Living Too Late

Eight years too late, The Bush Administration may have learned that tact can be used for good, not just for evil.

"So this is what it has come to for the Bush administration in what may be its last foreign policy crisis: No saber-rattling; no calls to expel Russia from the G-8, a la McCain. Instead, a patient effort to work with Europe, in partnership with French diplomats, for heaven's sake! And a policy premised on the idea that global capital markets are a better constraint than U.S. bluff and bluster. "
--David Ignatius

Back to good-ol' fashioned Bush-bashing

Fun with quotations:

"Big government is not the answer." George W. Bush, 4 August 2000, at the Republican National Convention.

"To create jobs, my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation, and making the tax relief permanent." George W. Bush, 2 September 2004, at the Republican National Convention.

and yet...

"I am, one, pleased with the Secretary of the Treasury's decision; and two, believe that it will stabilize the markets, which is necessary at this point in time," Bush said in an interview with Fox News Channel to air on Tuesday morning.

"I wouldn't call it a bailout. I'd call it a stabilization," he said according to the transcript.

Reuters, 8 September 2008.

No Bridges for Old Money

CQ has a fascinating article about Sarah Palin's involvement in the proposal, modification, and eventual tanking of the "Bridge to Nowhere." The basic timeline:

1) Rep. Don Young (R) earmarks nearly half a billion dollars for two bridges to islands with tiny populations.

2) Congress decides that maybe the earmark isn't a great idea. The money will be given to Alaska's Transportation department, but to be used however they see fit.

3) Sarah Palin runs for governor in 2006 promising to defend the bridge project from federal intervention, though the money has long since been given over to the discretion of the state government. "“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spin-meisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative."

4) Upon taking office, Palin decides that the bill is, in fact, as wasteful as everyone else has already said, and kills the project. Nevertheless, she keeps the money from the appropriation.

5) (and this part is not in the CQ article) In her Vice Presidential nomination speech, Palin claims to have created a budget surplus in Alaska, which she has returned to the people of Alaska in the form of tax breaks. These tax breaks, I'm sure, were not hurt by Rep. Don Young (R)(currently under investigation for taking bribes and other unreported "gifts") and Sen. Ted Stevens (R)(currently under indictment on seven counts of corruption) giving her $400+ million of money gathered from all 50 states to play with as she sees fit.

Conclusion: Palin can legitimately claim that she killed the project. However, she can also be taken to task for killing a project she campaigned to defend, although she faced no federal interference.

For further reading: Michael Kinsley on "Sarah Palin's Alaskonomics"

McCain

Thankfully, Senator McCain's speech last night was a reprieve from the hate-fest run by Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday. It had some moments that bothered me, but I left the speech remembering why I can't hate John McCain. He may be conservative, he may be dangerously unpredictable, he may be a philanderer, he may be he may have sold his independence this winter for a boost up the ladder, and he may be gratuitously milking his war stories to gather all the slack he can to make up for those flaws, but he really does believe he can make America a better place, and that's all he wants. I just can't agree with his definition of "better" or the means he's going to use to get there.

There are two parts that stuck in my craw. The first:

Matthew died serving our country in Iraq. I wear his bracelet and think of him every day. I intend to honor their sacrifice by making sure the country their son loved so well and never returned to remains safe from its enemies.

McCain wears the bracelet and pledges to honor the memory of a man who died fighting an unnecessary war that the good Senator helped us get into. He pledges to keep our country safe from a country that never posed a direct threat to us. John McCain helped send Matthew Stanley to his death in pursuit of a farce, and now comforts himself with the belief that he's on the side of the soldiers, and uses that poor boy's name to gather votes. It's exploitation of the most petty sort that all politicians get into, and I really wish they'd knock it off.

The other thing that bothered me came after his lengthy depiction of life as a POW. He started talking about why he loves America so much, and it broke my heart because it's so far from what his party has been pushing our country to. So I'm just going to post the text, with some links added, so you can get the flavor of how much this tore me up.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice, and goodness of its people.

I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again; I wasn't my own man anymore; I was my country's.

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.

My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist...

Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an -- an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed.

Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier, because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your president. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank him, that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on Earth. And with hard work -- with hard work, strong faith, and a little courage, great things are always within our reach.

Fight with me. Fight with me.

