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October 18, 2008

An Ex-Powell Aide Explains Why the Time Is Right for an Obama Endorsement--UPDATED

UPDATE: On Sunday, Colin Powell did endorse Barack Obam. Appearing on Meet The Press, he presented an eloquent statement of support in which he hailed Obama's "transformational" role, leadership ability, and intellectual curiosity. Powell emphasized that he believed that John McCain, his longtime friend, could be a good president, but he maintained that the GOP has become too much in hock to its right-wing base and that Sarah Palin was not at all ready to be president. Despite Powell's tarnished reputation--due to his starring role in the Iraq WMD fiasco--his unequivocal endorsement is a boost for Obama and yet one more problem for McCain. The below piece was written before Powell did the deed, but note Larry Wilkerson's explanation of the timing of Powell's endorsement. In this instance--unlike when he backed Bush's invasion of Iraq--Powell stuck to the Powell Doctrine, at least the Powell Doctrine of Decision-making....

With NBC News reporting that Colin Powell will appear on Meet the Press this Sunday, speculation is mounting that former Republican secretary of state will endorse Barack Obama for president. Politico reports

Retired Gen. Colin Powell, once considered a potential running mate for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), now may endorse his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), according to Republican sources. But an air of mystery surrounds Powell's planned live appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," and no one is sure what he will say.

Note the use of the word "may."

Predicting the most anticipated endorsement of the 2008 campaign has been a pundit standby for months. In June, Robert Novak asserted, "Powell probably will enter Obama's camp at a time of his own choosing." In August Bill Kristol declared that Powell would endorse Obama at the Democratic convention and "quite possibly" speak at the convention. Last week, Lawrence O'Donnell wrote, "It now seems beyond doubt that Colin Powell will endorse Barack Obama and thereby hammer the final nail in the coffin of the Republican campaign to hold onto the White House." He cited no sources.

Will Powell take the leap this weekend? In tracking the Powell story these past few months, I have periodically checked in with Larry Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief of staff at the State Department and who had worked with Powell in a variety of positions going back to 1989. Wilkerson always said the same thing: with Powell, it's all about the 60-percent rule--that is, the general manner in which he makes big decisions. Wilkerson explains:

Powell has a continuum he uses. It's based on time and information. Most people make mistakes because on this time/information continuum, they either decide too fast, with too little information, and thus make a bad decision, or they wait to get perfect information and then are a day late, and a dollar short--too late with their decision to influence events. Powell believes the optimum point is 60 percent. That is, if you have roughly 60 percent of the available information--and, in a perfect coincidence--are at about 60 percent of the elapsed time--that is when you are most apt to make the best decision. In the case of this political campaign this process translates into Powell's having at least a 3-2 chance of being on the winning side were he to endorse, and that he does it early enough to still influence the result.

Voila! Obama has opened a wide enough lead in the polls that he has become a betting favorite. A 3-to-2 favorite? Maybe. And if you start the clock at the conclusion of the GOP convention, the general election hit the 60-percent point last Sunday.

By Wilkerson's explanation, the circumstances are indeed in place for a Powell endorsement this weekend. At this stage--with Obama opening a lead, McCain failing to win the last debate, the economic crisis continuing to dominate the news, and not much time left for a major change of direction in the campaign--such an endorsement would be rather significant but it would also be only 60-percent gutsy.

October 17, 2008

16 Words: New Court Filing Suggests Manufactured Terror Threat in Bush's 2002 State of the Union

A new court filing by the lawyers for Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Guantanamo detainees suggests that the Bush administration ordered the Bosnian government to arrest and hold the men after an exhaustive Bosnian investigation had found them innocent of any terrorism related activity and had ordered their release, in order to use them as props in Bush's January 2002 State of the Union speech.

The filing--"Lakhdar Boumediene, et al., Petitioners, v. George W. Bush, President of the United States, et al., Respondents, Petitioners' Public Traverse to the Government's Return to the Petition for Habeas Corpus"--lays out the case that the Bush administration threatened at the highest levels to withdraw diplomatic and military aid to the Balkan nation if Bosnia released the men, which its own three-month investigation had found innocent of any terrorism charges in the days leading up to Bush's January 2002 State of the Union.

Faced with the threats of the withdrawal of aid and that if it released the men, the White House would order NATO troops to detain them, Bosnia transferred the men under duress to the custody of the US government in January 2002, and the US transferred them to Guantanamo. Ten days later, in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush used sixteen words to warn Americans that, in "cooperation" with the Bosnian government, it had captured terrorists who had planned to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo: "Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy," Bush told the nation.

But, six years later, the detainees' new petition says, after the US Supreme Court has sided with the detainees and ordered the US to give the detainees habeas corpus rights, the Bush administration has failed to repeat the embassy plot charges that Bush used in his State of the Union address, or to produce credible evidence of why the men should be held as enemy combatants.

(Bush also used 16 words to falsely claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had sought yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger -- a claim the White House had been previously repeatedly warned by the CIA was unfounded and which the White House later admitted Bush should not have said, months after the US invasion of Iraq).

The 58-page traverse petition was filed today in the US District Court for the District of Columbia (.pdf). Some key excerpts from its preliminary statement below the fold:

...Now that the Government at last faces a merits hearing before an Article III Court, the thinness of its basis for detaining Petitioners is plain. ... The Government nowhere acknowledges—and indeed, has done its utmost to avoid—the thorough investigation performed on the ground by Bosnian authorities in 2001. ... By mid-January 2002, both the prosecutor and the investigating judge had concluded that no basis had been established to hold Petitioners even for further investigation. ...

Now that the Court has finally ordered the Government to provide reasons for its continued military detention of Petitioners, its assertions in 2008 bear very little relation to its reasons for Petitioners’ initial extrajudicial rendition from Bosnia in 2002. The United States’ original claim was that Petitioners were supposedly plotting a terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.

