Twenty-five-year-old lie

What's the trouble with Social Security?

Twenty-five years ago, Alan Greenspan chaired a panel that recommended fiscal reform of Social Security in face of an unfunded shortfall due to the demographic bulge of retiring Baby Boomers. Ronald Reagan and the then-Democratic Congress accepted the bulk of the panel's recommendations, and the result was later benefits, higher payroll taxes, and taxable benefits for the affluent.

Higher payroll taxes had the biggest long-term impact. Basically, this was pitched as us Boomers salting away money for our retirements. Fair enough.

The trouble, though, is that we as a nation didn't actually salt the money away. We used it to make the deficit appear smaller.

Now, Serious people keep coming back to the well to say things like this:

"Social Security's negative cash flow becomes so horrendous -- hundreds of billions of dollars a year -- that our nation's 20- and 30- somethings aren't going to let the government cover it, regardless of how many Treasuries the trust fund holds. So forget about 2039 or whenever. Starting [sic] worrying about 2016 or 2017," [Forbes editor Allan] Sloan wrote.

(Forbes published this is March. You have to wonder what the news hook is for this. With the Republicans totally out of power in 2009, maybe it's just the last chance to push the same old story.)

As ever, here are the choices:

• Reduce benefits - Turn the program and the 1980s reform into a lie and theft to boot. Tell seniors they're screwed, and it's tough.
• Borrow trillions in seed money for privatization - Again, the 1980s reform becomes a thieving lie. The poverty reduction that was a main goal is left to the stock market, and you know how well that works.
• Tax a few hundred billion in general revenue per year to balance the accounts - This isn't pleasant, but it's a relatively small number. It also refuses to claim for fiscal convenience that the responsible act of the 1980s was actually a filthy lie.
  

Borrowing our way out of this might conceivably be another option, but we have so many other massive bills coming due (Iraq, the Wall St. bailout, at least one more stimulus, not to mention debt service on the trillions we already owe) that it's just not a credible one.

I actually support raising the retirement age, even as far as 70, despite the obviously adverse effect on me. I would also remove the cap on FICA-taxable earnings, where Barack Obama proposes new FICA taxes only on incomes over $250,000. (Either my or Obama's measure might convince Republicans that FICA actually is a tax, even though they have ignored it completely for a decade in talking about relative tax burdens.)

Hard to miss the handwriting

Even the GOP Congressional committees are using McCain's electoral deficit to strike fear in the hearts of the unwary. But that doesn't mean they're giving up on McCain. They're just coping with the contingency of an Obama win.

Of course, the party of doublethink and doubletalk has no trouble at all making these contradictory arguments. For that, CNN gives them double postings.

Blind pigs

CNN follows up yesterday's Republican election felon story with a Democratic (or, more accurately, progressive) election felon story. Naturally, obeying the prime journalistic directive (find and report an equivalence even if it's a false one), CNN buries today's lead:

A report from the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School supports his claim. Researchers reviewed voter fraud claims across the country and found that most were caused by technical glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters. One other finding: A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to impersonate another voter at the polls.

The report is here (PDF). See also truthaboutfraud.org.

So, even if the GOP can find something, anything wrong with Democrats voting once in a great while, the fact that they're not cowering inside on sunny days shows that they are not really interested in lowering the risk of voter fraud. After all, getting struck by lightning is quite a bit worse than an occasional fraudulent vote.

Again, the liberals are right: The GOP only wants to suppress votes that, statistically, it won't get.

Click image for full R.J. Matson/Roll Call cartoon.

Me and my Wall St. homies

... gunned down you mortgage suckas!

Or wasn't McCain in Washington the whole time, advocating the deregulation of the financial system? If only he were running against himself, he might have a chance. Now it looks as though he's trying that.

And I thought all he had left was fear. I forgot about absurd ridiculous bullshit that counts on the inability of those last witless undecideds to remember Monday, much less the cowboy economics leading to our current crisis.

Reformer with results

This I've got to admit: Sarah Palin has run Alaska as if she were CEO of a Fortune 500 business with a captive board, sucking up every possible perk for her family. This one is my favorite:

When Palin amended her children's expense reports, she listed a role for the two girls at the function -- "to draw two separate raffle tickets."

Two separate tickets! You can't say those Palin girls are afraid of a little heavy lifting!

Mediocracy

Here's the media's standard:

And her solid performance on "Saturday Night Live" suggests that regardless of what happens on Election Day, Palin could be a winner.

To imply that today's standard attains the mediocre, as my title does, is an insult to mediocrity.

Can idiocracy be far behind?

Oh, right, that's what we have now.

Obama, pro-person - McCain, pro-corporation

Have a look at their technology-related policy positions. In practically every case where Obama and McCain differ, McCain takes the pro-corporation position, and Obama takes the pro-person position:

• Net neutrality? Obama's for; McCain's against.
• H1-B visas? Obama says enough; McCain wants more.
• Outsourcing? Obama wants to end tax breaks that reward it; McCain doesn't.
• Renewable energy? Obama wants to research it; McCain at best pays lip service to it.

Update (10/23): Didn't I tell you this right here two days ago! I like my headline better. Skip that synecdoche.

Counting votes

This kind of vote-counting is almost by definition bogus since it relies on galloping and blissful voter ignorance of the process of making law. Biden's giving sauce for the goose, since McCain has been using the same technique, but we'd all be better off without this.

Of course, the problem is still that remaining undecided voters are the most dithering, apolitical, and limited in attention, intellect, or interest. They probably don't have the patience for long and revealing anecdotes of McCain's very real opposition (though not in every single instance) to raising the minimum wage.

Hey, my nickname's Neo, too

Since I spend so much of my time plugged into the Internet, maybe I'm a coppertop. But at least I can consult enough sources via Google to find out a little more than CNN reported about the context and message of this ragtag radical protest from Red Pill.

In most reports, typical of big media, we get the sound and fury but not enough of significance. They have good art in the form of amateur video, so they run it and call it a day. What did the banner say? You can piece it together as I did: "Make Democracy Direct". The best image is here, but the best story is here, even though it leaves 'make' out of the slogan it reports.

What the hell did the Neo-philes mean by that? Beats me. This report got a self-identified protester on camera, saying, "I was mauled by a police officer, and then he told me to have a nice day." Hilarious! (The cops were great, by the way. They didn't overreact, but they resolved the danger to all parties with a small amount of force.)

The radicals have learned a few things about media. Make noise with your dozen loons, and big media will report on you. All the liberals standing patiently on the sidewalk with their Obama signs didn't get much attention, and none of it came from CNN or the national media.

But the one radical who managed to get in front of a camera gave an off-message quote, so they still have that to learn. She may imagine that she had just been in the heat of battle (as if!), but she still has to deliver her group's message and nothing else. She didn't even identify herself as Trinity.

By the way, that is one big-ass motorcade Sarah Palin is riding around in. Were there reporters in all those white Chevy vans? Maybe one of them saw something. Probably not...

Why liberals think Republicans harbor racists

Because they routinely pander to them, go on their radio shows, and generally kiss their corpulent asses.

Look, Rush Limbaugh's job is to package racism as entertainment.

Shooting craps with McCain

For John McCain, response to crisis is high-velocity fighter ordnance - fire off as many different weapons as you have. Never mind that you can't aim any of them. Fling metal. Something will find the mark.

McCain's performance for the past several weeks has been lurchingly erratic. It's not that he can't find his ass with both hands. It's that he can't recognize when he's grabbed onto something he should hold on to. Instead, he's off to his next attempt to shoot straight with nothing but his unjustified certitude that he's right this time. Problem is, he had that same certitude the last dozen times he thought he was right with a contradictory plan. The certitude is all he's got.

