House Passes $819 Billion Economic Stimulus
Republicans Wary of Package's Price Tag, Spending Priorities
With no Republican support, the House approved an $819 billion stimulus plan that will serve as the cornerstone of President Obama's efforts to resuscitate the economy, an early victory for the new president but still a disappointment because of the lack of Republican votes.
The measure passed 244 to 188, with 11 Democrats and 177 Republicans voting against it.
The two-year economic package includes $275 billion in tax cuts and more than $550 billion in domestic spending on roads and bridges, alternative-energy development, health-care technology, unemployment assistance, and aid to states and local governments. It would also provide up to $500 per year in tax relief for most workers and more than $300 billion in aid to states for funding to help rebuild schools, provide health-care to the poor and reconstruct highways and bridges.
Despite a last-minute lobbying campaign by Obama -- including coming to the Capitol yesterday for separate closed-door meetings with House and Senate Republicans -- Republicans opposed the measure and argued that it spent hundreds of billions of dollars on Democratic initiatives that would do little to stimulate the economy or create jobs.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) heralded the legislation as the first down payment on Obama's pledge, in his inaugural address, to provide "bold and swift" action to revive an economy that is losing more than 500,000 jobs a month, including 65,000 layoffs announced just this week.
"He said he wanted action, bold and swift, and that is exactly what we are doing," Pelosi told reporters before the vote.
A $475 billion Republican alternative, which focused heavily on reducing individual and business taxes, was rejected largely on party lines. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), a member of the GOP leadership team, ridiculed the Democratic plan as a "typical bill that is full of wasteful spending."
After Democrats initially estimated the plan would cost $825 billion, the Congressional Budget Office announced this week its total cost would come to $816 billion, with about 65 percent of those funds spent by September 2010. During today's debate, lawmakers added $3 billion for transit funding.
The Senate is expected to consider a separate bill next week, which could carry a price tag of nearly $900 billion, with a goal of sending a final version to Obama's desk by President's Day.
The stimulus debate comes on the heels of congressional action in mid-January that released $350 billion to Obama's new Treasury secretary, Timothy J. Geithner, to use in the effort to free up the credit markets, part of the massive financial rescue package approved last fall.
Hours before the House vote, President Obama told a group of about 100 business leaders that Congress must not delay in efforts to restart the economy and put people back to work.
"The businesses that are shedding jobs to stay afloat, they cannot afford inaction or delay," Obama said at a White House gathering this morning. "The workers who are returning home to tell their husbands and wives and children that they no longer have a job, and all those who live in fear that theirs will be the next job cut -- they need help now. They are looking to Washington for action, bold and swift."
In his remarks this morning, Obama called the meeting with the industry leaders "sobering."
The president directly challenged GOP critics who say the proposed legislation would not inject money into the economy for many years.
"Most of the money we're investing as part of this plan will get out the door immediately and go directly to job-creation, generating or saving 3 to 4 million new jobs," he said.
Although Republicans in the House were not persuaded, Obama was not deterred in reaching out to them. The White House announced this afternoon that he had invited Senate and House leaders from both parties for a cocktail party at the White House at 7:30 p.m.
Congratulation Mr President.
You looked wonderful today, so did the First Lady and Malya and Sasha.
May God Bless you and give you the strength that you will need to lead as the most powerful man on Earth.
I trust that you will fulfill your dream and that of the American people.
You have given hope to all the children around the world.
You will not disappoint God who sent you to earth and who will use you to change the World.
Thank you for the unforgatable experience over the past 24 months .
Audrey Koumba
I just want tp wish you all a
Merry Christmas
and a
Prosporous New Year 2009
May the hand of God move in a mighty way over your Life, Health, Family, Career and Personality.
God Bless you all and our Elect- President
I just want to say thank you. You did it. The American people spoke and decided that they wanted change. No matter what the cinicals said. Barack Obama has been elected 44th President of this great nation.
