How much do we really know about McCain

We've heard from McCain that the questions about Obama's past associations are really about his rival's judgment.

But now, as I posted earlier, we know that the man he calls a "PLO spokesman" was funded by a group McCain leads.

Similar associations have also been made between a group McCain joined that supported central american terrorists and thugs in the 1980s. There are photos of him meeting Gen. Pinochet, a dictator, in Chile without preconditions.

And of course, as politico has told us, McCain has spoken out in support of ACORN, the voter registration group.

Now, I'm not sure the guy's really a PLO spokesman, or ACORN is evil. But McCain seems to think they're up there with Pinochet.

So what does it say that he associates with such people? How much do we know about the real McCain?

Now on Fox: McCain financed anti-semitic PLO terrorist!

Surveying the news this morning, I learned on Fox that this election could be decided by a videotape the LA Times has of Barack Obama saying something at a dinner for a PLO terrorist.

McCain has put this forward. ABC News reports today on a radio interview in which McCain referred to Obama's toast for a "PLO Spokesman." The name is Rashid Khlaidi, who's a Palestinian activist but a moderate one -- and a college professor, so it's no surprise Obama might go to a dinner.

The Times says it can't release the tape because of a promise with its source. So we don't really know if it's damning or not.

Funny thing, though: We do know, courtesy of the Huffington Post, that John McCain has funded this "PLO Spokesman," distributing a half-million bucks to the pro-Palestinian group he chaired.

Of course, he's actually no more a terrorist than Joe is a Plumber. But if he was, I imagine he'd rather half a half-million bucks than a toast. I'm sure the folks on the right demanding the tape will want to make sure we get all the details of McCain's relationship with this terrorist.

Crawl on Fox News

I got stuck watching Fox News while eating at Der Wenierschnitzel today. While I was nauseated, not by the food but by what passes for "journalism" on that channel (my j-profs would have shot me for behaving like that) I was mesmerized by the crawl on the bottom of the screen ...

"God endorses McCain ... Official: Palin Not 'Completely Crazy,' Ready To Lead ... Obama Is Having Sex With Your Daughter Right Now ... McCain's Economic Plan Will Eliminate Cancer ... Cindy McCain Will Give Hand Job To Everyone Who Votes For Her Husband ... Democrats Cause Bubonic Plague ... Obama: America Can Kiss My Black Ass ... Biden: I Hate Puppies ... "

So much for the "laughable curve"

Arthur Laffer has been making the rounds with his book proclaiming that the 'Age of Prosperity' is over.


He should call it the age of debt.


This is, of course, the guy who came up with the Laffer Curve that told Ronald Reagan he could cut taxes to stimulate the economy and raise revenues in the process, eliminating the budget deficit and national debt and making us all prosperous.


So what happened? Well, the economy did surge, though due as much to Reagan abandoning any plan to stop spending (according to David Stockman, his own budget chief) as to the tax cuts. The annual deficits surged. The national debt we hand to our kids soared from less than $1 trillion over the first 204 years of our nation to around $10 trillion today.


Not only did official spending and annual deficits soar, politicians learned to take wars and other pet projects 'off budget.' And most of them share the blame, though we did best under Bill Clinton and a GOP Congress, and worst under George Bush and a GOP Congress, in terms of fiscal responsibility.


But we're buried in freaking deep by now. More than one in four dollars we pay in taxes now goes for debt service, soon to be one in three. If our mortgaged nation were a mortgaged home, we'd turn in the key and let the creditors take in back.


Worse, perhaps, is how this national lack of responsibility seemed to impact the business world. The tech bubble, the housing bubble, cdos, etc., etc., all fed by an orgy of debt helped along by federal action to eliminate the rules that kept business from sinking into the same hole.

Which would be fine, except that they also got permission to lie about it to investors, and funneled more and more of our retirement dollars into these sinkholes.

