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August 23, 2008

First Two Questions for Vice Presidential Candidate Biden

(1) You said in the primary campaign that you "don't believe" Barack Obama is "ready" to be president. What has changed your mind?

(2) How do you reconcile your plan for partioning Iraq, which your office said you still support as recently as one week ago, with Barack Obama's withdrawal plan?

Obama Taps Biden: A Conventional But Perhaps Effective Pick

In the end, Barack Obama used unconventional means to announce a conventional choice for his running-mate.

Via a three A.M. text message sent to the cell phones of his supporters, donors and volunteers, Obama's campaign declared that he had chosen Senator Joe Biden, the Delaware Democrat, to be "our" veep nominee. (Three in the morning--was this a dig at Senator Hillary Clinton or just a coincidence?) With this I'll-let-you-know-first gimmick, Obama had snagged millions of cell numbers and email addresses his campaign can use in the weeks ahead to motivate voters and push them to the polls on Election Day. So in purely tactical terms, his running-mate rollout was indeed pioneering and widely successful. What remains to be seen, of course, is whether he made a smart pick by attaching his campaign for change to a fellow who has worked Washington's ways in the Senate for 35 years.

Sometimes going conventional is not the wrong course. During the past weeks of veep-frenzy, Biden's assets and liabilities have been dissected repeatedly. He possesses extensive foreign policy experience (which Obama does not). He can do straight-talk relatively well for a senator (while Obama has been accused of not fully connecting with working-class voters). Then again, Biden has suffered in the past from both verbal diarrhea and gaffe-itis. I've attended many committee hearings in the Senate when Biden turned a question into a long-winded monologue that drove people in the room to want to shout, "Question, Senator, do you have a question?!!" And there are times when Biden's mental filter has switched off and he has said the dumbest thing, such as when he famously called Obama "the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." (The Daily Mail headlined its account of Obama's pick this way: "Obama names 'gaffe-prone' Joe Biden as his running mate.")

But Biden is a smart legislator who has shown that he can suppress his own faults when he must. He had a good campaign this past year as a presidential candidate. He won few votes but performed well at the debates and demonstrated he could keep his infamous verbosity under control. At the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, while other Democrats got bogged down in legal jargon practically indecipherable to the average person, Biden peppered Roberts with straightforward questions about Roberts' claim that he merely wanted to be an umpire on the bench who calls constitutional balls and strikes. "Much as I respect your metaphor," Biden countered, "it's not very apt, because you get to determine the strike zone. The founders never set a strike zone." It was the best moment of the hearing.

On foreign policy, Biden has always been an activist, thinking and engaging with the issues and crises generating headlines and those that don't make the evening news. He has a fancy for cooking up proposals. And even if he devises ideas that may raise objections--such as his plan to partition Iraq--he often deserves credit for the effort. (He issued his proposal for splitting up Iraq at a time when the Bush administration was doing nothing but "staying the course.")

One of Biden's better moments came in the run-up to the war with Iraq. In the fall of 2002, the Bush administration, claiming Saddam Hussein had amassed loads of WMDs that he could hand to al Qaeda for attacks against the United States, was demanding that the House and Senate grant Bush the authority to invade Iraq whenever he wanted. Rather than cave to Bush, Biden, the chairman of the foreign relations committee, worked with Republican Senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel to craft an alternative: a resolution that would allow Bush to attack Iraq only for the purposes of destroying Iraq's WMDs and only after seeking UN approval. If the UN withheld permission, Bush would have to come back to Congress and prove that the threat was so "grave" that only military action could eliminate it. This was a wily legislative maneuver that could have averted a war. (And Biden told me and Michael Isikoff during an interview for our book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, that he had received backdoor encouragement from Secretary of State Colin Powell.) But Biden's bipartisan measure was ultimately derailed by a fellow Democrat: House minority leader Richard Gephardt, who essentially accepted the White House's blank-check approach. After Gephardt did that, Republican senators told Biden, How can we be to the left of Dick Gephardt? "I was so angry," Biden later said. "I was frustrated. But I never second-guess another man's political judgment."

Biden went on to vote for the Iraq war resolution. Which demonstrated his Washington-ness. He had tried for something better. When that failed, he, too, accepted the prevailing notion. But his pre-vote effort to create a much more limited resolution will afford the Obama-Biden ticket a small measure of cover when its foes point out that Obama's main charge against John McCain (he supported the Iraq invasion) can also be applied to his running-mate.

