Dannis Adamson has some wealth he needs to spread around
Something like
7 million
bucks worth.
I don't have any recollection of his run for governor two years ago, but
it turns out he was withholding income and payroll taxes from his
employees' pay for the California nursing homes he's been running,
and gee, never got around to sending it in to the IRS.
Joe Turner says there was no cheating!
Joe the Magician
got wind of my comment on Wednesday,
and wrote to tell me that "no video editing or camera tricks were
used in that video. I performed it live and could do it for you
right now."
I watched it again, more carefully, and I see that I was misled by the
quick hand-waving into thinking there was a video cut. It's a good
trick. (And, given October's market performance, I wish he would
perform it for me several times on all the $1s I can get my hands
on.)
"If it didn’t ring sincere enough for you in the video, let me assure
you that it is sincerely felt. The illusion was simply a neat visual
metaphor upon which to hang the point I was making... same thing I do in a
lot of my work, using magical visual effects as a framework around which
to tell the story that my client wants to tell... whether it’s about a
person, place, product, company, charity, or other entity. Waving
wheat, ones-to-hundreds, whatever."
Thanks for writing, Joe.
Now, about the point you were making. You do know that whole "spread the
wealth" thing is a useless caricature that the McCain-Palin campaign
took out of context and has been flogging mercilessly, don't you? If
we're talking parlor tricks, hand-waving is a Good Thing. If we're
talking leadership for the country, Not So Good. As responsible,
productive members of society, we all have to chip in and pay for the
infrastructure, the common defense, and yes, the safety nets that make
it all possible.
Our "free enterprise system," as you call it, "transforming good ideas
and hard work into prosperity" is a shared undertaking. Taxes are a fact
of life. We should make them as fair as we can, and as simple as we can.
We've dug ourselves into a huge hole of debt (in a fine, bipartisan
manner), and the idea that we can fix the problem by lowering taxes
(thus pushing the debt onto our children and grandchildren, through
inflation, and worse), well, that would be one hell of a magic
trick, you have to admit.
Just in case you haven't heard enough
about the Idaho CD-01 Congressional race,
Jill Kuraitis is wondering if we might be seeing a harbinger of a
shift away from the full-on Code Red of our Reddest of Red states.
And speaking of apologies that are overdue
There's the one for the
rubber checks
Bill Sali signed as a 23-year-old farm hand, the debt still
unpaid. Sali's spokesman Wayne Hoffman has a special gift for making
statements that leave you wide-eyed in incredulity:
"Bill's been a big supporter of farms. He's worked on a farm, he's been
very helpful to Idaho agriculture. It's why he has the support of so
many farmers."
Marianne DeShazo says "This is one farm family he did not support."
Will he succeed in getting his felony convictions overturned? Or in
getting the people of Alaska to re-elect him to the U.S. Senate? Or in
keeping two-thirds of his colleagues from expelling him if they do?
We will be staying tuned.
Apology needed
The state Democratic Party did offer a
"statement," admitting "regrettable" aspects of the "completely
unintentional oversight," but Jim Hansen should have done better, and
apologized directly for publishing the Social Security numbers of Bill
Sali and his wife.
It was a big mistake, and there should have been no "buts" in
the press release about it.
The best we (all of us, not just Idaho partisans) can hope for is that
the mistake will prompt more attention to the important privacy issues
that have been so-honored in the breach during the Bush/Cheney
administration. "Identity theft" is a problem, yes, but it is far from
the worst economic, or civil liberty issue before us.
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth,
frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions
in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured,
will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm
belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear
itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes
needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of
our national life a leadership of frankness and a vigor has met with
that understanding and support of the people themselves which is
essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that
support to leadership in these critical days."
How strange it seems that the so-called conservative party, and the one
that imagines patriotism to be its special reserve, is so fearful of
weakness that it continues to destroy the fabric of society—no,
really—with policies and actions in near exact opposition to
what our founders intended.
Our financial crisis was brought on in large measure by greed coupled
with remarkable disregard for the common good. Such disregard, in fact,
that it has proven contrary to even the self-interest of all but
a very, very few.
The crisis of our international reputation was brought about by blind
fear driving us beyond the measured retaliation for the horrific
terrorism of 9/11, focused on the perpertrators, to a war of choice, of
almost naked imperial aggression.
And now the fear of redirection from the disastrous path we've been on
has a sizeable part of the population
stocking
up on arms and ammo. The owner of Larry's Sporting Goods, in Nampa
Idaho:
"Sales are definitely up. People are buying more guns and ammo because
they are afraid of Obama."
The good news is the that the wingnuts who make for such colorful news are
not yet in the majority. Sales are up, yes, but well short of insane,
despite what firearm retailers who ask not to be identified might
"sense": 10% for the year, doubtless more for the last (and next)
month, but most of us will get along just fine with the self-defense we
already have.
30.Oct.2008
Sarah Palin: Be very afraid
Changing the subject to something, anything other than the
economy. She didn't even blink.
Kevin Richert's
viewer's guide for the races to watch in the Boise Boise
is an entertaining read.
Driving Congress into a ditch
Our current President has approval ratings that are so bad, he's been
persona non grata on the campaign trail for his party's nominee.
One of McCain's best moments in the three debates was
when he repudiated
George W. Bush most directly. (Not that his voting record supports
that repudiation, really.)
It could be worse. In fact, it is worse, for voters' approval
rating of Congress. Worst President ever, yeah, but Congress
worse than him?
If so, it's worth asking how it got that way. At least part of the
answer is that this is the way the newly-minted minority party in 2006
wanted it. We haven't heard much of anything about the importance of
"up or down votes" since the Republicans found themselves in a position
to only say "no" to things.
The reversal on
use of the filibuster has set a new standard for
obstructionism.
The 111th Congress will not be as easy to obstruct, but that won't stop
the minority from trying every trick in the book and few new ones. And
when all is said and—not—done, expect an even stronger
blame game if the
majority can't route around the damage.
Thinking about acorns
Not ACORN, but
acorns, by the tens, hundreds, thousands. Buckets full of acorns.
Raining down upon our roof, carried around the yard by squirrels,
planting themselves (or being planted) here, there and everywhere.
If you're in the Boise area, and are interested in an oak tree that
really likes this part of the world, look us up. We have them
from acorn size, on up to 5 and 6 feet tall, and we'd be happy to
share.
"Joe the Magician" is some kind of instant classic. Watch carefully as
he turns five $1 bills into five $100 bills! Now that's the kind of
guy we want in the White House, ain't it? Even if his sleight of hand is
too lame to actually pull off the trick, and he needs video editing to
get the job done?!
Let's just say Morris'
People in the
middle work comes across as (a) more sincere, (b) less b.s.,
and (c) better produced. Advertising is what it is, a medium of
persuasion. Just because the video is cheesy (or vice versa) doesn't
make it authentic. You still need to decide for yourself.
"Listen, you don't want my opinion on foreign policy"
You got that right,
Joe.
We have more than enough wingnuttery going on without unlicensed
plumbers spouting graywater... or worse.
Mr. Bill with no endorsements
The closest newspaper to his political point of view must be the
Idaho Press-Tribune
(they said as
much) but even they couldn't bring themselves to endorse Bill Sali for
re-election to the big House. (They couldn't bring themselves to endorse
his opponent either, go figure.)
Best thing I saw on YouTube today: She's a Hockey Mama for Obama.
27.Oct.2008
Mr. Pork come a cropper
Ted Stevens has done all sorts of good things for the people in Alaska,
largely at the expense of the lower 48. He did alright for himself too,
although compared to your run of the mill CEO golden parachute, the
graft was pitifully banal. A massage chair, for god's sake, "on loan"
for 7 years. Still, for a U.S. Senator, a higher level of integrity
seems appropriate.
"Back in the 1980s, gift-giving was not unusual in his business, said
Hubbard, who manages construction projects. It wasn't unusual to be
offered fly-in fishing trips, hunting trips and other gifts.
"That is gone now, Hubbard said.
"'It was just a way of expressing gratitude,' he [added]. 'Now it is
considered buying influence.'"
26.Oct.2008
Just ridiculous
On Meet the Press today, John McCain made excuses—oh wait, none of
that, he's proud of her record—for Sarah Palin.
"She lives a frugal life," he said. "She and her family are not
wealthy."
And while we may be tiring of talking about the fashion show, we
could—should—start talking about
Palin's apparent bid-rigging for God's Gas Pipeline, shouldn't we?
The Republican ticket's
"energy
expert" and all?
ES&S iVotronic's clear choice: the GOP
We'll be filling in ovals with a ball-point pen here in Idaho, now that
our punch card technology has been rendered defunct by time and
Florida's ineptitude. There are still Bad Things that could happen once
the ballot's out of our hands, but at least we'll be dropping an
unambiguous artifact into the box.
"[Minnick's] pragmatic, nonpartisan style has attracted many Republican
supporters who have tired of Sali's ideologically driven antics, which
may play well on the far right but are unproductive and sometimes
embarrassing for the state.
"Minnick is the best choice for Idahoans looking for practical leadership
in uncertain times."
