky. Which fits it into a narrative connecting the first two debates. In both, McCain’s most memorable tics were exhibitions of contempt for Barack Obama. in the first encounter, he couldn’t bear to look at Obama, and he used “What Senator Obama doesn’t understand” the way other people use “um.” In the second, he dismissed him in the language a busy mother uses for her third child, as if he couldn’t be bothered to recall the youngster’s name. But the youngster is the leading candidate for President of the United States. And McCain is doing himself no favors by acting unable to treat his opponent with respect.

Right on.

However, I also think this is an unconscious extension of McCain’s desperate and shameful new strategy attempting to paint Obama as “not one of us” — a terrorist sympathizer, a dangerous and shady character, one with the middle name of Hussein.

I think even McCain is starting to believe his own campaign’s rhetoric.

Which begs a question: If McCain is such an honorable character, and believes — according to recent stump speeches by himself and his VP candidate — that the most important thing you now need to know about Obama is that he “pals around with terrorists,” how come he couldn’t make these accusations to Obama’s face last night?

The Fringe Movement of Conservatism

There’s an excellent op-ed piece in today’s Salon.com by Gary Kamiya, about how the McCain campaign is attempting (once again) to use Obama’s “blackness” as a way to scare white voters off the Democratic ticket.

But perhaps even more effectively, Kamiya makes the case that conservatism as an ideology in America has been reduced to a fringe movement — at least for the near future.

From the article:

McCain is playing dirtier than Goldwater did. But the smear game still may not work. And if McCain loses, it will be for the same reasons that Goldwater lost: because conservatism itself — which means the GOP, since it no longer has a moderate branch — has been discredited. The Republican Party under Nixon and Reagan succeeded because it was able to convince enough white Democrats and swing voters that it was the party of the “average American,” oppressed by federal bureaucrats and do-gooder programs like busing and affirmative action. It was able to conceal the fact that it was the party of the rich beneath a populist, race-tinged appeal to white resentment.

But the truth is that America is not a particularly ideological country, and Americans’ allegiance to conservative ideas has always been fairly superficial. Yes, our frontier mythology and tradition of federalism makes us less supportive of the welfare state than European countries — but New Deal-inspired programs like Social Security and Medicare are deeply rooted in our society. A loose, de facto centrism is America’s default position. By embracing cracked ideologies like trickle-down economics, by letting big corporations do whatever they want, and by religiously refusing to raise taxes, the GOP since Reagan has tilted much too far to the right. George W. Bush pushed the party over the cliff, with the final straw being his own unique contribution, a demented and pointless war.

The Keating Five

Yesterday, Sarah Palin “took the gloves off” and proposed that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.” This claim has come about because the McCain/Palin ticket doesn’t have anything substantive to offer American voters, and it must now try to win using character assassination on Barack Obama in a last-ditch effort to stir up controversy and get voters onboard. This, despite the fact that McCain once promised that this would be an honest campaign about the issues. And hey, didn’t Palin say something in the last debate about “looking backward?” I thought they were the ticket that didn’t like to look backward? Seems to me that looking back to a time when Barack Obama was eight years old is looking pretty far back!

Well we know all about these “mavericky” types, don’t we? Maverick is just a code-word for liar. Or is it code for “say one thing, do another?” I forget. It’s definitely one of the two.

Anyway, it is a known certainty that Barack Obama didn’t, and doesn’t “pal around” with William Ayers.

But if Palin wanted to throw some stones, she might have given thought to the fact that her running mate is a glass house, and that the Obama camp is not going to sit idly by while the opposing ticket attempts to swift boat its candidate. This is not 2004.

To that end, Obama for America has just released a 13-minute documentary on the Keating Five, of which John McCain was a member. I didn’t recall the details of this shady group of characters, but the broad strokes are, of course, well known. I’m embedding the documentary on this page so all you have to do is click to view it.

Talk About Pork…

John McCain would have us all believe that he suspended his campaign, went to Washington, and helped hammer out a $700 billion bailout of the financial sector. Most of us “common folk” were saying “screw ’em,” but we understood that without this bailout, things could get much worse.

So we can all thank John McCain, at least in part, for this band-aid that hopefully will get money flowing to small businesses and potential homeowners again, right?

And if he wants to be held up as the good guy, the responsible guy, in all this mess, should he also be held at least partially responsible for the $112 billion in PORK that was added to this bill and signed into law by George W. Bush?

McCain has been making a big deal about earmarks in this campaign, but these accounted for $16.5 billion in the 2008 budget. Meanwhile, his big landmark bailout included almost seven times that amount?

Here’s a list of a few things included in this bailout, courtesy of SF Gate:

Wooden arrows: This tax break, backed by Oregon’s two senators, would benefit an Oregon manufacturer of wooden arrows for children by $2 million over 10 years.

Racetracks: Earmark would allow auto racetrack owners to depreciate their facilities over seven years, saving the industry $100 million over two years.

Rum: Offers rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands a rebate on excise taxes worth $192 million over two years.

Wool: Reduces tariffs for U.S. makers of wool fabric that use imported yarn, worth $148 million over five years. The measure was pushed by Reps. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., and Melissa Bean, D-Ill.

Exxon Valdez: Plaintiffs in the suit over the 1989 oil spill could spread their tax payments on punitive damages over three years, cutting their tax bill by $49 million. The measure was backed by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska.

American Samoa: Allows certain corporations to reduce their tax liability on income earned in American Samoa, at a cost of $33 million over two years.

Hollywood: Extends a tax break for film and TV companies that keep their production in the United States, worth $478 million over 10 years. The provision was originally pushed by Rep. Diane Watson, D-Los Angeles.

