Ouch.
"Senator McCain describes himself as a maverick, by which he seems to mean that he spent 25 years trying unsuccessfully to persuade his own party to follow his bipartisan, centrist lead. Sadly, maverick John McCain didn't show up for the campaign. Instead we have candidate McCain, who embraces the extreme Republican orthodoxy he once resisted and cynically asks Americans to buy for another four years.
It is Senator Obama who truly promises fundamental change in Washington. You need look no further than the guilt-by-association lies and sound-bite distortions of the degenerating McCain campaign to see how readily he embraces the divisive, fear-mongering tactics of Karl Rove. And while Senator McCain points to the fragile success of the troop surge in stabilizing conditions in Iraq, it is also plain that he was fundamentally wrong about the more crucial early decisions. Contrary to his assurances, we were not greeted as liberators; it was not a short, easy war; and Americans -- not Iraqi oil -- have had to pay for it. It was Senator Obama who more clearly saw the danger ahead.
The unqualified endorsement of Senator Obama by a seasoned, respected soldier and diplomat like General Colin Powell, a Republican icon, should reassure all Americans that the Democratic candidate will pass muster as commander in chief."
Monday, October 27, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Endorsements Keep Coming!
*Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, articulated why he supports Barack Obama in today's Telegraph:
There are all sorts of reasons for hoping that Barack Hussein Obama will be the next president of the United States. He seems highly intelligent. He has an air of courtesy and sincerity. Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.
Unlike his opponent, he visibly incarnates change and hope, at a time when America desperately needs both.
Barack Obama: Why I believe he should be the next President
By Boris JohnsonThere are all sorts of reasons for hoping that Barack Hussein Obama will be the next president of the United States. He seems highly intelligent. He has an air of courtesy and sincerity. Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.
Unlike his opponent, he visibly incarnates change and hope, at a time when America desperately needs both.
It is no disrespect to John McCain - a brave and principled man - to observe that he has chosen a difficult time to stand on the Republican ticket.
 | |
The legacy of George Bush may take years, if not decades, to determine.
But at present he seems to have pulled off an astonishing double whammy.
However well-intentioned it was, the catastrophic and unpopular intervention in Iraq has served in some parts of the world to discredit the very idea of western democracy.
The recent collapse of the banking system, and the humiliating resort to semi-socialist solutions, has done a great deal to discredit - in some people's eyes - the idea of free-market capitalism.
Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea.
To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune.
To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty stunning achievement for an American president.
It would be tough for any candidate to receive the Republican baton from Dubya, and McCain can be proud of doing as well as he is.
His chief problem is that he does not seem to offer any hope of repair to those American ideals.
Or, to put it another way, it is not clear how America under McCain would recover her standing in the eyes of the world.
His chief selling-point is his grasp of foreign affairs, and his staunch belligerence in the pursuit of American interests.
He is certainly owed the respect due to a man who fought for his country, was captured and tortured.
But is this bellicosity really what the world is crying out for today?
When asked what his policy was towards Iran, Mr McCain sang - to the tune of the Beach Boys - "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran".
No doubt he was joking, but if I were an Iranian politician, those words would make me want a nuclear deterrent all the more.
McCain seems to stand for perpetual sabre-rattling against the terrors of abroad, and Obama wins because he seems to stand for hope, not fear.
Not that the Democratic candidate is a pushover.
He has shown terrific steel, beating off the Clintons, and defeating McCain in all three televised debates.
If elections were decided on the ruthless efficiency of campaigns, then Obama would already have it in the bag.
The defining image of the battle so far is of the two candidates leaving the stage after the last TV debate - Obama moving confidently off, after another grave and measured performance, and McCain gagging like a gargoyle, tongue out, as he realised he was about to walk over the edge.
I am not suggesting that McCain is a buffoon, or that Obama is quite as Messianic as some of his supporters seem to believe.
He gave a speech of unrivalled torpor in Germany, for instance. He needs to stick up more vigorously for free trade, and we must hope that any ill-considered new taxes will be thwarted by Congress.
But then again, he is patently not the Marxist subversive loony Lefty that some of his detractors allege.
I revere Melanie Phillips, and I have carefully studied her blog entries about Obama and the vote-stealers, or Obama and his association with a quondam terrorist called Ayers.
In the end I gave up, goggle-eyed and exhausted, having trolled the wilds of the Neocon internet without finding anything remotely approaching a smoking gun.
Obama's terrorist chum is now a professor, and his last act of terrorism took place when the candidate was eight, and it is not really clear that he and Obama are chums at all.
The entire set of allegations seem to be an attempt to smear him by association, and are about as damaging as pointing out that some of Tony Blair's colleagues used to be Stalinists, or that Tory party conferences used to feature people who advocated the hanging of Nelson Mandela.
Obama deserves to win because he seems talented, compassionate, and because he offers the hope of rejuvenating the greatest country on earth in the eyes of the rest of us. All those are sufficient reasons for desiring his victory.
And then there is the final, additional reason, the glaring reason, and that is race. Huge numbers of voters, whether they admit it to themselves or not, will hesitate to choose Barack Obama for President because he is black. And then there are millions of white Americans who will undoubtedly vote Obama precisely because he is black, and because he stands for the change and the progress they want to see in their society.
After centuries of friction, prejudice, tension, hatred - you name it, they've had it - America is teetering on the brink of a triumph. If Obama wins, then the United States will have at last come a huge and maybe decisive step closer to achieving the dream of Martin Luther King, of a land where people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
If Obama wins, then black people the world over will be able to see how a gifted man has been able to smash through the ultimate glass ceiling.
If Obama wins, then it will be simply fatuous to claim that there are no black role models in politics or government, because there is no higher role model than the President of the United States.
If Barack Hussein Obama is successful next month, then we could even see the beginning of the end of race-based politics, with all the grievance-culture and special interest groups and political correctness that come with it.
If Obama wins, he will have established that being black is as relevant to your ability to do a hard job as being left-handed or ginger-haired, and he will have re-established America's claim to be the last, best hope of Earth.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
CA Prop 8
In the short time Jessica and I have been blogging we've had people from all over the world come by and read TP. Leave a comment or something will ya?
So with that said a California ballot initiative might be of fringe interest to our readers, but it's something that I'm sure every state is going to have to deal with one way or another in the near future.
Prop 8 would amend the California constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
I'm not here to argue morality; as that would be totally pointless. Everyone has their own ideas about what is right and wrong. What I will tell you is that amending the constitution to effectively take rights away from a group of people is unprecedented, wrong, and goes totally against the point of a constitution.
The founding fathers wrote the constitution with the understanding that a) Society changes, b) government does NOT endow people with rights, we already had them and c) We tell the government what it can do, not the other way around. If you've ever read that crazy old washed up "Bill of Rights", you'll notice that the first amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law" and so on.
Prop 8 will specifically take away the right for a homosexual couple to be legally "married." Even if they get all the same legal protections with a civil union in California, it doesn't matter. I have the right to change my name to Donkey Kong and the government of the state of California can't tell me not to. Anything less is just "back of the bus."
Prop 8 proponents, mostly funded by the men-only, kind of crazy Knights of Columbus, have some pretty hilarious ads. In one of them, a little five or six year old kid runs up to her mom and happily explains how teacher told her about gay marriage today. The mother is absolutely horror-stricken, then some old white guy tells us that the gays are shoving marriage down everyone's throat and that we don't have a choice. Specifically, it claims (false) that California schools would have to teach gay marriage to children, that it paves the way (false) for people to be sued over their personal beliefs and that churches would lose their tax status (false) if they refused to change their policies to conform with same sex marriage.
Society has changed. Nobody but uber-conservative damn-you-to-hell christians give a crap about gay marriage, so they have to lie to you about your freedoms being infringed upon to lure you into supporting prop 8.
I'm married. I love my wife. To say that homosexuals getting married degrades the sanctity of my marriage is absolutely asinine beyond comprehension. We had a beautiful , religious, family attended ceremony, an awesome honeymoon, and plan to have way too many kids- the totally 'normal' American family story. But we had those things- and are planning the future ones- because we want to. Because we have assigned value to them. Our marriage is only as strong as we make it, and absolutely nobody but us can affect that in any way. My point here is that gay marriage is not taking away the freedoms or rights of anyone else, so government needs to stay the hell away.
