Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth: 2008 Election

Showing posts with label 2008 Election. Show all posts

November 14, 2008

Meet Sen. Norm Slimy (R-MN), the Ted Stevens of the Midwest

ST. PAUL, MN - NOVEMBER 4: U.S. Sen. Norm Co...

Although I've lived in Toronto for going on two decades, Minnesota was my last state of residence in the US, so it is where I've voted since moving here. Reading on-line editions of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, coupled with having friends - some since high school - who still live there, it's easy for me to keep up with home state politics.
In a state known for squeaky clean, Lake Woebegon-like politics, Sen. Norm Coleman is the poster child of slimy political stunts, self-serving manoeuvring, and kow-towing to corporate campaign donors.
He was narrowly elected to the Senate in 2002 after incumbent Democrat Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash during the campaign - a sad irony because Wellstone was first elected in 1996 barnstorming the state in an battered, old, school bus. Now, Coleman is embroiled in a state-mandated recount because the election results in his fight against Al Franken fell within 0.5% of a tie.
How slimy is Coleman?
Besides demanding that Franken forego the recount even though precious few votes separate them and the law requires it, Coleman and his surrogates are attacking everyone from poll workers to Minnesota's Secretary of State Mark Ritchie with lies about vote count shenanigans, being untrustworthy and practically criminal behaviour. When Republican lies are disproven - sometimes by the very people who started them - Coleman conveniently ignores reality and goes on with his smears.
Well, what can you expect? Coleman was first approached about running for the Senate by Karl Rove.
Typical Coleman Crappola
This week on The Rachel Maddow Show, Ritchie fired back at the Senator. He noted that, as the elected Secretary of State, it is his job to take the jabs and smears "but Sen. Coleman has no business attacking the integrity of election judges around the state, many of whom have been volunteering for decades without a hint of wrongdoing or impropriety."
Now Coleman and the national Republican Party are flying in some 100 GOP lawyers to peek over the volunteer's shoulders as Minnesota's 87 counties recount the Senate vote. But while much of the nation is aghast at what Coleman is doing, for people in Minnesota his smarmy representation is nothing new.
For example, in March 2007, Coleman introduced legislation to kill the Defense Travel System, a program to automate Defense Dept. travel purchases, which spends roughly $5.5-billion annually for travel. Shortly after filing the legislation, Coleman received a generous contribution from CEO Marilyn Carlson Nelson of Minneapolis-based Carlson Companies, owner of Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Its Government Travel unit provides lucrative services for numerous federal agencies. Moreover, over the years, Coleman has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from other Carlson Companies executives.
As a constituent, I wrote objecting to his measure to bring efficiency to travel purchases by the federal government. Weeks later, a form letter showed up in my e-mail saying, in effect, go stuff yourself.
He backed President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, telling me in a letter I wrote to him at the time objecting to the scheme that Americans can better take care of their future than the government. As the stock market crash amply demonstrated, had Social Security been privatized as Coleman wanted, the nation's elderly would be even worse off now than they are.
He told me in another letter that the Patriot Act is an important way to protect Americans from terrorism, saying that people not involved in nefarious activities have nothing to worry about. Uhm, it turns out we all have a lot to worry about as Attorney General Michael Mukasey proved again a few weeks ago by allowing FBI agents to investigate anyone for any reason.
charley-james.jpgSmart Money
I stopped writing to Sen. Coleman once I realised all I was receiving in return were Republican talking points, the same ones The White House shares with Fox News every day. By comparison, when I write to my other senator, Amy Klobuchar, I receive a thoughtful reply that includes a rationale for her position. I don't always agree with her but at least she explains why she is supporting or opposing some piece of legislation.
Coleman merely spits in my face.
Friends in Minnesota tell me that the smart money in the recount is on Franken who carried the urban Hennepin and Ramsey counties and their surrounding suburbs by wide margins as well as counties in the traditionally heavy Democratic-voting Iron Range, which includes Duluth. The state and the US Senate would be well-served by ridding itself of another self-serving toady who, in his own quiet way, is the Ted Stevens of the Midwest.