If that hasn’t sickened you enough, you can read about the top ten earmarks included in this bill from Taxpayers for Common Sense.

You know, with all the talk about wasteful spending in Washington, and knowing that most of America opposed this bailout, don’t you think congress would’ve been on its best behavior? How about just dealing with the bailout in one bill, and debate these other issues later?

It seems to me that once people were on board (basically) with the $700 billion bailout, a bunch of politicians saw a whole bunch of ‘approved, free’ money available, and decided that while $700 billion was good, $112 billion more wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

Now, I’m all for fixing the AMT so that people don’t get hit with it, and I’m all for bicycle commuting incentives, but this is now $812 billion where American taxpayers are on the hook. My real question in all this is this: Who decides what bad debt the financial sector will be able to rid themselves of?

Can they throw everything in the mix and say, “here, can you help us with this?”

And what happens to this bad debt where the houses have more paper out than what they could get in the current market? Do the banks get to apply for the full value of bad debt on a house? If the house is under water, will they get the full return on their original bad loan?

Where can I go to get the government to buy my house for more than it’s worth?

I just wish we knew more about how this is going to be handled. Right now, it seems to me like a giant blank check. I hope people more educated in finance and law than myself can explain this to me over the coming weeks and months, because right now it sure sounds like not only does the working class have less of a safety net than they have ever had in this country, but now it looks like we’re actually paying for a safety net for corporations. Odd, since we can’t even seem to get one for ourselves.

I think all these corporations and banks and investment firms should pick themselves by their bootstraps and suck it up.

It should be easy, right? I mean, isn’t that what the Republicans have been telling us for so long?

The Debate

You saw it, I saw it. Palin was a total cartoon. Scripted lines at any point she could get away with it. No answers to Joe Biden’s questions on McCain’s health care plan, or anything else. Not even a defense of it. Not even an attempt at a defense. No, I don’t want to answer the question, I want to get back to my crib notes.

Perhaps the most notable quote for me came near the end of the debate, just after Joe Biden talked about almost losing his sons, and knowing what it’s like to be a single father. Rather than acknowledge anything about what Biden had just said, she vamped off his ending note of “people don’t want more of the same,” and then something strange happened. If she had been at the end of her time, she could’ve just stopped, and she probably should’ve stopped anyway. Instead, she looked at her notes for something else to say, and then offered this little tidbit, which was delivered as awkwardly as it reads:

Also, John McCain’s maverick position that he’s in, that’s really prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has. Look at Lieberman, and Giuliani, and Romney, and Lingle, and all of us who come from such a diverse background of — of policy and of partisanship, all coming together at this time, recognizing he is the man that we need to leave — lead in these next four years, because these are tumultuous times.

We have got to win the wars. We have got to get our economy back on track. We have got to not allow the greed and corruption on Wall Street anymore.

And we have not got to allow the partisanship that has really been entrenched in Washington, D.C., no matter who’s been in charge. When the Republicans were in charge, I didn’t see a lot of progress there, either. When the Democrats, either, though, this last go- around for the last two years.

What?

This “maverick position that he’s in which is prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has?” Diverse background of partisanship? Damned straight. She got that one right. And yes, Governor Palin, McCain is the man we have to leave.

The talking heads were calling this a tie, while undecided voters cast their vote for Biden almost two-to-one. I used to feel quite hostile to the undecided voters, who always said they couldn’t tell the difference between Gore and Bush, who said they questioned Kerry’s military service, who didn’t feel the Democrat in any race distinguished himself enough from his Republican counterpart. This time, though, it seems as if they have their ears open and realized during this debate that Joe Biden was the only one who offered any hint of a solution to the current crises in which we find ourselves. They saw the caricature that stood to his right and dismissed it almost entirely as a puppet reading talking points. I’m encouraged.

Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson and particularly Katie Couric caused some real damage. I was in New Hampshire for the past few days and I saw it personally. Everyone was talking about the Palin interviews. Not only does it seem people have decided that McCain’s first “executive” decision was a horrible disaster, but they might also have decided we can’t afford to have another person with no intellectual curiosity in the White House. It’s obvious what the past eight years have brought. It’s unfortunate that it took an almost perfect economic storm to wake people up to the damage of Republican ideals and change the electoral map, but that’s exactly what’s happening.

If Obama doesn’t win this election, if the Democrats don’t pick up significant seats in the House and Senate this election, there is something seriously screwy with the election system. It would appear, though, that Democratic operatives are in key states ready for anything. At least they say they are. Also, more and more areas of the country have gone back to straight paper ballots, while unreliable electronic voting machines sit in storage lockers gathering dust.

It’s horrible that America has to go through all that it has endured for the past eight years, but if Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Blackwell’s Ohio in 2004 resulted in America seeing clearly that so-called “conservative” policies just mean certain chaos and disaster for the middle class, hopefully the result will be at least a temporary embrace of liberal policies. The right is fond of pointing out that Barack Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate. Of course, he supported the bill that included telecom immunity, and he’s now for offshore drilling, but his liberal ideals are intact for the most part. In 31 days, the country could largely elect a slate of liberal politicians to shape foreign and domestic policy. It would be a significant overhaul of everything that has gone on for the last eight years, and it would be a big sign to the rest of the world that we’re done with the isolation game, done with the inequality game, and ready to join the rest of the world.

Due to eight years of Republican mismanagement (or outright dismantling) of government, we could see an entire generation or more willing to give liberal policies a chance. The Supreme Court could be a liberal Court. America could once again stand for all it has promised all men and women. My child could grow up in a world where the middle class can once again believe in the American Dream.

It’s just unfortunate it will have cost so many people so much to get there.