This is why McCain was such a crappy pilot. He lost four planes while flying for the Navy, two of them in training!

I don't think John McCain should be piloting America.

Like Vladimir Putin

Putin, kindred spirit to Duhbya, only appears to be showing the Republican Party how to cheat the voters. In truth, the GOP has been doing this for many, many years, having learned how through absorption of the Dixiecrats, with their long experience suppressing black votes (though that's not how they referred to them).

The Rolling Stone article has this:

Suppressing the vote has long been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral strategy. Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Republicans are happy to manufacture the consent of the governed out of whole cloth. Revolutions have been fought over this sort of abuse.

Bogeyman under the bed

The Republican ticket will make every effort to scare us. Fear is the only emotion strong enough to contend with the hope of better days offered by Obama and the Democrats.

The Republicans have tried the tiresome terrorist scares, but those have lost potency. An honest national policy should include well-tempered fear of al Qaeda and other sources of terror, but the Bushists have so often used that fear, for reasons related only to their power and not to our safety, that we're even more immune to it than we should be. Country first, my ass!

Now they're trying to scare the narrow-minded economics-illiterate with the John Birch shibboleth 'socialism'. They don't make any bones about whether a policy is fair or just or a good idea. They just want you to fear the bogeyman under your bed so that you'll run cowering to the Republican strongman.

Their problem - thank goodness - is that Obama looks calm and strong, while McCain looks scattered and panicky and unsure of what to do.

Who are all those scruffy people?

Republican Steve Dallas, exposed for all the world to see...

Click panel for full Berkeley Breathed cartoon in the Washington Post.

Strike up the bandwagon

Colin Powell finally stops dithering and endorses Barack Obama. Powell has been the antithesis of John McCain, never impulsive, never rocking the boat. If Powell had been just a little more willing to strike out on his own, he could have secured a legacy as a steady steward of American security. Instead, by allowing the Bushists to use him as mouthpiece for their lies, Powell missed the chance to go down in history as a man of honor. Though I'm sure Obama welcomes his support, it's really too little too late for Powell to expiate what he did while working for Duhbya.

There is one thing about Powell's endorsement and the still increasing cash bandwagon: The more the country unites behind Obama, the easier the country will be to govern. And make no mistake, that's important. No matter who is President, no matter who leads Congress, this is a difficult time for America and it will require the best sort of politics to move us forward as a nation.

Shoe on the other foot

It feels so weird to support a candidate who can push resources into offense instead of playing defense. Usually, the Republicans have the sort of resource advantage that Obama has this year. It's like playing Risk with twice as many armies as your opponents. In the past, Democrats have had to thread the needle, and usually they've failed at it.

Even though the campaign finance shoe is on the other party's foot this year, there are legitimate questions to ask about it, for instance:

• Money talks, but shouldn't a candidate's message be more important? (Don't get me wrong, I think Obama has plenty of message.)
• Over 3 million Americans have contributed to Obama's campaign. Will future campaigns be able to sustain this deep grassroots involvement? (If so, maybe there's no need for campaign finance reform. But I'm skeptical.)

I'm sure that a good bit of this additional, incredible surge in Obama fundraising is from bandwagon-jumpers who want to be on the right side of this watershed election. Nonetheless, lots of regular people are still giving. They know which side they're on.

One more thing: The CNN story reports that the Obama campaign says the average contribution is under $100. Problem is, the average contribution doesn't really matter. What matters is the average amount given per contributer.

Update: Atrios makes an important point: With more than half a billion dollars in funds raised, small money from people who want nothing more than a better government swamps the cash from those who want to buy access, and that's a good thing.

Stockholm Syndrome

The North Vietnamese tortured John McCain. Now he acquiesces to the continuation of Duhbya's CIA torture policy.

In 2000, Duhbya and the Bushists engaged in some of the vilest political character assassination against McCain. Now McCain makes common cause with one of the men who viciously abused him.

It appears that there is no depth to which John McCain will not stoop in pursuit of his overweening ambition. It's sad, really.

Live-blogging the ALCS

Since my self-appointed gig is to complain about things, here goes:

• TBS has technical difficulties and runs a sitcom instead of the first inning of the ALCS! Minor league...
  
• A fifteen-minute game delay to change umpires? You have got to be kidding me.
• Who's directing this broadcast? It's a slow enough game without lingering shots of grass and sudden zooms to get into position for a pitch.
• Why does Buck Martínez mispronounce Big Papi's name Órtiz, when it is Ortíz?
• Ron Darling sounds like James Woods (not a complaint, actually, just an observation).

Oh, and Jason Varitek just found a home run in his back pocket from the left side.

Anti-socialist

The Republicans think it's fine if Bill Gates has billions and the rest of us are destitute. On average, we're fine! And Bill will invite them to parties.

The Republicans think that the rich can have all the private equity, and there's no need for social equity for the rest of us. Never mind equality. If we're living in the street and burn down just one of their fucking houses to keep warm, they expect to punish us. They believe that this inequity is just and Christian.

There's a common ignoramus meme in conservatism that any policy that concerns itself with equity is "socialist". Tax the rich - who after all have reaped practically all of the economic gains of the past thirty years - to provide good government or health care, and that's somehow evil. But socialize the losses of the investment markets, and that's fine. Ending the tax subsidies that export solid jobs out of America is protectionism, but unlimited CEO pay is divine. The ignoramus conservatives think that they earn their paychecks, while we sponge ours.

These SOBs have no conscience, no respect for us or for facts, no willingness to share - the first moral lesson that every toddler has to learn. They want to restore feudalism - as long as they are liege.

You know, it's long past time we punished these greedy bastards.

(Man, that Irish whiskey is working tonight!)

What Sarah Palin means by pro-America

Palin means:

• Pro-war: Patriotism is not about love of country. It's not about liberty and equality through law. It's the rightful last refuge of bullies and scoundrels.
• Pro-secession: Sympathy for the Alaska Independence Party. Yep, politics makes strange bedfellows, literally in this case.
  
• Pro-Confederate: The Second Amendment frames a right of insurrection.
• Pro-fundie: How could a non-Christian be a good American?
• Pro-wealthies: If you tax the largest among us, you tax me.
  

Like Joe Biden, I'm really sick of this crap - and the bullshit, insincere "clarifications" of wingnuts like Palin.

Side effects may include

Obama's a pretty funny guy, too, and not just his big, lovely, goofy ears:

At a campaign rally in Roanoke, Obama compared McCain's health care proposals to drug advertising.

"It's like those ads for prescription drugs. They start out and everybody's running in the fields and everybody's happy, then there's a little fine print that says, you know, the side effects they may include," Obama said to laughter from the crowd.

John McCain might love an erection lasting four hours (ah, to be fifteen again), but hives, depression, and suicidal ideation are more likely. Then there's the side effect of another industrial consumable, Olestra: anal leakage, which is a good metaphor for Republican campaigns.

Short election cycle

Huh? Short?

Well, in an ever so long week and a half, CNN's Bob Greene has gone from interviewing people (voters? I doubt it) who hadn't yet really paid attention to the Presidential election to those who are sick and tired of it like this vacuous woman:

Karen Dyer, 45: "I'm tired of it. I'd like to read about something happy instead."

Such as?

"Such as the war being over," she said. "That would be happy, wouldn't it? I'd like to read about that, not about McCain and Obama."

