Centerblue.org

I think it’s fair to say that McCain’s campaign is imploding.

1) Nero fiddling while Rome burns (or is it Daniel vs. the lions?): Hoping to look like a hero and in control of the dire financial crisis, he swooped into Washington to inject presidential politics into a very delicate compromise happening between Bush, Democrats, and Senate Republicans. Instead, he observed passively without saying a word for the majority of a meeting called by Bush at the White House, and towards the end he garbled something unintelligible that vaguely sounded like he was siding with a conservative House Republican revolt against the plan. The compromise fell apart later in the day.

McCain is now in the unenviable position of being in between Bush/Democrats/Senate Republicans who are trying to save the nation from financial ruin on the one hand, and renegade conservative House Republicans who despise McCain but whose constituents McCain cannot afford to lose on Election Day. Who knows how this will play out, especially because a lot of Americans do sympathize with the House Republican position to some extent–but right now it’s looking like a nasty vise for McCain.

2) “Crawling to your corner and hiding behind your blanket”: this is how Barbara Boxer framed McCain threatening to walk out of the first debate tonight, and it was painful to watch. But various polls I’ve seen agree with her: most Americans want McCain there tonight. A president needs to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and attending some high level meetings where you hardly say a word is no excuse for failing to come before the frightened American people and present your case for why you should be the one to lead this mess in a few weeks.

3) Palin plunge: Did anyone see the horrendously embarrassing performance Palin put on for Katie Couric? This would be all over the news if it weren’t for Debate-gate. Here’s the bit about Putin “rearing his head”:

And then there was this little gem, where a question about the $700+ billion bailout devolved into an unintelligible set of talking points about healthcare:

Her answer was so nonsensical that she reminded me of this answer given during the Miss Teen USA contest last year:

Former Palin defender Glenn Greenwald put it best:

Sarah Palin’s performance in the tiny vignettes of unscripted dialogue in which we’ve been allowed to see her has been nothing short of frightening — really, as I said, pity-inducing. And I say that as someone who has thought from the start that the criticisms of her abilities — as opposed to her ideology — were much too extreme. One of two things is absolutely clear at this point: she is either (a) completely ignorant about the most basic political issues — a vacant, ill-informed, incurious know-nothing, or (b) aggressively concealing her actual beliefs about these matters because she’s petrified of deviating from the simple-minded campaign talking points she’s been fed and/or because her actual beliefs are so politically unpalatable, even when taking into account the right-wing extremism that is permitted, even rewarded, in our mainstream. I’m not really sure which is worse, but it doesn’t really matter, because with 40 days left before the election, both options are heinous.

This is all quite apart from the new story in today’s Washington Post about how Gov. Palin accepted $25,000 in gifts from industry executives and others. So much for being a reform-minded maverick!

As I said–”ka-boom.”

When a network known for being sympathetic to your campaign calls you out for lying, it’s time to change your tactics.

Harsh video showing reporters and news outlets calling out McCain’s lies again and again and again.

The media is finally starting to do its homework, and a narrative about McCain’s campaign is beginning to emerge: that they’re liars, willing to lose their integrity to win the election. Obama better pound this point home–because if McCain is going to spread lies, he deserves to have them thrown back at him.

A blizzard of “you’re a liar” coverage has emerged against McCain/Palin in recent days:

–McCain’s claims that Obama would raise taxes were called a lie–by none other than Fox News! So did the Washington Post’s editorial and factcheck.org.

–On McCain’s claim that Obama supported sex ed for kindergarteners when in fact he favored a bill in committee that would have optionally taught kids how to protect themselves from predators in language they understand, he was called a liar to his face before millions of people watching the View program with Barbara Walters.

–On that same show he was similarly called to the mat for the whole “lipstick on a pig” silly brouhaha, which has been exposed as the empty and irrelevant indignation that it was.

–On Palin’s claim that she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere/pork barrel spending, we now know she was for it before she was against it.

–Along the same vein, her current claim (repeated by McCain on the View and then rejected by the hosts as another lie) that she opposed Alaska earmarks was flatly false, as she in fact requested $750 million in special federal spending from Congress–by far the largest request per capita for any state in the union.

–McCain has been crowing about large crowd sizes and claiming the numbers are backed up by fire marshals, the Secret Service and other officials. Now we hear that those officials are saying they have provided no such estimates and are unable to do so.

–Palin and McCain said she had been in Iraq, when in fact she had not.

A pattern of lying is extremely relevant in figuring out how a future administration would lead the country. I can’t remember a candidate, even Bush, that has simply and baldly lied as much as McCain has, in hopes that the speed of the Internet will make the lies true in the minds of people. Shameful.