You have sent a strong message to the World. That the greatest nation on hearth is moving forward and is ready to lead the world again.
The world will change, the world needs to change. And it had to come from the USA the greatest nation.
I am proud to habe been part of this movement and to have believe from the begining that change was coming. Living it live last night with everyone else at Grant Park was just unbelievable.
Barack Obama will be a great President
Thank you America, Thank you Mr President.
Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.
Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."
Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.
"They walked out," Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. "They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day."
The daughter, who wanted her name withheld fearing retribution from her employer, confirmed the story to us. "It was like at least 40 people," the daughter said. "People thought the script was nasty and they didn't wanna read it."
A second worker at the call center confirmed the episode, saying that "at least 30" workers had walked out after refusing to read the script.
"We were asked to read something saying [Obama and Democrats] were against protecting children from danger," this worker said. "I wouldn't do it. A lot of people left. They thought it was disgusting."
This worker, too, confirmed sacrificing pay to walk out, saying her supervisor told her: "If you don't wanna phone it you can just go home for the day."
The script coincided with this robo-slime call running in other states, but because robocalling is illegal in Indiana it was being read by call center workers.
I received this message on my mail box from one of the groups I'm a member of. First I was worried about the title and then wondered why they would e-mail it to 647 members of the group. Then, as I started reading the message, I understood the content and before finishing the whole message I was happy I read it. I just wanted to share it with you.
The Dow is surging! No, it’s plunging! No, it’s surging! No, it’s ...
Nevermind. While the manic-depressive stock market is dominating the headlines, the more important story is the grim news coming in about the real economy. It’s now clear that rescuing the banks is just the beginning: the nonfinancial economy is also in desperate need of help.
And to provide that help, we’re going to have to put some prejudices aside. It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.
Before I get there, let’s talk about the economic situation.
Just this week, we learned that retail sales have fallen off a cliff, and so has industrial production. Unemployment claims are at steep-recession levels, and the Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is falling at the fastest pace in almost 20 years. All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long.
How nasty? The unemployment rate is already above 6 percent (and broader measures of underemployment are in double digits). It’s now virtually certain that the unemployment rate will go above 7 percent, and quite possibly above 8 percent, making this the worst recession in a quarter-century.
And how long? It could be very long indeed.
Think about what happened in the last recession, which followed the bursting of the late-1990s technology bubble. On the surface, the policy response to that recession looks like a success story. Although there were widespread fears that the United States would experience a Japanese-style “lost decade,” that didn’t happen: the Federal Reserve was able to engineer a recovery from that recession by cutting interest rates.
But the truth is that we were looking Japanese for quite a while: the Fed had a hard time getting traction. Despite repeated interest rate cuts, which eventually brought the federal funds rate down to just 1 percent, the unemployment rate just kept on rising; it was more than two years before the job picture started to improve. And when a convincing recovery finally did come, it was only because Alan Greenspan had managed to replace the technology bubble with a housing bubble.
Now the housing bubble has burst in turn, leaving the financial landscape strewn with wreckage. Even if the ongoing efforts to rescue the banking system and unfreeze the credit markets work — and while it’s early days yet, the initial results have been disappointing — it’s hard to see housing making a comeback any time soon. And if there’s another bubble waiting to happen, it’s not obvious. So the Fed will find it even harder to get traction this time.
In other words, there’s not much Ben Bernanke can do for the economy. He can and should cut interest rates even more — but nobody expects this to do more than provide a slight economic boost.
On the other hand, there’s a lot the federal government can do for the economy. It can provide extended benefits to the unemployed, which will both help distressed families cope and put money in the hands of people likely to spend it. It can provide emergency aid to state and local governments, so that they aren’t forced into steep spending cuts that both degrade public services and destroy jobs. It can buy up mortgages (but not at face value, as John McCain has proposed) and restructure the terms to help families stay in their homes.
