The Republic of T.

My previous post had me asking "How did we get here?" (Actually, I cleaned up my language for this post.) How did we end up on what could be an economic "road to perdition."

per·di·tion – noun
1. a state of final spiritual ruin; loss of the soul; damnation.
2. the future state of the wicked.
3. hell (def. 1).
4. utter destruction or ruin.
5. Obsolete. loss.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ed.Note: I’m at home with Dylan today, ’cause he has a case of the “scoots” (as I call them), and I haven’t looked at the news today. So this post, which has been sitting in draft format since last night, may be

The murmuring started shortly after McCain announced that he wanted to postpone the first presidential debate. But, at least in my office, the references were made jokingly. Because we were certain that after pulling one fairly obvious stunt, the McCain campaign wouldn’t pull another blatantly obvious stunt, like canceling the V.P. debate. We were wrong.

McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there’s no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.

In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.

Or, maybe I was the only one who was joking about it. Surely the McCain campaign doesn’t think they can get away with it. But, all things considered, I guess I can’t blame them for trying.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the weakest shit I’ve heard in a long time.

Republican John McCain said Wednesday he is directing his staff to work with Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign and the presidential debate commission to delay Friday’s debate because of the economic crisis.

In a statement, McCain said he will stop campaigning after addressing former President Clinton’s Global Initiative session on Thursday and return to Washington to focus on the nation’s financial problems.

The Republican presidential hopeful called Obama before he made the statement and told him he was going to suspend his campaign, according to a McCain senior adviser.

Message: What is John McCain afraid of?

Message: John McCain has no message on the economy.

Message: A president can’t postpone a crisis while he gets his act together.

Message: There’s no time-outs in the White House

Message: John McCain isn’t ready to talk about the economy.

Message: John McCain doesn’t want to talk to you about the bailout.

If I were Obama, I’d stand in front of a camera and say something like this.

John McCain can’t wait to get back to Washington. The people he wants to talk to about the economy and the bailout are in Washington. The people he wants to hear from about the economy and the bailout are in Washington. The people John McCain thinks are dealing with the economy and will deal with the bailout are in Washington.

I guess John McCain has forgotten his own words. It’s easy to be in Washington and frankly be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have. Like I said before, if all you do is walk the halls of power, all you’ll hear is the wants of the powerful.

John McCain can go back to Washington and talk with the people he thinks are dealing with the economy and will deal with the bailout. But you know and I know, the people who are really dealing with the economy, and the people who who are really going to pay for the bailout are out here in the rest of America, going to work, paying their bills, taking care of their families, and it’s getting harder for them to do it.

Let John McCain go back to Washington. Until I get a call from the Senate that it’s time for a vote, I’m staying out here to talk to you and listen to you, because the real economy isn’t in Washington, or on Wall Street. It’s right here. 

This is a post about two headlines and one scary story.

Headline one:

Bailout is financial equivalent of the Patriot Act

The passage is stunning:

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency,” the original draft of the proposed bill says.

And with those words, the Treasury secretary - whoever that may be in a few months - would be vested with perhaps the most incredible powers ever bestowed on one person over the economic and financial life of the United States. It is the financial equivalent of the Patriot Act, after 9/11.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr.’s $700 billion proposal to bail out Wall Street is both the biggest rescue and the most amazing power grab in the history of the American economy.

Headline two:

McCain Campaign Can’t…Won’t…Rule Out Gramm As Treasury Secretary

For those of you who have developed a fondness for Tucker Bounds-themed bondage and domination videos, here’s another YouTube where David Shuster chortles his way through a segment in which Bounds cannot or will not bring himself to assure the American people that Phil Gramm - who recently called America a “nation of whiners” but who led the effort for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that paved the way for the economic collapses of today - will not, under any circumstances, become Secretary of the Treasury in the McCain administration. If Bounds keeps at these sorts of “explanations,” the world’s supply of false equivalencies may run out by the first week of October.

Read the rest of this entry »

I admit it, the past week has left me speechless. As I sat and read the news about how the last of the investment banks shuffled off into extinction (kinda; they’re just becoming regular old banks now), it did feel like I was sitting in front of my television again watching the Berlin Wall come down.