The main rule in veep-picking is this: First, do no harm. Among Obama's conventional options, each had obvious problems. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana stood side-by-side with McCain in fervently advocating the war in Iraq prior to the invasion. Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia is another political newbie on the national stage with no foreign policy cred, and he has yet to rack up many accomplishments. As for Senator Hillary Clinton, with her on the ticket, the election would be as much about the Clintons as about Obama and McCain. Depending on your view, that's either a big winner or political hell.

Biden comes with decades of baggage. There are thousands of Senate floor votes for GOP oppo researchers to sift through. He's had more than one plagiarism scandal. Hailing from a solidly Democratic state, he brings no Electoral College votes with him. But he has the talent to be both Obama's attack dog and his top foreign policy adviser. And though vice presidential nominees tend to have no true impact on the final results, Biden has the potential to be a fierce campaigner for and with Obama--that is, if he can be the better Biden for the next ten weeks.

By tapping Biden, Obama does little to reinforce his core themes of change and hope. He does not amplify his Washington-is-broken and postpartisan messages. He does not boost his claim that his campaign is a movement. He does not increase the excitement factor or accentuate the historic nature of his candidacy. But then Obama himself has already provided much of that. And it's possible that the American electorate can only absorb so much unorthodoxy in a presidential election. With Biden, Obama may have passed the do-no-harm rule. But that won't be known until the election is over.

August 22, 2008

NYT: Seems to be Biden

With sources telling the AP and others that Virginia governor Tim Kaine and Indiana Senator Evan Bayh have claimed they've been informed it's not them, Obama's choice for vice president seems likely to be Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. Obama officials have indicated they'll inform voters of his choice on Saturday morning by text message and email.

CIA contra Suskind: Operation Squelch Congressional Investigation

The CIA has now joined the White House and former CIA director George Tenet in releasing a statement denying explosive charges at the heart of a new book by journalist Ronald Suskind, The Way of the World. In the book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter charged that a letter falsely alleging that lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta had trained in Iraq, which was purported to have been written by former Iraqi intelligence chief Tahir Habbush and which was leaked to journalist Con Coughlin who wrote about it in the Sunday Telegraph in December 2003, had materialized as the result of a White House ordered CIA forgery plot. Newsweek quickly exposed the letter as a fake, and it was later revealed that the letter had been passed to Coughlin by an Iraqi exile politician close to the CIA Ayad Allawi, who reportedly happened to be in meetings at Langley around the time Suskind claimed the White House directive came down. So how did the letter purported to be from Habbush with the discredited claims come to be? In a statement today, the CIA writes:

Suskind claims that, in September 2003, the White House ordered then-Director George Tenet to fabricate a letter describing a level of cooperation between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’ida that simply did not exist. The White House has denied making that request, and Director Tenet has denied receiving it. The former Agency officers Suskind cites in his narrative have, for their part, publicly denied being asked to carry out such a mission.

Those denials are powerful in and of themselves. But they are also backed by a thorough, time-consuming records search within CIA and by interviews with other officers—senior and junior alike—who were directly involved in Iraq operations. To assert, as Suskind does, that the White House would request such a document, and that the Agency would accept such a task, says something about him and nothing about us. It did not happen. Moreover, as the public record shows, CIA had concluded—and conveyed to our customers—that the ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’ida were not as close as some believed.

Tenet released a new statement today too that closely tracks with the CIA denial and was apparently coordinated.

The timing is interesting. Just this week, the House Judiciary committee moved forward with plans to investigate Suskind's claims, issuing letters to several of the participants named asking them to testify. As a reader friend suggests, whether Suskind got details in his account wrong or not, "there can be no doubt whatsoever that what motivated this statement by CIA echoed by Tenet's new statement is an effort to scare off and squelch Congress from pursuing its investigation."

Suskind has said in media appearances that he wants the officials involved to testify under oath. He has also posted the partial transcript of an interview with Rob Richer, a former top CIA official he cites as telling him about the White House order on Habbush. Richer has denied the account took place as Suskind reported it. But his denial is carefully worded. And as my reader friend notes, "Richer's comments on the record on Suskindresponse contradict the CIA's official response, insofar as he simply acknowledges as a fact Habbush's defection while CIA acts like it knows nothing about it and as far as it is concerned Habbush is still a wanted man."

Let's see if Operation Squelch Congressional Investigation succeeds.

"Houses" Releases the Creativity/Photoshopping Skills of the Blogs

People will have their fun.

Hey, it's a Friday afternoon. We're just biding our time until the big news. Go find an adult beverage.

Lobbyist Linked to NRA Spy Caper Co-Chairs McCain's Sportsmen's Committee

Earlier this week, ABC News reported that the McCain campaign was seeking to distance itself from adviser James Jay Baker, a onetime NRA official and current lobbyist for the gun rights group, who is reportedly a member of McCain's "kitchen cabinet." Questioned by ABC, the campaign played down his involvement, describing him as a "high level volunteer."

