The McCain campaign has decided that the New York Times is not real journalism. The stinging article below may be why...
Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.
Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.
But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.
Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.
“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis “didn’t really do anything,” Mr. McCarson, a Democrat, said.
Mr. Davis’s role with the group has bubbled up as an issue in the campaign, but the extent of his compensation and the details of his role have not been reported previously.
Mr. McCain was never a leading critic or defender of the mortgage giants, although several former executives of the companies said Mr. Davis did draw Mr. McCain to a 2004 awards banquet that the companies’ Homeownership Alliance held in a Senate office building. The organization printed a photograph of Mr. McCain at the event in its 2004 annual report, bolstering its clout and credibility. The event honored several other elected officials, including at least two Democrats, Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania and Representative Artur Davis of Alabama.
In an interview Sunday night with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr. McCain noted that Mr. Davis was no longer working on behalf of the mortgage giants. He said Mr. Davis “has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”
Asked about the reports of Mr. Davis’s role, a spokesman for Mr. McCain said that during the time when Mr. Davis ran the Homeownership Alliance, the senator had backed legislation to increase oversight of the mortgage companies’ accounting and executive compensation. The legislation, however, did not seek to change their anomalous structure as private companies with federal support.
The spokesman, Tucker Bounds, also noted that the Homeownership Alliance included nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Urban League. “It’s not controversial to promote homeownership and minority homeownership,” Mr. Bounds said. More than a half-dozen current and former executives, however, said the Homeownership Alliance was set up mainly to defend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by promoting their role in the housing market, and the two companies paid almost the entire cost of the group’s operations.
“They were financed largely, possibly exclusively, by Fannie and Freddie,” said William R. Maloni, a Democrat who is a former head of industry relations for Fannie Mae. “We thought it would be helpful to have someone who was a broadly recognized Republican to be the face of the organization, and that person became Rick Davis.” Mr. Maloni added, “Rick, for that purpose, turned out to be quite good.” (Several executives said Mr. Davis’s compensation was not unusual for the companies’ well-connected consultants.)
The federal bailout of the two mortgage giants has become an emblem of what critics say is the outdated or inadequate regulatory system that allowed the financial system to slide into crisis this summer.
At the time that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recruited Mr. Davis to run the Homeownership Alliance in 2000, they were under new pressure from private industry rivals and deregulation-minded Republicans who argued that the two companies’ federal sponsorship gave them an unfair advantage and put taxpayers at risk. Critics of the companies had formed their own Washington-based advocacy group, FM Watch. They were pushing for regulations that would deter the companies from expanding into new areas, including riskier and more profitable mortgages.
Mr. Davis had recently returned to his lobbying firm from running Mr. McCain’s unexpectedly strong 2000 Republican primary campaign, which elevated Mr. McCain’s profile as a legislator and Mr. Davis’s as a lobbyist.
“You can say what you want about free-market distortions, but people like the system because it gets them into houses cheap,” Mr. Davis said to Institutional Investor magazine in 2000, adding that he would run the advocacy group out of his Alexandria, Va., lobbying firm.
The organization also hired Public Strategies, a communications firm that included former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon. Mr. Davis wrote letters and gave speeches for the group. In April 2001, he sent out a press release headlined, “It’s Tax Day — Do You Know Where Your Deductions Are? For Most Americans, They’re in Your Home.”
But by the end of 2005, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were recovering from accounting problems and re-examining costs, former executives said. The companies decided the Homeownership Alliance had outlived its usefulness, and it disappeared.
John Harwood contributed reporting.
Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist bestknown for writing 'The Vagina Monologues' and founding V-Day, the globalmovement to end violence against women and girls, wrote the following aboutSarah Palin.Drill, Drill, DrillI am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was amember of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drownedand starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing forPolar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the factthat they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person ortouched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice.Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life tryingto build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It ishard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was allthe more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on thegoodness and solidarity of Feminists.But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical toFeminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth,ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening ourminds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choicesof my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-outmay be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America maynever recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo wouldhave on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In mylifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to thepresidency with regularity.Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In herworld and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better orevolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic,the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise ofcancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bearsoff the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to betaken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot andplundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to betaken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a taskfrom God.'Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who areraped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right todetermine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagineher daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies thatmakes.Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she hastried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with peoplewho think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity anddifference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the nextpresident of the United States . She would govern one of the most diversepopulations on the earth.Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. Shehas been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolvesfrom the air.Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. Butwhen God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declaredin God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is theend of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything Americahas ever tried to be.I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election inour hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just ofthe U.S. , but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policiesto save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It willdetermine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world orwhether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. Itwill determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or investour money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction.It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whetherwe build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether Americais a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalismand aggression.If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power toget Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palinspoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think ofdrills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. Ithink of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying thebrain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor ofthe sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations andpeoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?Eve EnslerSeptember 5, 2008
Karl Rove and others have used this same sort of "Executive Privilege" excuse in order to not have to testify about their wrong-doings. And they're getting away with it. Will Palin and her staff get away with it too? Notice how Palin's attorneys request that the legislature withdraw the subpoenas so that Palin's staff members won't have to choose between their loyalties to the State of Alaska and their loyalties to Governor Palin... The power of the Executive grows and grows each day as the system of checks and balances checks out.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CNN) -- Aides to Gov. Sarah Palin won't comply with subpoenas issued by state lawmakers investigating the firing of Alaska's former public safety commissioner, since Palin "has declined to participate" in the probe, her attorney general says.
