Monthly Archives: October 2008

October 8, 2008 · 9:53 am

On the Debate and Government Spending

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The second presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain was, for the most part, uninformative and boring. McCain came off as physically awkward, lacking in agility, and, as Colbert King said, looking like Fred Sanford from the 70s sitcom.

There’s not much new that I can add to the analysis of the debate that is not already out there, but one thing struck as particularly annoying. McCain started off with his latest Hail Mary: he proposed a massive U.S. government buyout of troubled mortgages (apparently he didn’t know that the power to do this already existed in the present bailout/rescue plan). Then a few minutes later he proposed a freeze on government spending to help save the economy. First of all, how can you freeze spending when you are buying out troubled mortgages? And second, as I have mentioned before, why would you proscribe a spending freeze during an economic crisis? That’s how Hoover dug us into a whole during the Great Depression.

Finally, on the subject of government spending, taxes, and Sarah Palin’s lines against Biden for saying that paying taxes was patriotic, Thomas Friedman today writes,

“Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

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October 7, 2008 · 5:25 pm

Culture Wars, Politics of Destruction and the Media

As I have mentioned, Obama is finally striking back against the McCain team’s low blows. I understand why the Democrats would finally want to start firing back at the Republican Lee Atwater, Karl Rove tactics of culture wars and personal destruction. Nevertheless, I am not fully comfortable with Obama taking this path, even if bringing up the Keating Five isn’t too much of a stretch. And now it looks like McCain’s connections to Iran Contra are also being dug up out of the past.

A few days ago, I blamed the press for giving credence to Palin’s statements about Obama “palling around with terrorists” by literally making it a headline. In an excellent piece on the subject in today’s Washington Post, Eugene Robinson echoed my concerns and wrote,

We also know that no matter how skeptical we are when we write about bogus allegations, writing about them at all gives them wider circulation. So when Palin questions Obama’s love of country because Obama knows somebody who did something unpatriotic when Obama was 8, our free-market ethos makes us rush to cover her every ridiculous word. We also find ways to convey that this is pure mudslinging and nothing but a cynical campaign tactic, but that doesn’t matter to the McCain campaign. What matters is that we’re writing and talking about this extraneous stuff — and not about the issues that polls say voters really care about.

If we in the media really believe what we say about serving the public interest, we have a duty to avoid being turned into instruments of mass distraction. Of course we should cover what the candidates say, putting their words in context and pointing out when the candidates are exaggerating or lying. But we should also think hard about how much prominence we give to smears and counter-smears.

It’s interesting because if you are like me (and by that I mean obsessively reading all of the major newspapers on a daily basis to get election coverage), you know that the serious press and journalists have pretty unanimously condemned John McCain’s change in strategy, most of his cheap shots, and have all — from the right, left and center — found Sarah Palin to be uniquely unqualified. Nevertheless when I read the papers this morning, there is still more coverage given to Obama links to Bill Ayers than to McCain and the Keating Five. Even if much of the stories criticize McCain’s misuse of the facts or dispel the Ayers connection, the press is still give airtime to the ridiculous claims. Continue reading →

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October 6, 2008 · 2:13 pm

The Keating Five

You kind of wonder why the McCain Palin gang waited so long to overtly go after Obama for being anti-American? In defending Palin’s recent comments about Obama “not being one of us”, McCain Palin surrogate Heather Wilson (R-NM) yesterday accused Obama of going to Germany to speak poorly about America. She claimed that

[Obama has] been critical not only of the president, but of American policy and hence of a–has kind of a negative view of America in the world. That’s not unusual, frankly, among liberals in kind of post-Vietnam America to say that America’s the problem. I think Sarah Palin believes that America is part of the solution. We are an exceptional country, we are a force for good.

Of course, these allegations are not only absurd, they could also be used against John McCain or Sarah Palin. McCain has very openly defamed the U.S. government as corrupt. Isn’t that “talking down America”? Didn’t Palin say in the debate, “Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you’re not always the solution”? Furthermore, any American who lives abroad witnesses on a daily basis how Obama is regaining the world’s confidence in our nation. Ironically, only in America could that be painted as unpatriotic.

The fact of the matter is that the McCain camp has feared retaliation. (Notice McCain hasn’t brought up Reverend Wright yet, most likely because McCain is on record earlier this year specifically denouncing the use of Wright against Obama). McCain and his boys have something they’re hoping the American people won’t remember.

So far the Obama campaign has ignored Todd Palin’s secessionist past or Palin having addressed the Alaskan separatist party’s convention, for the Palin’s are small fish to fry. It’s better to ignore them than acknowledge them. But now it appears that the Obama campaign is finally going to bring up McCain’s past ethics scandal, the Keating Five.  In 1989, John McCain together with four other Congressman were prosecuted for their alleged activities in relation to the Savings and Loans financial crisis. Although not convicted, McCain was formally reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee for his “poor judgment”.

Poor judgment and dubious friends in a financial crisis is not something McCain wants remembered. Too late, the Obama team are now fighting back with a documentary called “Keating Economics“. In a financial crisis, McCain — with his deregulation buddy Phil Gramm — is more likely to lose the guilt by association argument.