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November 06, 2008

Strains Between McCain and Palin Aides Go Public

ABC News

Reports of agitation between the two camps bubbled up in the final weeks of the campaign as Barack Obama began pulling away and the GOP duo was unable to regain the momentum.
But those reports are no longer in the rumor stage as McCain loyalists are now blasting away at the Alaska governor, who was a favorite of the Republican right during the campaign, but was cited in numerous polls as a reason why many Americans wouldn't vote for the Arizona Republican.
Perhaps the most dangerous allegation for Palin are reports in The New York Times and Newsweek that when she was urged by McCain adviser Nicole Wallace to buy three suits for the Republican convention and three suits for the campaign trail, she went on the now-infamous shopping spree at swank stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.
A Republican donor who agreed to foot a majority of the expenses was stunned when he received the bill, Newsweek reported. Both the Times and Newsweek report that the budget for the clothing was expected to be between $20,000 and $25,000. Instead, the amount reported by the Republican National Committee was $150,000.
That wasn't the whole tab, however, according to Newsweek. The magazine claims that Palin leaned on some low-level staffers to put thousands of dollars of additional purchases on their credit cards. The national committee and McCain became aware of the extra expenditures, including clothes for husband Todd Palin, when the staffers sought reimbursement, Newsweek reported.
There is one comment in particular from a McCain aide that guaranteed to heighten friction between the two camps. The angry aide described the Palin family shopping spree to Newsweek as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast."
It's unclear how much McCain knew about the clothing debacle. Reports suggest that he was kept out of the loop for fear that he would not approve.
Both Newsweek and The New York Times say McCain and Palin had little contact with each other.
[..]Vice presidential candidates traditionally leave the spotlight to the top of the ticket on election night and McCain aides made it clear to Palin that she would be a spectator that night, not a speaker, The New York Times reported.
And when McCain and Palin split up in Arizona Wednesday, the personal differences were stark.
McCain drove himself home in a Toyota sport utility vehicle. Palin's departure was a grander event. She left with an entourage of 18 family members and friends and a Secret Service detail, heading to the airport in a motorcade stretching more than a dozen vehicles, flanked by a dozen more cops on motorcycles.

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Tired of the First Black President Yet?

NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 04: Residents of the hist...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Tuesday night, I had tears in my eyes when I recognized a truly transformational event had occurred in America. The perception of African Americans that they are second class citizens has been squashed, perhaps forever. The next generation will be more color blind than every before in the US.
The real issue has always been rich and poor. But few people would have you believe that. Ronald Reagan perhaps put it best by classifying some poor as "unworthy". Everyone knew he referred to the stereotype of the AFDC mother and her irresponsible boyfriends. Most people saw those faces as black first. But most AFDC mothers were in fact white. Most AFDC mothers had a job history and would return to work within months. Very few were stuck forever on the dole.
Since the election, only a few journalists have mentioned Obama's skills. Few have mentioned that he is the best man for the job since Colin Powell did days before the election. Yet clearly, his communication skills, he grasp of the complex issues is as good as any man who has stood up in that office, and MUCH better than many more.
But we don't hear about his superior competence.
It seems pretty apparent that white America still sees color first.
The Buffalo News

In the midst of that meltdown, it was concerns about money, more than anything, that propelled the first black major-party nominee to victory.
The financial crisis put lots of Americans, if not in the same class, at least in the same boat. And finally, green trumped black as concerns about money outweighed trepidations about the color of a man's skin.
It's the irony of ironies that a country that built its economic power on the back of free black labor now turns to a black man to save its crumbling financial structures. But it's also a measure of how far we've come. It's proof of our growth that enough middle-and working-class Americans of all races united to put their common economic interests above all else.

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November 05, 2008

Obama Victory Speech - VIDEO, TEXT

Barak Obama is now President-Elect. This is an history moment for the World. The leader of the free world has emerged from a dark age. Obama celebrated in Grant Park and gave the following speech to an estimated 125,000 people. Follow the link to find the video.
Huffington Post
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.
Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.
I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations promise in the months ahead.
I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.
I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.
To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.
But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.
I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.
What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.
And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldnt vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.
And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when womens voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?
This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:
Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

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Robert J. Elisberg: "Politics of Change" Just Changed More Than You Think

November 03, 2008

Fact Check: Sunday's Senatorial debate

Work of the United States Senate, Credited to ...

Image via Wikipedia

TwinCities.com

During the debate between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, Franken and the Independence Party's Dean Barkley, Franken said Coleman had accepted trips from the same businessman accused in a lawsuit of trying to funnel money through the senator's wife's employer. Franken craned his neck up toward the questioner and responded simply, "Yeah."
Franken is correct.
In Senate disclosure forms, Coleman has reported receiving the following gifts over $305 from Bloomington financier Nasser Kazeminy: a private plane trip with Coleman's daughter valued at $3,960 on Feb. 21, 2005, and a private plane trip with his wife valued at $2,870 on May 27, 2004. Such gifts were legal because they were properly reported.
Also, in 2000, Kazeminy paid in full for then-St. Paul Mayor Coleman to travel on official business to Jordan to promote ties between local companies and that Middle Eastern nation's developing information technology network. The City Council unanimously approved that arrangement.
Still a bit bewildered about all that's been going back and forth with this Texas lawsuit?
Here are the important facts:
The lawsuit was filed by Paul McKim, a Republican from Texas. A second lawsuit with similar allegations has been filed in Delaware.