This has all come crashing down lately. And it's now pretty clear that the age of 'conservative,' Laffer economics was really an age of debt. What we thought of as prosperity was really just the thrill a gullible college kid might feel when the first credit card arrives in the mail.

You have fun buying rounds for a night or two, then regret it when the bill arrives.

As a nation, we've gotten the bill. And conservative tax-bashers are going to choke when they realize that, yes, we really all have to pay.

Murrow be damned!

Another broadcast journalist has to be credited for lowering the already low standing of the ol' news profession.

After recently serving softballs to John McCain, Florida WFTV anchor Barbara West interviewed Joe Biden with a series of question right out of the Fox News talking points. Ayres, Acorn, you name it.

Fair play aside, she even went as far as to ask if Obama's fairly mild economic proposals didn't make him a Marxist for wanting to 'spread the wealth around.' (This 'redistribution' thing is more than a little silly, since both Obama and McCain just voted to redistribute $700 billion in taxpayer dollars to the big banks.)

But really, Marxist? She actually quote Karl, and Biden asked the obvious question -- is this a joke? -- but she was instead serious, or thought she was.

Now, I learned in journalism school about Edward R. Murrow, the broadcaster who helped take down Joe McCarthy and bring an end to the redbaiting of fine Americans for political gain.

Ms. West probably did, too, but now it sees she's joined the right wing brigades who want to bring this back. We've come to expect this from Fox and politicians like Palin and Bachman, the woman who called for loyalty investigations quite recently.

But from a local newscaster? Shameful.

Get Rich The McCain Way!

At a recent campaign stop, McCain told his audience, "I want you to be wealthy." Wow, that's taking a controversial, hard-hitting stand.

Sorry. What I really want is to do is become a multimillionaire the McCain way - marry someone rich!

President McCain - America's First Kept Man.

Joe the Dictator?

Can't leave without noting an item at Huffington Post that details a meeting between John McCain and the bloody Chilean dictator Pinochet, back in 1985. Seems he was for meeting dictators without preconditions before he was against it.

He's been out campaigning as the guy for Joe the Plumber, Joe the Teacher, Joe the Hedge Fund Manager.

Guess he's also the candidate for Joe the Dictator.

Stephen Hawking steps down in failure

A little distraction from politics today. I read at MSNBC that the the vaunted pop cosmologist Stephen Hawking is leaving his post at Cambridge -- Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a title once held by the great 18th century physicist Isaac Newton -- to move to a quieter phase of research.

Hawking, of course, is as well known for his wheelchair and computerized voice as his work, which to be frank, most of us couldn't understand if we tried. He could out-think us with 100 IQ points tied behind his back.

But for all he has overcome, I must say that I'll have to consider him a failure.

Yes, he's written a couple of best sellers, like "A brief history of time," which is basically quantummechanicalastrophysics for dummies. He's thought many big thoughts. Yet after so many years as the human race's leading expert on time and gravity...

not a single flying car or time machine.

Good thing he's an academic. In private industry, he'd have been out of work years ago. Experts like these may explain what the hell happened to the future.

Tested?????

So Sen. McCain would like us to remember that back in the French-Indian War, or back in 1963, when I was exactly one year old, he was willing to obey orders and drop bombs on impoverished people from the safety of a front-line U.S. fighter plane.

So, what, exactly, is McCain trying to say? That he's proven that he's willing to kill people? Um, wow.

More to the point here, if McCain wants me to believe he's passed some sort of leadership "test,' then I've got a few more questions:

- What will he bomb into generating more jobs for Americans who have been reduced to service work, when they can find work?
- What will he bomb to reduce our need for foreign capital to save our banking system?
- What bank is he going to bomb to restore stability to our shattered economy?
- What is he going to bomb that will reduce our federal deficit?
- What country will he bomb to reverse our trade deficits?
- What will he bomb to ensure that the tens of millions of Americans who have no health coverage get it?
- What country do you bomb to restore the U.S.'s decayed manufacturing infrastructure?