Fashion on the street
Back in the day, we used to read the Sunday NYT on paper, and the "On
the Street" feature was half a page or so of black and white photos (at
least in memory, I suppose they must have them in color by now) that
were brief entertainment before moving on to the deep columns of
Important Writing.
Now of course, there's no waiting for Sunday, color 24/7, video, you
name it, from here, there, everywhere.
"The weather was mahvelous, the temperatures plummetted...
it was cold, oh I mean cold, and the wind is what made it
colder. But it was absolutely wonderful because everyone had to change
clothes...."
GOP bus tour in the ditch
Rocky
Barker reports that "four dollar gas prices, the internet and
perhaps a changing Republican Party in Idaho have driven this campaign
tool off the road and into the ditch."
But wait! Gas is back down to "only" $3! Barker surmises that it was an
excuse because nobody wanted to ride the same bus as Bill Sali, but I
imagine Norm Semanko wouldn't mind getting out of the office and going
for a ride with his buddy. Jim Risch doesn't seem to want to spend his
time and effort campaigning, and Mike Simpson doesn't have to.
Update 10/27: The Idaho Democrats provide
their
take on the bus breakdown.
25.Oct.2008
The October surprise
It looks like it's going to be finding out just
how
low the McCain campaign is willing to go. I don't know how well it's
working to raise money for the RNC, but my guess is it's working at
least that well in raising money for the other side.
Boise fired its mayor for less than this
Sheesh, what am I doing recycling old news on Sarah Palin when there's
new news available: more than $20,000 for "official business" to
cart her children around on commercial flights and put them up in hotel
rooms. She says the kids were invited, the event organizers say
"wha'?"
I like the one where they "officially" showed up to watch the First Dude
(a.k.a. First Dad) drive his snowmobile in a big race.
The citizens of Alaska seem happy enough about their maverick Governor's
shenanigans, as long as she's sharing the wealth with them.
You'll need your at-home vacuum generator (the
abstract of the Letter says a "moderate" vacuum, but I'm not ready
to pay $32 to find out how moderate), so maybe this is more suited
to a space-based, Scotch® tape weapon.
One step closer and I unroll this tape!
The slipperly slope of spending other people's money
Not to flog a dead horse or anything, but before we had our little
financial meltdown, and a few $tens of billions seemed like a lot of
money, "earmarks" were the cause célèbre of
anti-government forces everywhere. Or at least everywhere that wasn't
getting all that they wanted. It's sort of like Congress, versus
my Congressman for voters: as a group, they're contemptible,
but my gal/guy is OK. (Maybe not so much true this November, but
we'll see.)
This might be a good time to re-parse Palin at her best,
on her home turf
with Charlie Gibson, going over that Bridge to Nowhere that figured
so large in her early speeches to us all.
"It has always been an embarrassment that abuse of the
earform—ear—earmark process has been accepted in Congress
and that's what John McCain has fought, and that's what I join him in
fighting. It's been an embarrassment..."
Gibson: "But you were for it before you were against
it..."
"It's not inappropriate for a mayor, or for a governor to request, and
to work with their Congress, and their Congressman and their
Congresswomen, to plug into the federal budget along with every
other state, a share of the federal budget for infrastructure...."
Clear enough?
"Abuse" bad, "our share" perfectly appropriate. I don't
remember if Gibson got around to the fact that Alaska got to keep the
money even though they didn't build the bridge. He certainly didn't get
around to Alaska's outsized share of the flow of earmark dollars.
That's the new term for the process of
cleaning
out a foreclosed house of all the stuff the non-owners left behind.
Furniture, appliances, food, decor, photos, computers, TVs... Toss it
all in a dumpster and haul it to the dump.
The astonishing waste of resources was reported by KCET in southern
California, and picked up by
last night's NewsHour on PBS.
What wasn't clear is why there should be a big hurry to get these places
cleaned out; it's not like there are people lining up to buy the
properties, is it? It makes sense to drain the swimming pool, and get
rid of the rotting food in the kitchen, but furniture?
No time to be discerning, just throw it "away."
One thing he forgot to mention
In this week's
debate between Democratic challenger Walt Minnick, Representative
Bill Sali insisted that he'd been given a waiver to have his office
where it is, in Idaho's other Congressional District, overriding
the Committee on House Administration's rules.
Now the Idaho
Press-Tribune reports that Sali's comical spokesman Wayne Hoffman
noted that committee staff were not aware of its location outside the
1st District.
Handicapping post-election Idaho
Randy Stapilus is
looking ahead, and seeing our fair state still handicapped (or
"blessed," depending on your point of view) with Republican-dominated
elected officials. Then what? The battle for who gets to keep the big
tent can play out between Romney Republicans, "more Main Street,
business oriented, pragmatic (in the sense of being not especially
ideological) and more wedded to the party than to the 'cause,'
relatively willing to compromise (at least to a point)," and the Palin
branch, "social conservatives, highly ideological, more
interested in the cause than in the party."
Who is our Isaac Newton?
George Dyson's
essay on Economic Dis-Equilibrium has an interesting anecdote about
the history of money, and then when it seems like he's just getting
going, it's over. But still, an interesting read.
"The unlimited replication of information is generally a public good....
The problem starts, as the current crisis demonstrates, when unregulated
replication is applied to money itself. Highly complex
computer-generated financial instruments (known as derivatives) are
being produced, not from natural factors of production or other goods,
but purely from other financial instruments....
"The result is a game of musical chairs that follows von Neumann's model
of an expanding economic equilibrium—until the music stops, or we
bring in Isaac Newton, whichever comes first."
OK, that censorship didn't work too well
The power of the principal
ain't what it used
to be. Welcome to the age of YouTube, Mr. Dan Bettin.
23.Oct.2008
13 properties and how much in taxes?
I think John and Cindy McCain have more houses than Jim and Vicki Risch,
but according to
KTVB's follow-up on the tax charges that LaRocco made and Risch
rebutted in Tuesday night's debate, Risch has "13 pieces of
property," with an unknown number qualifying for the state's
agricultural exemption. Ysabel Bilbao confirmed that he
might have
benefited to the tune of $53,000 as LaRocco charged, or it could have
been as little as $5,000 per year. That exemption's a big deal.
Some years back (before they had a website, and long before the real
estate bubble), the Statesman did a feature on property taxes, and we
shared the details of the property tax we were paying on our
one-and-only residence with the world.
Seems like someone who's made a living in the public sphere as long as
Jim Risch (or, for that matter, Larry LaRocco) ought to be happy to do
the same. Waddayasay, Lieutenant? Tell us about all that property and
the taxes you pay on it. We'd like to know.
John Edwards' infamous $400 haircut seems like a fond memory by
comparison. And no, the cheesy moose bag she's carrying (and the
freakout hairdo) doesn't make her look more jes plain folks.
That's their
non-endorsement! They couldn't bring themselves to endorse McCain,
and it (almost) goes without saying that "the board did not believe that
Democratic candidate Barack Obama represented the basic beliefs and
philosophy of most Idaho voters and those in Elmore County in
particular." So...
"As a result, the [editorial] board urges voters to actually skip that
race on the ballot."
They went on to endorse Democrat Larry LaRocco for Senate, saying
that Risch "shouldn't give up his day job," since he's "simply too
representative of the old style of politics to win their support."
They wrapped up their list of endorsements for the local races with
a reminder that this is a "pivotal election, from the national level to
the local level..." and that "Every person's vote really does
count."
Except for President. Don't vote for that.
Bull Elk for Senate
In other campaign news, Rex Rammell has figured out (see BW story linked
below) that the more people associate him with his elk, the better off
he does in polls.
Which brings up the obvious winning strategy: Marvin Richardson changed
his name to Pro-Life to make his point on the ballot, now we just need
Rammell to change his name to Bull Elk. Brilliant!
If you call a huge increase in the sales tax to fund a decrease in the
property tax a "shift," you must be a Democrat, so then he doesn't
have to answer your question. But hey, thanks for asking!
I'm sure that was worthwhile instruction from the Republican
candidate for U.S. Senate at Capital High School.
He's shocked, shocked
He didn't see much of a problem when the bubbles were building (although
there was that "irrational exuberance" caution in the mid-90s that came
and went), or when the winners were taking riches beyond avarice (and
few were complaining while their boats were being floated), but now that
the house of cards has come crashing down, credit
Alan Greenspan for recognizing that there was "a flaw" in his
thinking; greedy bankers acting in their perceived self-interest
don't magically obviate market regulation.
All this time, who knew?
Even Idaho's loose wing Representative Bill Sali showed up to throw a
little fuel on the fire this time
(unlike the hearing
where A.I.G. got grilled), wondering who was going to make mom and
pop Idaho whole after the debacle. "Is somebody going to go to
jail?"
Don't count on it. But to complete the Idaho connection, John Yarmuth
(D-KY) brought up our car salesman and ex-Red Sox first basemen,
Bill Buckner, to
wax picturesque about the "error" of unregulated investment banking
coming a-crapper.
Update:
Mountain Goat picks up the story, with emphasis on the import for
our CD-01 race between incumbent Sali and Democratic challenger Walt
Minnick.