But we can't have people doing what they 'want' can we? Religion has always been about control(and I'd argue that is 90% a good thing). But what is striking to me is that a "charity" group like Knights of Columbus is willing to spend MILLIONS of dollars for Prop 8 ads when there are still starving homeless people in this country, gangs are out of control, we have a massive budget deficiet and we are at war.
Maybe not as much striking as sickening.
Anyway, here are some hilarious anti-prop 8 ads.
So with that said a California ballot initiative might be of fringe interest to our readers, but it's something that I'm sure every state is going to have to deal with one way or another in the near future.
Prop 8 would amend the California constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
I'm not here to argue morality; as that would be totally pointless. Everyone has their own ideas about what is right and wrong. What I will tell you is that amending the constitution to effectively take rights away from a group of people is unprecedented, wrong, and goes totally against the point of a constitution.
The founding fathers wrote the constitution with the understanding that a) Society changes, b) government does NOT endow people with rights, we already had them and c) We tell the government what it can do, not the other way around. If you've ever read that crazy old washed up "Bill of Rights", you'll notice that the first amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law" and so on.
Prop 8 will specifically take away the right for a homosexual couple to be legally "married." Even if they get all the same legal protections with a civil union in California, it doesn't matter. I have the right to change my name to Donkey Kong and the government of the state of California can't tell me not to. Anything less is just "back of the bus."
Prop 8 proponents, mostly funded by the men-only, kind of crazy Knights of Columbus, have some pretty hilarious ads. In one of them, a little five or six year old kid runs up to her mom and happily explains how teacher told her about gay marriage today. The mother is absolutely horror-stricken, then some old white guy tells us that the gays are shoving marriage down everyone's throat and that we don't have a choice. Specifically, it claims (false) that California schools would have to teach gay marriage to children, that it paves the way (false) for people to be sued over their personal beliefs and that churches would lose their tax status (false) if they refused to change their policies to conform with same sex marriage.
Society has changed. Nobody but uber-conservative damn-you-to-hell christians give a crap about gay marriage, so they have to lie to you about your freedoms being infringed upon to lure you into supporting prop 8.
I'm married. I love my wife. To say that homosexuals getting married degrades the sanctity of my marriage is absolutely asinine beyond comprehension. We had a beautiful , religious, family attended ceremony, an awesome honeymoon, and plan to have way too many kids- the totally 'normal' American family story. But we had those things- and are planning the future ones- because we want to. Because we have assigned value to them. Our marriage is only as strong as we make it, and absolutely nobody but us can affect that in any way. My point here is that gay marriage is not taking away the freedoms or rights of anyone else, so government needs to stay the hell away.
But we can't have people doing what they 'want' can we? Religion has always been about control(and I'd argue that is 90% a good thing). But what is striking to me is that a "charity" group like Knights of Columbus is willing to spend MILLIONS of dollars for Prop 8 ads when there are still starving homeless people in this country, gangs are out of control, we have a massive budget deficiet and we are at war.
Maybe not as much striking as sickening.
Anyway, here are some hilarious anti-prop 8 ads.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
T Boone Pickens
If a plan that will dramatically cut our dependence on foreign oil imports disproportionately benefits a gigantic energy corporation, would the end justify the means?
T Boone Pickens is a kind of a dick. He contributed three million dollars to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth in 2004, and in this election cycle endorsed, of all people, Rudy Giuliani. When John Kerry accepted his $1 million challenge to disprove the swift boat ads, he changed the rules to ludicrously require he "provide his Vietnam journal, all of his military records, specifically those covering the years after his active duty service, and copies of all movies and tapes made during his service" to get him to retract the ads.
But it can't be overlooked that he's also donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, Katrina relief and universities, and if the plan is good, who cares?
The plan, from Wikipedia's analysis of his website:
A major feature of the Pickens plan is replacing the 22% of the electricity that the United States gets from foreign countries with natural gas and wind energy, which would then make natural gas 38% of the nation's fuel for transportation. The Pickens Plan calls for the United States to utilize its wind corridor in the middle of the country stretching from Texas through the Great Plains to the Canadian border. He noted in Congressional testimony in July 2008 that his plan would generate new jobs and provide economic stimulus to this area, while noting that it would also require new transmission lines which traditionally antagonize some environmentalists and/or nearby populations.
Critics of the plan, however, point out that it is self-serving: Pickens is a huge investor in wind power, and subsidies and mandates for wind power would help his personal financial position. The announcement of the plan also coincides with Pickens' need for federal subsidies for wind to be renewed, as he's already begun placing orders for his planned wind farm in Texas.
Are there small businesses or other groups that could capitalize on a government mandate to implement the Pickens plan? I doubt it. You'd need a company of Halliburton proportions to pull it off. Properly put in check and regulated intelligently, I say let em have it.
Besides, the guy is worth four billion dollars, he's A-OK. If he didn't actually care about this stuff, why spend $58 million dollars on media ads when he could probably spend half that on lobbyists?
Finally, it's an energy policy. Remember that? No, you don't.
T Boone Pickens is a kind of a dick. He contributed three million dollars to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth in 2004, and in this election cycle endorsed, of all people, Rudy Giuliani. When John Kerry accepted his $1 million challenge to disprove the swift boat ads, he changed the rules to ludicrously require he "provide his Vietnam journal, all of his military records, specifically those covering the years after his active duty service, and copies of all movies and tapes made during his service" to get him to retract the ads.
But it can't be overlooked that he's also donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, Katrina relief and universities, and if the plan is good, who cares?
The plan, from Wikipedia's analysis of his website:
A major feature of the Pickens plan is replacing the 22% of the electricity that the United States gets from foreign countries with natural gas and wind energy, which would then make natural gas 38% of the nation's fuel for transportation. The Pickens Plan calls for the United States to utilize its wind corridor in the middle of the country stretching from Texas through the Great Plains to the Canadian border. He noted in Congressional testimony in July 2008 that his plan would generate new jobs and provide economic stimulus to this area, while noting that it would also require new transmission lines which traditionally antagonize some environmentalists and/or nearby populations.
Critics of the plan, however, point out that it is self-serving: Pickens is a huge investor in wind power, and subsidies and mandates for wind power would help his personal financial position. The announcement of the plan also coincides with Pickens' need for federal subsidies for wind to be renewed, as he's already begun placing orders for his planned wind farm in Texas.
Are there small businesses or other groups that could capitalize on a government mandate to implement the Pickens plan? I doubt it. You'd need a company of Halliburton proportions to pull it off. Properly put in check and regulated intelligently, I say let em have it.
Besides, the guy is worth four billion dollars, he's A-OK. If he didn't actually care about this stuff, why spend $58 million dollars on media ads when he could probably spend half that on lobbyists?
Finally, it's an energy policy. Remember that? No, you don't.
Monday, October 6, 2008
It's About to Get Ugly.
It's widely understood and in fact totally conceded by his own campaign that McCain loses badly if the narrative remains on the economy. It's also agreed to that John McCain has started off on the only track that remotely gives him a chance to win- go dirty, in a big, big way.
Nothing is off the table, according to the McCain campaign. What's interesting is the media reaction to this so far. Most stories seem to preface anything of "substance" in the article with an admission that McCain has set his pitbull loose and it's all a political ploy.
But if McCain is purposely loosing the hounds, he's going to have a pack of wolves on him before you can say Keating Five. Contrary to the current situation, in the primaries Hillary Clinton never purposefully played up the Rev Wright controversy, and never once mentioned Bill Ayers, which is why we never heard about Whitewater or any of the other dirt on Hillary.
The purpose of today's post is a side by side comparison of the associations you'll be hearing about so much in the next couple weeks.
Obama, from the Washington Times
Barack Obama: William Ayers
Today, Mr. Ayers is a university professor and a member of Chicago's intellectual establishment. Forty years ago he was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, including at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.