Nah, those things couldn't possibly be connected. Maybe a better name for Greene's beat would be "Apolitical white folks with nothing to add." Yeah, I've been reading his columns, but only to find out what new cultural banalities he can celebrate.

Pretty soon, he can pick up with missing blond white girls or how paint peels off a desolate drive-in movie screen or how middle-aged couch potatoes can lose weight but still watch eight hours a day of "reality" shows or what to do in small town honky-tonks on Saturday night (get drunk and look for nookie so you'll have something to ask forgiveness for in the morning).

I have to say this: I won't miss Greene's columns.

Back of his well-paid hand

Here's a laugh. The execrable Ruben Navarrette Jr. says a few nice things about Obama, acknowledging the fact that he's probably going to be the next President. But, typically, Navarrette does it in a demeaning way, stretching Obama's obvious cool to "icy."

Really, when you watch Obama, it's easy to see that he's cool and cerebral, but there is no way in the third circle of hell to find him icy. Unless you're a wingnut pundit and a back-handed compliment is all you have left...

Navarrette's praise for McCain is untempered by doubts:

As for McCain, he is an American hero who has given his life to public service, and the country is better for it. That record of service need not come to an end. He can still contribute and finish out his term in the Senate.

He knows what side he's on.

Becomes what he forswore

The Republicans lie even when they're lying. No one should any longer expect them to be fair to their opponents, but if their first tales are not juicy enough, they pump them up without limitation by silly things like facts.

John McCain had this done to him by the Bushists in 2000 in South Carolina. Now, he is trying vainly to do the same to Obama.

He has flushed his conscience down the toilet in the name of ambition. He has become a Bushist in every way.

Of course, compared to acquiescing to continued torture by the CIA, he had already much more visibly lost his bearings. It would be sad, a tragic flaw, except that it's so infuriating.

Despite all this, McCain will not be Thane of Cawdor. He will have to live with the damned spot for the rest of his days. He could have been a man and still lost. He chose to dishonor himself.

Explain this to me

Why would banks want to evict paying tenants from foreclosed properties! What's wrong with these people?

Oh, right (and with apologies to my friend BW, though he's just a lawyer for bankers and may even agree), they're bankers. They screwed this up in the first place, and now they want to sell their foreclosed properties into a glutted and falling market. In a year, when these homes are all sitting vacant, accruing property taxes and utility bills with no revenue streams from rent to offset the costs, these idiot bankers (what rhymes with 'wanker'?) will be crying for a government bailout of their nonperforming real estate.

Uh, no.

Holy shit!

Red Sox pull eight rabbits out of the hat.

Do not go gentle into that good night!

Forty percent solution

Why would the RNC fight to hold traditionally Republican states if they think McCain is still going to lose? What difference does it make if Obama takes 370 electoral votes or "only" 320?

If you fail to hold your base, you're less viable - or not viable at all - in the next election. The RNC is looking forward to 2012. McCain may be burnt flesh (in the electoral sense), but the RNC still wants to preserve Sarah Palin and the rest of its potential candidates by this triage of resources.

It also doesn't want its voters to get into the habit of staying home or voting for Democrats.

Update (10/17): More tacit surrender:

After quick forays to the traditional battlegrounds Thursday, McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin headed south to states President Bush carried handily in 2004 and ones that haven't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in more than four decades.

Then there's this:

According to CNN's latest analysis of the electoral map, only six states are up for grabs (Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida) and they were all won by President Bush in 2004. That means even if McCain were to go 6-for-6 in the current tossup states, he would still fall short of the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House.

Time to slam the door

Sure, I've sounded cocky here, here, and here. But let me tell you that there's an undercurrent of paranoia and apprehension that's keeping me awake at night. As Obama says:

"We've got 19 days. We're going to have to work absolutely as hard as we've ever worked in our lives in order to just to get to the start of what is going to be a very difficult and very challenging but ultimately a very fulfilling four years where we can get this country back on track."

Feets don't fail me now!

Update: One reason for my apprehension is that my reports of John McCain's demise have been premature before.

Defense of Sarah Palin

Yep, stop the presses.

The Europeans are right overall about Wasilla's own vapid beauty queen. But this is just a condescending bit of culture-bound silliness:

Anybody with the money to own an SUV, hunt moose and drive a snowmobile has the money to travel.

In Alaska, there's a strong case that all these things are necessities, not luxuries. It's not as though Alaskans only have to slog through a little London fog in their SUVs. Maybe a few Europeans should visit the great white north. (Yes, maybe I should, too.)

Choose your poison

For all those bleating sheep who pulled the wool over their own eyes and refused to believe the obvious fact that torture was (and, thanks to the likes of John McCain, still is) the policy of the Bushists, there are two choices:

1. Admit that fact, or
2. Deny it until you've been waterboarded, and then admit it.

I recommend option 1.

For this, George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld received the Medal of Freedom. An all-expenses-paid trip to the Hague in a barely heated cargo hold would have been more appropriate.

Even Rush Limbaugh knows it's over

In fact, even John McCain and Sarah Palin know that they have two chances, slim and none. Meanwhile, Palin is scaring voters away. Of course, Rush would never ask her about that.

Republican preference

As always, Republicans would rather prevent 100,000 legitimate votes that they're going to lose most of, in order to prevent a dozen fraudulent votes. They don't believe in democracy.

Update (10/18): Yep, those wingnuts are simply trying to protect civilization by destroying it.

Not a rubber stamp for Likud

Jesse Jackson's choice of right now to put words into Barack Obama's mouth seems a little like cutting off his balls. Even so, I would be happy with a pro-Israel policy that stops well short of approving whatever Likud wants. Israel is an important ally and friend, but friends don't let friends choose perpetual war over continued readiness for peace.

John McCain, of course, pretends to have such a Judea and Samaria policy, and that's much worse.

Long three weeks

Click image for full Tom Tomorrow cartoon in Salon.

The whole thing about Republicans banking on your stupidity? They think you wingnuts are too hidebound to consider the evidence. They think you'll go on swallowing the bullshit and telling your friends and neighbors how good it tastes.

So please pardon me if I insult your intelligence, but at least my insults are not as derogatory as the GOP's.

Issues?

Hillary gives a good interview to CNN. Here's my favorite part, especially the part I've italicized:

[John McCain] has to decide what is best for him to do. Certainly one thing that I hope is that at the debate Wednesday night and in next three weeks is that we have a clash of ideas here -- differing policies. Defend your proposal to privatize Social Security. Defend your health care plan, which would undermine employer-based health care. If you think these are good ideas for America, then go out there and present them and see whether you can convince people.

That's what campaigns should be about, in my opinion, and I hope that's what the next three weeks is about, and I'm confident that when the American people compare the Obama-Biden ticket with the McCain-Palin ticket and what each stands for, they are going to support Sen. Obama.

Like Hillary, I also look forward to a woman President, but actual policy positions are much more important than race or gender.

Devil you know

Since McCain doesn't have anything else, he goes back to making the argument that the devil you know is better than the one you don't know. I thought he was supposed to come out with something new. Oh, well. This story could have been published in almost exactly the same form in August. Or in February.

The problem for McCain is that Americans now know Obama. We've seen his calm seriousness. Except for the credulous wingnuts, we don't find him devilish, despite droning constant repetition from the Republican amen chorus.

Maybe, just maybe, McCain has decided that there are many worse things for America than his losing the Presidency, and one of them is the disgraceful campaign that he has run since the Palin nomination. Maybe McCain is finally beginning with the end in mind. (God, I'm an optimist today. More likely he's trying to have it both ways.)