The suitis primarily about a business McKim founded that Kazeminy now controls. It alleges Kazeminy tried to funnel $100,000 to Coleman, via a bogus consulting contract with the Hays Companies in Minneapolis, where Laurie Coleman works as a licensed insurance broker.

The suit does not accuse the Colemans of knowing about the alleged plan or of receiving any money.

The Hays Companies has said it does have a contract with McKim's company, but it says it's a legitimate contract and has condemned the lawsuit.

Then there is the ad war that followed.
Coleman, citing no direct evidence, accused Franken of being behind the lawsuit in numerous public statements and in a TV ad. Franken has denied that and has responded with an ad accusing Coleman of lying about that.
On Sunday night, Coleman changed his attack: He no longer said Franken was behind the suit; accused Franken of "crossing a line" by not condemning a different ad attacking Coleman over the suit.
That second ad is by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which brings us to a fact check.
Claim: Coleman called on Franken to "reject" the ad. "My anger is over an ad that's defaming my wife, and Mr. Franken, Al, rather than rejecting it, is promoting it."
Facts: Legally, Franken cannot control the content of an ad by the DSCC. Similarly, Coleman can't control the content of ads by his party's counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Coleman emphasized this point last month when he announced he was taking down his negative campaign ads but had no control over NRSC ads attacking Franken.
Both groups have been running attack ads, and neither candidate has exercised the most powerful influence he could have: Each could demand his party's group stop spending money in the state. But don't expect that. For example, in a recent interview, Coleman said he wasn't prepared to take such an action because it amounted to unilateral disarmament.

November 01, 2008

Republican Politics: Manipulating Ignorance

The Republican Party has a long history of stoking the greed, the bigotry and the ignorance of the voting public. Their past campaigns have brought together the bigots of fascism who espouse Social Darwinism, the religious right who seeks a merger of church and state, and the redneck ignorant white poor and working class. This coalition has been created by a propaganda machine, not principle, because the ultimate winners in the Republican party have risen to the top for anyone looking, the fascist super rich. They have no loyalty to America, who actually benefit by a wrecked American economy because they can get their labor cheaper and without benefits. There is no coincidence that fewer Americans are covered by health insurance now than 8 years ago. And wages for the middle class have dropped compared to the new cost of living of the 21st Century.
Voters need to vote for their pocket books. If they do, we won't see a Republican president for a long time.

Book cover via Amazon

AlterNet

Obama has a lot to offer, but until our education system is fixed or religious fundamentalism withers, anti-intellectuals will flaunt their ignorance.
How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the United States come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist?
Like most people on this side of the Atlantic, I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. The United States has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.
There have been exceptions over the past century: Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived; but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter -- stumbling a little, using long words -- carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said, "There you go again." His own health program would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.
It wasn't always like this. The founding fathers of the republic -- men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton -- were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W. Bush and Sarah Palin?
On one level, this is easy to answer: Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. U.S. education, like the U.S. health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on Earth, 1 adult in 5 believes the sun revolves around the Earth; only 26 percent accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of U.S. voters cannot name the three branches of government; and the math skills of 15-year-olds in the United States are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
But this merely extends the mystery: How did so many U.S. citizens become so dumb and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of U.S. politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.
One theme is both familiar and clear: Religion -- in particular fundamentalist religion -- makes you stupid. The United States is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.
Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti-rationalism. During the first few decades after the publication of Origin of Species, for example, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin's theory was mixed up in the United States with the brutal philosophy -- now known as Social Darwinism -- of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer's doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people from being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation, according to the doctrine; gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary.
Darwinism, in other words, became indistinguishable to the public from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is profoundly ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by such prominent fundamentalists as William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian Right. Modern fundamentalists reject the science of Darwinian evolution and accept the pseudoscience of Social Darwinism.
But there were other, more powerful reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The United States is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the Southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. "In the South," Jacoby writes, "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order."
The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest Protestant denomination in the United States, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the South stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that 1 in 4 of the state's public school biology teachers believed that humans and dinosaurs lived on Earth at the same time.
This tragedy has been assisted by the American fetishization of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln's career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education, provided by the state, is unnecessary; all that is required to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements, like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century, were in vogue. In the age of infotainment, it is a recipe for confusion.
Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason why intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism has been equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism a long time ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Almost every day, men like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rage against the "liberal elites" destroying America.
The specter of pointy-headed alien subversives was crucial to the elections of Reagan and Bush. A genuine intellectual elite -- like the neocons (some of them former communists) surrounding Bush -- has managed to pitch the political conflict as a battle between ordinary Americans and an overeducated pinko establishment. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the right-wing elite has been successfully branded as elitism.
Obama has a good deal to offer America, but none of this will come to an end if he wins. Until the great failures of the U.S. education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers, there will be political opportunities for people, like Bush and Palin, who flaunt their ignorance.