Mr. Ayers was a fugitive for years with his wife, fellow radical Bernadine Dohrn. But after surrendering in 1980, the charges against Mr. Ayers were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers served together on the board of a Chicago charity and were co-panelists on at least two academic panel discussions and an academic testimonial — two of them at the University of Chicago. In the mid-1990s, when Mr. Obama first ran for office, Mr. Ayers hosted a meet-the-candidate session for Mr. Obama at his home.
John McCain: The Reform Institute
Following his failed presidential bid in 2000, McCain needed a vehicle to keep his brand alive. He founded the Reform Institute, which he set up as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — a tax status that barred it from explicit political activity. McCain proceeded to staff the institute with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, as well as the fundraising chief, legal counsel and communications chief from his 2000 campaign.
There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain's crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain's committee. EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. McCain urged approval of the cable company's proposed pricing plan.
Barack Obama: Jerimiah Wright
I think we are all up to speed here, which is why you've not heard anything about him in months: it's not news. Ironically, Sarah Palin's pastor was recently quoted as warning of God "striking out his hand against... the United States of America" and "rais[ing] up" an alliance of nations to ruin America. (Full Text)
John McCain: Charlie Keating (paraphrased from the awesome mini-McCain biography)
Charlie Keating, the banker and anti-pornography crusader, would ultimately be convicted on 73 counts of fraud and racketeering for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. That crisis, much like today's subprime-mortgage meltdown, resulted from misbegotten banking deregulation, and ultimately left taxpayers to pick up a tab of more than $124 billion. Keating, who raised more than $100,000 for McCain's senate race, lavished the first-term congressman with the kind of political favors that would make Jack Abramoff blush. McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating's expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul's estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as "Charlie Keating's Shangri-La." Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.
McCain did the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating, whose financial empire was on the brink of collapse. Federal regulators were closing in on Keating, who had taken federally insured deposits from his Lincoln Savings and Loan and leveraged them to make wildly risky real estate ventures. If regulators restricted his investments, Keating knew, it would all be over.
In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain's Senate campaign. Now, when Keating tried to stack the federal regulatory bank board with cronies, McCain made a phone call seeking to push them through. In 1987, in an unprecedented display of political intimidation, McCain also attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.
"Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution," says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. "And it hasn't happened since."
Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Lincoln. By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out.
McCain was ultimately given a slap on the wrist by the Senate Ethics Committee, which concluded only that he had exercised "poor judgment." The committee never investigated Cindy's investment with Keating.
Barack Obama: Tony Rezko
"Tony" Rezko is a businessman who has helped raise campaign money for Mr. Obama and many other Illinois politicians. He was convicted in June on 16 of 24 counts involving mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and aiding and abetting bribery.
The charges have no connection to Mr. Obama, but Rezko is tied to the Illinois senator in other ways.
Rezko and his family donated at least $21,457 to Mr. Obama and helped raise over $200,000 more, though not for his presidential bid. He also advised Mr. Obama on the purchase of a new Chicago home and, in his wife's name, purchased a vacant lot next door to the new Obama home when the seller wanted to dispose of both properties at the same time. Rezko then sold a slice of the property to Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama has donated Rezko's contributions to charity and says it was a mistake to work with Rezko on buying the house.
John McCain: Phil Gramm
Indeed, if the current financial crisis has a villain, it is Phil Gramm, who remains close to McCain. As chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s, Gramm ushered in — with McCain's fervent support — a massive wave of deregulation for insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, the aftershocks of which are just now being felt in Wall Street's catastrophic collapse. McCain, who has admitted that "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," relies on Gramm to guide him.
In a July 9, 2008 interview explaining McCain's plans in reforming the U.S. economy, Gramm explained the nation was not in a recession, stating, "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."
John McCain: Vicki Iseman
Whatever McCain's romantic entanglements with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, he was clearly in bed with her clients, who donated nearly $85,000 to his campaigns. One of her clients, Bud Paxson, set up a meeting with McCain in 1999, frustrated by the FCC's delay of his proposed takeover of a television station in Pittsburgh. Paxson had treated McCain well, offering the then-presidential candidate use of his corporate jet to fly to campaign events and ponying up $20,000 in campaign donations.
"You're the head of the commerce committee," Paxson told McCain, according to The Washington Post. "The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."
Iseman helped draft the text, and McCain sent the letter. Several weeks later — the day after McCain used Paxson's jet to fly to Florida for a fundraiser — McCain wrote another letter. FCC chair William Kennard sent a sharp rebuke to McCain, calling the senator's meddling "highly unusual." Nonetheless, within a week of McCain's second letter, the FCC ruled three-to-two in favor of Paxson's deal.
John McCain: U.S. Council for World Freedom
John McCain sat on the board of the extremist "U.S. Council for World Freedom"...which the Anti-Defamation League said "has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-semites".
John McCain: John Hagee
John McCain actively sought the endorsement of by the anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic pastor John Hagee, until he became a political liability in the press.
Consider the following pronouncements on Jews by Hagee, the man who McCain proudly introduced as an ally not too long ago. "It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.
And: How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for his chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings he had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come."
In conclusion, both of these guys have skeletons in their closets, but when you really compare the two, it's obvious that if Obama has a skeleton, McCain has his own terracota army.
Nothing is off the table, according to the McCain campaign. What's interesting is the media reaction to this so far. Most stories seem to preface anything of "substance" in the article with an admission that McCain has set his pitbull loose and it's all a political ploy.
But if McCain is purposely loosing the hounds, he's going to have a pack of wolves on him before you can say Keating Five. Contrary to the current situation, in the primaries Hillary Clinton never purposefully played up the Rev Wright controversy, and never once mentioned Bill Ayers, which is why we never heard about Whitewater or any of the other dirt on Hillary.
The purpose of today's post is a side by side comparison of the associations you'll be hearing about so much in the next couple weeks.
Obama, from the Washington Times
Barack Obama: William Ayers
Today, Mr. Ayers is a university professor and a member of Chicago's intellectual establishment. Forty years ago he was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, including at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.
Mr. Ayers was a fugitive for years with his wife, fellow radical Bernadine Dohrn. But after surrendering in 1980, the charges against Mr. Ayers were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers served together on the board of a Chicago charity and were co-panelists on at least two academic panel discussions and an academic testimonial — two of them at the University of Chicago. In the mid-1990s, when Mr. Obama first ran for office, Mr. Ayers hosted a meet-the-candidate session for Mr. Obama at his home.
John McCain: The Reform Institute
Following his failed presidential bid in 2000, McCain needed a vehicle to keep his brand alive. He founded the Reform Institute, which he set up as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — a tax status that barred it from explicit political activity. McCain proceeded to staff the institute with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, as well as the fundraising chief, legal counsel and communications chief from his 2000 campaign.
There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain's crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain's committee. EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. McCain urged approval of the cable company's proposed pricing plan.
Barack Obama: Jerimiah Wright
I think we are all up to speed here, which is why you've not heard anything about him in months: it's not news. Ironically, Sarah Palin's pastor was recently quoted as warning of God "striking out his hand against... the United States of America" and "rais[ing] up" an alliance of nations to ruin America. (Full Text)
John McCain: Charlie Keating (paraphrased from the awesome mini-McCain biography)
Charlie Keating, the banker and anti-pornography crusader, would ultimately be convicted on 73 counts of fraud and racketeering for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. That crisis, much like today's subprime-mortgage meltdown, resulted from misbegotten banking deregulation, and ultimately left taxpayers to pick up a tab of more than $124 billion. Keating, who raised more than $100,000 for McCain's senate race, lavished the first-term congressman with the kind of political favors that would make Jack Abramoff blush. McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating's expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul's estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as "Charlie Keating's Shangri-La." Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.
McCain did the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating, whose financial empire was on the brink of collapse. Federal regulators were closing in on Keating, who had taken federally insured deposits from his Lincoln Savings and Loan and leveraged them to make wildly risky real estate ventures. If regulators restricted his investments, Keating knew, it would all be over.
In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain's Senate campaign. Now, when Keating tried to stack the federal regulatory bank board with cronies, McCain made a phone call seeking to push them through. In 1987, in an unprecedented display of political intimidation, McCain also attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.
"Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution," says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. "And it hasn't happened since."
Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Lincoln. By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out.