"As state employees, our clients have taken an oath to uphold the Alaska Constitution, and for that reason, they respect the legislature's desire to carry out an investigation in support of its law-making powers," Attorney General Talis Colberg, a Palin appointee, told the investigation's manager in a letter released Wednesday. "However, our clients are also loyal employees subject to the supervision of the governor."
Palin once pledged to cooperate with the state Legislature's investigation into the July firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. After his dismissal, Monegan accused Palin of trying to pressure him into firing her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper who had been involved in an acrimonious divorce from the governor's sister.
Palin has denied any wrongdoing. Her allies argue the investigation has become a "partisan circus" since she became Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's running mate, and they argue that any investigation should be handled by the state personnel board. Watch how the trooper probe has become political »
"Moreover, two lawsuits have been filed challenging the legitimacy of the investigation," Colberg wrote. "On behalf of our clients, we respectfully ask that you withdraw the subpoenas directed to our clients and thereby relieve them from the circumstance of having to choose where their loyalties lie."
It was unclear whether the letter covered Palin's husband, Todd, who was among those subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Colberg's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Gloria is spot-on, as can always be expected.
Palin: wrong woman, wrong messageSarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.LA Times - OpinionBy Gloria SteinemSeptember 4, 2008Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.This could be huge.------------------Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.
Once again, the Republican party is attempting to steal another election by taking advantage of the mortgage crisis that has plagued American families and the American economy for months. The Obama campaign has filed a suit aimed at protecting the civil rights of American voters.
That Republicans are now attempting to take advantage of families who have lost their homes to corrupt business practices and a lack of government regulation raises questions. Did the Bush Administration and Republican operatives guide the mortgage crisis to safe harbor once they realized that their party (and therefore their power) was in trouble? Did they hope that they might be able to swing the November election their way if they could just make enough progressive voters homeless?
We must be vigilant and keep a watchful eye on McCain and his corrupt party. They proved long ago that they are not to be trusted.
The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee have filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan over the Michigan GOP’s plan to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters at the polls, as first reported by the Michigan Messenger.Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama campaign, and Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, announced the lawsuit in a conference call with reporters this afternoon. It was filed on behalf of the campaign, the party and three Michigan residents who have had their houses foreclosed upon in recent months.
Bauer called the GOP plan to use foreclosure lists “a new and especially repellent version of caging.” Caging is a technique of challenging voters where they take lists of addresses, mail to them with a “do not forward” marking and if for whatever reason those mailings are returned, they use this as a basis for claiming that the voter no longer lives at the address at which they are registered.
Bauer noted that using foreclosure lists to challenge a voter’s address is “false and illegal” for several reasons. First, because getting a foreclosure notice is not evidence that the person’s address has changed. In Michigan, homeowners have the opportunity to redeem the foreclosure even after a sheriff’s sale has occurred, which means they can stay in the home for many months after a foreclosure notice has been sent. Second, because under Michigan law a person can vote at their old precinct if they lost their home within 60 days of the election.
Brewer noted that in July alone 11,000 Michigan residents received foreclosure notices. The McCain campaign, he argued, “wants to add insult to injury” by denying those residents their right to vote. “The right to vote is one of our most fundamental rights as Americans,” said Brewer, “To try to strip our fellow citizens of their right to vote is un-American and unconscionable.”
Last week, James Carabelli, chairman of the Macomb County GOP, told the Messenger’s Eartha Melzer in a phone interview: “We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.” The Michigan Republican Party has denied that Carabelli made the statements that the Michigan Messenger reported, but Bauer said that the complaint includes quotes from Republican operatives in Ohio and other states saying much the same thing Carabelli said and defending the legitimacy of using foreclosure lists and voter caging techniques.