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October 29, 2008

McCain Advisors call Palin a "Diva" and a "Whack Job"

Things aren't going so well on the campaign trail for the Alaskan Governor. According to
CNN:

A McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.
"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.
"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

It get's worse. Another top McCain adviser calls her "a whack job."
Meanwhile after Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was convicted accepting bribes, Palin does her statesman speech, leaving out the most relevant parts.
Alternet.org

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin issued a statement calling it "a sad day for Alaska." In the statement, Palin also declared that the "verdict shines a light though on the corrupting influence of the big oil service company" whose CEO provided many of Stevens' unreported gifts:
The verdict shines a light though on the corrupting influence of the big oil service company up there in Alaska that was allowed to control too much of our state. And that control was part of the culture of corruption that I was elected to fight. And that fight must always move forward regardless of party affiliation or seniority or even past service.

Palin's statement neglects to mention that she also has ties to "the big oil service company," Veco. When she ran for lieutenant governor in 2002, "she gathered $5,000 -- or about 10 percent of her campaign fund -- from Veco officials or their wives," including $500 from CEO Bill Allen.
In 2006, when she ran for governor, Palin ran as a critic of Veco and said that she "didn't want Veco money." But her running mate, Sean Parnell, received two $500 checks from Veco officers during the campaign, including one from Allen. Last month, Palin donated to charity "more than $1,000 in campaign contributions from two Alaska politicians implicated" in the federal corruption probe surrounding Veco.
Palin had accepted the donations from the state legislators, John Cowdery and Bruce Weyhrauch, after their offices were searched by the FBI in 2006. Palin made the charitable donations only after the AP had reported that she accepted the money in 2006.

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October 28, 2008

What are you going to do with the next 7 days?

Brave New PAC

7 days. That's all the time we have. Just 7 days to alert undecided voters and those who need motivation about how John McCain has voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time. 7 days to tell them about how he has smeared Barack Obama with malicious fear-mongering and race-baiting tactics. 7 days to stress how McCain's temper and his health record secrecy could pose national security risks. 7 days to point out that McCain overplays his POW card each time he's backed into a corner.

What are you going to do with the next 7 days?

Take the 7 videos below and send them, one each day, to all the undecided voters you know and all of your friends in need of motivation. Send along a personal note that conveys the time-sensitive nature of these videos, and tell them to keep spreading them to all the undecided voters they know. And donate $7 to Brave New PAC so we can continue our efforts to create hard-hitting videos like the 7 below.

1. Brave New PAC's new video: McCain's Mavericks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRImWNXzSHk

3. McCain's Medical Records Must Be Released:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHvJPGnkQxE

5. Former POW Says McCain "Not Cut Out to Be President":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KjsEs46C70

7. And from our friends at MoveOn, Obama's Loss Traced to [Your Friend's Name Here]:
http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/taf.html?hp=1

2. John McCain's Rage is a National Security Concern:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAyK-enrF1g

4. McCain's Ads Are Lies. Here's the Video Proof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH0xzsogzAk

6. McCain's Women's Clinic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7acdvJegOY

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October 27, 2008

McCain to Attack Obama for Public Radio Comments from 2001

Barack Obama and family in Springfield, Illino...

Image via Wikipedia

This is typical McCain. He's going to try to make hay on an out of context comment that Obama made in 2001. Actually, Obama here acknowledges a conservative belief that change shouldn't come from the courts, but from the community. He says he agrees with McCain. McCain plays to the ignorant. Or maybe HE is the ignorant, doesn't understand the theoretical constitutional legal argument!
Political Punch