McCain was ultimately given a slap on the wrist by the Senate Ethics Committee, which concluded only that he had exercised "poor judgment." The committee never investigated Cindy's investment with Keating.
Barack Obama: Tony Rezko
"Tony" Rezko is a businessman who has helped raise campaign money for Mr. Obama and many other Illinois politicians. He was convicted in June on 16 of 24 counts involving mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and aiding and abetting bribery.
The charges have no connection to Mr. Obama, but Rezko is tied to the Illinois senator in other ways.
Rezko and his family donated at least $21,457 to Mr. Obama and helped raise over $200,000 more, though not for his presidential bid. He also advised Mr. Obama on the purchase of a new Chicago home and, in his wife's name, purchased a vacant lot next door to the new Obama home when the seller wanted to dispose of both properties at the same time. Rezko then sold a slice of the property to Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama has donated Rezko's contributions to charity and says it was a mistake to work with Rezko on buying the house.
John McCain: Phil Gramm
Indeed, if the current financial crisis has a villain, it is Phil Gramm, who remains close to McCain. As chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s, Gramm ushered in — with McCain's fervent support — a massive wave of deregulation for insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, the aftershocks of which are just now being felt in Wall Street's catastrophic collapse. McCain, who has admitted that "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," relies on Gramm to guide him.
In a July 9, 2008 interview explaining McCain's plans in reforming the U.S. economy, Gramm explained the nation was not in a recession, stating, "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."
John McCain: Vicki Iseman
Whatever McCain's romantic entanglements with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, he was clearly in bed with her clients, who donated nearly $85,000 to his campaigns. One of her clients, Bud Paxson, set up a meeting with McCain in 1999, frustrated by the FCC's delay of his proposed takeover of a television station in Pittsburgh. Paxson had treated McCain well, offering the then-presidential candidate use of his corporate jet to fly to campaign events and ponying up $20,000 in campaign donations.
"You're the head of the commerce committee," Paxson told McCain, according to The Washington Post. "The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."
Iseman helped draft the text, and McCain sent the letter. Several weeks later — the day after McCain used Paxson's jet to fly to Florida for a fundraiser — McCain wrote another letter. FCC chair William Kennard sent a sharp rebuke to McCain, calling the senator's meddling "highly unusual." Nonetheless, within a week of McCain's second letter, the FCC ruled three-to-two in favor of Paxson's deal.
John McCain: U.S. Council for World Freedom
John McCain sat on the board of the extremist "U.S. Council for World Freedom"...which the Anti-Defamation League said "has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-semites".
John McCain: John Hagee
John McCain actively sought the endorsement of by the anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic pastor John Hagee, until he became a political liability in the press.
Consider the following pronouncements on Jews by Hagee, the man who McCain proudly introduced as an ally not too long ago. "It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.
And: How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for his chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings he had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come."
In conclusion, both of these guys have skeletons in their closets, but when you really compare the two, it's obvious that if Obama has a skeleton, McCain has his own terracota army.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Joe Six Pack
I was hesitant to post this, since it is not original content, but it so perfectly captures my thoughts on this whole "Joe Six-Pack" buzzword that has been flung around like monkey poop so much lately, part of the all out war on intellectualism.
My Fellow Joe Six-Packs (Courtesy of Copperwise)
Sarah Palin et al like to call us "Joe Six-Pack," and they think we like it too. They think it sounds folksy and homey and cute.
Sure. It's a folksy, homey, cute way to euphemistically call us something very close to trashy, ignorant hillbillies. We're just not supposed to be smart enough to realize it.
See, JSP isn't referring to our rock hard abs. JSP literally means "the blue collar guy who picks up a six pack of cheap beer every night after work and goes home to watch Nascar (and probably beat his wife/kids and light a cross on the black neighbor's lawn but we won't say anything about that wink wink nudge nudge)." That is the message that they are trying to get across to America.
We know you. You don't have a thought in your head beyond making sure you have food on the table and beer in the fridge. You want us to take care of you and do all the thinking for you. You're a demographic we've put together based on statistics of race, level of education, and family income. And we think that everyone who falls within those statistics is just exactly the same. And did we mention we don't think you're very bright?
And that, to them, based on statistics, is what they think of us middle Americans.
Are there a percentage of Americans who fit their definition? White (or POCs who are happy with their lot in life), blue collar, no higher education, racist, homophobic, specific brand of Christianity, afraid of intellectuals, jingoistic, sexist...of course there are.
Can we safely assume that demographic is already on their side? Fabulous. So now, JSP just refers to the undecided voter and the folks they want to pull over from the other side.
That is to say, us.
So, Governor Palin et al, let me tell you who the Joe Six-Pack that you think you're talking to really is.
Joe is the guy I worked with who served in Vietnam, worked construction, had four kids, thought Portland micro-brews were for hippies and weirdos -- and told me one day about having to change churches, because "our pastor spends all his time talking about how bad the gays are, and I go to church for God, and I really don't think God cares who you sleep with or who you marry." Oh, and he went back to school at 45 to get a degree in architecture, so I guess he won't be Joe Six-Pack soon. His income will put him into that Better Class of People y'all think you're part of.
Joe is a writer or an actor or an artist who waits tables, pumps gas, shelves books, does landscaping, delivers pizza, scrubs toilets, and otherwise works his or her ass off all day or night to pay the mortgage so they can continue to write or act or make art.
Joe is the lady down the street who is "just a secretary" and never finished college. She also reads D.H. Lawrence and lots of egghead poetry. Oh, and she can also name the newspapers she reads, but then she doesn't actually have time to read all of them.
Joe is a POC with parents of different races, who gets interrupted an awful lot at work to be asked "what ARE you?" by customers, and continues to bag your damn groceries with a smile. Then he goes home and watches Britcoms on PBS, plays long distance chess with a guy in Russia over the Interwebs, and feeds his kids before putting them to bed and reading them subversive stories by Neil Gaiman.
Joe is a stripper (who doesn't have a drug habit and isn't a prostitute.) She's putting herself through school. She's going to be a lawyer and look like one of you on the surface, but you're really gonna hate it when you're up against her in front of the Supreme Court.
Joe spends 8 hours a day on an assembly line with a wrench, turning bolts and hoping you don't send his job to a child in China. On Thursday nights he bowls with a bunch of construction workers and he does share a pitcher of beer with them. Budweiser, even. Then he goes home, puts on his ABBA records, and dances with his partner -- Andrew.
Joe comes in when you call I.T. because you've opened a forwarded executable file from your sister in an email with the header "Smile, God Loves You" and locked up your machine with a nasty killer worm. She smiles politely when you tell her how impressed you are that a pretty little girl like her knows so much about computers. Then she goes to her Tai Chi class and later dances naked in the back yard with her coven. But she drives a Chevy truck, so who knew?
Joe Six-Pack isn't who you think he/she is. You don't have a fucking clue about Joe Six-Pack.
I wish I were only talking to one camp. But I'm talking to my own, too. We "liberal elitists." Because we say the same kind of things when talking about "the average American." We assume we know them, and they are the same people Palin knows.
And that's kind of dangerous, and it's also kind of not true. Like I said, there are those people out there, and we know what camp they are in. But how many of us assumed "the average American" would say that Palin won the debate, because she didn't fall down and start speaking in tongues? And what are the polls saying? And hasn't our side also been moaning about how "Joe Six-Pack" wouldn't vote for a black man? Assuming "the average American" is that special demographic? Do we really think he did so well in the primaries because there's such a vast quantity of "intellectual elites" out there to compensate for all of the average people who'd naturally vote right wing? Come on, people.
Most of the "liberal elitists" I know are not, in fact, rich. Some are highly educated and working in lucrative professions. Some are highly educated and working class. Some, sadly, are incredibly liberal but not terribly educated (formally or autodidactically) and are just as easily led by sound bite as "the great unwashed" that they don't believe they are a part of.
But honestly, I know for a fact, pretty much everyone I know who will read this is, statistically, demographically, Joe Six-Pack.
And how many of you...us...truly fall into the assumed stereotype? Even if you're conservative? Even if you do like to buy a sixer now and again?
Are we the Joe Six-Pack they think they know?