And this is also a good time to engage in some serious infrastructure spending, which the country badly needs in any case. The usual argument against public works as economic stimulus is that they take too long: by the time you get around to repairing that bridge and upgrading that rail line, the slump is over and the stimulus isn’t needed. Well, that argument has no force now, since the chances that this slump will be over anytime soon are virtually nil. So let’s get those projects rolling.
Will the next administration do what’s needed to deal with the economic slump? Not if Mr. McCain pulls off an upset. What we need right now is more government spending — but when Mr. McCain was asked in one of the debates how he would deal with the economic crisis, he answered: “Well, the first thing we have to do is get spending under control.”
If Barack Obama becomes president, he won’t have the same knee-jerk opposition to spending. But he will face a chorus of inside-the-Beltway types telling him that he has to be responsible, that the big deficits the government will run next year if it does the right thing are unacceptable.
(CNN) -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Sunday that he will be voting for Sen. Barack Obama, citing the Democrat's "ability to inspire" and the "inclusive nature of his campaign."
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says he is voting for Barack Obama.
"He has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"Obama displayed a steadiness. Showed intellectual vigor. He has a definitive way of doing business that will do us well," Powell said.
Powell, a retired U.S. general and a Republican, was once seen as a possible presidential candidate himself.
Powell said he questioned Sen. John McCain's judgment in picking Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate because he doesn't think she is ready to be president.
He also said he was disappointed with some of McCain's campaign tactics, such as bringing up Obama's ties to former 1960s radical Bill Ayers.
Powell served as secretary of state under President Bush from 2001 to 2005.
The notion of a Powell endorsement has been rumored for several months.
On August 13, Powell's office denied a report on Fox by commentator Bill Kristol that Powell had decided to publicly back Obama at the Democratic National Convention.
Several sources said at the time that Powell had not made a decision about a possible endorsement.
"As always, he is holding his cards close and waiting for more information," one adviser told CNN's John King in August.
Powell himself brushed off queries on any potential presidential nod but told ABC News on August 13 that he would not be going to Denver, Colorado, for the convention.
"I do not have time to waste on Bill Kristol's musings," he said. "I am not going to the convention. I have made this clear."
In February, Powell told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he was weighing an endorsement of a Democratic or independent candidate.
"I am keeping my options open at the moment," Powell said.
"I have voted for members of both parties in the course of my adult life. And as I said earlier, I will vote for the candidate I think can do the best job for America, whether that candidate is a Republican, a Democrat or an independent," he added.
Powell has offered praise for Obama, calling him an "exciting person on the political stage."
"He has energized a lot of people in America," said Powell, who briefly weighed his own run for the White House in the mid-1990s. "He has energized a lot of people around the world. And so I think he is worth listening to and seeing what he stands for."
Powell's adviser has said that "he likes and admires John McCain, and that would be a factor in anything he does if he decides to get more involved."
Another source close to Powell said he has known the Republican nominee for more than three decades "and likes him and is looking for a reason to vote for him. He hasn't found it yet."
The former general, who has largely steered clear of politics since leaving the Bush administration, noted that the next president will need to work to restore America's standing in the world.
Powell gave the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in support of George W. Bush in 2000.
"I will ultimately vote for the person I believe brings to the American people the kind of vision the American people want to see for the next four years," he said. "A vision that reaches out to the rest of the world, that starts to restore confidence in America, that starts to restore favorable ratings to America. Frankly, we've lost a lot in recent years."
Powell's adviser also said at the time that the vice presidential picks for both candidates would be a major factor in his decision, both for the quality of each man's running mate and for what sort of "signal that choice sends about the character and judgment of the candidate."
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CNN) -- Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska's governor and violated state ethics law by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police, a state investigator's report concluded Friday.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is under investigation for the firing of her public safety commissioner.
"Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states.
Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's refusal to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten from the state police force was "likely a contributing factor" to Monegan's July dismissal, but Palin had the authority as governor to fire him, the report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower states.