It stands to reason why the campaign would want to draw a wide berth around Baker. Until 2002, Baker was the executive director of the NRA's lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. During his tenure, the ILA engaged the services of a now defunct private security firm, Beckett Brown, which specialized in spying on activist groups. Beckett Brown's point of contact at ILA was Baker's deputy, Patrick O'Malley. O'Malley also served as an NRA contact for Mary Lou Sapone, who, as Mother Jones reported in July, is a freelance spy who infiltrated the gun control movement from more than a decade on behalf of the gun lobby. When we contacted Baker seeking comment on Sapone's work for the NRA, he said, "I don't have anything to say about any vendors at the NRA." And while maintaining that he had no knowledge of any efforts to penetrate the gun control movement while he was at the NRA, he added: "We got information from whatever sources we can." The NRA has refused to comment on the Sapone story, declining to explain any possible relationship between the ILA and Sapone.

But if McCain intends on throwing Baker overboard, he has a strange way of showing it. On Thursday his campaign issued a press release announcing the leadership of the National Steering Committee of the Sportsmen for McCain coalition. And, along with Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating, Baker is one of its co-chairs.

"I am proud to have the support of these national and state leaders within the sportsmen's community and know that their support is integral to my bid to become your next president," McCain said in the release. "It would be an honor to serve as your president and carry on the guiding principles of Theodore Roosevelt, America's foremost conservation president."

Baker's top role in Sportsmen for McCain was not lost on the American Hunters and Shooters Association, a pro-gun group that is a critic of the NRA (and has endorsed Barack Obama), which today issued an amusingly titled press release ("McCain and NRA Spy Figure Sitting in a Tree, K-i-s-s-i-n-g"), blasting the campaign's continued association with Baker.

"America's hunters and shooters deserve better," the AHSA's president Ray Schoenke said in the release. "The McCain campaign showed its disdain for America's sportsmen by naming a former NRA official, who is implicated in the scandal over the hiring of a spy to monitor non-profit groups, as a leader of its sportsmen's effort. There are serious issues for sportsmen, like global warming, roadless rules and public access that warrant the attention of the next President. Sophomoric, Tricky Dick Nixon-esque stunts like hiring spies aren't what hunters are looking for. While the investigation of that matter is underway, Baker should not be the face of America's sportsmen community—for John McCain—or anyone."

Four-Day School Weeks: For Real Now

About a month ago, I wrote that a handful of school districts—due to rising fuel costs—said they could save thousands of dollars in school bus fuel by switching to four-day school weeks. Apparently things have really ramped up since then.

A recent survey says that 1 in 7 school boards nationwide are considering whether to drop a day off the normal five-day school week. About half surveyed said they were planning to cut out field trips, and more than 30% said they were consolidating or eliminating bus routes.

We've been down this road before. During the oil crisis of the 1970s about 100 districts implemented a four-day week also. One small study in Florida in 1973 found that half the students preferred it (Heck yeah: three-day weekends!).

But gas prices aren't the only issue: a shaky economy and some state budge woes led some districts to switch to a four-day week as many as four years ago.

Find Out Where a Gas Tax Holiday Might Have Some Serious Appeal...

When you're done checking out our cool interactive map of America's global military footprint, check out this cool interactive map of global gas prices.

Some of the facts are really remarkable. Citizens of Scandinavia pay almost $10 a gallon and the Turks, who labor under a 72 percent gas tax, pay $11.18. Meanwhile, residents of Turkmenistan pay just $0.76 per gallon, and the first 32 gallons each month are free. Comparatively speaking, we get off pretty easy. (Via Andrew.)

McCain's Houses: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

The McCains spend more each year on house staff ($273,000), than the average American's home is worth ($266,000).

Update: McCain isn't commenting on this story. But that doesn't mean he's not out and about!

McCain, who huddled with advisors at his desert compound in Sedona, Ariz., said nothing in public. A nine-car motorcade took him to a nearby Starbucks early in the morning, where he ordered a large cappuccino. McCain otherwise avoided reporters.

Late update: The McCain's spent more on household help than they gave to charity.

Brooks Dreams of Biden

David Brook's column today is a pretty good indication of what the Very Serious people of Washington will think of a Joe Biden pick.

Brooks likes Biden because of Biden's working class roots, his straight-shooting nature, and his experience in Washington and abroad. One suspects it is this last that really matters. "When Obama talks about postpartisanship, he talks about a grass-roots movement that will arise and sweep away the old ways of Washington," writes Brooks. "When John McCain talks about it, he describes a meeting of wise old heads who get together to craft compromises. Obama’s vision is more romantic, but McCain’s is more realistic."