When I get overwhelmed by all the things I feel passionately about -- racism, sexism, homophobia; when I despair that nothing is getting better and we're all just going to go on hating each other; when I start to fall into thinking that the doomsayers are right and nothing has improved and America just sucks...I hear Dr. King in my head.
I say good night to you by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who said, 'We ain't what we ought to be and we ain't what we want to be and we ain't what we're going to be. But thank God, we ain't what we was.'
And I look at the world, where things have changed a bit at a time, a step at a time. There are states where gay marriage is legal. We have a black Presidential candidate, and not, bless his heart, a Jesse Jackson running independently, but a black candidate who made it through our very inherently racist and generally crappy two party system to be the probable next President of the United States. And had it not been him, it would have been a woman.
We SO AIN'T what we ought to be or what we want to be. We are not even what I would call close. But one step at a time, one person at a time, we are steadily pressing on, trying to get there.
And the rich and powerful don't get to steal the credit for that.
The credit for the ongoing battle goes to Mr., Mrs., and Ms. Goddamn Joe Six-Pack. The agitators, the commenters, the people on the phone banks, the people in the streets marching, the people organizing, the people speaking out, the people working on their families and neighbors to make the changes that have to happen for us to change our society for the better...
Joe Six-Pack.
You are JSP. I am JSP. I grew up white and middle class. I have that endangered mortgage. I worry about putting food on the table. Hell, I'm an artist and a writer, I'm not even as high up as blue collar...I can barely find a good shirt to wear. And I'm bisexual, polyamorous, and pagan. And by the way, I know Cindy Soccer Mom. She's a full time nurse, "single" mother, drives a minivan, takes her kids to soccer and dance classes -- and goes home at night to strap on a leather harness and roger her girlfriend silly.
I am Joe Six-Pack. I am not who they think that they are talking to. Are you?
My Fellow Joe Six-Packs (Courtesy of Copperwise)
Sarah Palin et al like to call us "Joe Six-Pack," and they think we like it too. They think it sounds folksy and homey and cute.
Sure. It's a folksy, homey, cute way to euphemistically call us something very close to trashy, ignorant hillbillies. We're just not supposed to be smart enough to realize it.
See, JSP isn't referring to our rock hard abs. JSP literally means "the blue collar guy who picks up a six pack of cheap beer every night after work and goes home to watch Nascar (and probably beat his wife/kids and light a cross on the black neighbor's lawn but we won't say anything about that wink wink nudge nudge)." That is the message that they are trying to get across to America.
We know you. You don't have a thought in your head beyond making sure you have food on the table and beer in the fridge. You want us to take care of you and do all the thinking for you. You're a demographic we've put together based on statistics of race, level of education, and family income. And we think that everyone who falls within those statistics is just exactly the same. And did we mention we don't think you're very bright?
And that, to them, based on statistics, is what they think of us middle Americans.
Are there a percentage of Americans who fit their definition? White (or POCs who are happy with their lot in life), blue collar, no higher education, racist, homophobic, specific brand of Christianity, afraid of intellectuals, jingoistic, sexist...of course there are.
Can we safely assume that demographic is already on their side? Fabulous. So now, JSP just refers to the undecided voter and the folks they want to pull over from the other side.
That is to say, us.
So, Governor Palin et al, let me tell you who the Joe Six-Pack that you think you're talking to really is.
Joe is the guy I worked with who served in Vietnam, worked construction, had four kids, thought Portland micro-brews were for hippies and weirdos -- and told me one day about having to change churches, because "our pastor spends all his time talking about how bad the gays are, and I go to church for God, and I really don't think God cares who you sleep with or who you marry." Oh, and he went back to school at 45 to get a degree in architecture, so I guess he won't be Joe Six-Pack soon. His income will put him into that Better Class of People y'all think you're part of.
Joe is a writer or an actor or an artist who waits tables, pumps gas, shelves books, does landscaping, delivers pizza, scrubs toilets, and otherwise works his or her ass off all day or night to pay the mortgage so they can continue to write or act or make art.
Joe is the lady down the street who is "just a secretary" and never finished college. She also reads D.H. Lawrence and lots of egghead poetry. Oh, and she can also name the newspapers she reads, but then she doesn't actually have time to read all of them.
Joe is a POC with parents of different races, who gets interrupted an awful lot at work to be asked "what ARE you?" by customers, and continues to bag your damn groceries with a smile. Then he goes home and watches Britcoms on PBS, plays long distance chess with a guy in Russia over the Interwebs, and feeds his kids before putting them to bed and reading them subversive stories by Neil Gaiman.
Joe is a stripper (who doesn't have a drug habit and isn't a prostitute.) She's putting herself through school. She's going to be a lawyer and look like one of you on the surface, but you're really gonna hate it when you're up against her in front of the Supreme Court.
Joe spends 8 hours a day on an assembly line with a wrench, turning bolts and hoping you don't send his job to a child in China. On Thursday nights he bowls with a bunch of construction workers and he does share a pitcher of beer with them. Budweiser, even. Then he goes home, puts on his ABBA records, and dances with his partner -- Andrew.
Joe comes in when you call I.T. because you've opened a forwarded executable file from your sister in an email with the header "Smile, God Loves You" and locked up your machine with a nasty killer worm. She smiles politely when you tell her how impressed you are that a pretty little girl like her knows so much about computers. Then she goes to her Tai Chi class and later dances naked in the back yard with her coven. But she drives a Chevy truck, so who knew?
Joe Six-Pack isn't who you think he/she is. You don't have a fucking clue about Joe Six-Pack.
I wish I were only talking to one camp. But I'm talking to my own, too. We "liberal elitists." Because we say the same kind of things when talking about "the average American." We assume we know them, and they are the same people Palin knows.
And that's kind of dangerous, and it's also kind of not true. Like I said, there are those people out there, and we know what camp they are in. But how many of us assumed "the average American" would say that Palin won the debate, because she didn't fall down and start speaking in tongues? And what are the polls saying? And hasn't our side also been moaning about how "Joe Six-Pack" wouldn't vote for a black man? Assuming "the average American" is that special demographic? Do we really think he did so well in the primaries because there's such a vast quantity of "intellectual elites" out there to compensate for all of the average people who'd naturally vote right wing? Come on, people.
Most of the "liberal elitists" I know are not, in fact, rich. Some are highly educated and working in lucrative professions. Some are highly educated and working class. Some, sadly, are incredibly liberal but not terribly educated (formally or autodidactically) and are just as easily led by sound bite as "the great unwashed" that they don't believe they are a part of.
But honestly, I know for a fact, pretty much everyone I know who will read this is, statistically, demographically, Joe Six-Pack.
And how many of you...us...truly fall into the assumed stereotype? Even if you're conservative? Even if you do like to buy a sixer now and again?
Are we the Joe Six-Pack they think they know?
When I get overwhelmed by all the things I feel passionately about -- racism, sexism, homophobia; when I despair that nothing is getting better and we're all just going to go on hating each other; when I start to fall into thinking that the doomsayers are right and nothing has improved and America just sucks...I hear Dr. King in my head.
I say good night to you by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who said, 'We ain't what we ought to be and we ain't what we want to be and we ain't what we're going to be. But thank God, we ain't what we was.'
And I look at the world, where things have changed a bit at a time, a step at a time. There are states where gay marriage is legal. We have a black Presidential candidate, and not, bless his heart, a Jesse Jackson running independently, but a black candidate who made it through our very inherently racist and generally crappy two party system to be the probable next President of the United States. And had it not been him, it would have been a woman.
We SO AIN'T what we ought to be or what we want to be. We are not even what I would call close. But one step at a time, one person at a time, we are steadily pressing on, trying to get there.
And the rich and powerful don't get to steal the credit for that.
The credit for the ongoing battle goes to Mr., Mrs., and Ms. Goddamn Joe Six-Pack. The agitators, the commenters, the people on the phone banks, the people in the streets marching, the people organizing, the people speaking out, the people working on their families and neighbors to make the changes that have to happen for us to change our society for the better...
Joe Six-Pack.