Bauer also said that they expect that the lawsuit will allow them to subpoena emails and memos from the state and local GOP officials that will prove that they had obtained foreclosure lists and were planning to use them for this purpose.
Top Economic Advisor to Republican presidential nominee, Carly Fiorina, has advised that in her opinion neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin has what it takes to run a major corporation such as Hewlett Packard. If anyone would know, it's Fiorina. She was Hewlett Packard's CEO and Chairwoman of the Board until she was ousted in 2005 after HP incurred huge losses when it merged with Compaq. HP's stocks rose significantly (as high as 10.5%) after news of Fiorina's forced departure was made public.
Fiorina defends McCain's and Palin's incompetence when it comes to running a major corporation by noting that McCain and Palin are running for public office, not for Chairmanship (or Chairwomanship) of the Board of a major company. What Fiorina has failed to note is that running the United States of America, a country with the biggest economy in the world, is a lot like running a major corporation. Granted, there are major differences. For example, when major corporations go bankrupt, the US government is there to bail them out. If the US were to go bankrupt, who's going to bail us out?
I am obligated to also mention here that Fiorina also said that neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden has what it takes to run a corporation. Well, we expect the opposition to attack us in all directions, and therefore we don't pay much mind to her comments. After all, in Fiorina's defense, once she slipped and told the world that McCain and Palin didn't have what it takes, she had to engage in a little CYA.
This all sounds quite childish, doesn't it. "I can't play on the jungle gym so you can't either. Nah nah nah nah nah nah." Well, Carly, YES WE CAN. And we will.
Sources:
Paul R. La Monica (2005-02-10). "Fiorina out, HP stock soars", CNN/Money.
Imagine for a minute that attending the Republican convention in St. Paul, sitting in a skybox overlooking the convention floor, were observers from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And imagine for a minute what these observers would have been doing when Rudy Giuliani led the delegates in a chant of “drill, baby, drill!”
I’ll tell you what they would have been doing: the Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan observers would have been up out of their seats, exchanging high-fives and joining in the chant louder than anyone in the hall — “Yes! Yes! Drill, America, drill!” — because an America that is focused first and foremost on drilling for oil is an America more focused on feeding its oil habit than kicking it.
Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewriters, baby, typewriters.”
Of course, we’re going to need oil for many years, but instead of exalting that — with “drill, baby, drill” — why not throw all our energy into innovating a whole new industry of clean power with the mantra “invent, baby, invent?” That is what a party committed to “change” would really be doing. As they say in Texas: “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”
I dwell on this issue because it is symbolic of the campaign that John McCain has decided to run. It’s a campaign now built on turning everything possible into a cultural wedge issue — including even energy policy, no matter how stupid it makes the voters and no matter how much it might weaken America.
I respected McCain’s willingness to support the troop surge in Iraq, even if it was going to cost him the Republican nomination. Now the same guy, who would not sell his soul to win his party’s nomination, is ready to sell every piece of his soul to win the presidency.
In order to disguise the fact that the core of his campaign is to continue the same Bush policies that have led 80 percent of the country to conclude we’re on the wrong track, McCain has decided to play the culture-war card. Obama may be a bit professorial, but at least he is trying to unite the country to face the real issues rather than divide us over cultural differences.
A Washington Post editorial on Thursday put it well: “On a day when the Congressional Budget Office warned of looming deficits and a grim economic outlook, when the stock market faltered even in the wake of the government’s rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, when President Bush discussed the road ahead in Iraq and Afghanistan, on what did the campaign of Senator John McCain spend its energy? A conference call to denounce Senator Barack Obama for using the phrase ‘lipstick on a pig’ and a new television ad accusing the Democrat of wanting to teach kindergartners about sex before they learn to read.”
Some McCain supporters criticize Obama for not having the steel in his belly to use force in the dangerous world we live in today. Well I know this: In order to use force, you have to have force. In order to exercise leverage, you have to have leverage.
I don’t know how much steel is in Obama’s belly, but I do know that the issues he is focusing on in this campaign — improving education and health care, dealing with the deficit and forging a real energy policy based on building a whole new energy infrastructure — are the only way we can put steel back into America’s spine. McCain, alas, has abandoned those issues for the culture-war strategy.