On September 6, 2001, then-state senator Barack Obama appeared on a public radio chat show to discuss "Slavery and the Constitution." You can listen to the whole show HERE.
In that show -- WBEZ-FM's "Odyssey" -- Obama discussed the role of the courts in civil rights.
Today, aides say, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will seize on some of those remarks, as hyped by Mr. Drudge.
Obama in that interview said, "If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I'd be okay."
"But," Obama said, "The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it's been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted."
Obama said "one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still stuffer from that."
A caller, "Karen," asked if it's "too late for that kind of reparative work economically?" And she asked if that work should be done through the courts or through legislation.
"Maybe I'm showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor," Obama said. "I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn't structured that way."
Presumably McCain will go after Obama in ways some on the conservative bloggosphere are today, accusing Obama of calling it a "tragedy" for not venturing into "the issues of redistribution of wealth" -- though Obama's campaign says that's a twisting of his words.
"In this interview back in 2001, Obama was talking about the civil rights movement - and the kind of work that has to be done on the ground to make sure that everyone can live out the promise of equality," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton says. "Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Obama's economic plan or his plan to give the middle class a tax cut. It's just another distraction from an increasingly desperate McCain campaign."
Burton continues: "In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of 'redistributing' wealth. Obama's point - and what he called a tragedy - was that legal victories in the Civil Rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country.
"As Obama has said before and written about, he believes that change comes from the bottom up - not from the corridors of Washington," Burton says. "He worked in struggling communities to improve the economic situation of people on the South Side of Chicago, who lost their jobs when the steel plants closed. And he's worked as a legislator to provide tax relief and health care to middle-class families. And so Obama's point was simply that if we want to improve economic conditions for people in this country, we should do so by bringing people together at the community level and getting everyone involved in our democratic process."
-- jpt

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Bill Clinton and Obama Set to Campaign Together for First Time

October 23, 2008

Correction... Technically, the Empress "Has Clothes"...

McClatchy Washington Bureau

A watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission Wednesday alleging that the Republican Party broke federal campaign laws by buying Sarah Palin and her family about $150,000 in clothes for campaign appearances.
The complaint names as defendants Palin, the RNC, Larson and other operatives associated with the RNC.

Image via Wikipedia

The Federal Election Campaign Act specifically prohibits expenditures for such purposes, the liberal-leaning Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in its complaint.
The group cited language in the law stating that no donated funds may be converted to personal use if the expense "would exist irrespective of the candidate's election campaign," including a clothing purchase unless it is of "de minimis value."
Murkier, however, is whether the law allows clothing purchases by a party committee, as occurred with the Palin expenses.
Jeff Larson, a Minnesota-based Republican consultant, made most or all of the purchases at high-end chain stores in Minneapolis as the Republican National Convention was ending, according to the Republican National Committee's campaign finance report for September.
He was reimbursed for amounts including $75,062 at Neiman Marcus, $41,851 at Saks Fifth Avenue, $4,902 at Atelier New York, $4,397 at Macy's and $5,103 at Bloomingdale's.
The RNC report said only that the expenditures were for "campaign accessories," but Politico.com disclosed this week that the expenses were for clothing for Palin and her family.
An RNC official, who lacked authorization to be identified, defended the purchases as permissible, because they didn't come from the McCain-Palin campaign.
"Because these accessories were purchased with coordinated funds, they belong to the RNC," the official said. "They will be returned to the national committee at the conclusion of the general election, and in turn directed to charity."
RNC spokesman Danny Diaz said only that the party committee "does not discuss expenses as it relates to strategy."
The center's executive director, Melanie Sloan, called it "ridiculous that RNC would spend $150,000 to outfit a vice presidential nominee and her family at any time," and even more so at a time when many Americans have been hit hard by the sagging economy.
"The FEC should investigate immediately," she said.Related articles by Zemanta

Al Qaeda Endorses McCain

Image by oceandesetoiles via Flickr

The Nation: The Dreyfuss Report

The Post today reports that Al Qaeda has endorsed John McCain for president. With seemingly impeccable logic, the cave dwellers -- actually, more likely, Quetta-squatters -- say that by electing McCain, the United States will commit itself to an extension of President Bush's blunders and thus exhaust itself militarily and financially.
Of course, Al Qaeda says that the way it can assist McCain is through a terrorist act that will rally Americans to his side.
Saying that McCain will continue the "failing march of his predecessor," Al Qaeda added:
"Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election. ... [We] will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

The quotes came from an AQ-linked website called al-Hesbah and were written by Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the site.

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October 20, 2008

Acorn Update: The Deluge of Hate

The Board Blog - NYTimes.com

Acorn, a non-profit group that advocates for poor and moderate-income people, has unfairly become a high-profile target in the presidential campaign.
Acorn has conducted a large-scale voter registration drive, in the course of which some of its employees filled out some bogus registration forms. Acorn flagged the suspect forms for election officials -- urging that they be investigated -- but still, it is being attacked for perpetrating voter fraud.
In the last presidential debate, John McCain made the stunning assertion that Acorn is "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history." He also insisted that it "may be destroying the fabric of democracy."
Well, that sort of incendiary language has consequences -- as Acorn has been learning. The group's Boston and Seattle-area offices were broken into. (They could be simple break-ins, though the timing is noteworthy.) At least one Acorn employee received a death threat.
Acorn has also been receiving some ugly emails and voice mail messages. The liberal group People for the American Way has collected some of them on its website. Warning before you click through: they are not for the faint of heart.