You are JSP. I am JSP. I grew up white and middle class. I have that endangered mortgage. I worry about putting food on the table. Hell, I'm an artist and a writer, I'm not even as high up as blue collar...I can barely find a good shirt to wear. And I'm bisexual, polyamorous, and pagan. And by the way, I know Cindy Soccer Mom. She's a full time nurse, "single" mother, drives a minivan, takes her kids to soccer and dance classes -- and goes home at night to strap on a leather harness and roger her girlfriend silly.
I am Joe Six-Pack. I am not who they think that they are talking to. Are you?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
McCain's HealthCare Plan
John McCain's stated goal for our health care system is: "Remove the favorable tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance and provide a tax credit to all individuals and families to increase incentives for insurance coverage; promote insurance competition; and contain costs through payment changes to providers, tort reform and other measures."
There are several aspects to any health care reform package that should be considered. Very broadly:
1. Cost of premiums
2. Overall cost (I.E. hospital bills in emergencies)
3. Availability of coverage
4. Quality of care
Senator McCain doesn't address all of these (which is problem one) but I wanted to talk about what he does address. All of the information here is from McCain's website, Kaiser's health care plan's comparison, and factcheck.org.
1. Cost of premiums: Stated goal is to reduce through competition and provide a tax break of $2,500-$5,000 to those with private insurance. However, as Obama tried to point out in the debate (he did a bad job), his plan really screws over 100 million Americans with employee provided health insurance- the only remotely affordable health insurance the "un-insurable" can get in this country.
One of his plan planks on premiums is: "Reform the tax code to eliminate the exclusion of the value of health insurance plans offered by employers from workers’ taxable income." This overwhelmingly outweighs the $2,500-$5,000 rebate because it makes money your employers pay toward your health care taxable income against you. The purpose of this is to discourage you from having health insurance from your employer and get into the market for private insurance, supposedly increasing competition. Unfortunately, beyond this theory of competition, the McCain plan does nothing to actually encourage price drops. Considering that more Americans are insured than ever before (NOT by percentage, by simple volume) and prices go up every year with the cost of health care, without comprehensive reform there is no guarantee, and for that matter, no impetus at all for costs to come down.
On average for a family of four, employers contribute $12,000 per year to the cost of health insurance for those on an employer provided plan. $12,000 minus $5,000 = a $7,000 tax increase per year for almost a third of the country. For individuals it's much less of a punch, for example in my case it would end up being about a $900 increase.
2. As for the cost of care, Obama and McCain have some similarities when it comes to prevention, frivolous lawsuits, and generic drugs. However McCain's overall philosophy on how to bring costs down is still competition. Health insurance companies exist to make money, not to care about people. That isn't a moral fault- as a corporation that's the way it should be- but in this economy that is only serving to eliminate competition and force consolidation we are going to have to enforce price ceilings like any other commodity, a stable of the Obama plan.
3. McCain will leave it up to states to pass laws requiring insurances companies to insure people. This is a horrifically inadequate solution to a downright immoral system where people who went to the doctor for a yeast infection are denied health insurance. Not to mention people who have been CURED of their condition (who ever heard of that right?) being un-insurable.
4. Both McCain and Obama's plans on this seem to be full or jargon; but it basically boils down to new accountibility standards, which is fine with me. I think the biggest issue we have though is emergency room care, particularly in inner cities, which only Obama seems to even (lightly) address with care disparity accountability based on region.
Obama's healthcare plan is far from perfect. But everyone agrees that his priority is getting people health care instead of continuing the trend toward more families not being able to afford it or even qualify for it. The bottom line is that McCain's alternatives won't work- something even writers at the Wall Street Journal agree with.
There are several aspects to any health care reform package that should be considered. Very broadly:
1. Cost of premiums
2. Overall cost (I.E. hospital bills in emergencies)
3. Availability of coverage
4. Quality of care
Senator McCain doesn't address all of these (which is problem one) but I wanted to talk about what he does address. All of the information here is from McCain's website, Kaiser's health care plan's comparison, and factcheck.org.
1. Cost of premiums: Stated goal is to reduce through competition and provide a tax break of $2,500-$5,000 to those with private insurance. However, as Obama tried to point out in the debate (he did a bad job), his plan really screws over 100 million Americans with employee provided health insurance- the only remotely affordable health insurance the "un-insurable" can get in this country.
One of his plan planks on premiums is: "Reform the tax code to eliminate the exclusion of the value of health insurance plans offered by employers from workers’ taxable income." This overwhelmingly outweighs the $2,500-$5,000 rebate because it makes money your employers pay toward your health care taxable income against you. The purpose of this is to discourage you from having health insurance from your employer and get into the market for private insurance, supposedly increasing competition. Unfortunately, beyond this theory of competition, the McCain plan does nothing to actually encourage price drops. Considering that more Americans are insured than ever before (NOT by percentage, by simple volume) and prices go up every year with the cost of health care, without comprehensive reform there is no guarantee, and for that matter, no impetus at all for costs to come down.
On average for a family of four, employers contribute $12,000 per year to the cost of health insurance for those on an employer provided plan. $12,000 minus $5,000 = a $7,000 tax increase per year for almost a third of the country. For individuals it's much less of a punch, for example in my case it would end up being about a $900 increase.
2. As for the cost of care, Obama and McCain have some similarities when it comes to prevention, frivolous lawsuits, and generic drugs. However McCain's overall philosophy on how to bring costs down is still competition. Health insurance companies exist to make money, not to care about people. That isn't a moral fault- as a corporation that's the way it should be- but in this economy that is only serving to eliminate competition and force consolidation we are going to have to enforce price ceilings like any other commodity, a stable of the Obama plan.
3. McCain will leave it up to states to pass laws requiring insurances companies to insure people. This is a horrifically inadequate solution to a downright immoral system where people who went to the doctor for a yeast infection are denied health insurance. Not to mention people who have been CURED of their condition (who ever heard of that right?) being un-insurable.
4. Both McCain and Obama's plans on this seem to be full or jargon; but it basically boils down to new accountibility standards, which is fine with me. I think the biggest issue we have though is emergency room care, particularly in inner cities, which only Obama seems to even (lightly) address with care disparity accountability based on region.
Obama's healthcare plan is far from perfect. But everyone agrees that his priority is getting people health care instead of continuing the trend toward more families not being able to afford it or even qualify for it. The bottom line is that McCain's alternatives won't work- something even writers at the Wall Street Journal agree with.
Jerusalem
I think that Jessica and I have talked about as much as we need to on the part Israel is playing in the 2008 election, so this is going to be my last post on the topic unless something else comes up in a later debate.
Yesterday I posted an Obama quote from the AIPAC conference: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,"
Someone pointed out that Obama later retracted this statement, and he should have. As far as I understand it from some basic research and talking to a few Israeli friends, an undivided Jerusalem is a fairly extreme right proposition. Palestinians were horrified by that quote and it would have been unhelpful if he were elected and hadn't retracted it.
I think you could chalk it up to a Biden-esque gaffe, but it doesn't detract from the point of the post- he's on board.
Yesterday I posted an Obama quote from the AIPAC conference: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,"
Someone pointed out that Obama later retracted this statement, and he should have. As far as I understand it from some basic research and talking to a few Israeli friends, an undivided Jerusalem is a fairly extreme right proposition. Palestinians were horrified by that quote and it would have been unhelpful if he were elected and hadn't retracted it.
I think you could chalk it up to a Biden-esque gaffe, but it doesn't detract from the point of the post- he's on board.
Monday, September 29, 2008
More Obama Israel Quotes
Use labs.google.com/inquotes and find anything Anti-Israel that Obama has ever said. Please judge Obama's stance on Israel onwhat he has done for Israel and what he has said instead of email chains and fake phone calls.
"You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington."
"I strongly condemn President Ahmadinejad's outrageous remarks at the United Nations, and am disappointed that he had a platform to air his hateful and anti-Semitic views. The threat from Iran's nuclear program is grave. Now is the time for Americans to unite on behalf of the strong sanctions that are needed to increase pressure on the Iranian regime." "...join me in supporting a bipartisan bill to increase pressure on the Iranian regime by allowing states and private companies to divest from companies doing business in Iran. The security of our ally Israel is too important to play partisan politics, and it is deeply disappointing that Senator McCain and a few of his allies in Congress feel otherwise."