21.Oct.2008
Sarah, we hardly knew ya
The media has been shaking all the bushes up in Moscow, Idaho, and
nobody—nobody—seems to have
any recollection whatsoever of Sarah Palin's brief attendance of the
University of Idaho, putting the cap on her 4-college/5-stop journalism
degree.
The hits keep coming
Pro-Life: "The people who run this world, they're fascists, you
know..."
Rammell: "That's something I would be ashamed of if I was a
conservative."
Pro-Life: "There's nothing wrong with being green."
Rammell: "Jim Risch is an environmentalist!"
Pro-Life: "I think it's really humorous to hear socialists talking about
fine-tuning socialism." (But at least they're not fascists?)
If I was king...
That slipped past Pro-Life's lips talking about what budget items he'd
cut, to fix our "debauched society," and I got to thinking how much he
looks like
Bert Lahr,
and how much I would've liked it if he'd broken out into song.
Sparks fly, prayer answered in Senate debate
Well, it didn't lack for drama, with "Mr. Pro-Life" unable to get
through his one minute opening statement without moving himself to
tears, and Rex Rammell inexplicably finding himself unable to stand at
his podium for 15 minutes. Instant karma for making fun of how old his
opponents are?
Things heated up when LaRocco accused Risch of personally benefiting
from the big shift from property to sales tax that Risch engineered
during his short stint as Governor. He saved as much as $53,000?
Risch: "With all due respect, Mr. LaRocco, that's a lie.
I pay under $10,000 in property taxes and always have."
In the back and forth rebuttals, he lowered the bar, said he's paying
less than $10,000 in property taxes, and offered to drop out of
the race if he wasn't telling the truth, inviting LaRocco to do likewise
if he was wrong.
Ok, but how do you manage paying so little property taxes when you have
at
least $17 million (something between that and $83 million) in real
estate? Doesn't sound like he's pulling his weight to me.
Pro-Life: "Let's all say a little prayer in your heart that Mr. Rammell
can get out here..." And poof! There was Rammell, coming back onstage,
saying "I'm good"! Man, this Pro-Life guy might be onto something.
What it means to be an environmentalist
Walt Minnick's opponent in the campaign for the 1st Congressional
District seat in the U.S. House has tried to tar him with
the label of radical environmentalist, which is passing strange in
this state full of people who cherish the riches of the Rocky Mountain
West for their individual reasons.
We all need to make a living, and resource exploitation is part of that,
but for the vast majority of Idahoans, what brought us here, or what
keeps us here is the quality of life, and the quality of the
environment.
Minnick has served on the boards of
the Wilderness Society, and the
Idaho Conservation League,
groups that have worked with Idaho's Senator Mike Crapo on the Owhyee
Initiative to find a compromise that works with all
stakeholders.
Judging by his preference for grandstanding, Sali seems to think
actual political engagement is "radical"; in his two years in Congress,
he hasn't seen fit to express support or participate in the Owhyee
Initiative, even though the Owyhees are in his district.
While going through some of our collected treasures (otherwise known as
"cleaning up some of the junk in our house"), Jeanette came across the
November/December 1987 issue of the Idaho Arts Journal, in which
she had a "Readers' Reviews" piece entitled "Let's Talk About It..."
It's a review of the film A River Runs Through It, and an
interview with Walt Minnick that says a lot about what matters in this
part of the world, and why "environmentalist" is a prerequisite
for representing this state, rather than the epithet Sali thinks it
is.
I'm happy to feature Jeanette's piece from 21 years ago on this,
fortboise.org's 8th anniversary month, under the new title Rooted in
the West.
My reconnoitering of my Montana roots began ten years after I rode out
of the state in a '52 Chevy, vowing to leave all that mule-minded
meanness behind. No more prairie storms and no more thin-lipped cowboys
who equated easy talk, thoughtful talk with Eastern effeminacy.
But, I couldn't let go. A recognition of Montana's brand on me and a
reconciliation of sorts has come through several writers—my sister,
novelist Ivan Doig, and now, most ambivalently, through Norman Maclean.
A River Runs Through It is Maclean's fictionalized recollection of
fly-fishing in western Montana with his brother, Paul. Maclean's love of
the land and the art of fly-fishing are so strong that they nearly
overwhelm the apparent story.
Like most Montanans I learn from confrontations, and so it is fitting
that my response to A River Runs Through It deepened after talking
about the book with an unabashed fan, Walt Minnick of Boise. Walt knows
the state and one of its primary obsessions—fly-fishing—from
family visits going back to childhood. He brings his affection for that
unique part of the country and his acute powers of observation to his
reading of Maclean's novella. Walt reads it as a love story on five
levels, each satisfying and complete in itself....
Jim Risch has been a mainstay of Idaho politics for decades now, funding
both his political hobby and ranching from
a
successful career as a trial lawyer, so the insiders probably know
what to expect. Democrat Larry LaRocco and the other Republican, Rex
Rammell (who the Statesman deemed unworthy of a profile to go with
the other
two) have been doing their best to call Risch out, get him debating,
and responding to their ample criticism.
Risch's 29-2 campaign record suggests he knows what he's doing, sitting
on a big lead, but any voters who would like to know have to put
their faith in his party affiliation, because
he
mostly isn't talking about the issues.
I went for a bike ride down to and over the river.
Nothing like it.
Endorsement season
Hard to top
Colin Powell's endorsing Barack Obama, this morning on
Meet the Press. Retired Army General, former Secretary of State,
and an amazingly eloquent elder statesman. He says a lot of the same
things others have been saying in recent weeks and months, but with
stature that few—perhaps no one—in this country can
match.
More locally,
the
Idaho Statesman endorsed Obama, too for many of the same reasons
Powell spoke of. Out here where flaming left-wing radicalism starts in
the neighborhood of "moderate" anywhere else, we can hardly wait for the
flood of comments and letters denouncing the Statesman for being another
outlet of the liberal MSM.
Joe the Plumber Strikes Back
Sounds like a worse sequel to a bad movie, doesn't it? I don't know if
he's mad as hell, but he's a little mad anyway, and
he's not
going to take it any more (maybe) now that he's done with
his appearance on Mike Huckabee's Fox "News" talk show, and maybe
a cameo with John McCain today.
Can't a guy ask a question of his leaders anymore?
Odd sentiment coming from the guy who so famously could and did, and got
promoted to icon by one of them.
Take it from
Abe the Accountant, Joe. Be happy you're paying taxes, it means
you're making money.
"For Republicans who care about their party and their country, it
is right to consider voting for Barack Obama. Rejecting the cynical
political machinations of John McCain and Sarah Palin will not destroy
the Republican Party. It will free the party in particular and American
politics in general to seek a better balance and the higher ground."
17.Oct.2008
The small town elite
I've lived in or near 6 or 7 different cities, and one tourist town, and
I never really stopped to consider the question of which ones were more
or less "real America." Could the question possibly make sense?
Or could
Sarah Palin's notion that virtue varies inversely with population
density be more insulting to those of us who somehow manage to live
virtuous lives at higher population density?
So much for that talking point. Can't be calling city folk unpatriotic
when you want them to vote for you, now can you?
Orrin Hatch, Late Night
I don't who's really writing the stuff going out under Senator Orrin
Hatch's name for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, but I
trust it's some low-paid staffer looking after the party fundraising
while the good Senator from Utah looks after his day job, the one we're
paying him $169,300 a year to do.
Today's NRSC missive comes under the ever-popular subject, "Joe
the Plumber."
"Dear T," it begins, "Americans are catching on."
"Every once in a while, a small crack opens up in Barack Obama's smooth
and polished persona, and the truth shines through...."
Every lede in the country's business sections can use the "another
tumultuous week in the markets" phrase for its Saturday rundown,
and blended with the home stretch of the election season, it's quite the
stew. Tommy McCall offers a hopeful forecast (if you think our next
President will be a Democrat, and believe, contrary to the fine print
that's been sent your way a hundred times, that past results are
indicative of future performance), in the form of
a larger-than-life Op-Chart on the NYT, comparing average annualized
return of the stock market (as measured by S&P indices over the
years) under "red" and "blue" Presidents.
Herbert Hoover gets asterisked. Perhaps Bill Clinton should too? But
then there's Nixon and Bush-I that countervail the long-term trend of
prosperity. Does the President's party matter that much, or are there
larger forces that have determined these unique historical outcomes? (Of
course there are.) What about graphing the numbers by which party
controlled Congress? It gets more complicated, with no guarantee of
greater illumination.
The bigger question is what to do next? Warren Buffett, who
apparently knows a lot more about investing than I do, says
he's
going to Buy American.
"A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and
be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now
widespread, gripping even seasoned investors."
There was a possibly brilliant ad in the newspaper from one of the
local banks. Many have been buying ink to reassure their customers that
they're strong and safe. This one featured "BORING" CD interest rates.
(And did we mention the Federal Deposit Insurance?) But that's looking
in the rear-view mirror, isn't it? You should have been in boring
CDs for the past year or two (or seven?!), but look forward:
"Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t.
They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually
nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that
government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis
will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in
the real value of cash accounts."