Of all the things in doubt about the result of next month's election, the most important will be whether we wind up with a governable polity. If we don't, we won't be able to solve any of the other problems we face, and the late ugliness from the right has not been leading that way.

Even Harvard libertarians

... live in a fool's paradise unrelated to real life. Hell, Harvard libertarians are probably even more immune to empirical contradiction. Jeffrey Miron would prefer a world-wide, deep, decade-long depression if that's what it takes to cling to his precious, simplifying, too-simple theory of economics.

Markets are self-stabilizing within certain bounds. (Define these predictively, and you'll win a Nobel Prize someday.) Outside these bounds, their players panic and make what individually are rational decisions. But these decisions collectively lead to positive feedback and more panic, a self-perpetuating loop that brings free-fall. Everyone winds up hurt. Everyone winds up in a cash economy with drastically reduced productive activity. Many people wind up as Okies.

Intervening in the markets in a centralized way when required can cut short the fall. What comes after a massive debt overhang collapses still hurts, but it hurts less. The social price is that some of the guilty escape market punishment along with the innocent. That's a regrettable price because it encourages them to try some other scheme, but it beats punishing everyone. And we can surely find some fine-grained mechanisms to find the guilty and hold them to account.

Or you can just accept the extremes of an unregulated business cycle and the depressions that wipe out a third of the economy every decade or two. You pick.

Wingnut proof

Here's the kind of deranged lunatic that the wingnuts believe in.

For those of us who learn from experience, the first response to any new claim from the right should be, "Oh, I hadn't heard that, but based on past claims, it's almost sure to be bullshit just like the rest."

No money for you

Seven hundred billion dollars for Wall St., not a penny for you and me. Every time you turn around, that's what Republicans are saying.

Even at a time when capital gains taxes are the least of our worries, the oily John Boehner wants to cut them. Has anyone seen a capital gain lately?

No, the long war that the Republicans actually fight every day is not the global war on terror. It's class war. They know that eventually their wealthy base will once again have capital gains - maybe soon if the Democrats don't oversee the bailout closely enough - and then they'll need the tax cuts to start the next bubble.

A friend writes

Yes, a friend really did send me a link to the New Yorker:

At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

Liberal bias

Of course, the Swedish Academy's bias is well known, never moreso than today. Why, oh why, is important research so often liberal?

Congrats to Paul Krugman, who remains much more clear-sighted than most professional journalists. Could a Pulitzer be next?

Not with a bang

... but with a whimper.

Duhbya was never equipped to handle the difficult duties and choices of the Presidency, but he still has them, now that a strong majority have finally cottoned onto his lack of ability.

It's a very bad time to have such a dismal and unconvincing President.

Smack checking

McCain and Obama are both talking smack about each other. McCNN says it's all even-steven, all fair in love and war, a pox on both their houses, they all do it.

Never mind that much of Obama's ad budget is going to contrast ads about their actual positions, while most of McCain's is going to character assassination. Just tot up the spending for ads that cast the respective candidates in a bad light - that's McCNN's method.

Never mind that the McCain campaign cannot show one single positive ad. Of course, they won't admit this; they just won't call you back. Well, actually, their flacks in the field will tell you that you'll have to talk to HQ to get a comment on that one story, and then HQ won't call you back. But if you're a reporter, don't worry; they'll still hand-deliver their latest spin on everything else, not to mention the catering schedule.

Never mind that Biden's assertion is about proportion, not total amounts. McCNN "reasons" that Alexander Mooney, one of its producers, found that the Obama campaign is spending double the McCain campaign, so the fact that it's spending half on so-called negative ads means it's keeping pace with McCain.

Never mind that people with an ordinary middle school understanding of basic arithmetic can see that this finding confirms Biden's claim.

Never mind that even this claim from Mooney of McCNN is false. His numbers are vague estimates, not backed up by ... anything. The group that actually studied the question says that Obama is spending a third of his budget on negative ads, which is only "roughly half" if you're republishing a Republican press release and pretending against all experience that it could be accurate.

McCNN still claims that Joe Biden is stating a falsehood when he says that 100% of McCain's ads are negative. It's McCNN's claim that's bullshit.

Never mind that it's bullshit. Swallow it whole. Assuming you like the taste.

Minitru

See, what a Republican means by "cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there" is this:

"Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states.

Stuffed with mildewed straw

Sarah Palin stars in a new one-woman show, The Wizard of Id. She plays Dorothy even though she can't sing. She can't even dance around reporters' questions. She plays the Tin Man, a natural for every Republican. She plays the Scarecrow, stuffed with straw, although not with knowledge. She plays the Cowardly Lyin'.

Even so, her favorite part is playing the Wicked Witch of the Northwest Passage. Who needs that Arctic ice anyways, besides a few sponging unchristian polar bears! She's so talented that monkeys fly out of her butt. Speaking of which, she couldn't find her ass with both hands even if she was already sitting on them.

Will somebody puh-leeze throw a hogshead of dirty dishwater on this fraud!

At what, shuffleboard?

John McCain writes another check with his mouth that his body can't cash. I guess he's now afraid that he has to shore up his standing among macho assholes, and you know if he has that much trouble in the bully faction of the Republican base, this election is over.

Trapped in a maze of twisty passages, all different

Being a maverick means never having to say you're sorry.

What McCain has had all these years is certitude in everything he says, no matter how often he completely contradicted himself - in five minutes, five days, or five years.

This story enumerates McCain's nonsensical mix of positions. In one way, he is heir to Reagan, who promised lower taxes, a balanced budget, and a large increase in military spending all at once. McCain similarly can't count.

You might say McCain's positions bespeak a lack of any core convictions. I just call his platform bullshit.

Shocked, I tell you

"I'm shocked, shocked that a black leader of the civil rights movement would notice that we Republicans have been fishing for anger from our supporters."

"Sir, here're your Southern strategy winnings."

(sotto voce)
"Oh, thank you."

Extremity

Sarah Palin says that Barack Obama is extreme on abortion rights. Yet her position - no exception for rape or incest - is one that only 10% of Americans agree with.

Of course, it isn't a surprise any more when a Republican accuses a Democrat of something that's more true of the Republican.

Wear her disdain as a badge of honor

The oath that Barack Obama will take on January 20, 2009, will require him to swear (or affirm) that he will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Not a problem, he has already been doing that: He has said both publicly and privately to Iraqi leaders that the Bushist status of forces agreement was not binding without Congressional approval.

Salient quotes from the (formerly enforceable) Constitution:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. (Article I, section 1)

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. (Article I, section 7)

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur. (Article II, section 2)

Sarah Palin thinks Obama puts ambition before country. As usual, she - and the Washington Times - are completely full of bullshit. Obama put America and its founding ideals first. The Bushists, not so much. They put power before country.

Why gamble?

Barack Obama is buying major air time on multiple TV networks. The question is: Why?

He's running away in the polls. McCain keeps flailing in desperation as his campaign goes down in flames. At the poker table, we'd say that he's on tilt, but craps is his game, so I guess we're stuck with him crapping out. (And I don't know enough about

Conventional political strategy would keep Obama doing what he has been doing, pressing his advantage steadily and incrementally. Buying a half hour of national TV time, simply because it's a big step, looks risky, and most campaigns that are leading become increasingly risk averse.

I don't think Obama is doing just because he can afford the cost and McCain can't answer. (How do you Republicans feel about Reagan's killing of the Fairness Doctrine now?) I don't think Obama is trying to pump up turnout enough to get the Democrats to 60 Senate seats, though I hope that's one outcome.