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McCains would have received $55,000 a year from his capital gains tax cut proposal.

Image by Barrybar via Flickr

Look who says it isn't class warfare.
Think Progress

Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) proposed temporarily cutting the capital gains tax from 15 percent to 7.5 percent. On Friday, the McCain campaign released Cindy McCain's 2007 tax returns, which show that the McCains made $746,395 in capitals gains last year. A new analysis by Michael Ettlinger, Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reveals that McCain's capital gains cut would have reduced the McCains' taxes by $55,980 in 2007. This is on top of the more than $350,000 that the McCains would have saved due to the Senator's other tax proposals. The Wonk Room has more.

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October 19, 2008

Colin Powell Pulls No Punches

The LA Progressive

Colin Powell pulled no punches. In his interview on Meet the Press, the former Secretary of State said he found that McCain was unsure of how to deal with the economic problems we are having in this country. Powell also felt that the selection of Governor Palin as McCain's VP was a mistake. See the full interview below.

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October 17, 2008

Why Does McCain Keep Calling on Joe the Plumber?

October 13, 2008

The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel

t r u t h o u t by: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Huffington Post

But if McCarthy-era guilt-by-association is once again a valid political consideration, Palin, it would seem, has more to lose than Obama. Palin, it could be argued, following her own logic, thinks so little of America's perfection that she continues to "pal around" with a man - her husband, actually - who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska's rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of America's land base - an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy.
AIP's charter commits the party "to the ultimate independence of Alaska," from the United States which it refers to as "the colonial bureaucracy in Washington." It proclaims Alaska's 1959 induction as a state "as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law."
AIP's creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American," reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP's current website, "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." According to Vogler AIP's central purpose was to drive Alaska's secession from the United States. Alaska, says current Chairwoman Lynette Clark, "should be an independent nation."
Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives that went bad. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government." He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, "I won't be buried under their damned flag...when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home." Palin has never denounced Vogler or his detestable anti-Americanism.
Palin's husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a "fellow traveler." While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP's 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP's 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP's 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year's 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight!
So when Palin accuses Barack of "not seeing the same America as you and me," maybe she is referring to an America without Alaska. In any case, isn't it time the media start giving equal time to Palin's buddy list of anti-American bombers and other radical associates?

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October 09, 2008

Obama Will Be One of The Greatest (and Most Loved) American Presidents

US Senator Barack Obama campaigning in New Ham...

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by Frank Schaeffer, whose father was a famous evangelist, and one of the creators of both the Religious Right and the Pro-Life movement.