So Biden is a liberal, not-evil Cheney. I'll agree that's a good thing. I'll further agree that having people like David Brooks on-board with the Obama VP pick is a good thing for Obama. But I won't agree that experience is the primary consideration when choosing a VP. Is Brooks not aware how that undercuts Obama's entire case for the presidency? If we value experience, why settle for a ticket with a VP who has 25+ years of experience in Washington? Why not pick the ticket with the nominee who has 25+ years of experience in Washington?

But Honey, Now I Know What the US Military Is Doing in Nauru!

Sure, everyone knows that America's military is hunkered down in the Middle East, but what's it doing in the rest of the world? Quite a lot, as it turns out. The Pentagon is several years into its biggest overseas base reshuffling since the Cold War, a realignment that is expected to cost US taxpayers $20 billion.

Given these rapid changes, our intrepid editorial and technical teams embarked on a yearlong project entitled "Mission Creep: US Military Presence Worldwide" to find out what our soldiers are up to, country by country. At its heart is this interactive world map that lets viewers zoom in to almost any place on the planet to learn about US involvement there. I’m already hearing it described as "addictive," and I highly doubt so much up-to-date information about America's overseas military presence has ever been available in one place in a fashion so accessible to casual readers. So what if my wife and children no longer recognize me. It's finished! (See more highlights below.)

Among the interesting facts and trends you'll find in the package:

-Worldwide, US military bases occupy 46,566 square miles, a land area larger than North Korea.

- Nations round the world spend roughly $1.2 trillion on defense. Nearly half of the total is expended by the United States. The federal government spent $587 billion on defense in fiscal 2008, including emergency war funding. By contrast it spent $62 billion on education and $5 billion on Social Security that year.

-The Pentagon acknowledges 5,429 US military installations, of which 761 are located in 39 foreign countries and territories. Of the foreign sites, 30 are defined as medium or large—a medium site would cost at least $888 million to replace; a large one at least $1.65 billion. Staggering numbers, but they still understate the true US footprint: The Pentagon doesn't acknowledge all of its foreign bases, and many countries have opened up their own bases for use by American troops. Moreover, the Defense Department reports suspiciously low troop counts for countries known to be abuzz with US military activity, such as Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

-Nearly 1 in 5 acknowledged US military "facilities" (buildings, roads, bridges, weapons ranges, etc.) are located on foreign soil. To replace all 102,376 of the Pentagon's foreign facilities would cost at least $119 billion. To replace all of its facilities, foreign and domestic, would cost at least $586 billion.

- Foreign training missions are a key part of the new Pentagon strategy. The US spends large amounts to train and equip foreign troops—the Bush administration requested $4.5 billion for this purpose in 2008. Rotating troops in and out frequently lets the US keep tabs on a region without drawing the public opposition a permanent base would—opposition that contributor Chalmers Johnson details in "America's Unwelcome Advances." And, as contributor Herbert Docena demonstrates in "US Troops Retake the Dragon's Lair," the new strategy has allowed the Pentagon to quietly rebuild a major strategic hub in the Philippines, whose senators sent US troops packing in 1991.

- America routinely buys its access overseas through humanitarian and military aid. As Josh Kurlantzick reports in our September/October issue, 22 percent of US foreign aid now flows directly through the Pentagon. Conversely, the US Agency for International Development funds military training in a number of countries. From weapons to cash to extending runways and building medical clinics, the Pentagon is there to help—in exchange for use of local bases, overflight rights, port privileges, freedom of movement, and legal immunity for US troops.

Adding to the package, contributor Frida Berrigan gives us an in-depth look at US status of forces negotiations ("How to Stay in Iraq for 1,000 Years."), while author David Vine brings us up to speed on "a raging legal battle over the British island of Diego Garcia, where the US has a major base. In addition, Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic interviews former national security adviser "Zbigniew Brzezinski on US basing and foreign policy. In the upcoming weeks we'll roll out dispatches on related topics from more than a dozen military scholars and thinkers, all of which will be available at motherjones.com/military.

The End of the Iraq War Is in Sight

So at this point there is no doubt: the Bush Administration supports a timetable for withdrawal.