The Statement: An ad released Thursday, October 9, by Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, titled "Tested," takes aim at Sen. John McCain's mortgage plan. "McCain would shift the burden from lenders to taxpayers, guaranteeing a loss of taxpayer money," the ad's narrator says. "Who wins? The same lenders that caused the crisis in the first place."
Get the facts!
The Facts: The ad refers to a plan McCain announced during a debate Tuesday night in Nashville, Tennessee. "I would order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes — at the diminished value of those homes — and let people be able to … make those payments and stay in their homes," McCain said.
On his Web site, McCain calls it "an American Homeownership Resurgence Plan." Under his plan, the government would buy up some troubled mortgages at their full value — meaning the lenders would not take a loss. The government would then renegotiate those mortgages, so that eligible homeowners would be paying rates based on their homes' current, reduced value.
McCain previously supported renegotiating mortgages with lenders, who would take losses. His economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, told reporters Wednesday that McCain now believes having the government pay the entire value of the loans is "the only way" to begin stabilizing the housing market "in a timely fashion."
Obama, in his ad, highlights this quote from a CNNMoney.com story: "Much of the burden of paying to keep troubled borrowers in their homes will shift to taxpayers." The McCain campaign acknowledged that point, both on a conference call with Holtz-Eakin on the day after the debate and in a follow-up interview with CNN's Les Christie, writer of the CNNMoney.com story.
The McCain campaign says the plan would cost about $300 billion. "Funds provided by Congress in (the) recent financial market stabilization bill can be used for this purpose; indeed by stabilizing mortgages it will likely be possible to avoid some purposes previously assumed needed in that bill," the campaign Web site says.
McCain's plan puts him at odds with a bill adopted by Congress in July that required lenders to write down mortgage balances to 90 percent of a home's current market value in order to qualify for refinancing insured by the Federal Housing Administration. Neither McCain nor Obama voted on that bill.
While the Obama ad refers to "lenders that caused the crisis in the first place," Obama himself has been using slightly different language on the stump, referring to lenders who "helped create this mess in the first place." But the substance of Obama's attack has not changed.
The Verdict: True. The McCain campaign acknowledges the plan would shift the burden to taxpayers.
(CNN) — No, hell has not frozen over, but a Buckley is backing a Democrat for president.
Christopher Buckley, the son of the late conservative icon William F. Buckley, said Friday he's decided to back Barack Obama's White House bid, the first time in his life he will vote Democrat.
“It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup [sic] are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance," Buckley, a columnist for the conservative National Review, wrote on the Web site The Daily Beast Friday.
Buckley, who praised McCain in a New York Times Op-Ed earlier this year and defended the Arizona senator's conservative credentials against wary talk-radio hosts, said McCain is no longer the “real” and “unconventional” man he once admired.
"This campaign has changed John McCain," Buckley wrote. "It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget 'by the end of my first term.' Who, really, believes that?
"Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis," Buckley added. "His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?"
But Buckley made clear he's not just voting against McCain, praising Obama for his "first-class temperament and first-class intellect."
"Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy 'We are the people we have been waiting for' silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for," Buckley wrote.
The Statement: The campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama on Monday, Oct. 6, unveiled a Web site noting that Republican opponent Sen. John McCain played a key role in the Senate's "Keating Five" scandal of the 1980s. "McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers," the site says.
The Facts: Keating was sentenced to prison and required to pay more than $1 billion in civil penalties after being convicted on fraud, racketeering and conspiracy charges centered around his running of Lincoln Savings and Loan, which he bought in 1984. On April 14, 1989, Lincoln was seized by the government at an eventual taxpayer cost of $3.4 billion, then the most expensive thrift bailout in history. Lincoln and Keating became national symbols of the savings-and-loans collapse of the '80s — much as lending firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have symbolized the current financial meltdown.