Great presidents are made great by horrible circumstances combined with character, temperament and intelligence. Like firemen, cops, doctors or soldiers, presidents need a crisis to shine.
Obama is one of the most intelligent presidential aspirants to ever step forward in American history. The likes of his intellectual capabilities have not been surpassed in public life since the Founding Fathers put pen to paper. His personal character is also solid gold. Take heart, America: we have the leader for our times.
I say this as a white, former life-long Republican. I say this as the proud father of a Marine. I say this as just another American watching his pension evaporate along with the stock market! I speak as someone who knows it's time to forget party loyalty, ideology and pride and put the country first. I say this as someone happy to be called a fool for going out on a limb and declaring that, 1) Obama will win, and 2) he is going to be amongst the greatest of American presidents.
Obama is our last best chance. He's worth laying it all on the line for.
This is a man who in the age of greed took the high road of community service. This is the good father and husband. This is the humble servant. This is the pati ent teacher. This is the scholar statesman. This is the man of deep Christian faith.
Good stories about Obama abound; from his personal relationship with his Secret Service agents (he invites them into his home to watch sports, and shoots hoops with them) to the story about how, more than twenty years ago, while standing in the check-in line at an airport, Obama paid a $100 baggage surcharge for a stranger who was broke and stuck. (Obama was virtually penniless himself in those days.) Years later after he became a senator, that stranger recognized Obama's picture and wrote to him to thank him. She received a kindly note back from the senator. (The story only surfaced because the person, who lives in Norway, told a local newspaper after Obama ran for the presidency. The paper published a photograph of this lady proudly displaying Senator Obama's letter.)
Where many leaders are two-faced; publicly kindly but privately feared and/or hated by people closest to them, Obama is consistent in the way he treats people, consistently kind and personally humble. He lives by the code that those who lead must serve. He believes that. He lives it. He lived it long before he was in the public eye.
Obama puts service ahead of ideology. He also knows that to win politically you need to be tough. He can be. He has been. This is a man who does what works, rather than scoring ideological points. In other words he is the quintessential non-ideological pragmatic American. He will (thank God!) disappoint ideologues and purists of the left and the right.
Obama has a reservoir of personal physical courage that is unmatched in presidential history. Why unmatched? Because as the first black contender for the presidency who will win, Obama, and all the rest of us, know that he is in great physical danger from the seemingly unlimited reserve of unhinged racial hatred, and just plain unhinged ignorant hatred, that swirls in the bowels of our wounded and sinful country. By stepping forward to lead, Obama has literally put his life on the line for all of us in a way no white candidate ever has had to do. (And we all know how dangerous the presidency has been even for white presidents.)
Nice stories or even unparalleled courage isn't the only point. The greater point about Obama is that the midst of our worldwide financial meltdown, an expanding (and losing) war in Afghanistan, trying to extricate our country from a wrong and stupidly mistaken ruinously expensive war in Iraq, our mounting and crushing national debt, awaiting the next (and inevitable) Al Qaeda attack on our homeland, watching our schools decline to Third World levels of incompetence, facing a general loss of confidence in the government that has been exacerbated by the Republicans doing all they can to undermine our government's capabilities and programs... President Obama will take on the leadership of our country at a make or break time of historic proportions. He faces not one but dozens of crisis, each big enough to define any presidency in better times.
As luck, fate or divine grace would have it (depending on one's personal theology) Obama is blessedly, dare I say uniquely, well-suited to our dire circumstances. Obama is a person with hands-on community service experience, deep connections to top economic advisers from the renowned University of Chicago where he taught law, and a middle-class background that gives him an abiding knowledgeable empathy with the rest of us. As the son of a single mother, who has worked his way up with merit and brains, recipient of top-notch academic scholarships, the peer-selected editor of the Harvard Law Review and, in three giant political steps to state office, national office and now the presidency, Obama clearly has the wit and drive to lead.
Obama is the sober voice of reason at a time of unreason. He is the fellow keeping his head while all around him are panicking. He is the healing presence at a time of national division and strife. He is also new enough to the political process so that he doesn't suffer from the terminally jaded cynicism, the seen-it-all-before syndrome afflicting most politicians in Washington. In that regard we Americans lucked out. It's as if having despaired of our political process we picked a name from the phone book to lead us and that person turned out to be a very man we needed.
Obama brings a healing and uplifting spiritual quality to our politics at the very time when our worst enemy is fear. For eight years we've been ruled by a stunted fear-filled mediocrity of a little liar who has expanded his power on the basis of creating fear in others. Fearless Obama is the cure. He speaks a litany of hope rather than a litany of terror.
As we have watched Obama respond in a quiet reasoned manner to crisis after crisis, in both the way he has responded after being attacked and lied about in the 2008 campaign season, to his reasoned response to our multiplying national crises, wha t we see is the spirit of a trusted family doctor with a great bedside manner. Obama is perfectly suited to hold our hand and lead us through some very tough times. The word panic is not in the Obama dictionary.
America is fighting its "Armageddon" in one fearful heart at a time. A brilliant leader with the mild manner of an old-time matter-of-fact country doctor soothing a frightened child is just what we need. The fact that our "doctor" is a black man leading a hitherto white-ruled nation out of the mess of its own making is all the sweeter and raises the Obama story to that of moral allegory.
Obama brings a moral clarity to his leadership reserved for those who have had to work for everything they've gotten and had to do twice as well as the person standing next to them because of the color of their skin. His experience of succeeding in spite of his color, social background and prejudice could have been embittering or one that fostered a spiritual rebirth of forgiveness and enlightenment. Obama radiates the calm inner peace of the spirit of forgiveness.
Speaking as a believing Christian I see the hand of a merciful God in Obama's candidacy. The biblical metaphors abound.=2 0The stone the builder rejected is become the cornerstone... the last shall be first... he that would gain his life must first lose it... the meek shall inherit the earth...
For my secular friends I'll allow that we may have just been extraordinarily lucky! Either way America wins.
Only a brilliant man, with the spirit of a preacher and the humble heart of a kindly family doctor can lead us now. We are afraid, out of ideas, and worst of all out of hope. Obama is the cure. And we Americans have it in us to rise to the occasion. We will. We're about to enter one of the most frightening periods of American history. Our country has rarely faced more uncertainty. This is the time for greatness. We have a great leader. We must be a great people backing him, fighting for him, sacrificing for a cause greater than ourselves.
A hundred years from now Obama's portrait will be placed next to that of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Long before that we'll be telling our children and grandchildren that we stepped out in faith and voted for a young black man who stood up and led our country back from the brink of an abyss. We'll tell them about the power of love, faith and hope. We'll tell them about the power of creativity combined with humility and intellectual brilliance.
We'll tell them that President Obama gave us the gift of regaining our faith in our country. We'll tell them that we all stood up and pitched in and won the day. We'll tell them that President Obama restored our standing in the world. We'll tell them that by the time he left office our schools were on the mend, our economy booming, that we'd become a nation filled with green energy alternatives and were leading the world away from dependence on carbon-based destruction. We'll tell them that because of President Obama's example and leadership the integrity of the family was restored, divorce rates went down, more fathers took responsibility for their children, and abortion rates fell dramatically as women, families and children were cared for through compassionate social programs that worked. We'll tell them about how the gap closed between the middle class and the super rich, how we won health care for all, how crime rates fell, how bad wars were brought to an honorable conclusion. We'll tell them that when we were attacked again by Al Qaeda, how reason prevailed and the response was smart, tough, measured and effective, and our civil rights were protected even in times of crisis...
We'll tell them that we were part of the inexplicably blessed miracle that happened to our country those many years ago in 2008 when a young black man was sent by God, fate or luck to save our country. We'll tell them that it's good to live in America where anything is possible. Yes we will.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.