As always, Your Mileage May Vary.
16.Oct.2008
"There's millions of words in a campaign"
That was McCain's excuse for his running mate's repeated use of the word
terrorists—plural, no droppin' the final consonant on that,
and ya really have to concentrate with three in a row like
that—rather than just terrorist, singular, when all
she—they—have is the old, washed-up bogus
guilt-by-association story McCain did his best to sell last night, and
didn't.
Now that he finally showed up on Letterman, and had his chance to try
the same talking points to an audience really more interested in
something funny, Dave pinned him on the point. Name another "terrorist"
he's been "palling around with," wouldja?
Nope. Ha ha, there's millions of words tossed around in the
campaign, Dave. And hell, that's just one letter, it's not even
a whole word!
Right.
Really taking the high road there, Senator.
Categorically proud
Here are some of the people John McCain says he's proud of,
havin' a rally with Sarah Palin.
Say it ain't so, Joe!
Turns out he's not a licensed plumber... and we don't know which
way his taxes are going to go, but we do know
he owes $1,200 in back taxes.
Candidate for the best in-line joke: "Wurzelbacher had to deal with a
clog of two dozen reporters outside his home..."
Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has recruited Joe for a starring roll in
Toledo on Sunday. How 'bout them Republicans, all in favor of the
regular Joe? Who knows, maybe he'll even register to vote.
Update, 17.Oct: Turns out
he is registered thankyouverymuch, but with his name
misspelled. Since he's white, he'll probably be OK to vote.
Are Republicans aiming to steal another election?
That's the most obvious inference to draw from the way they're flogging
the problems of a small number of registration forms coming through
ACORN. McCain's "fabric of democracy" talking point last night might be
alarming if we hadn't already seen the fabric rent so badly in Florida
in 2000 and
Ohio in 2004.
I loved Schieffer's opening proposition for
last night's debate:"By now, we've heard all the talking points, so
let's try to tell the people tonight some things that they haven't
heard." The more interactive format did actually work to provide some
useful give-and-take, and a forum that short-circuited the
kind of free-wheeling partisan attacks that have been the focus of
McCain and Palin going into the home stretch. Instead of the pally Palin
soundbite, we actually got to hear Obama answer the b.s. about Ayers
directly.
Here's my tax plan: let's just shut up about reducing
taxes for the moment, and see if we can somehow straighten out the
financial meltdown and the recession that's likely to cost millions of
jobs, on top of 8 years of pathetic job growth during the two terms of
Bush and Cheney.
Joe Wurzelbacher is going to have to do the best he can with his
plumbing career, and deciding whether or not he wants to transition to
being a small business owner instead. If he does, and if he goes from
whatever he makes as a plumber to a $quarter million annual income, you
betcha his taxes are going to go up, but he'll be happy to have the
extra income, don't you think?
It's not so much about "sharing" the wealth as it trying to recover some
of it before it's gone forever. Having Bush and Cheney drive the country
into a ditch was one thing; having it go over a cliff would be quite
another.
I want to hear Adlai Stevenson's message, not a bunch of cocked-up last
minute ideas that will be thoroughly trashed by two houses of Congress
before any laws are made. Hank Paulson had to change his big plans
within a week or two of making them. By January 20, there will be a lot
more suprises to deal with, I'm sure.
Ok, enough seriousness. On with the show.
Gail
Collins:
"For a while, it seemed as if Joe was sitting right there
at the table. McCain began addressing him directly through the TV
screen. ("If you’re out there, my friend...") Then, at one point, Obama
joined in the discussion with the phantom plumber, and the two
candidates for president of the United States argued over whose health
care plan Joe would like the best. By next week, I expect Joe will have
his own cable TV show. Or at a minimum, a really fancy blog."
Old-fashioned campaigner
NPR had a piece about the 1952 presidential campaign yesterday,
When TV Changed Politics: Adlai Stevenson Vs. Ike. That was before
my time as we say, and I never had the chance to reject one approach
Stevenson took to campaigning: 30 minute blocks on TV, with him speaking
the whole time about important issues.
The medium is the message, and the only place for that kind of TV is
late-night Cable for Insomniacs, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, one
hopelessly candid statement Stevenson made stands out:
"I don't like taxes. I doubt if anybody does. I shall do everything I can
to reduce them. But I shall make no promises that I know I cannot
keep."
Which one can cut our taxes more than the other? How thoroughly can
McCain repudiate the policies and ideology of the Republican Party?
Which one can pander most effectively to Joe the Plumber? Which one can
call on the other to repudiate more things that other people have
said?
"I'm proud of the people who come to our rallies," John McCain says,
"categorically." Even those ones that make your head jerk reflexively
when you hear what they shout?
Idaho's 1st Congressional District Representative is doing everything he
can to demonstrate that he thinks government is a joke. Are we all
supposed to laugh along at the
hijinx? If voters in the the 1st District send him back to
Washington, it's hard to imagine the joke's not going to be at their
expense.
Liars of various stripes
The man is certifiable—certified, in fact, back in the 70s—which
apparently
makes him perfect for Fox "News":
"But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel
watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin,
and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to
assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to
overthrow the government."
Over at the Left Side of the Moon, Rachel Maddow responds to Sarah
Palin's inversion ("spin" is too generous a term) of the result of her
ethics investigation. No evidence that Palin is deranged, so scratch
that as a possible excuse.
Southern Idaho has its own rabid wingnut soiling the airwaves,
Zeb Bell and KBAR, still vamping the long-debunked Obama myths of
the sort that Andy Martin got going.
"Perhaps Gov. Palin has been too busy to actually read the Troopergate
report. Perhaps she is relying on briefings from McCain campaign
spinmeisters.
"Because if she had actually read it, she couldn't claim 'vindication'
with a straight face....
"In fact, the report concluded that 'impermissible pressure was placed
on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit:
to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired.'...
"You asked us to hold you accountable, Gov. Palin. Did you mean it?"
Also in the
ADN: "The state Personnel Board investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin's
firing of Walt Monegan has broadened to include other ethics complaints
against the governor and examination of actions by other state
employees, according to the independent counsel handling the case."
Yer flag decal
Now Jesus don't like killin'
no matter what the reasons for
I can't read about this subject without
hearing John
Prine singing, and it amazes me that we could possibly, possibly be
talking about this as if it were a meaningful issue in any political
campaign, much less one for President of the United States of
America.
Since
John McCain seems to have opted out, perhaps the ranks of "patriots"
can give it a rest as well, and acknowledge that putting country first
does not have anything to do with jewelry.
13.Oct.2008
McCain/Palin thrashing harder
Yet another
new economic proposal from the McCain campaign, "lowering tax rates for
investors and cutting the capital gains tax."
Aye carumba, after the bloodbath in the markets over the last couple
weeks, the last thing investors are worried about is cutting the
capital gains tax. It would be more advantageous to have a higher
cap gains rate to reduce the sting of the losses people have been taking.
You have to income to worry about income tax.
And Palin, found to have acted unethically, somehow doesn't get the
message, claims she's so-pleased to be vindicated? I know how well the
Karl Rove strategy of repeating lies often enough to have people believe
them works, but this is just incredible. An apology is in order,
not a conference call to tell reporters how "pleased" she is.
Five hours well spent
Congratulations to my brother Phil, for running in—and
finishing!—his first-ever Marathon. Now he can take up the violin.
Or something.
Speaking of predatory lending
How many of the hundreds of thousands of people winding up in
21st
century debtors court do you suppose have ever heard the word
"usury," much less know what it means?
It's so last-century.
In this century, the lawyer for the bank shows up with the
defendant's name and a number, with a generous allowance to cut the
accumulated interest and fees by half if the defendant shows up and is
willing to negotiate. Not a bad deal for the bank when the fees are
bloated by a factor of four.
Desperately seeking scapegoat
Let's see, which story is more plausible: "poor people crashed the
global economy," or "the greedy 'geniuses' running investment banks
leveraged themselves into oblivion"?
The McCain campaign (and the ugliest and most rabid Right base) are
pushing the first option as hard as they can, and throwing in a big
dollop of racism and a little third-hand guilt-by-association against
Obama for good measure, attacking the
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Inc. Here's
what ACORN says in their defense:
"In his newest ad, John McCain's campaign bizarrely claims, 'ACORN
forced banks to issue risky home loans, the same types of loans that
caused the financial crisis we're in today.' Nothing could be further
from the truth. In fact, ACORN has worked successfully to help working
class families get good home loans on fair terms from legitimate banks
and has fought vigorously against predatory lenders who have ripped off
families in our communities. These predatory loans caused the
crisis."
The dogs—and lipstuck pitbull—that McCain and his campaign
have unleashed are running ahead of him, and may well be beyond his
tepid attempts to quell their anger.
Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of
"Treason!"
and "Terrorist!"
and "Kill him!"
and "Off with his head!" as well as the uninhibited
slinging
of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that
has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing
is not an option.
Who is this really?