Indeed, in the 2002 State of the Union Address, delivered fewer than ten days after Petitioners were flown by plane to Guantanamo, President Bush stated: “Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy.”

Notably omitted from the President’s account was the fact that the three-month investigation carried out by Bosnian authorities failed to unearth any evidence to warrant further investigation, let alone sufficient evidence to charge Petitioners with any terrorism-related crime. ... The Government’s unclassified Return makes no mention of the claim that Petitioners “were plotting to bomb our embassy.”

"But rather than acknowledge its errors," the filing says, "the Government has compounded them through vague allegations."

The petition indicates it was filed to the court accompanied by more than 150 exhibits in support of its claims, including sealed statements from former US official Philip Zelikow, former CIA officer Paul Pillar and Harvard University Bosnia expert Andras Riedlmayer.

Dan Savage on Sex, Moose, and the Palin Kids

Gay-as-hell sex columnist Dan Savage offers himself up to teach Sarah and Todd's kids about sex and birth control, if they'll teach his kid about God and how to "kill and field dress a moose. Something he doesn't get to see at home."

Take a look, it'll make your day, trust me.

The American Economy—More Pain to Come For Now

Below is a guest blog entry by economist and MoJo author Nomi Prins:

There are no bright spots on the immediate horizon for the US economy, mired in a debt-led recession that has yet to reach its trough. Indeed, on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke relayed his most somber opinion about the US economy to date. Focusing on the ongoing liquidity crisis, he told a roomful of people at the Economic Club in New York that there was a "significant threat" to the US economy emanating from the credit markets, indicating that as bad as it seems, the worst is still ahead.

Though Bernanke appeared to be giving the Fed room for more rate cuts in the near future, especially since inflationary pressures from things such as high oil prices have fallen dramatically over the past few weeks, that won't be enough to do more than put some short-lived cheer in the markets.

Even if Bernanke were to cut rates to the levels that Greenspan reached to spur the US economy out of its recession in 2001, he and the US are facing a more widespread problem given the extent of credit issues. He can do little to control the massive over-leverage that still exists in the US (and global) banking industry, but wait, and hope that at some point, the pressures of the tightened credit will ease.

Meanwhile, they are seeping through the rest of the US economy. And, there are other growing problems. The most obvious is that the housing sector is still weak, and foreclosures are still rising. Second, unemployment is rising. The national unemployment level reached 6.1 percent last month, or 9.5 million people, an increase of nearly 30 percent over the prior year. New jobless claims are at their highest level since the milder recession in 2001. Wall Street will have laid off 30 percent of its workforce by the end of year, due to a combination of bankruptcies, mergers, and general cost cutting measures, which affect not just former bankers, but everyone whose livelihood is related.

The speed of the rise has even caught some state unemployment funds off guard. At this pace, the funds of at least 10 states in the US will go bankrupt by spring of 2009, including California, New York, Michigan, and Ohio. An average of almost half a million new Americans are claiming unemployment benefits on a weekly basis, since August.

Aside from the unemployed, there are a growing number of underemployed workers (part-time workers who want full-time jobs, and jobless workers who aren't actively seeking employment, but do want a job). At 11 percent of the population, or 17 million people, that underemployment rate is at its highest level in more than 14 years.

According to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington DC, "The fact that one out of every nine US workers is now either unemployed or underemployed is clear evidence of the need for a second stimulus package targeted at job creation."

Yet, so far, Congressional discourse about helping and protecting taxpayers aside, all that has been implemented by Washington to fix the financial meltdown are various means of government guarantees to back agencies like Fannie, Freddie and bank-to-bank lending, as well as cash and equity injections. AIG, reaching the end of its $85 billion helping of government money, is already back for more. Citigroup and Merrill Lynch posted new ominous losses this week.

Treasury Sec. Hank Paulson's $700 billion purchase plan still concentrates mainly on preferred stock purchases at the most influential banks, as their leaders hold out for the toxic waste purchase phase. It was the CEOs of the top 5 banks that met with Paulson in Washington to discuss the plan's steps, not leaders representing American citizens, many of whom would love an equity injection of their own to help balance their debts.

Meanwhile, the plan's execution will at best provide temporary relief to massively overleveraged financial institutions, but will neither fix their problems, nor those of the greater economy. And, it is not just the banking system that is overleveraged: Federal debt has shot through the $10 trillion mark, and will rise to accommodate the latest bailout plan. The budget deficit is expected to triple in size to almost half a trillion dollars for 2007-2008, up from $162 billion dollars during the prior year, from 2006-2007.

"This year's budget results reflect the ongoing housing correction, and the manifestations of that in strained capital markets and slower growth," said Paulson in a statement on Tuesday. This dogmatic attachment to the idea that the underlying financial problems in the US, that have weakened the entire economy, are merely a 'correction,' is a willful denial that the current situation is the result of years of deregulation, lack of oversight, rampant repackaging, and leverage.

It is important to understand this reality to work towards solutions. Effective legislation and immediate action is required to keep people from default and foreclosure on their homes, in order to contain the hemorrhaging at the bottom of the mortgage loan market that has proliferated entire neighborhoods as well as the global financial markets. That won't solve the problem either, but it will go a longer way to securing the foundation on which all the leverage and toxic assets sit, plus help citizens who need it. Plans to create more jobs to keep up with rising unemployment figures are required.

On an interview on the Fox Business Network, Paulson projected optimism that the measures that he and the Bush administration will work, "We will mitigate the impact on the real economy and we'll get this financial system working again," he said.

Polls of ordinary Americans weren't quite so sure. Results of an online CNN Money poll that asked, "How gloomy are you about the nation's economy?" taken one day after the last presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain summed up the country's sentiment. 71 percent of respondents said, "It was the worst I've seen", 16 percent said, "this is bad, but I've seen worse", and just 13 percent said, "This isn't so bad."