Fight for what's right for our country. Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children's future. Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

John McCain has a beautiful vision of what America could be again, and he's leading us away from it.

Palin's speech

Now, if a Republican were to read this blog, he or she would say that I'm biased, and that I wasn't listening to Palin's speech with an open mind and I was just going to pick through her speech anyway. It's absolutely true. What I was hoping for was some evidence that this woman had a brain and a heart, that there was a good reason that John McCain picked her. The reason I have come up with is that she's a spectacular demagogue. Let's dig through this speech and all of the things that the GOP was cheering last night.
_____________________________________________________________

"The voters knew better, and maybe that's because they realized there's a time for politics and a time for leadership, a time to campaign and a time to put our country first."

This implies that Barack Obama has been campaigning while John McCain has been "putting our country first," which she seems to think involves doing something that isn't campaigning. Clearly, this is not the case.

You know, from the inside, no family ever seems typical, and that's how it is with us. Our family has the same ups and downs as any other, the same challenges and the same joys.

Yes, every family has a mother being investigated for corruption and nominated for Vice President. It must have happened to my mom three or four times.

"And Todd is a story all by himself. He's a lifelong commercial fisherman and a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope, and a proud member of the United Steelworkers union. And Todd is a world champion snow machine racer. Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package. And we met in high school. And two decades and five children later, he's still my guy."

I don't have a problem with anything she's saying here, actually, I just think it's really badly written.

"So I signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education even better. And when I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and I knew their families, too."

If she's planning on knowing every voter she's going to represent as Vice President, she's got an awful lot of work to do in the next 60 days.

"Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involved. I guess -- I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."

I don't even know where to begin with this. The GOP loves the "bootstrap" story. They love saying that the free market will take care of itself. They love small-town values. They love "faith-based initiatives." When you have a community that is in poverty, when the jobs and the money go away, people need to do something. Some people with big hearts, with skills, and a lot of patience come in and help the community become a community. They pool their resources, raise money, and start programs to get people trained for new jobs. They help people help themselves (bootstraps), they teach people to look out for each other (small-town values), they teach people to do things without having to resort to government interference in the market (free markets) and they do it in church basements (faith-based initiatives). So who in the hell does she think she is saying that Barack Obama had no responsibilities as a community organizer, teaching poor, uneducated people in Bullethole City USA to take care of themselves without resorting to crime or relying on welfare? Yes, she had responsibilities, but so did he. Community organizing is to society what a conscience is to the mind.

"I might add that, in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they're listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening."

Let's look at the Obama statement she's talking about.

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Okay. So we have Obama talking about how, on a bipartisan level, the working class is getting screwed. He says that when they have little else in their lives that they're in control of, they look for conservative religion and so forth to provide order and meaning to a life filled with chaos. It's a God that says to them, "you are living the righteous way, and the rest of the world is screwed up." And he's not judging them, he's saying that we need to actually help them, because they have gotten screwed, and the bitterness (which many underemployed folks in rural Pennsylvania will tell you is absolutely real) is just emblematic of a bigger problem that needs to be fixed, not embraced because of how all-American and wonderful the current situation is.

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes and whoever is listening John McCain is the same man.

Ah yes, because being the same man in one place as you were in another is qualification enough for being president.

The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.

I believe the expression is "change we can believe in," and it's what you get when you don't except that things are already perfect in Scranton.

This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau, when I stood up to the special interests, and the lobbyists, and the Big Oil companies, and the good-old boys. Suddenly, I realized that sudden and relentless reform never sits well with entrenched interests and power-brokers. That's why true reform is so hard to achieve. But with the support of the citizens of Alaska, we shook things up. And in short order, we put the government of our state back on the side of the people. I came to office promising major ethics reform to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is a law.

I have never heard such a long string of tired political catch-phrases spewed continuously without any explanation. What did she shake up? A can of Pepsi? A baby? No-bid government contracts? What?

When oil and gas prices went up dramatically and filled up the state treasury, I sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged: directly to the people of Alaska.

Wait a second, what? Chicago's paying $4.50 a gallon and she's giving that money out in tax breaks? Nuts to that!

Our opponents say again and again that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems, as if we didn't know that already. But the fact that drilling, though, won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

Okay, this is fair. But we do need to be aware of where we're drilling. Permanently obliterating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not worth a few more years of oil.