McCain had been friends with Keating since the early '80s — their families vacationed together several times, according to previous CNN reporting. Keating was an early financial supporter of McCain's political career and donated to his campaigns repeatedly over the years. Keating's first company, American Continental, was headquartered in Arizona, the state McCain represents. McCain became one of the so-called "Keating Five" — five U.S. senators investigated over accusations they tried to interfere in a federal investigation of Keating's role in the savings-and-loan's collapse.
In January 1985, while in the U.S. House, McCain co-sponsored a resolution that would have delayed the effective date of proposed government limits "on direct investment in real estate, service corporations, and equity securities by federally insured savings and loan associations." He was one of the early sponsors, although a majority of Congress eventually signed on to sponsor it. The legislation would have impacted Keating's business, but would have regulated the entire industry, not specifically Lincoln Savings and Loan.
McCain also wrote several letters to government regulators and other officials regarding the issue. One, dated Jan. 30, 1985, to White House chief of staff James Baker, called the proposed regulations "unwise," saying the effort "flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise."
On April 9, 1987, McCain and the other senators attended a meeting with federal regulators investigating Keating. McCain has since said he regrets doing so. "He asked me to help him," he said during an October 2002 interview with Chicago's WGN-AM radio station. "I said I wouldn't do certain things. He called me a wimp. I threw him out of my office, but I still went to a meeting with four other senators with a group of regulators."
McCain testified that he never asked for anything inappropriate during the meeting, and the Senate ethics committee found that, after regulators said the firm was being investigated not just for insolvency, but on criminal grounds, McCain took no further action on Keating's behalf. In the end, the committee recommended McCain and Sen. John Glenn be dropped from the probe — although McCain was rebuked by the Senate for using "poor judgment" in his relationship with the millionaire banker.
The Verdict: True. McCain did push to delay regulations that would have cracked down on savings-and-loans practices and intervened on Keating's behalf, although he was cleared of wrongdoing in the "Keating Five" case.
WASHINGTON - GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.
McCain's ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.
The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.
The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.
'New guy on the block'"McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes," Singlaub told The Associated Press in an interview. "I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.
"I don't recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group," Singlaub said.
The renewed attention over McCain's association with Singlaub's group comes as McCain's campaign steps up criticism of Obama's dealings with William Ayers, a college professor who co-founded the Weather Underground and years later worked on education reform in Chicago alongside Obama. Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home when Obama first ran for public office in the mid-1990s.
Obama was roughly 8 years old when Ayers, now at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was working with the Weather Underground, which took responsibility for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. McCain's vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, has said that Obama "pals around with terrorists."
In McCain's case, Singlaub knew McCain's father, a Navy admiral who had sought Singlaub's counsel when McCain, a Navy pilot, became a prisoner of war and spent 5 1/2 years in North Vietnamese hands.
"John's father asked me for advice about what he ought to do now that his son had been shot down and captured," Singlaub recalled in one of two recent interviews. "I said, 'As long as you don't give any impression that you care more about him than you care about any of the other prisoners, he won't be treated any differently.'"
Covert arms shipments Covert arms shipments to the rebels called Contras, financed in part by secret arms sales to Iran, became known as the Iran-Contra affair. They proved to be the undoing of Singlaub's council.
In 1987, the Internal Revenue Service withdrew the tax-exempt status of Singlaub's group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras.
Elected to the House in 1982 and at a time when he was on the board of Singlaub's council, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America. In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras.
Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network and put National Security Council aide Oliver North in charge of running it. The goal was to keep the Contras operational until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.
Singlaub's private group became the public cover for the White House operation.
Secretly, Singlaub worked with North in an effort to raise millions of dollars from foreign governments.
McCain resignation?McCain has said previously he resigned from the council in 1984 and asked in 1986 to have his name removed from the group's letterhead.
"I didn't know whether (the group's activity) was legal or illegal, but I didn't think I wanted to be associated with them," McCain said in a newspaper interview in 1986.