I swear, it's the Mike Tyson approach to problem-solving. With apologies to Mike; even he's learned by this point that there are one hell of a lot of problems in life that you just can't bomb into submission.

Am I Reading This Correctly?

The Republican candidate for president looks at an unlicensed plumber who's failed to pay his taxes and sees him as "the man" and "what small business people all over this country are about."

I guess holding up a lawbreaking tax scofflaw makes sense to a man who, on the eve of his nomination, in front of the national press, shook hands with a "man" who knocked up an underage girl.

To paraphrase Obama, this says a lot about McCain's campaign.

Fuck Joe the Plumber until he pays his taxes like I do, and have, without fail and without delay, for the past 30 years of my life.

Why Is This Person Allowed To Vote? Part 2:

"I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."

Well, if it's on the Interweb thingee, it must be true!

I tried to come up with something insightful to say about this, but all I keep coming back to is that in our system of government, her vote counts as much as mine or yours.

Grudging Respect

I rarely have anything good to say about our mass commercial media. But I have to commend my former profession and vocation for one thing that seems to have been done well in this election - what we call in the classroom "second level" reporting. Reporters have gone beyond Level One - get the quote right, spell the names right. When Sarah Pitbull starts spewing racist vitrol, I have seen reporter after reporter check into the facts behind the claims - and state that they are simply wrong. Or when Obama makes a claim, someone checks to see if it's real or not.

Here's my take: Many of the people in newsroom management can remember being played by the first Bush administration with the "Willie Horton" ads. And ever since, the political relationship with the media has been an increasingly one-sided one. Politicians use the media to make claims that are about as substantial as ad copy, secure in the knowledge that few, if any, reporters will be given the time or resources to investigate those claims.

But there are a lot of working journalists right now, I suspect, who feel a deep, personal shame for every time they wrote the phrase "weapons of mass destruction," knowing that they didn't know if it was true, couldn't know if it was true, knowing only that they were being used as cheerleaders to lead the nation to a war that was laughable in its premise from day one. And those same journalists also knew that if Obama was nominated, the campaign battlefield would be littered with barely-concealed racist attacks, especially if the Republican candidate got behind. As I said to a class of students six months ago, at the end of this campaign, watch how many new ways you will learn to say "nigger" without saying "nigger."

Getting played on complex issues of foreign policy or economics is one thing - few reporters truly are knowledgable enough about such issues to make intelligent commentary. But members of the working press know racism when they see it. They know personal attacks when they see them. And this time through, they've called it what it is.

How can McCain actually say that "We don't know who the real Obama is?" The man's been running for office for two years - and if there was anything in his background that was unpleasant, it had been raised and raised. There's nothing new in the McCain camp's attacks. They are just another way of raising the same old tired issues, this time by a hick-talking pitbull with lipstick.

Maybe McCain really feels the ends justifies the means. Or maybe he's old, tired of losing, knows this is his very last shot at the Big Prize, and has simply told his handlers to do what's necessary to win, no questions asked.

The saddest part is that McCain is a bright guy who might actually have some ideas on how to improve the country. But he's chosen this moment, when the world's eyes are turned to him, to assasinate the character of a colleague, someone who McCain, deep down, knows isn't a "danger to America." But in politics, nothing is too low, too debasing, too shameful to do when it comes to winning.

McCain is the O.J. of this year's presidential campaign. He may win, but no one I know would want to shake his hand.

McCain hides behind Palin's skirts

My comment on last night's debate is simple. Even the right wing is disappointed, and for good reason.

McCain sends his lady out to call Obama a terrorist sympathizer and a crook, the sort of underhanded and unfounded attacks usually assigned to folks with some distance from the campaign.

But he refuses to say to Obama's face what his lady says behind his opponents back.

Old Johnny's a coward. Plain and simple.