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines, and build more nuclear plants, and create jobs with clean coal, and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need... American sources of resources. We need American energy brought to you by American ingenuity and produced by American workers.

I believe Barack Obama had a very similar line in his nomination speech. Something to the effect of, "As president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced." We agree on this. Why are we fighting over it? Let's just do it.

America needs more energy; our opponent is against producing it.

Ahem. Bullshit. See last comment.

Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

*cough*

And let me be specific: The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, and raise payroll taxes, and raise investment income taxes, and raise the death tax, and raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Now, I haven't gotten into the hard math of either candidate's tax plans. But at no point does she say which segment of the population this money is coming from. Because I believe it's from the people who are more than capable of affording it, and that the vast majority of Americans will actually see decreased taxes. I won't say for sure it's the case but she says nothing to refute this.

And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they're always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely: There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you.

Yeah, I definitely don't want to have a president who dodged military service.

And it's a long way from the fear, and pain, and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.

It would be a great story of triumph if he made it from that cell to the Oval Office and had a presidency to outshine all others, but the fact is that having been tortured in a pit in Hanoi does not qualify you to be President of the United States. That he's made it to the Senate is triumph enough, especially if you don't believe his presidency would be all that spectacular.

More fun with photos.

This picture accompanied last Friday's NYT article about Sarah Palin...and now all I can think is, damn, I really want to see Sarah Palin fight a live bear and a live king crab.

Jawohl, mein veep!

Thank you, oh thank you so much, CNN.



I'm going to dig through her speech when I have time, but man, that says it all.

No matter where it rises, the Sun will melt Mitt's plastic hair

I'm paraphrasing Mitt Romney here, but this is essentially what he just said:

"For years, the leaders in Washington have looked for the Sun to rise in the East, with the media elites at the Times, the Post, and the broadcasters on the coast. But now, it's time to look for the Sun in the West, from Arizona and Alaska!"

My first thought: The Sun sets in the West. Are you saying the Sun is setting on America, Mitt?

My second thought: If he means that if McCain/Palin win in November, then the Sun will rise in the West, surely that's a sign of the Apocalypse, right?

Quote of the Day, Planet Paul Edition

From Bill Kauffman, speaking at Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty event at the Target Center in Minneapolis:

"Locating the antiwar wing of today’s Republican Party is like looking for the Juice Newton wing in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."

More on Palin

Political Wire has been posting a flurry of responses from various politicos about Sarah Palin's nomination for Vice President. Here are three snippets that prove to me just how dangerous (not just to his campaign, but for the nation) this nomination is.

The First:

"According to the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin "thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state's public classrooms."

This says to me that McCain is hurting to get the Pat Robertson people on board.

The Second:

"In fact, as Palin's cultural views become better known -- she oppose abortion in all cases and opposes the use of birth control pills and condoms even among married couples -- she will undoubtedly scare the hell out of the soccer moms and 98% of Hillary voters."

It also scares the hell out of me. I don't care how pro-life you are, anyone with any sort of grasp on reality understands that taking away contraception is going to lead to staggering increases in the numbers of abortions, cases of preventable sexually transmitted diseases, and kids who end up leading shit lives because their parents weren't ready to have them. Family planning helps kids, helps parents, helps communities, and all the way on down the line.

The Third:

Nothing undersocres the riskiness of Sen. John McCain's pick of a running mate than this fact: "In an interview with Roll Call two weeks ago, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) said she had met presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain only once or twice."

According to Politico, McCain "spoke with just once on the phone" with Palin "about the position before offering it in person earlier this week."

John McCain is risking his campaign on the blank page. He's taking the chance that his people can write an appealing story about Sarah Palin faster than Obama's people can point out how truly idiotic the choice was, and that two months isn't enough time for people to fully form an opinion on her, and they'll just take Mr. Straight Talk's word that she's qualified. Meanwhile, the honorable Senator hasn't even bothered to develop any sort of relationship with his running mate, and he's using her as a prop without regard to the fact that, should anything go awry for him, he'll be putting the country in the hands of someone who has neither an idea how to run the country, nor even a basic understanding of how a vast majority of Americans relate to their own bodies.

And to really drive the point home, here's a bonus for you, from a Politico article from last month:

"As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?"

This nomination is going from silly to scary in a hurry.