September 30, 2008

John McCain: Economic Disaster

John McCain does not have the ability to fix this economic crisis. After declaring the fundamentals of the economy strong, he created a political circus in Washington last week by mucking up bailout negotiations; a deplorable stunt, considering he and his political cronies helped cause the current meltdown.

It was McCain and his economic adviser Phil Gramm who pushed for the deregulation that helped lead to the banking crisis, and it was McCain's crony Rick Davis who had deep lobbyist ties to Freddie Mac. Don't let others be fooled by McCain's economic grandstanding because the reality is his policies and principles will only exacerbate our financial hardships. That's why you must spread this video.

Watch the video

McCain is being deceitful with his sudden populist message and support for regulation; his economic policies still favor our nation's wealthy elite. Call out McCain's economic dishonesty. Send this video to friends and ask them to sign up for a free Brave New Films video subscription to know the latest on TheRealMcCain.com. Then, post it on your blogs and spread it on networking sites like Digg and Reddit. These are some of the best ways to reach people who are not following this debate closely.

Let's make sure everyone knows McCain can't get us out of the mess he got us into in the first place.

Yours,
Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New team

------
Brave New Films is supported by members like you, please consider making a donation. You can get all our latest videos via email, RSS, iTunes or YouTube here. To stop receiving updates from us, click here. We are located at 10510 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232 and info@bravenewfilms.org

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Robert Greenwald: John McCain: Economic Disaster

September 26, 2008

The Photo McCain Wanted

E. J. Dionne Jr. - washingtonpost.com

If you doubt that McCain's moves were about rescuing his candidacy rather than our economy, consider how his proposal to suspend the presidential campaign came about.
McCain had just finished a phone call with Obama on Wednesday in which they discussed a joint statement of principles and McCain broached the idea of suspending the campaign. Obama said he'd think about it, but McCain didn't give him time. To Obama's surprise, McCain appeared on television shortly after the conversation to announce his unilateral pause in campaigning and a call for postponing Friday's debate. This is bipartisanship?
As for getting the nominees to yesterday's White House meeting, Bush's lieutenants had been in discussions with McCain's people during the day Wednesday. Obama didn't get his invitation from the president until around 7:30 p.m., just an hour and a half before Bush's speech. This was an active intervention by Bush on behalf of McCain to box Obama into the photo op. Again, was this bipartisan?
The simple truth is that Washington is petrified about this crisis and will pass something. There are dark fears floating through the city that foreign investors, particularly the Chinese, might begin to pull their billions out of our system.
Scarier than the bad mortgages are those unregulated credit default swaps that financier George Soros has been warning about. There are $45 trillion of those esoteric instruments sloshing around the global financial system. They were invented as a hedge against debt defaults, but even the financial smart guys don't fully understand their impact or how to price their real value.
Fear is a terrible motivator for careful legislating, but it's a heck of a way to bring about a lot of bipartisanship. McCain jumped into this game in the fourth quarter. Many of the players on the field, caked in mud and exhausted but determined as they approach the goal line, wonder why this new would-be quarterback has suddenly appeared in their midst.
McCain could yet play a constructive role by rounding up votes from restive Republicans. Oddly, the biggest obstacle to a bill may not be Democrats but Republicans who refuse to go along with their own president. And -- yes, there is an election coming -- Democrats will be wary of going forward unless a substantial number of Republicans join them.
But McCain's boisterous intervention -- and particularly his grandstanding on the debate -- was less a presidential act than the tactical ploy of a man worried that his chances of becoming president might be slipping away.

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What on earth is John McCain doing?