I think there are two things going on. For one, Obama and his people have proven to be one step ahead of conventional thinking since our interminable election season began. They've seen how risk aversion often leads to stagnation and loss. They've got a clear path to the basket, they trust in their candidate's ability, and they're going to finish this fast break with a slam.

The other factor is more important. The economy is committing suicide, where every individual actor is rationally retrenching and that sends the whole cascading over the falls. There's no one home in Washington who can calm the sweeping, blinding fears. Duhbya's approval rating is in Cheneyesque territory. He couldn't calm Barney, no matter how far south he's willing to scratch Barney's belly.

Obama cannot wait until January 20 to lead the country. Come what may, for the good of America, presumptuous or not, he has to start now, or he'll be the first black President of economic rubble.

He's doing it because it's his responsibility now, and there's no one else who can possibly do it. No one else has the stature. It's just a bonus that he will not only look Presidential but actually be Presidential doing it.

Alleged

I'm all for punishing the guilty. But first you have to find them.

Every election cycle, the Republicans place a story about massive voter fraud. Up till now, it has always been the stories that are frauds. Instead of thousands of illegal votes, there have been a handful, maybe a dozen.

This story will probably turn out the same way. If not, full force of law.

Meanwhile, the media should be more skeptical.

Update: Ask and ye shall receive:

ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring said that in most cases the bogus registrations were flagged by ACORN supervisors during a review, brought to the attention of the local officials when they were submitted, and ACORN fired "probably a couple of dozen" employees who fabricated them. Under most state laws, the organization must submit every card an employee collects, he said.

(h/t Philosoraptor)

Why believe this?

You can believe that our government has had us under surveillance if you want. But I'd have to believe then that the Bushists are lying to us about everything, and ...

Adrienne Kinne, a former U.S. Army Reserves Arab linguist, told ABC News the NSA was listening to the phone calls of U.S. military officers, journalists and aid workers overseas who were talking about "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."

David Murfee Faulk, a former U.S. Navy Arab linguist, said in the news report that he and his colleagues were listening to the conversations of military officers in Iraq who were talking with their spouses or girlfriends in the United States.

Better prosecute these bad apples before they make this man look bad:

"There is a constant check to make sure that our civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect," said President Bush at a news conference this past February.

Definitely don't let this get out:

"By casting the net so wide and continuing to collect on Americans and aid organizations, it's almost like they're making the haystack bigger and it's harder to find that piece of information that might actually be useful to somebody," she said. "You're actually hurting our ability to effectively protect our national security."

Missed it by that much

Speaking of under water, here's another dope whose credibility checks are returned marked "insufficient funds."

Right about now, we're really handicapped by our inability to vote no confidence in a President we have no confidence in. I'm not a fan of parliamentary democracy, and the past nearly eight years of unified Republican government haven't moved me in that direction, but it is a big advantage to be able to take down an ineffectual government pronto and put another one in its place.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

No liberal dog in this fight

McCain wants to give away $300 billion to irresponsible lenders and loan purchasers. Even the National Review recognizes this as a "gift to lenders who abandoned any sense of prudence during the boom years." Even Douglas Holmes-Eakin, whose own intellectual capital is now well under water, openly states, "The original plan relied on lenders taking the hit. This bypasses that step."

That's not liberal, as much as conservatives everywhere want to lay their movement's sins off against liberalism.

This fight is between corporate Republicans and laissez-faire Republicans. No matter how much bullshit Michelle Malkin and Matt Lewis may use to muddy up the blame, this ain't got nuthin' to do with us liberals.

Dana Bash and two minutes of total bullshit

Even by McCNN's standards, this report from Dana Bash is gag-and-vomit-level fetid runny sulfurous bullshit. Every major point in it is bullshit, including the headline.

First, Bash says McCain's plan is to buy toxic mortgages from homeowners. Neat trick, that. Homeowners don't own mortgages; the lenders do. This small sleight of hand is hard to explain without imputing the malign intent to hide the fact that McCain is proposing a gift of $300 billion to the exact people who made the stupid, bad, dangerous loans - or at least to the fools who bought them. This is nothing short of paying off the profiteers who, of all the people who contributed to this clusterfuck, are the ones who should have the most knowledge of risk and for whom market punishment is most appropriate.

Then, Bash attributes this plan to liberals! She shows a clip of Hillary Clinton that purports to show Clinton proposing the same thing. But it doesn't. Not even close. Hillary advocates instead that bankruptcy judges be empowered to rewrite loan terms, not to bail out lenders. In fact, Hillary's proposal, which is a mainstream Democratic proposal, leaves some of the right people holding the bag they very much deserve to hold.

Last, Bash brings on Penelope Patsuris for no apparent reason, and Patsuris makes some vapid point about how many mortgages $300 billion would buy if we Americans were stupid enough to elect the economically clueless John McCain. She can't even come up with an estimate, but she can ask rhetorically whether Henry Paulson is going to inspect every one of them. Uh, Penelope, how does $300 billion make that a harder problem than $700 billion?

Seriously, these people think we all have the IQ of a century-old chestnut stump - combined.

Bash has a nice voice, but I'd fire her ass and let her look for a graveyard shift AM DJ job. I'd fire her with no notice and no severance and no bullshit politesse, as in clean your fucking desk out in the next 10 minutes under supervision of security and don't ever darken my door or ask for a reference. I don't care whether she's dishonest or just stupidly incompetent (though I'd bet on dishonest). I'd fire her producer's ass, too.

There is no excuse for this disgraceful tissue of lies.

Diapers

Most of the noise about Obama's youth and McCain's, uh, maturity have focused on the negatives of both. Obama's barely out of diapers, and McCain's practically back in them. Obama needs Joe Biden to burp him after meals and make sure he gets his naps; McCain needs Sarah Palin to floss his dentures and make sure he gets his naps.

This sentence, which is really an afterthought in this story about McCain's age, has me rethinking the Obama's youth in light of history:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, is 47 and the fourth-youngest major party nominee. (emphasis added)

OK, who were the younger three?

1. JFK, who took office at age 44
2. Teddy Roosevelt, who took office after winning his own term at age 46 and 4-plus months
3. Bill Clinton, who took office at age 46 and 5 months

Even though I think Clinton was made more historically attractive by his good fortune to come between the two dismal Bushes, that's a pretty good trio. If you look at the entire list of U.S. Presidents, especially those from the resolutely mediocre century between 1837 and 1933 (with exceptions, of course), those three look magnificent. What we really need is more youth and vigor.

Of course, insight and knowledge are still essential, too, which is why I'm not in favor of Obama-Palin.

You might also notice that all three of the previous young candidates won.

Family jewels

Looks as though wearing a cup all those years while playing baseball and fast-pitch softball was a good hedge against the day when I come down with senile dementia or cancer or type I diabetes (unlikely at this point, but I did wait till almost 50 to part with my appendix). Heck, I could already use some shiny new cartilage in my knees.

Still, this new knowledge does complicate playing serve and volley. If a hot shot comes back, which area gets the better protection of my racket - my head or my family jewels?

Mother's maiden name

The hacking of Sarah Palin's Yahoo account should be a teachable moment for people who really are regular people. Don't use stuff that other people know to "secure" your data!

When your bank or your credit card or your service provider asks you to choose a challenge question on your account and they offer you vintage 1950 questions - mother's maiden name, place of birth, high school graduated from, last four digits of SSN, etc. - it's pretty clear that either (1) they don't know what they're doing, or (2) they don't care, and their real goal is to fob responsibility for security off on you. (Of course, CNN sanitizes the story, hiding how the hacker reset the password and pretending that the contents of Palin's account only appeared "briefly.")