"I think that a nuclear-armed Iran is not just a threat to us, it's a threat to Israel. It is a game-changer in the region. It's unacceptable. And that is why I've said that I won't take any option off the table, including military, to prevent them (Iranians) from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,"
“throughout my career in the state Legislature, and now in the U.S. Senate, I have been a stalwart friend of Israel. On every single issue related to Israel's security, I have been unwavering, and will continue to be unwavering.”
"I wish Prime Minister Olmert well and have told him how much I admire his pursuit of peace and his staunch defense of Israel's security. I look forward to working closely with Israel's next prime minister to strengthen the U.S.-Israeli partnership, and to advance Israel's security." "...is once again demonstrating that it can handle transition, and we are reminded today that the U.S.-Israeli relationship transcends parties and individual leaders."
Obama will support Israel. Seriously people.
As a Jew, and a passionate supporter of Israel, I understand why Senator McCain appears to be the safer choice for Israel:
1. He says "Israel" in a lot of his speeches.
2. His supporters believe that the second coming of Christ can only occur when Israel, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, belongs to the Jews. Of course all the Jews who don't accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior will then be damned to Hell, but anyway. . .
3. He is hot-tempered and military-minded. He seems more likely to support aggressive Israeli defense efforts against their enemies.
However, we have another candidate in this race who openly and explicitly supports Israel. Another candidate who may not feel the same religious fervor to keep Israel in Jewish hands for the End of Days, but who understands the situation from a realistic perspective, and has every intention of supporting Israel. Here's why I believe Barack Obama can and will support Israel:
1. Barack Obama expressed his explicit and, what I believe to be his heartfelt support of Israel at the 2008 AIPAC conference. Here is his speech in its entirety:
2. Barack Obama has made his support of Israel clear to the media. He has said that Israel will have an "unwavering ally" in him. Watch him speak about America's "special relationship" with Israel on CNN here:
3. There is this idea that Obama thinks he can just talk his way into peace in the middle east. He understands this isn't the case. Watch that here:
4. Obama is not just talk. On Jan. 22, 2008, he sent the following letter to U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad:
5. I have tried to find evidence of the rumored hypocrtical speech Obama gave to the Palestinian community. Besides evidence that he has some Palestinian and Muslim supporters, I can't find anything to support this idea that Obama is pandering to both sides. And I think Obama's focus on diplomacy alone would make him a more appealing choice to ANYONE in the global community, not just Muslims.
I invite anyone with any real evidence that Obama will not fully support Israel to leave a comment on this post.
1. He says "Israel" in a lot of his speeches.
2. His supporters believe that the second coming of Christ can only occur when Israel, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, belongs to the Jews. Of course all the Jews who don't accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior will then be damned to Hell, but anyway. . .
3. He is hot-tempered and military-minded. He seems more likely to support aggressive Israeli defense efforts against their enemies.
However, we have another candidate in this race who openly and explicitly supports Israel. Another candidate who may not feel the same religious fervor to keep Israel in Jewish hands for the End of Days, but who understands the situation from a realistic perspective, and has every intention of supporting Israel. Here's why I believe Barack Obama can and will support Israel:
1. Barack Obama expressed his explicit and, what I believe to be his heartfelt support of Israel at the 2008 AIPAC conference. Here is his speech in its entirety:
2. Barack Obama has made his support of Israel clear to the media. He has said that Israel will have an "unwavering ally" in him. Watch him speak about America's "special relationship" with Israel on CNN here:
3. There is this idea that Obama thinks he can just talk his way into peace in the middle east. He understands this isn't the case. Watch that here:
4. Obama is not just talk. On Jan. 22, 2008, he sent the following letter to U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad:
5. I have tried to find evidence of the rumored hypocrtical speech Obama gave to the Palestinian community. Besides evidence that he has some Palestinian and Muslim supporters, I can't find anything to support this idea that Obama is pandering to both sides. And I think Obama's focus on diplomacy alone would make him a more appealing choice to ANYONE in the global community, not just Muslims.
I invite anyone with any real evidence that Obama will not fully support Israel to leave a comment on this post.
America's Mixed Bailout Feelings
One thing is clear from the last week of bailout negotiations: Americans have, at least for the time being, gotten past letting fear control our emotions. In that respect, it should be a proud day for our country. 130 republicans and 95 democrats actually listened to the voices of the American people and rejected what many call "Corporate Socialism". Rather than give the public the full details of the bailout plan and enough time to make up our own minds, the House decided to make a snap vote under the mysterious guise of expediency, and it failed. On the other more pessimistic hand, among 38 incumbent congressmen in races rated as "toss-up" or "lean" by Swing State Project, just 8 voted for the bailout as opposed to 30 against: a batting average of .211. By comparison, the vote among congressmen who don't have as much to worry about was essentially even: 197 for, 198 against.
In any case, it all amounts to the same tactic that got us into Iraq, scare us so fucking stupid that we don't bother to educate ourselves.
The fact of the matter is that we've been living on the credit card far too long. We are fighting two wars that are being financed entirely by funny money, and are the only conflicts in the history of the country that have not accompanied a tax increase. Pulling 700 billion dollars out of our ass to stabilize the economy in the present is only going to serve to bog us down in the future. I think we have a moral imperative to not scoot by in the present and dump wallstreet's idiocy on our kids in the future just because we could.
Anyway, here are more reasons why the bailout is bad. Take these with a grain of salt and recognize my bias though- I'm 26, make almost enough to buy a condo, and live in freaking Los Angeles. A total collapse of the housing market is the best thing that could ever happen to me.
First of all, a bailout is morally irresponsible. Here is a short list of some moral dilemmas that a bailout poses:
- A bailout sends the wrong message about personal responsibility. It tells Americans in no uncertain terms that the major financial decisions they've made will have no consequences; the government will pick up the tab.
- A bailout allows banks, mortgage brokers, speculators, and refinancers to benefit from abuse of the system. By doing so, it encourages these people to act irresponsibly in the future. As long as we are ABOUT TO DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH papa bear will fix it.
- A bailout will force Americans who acted responsibly to pay for those who did not. My wife and I are going to have to save probably 20% to buy a house- but even still might be out of luck because speculators and over-extenders boosted home prices beyond affordability- and now we'll be forced to pay for the homes of those who were less scrupulous.
- A bailout will have a disproportionately negative affect on people under 35. Americans under 35 are disproportionately underrepresented among homeowners; only 42% of Americans under 35 own homes, compared to 80% for Americans 55 and older. A government bailout will perpetuate this gap by propping-up inflated housing prices, thereby permanently pricing a generation of youth out of the market. And in a Kafkaesque irony, these folks will actually have to pay to prevent themselves from buying homes (i.e., taxes).
But a bailout is also fiscally irresponsible:
- A bailout shifts the risks of falling market prices from financially secure banks to the American taxpayer. As a result, either taxes or the federal deficit will skyrocket.
- See this PDF from Denniger here.
- And another one here.
- Additionally, the methodology of the distribution of the 700 billion dollars is subject to the whims of Henry Paulson. Yes, the failed bill had oversight in it, but how many economics professors are in Congress? Oh yeah.
Finally, I'll close with some pretty hiliarious pre-vote McCain gushing. Oh John, you came and you made it allllll better...
"[T]his bill would not have been agreed to had it not been for John McCain. ... But, you know, this is a bipartisan accomplishment, a bipartisan success. And if people want to get something done in Washington, they just watch John McCain." — Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, 9/29/08
"Earlier in the week, when Senator McCain came back to Washington, there had been no deal reached. ... What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all the parties to the table, including the House Republicans." — Senior adviser Steve Schmidt, 9/28/08
"But here are the facts, and I’m not overselling anything. The fact is that the House Republicans were not in the mix at all. John didn’t phone this one in. He came and actually did something. ... You can’t phone something like this in. Thank God John came back." — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 9/28/08
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The Hack that Wasn't and Why It Matters
First, some brief background on me:
I have two bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Information Systems. I was in IT for about six years before moving into IT management (totally different world!) and for much of my college career was deeply fascinated by hackers, hacking, and all that other immature pointless crap.