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October 5, 2008 · 12:48 am

Poor Journalism

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I just read an article that was titled “Palin says Obama ‘palling around’ with terrorists‘”. This is just another example of the irresponsible journalism that has plagued these elections. The author, Jim Kuhnhenn of the Associated Press, should be ashamed of himself. Why is a factually inaccurate statement by Palin whose sole purpose is to falsely and offensively tie an American presidential candidate to terrorism treated as newsworthy or given the benefit of the doubt? Why even give such tactics the time of day?

Of course, Kuhnhenn tries to give both sides of the story, but when one side is so blatantly misleading, how can a serious journalist justify first the headline and second the forced neutrality? He even prints Palin’s ridiculous statement,

Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country . . . This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America.

Let’s open the flood gates. Why doesn’t Obama now come out and accuse Todd Palin of being an Alaskan separatist? Wasn’t he a member of an Alaskan pro-independence party? I could just imagine the quote,

Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that she would marry and bare multiple children to a separatist who would want Alaska to become an independent state, free of the clutches of our own country’s federal strangle . . . This is not a woman who sees America as you see America and as I see America.

I’d even suggest the headline, “Palin impregnated on numerous occasions by white separatist,” or “Palin eloped with white separatist, gave him five children, the most recent just months ago.”

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October 4, 2008 · 2:27 pm

War and Consumption: How America is Out of Touch with the World

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If you’ve listened to John McCain’s repetitive line that Barack Obama just doesn’t understand the problems facing the world, then maybe you’d be surprised to the learn that the vast majority of the world would prefer to see Obama in the White House.

A recent Economist survey and poll that divided the world up into theoretical electoral votes found that a shocking 8,375 world electoral votes would go to Obama and only 16 to McCain. In every country and every region in the world, with maybe the sole exception of Georgia (where all Americans are Georgians, according to McCain), Obama would win handsomely. Even after Sarah Palin claimed that she “loved Israel” and would never second guess them, Israelis poll 74% in favor of the candidate with the funny Muslim sounding name. In another survey, the Economist found that the great majority of professional economists preferred Obama’s economic plans to those of McCain.

Now is there something that John McCain doesn’t understand? Does the fact that Obama is only leading by single digits show that America is increasingly distancing itself from the international mainstream? The U.S. has stood alone and against all the other major democracies on some of they key moral issues of the day from ending capital punishment, creating an international criminal tribunal to ratifying international climate change measures. Furthermore, the U.S. is increasingly seen, not as a force of good, but as a military empire that uses its force for the sole purpose of sustaining it’s economic and military dominance. This isn’t the view point of America’s enemies, but that of its friends. I know. I live in Europe and hear this kind of talk all the time. For example, in a recent headline in a major Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, a leading communications scholar likened Obama to Gorbachev, hoping that the American politician could move the U.S. away from imperial militarism in the same way that Gorbachev loosened the oppressive grip on the Soviet Union.

I believe that when you analyze the facts, there are two areas where the U.S. is moving dangerously out of touch with the world: consumption and war. These will eventually alienate America to its own detriment. Continue reading →

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October 3, 2008 · 3:41 pm

A Final Word on Palin

Palin Biden Debate

Now that the Vice Presidential debate is over, it’s about time I get over Sarah Palin too. As a matter of fact, I am no longer interested in dedicating any significant amount of space on this blog to the Republican vice presidential nominee. Nevertheless, I will end by saying this: Both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin performed very well in last night’s debate. Joe Biden proved himself informed, capable, and uniquely situated to rebut John McCain’s claims of maverick grandeur. Furthermore, he instilled confidence in his ability to act as the nation’s steward.

At the same time, Sarah Palin did not crash and burn. She sounded confident, outperformed the low expectations, and hit all of the major talking points she had crammed in recent weeks. She was aided by the debate format where she was never asked to elaborate, explain her position, or specifically cite anything (Supreme Court decisions or newspapers she’s read). Rather, she was permitted great leeway to avoid answering the questions altogether and go straight to her talking points: Obama equals more taxes and bigger government, Alaska, Ned Flanders English, hockey moms and mavericks, and war. It didn’t matter whether what she said made any sense, what mattered was that these were words that average Americans could relate to.

My fundamental problem with this approach is that it treats “average” Americans as idiots — as Pavlovian dogs who will salivate at the very mention of key words. Continue reading →

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October 2, 2008 · 3:49 pm

Shocking!

The truce is over, I am back to writing about the elections. In the latest installment of the Palin-Couric exchange, Palin has really outdone herself again. As a politician, Palin is free to have her political views on the issues of the day, and we as voters are free to agree or disagree with those views. So I will respect her views on abortion as a federal question. But in her answers to the follow-up questions — just as she does with every other follow-up question — she is so extremely uniformed about the issue, that her only remedy is to rearrange the syntax of her first answer, “sticking to her guns”, and hope that nobody notices. Unfortunately, these rephrased answers, which apparently have worked in Alaskan debates, highlight her utter lack of understanding of national issues and basic constitutional questions. Continue reading →

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October 1, 2008 · 10:10 pm

While I was Not Writing About the Election

Last Friday, I made a campaign pledge to forgo writing about the Presidential Election for a total of five days. My intention was not just to give the entire Obama v. McCain thing a break, but to get back to some of my more fun-loving, down home (golly-jeepers, can’t think of the word, kind of, I don’t know, yeah, that’s it) self-mocking digressions. It was not my intention to avoid writing altogether, but in my defense, I was busy. Here’s what was going on (outside of politics in my world) while I was not writing about the election: Continue reading →

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