Unfortunately, it will take a few years to get the US economy moving forward. Getting through the crisis in the banking sector is one step, particularly since the banking sector's problems are keeping ordinary Americans from getting credit on everything from student to small business loans, and causing unaffordable fee hikes on credit cards, another looming disaster. Helping Americans keep their homes and find good jobs will be necessary to bolster the economy. Forget cutting taxes and bloating the budget further, that's something that the next president of the United States will have to work on, fast.

—Nomi Prins

Is Getting Race Right All About the Benjamins?

Ireland is welcoming immigrants of all hues and thriving. From Slate:

After centuries of emigration—particularly to Great Britain and the United States—Ireland has attracted thousands of newcomers. While the economy has cooled, foreigners have not, for the most part, headed for the exits: Approximately 10 percent of the country's 4.1 million residents are now foreign-born. The diversity of this group becomes apparent as you stroll around Dublin: Filipino restaurants stand next to Polish grocery stores and African hair-braiding salons. ...

...the government has encouraged businesses to fill low-skill jobs with citizens from the new EU member states. According to 2006 statistics (the most recent available), about 70,000 Poles have successfully landed work in Ireland. The third-largest group of foreigners—after British and Polish—are Africans. There are about 50,000 Africans in Ireland, and many of them arrived as asylum seekers.

One Nigerian immigrant is mayor of an Irish town, and he isn't even a citizen. Imagine that happening here. Unfortunately, immigration isn't going so well in Spain. Also from Slate:

It wasn't so long ago that Spain was considered one of the most immigrant-friendly countries in the world. In 2005, the nation's European neighbors looked askance when the Spanish government instituted an amnesty program that granted residency papers to more than 500,000 foreigners. It was a potential first step to acquiring Spanish citizenship and, by extension, an EU passport. That wasn't the only chance non-EU citizens had to settle in the country through legal channels: The government has also allowed businesses to recruit for so-called hard-to-fill positions—ranging from medical technician to domestic worker—by hiring abroad. Last year, more than 200,000 foreigners arrived in Spain this way. Upon arrival, newcomers both legal and illegal could access Spain's health care system at no cost by registering at the local town hall.

Immigrants can still access the state safety net, but now that the economy has cooled, opportunities to settle in the country legally are becoming scarce. ...

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Spanish government would become more apprehensive about its newfound multiculturalism. The country has undergone a bewildering transformation: In the past decade, the immigrant population spiked to nearly 4 million, or 10 percent of the country's total population of 40 million. That is almost as high as the proportion of foreign-born residents in the United States, where immigrants comprise 12.5 percent of the population. Unlike the United States or European countries like Austria and Germany, Spain has little experience of absorbing outsiders. Traditionally, people left the country rather than settled there.

As usual, it's all about the benjamins; when the economy is strong and unpleasant work needs to be done, immigrants are wooed. When the economy tanks.....

Maybe Nothing is Wrong With Kansas

CNN reports that Rep. Murtha is apologizing for referring to western Pennsylvania, which he represents, as "a racist area". Of course, this comes on the heels of Obama's comments about the white working class bitterly clinging to racism, guns and religion as the economy worsens. Until recently, this week in fact, my reaction had been a big 'truth hurts. Deal with it'. Now I'm wondering if it's so simple.

In the Oct. 13 New Yorker, George Packer offers a superbly argued defense of this very demographic and tries to shift the paradigm: Counter-intuitive as it seems for poor-to-lower middle class whites to have shifted their loyalty to the GOP and remain aloof to Obama, it is not a symptom of stupidity. It's a legitimate reaction to their belief that the Democrats just haven't done much for them lately. Lately, like since the 70s, when working whites abandoned the party they'd embraced since FDR.

It's the delicious New Yorker, so a quick excerpt just won't do:

"[A] study followed the voting behavior of the forty-five percent of white Americans who identify themselves as working class. Mining electoral data from the General Social Survey, they found that the decline in white working-class support for Democrats occurred in one period—from the mid-seventies until the early nineties, with a brief lull in the early eighties—and has remained well below fifty percent ever since. But they concluded that social issues like abortion, guns, religion, and even (outside the South) race had little to do with the shift. Instead, according to their data, it was based on a judgment that—during years in which industrial jobs went overseas, unions practically vanished, and working-class incomes stagnated—the Democratic Party was no longer much help to them.

“Beginning in the mid-to-late 1970s, there was increasing reason for working-class whites to question whether the Democrats were still better than the Republicans at promoting their material well-being,” the study’s authors write. Working-class whites, their fortunes falling, began to embrace the anti-government, low-tax rhetoric of the conservative movement. During Clinton’s Presidency, the downward economic spiral of these Americans was arrested, but by then their identification with the Democrats had eroded. Having earlier moved to the right for economic reasons, the Arizona study concluded, the working class stayed there because of the rising prominence of social issues........ But the Democrats fundamentally lost the white working class because these voters no longer believed the Party’s central tenet—that government could restore a sense of economic security.

Since the recession/layoff 80s and the rise of the Reagan Democrats, I have been astounded, but convinced, that less affluent whites would shoot themselves in the foot and support the very people responsible for their problems. What else could explain their voting behavior but the three card Monte of shifting their focus from the corporate fat cats who laid them off to the minorities, women, and gays suffering along with them.

When What's the Matter With Kansas hit the shelves, I had to be among its first, and most avid readers. That book's central thesis: that non-affluent whites who voted GOP were, basically, stupid. Duped. In thrall to their oppressors and so intrinsically racist, sexist, etc., that such appeals were irresistible. Now Packer's messing with my mind.