The hacker committed a crime, and David Kernell is probably guilty as alleged. This level of foolishness should be best resolved by a misdemeanor plea agreement and a slap on the wrist, say public service, much as has happened in various past illegal taping cases involving partisans of both sides.

The crime exposed the fact that Palin has indeed used unofficial email for official acts, shades of the Bushists. She's an apt pupil. I seriously doubt that this is a crime in Alaska (though it's clearly an evasion of law in Washington), but it's a legitimate subject for political controversy even if it isn't illegal.

At least Palin can send email, even though her writing skills are right in line with her extemporaneous speaking skills. Which is to say, right up with some of the wingnut commenters on this blog.

Strong partisan

Yeah, I admit it. I'm a strong partisan. Duh. So this applies to me:

The only voters who like to hear the jabs, [Merle] Black said, are "the strong partisans. They like to see the other candidate, the other side, criticized."

The fundamental problem in the CNN story - and probably in the swing voters themselves - is that no one makes even a theoretical distinction between drawing a strong contrast with your opponent and attacking your opponent. It's all "negative campaigning." So, calling your opponent a sleazy, cow-tipping, alcoholic pederast is the same as showing how he'll implement his health care plan in an unpopular or expensive way.

I find it credible that the so-called persuadables don't make this vital distinction either. They don't want politicians saying bad things about each other even if they're both fair and true. Frankly, I just don't understand how adults can possibly be so timorous. What we're deciding is important. It would be weird and unnatural if we strong partisans didn't get passionate about the issues and the candidates.

Once again, our political discourse is pitched to those who have the least interest in it and who are least equipped to deal with both the pros and the cons, both of which need to be heard.

Blogger flushes

I had written a screed about Todd Palin's superficial answers to questions about the firing of Walt Monegan. But after reading Palin's submission (PDF), I wasn't happy with it, so I saved it for later consideration, and Blogger flushed it. Maybe Blogger did me a favor.

Make no mistake, Sarah Palin fired Monegan, despite Todd's pleading that Monegan resigned rather than be reassigned to Nome or wherever. And the appearance that the Palins used their position to settle a personal score is an important issue.

But there's another important issue that the media need to look into, and that's Mike Wooten, who does indeed sound like the worst kind of cop, one who also used his position to settle personal scores.

Todd makes a lot of serious allegations. Could the media please look into both issues at once? Or are they too busy interviewing non-voters? Specifically, is there credible evidence that Wooten made death threats, or did someone overreact to having an armed adversary.

Update: Well, it wasn't Blogger. It was me. But I'm still glad I reconsidered.

Zoe Kentucky returns

Demagogue is back, and that's good news even if only one of the bloggers is back. So far.

Memory hole

Get John McCain off of a simple formulaic message, and he often stumbles. Does this mean he's suffering from dementia? I don't know, but he didn't always do this. A Bill Clinton style policy wonk he never was, but he must have made sense on the 2000 straight talk express, when he wasn't getting so much careful political management. Else what did they talk about? Sex, drugs, and Abba?

What I really have trouble understanding is how McCNN can point to Ronald Reagan's famed age quip in 1984 without acknowledging the ample evidence that Reagan was already suffering from cognitive decline at the time, and of course, it's public record that he did turn out to have Alzheimer's. But here's the sum total of all Reagan references:

Or McCain might take a page from Ronald Reagan, who was 73 when he ran for re-election in 1984. During a televised debate against Walter Mondale, then 56, Reagan famously began by saying, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I will not hold my opponent's youth and inexperience against him." The audience laughed. Reagan went on to win the election.

Did the reporter think that wasn't relevant? Or did he just not want Tucker Bounds or Nicolle Wallace yelling at him and his editor?

Confession

Normally, I hate stories like this. They're trying to poll what reality is. They purport to tell us what we should be able to see and judge ourselves. The non-rational truth is that many people are influenced by social consensus to believe things they didn't actually conclude themselves. (See Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.) In evolutionary terms, this is adaptive for social species (humans, ants, etc.), but I digress.

In politics, the usual rule is that perception is reality, but I obstinately resist the claim that anything besides reality is actually reality. Yeah, I'm old fashioned that way. My blog-friend Winston Smith at Philosoraptor (we've exchanged links, but it doesn't mean we're married) may be relieved to hear that I believe this, despite my occasional hedged defense of the phrase 'socially constructed'.

Still, the CNN polling story does show at least that people are seeing through the bullshit that we call our mass media. But, sure, I agree that Obama's more compassionate, better at the economy, smarter, a better leader, etc., so of course I like it.

Everybody rationalizes. Why shouldn't I?

Update: Ditto this story about the debate.

Sense of entitlement

Remember when Republicans made a big show of concern about the poor having a sense of entitlement to welfare? Well, I guess they fixed that.

Rescued

Great thing about a dog is she'll get you out of the house and away from the TV, in tonight's case the Presidential "town meeting." I put "town meeting" into quotes because I've been to town meetings, and they're nothing like this format, although some moderators are as mumble-prone as Tom Brokaw.

So I missed most of the debate, and the part I saw didn't really hold my interest. Obama gave a pretty lackluster performance in the few minutes I did see. McCain was a little better relative to expectations.

Reading is a better way to get real information than sound bite manufactured for the still indecisive middling, muddled, mediocre voter who only turns out every four years. McCNN reports this:

"We will kill bin Laden, we will crush al Qaeda," [Obama] said.

McCain responded in equally strong terms: "I'll get him. I know how to get him. But I am not going to telegraph my punches as Sen. Obama did."

Now that's comedy! No difference in content or intent, except for the chip on McCain's shoulder. Yep, that silly Obama - he revealed the intelligence assets he'd use to find Osama. Not.

The delusional McCain?

Apparently, Cindy McCain has forgotten the way the Bushists' allies slimed her daughter and her family in South Carolina in 2000. As a parent, I would find that unforgivable even with the White House at stake. (Another reason I'll never be President!) There is no way I could ever greet warmly the man who permitted my daughter to be used against me the way Bushists used Bridget against John McCain.

Still, according to Cindy, what Obama is saying about her husband is worse. Bullshit. There are a large number of what Karl Rove would call character issues that Obama has left alone against John McCain:

• Cindy's drug addiction (without legal consequence)
  
• John's infidelity
• John's temper
• John's gambling
• John's rambling
• John's dismal flying record
• John's dearth of academic achievement
• John's willingness to exploit the protection of his admiral father
  

Yet Obama is running the "dirtiest campaign in American history." I suppose it's only natural for people who believe in Republican economics - we earned our inherited wealth - to believe that they are entitled to their own facts.

But Cindy's lack of perspective could only come from someone who has always had the field tilted in her favor and who can't remember as far back as 2000 - or chooses not to.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Justice delayed

The Bushists run out the clock on another legal proceeding. For a long time now, we've needed to speed up the glacial pace of the courts in this country.

Sauce for the gander

How can a man who swoons over Ronald Reagan on a regular basis (and twice in this column he sets Ronnie as the standard) write this?

[Obama] was the newcomer and the stranger, he rose above the crowd on pure special effects: dazzling rhetoric, natural charisma and a magic carpet ride of transcendence and hope.

It worked for two reasons: Democrats believe that nonsense, and he was new.

Charles Krauthammer, like many conservatives, lacks that essential germ of morality that applies the same set of rules to himself that he wants to apply to others. This lack is why the morality of these particular conservatives, such as it is, is a pastiche of taboos that must be received from authority rather than reasoned about. It's also why they don't believe in the concept of law as binding even the king.