In just a couple of sentences, Whoopi Goldberg reduces McCain to a blubbering mess over his claim he will appoint judges that aren’t activists and won’t legislate from the bench.

Watch (about 1:30 into the video):

She is so right. The Rabid Right is good at pushing this pathetic nonsense about activist judges, yet are quick to applaud every past civil rights ruling on issues that were clearly not in the Constitution.

Brown v. Board of Education? Yep, an “activist court” outlawed segregation (and segregation would have been fully approved by the writers of the Constitution, their slaves in tow.)

Griswold v. Connecticut? yep, an “activist court” found a right to basic privacy.

Gideon v. Wainwright? An “activist court” found that defendants are entitled to the most basic legal representation.

Miranda v. Arizona? An “activist court” found that a suspect must be told he has the right to remain silent.

Loving v. Virginia? An “activist court” found that members of two different races can marry one another.

There are many others, and no Republican in his right mind would say that he feels these decisions by “activist judges legislating from the bench” were wrong to rule as they did.

So why don’t these Rabid Righters call a spade a spade and say what they really mean? I’ll do it for them:

“When we say we don’t want activist judges, what we mean is that we don’t like judges ruling in favor of homosexuals, affirmative action, and abortion rights…and we will appoint judges who agree with us.”

Go on, say it. It’s good to get the bigotry off your chest. Because if you don’t, you’ll end up the same slobbering mess that McCain became at the hands of Whoopi Goldberg.

The McCain campaign trying to talk up Sarah Palin’s “foreign policy experience:”

Man, hypocrisy hurts:

That’s one cozy outdoor fireplace next to that built-in hottub…how many Americans can identify with that kind of wasteful opulence?

Get the whole Architectural Digest story and additional elitist pics here.

Picture of McCain with elder Bush on golf cart wearing $500 shoes.

VOICE: John McCain wants you to believe he’s just like you. OH REALLY?

How many houses does he own? He doesn’t seem to know.

(big white letters over picture) “”I think - I’ll have my staff get to you. It’s condominiums where - I’ll have them get to you.”

VOICE: The answer: Four. And what kind of income does he think defines who’s rich?

::SHOW VIDEO OF RECENT RELIGIOUS FORUM:::

MCCAIN: IF WE’RE TALKING ABOUT INCOME, HOW ABOUT $5 MILLION?

VOICE: Is this why John McCain wants to cut taxes on people making $2.5 million or more, because he thinks they’re middle class?

VOICE with nice pic of Obama in background) BARACK OBAMA only recently paid off his student loans, and gave up his career as a lawyer to help the youth of Chicago as a community organizer, helping kids get off the streets and stay out of trouble.

(back to pic of McCain/Bush/shoes)

$500 shoes, four houses, and a $2.5 million a year middle class? WHO’S REALLY MORE LIKE YOU?

OBAMA: i’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.

————————–

GET WITH THE F’ING PROGRAM, OBAMA! Time to destroy this totally false view of McCain as the Everyman who understands the needs of people suffering real economic hardship, and focus on who has REALLY seen the carnage on the streets.

I decided to evaluate Obama’s and McCain’s proposals for confronting the twin crises of energy scarcity/dependence and climate change. I developed the following grid, based on information provided by the two candidates on their respective web pages devoted to these issues (you can see Obama’s page here, and McCain’s pages here and here.)

(The government report referenced above regarding offshore resources can be found here.)

Bottom line: overall, Obama’s plan beats McCain’s hands down when it comes to aggressiveness and vision. These crises require a national resolve and commitment akin to the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program in order to relieve our oil dependence and prevent a climate catastrophe. We should be throwing everything and the kitchen sink at these problems–government funding, tax incentives, education, efficiency improvements, and every other tool in the book. Both candidates kind of pick and choose, but at the end of the day Obama’s plan shows more of a commitment to resolving these problems than McCain’s.

McCain’s emphasis on developing “clean coal” technology is particularly disappointing. Coal can never truly be clean from an emissions perspective until we develop sound ways to sequester the carbon dioxide emitting from these plants, and we are a long ways off from doing that in a cost-effective and reliable manner.

However, McCain’s plan fills some notable gaps in Obama’s–most notably in pushing for the large-scale development of nuclear power as a cleaner alternative to coal. Nuclear has its problems too, but at least it doesn’t worsen the carbon emissions problem as we ramp up production of renewable energy.

I also oppose continuing subsidies for corn-based ethanol, which Obama favors but McCain does not. We have to stop putting food into our gas tanks as quickly as possible or we will continue to exacerbate food shortages around the world. Cellulosic ethanol is just around the corner, but we need to push very hard right now to make that a viable alternative to corn.