Specifically, it supports withdrawing American troops out of Iraqi cities by summer 2009 and out of the rest of the country by the end of 2011. Those are the terms of a draft accord the Bush Administration is putting in front of Iraq's leaders for ratification. The quickness with which American combat operations are supposed to cease is reportedly the price the Administration had to pay for the Iraqi government's legalization of the American military presence in Iraq after this year, when the United Nations mandate currently authorizing the American presence expires. It is unclear whether the accord addresses the issue of permanent bases in Iraq, which are supported by John McCain and opposed by Barack Obama and wide swaths of the Iraqi public.

Of course, the Administration said that these dates are "aspirational goals" and that the actual pace of withdrawal will depend on the security situation in Iraq. But the fact is that the Bush Administration has put a plan for withdrawal on the table.

One has to ask — how does this change when the next president takes office? Barack Obama has said that he would have all combat troops home from Iraq in 16 months, meaning spring or summer of 2010. Would he rewrite the accord, if it is in fact ratified shortly, to speed up the pace of withdrawal?

McCain has remained vague, saying at one point that Obama's 16-month timetable was "pretty good," then frantically denying he said any such thing, adding, "Anything is a good timetable that is dictated by conditions on the ground." As everyone knows, he sees a long-term, Korea-like American presence in Iraq. Would McCain rewrite the accord if he feels American troops need to be kept in Iraq longer? It would appear almost completely impossible to get Iraqi leaders, who favor a plan along the lines of Barack Obama's, to agree to such a move.

And furthermore, how does this change the presidential election? Can McCain continue calling Obama a surrendercrat (not in that language, of course) for supporting a plan that is not too far off from what the Bush Administration is currently pushing and that the Iraqi government may soon approve?

August 21, 2008

McCain Camp Responds to "Houses" Situation... Hilariously

This is awesome or awful PR work. I'm not sure which. A collection of things McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post about the "How Many Houses?" scandal that is brewing:

On Obama's house:

"It's a frickin' mansion."

On the McCains' definitely-not-elitist housing habits:

"The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff. It's not as if he lives in ten houses. That's just not the case. The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use."

On how the McCain campaign apparently sees Obama:

"In terms of who's an elitist, I think people have made a judgment that John McCain is not an arugula-eating, pointy headed professor-type."

On something completely irrelevant:

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison."

A couple observations: (1) Isn't it weird how the McCain campaign simultaneously paints Obama as an effete nerd and a super-cool celebrity? (2) Noun-verb-POW!

Howard Wolfson Contains Multitudes

Hillary Clinton's former top flack starts a music blog, of all things.

Of Suskind and Habbush

Earlier this month, journalist Ron Suskind published a book in which he explosively charged that the White House had directed the CIA to concoct a letter from former Iraqi intelligence chief Tahir Jalil Habbush alleging falsely that 9/11 lead hijacker Mohammad Atta had trained for his mission in Iraq. The bogus letter exists and was indeed passed by an Iraqi exile figure close to the CIA Ayad Allawi to journalist Con Coughlin who published it in the Sunday Telegraph; Newsweek quickly exposed the letter as phony. The White House described Suskind's claims as "absurd," and a CIA official quoted in Suskind's account, Rob Richer, has disputed Suskind's characterization of what happened, as has former CIA director George Tenet. Today, Dan Froomkin follows up at his washingtonpost.com column:

Someone is finally demanding some answers about author Ron Suskind's charge that the White House, seeking to justify its invasion of Iraq, ordered the CIA in late 2003 to forge documents linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda and nuclear imports from Niger.

It's not the press, however -- it's the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Keith Perine writes for Congressional Quarterly: "The House Judiciary Committee cast a dragnet Wednesday in its investigation of claims that the Bush administration forged a document to buttress the case for invading Iraq.

"Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., sent letters to six current and former senior government officials, asking them to schedule a time to tell the committee what they know about the affair.

"The review stems from charges made in the recently published book 'The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism,' by Ron Suskind." ...

In his letter to former vice presidential chief of staff and convicted felon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Conyers writes: "I am writing to follow up on recent serious allegations regarding the creation of a false letter from Tahir Jalil Habbush, Saddam Hussein's former Chief of Intelligence, to Saddam Hussein. The letter, which was allegedly backdated to July 1, 2001, attempted to establish an operational link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein in the period before the 9/11 attacks by specifically stating that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had received training in Iraq. At the time of the alleged decision in 2003 to concoct the false letter, the Vice President's Office had been reportedly pressuring the CIA to prove this connection as a justification to invade Iraq. The letter also falsely noted that Iraq had received a 'shipment' (presumably uranium) from Niger with the assistance of al Qaeda.

"Upon careful review of the allegations concerning this matter, I have become very concerned with the possibility that this Administration may have violated federal law by using the resources of our intelligence agencies to influence domestic policy processes or opinion. The law specifically provides that '[n]o covert action may be conducted which is intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media.'