GOP doctrine of total political war

John McCain has a choice: lose honorably or generate a furious shitstorm of mudslinging to change the race's undeniable trend.

Ed Rollins advocates another way, not a bomb-dropping attack, but a return to Republican ideology. This is a stunning rejection of the orthodox GOP core doctrine of total political war, and no one in the McCain camp appears to be listening.

McCain tasted total political war from the Bushists in 2000. Now, the hero of the Hanoi Hilton can rationalize any means to his own ends - because he's a hero, after all. If he gave up his conscience on torture in order to gain the nomination from the pro-torture Republican base, how bad is a little gutter politics?

Why liberals think Republicans harbor racists

Because they do. Get them anti-macaca voters to the polls. Too bad McCain has a black baby, but Obama has two. Feh.

(h/t Philosoraptor)

Wingnut Supreme Court

What's the likelihood that 88-year-old John Paul Stevens will still be on the Court four years from now? He's as close as the Court gets to a real liberal.

Contrary to the press's conventional story that the Court has conservative and liberal wings, it really divides like this from right to center:

• Scalia, Thomas, Alito - hard right, no apologies, screw you
  
• Roberts - hard right pretending to be merely conservative
• Kennedy - conservative
• Breyer - centrist, pro-corporate
• Souter - centrist
  
• Stevens, Ginsburg - liberal, sort of

There's not the slightest populist leaning anywhere in sight.

As Bill Mears says rather more elliptically, if McCain wins one term, expect a hard-right majority of at least five and probably six, which Kennedy is likely to follow to avoid irrelevancy. This would probably remain the case more or less for at least twenty years. Two terms would mean no centrist or tepid liberal wing at all.

If Obama wins, he probably cannot move the median of the Court at all. Instead, he can extend the current conservative balance and merely prevent it from lurching further to the extreme right. In a second term, he might possibly replace a conservative. Might.

(Yeah, and I won't bring the irrelevancy of Tony Rezko into this story even if someone else does me the favor of providing a canned non sequitur about him. This was bad journalism on Mears's part. It didn't belong in this story just because someone with no reputation said it.)

Projection

The RNC knows that if they could find this much money, they'd be cheating.

Update (10/6): Since Obama has contributions from millions of Americans, that's going to be some serious labor-intensive auditing. Could be a stimulus program using government jobs all by itself!

Dispatches from clueless-land

CNN missed the 2000 McCain experience so much that they commissioned Bob Greene to tour on their own leased bus. So far, the results of Greene's conversations with ordinary Americans have been, well, to call them ordinary would be an insult to ordinary people.

Mainly, Greene's interviews have been with people who don't have a clue about anything. For instance, today we hear from a woman in the age of expensive gasoline who drove five hours for a meal of "throwed rolls" (pronounced "thowed" for those of you not born, as I was, in the Cape Girardeau broadcast area). At least she cares a little about politics, unlike some previous interviewees. She wants to change completely how we elect leaders so that we can take all of them. Mitt Romney and John Edwards can compare hair products, I guess, but that's about all they have in common.

If she has a real idea, let her try to pass it. But no, she's just carping out vague dissatisfaction signifying nothing.

Frozen assets

Will someone, preferably a Democrat, please freeze this man's assets! He's an embarrassment to everyone who believes in good government.

Want some wahhabi with that?

Is it just me, or does the idea of the House of Saud bringing "peace" to Afghanistan give anyone else the willies? Is anyone out there not named Bush actually convinced that the Saudis are an ally of anything more than ephemeral convenience?

Entitlement

... to their own facts, free of charge.

Click image for Danziger cartoon.

Devil's tail

No, I meant 'tale'.

Click image for Mike Luckovich/AJC cartoon.

Reaction shot

At least cartoonists can get the details right. Check out her feet! And of course the reaction of the short Republican.

Click image for full Mike Luckovich/AJC cartoon.

Coming to a gutter near you

More Republican bullshit, the smearing ugly kind! Let's see, Obama runs into radical Bill Ayers by accident on the street. Sarah Palin does the nasty with an Alaska secessionist, her husband.

This is only going to get worse as the election nears. McCain and Palin can't win on the merits, but by damn they'll try mud-slinging. Even worse, they'll be proud of it.

Tucker Bounds, unrepentant liar

Tucky Bounds is in love with his $42,000 lie on behalf of John McCain. So in love that he repeats it in all sorts of contexts, including accusing Joe Biden of an "outright lie." If you're going to be a Republican spokesman, you need the satanic ability out of "The Exorcist" to induce head-swivelling like this. Imputing your sins to everyone else is their standard method of making me projectile vomit.

The truth, which big media mostly refuses to tell us, is here (in the economy tab), reported for children, who actually need facts, unlike adults, whom we allow to make up their own out of their impressions. Here's the Washington Post's table:

Change in Yearly Taxes
1) 0 to $18,981	-$21	-$567
2) $18,982 to $37,595	-$118	-$892
3) $37,596 to $66,354	-$325	-$1,118
4) $66,355 to $111,645	-$994	-$1,264
5) $111,646 to $2.87 million plus	-$6,498	+$3,017
$111,646 to $160,972	-$2,584	-$2,135
$160,973 to $226,918	-$4,437	-$2,796
$226,919 to $603,402	-$8,159	+$121
$603,403 to $2.87 million	-$48,862	+$93,709
More than $2.87 million	-$290,708	+$542,882

Yeah, that's Obama's tax plan on the right. Hmm, which one helps the middle class?

(h/t MediaMatters, via Atrios)

See you in four years, Michigan

Sarah Palin thought bubble: People tell me I sound like I'm from Michigan, so I know I can compete up there. They'll vote for me in 2012. And, heck, yeah, the UP is just like Alaska, right next to Canada, cold in the winter, and hardly anybody lives a-way up there. They even have some moose for me to shoot. Now that would be a photo op.

The truth is: So what, so Palin wouldn't leave Michigan. Who cares about that level of disagreement with John McCain? If she couldn't defend McCain's healthcare plan or his tax plan or his Afghanistan policy or whatever, that would matter. Oh, right...

Analyze this

There is a real story hidden in this silly "analysis" of the language Joe Biden and Sarah Palin used in their debate. But first the bullshit detection.

Text readability metrics are not bunk - until you try to use them this way. They measure text complexity and map it onto grade level. The sort of opaque, self-interrupting sentences that politicians in general - and both Biden and Palin in particular - often utter look complex to the algorithm. Gibberish is often complex, but the readability algorithm doesn't care about underlying meaning.

Paul Payack and CNN appear to be praising Palin's grade level. Instead, they should spend time on clarity of presentation, which Palin can only manage in the most superficial way. CNN and Payack barely scratch that story. After all, it's a judgement call, not something Microsoft Word can give you at the touch of a button.

By the way, Payack apparently did not use Word. When I used its built-in Flesch-Kincaid algorithm, his example sentences gave significantly different scores than he reported. That's another problem with text metrics; there are several of them.

(Note: Word says that this entry's grade level is 8.6. With a little tinkering, I can get it down to 7.5, but that doesn't make it better. A little tinkering in the other direction gets me to 10.5 with little change in meaning.

Also, if you have nothing better to do, you can play on your own with the transcribed text from here.)

Avoidance behavior

It's important to have debates, but it would be better to have revealing debates. No, I'm not talking about the pundit-fueled faux revelation we've seen so often in the past.

Still, I have to confess that the only part of the VP debate I've seen so far was an image of Sarah Palin shining off a widescreen TV through the window of a house I used to live in, as I drove by at 10:20 on the way home from tennis.