Overall, Obama has it right on these crises–but he would do well to pick up a few elements of McCain’s plan so as to truly commit America to literally saving the world from these pernicious problems that are wrecking our planet, economy, and national security.

Neocons are fond of screaming that Obama saying he would simply talk with our enemies is a serious error that amounts to appeasement. They often cite the Kennedy/Kruschev summit as an example, which they claim emboldened the USSR and led to the rise of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis (they fail to mention, of course, that we had already provoked the USSR by moving nuclear missiles into Turkey and Italy).

Of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis passed with Kruschev being forced to back down, and neither the Berlin Wall nor the USSR still exist, calling into question whether this summit was such a bad idea in the long run.

Some folks insist that Kennedy “appeased” Kruschev by meeting with him without preconditions. Spare me. Kruschev was NOT “appeased” after Kennedy. Unlike the situation with Chamberlain and Hitler, Kruschev made no land grabs, launched no wars, and obtained no significant, long-lasting economic or political advantage from having had a chat with Kennedy.

But regardless, that was then and this is now. There are some key differences between the situation then, and how it exists now. Before going there, however, it is worth noting how eight years of Bush’s refusal to talk with our enemies has affected the foreign policy stance of the United States:

–Bush refused to talk with North Korea, and it now has nuclear weapons.

–Bush refused to talk with Iran, and it is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons. In addition, Hamas and Hezbollah are stronger and better-financed than ever before in history, and these three entities collectively pose a much greater threat to our interests in the region than ever before.

–Bush refused to talk with Iraq (and refused to let anyone else do so either), and had he done otherwise he might have discovered the lack of any WMD’s and held back from launching a war that will end up costing thousands of lives and $1 trillion we cannot afford.

–There is probably no country more reviled in the world today than the United States. Our name, our currency, our principles, our reputation are all in the toilet because of our insistence on acting like a petulant child (much like many neocons do), refusing to talk and being all too willing to play the part of the schoolyard bully.

In short, this so-called foreign policy of refusing to talk has been a complete disaster, from which the United States will need a generation to recover.

Now, to the present. The USSR differed from Iran in a couple of key respects:

–they had the ability to annihilate us off the face of the Earth within minutes, whereas Iran does not;

–Iran directly possesses a precious commodity that we need for our economic survival–oil–whereas the USSR had no such leverage.

–Now, unlike then, our forces are bogged down, worn out, and practically helpless in a country we foolishly chose to invade, vastly decreasing our ability to leverage the threat of sustained military force.

The implications of foreign policy are very different when you have submarines bristling with nuclear missiles off your shores on the one hand, and dealing with a country that poses no military threat to your survival but has something you badly need on the other. One was outside of our control, forcing us to attempt to contain it (the USSR), the other one IS within our control–or rather, the terms of how we deal with that country are within our control if we chose to exercise it.

Let’s put it another way: suppose Iran had no oil. Wouldn’t a decision to bomb Iran’s facilities to prevent its acquisition of the bomb be SO much easier? Of course it would be. Furthermore, Iran would be well aware of its vulnerability and act accordingly–perhaps even thinking twice about developing nuclear technology.

But no, we instead choose to let Iran put its hand on our collective economic testicles, and then pray we can somehow bully it into submission. Fat chance.

The problem with Iran isn’t just them, it’s us. It’s hard to to make these two propositions work together while refusing to talk:

–They shouldn’t have something that we have (nukes);
–They must continue to supply us with something western civilization needs (oil).

I’ll leave the “we can have it but you can’t” issue for another day (I believe that the US’s insistence on that particular nuke doctrine completely undermines our moral authority on the issue, but it’s not worth arguing here). On the second premiss, we would be far better served by taking control of our addiction to oil and removing Iran’s hand from our economic testicles.

It all comes back to the desperately urgent need to develop progressive energy policies in this country that wean us off carbon fuels, which has the marvelous secondary (or primary, if you’re a conservative) consequence of freeing the US from being dependent on anybody else for its energy.

On that score, Obama beats McCain hands down. McCain idiotically thinks that drilling a few more holes offshore is going to solve the current energy crisis (when it will take 5-10 years for those wells to come online and even government documents show that such wells would only shave a few dollars off existing barrel-of-oil prices). Obama gets that we have a long emergency on our hands, one we can’t dig ourselves out of with more holes in the ground–one that requires a revolution in the way this nation consumes energy.

Until that revolution gets underway, we better talk with Iran–because talking is just about our only palatable option until we get our own act together.