In this sense, the fall of Wall Street is for market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism — it tells the world that this way of economic organization turns out not to be sustainable. In the end, everyone says, that model doesn’t work. This moment is a marker that the claims of financial market liberalization were bogus.

Only this time there doesn’t seem to be as much celebrate.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is one of the great curiosities of conservatism that its adherents enthusiastically destroy regulations which — besides a conscience — act as a bulwark against greed and corruption, thereby making greed and corruption inevitable. Because when (a) there’s no wrong way to make a buck, and (b) no accountability or consequences for malfeasance, there’s no disincentive either. (Other than being able to sleep at night, which isn’t a problem if you don’t have a conscience in the first place.) And when the inevitable happens, the resulting disaster spreads (because it is never really contained), they bemoan the very same rampant greed and corruption their deregulation made inevitable.

Naomi Klein found hints of it, in the musings of Alan Greenspan.

Read the rest of this entry »

Guess who finally took his finger out of his ass and stuck it in the breeze.

Rarely have I seen or heard a candidate do a 180° so quickly, and then act as though the skid-marks and the smell of burning rubber aren’t obvious to just about everyone. But then came candidate John McCain (circa 2008).

On Monday morning, as Wall Street was absorbing one of the biggest shocks to the financial system in generations, Senator John McCain said he believed the fundamentals of the U.S. economy were “strong.”

Hours later he backpedaled, explaining that he meant that American workers, the backbone of the economy, were productive and resilient. By Tuesday he was calling the economic situation “a total crisis” and decrying “greed” in Wall Street and Washington.

McCain’s sharp turnabout in tone and substance reflected not only a recognition that he had struck a discordant note at a sensitive moment, but that he had done so on the very issue on which he can least afford to stumble.

As economic conditions have worsened over the course of this year and voter anxiety has increased, McCain has had to work to counter the impression - fostered by his own admissions as recently as last year that the economy is not his strongest suit - that he lacks the experience and understanding to address the nation’s economic woes.

We could take comfort in the idea that a president doesn’t have to know much about the economy. (Or foreign policy, for that matter, but that’s another discussion.) Or at least he doesn’t have to be an expert in the subject, so long as he surrounds himself with knowledgeable experts, and heeds their advice. Much depends, then, on the experts the president leans upon, their agendas, and their track records.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s getting more and more interesting to hear conservative pundits talk about the McCain campaign.

When Karl Rove is saying your political ads have gone too far, you know you must be doing something dishonest.

The former Bush chief strategist, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said that John McCain had stretched the truth in his recent round of attacks against Barack Obama, in the process opening up the Arizonan to a round of effective counter-attacks.

“McCain has gone in his ads one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100-percent-truth test,” said Rove. “Both campaigns ought to be careful about… there ought to be an adult who says: ‘Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don’t we make our point and get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don’t include that one little last tweak in the ad?’”

I can only repeat what I’ve said before.

And I just gotta say, when Peggy Noonan has to serve as a voice of reason… Well, it’s the political equivalent of Courtney Love showing up at your intervention and suggesting you ease up on the pipe just little a bit.

Except now it’s Karl Rove in the Courtney Love role. (I can’t think of a male celebrity equivalent.)

If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry. Thanks to my husband, I got a laugh out of this.

I read him his headline: “Palin Open to War with Russia.” His response: “Then she should go.”

In her first sit-down with a national news media outlet since becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin responded to a series of specific questions about foreign policy and national security with a series of general answers that put her firmly on the side of doing “whatever it takes” to protect the nation. And she left open the option of waging war with Russia if it were to again invade neighboring Georgia and the former Soviet republic were a NATO ally.

“We will not repeat a Cold War,” Palin said in her first television interview since becoming Republican John McCain’s vice presidential running mate two weeks ago.

Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that she’d favor including Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, in NATO despite opposition by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the country was part of NATO, Palin said: “Perhaps so.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t wait to hear how LCR explains this away. Via Queerty comes more specifics on the story about Sarah Palin inquiring about banning books from the public library while mayor of Wasillia.