Who cares how much steel John McCain has in his gut when the steel that today holds up our bridges, railroads, nuclear reactors and other infrastructure is rusting? McCain talks about how he would build dozens of nuclear power plants. Oh, really? They go for $10 billion a pop. Where is the money going to come from? From lowering taxes? From banning abortions? From borrowing more from China? From having Sarah Palin “reform” Washington — as if she has any more clue how to do that than the first 100 names in the D.C. phonebook?
Sorry, but there is no sustainable political/military power without economic power, and talking about one without the other is nonsense. Unless we make America the country most able to innovate, compete and win in the age of globalization, our leverage in the world will continue to slowly erode. Those are the issues this election needs to be about, because that is what the next four years need to be about.
There is no strong leader without a strong country. And posing as one, to use the current vernacular, is nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.
Nicholas D. Kristof is off today.
It's 6:19pm and the DOW is down more than 500 points. The NASDAQ is down more than 81 points. The S&P is down 59 points. John McCain, in the video below, reads from a script. He says that our nation is in a panic but that our fundamentals are strong. What are our fundamentals? The American workers. The American worker is going strong even though, as McCain points out, unemployment is on the rise. The American worker is going strong even though high oil prices are making it harder and harder for her to get to work every day. The American worker is going strong despite the failing market figures. The American worker is strong despite the mortgage crises - after all, the American worker is working very long hours these days in order to survive...what need does she have for a home? Foreclosure? No problem; she needed to work longer hours anyway.
John McCain says that the nation is in a panic and that he's going to solve the problems on Wall Street and in the banking industries. He's well-suited to do so since, after all, he gained a lot of experience as a member of the Keating-5. He's been reforming Wall Street, Banks, and big business with his good friend and market regulations-advisor / Enron precipitator Phil Graham for quite some time now. How do you like the effects, dear American worker? Oh, don't whine. You don't want to be part of the nation of whiners, do you? Sit back and take it like a man...or a second class citizen (woman, GLBT, black, etc.).
I leave you with the clip below of John McCain stumbling over the script in front of him and repeating the same words over and over again, as though the American people didn't already know that they were in a panic. We can understand why he might be confused about his though. After all, McCain only recent found out (during an economics lesson, no doubt), about the panic - it's what happens when you're so out of touch with the country and people around you.
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Just hours after Lehman Brothers made it's announcement, John McCain said that the US economy was strong. As of 1:04pm, the DOW was down more than 264 points, the NASDAQ was down more than 29 points, and the S&P was down more than 25 points. Shall we discuss job and unemployment reports? Shall we address inflation? McSame is OUT OF TOUCH!
(CNN) — Democrats are pouncing on John McCain's comments at a Florida campaign rally Monday morning that the economy is “strong,” even as a major Wall Street bank filed for bankruptcy protection and another was sold to Bank of America.
"You know, there's been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street," McCain said at a Jacksonville, Florida event earlier Monday. "And it is, people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong, but these are very, very difficult times."
McCain's comments came hours after Lehman Brothers — the 158-year-old Wall Street giant — filed for bankruptcy protection and 94 year-old Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America. Both developments sent shockwaves through Wall Street and have dominated the talk on the campaign trail.
McCain's comments seemed out-of-sync with a television ad the Arizona senator released earlier Monday morning declaring the economy in "crisis," a sign his campaign may be struggling over exactly how to respond to the woes on Wall Street.
The Obama campaign quickly mocked McCain's remarks, saying the Arizona senator is "disturbingly out of touch."
"Today of all days, John McCain's stubborn insistence that the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong' shows that he is disturbingly out of touch with what's going in the lives of ordinary Americans," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said. "Even as his own ads try to convince him that the economy is in crisis, apparently his 26 years in Washington have left him incapable of understanding that the policies he supports have created an historic economic crisis."
Campaigning in the key battleground state of Michigan — a state which has experienced significant economic turmoil over the last year — Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden also attacked McCain over his economic comments.
"If all you do is walk the halls of power, all you'll hear is the wants of the powerful," said Biden. "I believe that's why John McCain can say with a straight face as recently as this morning, and this is a quote, the fundamentals of the economy are strong. That's what John said. He says that we've made great progress economically in the Bush years.
"Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn't run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well — unless I ran into John McCain," he also said.
If this is what these backwards racists value, they can keep their UnAmerican values!
By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press WriterSat Sep 13, 4:14 PM ET
Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.
Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.
The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box from a rented booth at the summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.
David Nammo, executive director of the lobbying group FRC Action, said summit organizers were told the boxes were a parody of Obama's policy positions but had not examined them closely.
Republican Party stalwarts Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were among speakers at the forum, which officials said drew 2,100 activists from 44 states.