"According to recent allegations, the Vice President's Office was involved in directing CIA officials to draft the false letter. As the former Chief of Staff to the Vice President, you may have direct knowledge of these events. I am requesting that you contact Judiciary Committee staff as soon as possible to set up a time to discuss your involvement and knowledge of the allegedly false letter."

In his letter to Robert Richer, who Suskind identified as a key source, Conyers writes: "According to recent allegations, in your capacity as the former CIA Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations and Chief of the Near East Division, you were tasked by former CIA Director George Tenet to create the false letter and may even have seen the White House stationery on which the false letter assignment was reportedly written. Given your reported direct knowledge of these events, I am requesting that you contact Judiciary Committee staff as soon as possible to set up a time to discuss your involvement and knowledge of the allegedly false letter."

Froomkin has more on the White House's non-denial denials of Suskind's account, and more carefully worded former CIA officials' denials, here.

Mia Farrow and Erik Prince Do Breakfast

So, what do Mia Farrow and Erik Prince have in common? No, it's not a joke. The answer is nothing. Well, almost nothing. But according to ABC News, the aging starlet and the Blackwater founder breakfasted together in New York City last month. The subject of their discussion? Sending Blackwater operators to Darfur to train African Union soldiers and protect refugee camps. Farrow, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and chair of Dream for Darfur, is (like everyone else) frustrated by the inability of African peacekeepers to protect refugees from the Janjaweed and believes Blackwater just might have what it takes to do the job right. "Blackwater has a much better idea of what an effective peace-keeping mission would look like than western governments," Farrow said.

Farrow has become an impassioned advocate for stopping the violence in Darfur at the same time that Blackwater, better known for its cowboy behavior in Iraq, appears to be attempting to reposition itself away from protecting diplomats and back to its original mission, the provision of military training. A reporter who knows both Prince and Farrow apparently put the odd couple in touch with each other by telephone, a contact that resulted in the New York breakfast.

Obama Goes on the Air With McCain's Houses

The Obama campaign has the quickest video team on these here internets. It already has an ad up on what is quickly becoming my new favorite story.

I know they had to keep it simple, but I would have tried to work in this point. Take a look at the spending habits of the McCains ("Cindy McCain charged as much as $500,000 in a single month on one American Express card and $250,000 on another") and the fact that they have so many million-dollar homes that John McCain can't even remember them all. And then consider the fact that wasteful spending is supposedly John McCain's animating passion.

I view this as a more serious hypocrisy that John Edwards' zip code-sized house. And we all know how long that story hung around.

Update: Another point Obama's team could have made: how can someone oversee the housing crisis when he doesn't have any day-to-day concerns about his own mortgage? Or mortgages, as the case may be? How can this person set tax rates for the middle class? All of that is implied, I suppose...

Obvious Policy Suggestion for Barack Obama

Propose using John McCain's myriad properties to address the housing crisis.

How many Americans who have lost their homes to foreclosure can fit on a ranch with four addresses and six houses? I'm guessing a fair amount. We could make it a TV show! What happens when a bunch of pissed off voters stop being polite and start getting real?

It's Easy to Get Confused By John McCain's Houses

Look, I can understand why John McCain has trouble counting his houses. Are we talking properties? Addresses? Homes? Because when you have a massive ranch with a half dozen homes and four addresses on it, things get confusing.

From a press report on the barbecue McCain threw for the members of the media (no, Mother Jones was not invited) in March:

McCain said... the Hidden Valley Ranch [in Arizona] got its name from the horseshoe shape of the creek that runs through the property.

He said he built the first house on his property 24 years ago and now there are six houses on his lot.

The addresses on the ranch are 11455 E Hidden Valley Road, 11445 E Hidden Valley Road, 11415 E Hidden Valley Road, and 11405 E Hidden Valley Road. I'm going to go ahead and assume that's a sizable ranch.

Here's the closest to a full account of the McCains' properties that I can find. It's from the Politico story that revealed exactly how extravagant the McCains' spending is ("Their credit card bills peaked between January 2007 and May 2008, during which time Cindy McCain charged as much as $500,000 in a single month on one American Express card and $250,000 on another"):

One of the Phoenix condos, a 6,600-square-foot unit for which Cindy McCain’s trust paid $4.7 million in October 2006, became Cindy McCain’s primary residence after the trust sold the couple’s Phoenix house for $3.2 million in December 2006. She had purchased the house years earlier from her father.

Less than one year later, a corporation controlled by Cindy McCain bought another condo on a lower floor in the same building for $830,000.