In her first public statement since Palin was named the GOP vice-presidential candidate, Mary Ellen Baker said today, “I simply do not recall a conversation with specific titles,” Baker told ABCNews.com.

Palin has acknowledged she twice raised the issue in 1996 of how books could be removed from the shelves, but said it was only a “rhetorical question” and that she did not ask for any books to be banned.

Palin’s church at the time, the Assembly of God, had been pushing for the removal a book called “Pastor, I Am Gay” from local bookstores, according to the book’s author Pastor Howard Bess, of the Church of the Covenant in nearby Palmer, Alaska.

“And she was one of them,” said Bess, “this whole thing of controlling information, censorship, that’s part of the scene,” said Bess.

Here’s where I’m confused. How does This add up to being “inclusive”? OK, she has “gay friends” but doesn’t want “gay books” in the library? And did she have “gay friends” when she was mayor? Did they say anything to her about this? Do Republicans’ “gay friends” ever say anything to them about stuff like this?

If so, it apparently doesn’t do any good. (That the books weren’t banned says more about the character librarian and the integrity of the process than about how much of either quality Palin possesses.) And if not, why not?

Ouch. I’ve heard of “If you can’t say something nice about anyone, don’t say anything at all,” and I’m pretty sure stating the obvious doesn’t count as “saying something nice.” So, what’s one to make of Condi Rice’s ringing endorsement of Sarah Palin?

In a less-than-hearty endorsement, Rice declined to say anything more positive about Palin than “she gave a terrific speech” and “she’s a governor of a state here in the United States” during her interview with Zain Verjee of CNN.

She’s a governor of a state here in the United States? Well, yeah. That about as much of an endorsement at saying “She walks on two legs and breathes air.” She gave a terrific speech? Well, that’s debatable when it comes to content, but in terms of delivery and being a crowd pleaser at the Republican convention, yeah. That’s about as much of an endorsement as saying “She sure can talk.”

You know, what’s not said is sometimes as important as was is said. That said, I would love to hear what Condoleeza Rice — a woman who, despite my disagreement with her on just about everything and her part in getting us into Iraq, is imminently more qualified than Palin to be V.P. or President — really thinks about McCain’s pick.

Part One: Yours, Mine…

One of the things I hoped for when Michelle Obama spoke at the Democratic convention, was that she would introduce people to the America that she came from, and that was the setting of her story. One of the biggest shames in the campaign — aside from the fact that political realities required this intelligent, accomplished woman to effectively bite her tongue for the last couple of months — is the lack of any honest discussion about the reality that we don’t all live in the same America. It’s one reality that both progressives and conservatives must grapple with between now and November, and beyond

Delivered on a night that carried the theme “One America,” her speech should serve as a reminder that if we are to be America, we have to first acknowledge that what we have are three America’s: yours, mine, and ours.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let me start by saying that I’m going to give the Log Cabin Republicans the benefit of the doubt that they choose their party and their candidate based on their political philosophy and not just their positions on LGBT issues. I said as much in a comment on a post at Independent Gay Forum that, to me, didn’t seem to extend the same courtesy to those of us at the other side of the political spectrum.

But obviously, if your vote is determined by gay issues, it’s going to go to Obama/Biden. If you think Obama is better for gays but worse (or even dangerously worse) for the country, than voting for McCain/Palin does not make you a self-loather (though Obama’s LGBT devotees will certainly tar you, endlessly, with that brush).

As I said in my comment, I’ll make a deal with the LCR and gay conservatives: I won’t characterize you guys as self-loathing if you don’t characterize LGBT Democrats and progressives as mindless, one-issue voters. After all, none of the people I know or talked to in Denver are supporting Obama/Biden soley on the basis of their positions on LGBT issues, but because we think that McCain/Palin is worse (or even dangerously worse) for the country on a whole range of issues from the economy to health care and foreign policy. It just happens that one candidate/party is better on LGBT issues than the other

Which brings me, belatedly, to LCR’s endorsement of the McCain/Palin ticket.

Read the rest of this entry »