Every vote is a stark one; who among us agrees with everything the party we vote for stands for? Most of us no doubt loathe certain facets (for me, all the heart-on-my-sleeve religious posturing, for just one thing) of those who get our votes. So, the argument that whites abandoned the Dems because they believed it abandoned them makes sense. So does the corollary that social issues could tip the balance between two parties, neither of which cares about them, but one of which resonates with their own social preferences.

It makes more sense to believe that people are rational, than that they're too stupid to know what's happening to them. Racism, etc. is all too real, but it's good to be reminded that it isn't all that bigots ever think about. Slate makes this point a different way: Why an Obama win wouldn't be a victory over racial prejudice.

It Finally Happened: Reporter Assaulted at Palin Rally

This was a long time coming. A reporter in North Carolina was assaulted at a Palin rally when he tried to interview Obama supporters who were protesting on the scene.

I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.

As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.

"Hey, hey," I said. "I'm trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay?"

The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building. We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.

This was met with curses, screams and chants of "U.S.A" by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.

It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.

"Oh, you think that 's funny?!" the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. "Yeah, that's real funny…" he said.

And then he kicked the back of leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.

You can read the rest of the account here. Ugly.

McCain Now Using Robocalls He Once Condemned

As John McCain robocalls sweep the country, accusing Barack Obama of literally murdering newborns and associating with a group that "killed Americans," keep in mind that when John McCain was a victim of Bush robocalls in the 2000 Republican primary he had a very different view of the tactic. Back then, he slammed slimy robocalls as "hate calls."

Evidently, he is willing to use "hate calls" in the service of his campaign. But who knows? As I've postulated before, the image of McCain as a saintly campaigner that emerged out of 2000 might have been very different if he had won the primary and went on to a bruising general election. If McCain were losing by 10 points in October 2000, whose to say he wouldn't be acting the same way he is now?

The Right's Final Attack: Obama is a Black Muslim, Anti-Christian Socialist Plotting with an Evil Jewish Billionaire

With less than three weeks to go before Election Day, time is running out on the rightwing effort to delegitimize Barack Obama. At the last debate between John McCain and Obama, McCain finally confronted his opponent directly with the Bill Ayers charge. It was a half-hearted effort: he noted that he didn't "care about an old washed-up terrorist" but insisted that "we need to know the full extent" of Obama's relationship with the former Weather Underground radical, who has since become an education expert. Though McCain succeeded in appeasing conservatives who demanded he pounce on the Ayers matter, the polling evidence has indicated that whining about Obama's casual association with Ayers has not yet become a winning tactic for McCain and Republicans trying to depict Obama as an untrustworthy pol outside the American mainstream. But Ayers is not the only ammo for rightwingers striving to brand Obama as anti-American. Various conservatives are pushing other lines of attack to achieve this goal. And as they mount various ploys, their desperation is showing. Here are some of the last-minute blasts being waged by conservatives hoping to convince voters that they ought to be afraid--very afraid--of Obama:

Mohamed Atta's Driver License. An outfit called the National Republican Trust Political Action Committee has sent out an email to potential conservative donors calling Obama "dangerous" and boasting that it has hit on the killer issue that "will nail him." That issue: Obama supports allowing undocumented aliens to obtain driver's licenses. This means, the group says, that the next Mohamed Atta could obtain a valid driver's license--and somehow make use of it in a plot to kill thousands of Americans. "We are days away from our new TV ad exposing Obama's support for driver's licenses for illegals," the email says. Message: Obama doesn't understand the dangers facing the country and will help terrorists conspiring to destroy the United States.

Obama is a Socialist. McCain came close to saying this at that final debate, when he derided Obama for wanting to "spread the wealth" and maintained that Obama's plan to raise taxes on the well-to-do to help finance tax cuts for the middle class was "class warfare." But McCain did not use the S-word. Others are not so reticent. Richard Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com and a founder of the modern conservative movement, proposes that Obama be slammed in a simple manner. "The Obama economic policy," he says, "can be summed up in two words: Marxism/Socialism." In Viguerie's view, the McCain campaign and others must reveal that Obama wants to "re-make America along the lines of socialist countries in Europe, most of which are headed toward collapse." Drop the S-bomb, he urges. Message: Obama is a commie who hates the rich and wants to kill the American Dream.

Obama Is a Secret Muslim Plotting With an Evil Billionaire. Human Events, a leading conservative magazine, sent out a promotional email the other day for an anti-Obama book co-written by Floyd Brown, a conservative activist infamous for having cooked up the Willie Horton ad during the 1988 presidential election. The email notes that there are "many Islamofascists who are sworn to the destruction of America" who are "actively campaigning for Obama" and that Muslims would demand and receive "special rights" from a President Obama. The email asks, "Being a Black Muslim doesn't disqualify [Obama] from running for President, so why won't he be honest about it?" In other words, yep, he's a covert Muslim. But beyond circulating this canard, the email claims that George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire financier who has supported Democratic and liberal causes, is "planning to sack the US economy, make himself billions richer, and put Obama in the White House marching to his mad tune." Message: A black Muslim in league with an evil Jewish billionaire--you do the math.

Obama Is Fronting for Islamic Jihadists. Writing in The Washington Times this week, former Reagan Pentagon official Frank Gaffney, charges that Obama's campaign has received "between $30 million and $100 million" from the Mideast, Africa and other places [where] Islamists are active." He asserts it "seems likely" that "these funds come not only from Wahhabis, Muslim Brotherhood types and jihadists of other stripes but from non-U.S. citizens." (His evidence? Don't be so picky.) Gaffney adds that "Obama hopes to win the White House by relying, in part, on the Jihadist vote." He writes: "The next three weeks afford the American people--and the media, the courts and the [Federal Elections Commission]--an opportunity to get to the bottom of Barack Obama's ties to and affinity for jihadists who have their own reasons for relishing his promise of 'change]' for this country. Unfortunately, the change his Islamists supporters have in mind is for global theocratic rule under Shariah, and the end of our constitutional, democratic government." Message: Obama will destroy Christianity in the United States and enslave you within an Islamic dictatorship.