Singlaub does not recall any McCain resignation in 1984 or May 1986. Nor does Joyce Downey, who oversaw the group's day-to-day activities.
"That's a surprise to me," Singlaub said. "This is the first time I've ever heard that. There may have been someone in his office communicating with our office."
"I don't ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn't worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing," said Singlaub. "If he didn't want to be on the board that's OK. It wasn't as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us."
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Polls in five key battleground states in the race for the White House released Tuesday suggest that Sen. Barack Obama is making major gains.
The CNN/Time Magazine/Opinion Research Corporation polls of likely voters in Indiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin reflect a significant nationwide shift toward the Democratic presidential nominee.
In Indiana, 51 percent of likely voters say Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, is their choice for president, with 46 percent backing Obama. Indiana went for George W. Bush by 21 points four years ago; the Democrats have not carried the state since 1964.
Obama has made significant strides in New Hampshire, a state which is credited with reviving McCain’s GOP primary campaign in both 2000 and 2008. Fifty-three percent of the state’s likely voters are backing Obama, while 45 percent are supporting McCain. Obama’s eight-point lead is larger than the five-point lead held by Obama in the last CNN New Hampshire poll taken in the beginning of September.
Bush squeezed out a slender one-point win in the state in 2000 — but four years ago, John Kerry narrowly carried the one-time GOP stronghold.
Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years.
Bob Herbert
We’ve lived through nearly two terms of an administration that believed it could create its own reality:
“Deficits don’t matter.” “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” “Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere.”
Now comes Ms. Palin, a smiling, bubbly vice-presidential candidate who travels in an alternate language universe. For Ms. Palin, such things as context, syntax and the proximity of answers to questions have no meaning.
In her closing remarks at the vice-presidential debate Thursday night, Ms. Palin referred earnestly, if loosely, to a quote from Ronald Reagan. He had warned that if Americans weren’t vigilant in protecting their freedom, they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”
What Ms. Palin didn’t say was that the menace to freedom that Reagan was talking about was Medicare. As the historian Robert Dallek has pointed out, Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ ”
Does Ms. Palin agree with that Looney Tunes notion? Or was this just another case of the aw-shucks, darn-right, I’m-just-a-hockey-mom governor of Alaska mouthing something completely devoid of meaning?
Here’s Ms. Palin during the debate: “Say it ain’t so, Joe! There you go pointing backwards again ... Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?”
If Governor Palin didn’t like a question, or didn’t know the answer, she responded as though some other question had been asked. She made no bones about this, saying early in the debate: “I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear.”
The problem with Ms. Palin’s candidacy is that John McCain might actually win this election, and then if something terrible happened, the country could be left with little more than an exclamation point as president.
After Ms. Palin had woven one of her particularly impenetrable linguistic webs, Joe Biden turned to the debate’s moderator, Gwen Ifill, and said: “Gwen, I don’t know where to start.”
Of course he didn’t know where to start because Ms. Palin’s words don’t mean anything. She’s all punctuation.
This is such a serious moment in American history that it’s hard to believe that someone with Ms. Palin’s limited skills could possibly be playing a leadership role. On the day before the debate, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, made an urgent appeal for more troops, saying the additional “boots on the ground,” as well as more helicopters and other vital equipment, were “needed as quickly as possible.”
The morning after the debate, the Labor Department announced that the employment situation in the U.S. had deteriorated even more than experts had expected. The nation lost nearly 160,000 jobs in September, more than double the monthly losses in July and August.
Conditions are probably worse than even those numbers indicate because the government’s statistics do not yet reflect the response of employers to the credit crisis that has taken such a hold in the last few weeks.
Where is the evidence that Governor Palin even understands these complex and enormously challenging problems? During the debate she twice referred to General McKiernan as “McClellan.” Neither Ms. Ifill nor Senator Biden corrected her.