Hacking has two motives. First is underground corporate warfare. Until recently, the most damaging computer worms and virii ever to spread through the internet were originally designed specifically to attack another corporation's network, exploit known vulnerabilities, and dash consumer confidence in a bid to wipe out the competition. Second, and this is much more common, is what is commonly known as increasing the size of your "E-Peen". Basically, bragging rights and being funny.
Now that we have that out of the way, I want to definitively tell you that while the motivation to get into Sarah Palin's email account fell into the latter category, it does not fit what we commonly define as a hack. Then I'll tell you what it says about her and the campaign.
Calling what happened to her Yahoo! email account a hack is like calling some guy walking into your open front door breaking and entering. It would be like calling someone who jumped out of a moving car the fastest man on earth. It was not a hack, it was the exploitation of a careless person.
I could have "hacked" Sarah Palin's email account.
Here's the details. Every free "consumer level" (yahoo, hotmail, aol) email account has a password recovery feature, except gmail, which has a far superior method. Password recovery simply asks you those generic questions you've filled in a hundred times- your favorite pet, the street you grew up on, etc. If you didn't know the details of this before now and are putting two and two together here- yes, your disgust is valid.
Googling is not a hack. All the "hacker" had to do was google basic information about Sarah Palin- her zipcode in Wasila (there are only two zipcodes in Alaska) and where she met Todd Palin. A couple more google searches led him to the answer- Wasila High School. Good times.
We've established that anyone with a little motivation and the idea to do so could have socially engineered this exploit. Now, let's think about what this means.
It was widely known, and controversial, that she even had this email account in the first place. Speculation was brewing that she was using it for official state business to get around any kind of oversight and stay under the radar. That largely turned out to be false- the kid who got into the account admitted he was rifling around for incriminating emails but found none. So, here is the question: You mean to tell me that during the vetting process, during the post-selection hype, during the period of microscopic analysis everyone was heaping on her, even after the email scandal emerged nobody in that campaign thought to make sure that account was secure? Not to mention anyone in the Alaska state government or her cabinet?
It absolutely blows my mind that a campaign of hundreds of expert politicians with secret service oversight, with undoubtedly a small army of IT professionals, web developers, and consultants let that just breeze right over. Or even if someone did point it out, it never got fixed. It is something I would absolutely get fired from my job for.
These people have no idea what they are doing.
I don't expect either Sarah Palin or John McCain to be tech savvy (although you do NOT have to be a pro to know this stuff), but I expect a certain level of professionalism and foresight in a campaign of hundreds. Haven't they seen what happens to celebs and public officials when they aren't careful with their technology? (See: Paris Hilton phone hack) John McCain is going to pick his cabinet largely from the people helping him in his campaign, just like any good old boy.
But, clearly they haven't a clue.
Heckuva job.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Opinion: Bailout Package
Marcy Kaptur, D-OH, absolutely obliterates the Bush bailout proposal in a youtube video that is going viral. Far be it from me to stop an e-virus!
The implications of having a $700 billion bailout bill that has no oversight are staggering. This is corporate welfare in it's perfect form- naysayers will be ostracized, wafflers blitzed with a campaign of fear and the media absolutely complicit in letting these idiots have their checks.
The facts: The bill gives one man- Paulson, the power to buy up bad mortgages and make investments in struggling companies. HE decides. Does anyone else see 700 billion red flags in their head? If Paulson pays too little for an asset, he won’t stop the business from going under. If he pays too much, he enriches its shareholders. He has to figure out on his own what that perfect dollar amount is, who it goes to, and so on. These companies employ armies of lobbists who will pressure him to pay too much and generate a class of grateful investment bankers while taxpayers get the shaft, in the process avoiding a financial crisis but generating large costs down the line which will ballon the rich-poor gap in this country.
Its almost like Bush and the Treasury want to "deregulate" the bailout. Deregulation doesn't work. It didn't work for the California energy market, it didn't work for the S&Ls in the 80s, and it obviously isn't helping us now. When was the last time what congress does came close to impacting you as much as the five CEOs of these criminally negligent corporations? They were given the tools by Washington to screw up, and they are getting a free pass for it, paid for by us.
Everyone agrees that the consequences of ignoring the problem outweigh the flaws of the bill. But why is it so horrible to ask for accountibility and oversight? Will that somehow delay the immediate relief the market needs?
Isn't lack of oversight exactly how this happened?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Opinion Topic: Town Hall Meetings
On June 4th, Senator McCain invited Senator Obama to take part in a series of 10 town hall meetings. Since the proposal fell through, Senator McCain has often referenced his plan as a way the negative tone of the campaign could have been avoided, making it seem as if it was Senator Obama's fault the campaign was going in the direction it was. Beyond that fuzzy logic (see: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/john-mccain-town-hall-stalker-let-us.html for a good analogy) I wanted to know more specifics about why the proposal was flawed and why the Obama campaign rejected it. After all, the idea is certainly intriguing.
Here are excerpts directly from the McCain campaign's formal proposal.
"I propose these town hall meetings be as free from the regimented trappings, rules and spectacle of formal debates as possible"
This first statement seems to encapsulate the spirit of the entire proposal. But as I'll later underscore, the "deregulated" theme of the proposed town hall meetings is a carefully crafted fish hook that favors Senator McCain.
"and that we pledge to the American people we will not allow the idea to die on the negotiation table as our campaigns work out the details."
While not relevant to the format, I wanted to point out that the Obama campaign's counter-proposal of five meetings with various formats was rejected by the McCain campaign, and then never brought back to the table for discussion again with a counter-counter proposal.
"These town halls should be attended by an audience of between two to four hundred selected by an independent polling agency,"
The devil is in the details. What "independent polling agency"? Why so few people? Why two to four hundred? Analysis below.
"could be sixty to ninety minutes in length, have very limited moderation by an independent local moderator, take blind questions from the audience selected by the moderator and allow for equally proportional time for answers by each of us."
Say "Independent Local Moderator" to yourself ten times fast. I don't really feel the need to deconstruct that one. Blind questions from the audience? Why not questions on topics that are guaranteed relevant to the American people, carefully crafted and well-thought out?
Here are the bullet point reasons why it would have been a terrible idea:
• At the time of this proposal, Senator Obama hadn't even slept it off after officially declaring victory over Senator Clinton. He had plenty of work to de re-uniting the Democratic Party all over the country before he turned his attention to McCain, while McCain has wrapped up the nomination months previous.
• Regular debates would have helped McCain compensate for Obama's fundraising advantage by providing him with regular, free media exposure. McCain even pseudo-joked about it- "Given our expenses, I know my campaign would agree to it," You would too if you were being outraised 10:1 at the time.
• Given his 50 state strategy, why would Obama want to use his valuable time speaking to 200 when he can easily speak to crowds of 5,000, 10,000, or more?
Further, the Obama counter-proposal of five joint meetings would have actually been the most of any presidential campaign in the modern era. Harkening back to Lincoln-Douglas and the Kennedy debates is a ploy that endears McCain to those wanting to return to a simpler time as the Guardian puts it, "The press sure eats it up, playing it as a charming artifact of pre-modern Americana, an outgrowth of flinty self-governing New England.".
Unfortunately for him, this is the age of fervent media sensationalism and the internet. Given the state of our culture and media, I don't think it will ever be possible to return to a time where town-hall meetings are a viable presidential vetting process. The ratings for the presidential debates in 2004 weren't much to write home about, and there were only three of them. The Guardian directly follows the quote above with: "There is but one problem: it is nothing of the sort. The town hall meeting that is a staple of the McCain campaign and may well partially replace this fall's debates is instead ersatz and hollow, a grotesque parody of a venerable institution, the New England town meeting." The Brits can really give a zinger. What the article goes on to explain is that an actual town hall meeting (such as those still used in Vermont) is, for the modern politician, absolutely terrifying.
• The mayor is the moderator.
• The entire town is invited.
• Absolutely anyone can ask a question.
Yikes. By contrast, a Rovian-Bush and now McCain "town-hall" meeting is a hand-picked group of supporters where dissidents are forcibly removed:
Not quite the town hall meetings of our forefathers.
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