This is heady stuff. And there are, no doubt, more 11th hour assaults in the works. Right-wing bloggers have promoted a British news story reporting that an African-American poet and friend of Obama's grandfather in Hawaii--when Obama was being raised by his grandparents--wrote pornography and engaged in sex with a 13-year-old girl. (Stop everything: Obama, when he was a teenager, received advice on how to be a black man from a pervert!) And one right-wing blogger has been pushing the conspiracy theory that it was Bill Ayers who actually wrote Obama's book Dreams From My Father.

For months, the McCain camp and conservatives have attempted to persuade voters that Obama is not one of them, not a truly loyal American--that, for instance, he pals around with domestic terrorists, as Governor Sarah Palin put it. (And the McCain campaign and the Republican Party this week launched a robocall operation that tells potential voters that they "need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the US Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans.") If the recent polling is accurate, this anti-Obama crusade has not tilted the electorate toward McCain. But one final push--with or without references to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright--will be coming from rightwingers anxious to prevent an Obama win. In a letter sent to supporters, Donald Wildmon, chairman of the American Family Association, declares, "If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity."

Some of these attacks do seem silly and are probably designed more to squeeze money out of paranoid rightwing contributors than to sway swing voters. (Don't vote for Obama because he will let Soros loot the US treasury?) But they are something of a warning: if Obama wins, this is the tenor of the conservative opposition he will face right out of the box: sensationalized, racialized, apocalyptic, and crazy.

List of Republicans Calling BS on ACORN Voter Fraud Allegations Growing

First the Republican Governor of Florida broke with Republican talking points on this ACORN voter fraud business (here's a primer on the ACORN kerfuffle). Now fired US Attorney David Iglesias, who got the boot in part because he refused to pursue trumped up voter fraud charges against groups like ACORN, agrees.

David Iglesias says he's shocked by the news, leaked today to the Associated Press, that the FBI is pursuing a voter-fraud investigation into ACORN just weeks before the election.

"I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again," Iglesias told TPMmuckraker. "Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic." In 2006, Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney thanks partly to his reluctance to pursue voter-fraud cases as aggressively as DOJ wanted -- one of several U.S. attorneys fired for inappropriate political reasons, according to a recently released report by DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.

Iglesias, who has been the most outspoken of the fired U.S. attorneys, went on to say that the FBI's investigation seemed designed to inappropriately create a "boogeyman" out of voter fraud.

Let's call this what it is: a massive and well-coordinated attempt to (1) discredit groups that register low-income voters and (2) lay the groundwork for a post-election delegitimization of Obama's victory. It's pre-spin.

Fox News Is Critical of McCain? "Elites!"

Here's a lesson in how right-wing messaging works. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are obviously simpatico most of the time. But of late Bill Kristol, a regular Fox News contributor, has been critical of McCain, and a panel of Fox News pundits including Kristol, Nina Easton, Mort Kondrake, and Juan Williams panned McCain's recent debate performance. So what is Limbaugh's reaction?

LIMBAUGH: The Fox All-Stars, they're not America. They have become elites.

Let's get real. Nothing fundamental has changed about Kristol, Easton, Kondrake, and Williams in the last two weeks. They are the same people with the same political principles. But they are no longer full-throated supporters of the cause, so they get labeled elites. Regardless, of course, of the legitimacy of the term. This is how the right operates.

You know what's particularly funny? Limbaugh immediately follows his accusation about the Fox News contributors by saying this: "You don't know how hard this is for me to say folks, Roger Ailes is one of my closest friends. … Saw him this weekend, I spend a lot of social time with him." You can see the video here.

Roger Ailes is the president of Fox News and a former media consultant for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Sounds like pretty elite company to me, Rush.

October 16, 2008

Would Republicans Accuse Joe the Plumber of Voter Fraud?

Originally published on the Guardian's "On the Road to the White House" blog, a project of Guardian Films

Under the GOP's current vote suppression strategy in Ohio, McCain's now famous icon might have had a hard time casting a ballot. In a case that has now gone to the Supreme Court for review, Republicans in the state are challenging the registrations of all new voters whose names and other information do not exactly match those in government databases. It turns out that one of the present Ohio voters who could have fallen into this category is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher—or is it Worzelbacher?—otherwise known as Joe the Plumber.

The man John McCain lionized in Wednesday night's debate has since had every aspect of his life scrutinized by the media. They've uncovered some contradictory facts, to say the least: He's not really a plumber, he probably wouldn't pay more taxes under Obama if he bought his business, and he hasn't actually paid some of the taxes he already owes. He's also registered to vote under a different name.

The New York Times politics blog The Caucus yesterday included the following piece of information:

Mr. Wurzelbacher is registered to vote in Lucas County under the name Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher.

"We have his named spelled W-O, instead of W-U," Linda Howe, executive director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said in a telephone interview. "Handwriting is sometimes hard to read. He has never corrected it in his registration card."

The records, she said, showed he voted Republican in the March primary.

Because Joe the Plumber registered and has a record of voting in the past, he would not be among those targeted by the Republicans. That privilege is reserved for the voters with newly filed registration applications--a group that clearly favors Obama.

On Tuesday, a federal court ruled in favor of the GOP, ordering Ohio's Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, to release a list of those voters whose information on voter registration applications does not match the information on Social Security and drivers license databases. Republicans want to force these voters to cast provisional ballots, which can later be scrutinized and challenged; some may instead choose to simply go home.