First robo-connect failed, but the second one came through just after
I'd looked up the number on caller ID, and tried calling it to find that
the number from a western Missouri area code, (816) 248-8510 was "not in
service." She said she was calling for "Idaho Voter Research," and
wanted to know which I was most concerned with, followed by a list to
choose from.
"What is the name of your company?" I asked, and she repeated the name,
which has no hits on Google, then her first question, "what are you most
concerned about..."
I said, "I'm most concerned about people abusing my phone service and
spoofing caller ID." She said she'd put me down for that, and sounded
ready to keep going with the next question, but I hung up.
Turns out that
Idaho
Code has something to say about "persuasive polling," which I'm
guessing this was. At the end of the poll, they have to
"disclose the name and telephone number of the person, candidate,
political party or political committee that requested or compensated the
person for the poll." If I'd toughed it out, and they failed to do that,
they'd be subject to a $250 fine ($2,500 for a "person other than as an
individual") fine and 6 months in jail.
Seems like it would be good to have a recording device on the phone this
time of year...
Might want to check the dictionary for "vindicated"
The "long-awaited
Alaska
legislative report concluded that Republican Sen. John McCain's
vice-presidential running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, abused her authority
and broke state ethics law by trying to remove her former brother-in-law
from his job as a state trooper,"
according to the Wall Street Journal. They say that 12 of the
14 members of the panel voted unanimously "to release the findings to
the public." (14 members are more than a quarter of Alaska's
legislature, by the way.)
Palin's spokesman says she "feels absolutely vindicated." The McCain
campaign said the report "illustrates what we've known all along: this
was a partisan led inquiry run by Obama supporters." (Even better than
Burger King: not only can you have it your way, you can have it
both ways!)
I didn't see how "Obama supporters" figured in the family feud, but
the New York Times' report ended with the statement that
"The McCain campaign flew operatives into Alaska to wage a public
relations campaign to discredit the investigation and to help mount
legal challenges to it." Shades of Florida, 2000.
The so-called
First Gentleman
is one of 10 people who refused to answer subpoenas, although word is
that he agreed to answer some questions in writing. His wife, the
maverick reformer executive and proponent of "transparency" was not
subpoenaed, "out of deference to her position," but Palin did ignore the
council's request for her to cooperate via a sworn statement.
For the record, the three findings relating to the Governer were that
(1) Palin abused her power by violating the Alaska Executive Branch
Ethics Act; (2) Palin's firing of the Commissioner of Public Safety was
"proper and lawful" (not a very high bar, since the Governor has the
authority to fire "at will, for almost any reason, or no reason at
all"); and (3) the Attorney General's office "failed to substantially
comply" with a request for emails related to the case, made two months
ago.
The Governor's office did release
a bunch of trancripts from employees who finally responded to the
subpoenas too late for the council's report. (Is there... anything else
you'd like to say in this matter by way of providing the whole truth?)
Reducing the size of the federal government
Finally, Jim Risch came out of his undisclosed location and
participated in a debate with the other candidates for U.S. Senate.
There's no shortage of thinly disguised enmity between the two leading
candidates, but outraged elk rancher Rex Rammell kept it more
interesting:
"What happened to the Constitution, my friends? Did we just stick it in
the drawer and forget it exists?
Article 1,
Section 8 is very specific on what powers the federal government
has. They're listed and enumerated. All we have to do is
follow the federal Constitution and a lot of this debt will simply go
away....
"A lot of these programs are not found in the Constitution, and every one
that's not should be eliminated."
Sorry about that, Air Force!
10.10.08
Tomatoes are done
We covered them up night before last, and lit the pilot light on the
furnace, anticipating the first freeze. Yesterday had a decided nip in
the air with a NW wind bringing it in. Today, it was gloomy all day,
looking like it wanted to rain or something...
The "or something" came in the form of heavy, wet snow this late
afternoon. Maybe an inch of it, closer to slush than fluff.
Idaho: Ok, you students can too vote
The Idaho Democratic Party
pushed the issue of the verbiage on the Secretary of State's website
which appears to be designed to discourage college students who come
here from out of state from voting in Idaho. After a positive
response,
The Students and Voting Residency page is still far more obscure
than it needs to be, and while they removed the threat that
"Registering to vote is a serious matter which, if abused, can subject
you to criminal penalties," they didn't make it clear what the law
says. Boise attorney Tom Lloyd does:
"Idaho law simply requires residency in one’s current county for 30
days. Period. It does not require students to make any
affirmation or speculation that they will remain here in future
years."
According to Lloyd, if students know that after graduation they will
definitely be returning to the state or county of their previous
residence, they should not register to vote here. But students who
either don’t know where they will live after college or have "no
definite plans" to leave are eligible to vote after living here for
30 days. He further encouraged students to go to the polls with a
photo I.D. and a 30-day-old piece of mail to guarantee that they will
not be challenged.
When I came to the University of Idaho from Wisconsin in 1975, I had no
idea what the future would bring, or where it would take me. But I
affirmed my intention to be a resident of Idaho for a number of reasons,
not the least of which was to avoid paying out-of-state tuition for more
than one year. As it happens, events demonstrate that I am a true blue
Idahoan, but when did it happen? Arguably, when I landed in
Lewiston and hitchhiked up the grade to the Palouse. Indisputably, when
I'd maintained my primary abode here for 12 months. And most definitely
when I voted for the first time in a Presidential election, in 1976.
"In 2005, the Connecticut Legislature passed civil union legislation, but
the eight gay and lesbian couples who were plaintiffs in the case argued
that the civil union law had created an unequal status for gay men and
lesbians that did not confer upon them the same rights and protections
as marriage."
The plaintiffs in the case "contend that marriage is not simply a term
denominating a bundle of legal rights," according to
the text of the ruling, but rather "an institution of unique and
enduring importance in our society, one that carries with it a special
status."
Interesting; that's the argument from conservative religion, too.
It's unique, and must be kept away from same sex couples.
But the Connecticut Legislature recognized the need to recognize
the rights of same-sex couples, albeit under a new status, and the
Court found that Connecticut's Constitution leads from that to
the right to marry:
"We agree with the plaintiffs that, despite the legislature’s recent
establishment of civil unions, the restriction of marriage to opposite
sex couples implicates the constitutional rights of gay persons
who wish to marry a person of the same sex."
Must have proper labelling!
Merilly Hines, writing from Garden Valley, Idaho, publishes a classic in
the
annals of local Letters to the Editor. The editor put the headline
Party labels aid voters on it.
Ms. (?) Hines says she's "a conservative voter," and she wants to know
why Democrat Walt Minnick doesn't show his party affiliation in his
ads.
"Isn't he proud to be a Democrat? I believe that it's devious and
typical of today's Democrats. Lying by words, or lack thereof, seems to
be second nature to them."
"It makes all the difference to most of us when we are selecting a
candidate for whom to vote. The Republican philosophy (ideally) is less
federal government and more states' rights. The Dems favor "Big Brother"
caring for us from womb to tomb."
In other words, I have a fully-formed stereotype impenetrable to
contradictory fact or rational argument. Labelling is essential, lest I
vote for someone in the wrong party by accident!
Hines might be reassured to know that her ballot will show party
affiliation, and she won't have to actually think in order to cast her
vote for Representative. (If she's actually bothering to vote that is;
most anyone who has would know this, wouldn't they?) She can vote for
the party of
"less federal government" and
"more states' rights" to her heart's content.
9.Oct.2008
Say it ain't so, Sarah!
Three
dozen calls trying to get your ex-brother-in-law sacked?!
We know you can read the New York Times now, so you've seen the
story. What do you have to say for yourself? And your First Dude?
Whatever it is, don't try that "liberal media" crap—you got some
'splainin' to do.
John McCain: Steady strain
It didn't occur to me that accepting public funding precluded the McCain
campaign from fundraising to the home stretch, probably because the
fundraising messages "from" him and Sarah Palin kept rolling in.
I noticed the fine print at the bottom, after the pitch to send money
now:
"Because the McCain-Palin Campaign is participating in the presidential
public funding system, it may not receive contributions for any
candidate's election. However, federal law allows the McCain-Palin
Campaign's Compliance Fund to defray legal and accounting compliance
costs and preserve the Campaign's public grant for media, mail, phones,
and get-out-the-vote programs. Contributions to McCain-Palin Victory
2008 will go to the Compliance Fund, and to participating party
committees for Victory 2008 programs."
Huh. So, please send money to "defray legal and accounting compliance
costs" so we can spend our public grant on all the sleazeball ads we
want to run. Yeah, I don't think so.
Anyway, in the message he plays on his Navy career, and the phrase
describing "the need to keep lines between ships steady to avoid a
sudden jerk or movement that could easily snap the line." Weird
metaphor, if you ask me. Is he telling us he's about to snap?
Update: Apparently the application was more popular than
scalable. They're working on it, though.
Two-faced
So, in the "town hall meeting," he's forceful and direct, but oh-so
polite, or at least civil. Out on the stump,
he's a snarky, vile, back-stabbing smear machine. Isn't that
special. I don't know that the feeding his "kill 'im!" base is going to
do much for his increasingly desperate campaign at this point, but it is
going to drag this campaign further down into the mud.