And, in between, the corporation plunked down $700,000 for a 1,900-square foot, three-bedroom loft condo for her then-22-year-old daughter Meghan McCain, who was moving back to Phoenix after graduating from New York’s Columbia University.

Cindy McCain, through another family corporation, spent about $4.7 million in 2004 and 2008 on two condos in an exclusive building in Coronado, Calif., an affluent San Diego suburb noted for its high percentage of military retirees.

In her recent Vogue interview, conducted from the newer Coronado condo, McCain explained that her husband, a Navy veteran, initially wasn’t keen on the idea of a pied-à-terre in Coronado.

"When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh, this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go,'" she told Vogue. "Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one."

Through her trusts and other corporate entities, Cindy McCain also owns another three properties: a scenic ranch outside Sedona, Ariz., where John McCain has entertained staff, prospective running mates and political reporters; a three-bedroom Arlington, Va., condo that's been John McCain’s Washington-area residence since 1993 and the La Jolla, Calif., condo on which the back taxes were due.

I count eight in that description. But that $4.7 million Phoenix condo is actually a combination of two different luxury condos. And you can count the ranch as one, four, or six.

For a guy who makes the government's supposedly profligate spending the centerpiece of his campaign pitch, this is all a touch ridiculous.

Clinton "Whip Team" Organized to Slay PUMAs

Clinton supporters hoping to agitate at the convention (starting Monday!) will face some friendly fire.

In an unusual move, Hillary Clinton's staff is creating a 40-member "whip team" at the Denver Democratic convention to ensure that her supporters don't engage in embarrassing anti-Obama demonstrations during the floor vote on her nomination, according to people familiar with the planning.

The team, which is being organized by longtime Clinton staffer Craig Smith, is working in conjunction with Obama's floor organizers to help foster the image of a unified front during a roll-call process Clinton herself has described as an emotional "catharsis" for her disappointed supporters.

This part isn't so helpful: "Clinton spokesperson Kathleen Strand emphasized the team would not seek to convince delegates to vote for the former first lady, but would hand out Clinton signs to supporters who requested them." [Emphasis mine.]

John McCain Does Not Know How Many Houses He Owns. This Is Not a Joke

A fall full of moments like these will be entertaining. You have to wonder if there is video.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

The McCain family has proved to be out of touch before. These aren't harmless little gotcha moments. This sort of thing is a threat to your pocketbook.

August 20, 2008

McCain Would Consider a Draft. Every Parent In America Should Know This

There is a new video out in which a questioner at a McCain town hall event speaks at length about veterans and then ends with a sentence or two about the need to reinstate the draft if we are going to catch Osama bin Laden. McCain responds, "I don’t disagree with anything you said."

The video is making the rounds of the interwebs. McCain's response is a poor choice of words, but not necessarily an endorsement of the draft.

This video, however, is pretty unambiguous. It's from several months back.

McCain does not have an unequivocal, philosophical opposition to using the draft in the war on terror. Do you know an undecided voter who is the parent of a child between 12 and 22? Make sure they've memorized this quote before election day, so they know exactly what they're getting if they vote for McCain:

"I might consider it, I don't think it's necessary, but I might consider it if you could design a draft where everybody equally could serve."

Obama's Historical Comparisons

In a PressThink post, Jay Rosen takes issue with our recently published forum on Barack Obama. We asked two dozen thinkers and writers, "Is Barack Obama exaggerating when he compares his campaign to the great progressive moments in US history?"

Writes Rosen, "Obama really said something like that? His campaign is a 'movement' comparable to, say, the civil rights movement, or to second wave feminism, or to the labor movement after the industrial revolution? If so, I had missed it."

Rosen is really insistent on this point. He also writes, "any statement from the candidate himself that compared Obama ‘08 to the great movements for freedom and justice in our history would have been quite the controversy, what with the McCain camp already mocking his messiah complex and calling him "The One." Why would Mother Jones, a progressive magazine, accuse Obama of the same thing McCain is attacking him for?"

To answer the question that ends that passage, we may be a progressive magazine, but we're still journalists who believe in refereeing and commenting on the campaign as fairly as we can. Nothing we write is in service of the Obama campaign and its goals. Occasionally, we'll write posts and articles that hurt Obama; the New Republic, the Nation, and the American Prospect all do the same.

But to Rosen's larger point — Obama does indeed put himself in a historical context alongside the great progressive movements of the last century. Here are four examples, one of which Rosen has already seen. They get long. Feel free to skim. Also feel free to visit the links to get a better sense of context.

From Barack Obama's January 3 speech, delivered after winning the Iowa primary:

Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause.