Well, I thought, she didn't collapse and need to be wheeled off the set, so she must have exceeded expectations.

Yes, I have it on the DVR - I think. That didn't go well for the first Presidential debate, so I can't be sure. I promise to watch it someday. I'm guessing that she completely met my expectations - since I didn't have any positive ones.

(Note: I got a helpful email that C-SPAN has a mash-up site for the debates, and the VP debate is there, too.)

Credit needs, small and large

Every year at Annual Town Meeting, we pass an article that authorizes the Treasurer with the approval of the Selectmen to borrow in anticipation of revenue to meet short-term cash needs. In all the years I've been going to TM, this has been controversial once, when some bad feeling spilled over from another article. But what if there were no loans to be had?

The town would miss payroll, furlough workers, and wait for liquid tax receipts to come in. The suddenly unemployed workers would tighten their belts, and you can bet they wouldn't pay their taxes on time.

The private sector is even more sensitive to the absence of credit. Its ex-employees would be holding onto every dime, too.

Writ large, California is already in this situation.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer issued a statement a day earlier saying because of the national financial crisis, California "has been locked out of credit markets for the past 10 days."

The crisis is picking up speed, and that's not good. When the Bushists tell me the sky is falling, I'm skeptical. But they aren't the only people pulling fire alarms these days.

Anything to avoid learning

Big media personality Gwen Ifill is now in the sights of the right. Big deal.

Ifill is hardly a reliable liberal. In fact, she's only reliable at playing that vital Beltway game of speaking troth to power.

Ifill moderated the 2004 debate between Darth and John Edwards, and she once appropriately enforced the rules against Darth using tones that the vaporous wingnut punditry found insufficiently respectful.

But these are facts, and facts don't matter. This new, trumped-up bullshit controversy is about giving weak-minded people excuses to discount the obvious inadequacy of Sarah Palin. It's an attempt to lower expectations by the tried-and-true Republican means of patronizing the voting public.

A few pearls from Warren Buffett

Quotes selected according to my biases:

I don’t think [the bailout is] perfect, but I don’t know that I could draw one that’s perfect. I’d rather be approximately right than precisely wrong, and it would be precisely wrong to turn it down.

...

95 percent of the people at least are worse off in terms of their residential wealth plus stock wealth from a year ago or two years ago. That is bleeding into the real economy. I mean, that’s bleeding into auto sales and jewelry sales and furniture sales and all that. But that wave is just starting to hit. And if the paralysis we have in the credit markets, if every company continues to feel all we want to do is get our balance sheet down, sell assets, you know, it’s just the start of what can happen. Unemployment’s going to go up under any circumstances. I mean, the 6.1% is going to go higher.

...

We may need another stimulus - if we do, it’s - it should go to the lower and middle-income people. I mean, the truth is, I’ve never had it so good in terms of taxes. I am paying the lowest tax rate that I’ve ever paid in my life. Now, that’s crazy. And if you look at the Forbes 400, they are paying a lower rate, accounting payroll taxes, than their secretary or - whomever around their office.

...

I think it’s terrible for people in effect to say that income from investment should be taxed at a much lower rate than income from labor...

In truth, the rest makes a lot of sense, too, but I can't quote it all and adhere to copyright law.

How low are expectations?

They are sooo low.

Sarah Palin can't name a newspaper she reads. She can't name a Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade that she disagrees with. (Hmm, you think those two things might be connected?) On her behalf, smarmy Tucky Bounds can't name a single decision she made about the Alaska National Guard.

The thing is, these omissions are all easily remedied. What's not easily crammed for is the habit of a lifetime of taking in information in your field that someday might be useful to have at your fingertips. Palin, like Duhbya, is a proud ignoramus. She's like that high school cheerleader no one has ever said no to, who wants to run the yearbook because ... no reason, she just wants to run it.

Palin can walk out on stage tonight and not fall off her heels, though, and the captive media will intone with all seriousness that she exceeded expectations in her first (!) chance for America to get to know her.

Obama girl commercialized

Sometimes selling out works!

Artificial sweeteners

Only one of the proposed new features of the Senate bailout bill even pretends to address the credit crisis, and that's the increase in the FDIC limit.

Some of the others are good ideas, and some are bad, but their purpose is to get votes - and voter acquiescence - not to solve the acute economic problem.

An aura of fragile loveliness

Please take this sweet, sad trip outside of politics. It will repay the short time you spend reading it.

Not long ago, I drove by shortly after a high-speed motorcycle accident. There were already so many good samaritans working on the victim I couldn't tell her gender (which I found later on line), but I didn't have much hope for her after a helmetless 75-mph dismount stopped by the guardrail. Nonetheless, she survived, how well the news is equivocal about. But she has lingered with me, too, as Alma did with Garrison Keillor.

Reasons to be cheerful

"New polls show Obama breaking away in key states" --CNN

FiveThirtyEight.com shows Obama with 336 electoral votes after today's polls and projects Obama winning in 85% of scenarios. A different type of projection gives Obama 51% of the eventual vote, and that's a hard number to beat for McCain.

Update (10/2): Essentially a repeat of the CNN story above, with a little commentary added. Bill Schneider chalks Florida up to storm surge from recent candidate visits. He seems to think this couldn't possibly be a trend away from his pal, John McCain.

Touching faith

Because Ron Paul is an acolyte of Ayn Rand's pure and simple-minded economic libertarianism, he cannot conceive of a government intervention in the market that would help the aggregate economy. He has a touching faith that the free market will always provide the best of all possible economies.

It's bunk, and the current crisis proves it. The market, freed from rules restraining the leverage of capital and keeping risk visible, inevitably corrects itself with a nasty recession. Paul won't admit it, but he is willing to countenance a depression in order to save his worldview.

Paul is right about one thing: Real estate has been overpriced, and the resulting bubble is the proximate cause of our current financial situation. What he doesn't seem to understand is that, just as easy credit causes markets to overshoot, lack of credit kills markets and businesses that would otherwise be solvent and very useful to sustained economic activity.

The bad thing about a bailout is that it does not punish the guilty, those who have caused the bubble. The good thing about a bailout - one that works, anyway - is that it prevents nasty damage to the economy that all of us rely on to make our lives.

The brief history of this bailout:

• Paulson proposes a typical Republican approach: Give money to the market with no strings attached and have faith the market will take care of us.
• Congressional leaders add some elements of a typical Democratic approach, though pretty centrist at that: Spend the money instead of giving it away. Get equity, limit deductibility of executive pay (which John McCain supports for the first time in his life for faux populist political reasons), provide fig leaf oversight of the power-mad Bushists.
• Republicans in the House promise to deliver a majority of their caucus, but they fail, duplicitously or otherwise.
• Democrats in the Senate offer tax cut and tax credit sweeteners to the Republicans. Once again, the Dems choose to lose to hardball Republican tactics. You might call them responsible enablers. If they had picked other items, you might be right, but the new provisions do hardly anything to actually address the credit problem. Thus the new bill is worse than the old one - more expensive with no more effectiveness.
  

It's pretty clear that the Europeans have the right idea: Recapitalize the credit markets by taking equity stakes. Yeah, that's socialist. But when the credit markets have been stable for a while, unwind those positions back to the private capital that is currently too afraid to lend itself out for useful economic purposes. Oh, when unwinding, make a profit if possible off the very people who made all this fun stuff into news. That would be a mixed economy's best revenge.

Update: More good sense from Paul Krugman.

Update: My CNN comment threads stay open long after CNN closes theirs.