It's already pretty low. It was weeks ago that
Karl
Rove said he thought both sides were going too far.
8.Oct.8
Don't Panic
Such good advice, for everything from minor accidents, to airplane
evacuation or global financial meltdowns.
In one of the more bizarre endorsements I've come across,
the
Idaho Statesman has recommended voters send Christ Troupis
(rhymes with "frist" in case you were wondering) to the Idaho Senate.
This is in spite of the fact that he's more conservative than "many" in
the district in their estimation (or "most" in mine), his
anti-government ideology (opposing any new revenue for highways when
most agree that the state has a backlog of hundreds of millions of
dollars in roadwork), his fiscally contradictory support for a medical
school in the state, and his legal work for religous right activists.
His opponent, Les Bock, served ably in the Idaho House, and "has proven
himself a sharp, committed lawmaker." The endorsement of his opponent
for the state Senate as his first elected office hinges on this:
"We think Troupis is better positioned to get results in a Republican
Statehouse."
There's no question that the moderate electorate in the Treasure Valley
has suffered at the hands of the Republican-dominated Legislature, and
the shift from moderate Republican members to moderate Democrats in the
last election gave more power to the extreme elements of the state's
G.O.P. The district in question, 16, elected a Democrat to the Senate
and 2 Democrats to its House seats in 2006. Meanwhile, the Republicans
ousted their moderate Speaker of the House, and then this summer,
replaced its moderate Executive Director with a more extreme
conservative as well.
And our response is supposed to be to follow this trend so that we can
better get along? Do our best to get someone who looks most like one of
the most extreme legislatures in the country? I'd rather elect
Bock, who has demonstrated he is
capable of
representing our views, and who knows his way around the
Statehouse.
"A month of primary recounts in the election battleground of Palm Beach
County, Florida, has twice flipped the winner in a local judicial race
and revealed grave problems in the county's election infrastructure,
including thousands of misplaced ballots and vote tabulation machines
that are literally unable to produce the same results twice....
"At issue is an Aug. 26 primary election in which officials discovered,
during a recount of a close judicial race, that more than 3,400 ballots
had mysteriously disappeared after they were initially counted on
election day. The recount a week later, minus the missing ballots,
flipped the results of the race to a different winner.
"The county eventually found the missing ballots after a prolonged hunt.
But it also turned up an additional 200 or so ballots that officials
never knew were missing and that were never counted in the original
tabulation of the race. A recently completed recount -- with all of the
ballots -- has restored victory to the original winner...."
Townhall debate moment
Obama triggered a change to the the rules, to dig into the
issue of fighting terrorism, after McCain used some of his stump
attack on Obama.
Obama: "No one called for an invasion of Pakistan. Senator McCain
continues to repeat this. What I said was the same thing that the
audience here today heard me say, which is, if Pakistan is unable or
unwilling or unable to hunt down bin Laden and take him out, then we
should."
McCain's response, after he had to explain that it was just a joke with
an old veteran friend to "bomb bomb bomb Iran," did his best to assure
the audience that he was the Fearless Leader we needed for this
moment.
McCain: "I know how to handle these crises, and Senator Obama by
saying that he would attack Pakistan, and look at the context of his
words. I'll get Osama bin Laden, my friends, I'll get 'im. I know how to
get 'im. I'll get 'im, no matter what. And I know how to do it, but I'm
not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Senator Obama did. And
I'm gonna act responsibily as I've acted responsibly throughout my
military career and throughout my career in the United States
Senate...."
Fascinating stuff. Does McCain's act work to reassure any of these
Undecideds, I wonder? He's trying to pitch smart, savvy, wise, and
fearsome all at once, and it's not working on me, especially when he
works to twist his opponents words less than a minute after they were
said. And especially after reading about some of the details about his
military career in the last couple days; even giving him some slack for
disputed elements, "acted responsibly throughout (his) military career"
is a bald-faced lie.
Even the blogs are getting ugly
Well OK, some have been ugly all along, but I would've thought the
comments in a campaign's blog would be pretty well vetted. A lot of
people have something to say, and there must be more important tasks
for campaign staffers to attend to, though. I didn't read through very
many of the comments under
the McPain campaign's "Dangerous" ad post, but there were some
interesting ones. For example:
"reform, prosperity, peace?
All I see coming from the McCain campaign is fear, hatred, anger.
That makes me sad, sickened, repulsed."
And a very thoughtful one from "Preston":
"I watched this new ad and I've been reading these blog entries and I
have to say that I've got a pretty sour taste in my mouth.
"I always been a loyal Republican and I fully planned to vote for
McCain, though I don't agree with him on some core issues. I'm not so
troubled that all of his recent ads have a negative tone to them (that
always seems to happen in presidential campaigns), but I am bothered
that the claims he makes are either patently false or incredible
distortions (even the Wall Street Journal agrees). How can I feel good
about winning an election by lying to the electorate?...
"I am also troubled by the fact that McCain and Pailn are now repeating
these distortions about Obama and Ayers. From everything that I read
(and I read a lot), they were simply colleagues on a charitable board of
trustees. Obama wasn't even an adult during Ayers's radical days.
"It is little wonder—given these new ads—that Obama has
chosen to go after John for his role as one of the Keating Five. That
isn't just guilt by association and it isn't fabricated.
"I want to vote for McCain, but my conscience is putting up a pretty
strong fight right now...."
"It's cool, I want them to ask me the questions"
She just doesn't want to answer them. "We have absolutely nothing to
hide," she said, once upon a time. In July. In August, it was
"We will fully cooperate with the Legislature's investigation."
These days the cooperation is a bit less than "full," although
the Anchorage
Daily News reports that Todd Palin is going to at least answer
questions under subpoena. As long as they're in writing, and funneled
through his lawyer.
And
Rita Beamish reports (AP) on the other clouds in front of "Alaska
sunshine" during Palin's term. She ran on "transparency," and then
turned as opaque as the previous office holders when it was her turn.
That's the kind of flip-floppin' "reform" we've already had more than
enough of in Washington.
Branded
Terrellita Maverick says she's enraged at the current misuse of her
family name by the G.O.P. ticket. John Schwartz reports that
the "family has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s,
when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his
agitation for the rights of indentured servants."
Ms. Maverick says John McCain "is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or
lowercase."
"It's just incredible—the nerve!—to suggest that he’s not
part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and
I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it
again.’"
"He's a Republican," she said. "He's branded."
An even more annoying means of "phone support"
After responding to an Intuit coupon offer to upgrade my 4-year old copy
of Quicken, and seeing the "free" software packages they
were bundling with it that looked better than the usual shovelware, I
placed the order, downloaded my shiny new bits, and...
Where's that other stuff they promised? (Did they promise? Or
was this an internet bait-and-switch scam?)
The contact phone number led through a menu that finally told me to use
their whizzy new web interface to request a callback. I won't have to
sit on hold for 20 or 40 minutes, that's nice, right? Well, after
being warned that it may cost me $24.95 (directly; my time is of course
worth nothing to them), but that "Questions relating to purchasing or
installing the product are always free," I filled out the form, and so
on.
It turns out it's actually pretty annoying to hold your telephone
"free" for an hour. A friend called during the early part of the wait.
"Can I call you back?" I asked, as quickly as I could with out being
too rude.
68 minutes after the auto-reply told me they'd call in 60, Ashish gave a
jingle... from India, sounds like. I told him my story, and he said
"You do not need to worry," they will send me LegalBusinessPro and
WillMaker. That offer was limited to shipped products, he
notes. I actually wanted to order a hard copy, I noted; their
user interface failed if they really wanted to offer me my choice of
delivery.
At some point in the conversation, while he had to wait for his computer
system (I imagine), he casually asked me how the weather was here.
"Beautiful," I said, looking out on early fall sunshine on oak leaves,
still dark green and madly photosynthesizing to build acorns to drop on
our roof. "A little chilly this morning..." (I hesitated, thinking it
would be polite to convert to Celsius for him, but not having the number
handy enough), "in the 40s. It'll be up in the 70s later."
"How about where you are?"
He did have to convert, came up with "87 or 88 today, I think."
"Where's that?" I asked, wondering if his company had a rule not to
answer such questions. Whether or not they do, he did: "New Delhi."
"Where it's the middle of the night, huh?"
Not quite -- still early in the night, IST being UTC+5:30,
11½ hours ahead of MDT, not quite 10pm.
"What a world," I said, and asked for some numeric confirmation of our
transaction. Not that I don't trust people in New Delhi, or course.
"You do not need to worry."
Speaking of old associations
I guess I wasn't paying close attention to
the Paul Begala
part of last Sunday's Meet the Press, looking forward
to the later part of the show. Part of the transcript:
"This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for
the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back—I’ve written
a book about McCain.
I had a dozen researchers go through him. I didn’t even put this
in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing
organization. It was the U.S. Council for World Freedom. It was chaired
by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran-Contra
scandal. It was an ultraconservative right-wing group. The
Anti-Defamation League, in 1981, when McCain was on the board, said this
about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist
League, the parent organization, which ADL said, 'has increasingly
become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists,
racists and Anti-Semites.' Now, that’s not John McCain. I don’t think he
is that. But, but, you know, the problem is that a lot of people know
John McCain's record better than Governor Palin, and he does not want to
play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face."