But after Senator Biden suggested that John McCain’s answer to the nation’s energy problems was to “drill, drill, drill,” Ms. Palin promptly pointed out, as if scoring a point, that “the chant is ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ ”
How’s that for perspective? The credit markets are frozen. Our top general in Afghanistan is dialing 911. Americans are losing jobs by the scores of thousands. And Sarah Palin is making sure we know that the chant is “drill, baby, drill!” not “drill, drill, drill.”
John McCain has spent most of his adult life speaking of his love for his country. Maybe he sees something in Sarah Palin that most Americans do not. Maybe he is aware of qualities that lead him to believe she’d be as steady as Franklin Roosevelt in guiding the U.S. through a prolonged economic downturn. Maybe she’d be as wise and prudent in a national emergency as John Kennedy was during the Cuban missile crisis.
Maybe Senator McCain has reason to believe that it would not be the most colossal of errors to put Ms. Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.
He’s got just four weeks to share that insight with the rest of us.
Latest Palin Gaffe: Can't Name Supreme Court Case Other Than Roe V. Wade
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | September 29, 2008 06:30 PM
Today, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported on potentially embarrassing clips of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric that haven't yet been aired. The Politico has more information on one in particular:
Of concern to McCain's campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin's interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing. The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions. After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases. There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.
The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.
After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.
There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.
STOCKTON, Calif., Sept. 28 (UPI) -- A Stockton, Calif., newspaper Sunday endorsed Barack Obama for president, ending a 72-year record of endorsing only Republicans for the office.
The Record, which did not endorse a presidential candidate in 1992, has endorsed Republicans in every other White House election since 1940, when it went for Wendell Willkie over President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The newspaper had endorsed Roosevelt over Alf Landon in 1936.
In an editorial, the newspaper said it backs Obama over Republican John McCain because Obama "has demonstrated he will think things through, seek advice and actually listen to it."
"Obama is a gifted speaker," the editorial said. "But in addition to his smarts and energy, possibly his greatest gift is his ability to inspire."
The Record said U.S. politics in the past eight years "has been marked by smears, fears and greed."
"For too long, we've practiced partisanship in Washington, not politics. The result is a cynicism every bit as deep as that which infected the nation when Richard Nixon was shamed from office and when Bill Clinton brought shame to the office.
"This must end, but John McCain can't do it."
Editor Mike Klocke wrote in Sunday's edition of The Record that the editorial board was unanimous in its decision.
The former diplomats and ambassadors signed the statement before the Friday debate between Obama and Republican nominee John McCain.
"We are supporting Senator Barack Obama because of his judgment, experience, and ability to inspire people to come together around a common purpose," the letter said. "Senator Obama's talents offer an historic opportunity; for the sake of America's security and standing in the world, we must seize it."
The letter, signed by officials from both major political parties, said the foreign policies of the Bush administration have diminished America's alliances abroad.
"As former diplomats, we believe it is past time that we had a President with the judgment and confidence -- in himself, our diplomatic corps, and our values -- to talk directly to America's adversaries with due preparation but without preconditions," the letter said.
The signatories include former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, former National Security Adviser Richard Clarke and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk.
I didn't know that you cannot wear your candidate's gear at the polls so please pass on toall your friends and family.
I trust that closer to the time the Campaign will send messages to us.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE ADVISE EVERYONE YOU KNOW THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT GO TO THE POLLS WEARING ANY OBAMA SHIRTS, PINS OR HATS, IT IS AGAINST THE LAW AND WILL BE GROUNDS TO HAVE THE POLLING OFFICIALS TO TURN YOU AWAY. THAT IS CONSIDERED CAMPAIGNING AND NO ONE CAN CAMPAIGN WITHIN X AMOUNT OF FEET TO THE POLLS. THEY ARE BANKING ON US BEING EXCITED AND NOT BEING AWARE OF THIS LONG STANDING LAW THAT YOU CAN BET WILL BE ENFORCED THIS YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALSO THEY ARE ASSUMING THAT IF YOU ARE TURNED AWAY YOU WILL NOT GO HOME AND CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES. PLEASE JUST DON'T WEAR OBAMA GEAR OF ANY SORTS TO THE POLLS!! PLEASE SHARE THIS IN FORMATION...OH AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WERE ALREADY AWARE THIS WAS NOT MEANT TO INSULT YOUR INTELLIGENCE. JUST TRYING TO COVER ALL GROUNDS.