The list includes a stunning 200,000 of the 660,000 Ohioans who have registered since January 1 of this year. The magnitude of the number—like the glitch in Joe the Plumber's registration—prove the fallibility of a system in which sloppy handwriting is being used to deny people their most basic democratic rights.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Flaming the Geezer Vote: Attacks on John McCain's Age May Backfire

Originally published on the Guardian's "On the road to the White House" blog, a project of Guardian Films

Every year, despite their purported senility and decrepitude, elderly people like myself somehow manage to hobble to the polls with their canes and walkers, or zip down in their golf carts or aging Cadillacs, and figure out which lever to pull or which little box to fill in. We are the most reliable group of voters in America. In 2004, people over the age of 65 made up more than a third of the voting age population, and what's more important, nearly 70% of them actually voted. In addition, seniors are a key segment of the vote in several vital swing states, including here in Nevada, as well as Florida and Pennsylvania.

With this in mind, attacking McCain on the basis of age is not just mean, it's dumb.

While Obama himself has avoided such attacks, his supporters are gleefully pursuing them. There are websites now devoted to nothing else, and the Guardian Films team's own recent video with Roseanne Barr gets into the act big time, with the comedian declaring that "old people ... should just die" and "know when it's time to move over and leave the future for the young."

Being not that much younger than John McCain myself, I find such attacks disconcerting. I suppose I could do as Roseanne suggests, and kill myself for the good of the nation. But right now I'm thinking about how to keep working so I can stay alive a bit longer, since our so-called retirement funds in the 401Ks have been decimated in the fiscal chaos, and Medicare benefits could easily get cut as well. With McCain's long history of favouring things like privatising social security, there are plenty of ways in which Obama supporters could try to win over old people's votes from the GOP--but calling him decrepit and senile is probably not one of them.

As someone who has reported on McCain for decades, I also know that the attacks simply get things wrong. What's wrong with McCain has nothing to do with his age. He was not an old man when he was implicated in the S&L scandal as part of the Keating 5 affair back in the 1980s. He wasn't old when he voted against Martin Luther King Day. Plus he's been a loose cannon all along, and if he's gotten more "erratic" it's probably from the pressure of groveling before the Republican base.

As for old politicians, I doubt even Roseanne would wish to hasten the death of Ted Kennedy, who is older than McCain, or denounce Robert Byrd as he tottered to the podium, Constitution in hand, to lay out the most scathing attack on Bush for the Iraq war. Gloria Steinem is older than McCain, and she hardly looks or acts ready to be put out to pasture, nor did Paul Newman.

The smarter approach to the geezer vote comes from those Obama supporters who are courting oldsters, rather than alienating them. Notable among these is what's being called "the Great Schlep," championed by comedian Sarah Silverman--the legions of young Jewish voters who are travelling to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama, thereby securing "the bubbe vote."

If they'd done something like this back in 2000, the old folks might have spared the country eight years of George W. Bush.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Who Cares If Joe the Plumber Isn't a Plumber?

Or if the Court of Common Pleas in Lucas County, Ohio, issued a tax lien on Joe Wurzelbacher, the now-(in)famous plumber-by-association?

I don't; nobody should.

But while John McCain and the right are heralding Joe as a hero for asking Barack Obama head-on if the plumbing business he wants to buy would pay higher taxes under Obama's economic plan, everyone else, it seems, is prying into his life and making a huff about the fact that he was never licensed as a plumber in Ohio, owes back taxes, and just might be related to Charles Keating.

Why can't we—the media—leave the guy alone? As far as I'm concerned, there are only two things that matter about Wurzelbacher: He probably won't actually pay more taxes under Obama's plan if he buys the plumbing business, and, as Andrew Sullivan notes:

Joe the Plumber has now had more press conferences than Sarah Palin.

—Steve Aquino

Secret Service Keeping Press From Palin and Event Attendees

So says Dana Milbank:

I have to say the Secret Service is in dangerous territory here. In cooperation with the Palin campaign, they've started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. This is a serious violation of their duty -- protecting the protectee -- and gets into assisting with the political aspirations of the candidate. It also often makes it impossible for reporters to get into the crowd to question the people who say vulgar things. So they prevent reporters from getting near the people doing the shouting, then claim it's unfounded because the reporters can't get close enough to identify the person.

Via Poynter Online. Wanna know why the McCain campaign wants to limit the media's access? Because it makes videos like this one.

Do Debates Determine Election Winners? Only On Likeability

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the American voter can be pretty superficial sometimes, but I still find this disheartening.

Turns out, candidates who "won" past presidential debates didn't always win the elections that followed, but candidates who were found more "likeable" in the debates did. Andrew Romano of Newsweek points to unlikeable put well-prepared debaters who went on to lose in November and then says:

In 1984, Reagan struck voters as about 20 percent more likeable than Mondale. Bush defeated Dukakis largely because he "triumphed in the congeniality competition"--and later lost to Clinton largely because he didn't. After the Oct. 17, 2000 debate, voters rated Bush the more likable candidate, 60-30; four years later, Dubya whipped Kerry 52-41 in the same department. In other words, the candidate who won the debates may not have won the subsequent election--but the candidate who came off as most congenial almost always did.

Romano adds that all of this bodes well for Obama. "According to the CNN poll, viewers found the Illinois Democrat more likeable last night by a margin of 65 to 28 percent--a far larger spread than either Reagan, Bush, Clinton or W. ever enjoyed in similar surveys."

This information does not suggest a direct correlation between likeability in debates and election victories (ie people aren't saying, "He was a nice dude in that debate I remember watching three weeks ago, I'm voting for him."). Instead, it suggests that candidates who know how to appear friendly in the debates, regardless of their command of the issues, also know how to win voters over the course of a campaign.

I don't know why I'm startled by this. We lived through eight years of George W. Bush after all, a man who took the White House because his debate opponent sighed too loudly...

"Comrade Bush"

I know Hugo Chavez likes to get his rocks off by saying a lot of ridiculous things about President Bush, but this comment is pretty funny.