With a biography like
this, John McCain wants his campaign to work the angle of a couple
of Obama's less upstanding acquaintances? Now that's chutzpah.
Could be real interesting tomorrow night if the gloves come off.
That McNasty John is not very far below the surface right now.
In the script the handlers have fed Palin to regurgitate, William Ayers
is imagined to be at the "beginning" of Obama's political carreer, with
no real evidence for that. Whereas convicted felon Charles Keating,
later at the center of the Lincoln Savings and Loan debacle,
actually was instrumental in McCain's political rise.
"(Keating) raised more than $100,000 for McCain's 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.
Not that Keating was the only hand up McCain has enjoyed. The grandson
and son of Admirals, and the benefactor of his 2nd wife's inherited
fortune, he's another child of privilege looking for a ticket to the
top.
5.Oct.2008
Debate, deconstructed
Interesting to see Gwen Ifill speak for herself
on Meet the Press
today....
"The understanding that we had (with the candidates) was that we were
going to have debate. One of the interesting things about a debate that
people forget, especially with this one, there was so much obsession
about Sarah Palin, is that there are two people on the stage, and their
jobs are to debate each other. The moderator's job is to control
their debate. If they have decided, as Joe Biden decided, that he was
going to debate John McCain, as she decided, she was going to give a
stump speech to the American people there's very little a moderator can
do...
"(I)f she wasn't challenged... by her competitor, I had another
job to do at the table....
"(Palin) was transaparent in her intentions, when she said 'I won't
listen to the moderator, I won't answer the questions,' that allowed
people at home to say 'oh, she's not answering the questions tonight,
what is she trying to do?'"
Ifill also laughed off the b.s. about how biased she was because of her
book, for which she hasn't written the chapter about Obama yet. (I was
wondering how all the right-wing nutjobs knew all about it but I didn't;
it's easier if you just use your imagination.)
O Wad Some Gif'
Jon Kelly's riding the bus—the BBC election bus—across the
country, and
blogging America, one month from the Big Vote. Interesting
point of view.
4.Oct.2008
Palin sounds as inside Washington as Karl Rove
All of a sudden. And hey,
she reads the New York Times when it suits her. Picks out the
facts she likes, and turns 'em into insinuation.
Very patriotic. Very down home.
Creepy campaign quote of the day
John McCain wanted to know: "How can you countenance someone who was
engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?"
He wasn't addressing this to the President or Vice President from
his party, nor to himself. Apparently his conscience is clear for
however many bombing runs he made himself. No, this is
fishing for dirt in muddy waters.
In the news because of the Straight Talk Express' squeaky clean campaign?
Not exactly. The only chance left for McCain is to change the
subject to anything other than the economy and
get downright McNasty.
It'll feed the base, for sure. But win over the undecided?
3.Oct.2008
Astounding helpfulness
Pogue spent his latest column on
Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User, most of which I know, but
some of which I don't. You may know them all, but I bet you don't. And
I'm certain you don't know every one of the follow-on tips in the
500+ comments. (Of course, looking through all 500 is a bit of a
slog... but make a note of this and mine it when you're looking for ways
to sharpen your saw.)
"Nobody, but nobody, is going to give you half of $80 million to help
them liberate the funds of a deceased millionaire... from Nigeria or
anywhere else."
"The $3.1 billion paid to the top five executives at [Goldman Sachs,
Morgan Stanley, Merrill, Lehman. and Bear Stearns] between 2003 and 2007
was about three times what JPMorgan spent to buy Bear Stearns."
Quote check
This is nice.
Paul Krugman tracked down the Ronald Reagan quote that Palin signed
off with last night.
"When did he say this? It was on a recording he made for Operation
Coffeecup — a campaign organized by the American Medical
Association to block the passage of Medicare. Doctors’ wives were
supposed to organize coffee klatches for patients, where they would play
the Reagan recording, which declared that Medicare would lead us to
totalitarianism."
In the tank
Now Miss Congeniality is
telling the press how to do their jobs?! In her peripatetic college
career, winding up at the University of Idaho, she studied journalism
don't you know, and with the benefit of that education, she's here to
tell us (not directly, mind you, but with oh-so-professional
insinuation) that Gibson and Couric were unethical in
their questioning of her.
But hey, she's spunky enough to take it. "Bring it on!"
she might say. "...this is all about 'gotcha' journalism. A lot of
it is. But that's okay, too."
Dear Senator Hatch:
I'm not sure how to respond to the messages you're sending out via the
National Republican Senatorial Committee, but you are clearly lending
the prestige of your position as a U.S. Senator to the fundraising
messages.
In yesterday's, you wrote:
"The moderator of tonight's debate is in the tank for Obama -- this
liberal PBS reporter is releasing a pro-Obama book ... to debut on
inauguration day."
I think you owe Gwen Ifill a public apology for your cheap—and
misguided—shot. Whatever her political opinions, she has long
demonstrated her ability as a journalist to treat issues and candidates
fairly, and without bias. Whatever is coming in her new book is utterly
irrelevant to her work on-air.
And whatever her failings as the moderator last night, being "in the
tank" for Obama was not one of them.
Fast and loose with the facts
Not that the facts seem to matter for electing Presidents—they
certainly didn't when George W. Bush was running—but our friends
at
FactCheck.org run through last night's claims, rather studiously
bouncing back and forth to make the errors feel evenly divided. Since
people's reactions to the candidates are what matter, and corrections do
not magically push out false perceptions and beliefs, I guess the
misstatements add up to a tie.
That leaves us with our impressions. Was Palin's performance
"vibrant and tactically clever" as
David
Brooks gushes, or "abysmal," showing a "paper thin" understanding of
major policy issues, as
Michael Cohen judges? Or was it bordering on incoherent,
as Charles Blow thinks?
Brooks' comments right after the debate
included the bizarre observation that Biden didn't say Obama's name
enough, or nearly as much as Palin did for her running mate, which makes
it clear what objectivity he may have doesn't work in real time. Others
can count their way through the transcript, the Biden I saw was the one
Cohen did: concise and disciplined, and, as
the NYT
editorial board put it, "showing a clear grasp of the big picture
and the details. He left Ms. Palin way behind on most issues,
especially foreign policy and national security, where she just seemed
lost."
More from the bloviosphere:
Gideon Rachman was disappointed (along with 40 or 50 million others)
that there was no "car-crash television." ("Biden occasionally broke the
informal rules of the debate, by speaking coherently and making
sense...")
Fort Mill U
students: Palin was "sugar-coated," Biden strong and direct.
"Joe Biden pretty much crushed Sarah Palin," Stephanie Luo said,
Palin "speaks in generalizations and doesn't bring much substance."
McCain: "How about Sarah Palin last night, huh? How about her,
huh?"
At our debate party last night, the crowd started the theme song for the
"Maverick" every time Palin trotted out that chestnut, but it wasn't the
right tune. Turns out the theme from Bonanza comes more readily
to mind. Thanks to the Intertubes we can
have a listen
and remember those halcyon black and white days of James Garner and Jack
Kelly, and wonder just what the heck the self-assigned nickname is
supposed to mean for the McCain/Palin ticket.
Riverboat ring your bell!
Fare thee well, Annabelle
Luck is the lady that he loves the beeeesst
Natchez to New Orleans
Livin' on Jacks and Queens
Maverick is a legend of the Weeeeest.
Motion to Concur
Another brilliant
interactive graphic from the NYT, showing today's vote in the House
of Represenatives, a motion to concur on the Senate amendments to the
Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, sending the bailout to
George W. Bush for his signature. It artfully includes state-by-state
party affiliation and Congressional District maps to slice and dice the
263-171 vote, this time with 73% of the Democrats and 46% of the
Republicans joining to pass the bill.
The "show only certain districts" subsets reveal the stark population
distribution of the West, with the interesting scattering of urban,
suburban and rural districts, among other dimensions.
Speaking of caricatures
Sarah Palin's a smart cookie, I'll give you that. After the
cara-cari-mockery problem with Katie Couric, she practiced her delivery,
and
got it right the next time she tried, deriding the response
to what she supposed was the worst thing Dick Cheney had done in his
latest government job: "the duck hunting accident."
"...when we talk about the Bush administration, ah, there's a time, too,
when Americans are gonna say, 'Enough is enough with your ticket,' on
constantly looking backwards, and pointing fingers, and doin' the blame
game." –Sarah Palin
"The issue is, how different is John McCain's policy going to be than
George Bush's? I haven't heard anything yet." –Joe Biden
Presumably she was talking about the "quail hunting accident" where
Cheney broke the first rule of hunting (don't shoot your buddies or
their dogs), rather than the December 2003 slaughter of pen-raised ducks
and pheasants at the Rolling Rock Club in Pennsylvania. (That was just
good sporting fun, even if they didn't do it with a helicopter.)