HIGHLIGHTS OF MAJOR NEWS EVENTS ON DAYS OF PAST PRESIDENTIAL, VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
1960 DEBATES Sep 26, 1960 Soviets announce ready to put first astronaut into space Oct 7, 1960 Cuba accuses US of links to invasion Pentagon curbs spending in light of trade imbalance Oct 13, 1960 KRUSHCHEV BANGS SHOE ON DESK Bomb injures 33 in Times Square in 3rd explosion in 11 days US embargo on Cuba announced Oct 21, 1960 KRUSHCHEV SAYS USSR HAS NUCLEAR SUBS Gold price problems in world markets
SOURCE: Front pages of New York Times on debate day
1976 DEBATES Sep 23, 1976 SEC probing US Steel, including Gerald Ford Congressional activities Oct 06, 1976 Chinese nuke tests fallout on US soil Oct 22, 1976 Swine flu vaccine leads the news Oct 15, 1976 (VP) Castro says CIA involved in crash of airliner of Barbados, won’t renew anti-hijack agreement with US. Watergate: no investigation of Ford blocking probe
SOURCE: NBC Nightly News evening of each debate via Vanderbilt TV News Archive
1980 DEBATES Sep 21, 1980 Iran/Iraq war developments, including US role Cutoff of rail access for West Germany to West Berlin. Follow-up on Titan II Missile explosion earlier in week Oct 28, 1980 Iranian parliament resumes debate on US hostages. Questions of arms to Saudi Arabia from US Record loss for car company from Ford
1984 DEBATES Oct 07, 1984 Space shuttle Challenger difficulties in orbit Oct 21, 1984 El Salvador reports CIA agents killed in plane crash Oct 11, 1984 (VP) Chief Justice Burger blocking abortion for retarded, dead, blind rape victim Threats confirmed of plan to crash plane into US embassy in Middle East
SOURCE: CBS (10/7, 10/21) and CBS (10/11) Nightly News via Vanderbilt TV News Archive
1988 DEBATES Sep 25, 1988 Oct 13, 1988 New stats on growing trade deficit Oct 05, 1988 (VP) US hostages in Lebanon Elections/violence in Chile
1992 DEBATES Oct 11, 1992 Reemergence of tuberculosis Oct 15, 1992 Oct 19, 1992 Oct 13, 1992 (VP)
SOURCE: New York Times, 10/11/92
1996 DEBATES Oct 6, 1996 Oct 16, 1996 Oct 9, 1996 (VP)
2000 DEBATES Oct 3, 2000 Oct 11, 2000 Middle East violence erupts Oct 17, 2000 Debate goes in the aftermath of the sudden death of Senator Mel Carnahan Attack of USS Cole occurred 5 days earlier Oct 5, 2000 (VP) Middle East peace talks fall apart
SOURCE: AP, 10/17/00; New York Times, 10/5/00, 10/11/00, 10/14/00
2004 DEBATES Sep 30, 2004 “North Korea has said it has turned plutonium from 8,000 spent fuel rods into nuclear weapons.” [BBC, 9/28/04] Fannie Mae Agreed To ‘Major Changes’ In Its Accounting And Management Practices. [New York Times, 9/28/04] Oct 8, 2004 Oct 13, 2004 Oct 5, 2004 (VP)
SOURCE FOR DATES: Commission On Presidential Debates (http://www.debates.org/pages/history.html) NOTE: There were no debates in 1964, 1968 or 1972