"Bush is to the left of me now," Mr Chavez told an audience of international intellectuals debating the benefits of socialism. "Comrade Bush announced he will buy shares in private banks."

October 15, 2008

The Final Debate: McCain Attacks, But He's No Longer in Control

A political campaign can be like a rock slide. At some point, it's just going to continue in the direction it's heading--and not much can stop it. After the final debate between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, it may well be that the 2008 presidential contest has reached not the tipping point, but that rock slide point. This is not a prediction of a pro-Obama avalanche on November 4--though that's a possibility. It's merely an observation that the campaign may be done in the sense that there are no major inputs to come (barring a bolt-from-the-blue event) that will affect the final tally. Polls will show that there are still some undecided voters out there. (Who are these people?) But whatever's going to determine this election--economic concerns, a desire for change, racism, you name it--is probably already in place, and the candidates may not be able to alter this, at least not in a proactive manner. Certainly, at any time, either can turn the race upside down by saying or doing something particularly dopey.

Neither got dopey on Wednesday night. McCain even had his best (or his least unsuccessful) debate performance, but it was no--damn, I hate this cliché--game changer. McCain was more aggressive than in the previous face-offs, and he finally dared to challenge Barack Obama directly on the--drum roll, please--Bill Ayers Question. But there was this: viewers watching McCain's reaction shots during the evening could have easily wondered if the Republican presidential nominee would make it to the finish without his head exploding, for he seemed to be in the midst of an exercise in anger control.

Prior to the debate, there was much chatter about whether McCain would play the Ayers card. Judging from video of his recent rallies, it appeared that his base was demanding blood on this front. But polls indicated that these sorts of attacks have been hurting McCain with in-the-middle voters. So he faced a tough decision: ignore Ayers and upset the diehards or accuse Obama of being a pal of a domestic terrorist and alienate the indies.

McCain and his strategists came up with a hybrid approach: take a shot on the Ayers front and combine it with a traditional political assault. "I don't care about an old washed-up terrorist," McCain huffed, but then he went on to say, "we need to know the full extent of that relationship." Huh? If you don't care about Ayers, why do you care about the relationship? And why repeat the false claim that Obama launched his first political campaign within Ayer's living room?

This was essentially McCain's love letter to the GOP base. ("Now get off my case, okay?") More important, he attached it to his true attack of the night: Obama will raise your taxes. After quickly running through his Ayers index cards, McCain noted, "My campaign is about getting this economy back on track...I'm not going to raise taxes the way Senator Obama wants to raise taxes." In what was probably the last big moment of the campaign before Election Day, McCain offered this meta-argument: Obama is a liberal tax-and-spend Democrat, and I'm a conservative. (He left off the Republican part.)

Repeatedly, McCain accused Obama of wanting to throw money at problems and of yearning to raise taxes. When Obama maintained he would give tax breaks to the bottom 95 percent--and more tax relief than McCain would to this large slice of the American public--McCain replied: hey, this guy wants to raise taxes. And, by the way, he wants to spend your money.

McCain did tout his own plan to spend $300 billion to buy up troubled home mortgages, and he maintained his health care tax credits were the right medicine. (Obama blasted the former as a "giveaway" to banks and noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had slammed the latter.) But his main message was, Obama is just another Democrat and, my friends, we all know what that means. Obama, he charged, wants to spread the wealth. J'accuse: he wants class warfare.

After nearly eight years of a conservative Republican White House now held in disdain by many voters--and at a time when the federal government is partially nationalizing banks--how much juice is there in this old Democrats-are-bad argument? Sure, McCain was punchier in this debate than in the previous two. But being aggressive on a tired message won't do a candidate much good. "I am not President Bush," McCain proclaimed with some anger in his voice. But this declaration of purported independence may have come a bit late in the process.

And Obama did fight back. He repeatedly corrected McCain when McCain mischaracterized his tax plans. He reminded viewers that McCain favors handing $200 billion in tax cuts to corporations, including ExxonMobile. Obama talked about raising taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for "core investments"--tax breaks for middle-class Americans, health care, education, and energy independence. McCain fired back: there he goes again, thinking that the government can do better with Joe the Plumber's money than Joe can. (Joe the Plumber is a real guy, and McCain cited him as someone who would not fare well under Obama's tax proposal.) But at a time of crisis, such Reaganistic rhetoric--as much as it jazzes up base voters--could come across to some as either retro or, worse, irrelevant.

McCain talked much about how he would cut spending in Washington; Obama discussed how he would assist middle-class Americans. Perhaps the key question then is, do voters want a president who will kick butt on Capitol Hill regarding certain types of spending, or one who will help them during tough times?

And do they want a grouch? McCain frequently appeared irritated. He interrupted Obama more than he should have. And he stumbled over his words too often. (In deriding gold-plated health care plans, he equated transplants with cosmetic surgery.) At one point, McCain went on too long, demanding that Obama repudiate Rep. John Lewis' observation that the hatred on display at McCain-Palin rallies was reminiscent of the worst days of the civil rights movement. On this matter, McCain came across as petulant. (Obama noted his campaign had put out a statement calling Lewis' comparison inappropriate.) More than once, McCain sarcastically complimented Obama's "eloquence."

Obama was, again, cool and calm. He praised McCain for showing "commendable independence" on some issues, such as the use of torture. Obama never took the bait. He ably batted back McCain's attacks on his tax record and proposal. He spoke in measured tones about abortion and voiced respect for those who differ with him on this topic. If his goal was to look steady and smooth--like someone capable of dealing with, say, a mega-crisis--Obama succeeded.