And in
last night's debate, she presented a high-energy (and ever-so
slightly robotic) delivery vehicle for Republican talking points,
smartly dodging direct answers to every inconvenient question and
snapping back to "message," delivered with her
imitable
folksy charm, droppin' those g's (sometimes) and tossin' in a
"doggone it" here and there.
Doncha just wanna go have a beer with her, and see if ya can get
'er to wink atcha?
Wondering how this could be the same person who looked like such an
ignoramus in the one-on-one interviews, the answer (!) jumped out at me:
she didn't have to answer any questions she didn't want to. I
think Gwen Ifill did a fine (and nonpartisan, thankyouverymuch) job of
moderating for the most part, but she failed in the task to make
some effort to get the candidates—much more so for Palin
than Biden—to answer the question. Otherwise, why spend the
time and effort coming up with the questions?
"Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've
had probably in American history." –Joe Biden
The was enough structure to keep it from being totally scripted and
totally stump-style taking points mixed with anecdotes, but just
barely. Let's focus on just one particular issue, that of our current
Vice-President, and how things will change under the next
sub-administration.
What does Sarah Palin think of Dick Cheney's lawyers reinterpretation of
the U.S. Constitution, making his office a 4th branch of government?
"Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the
Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president.
And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that
position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative
with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with
him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we
have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed
for this nation...."
I don't get the impression that she really knows what's in the
Constitution, or thinks that it matters, much.
2.Oct.2008
More dueling polls in Idaho's 1st CD
Something strange going on behind the scenes as another pair of polls
come out with contradictory numbers between Democratic challenger Walt
Minnick, and Republican incumbent Bill Sali. The first one I saw was
from Harstad Strategic Research, with essentially the same result as
earlier this month: 44% for Minnick, 38% for Sali. The campaign's
communication director tells me the poll was of 400 registered voters;
a random sample that size should give results ±5% with 95%
confidence.
Greg Smith & Associates has a checkered forecasting history, but
fellow Republican Sid Smith is touting their new poll numbers from
"200 likely voters," showing Sali over Minnick, 51-39%,
"well outside of the margin of error" according to the press release.
With a random sample of only 200, that margin would be ±7%.
Likely voters? And why so few?
Oh that's right, Sali is
still short of cash, isn't he? I guess those
yard sales didn't really do the trick, and with shorter and cooler
days, the season for those is kind of over.
Another view of the bailout
I asked one of my big brothers what he thought. I trust his business
sense, even though we're on opposite sides (if not poles) of the
political spectrum. He replied, "I am a proponent of the legislation.
Something needs to be done, because if Wall street fails, Main street
goes with it."
That was the easy part. Then he went off on how we got here...
He says it all started with "Loose lending standards that Bill Clinton
forced on Fannie and Freddie during his administration." Not everyone
can own their own home, and it doesn't appear that either candidate is
willing to present that uncomfortable truth to the American people.
Accountability is lacking in Congress as well as on Wall Street,
he noted. (Me, I'd settle for having businesses meet generally accepted
accounting principles, but that seems too high a bar much of the time,
too.) Then he went on to name names of Democrats who he thinks are to
blame, or who are benefiting, and then said "no need to respond my blood
pressure is already up."
Sheesh, couldn't even have a calm discussion in the family past one
email each. Good think he doesn't keep up with my blog, he'd need
medication for hypertension.
The suspense is killing us
If, as Adam
Brookes speculates from across the pond, "for once in politics, less
is more," Joe Biden could have his hands full tonight. Sarah Palin has
less to offer in every category except
the one that Samuel
Johnson noted: it's flat-out amazing that she didn't blink, swallow,
and say "you've got to be kidding, Mr. McCain" when she got that
call. Her ambition is not of the well-informed variety.
So maybe that's fine, and ignorance is bliss, and a fresh-faced
imaginary Everywoman can capture the imagination of a sufficiently large
(and sufficiently credulous) sector of the electorate that McCain can
ride a pitbull to the White House.
But when she's off-script, and off photo-op, which surely must happen
for a good portion of tonight's 90 minutes, she just looks like a car-,
cari-, mockery of a real candidate, spouting gibberish or,
as Fareed
Zakaria put it, "a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase" that
comes into her head on a topic. (Mercifully, even that doesn't
take long, but still long enough to be painful.) Could the absurd
conceit that the wicked media are browbeating her really stand up to a
moment's scrutiny? Can Gwen Ifill's glowing presence fail to outshine
our once-upon-a-time beauty queen?
Tune in at 7pm MDT!
Just makin' stuff up
I bet Jim Risch was quite the little storyteller as a kid. The stuff
he's coming up with now shows a lot of practice. His signature piece is
spinning a huge shift from property tax to sales tax as the biggest tax
cut ever. Then there's the "rancher" window dressing on his career as
a trial lawyer and political operative. And now comes the politics of
personal perception, where he "cooperated" with Democratic leadership in
the past.
The object of his new-found affection, former Governor Cecil Andrus,
called that claim "preposterous."
"Risch is one of the most partisan people I’ve ever had to deal with,"
Andrus said. "During his time in legislative leadership, cooperation
across the aisle and with the governor's office reached a new low."
Fortunately, there is a better alternative:
Larry LaRocco
for U.S. Senate.
Pre-debate Teapot Tempest
God forbid the moderator should be writing a book about politics and
race that has the name of the first black candidate to be nominated for
President by a major party in the title. It's the liberal media
conspiracy! Or, as Richard Viguerie puts it,
Selection of Gwen
Ifill again shows that GOP is "the stupid party." (And at
ConservativeHQ, the grassroots are burning, for some reason.)
I get the impression the critics have never seen Ifill's work, which
happens to be first-rate and rather studiously unbiased. It's a
projection thing: they can't imagine moderating a debate
neutrally, so how could anyone who disagrees with them about anything
do it?
It's not about being neutral, though: they want every advantage they can
get. Attacking the supposed "liberal media" is a sure-fire attention and
support getter among their base, so there's nothing to lose. And if they
can get in Ifill's head and have her bend over backwards to avoid any
hint of bias, that's all good, too.
Having Sarah Palin establish an incredibly low bar with her first two
unscripted outings, they've also made sure expectations are
really, really low for tonight. Has she been playing possum with Charlie
and Katie, waiting to spring on poor Joe like a she-pit bull? Or are the
depth and breadth of the ignorance Palin has shown so far reflective of
her actual ignorance?
We can hardly wait to find out.
1.Oct.08
Disrespect and condescension
The more we see of John McCain, the uglier he gets. Everything starts
with "my friends," first of all. I'm sorry, we are not friends.
We are not even acquainted. We have a politician-voter relationship,
which come to think of it, is pretty well covered by the headline.
We don't have collegiality, we don't have a one-on-one interaction.
It's one-to-many, you-to-me and millions of others. Tens of
millions.
"Senator Obama just doesn't understand" seemed to be his main talking
point in the first debate. What, you're so damn smart, just because
you've been travelling on taxpayer funds for so many more years than he
has? I guess that would make Sarah Palin totally unqualified then, eh?
(And by the way, what was up with picking her for your running mate,
anyway? Do you really take us for complete fools?)
That "suspending the campaign" schtick, that was impressive. Just long
enough to skip out of Letterman...
I can appreciate why you'd be unhappy, angry even.
The latest polls—and the trends—don't look good. One
campaign staffer turns out to be getting paid by the supposed bad guys,
and
the other one is spouting nonsense about what is and isn't "a
journalistic organization." As if what's coming out of the campaign
is somehow credible? At all?
How strange it seems that the so-called conservative party, and the one
that imagines patriotism to be its special reserve, is so fearful of
weakness that it continues to destroy the fabric of society—no,
really—with policies and actions in near exact opposition to
what our founders intended.
Not 
Holy cow. Most of the blue collar folks being courted by Sarah Palin
don't make $150,000 in two or three years, and
In other campaign news, Rex Rammell has figured out (see BW story linked
below) that the more people associate him with his elk, the better off
he does in polls.
While going through some of our collected treasures (otherwise known as
"cleaning up some of the junk in our house"), Jeanette came across the
November/December 1987 issue of the Idaho Arts Journal, in which
she had a "Readers' Reviews" piece entitled "Let's Talk About It..."
It's a review of the film A River Runs Through It, and an
interview with Walt Minnick that says a lot about what matters in this
part of the world, and why "environmentalist" is a prerequisite
for representing this state, rather than the epithet Sali thinks it
is.
The Anchorage Daily News:
We covered them up night before last, and lit the pilot light on the
furnace, anticipating the first freeze. Yesterday had a decided nip in
the air with a NW wind bringing it in. Today, it was gloomy all day,
looking like it wanted to rain or something...
.
I had a dozen researchers go through him. I didn’t even put this
in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing
organization. It was the U.S. Council for World Freedom. It was chaired
by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran-Contra
scandal. It was an ultraconservative right-wing group. The
Anti-Defamation League, in 1981, when McCain was on the board, said this
about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist
League, the parent organization, which ADL said, 'has increasingly
become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists,
racists and Anti-Semites.' Now, that’s not John McCain. I don’t think he
is that. But, but, you know, the problem is that a lot of people know
John McCain's record better than Governor Palin, and he does not want to
play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face."
