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.