In his closing statement, McCain said the fundamental issue of the campaign was whether "you can trust us or not to be careful stewards of your tax dollars." He noted his decades of service to the country--as in, Country First--and asked voters to "give me an opportunity to serve again." Obama took a different approach: he again outlined what he wants to do for the middle class: tax cuts, health care reform, greater access to college, an energy independence program. As had happened in the last debate, McCain finished by referencing the McCain-the-Hero Story; Obama was offering himself as a leader who will do right by and for you. It was past versus future. Old guy versus young guy. You do the math.

Though television pundits initially praised McCain's feisty performance, the quickie polls, once more, indicated viewers scored the debate a win for Obama. (CNN: 58-to-31; CBS: 53-to-32.) That was no surprise. The issue is not whether McCain's attacks this time around were slightly more focused or assertive; it's what he's selling. And in the midst of an economic maelstrom, how many voters want a fellow at the helm who says government is the problem. There's also a significant measure of cognitive dissonance within McCain's pitch: one moment, he's assailing Obama's addiction to government solutions; the next he's calling for the government to buy up all those bad mortgages.

Which brings us back to the rock slide. The forces that will dictate the final outcome may well be set by now. And there was not much McCain could have done in this last debate to change the movement of the tectonic plates of this election. There could be last-minute bombshells. And it's likely that independent outfits on the right are preparing a final blitzkrieg of negative ads against Obama (that secret Muslim/Black Panther socialist who hangs out with domestic terrorists who want to kill you and your family). But the race might be over but for the remaining shouting and the actual voting--though early voting has begun in many states, with already 540,000 people having voted in the state of Georgia.

It sure is not an encouraging sign for a candidate when he does his best in a debate and the insta-polls indicate that he was crushed. Following this debate, Obama will continue to stride along--being reassuring, if even boring. And for McCain, there does not appear to be any obvious path. After all, he's not behind the wheel. For the next three weeks, he's stuck in the passenger seat. And see that sign? Caution: falling rocks.

Forget Joe. Long Live Josephine the Plumber

Just in case two MoJo liveblogs left you wanting even more microscopic coverage of Blinky McCain's excruciating plumber remarks, check out MoJo managing editor Elizabeth Gettelman's and my Tweets on tonight's debate, here and here. It's as off the cuff and detailed as you can get in 144 characters per Tweet (what can I say, we're experimenting with Twitter).

Here's a sample, the rest is on Twitter (first Tweet at the bottom):

LM_MOJO that's it. forget Rosie the Riveter. it's Josephine the Plumber time. #current about 3 hours ago from Election 2008

eg_mojo What about Josephine the Plumber, do you speak for her McCain? about 3 hours ago from Election 2008

eg_mojo Joe the Plumber is no Lilly Ledbetter. about 3 hours ago from Election 2008

LM_MOJO on Roe v Wade: Obama brings the Harvard Law down on McCain about 3 hours ago from Election 2008

eg_mojo McCain doesn't support equal pay for equal work! about 3 hours ago from Election 2008

eg_mojo Abortion a difficult, moral issue. Obama says WOMEN make the decision, not the STATES about 3 hours ago from Election 2008

See and Hear Joe the Plumber

Here's why John McCain knew about Joe Wurzelbacher, now known to the world as Joe the plumber, in tonight's debate: Joe was interviewed on Fox News Tuesday. He doesn't much care for Barack Obama's tax plan and is already a mini-celebrity on the right-wing blogs. Here's the video:

Debate III: The Live Blog

Hello internet! Nick and I are back with another liveblog — sadly, it's likely our last until election day. Tonight's key questions:

(1) Does McCain raise Ayers? If so, does he find a way to do it without crippling his reformer image and without making it appear he lacks the necessary focus on the economy?

(2) Will moderator Bob Schieffer ask John McCain about a report that broke this afternoon detailing cell phone towers the McCains had installed at their ranch (free of cost) by telecom companies under McCain's jurisdiction on the Senate Commerce Committee?

(3) Will the Dodgers or the Phillies prevail in sunny Los Angeles? Current score: Phillies 1, Dodgers 0. ~~Ichabod Crane~~ Cole Hamels is on the hill for Philadelphia.

Here we go...

8:58: Chris Matthews, wearing a sweater, is talking about how the candidates can persuade male voters by appealing to men's need to provide for their wives and children. He admits that this is an old-fashioned view of the American family.

9:04: McCain says Americans are hurt and angry. And they want this country to go in a new direction. I think he has to go stronger. I think he needs to break with the last eight years of Republican leadership cleanly and clearly. He adds that the catalyst of the economic crisis was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

9:06: Obama recites the new economic policies he unveiled Monday. You can see them here.

9:08: John McCain somehow knows Barack Obama's plumber friend named Joe, who wants to run a small business. He actually calls the guy "Joe the plumber."

9:10: Now Obama calls this guy "Joe the plumber." Officially the most famous pipe cleaner in America.

9:11: Obama is going over his tax plan. If you don't know Senator Obama wants a tax cuts for 95% of Americans, you haven't been paying attention. He says that all the time.

9:12: Third mention of "Joe the plumber."

9:13: Fourth and fifth mention. I say whoever Joe the plumber supports wins the White House. Somebody get this guy on the record!

9:14: Schieffer buys into the idea that when the economy is hurting and the nation is running oversized deficits, we have to stop spending. Obama, who must know deficit spending can be good for America, plays along. After 30 or 45 seconds of talking about cutting or trimming programs, Obama does get around to "investments," which is the nicest possible way to say sometimes spending is necessary.

9:17: It's shocking how much of an advantage it is for McCain to be sitting down. The difference between how the two men look is much less noticeable.

9:20: Obama points out that for all of McCain's emphasis on cutting spending, he voted for four of five Bush budgets.

9:20: "I'm not President Bush," responds McCain. "If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." Great line! Why didn't he say that two debates ago?

9:22: McCain again points to two taxpayers groups that can vouch for his record, without mentioning that the groups are