From Barack Obama's February 12 speech, delivered after winning the Potomac Primaries:

Nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere is willing to hope. Somebody is willing to stand up.

Somebody who is willing to stand up when they are told "No you can't" and instead they say, "Yes we can."

That's how this country was founded. A group of patriots declaring independence against a mighty British empire—nobody gave them a chance—but they said, "Yes we can." That's how slaves and abolitionists resisted that wicked system, and how a new president charted a course to ensure we would not remain half slave and half free.

That's how the greatest generation—my grandfather fighting in Patton's Army, my grandmother staying at home with a baby and still working on a Bomber assembly line—how that greatest generation overcame Hitler and fascism, and also lifted themselves up out of a Great Depression.

That's how pioneers went West when people told them it was dangerous, they said, "Yes we can." That's how immigrants traveled from distant shores when people said their fates would be uncertain, "Yes we can." That's how women won the right to vote, how workers won the right to organize, how young people like you traveled down South to march and sit in and go to jail, and some were beaten and some died for freedom's cause. That's what hope is. That's what hope is.

That's what hope is, Madison.

That moment when we shed our fears and our doubts. When we don't settle for what the cynics tell us we have to accept. Because cynicism is a sorry sort of wisdom. When we instead join arm in arm and decide we are going to remake this country, block by block, precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state. That's what hope is.

There's a moment in the life of every generation, when that spirit has to come through if we are to make our mark on history. And this is our moment. This is our time.

From Obama's May 20 speech, delivered after securing a majority of pledged delegates in the Democratic primary race via the Oregon primary:

Change is coming.

It's the spirit that sent the first patriots to Lexington and Concord and led the defenders of freedom to light the way north on an Underground Railroad.

It's what sent my grandfather's generation to beachheads in Normandy, and women to Seneca Falls, and workers to picket lines and factory fences.

It’s what led all those young men and women who saw beatings and billy-clubs on their television screens to leave the safety of their homes and get on buses and march through the streets of Selma and Montgomery, black and white, rich and poor.

Change is coming to America...

From Obama's speech on June 3, delivered after the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota:

And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.

So it was for that band of patriots who declared in a Philadelphia hall the formation of a more perfect union; and for all those who gave on the fields of Gettysburg and Antietam their last full measure of devotion to save that same union.

So it was for the greatest generation that conquered fear itself, and liberated a continent from tyranny and made this country home to untold opportunity and prosperity.

So it was for the workers who stood out on the picket lines; the women who shattered glass ceilings; the children who braved a Selma bridge for freedom's cause.

So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that's better, and kinder, and more just.

And so it must be for us. America, this is our moment. This is our time.

Do I personally think that Obama sees his candidacy as on par with the civil rights movement or Revolutionary War soldiers? No. Do I think he is suggesting that electing a half-black man is America's next big step forward? No. But do I think Obama sees his candidacy as sparking hope and a renewed sense of empowerment that could be historical in scope by the time he is elected? Yes. Do I think he believes that if enough Americans trust their government and believe in the process of politics that something amazing could happen? Yes.

And do I think it's worth having a bunch of really smart people sort all of this out? Of course.

In Politics, Cheating on Your Wife Is Relative

John Edwards cheated on his wife. The media found out about it. John Edwards will not be attending the Democratic convention.

Rudy Giuliani used public funds to cheat on his wife and used city agencies to cover his tracks. The media found out about it. Rudy Giuliani will be delivering the keynote at the Republican convention.

Dear Lord, Glenn McCoy. That Is One Nasty Cartoon

Take a look at this.

If there is some point here relevant to the headlines — beyond the fact that Obama is pro-choice — I don't know what it is. I'm not sure it matters. This is so foul is goes beyond any standard of good taste and common decency. I tend to give satire a pretty wide berth; this is beyond the pale.

Barack Obama beating fetuses with a bloody baseball bat in a dumpster? I can't even look at it for more than a few seconds.

Here's the thing. A few years back I had a coworker who wrote a feminist blog on the side. We used to joke about the way hardcore pro-lifers saw her, as an activist for abortion rights. "They probably think you eat fetuses in a bowl for breakfast," I would say. "With chopsticks!" she would respond.

We knew it was over the top. It was ridiculous. It was parody. And apparently, stunningly, it had elements of truth.

Update: Here's what this is about. As you would guess, it in no way justifies this cartoon. And EF makes a great point in the comments — if Democrats produced something equally disgusting about John McCain, there would be a backlash with serious consequences. It would start, of course, with Fox News, the in-house network of the Republican Party.

Posted by Jonathan Stein on 08/20/08 at 9:22 AM | | Comments (13) |