Some one will label Johnny's obvious disdain for "that one" and refusal to face him as racist. Others will say it's rightous indignation. But it's must simpler. He's a coward.

I'm sure glad McCain and the GOP caught on to Franron

John McCain keeps trying to reassure us that hey, he blew the whistle on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back in 2004 and 2005.

Indeed, the whole GOP seems to want to have this both ways. I heard Libby Dole on radio this morning whining that she and members of the Senate Banking Committee tried hard early on to put a stop to this. (She also complained about the pork added to the latest bailout bill, ignoring the fact that it was tucked in to win support from reluctant GOPers.)


But I have to wonder: since the GOP controlled both houses of Congress, the White House and the courts in the years the housing bubble blew up, starting in 2002...

Why couldn't they get anything passed?

I know John McCain seems to have decided to run against the GOP and President Bush in this race, as well as Obama. But if Republicans in general try to run against the GOP, who's going to buy it.

They like to pretend the war and the housing mess started when democrats took Congress in 2006. That ain't going to fly this time.

Finally, Charles Keating Surfaces

I've been wondering when the Obama campaign was going to re-introduce the American public to Charles Keating, the face of the first deregulated banking industry scandal. This is why I'm not a political consultant; I'd have been screaming for months about Keating and John McCain's decision to keep federal regulators at bay while his friend and business colleage Keating fleeced people's retirement accounts and other investments. I'd have the Senate's ruling that McCain "exhibited poor judgement" all over the airwaves.

But Obama's campaign kept that card as an ace in the hole for when things turned nasty. And they have played that card with exquisite timing. McCain's people can sink to whatever unreal, hideous depths they want (Terrorist? Nauseating and inexcuseable. An insult to every soldier, sailor, and law enforcement member actually fighting terrorism).

The "Keating Five" tag attached to McCain resonates with people terrified of losing their savings, their jobs and their homes. No average American can comprehend a Senator sitting in a room with a thief, telling the federal regulators to back off. And no matter how long it's been, or how minor McCain's role in the Keating scandal may have been, those harsh, ugly facts are there, indisputable, and more relevant than ever as the next president will have to preside over the re-regulation of the financial industry.

As the AP described it, it is the political wound that will never heal for McCain.

House conservatives: we can be bought

Well, the House has voted in favor of the Wall Street bailout, er, Main Street rescue, bill.

The big shift from Monday: House conservatives, who rejected it as too big Monday, like this even bigger bill, to which every uncovered tax cut ever proposed has been added, as well as giveaways and health provisions and wooden-arrow rebates and god knows what else.

None of which is paid for. Even if the bailout works out, this is a $300 billion addition to the federal deficit, at minimum.

Now, there are very good reasons for passing this, but they haven't changed since Monday.

So one can only assume that the rebellious conservative Republicans and blue dog Dems sent a message Monday, and the leadership answered:

"We can be bought."

"Here ya go."

Ifel tower of debate BS

John McCain's folks are suddenly up in arms that Gwen Ifel, debate moderator, has a book coming out next year about black political power in the "age of Obama."

Now yeah, it's a conflict, but this is TV. It's not like the talking puppets on Fox aren't partisan.

But the truth is, this book had been written about well before McCain agreed to let this woman host the debate. Hell, I think you could order it on Amazon via presale.

If the McCainiacs really didn't know, it's another sign of their flat-out incompetence. Do we want incompetents running FEMA? Again.

Rather, I think the problem is that this surfaced on the Internet via the ever outraged Michelle Malkin, the campaign denied it knew, and now McCain has to reluctantly get his back up over another phony issue. Or be shown as incompetent on the campaign front.

And, once again, a former man of honor becomes a crybaby willing to trash a respected woman he agreed to host this thing, who hid nothing. (Yes, John doesn't do that Internet thing, but someone in his campaign must know how.)

Phony outrage and nonsense. That seems to be all he has going for him.