While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama's politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.
Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian.
On the back of the box, Obama is depicted in stereotypical Mexican dress, including a sombrero, above a recipe for "Open Border Fiesta Waffles" that says it can serve "4 or more illegal aliens." The recipe includes a tip: "While waiting for these zesty treats to invade your home, why not learn a foreign language?"
The novelty item also takes shots at 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, Obama's wife, Michelle, and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The Obama campaign declined to comment.
Wearing white chef's aprons, Whitlock and DeMoss were doing a brisk business at noon Saturday selling the waffle mix to people crowded around their booth. Two pyramids of waffle mix boxes stood several feet high on the booth's table.
"It's the ultimate political souvenir," DeMoss told a customer.
Asked if he considered the pictures of Obama on the box to be racial stereotypes, Whitlock said: "We had some people mention that to us, but you think of Newman's Own or Emeril's — there are tons and tons of personality-branded food products on the market. So we've taken that model and, using political satire, have highlighted his policies, his position changes."
The socially conservative public policy groups American Values and Focus on the Family Action co-sponsored the summit.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
It's time to start stepping it up. The election is just around the corner and we can't lose energy or focus now. Make those calls, send those e-mails, write those letters, register those voters, knock on those doors, spread the word!
YES WE WILL!!!
With all the sniping from the Clinton camp about whether Barack Obama has enough experience to make a strong president, consider another presidential candidate who was far more of a novice. He had the gall to run for president even though he had served a single undistinguished term in the House of Representatives, before being hounded back to his district.
That was Abraham Lincoln.
Another successful president scorned any need for years of apprenticeship in Washington, declaring, “The same old experience is not relevant.” He suggested that the most useful training comes not from hanging around the White House and Congress but rather from experience “rooted in the real lives of real people” so that “it will bring real results if we have the courage to change.”
That was Bill Clinton running in 1992 against George H. W. Bush, who was then trumpeting his own experience over the callow youth of Mr. Clinton. That year Mr. Bush aired a television commercial urging voters to keep America “in the hands of experience.”
It might seem obvious that long service in Washington is the best preparation for the White House, but on the contrary, one lesson of American history is that length of experience in national politics is an extremely poor predictor of presidential success.
Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress.
They all did have executive experience (as did Mr. Clinton), actually running something larger than a Senate office. Maybe that’s something voters should think about more: governors have often made better presidents than senators. But that’s not a good Democratic talking point, because the candidates with the greatest administrative experience by far are Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee.
Alternatively, look at the five presidents since 1900 with perhaps the most political experience when taking office: William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. They had great technical skills — but not one was among our very greatest presidents.
The point is not that experience is pointless but that it needn’t be in politics to be useful. John McCain’s years as a P.O.W. gave him an understanding of torture and a moral authority to discuss it that no amount of Senate hearings ever could have conferred.
In the same way, Mr. Obama’s years as an antipoverty organizer give him insights into one of our greatest challenges: how to end cycles of poverty. That front-line experience is one reason Mr. Obama not only favors government spending programs, like early-childhood education, but also cultural initiatives like promoting responsible fatherhood.
Then there’s Mr. Obama’s grade-school years in Indonesia. Our most serious mistakes in foreign policy, from Vietnam to Iraq, have been a blindness to other people’s nationalism and an inability to see ourselves as others see us. Mr. Obama seems to have absorbed an intuitive sensitivity to that problem. For starters, he understood back in 2002 that American troops would not be greeted in Iraq with flowers.
In politics, Mr. Obama’s preparation is indeed thin, though it’s more than Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledges. His seven years in the Illinois State Senate aren’t heavily scrutinized, but he scored significant achievements there: a law to videotape police interrogations in capital cases; an earned income tax credit to fight poverty; an expansion of early-childhood education.
Mrs. Clinton’s strength is her mastery of the details of domestic and foreign policy, unrivaled among the candidates; she speaks fluently about what to do in Pakistan, Iraq, Darfur. Mr. Obama’s strength is his vision and charisma and the possibility that his election would heal divisions at home and around the world. John Edwards’s strength is his common touch and his leadership among the candidates in establishing detailed positions on health care, poverty and foreign aid.
Those are the meaningful distinctions in the Democratic field, not Mrs. Clinton’s spurious claim to “35 years of experience.” The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him.
To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the “experience” camp — best qualified to become the next president.
That’s Dick Cheney. And I rest my case.
Hillary Clinton's campaign deployed President Bill Clinton in South Carolina for the specific purpose of delivering the black vote, aiming to remind African-Americans of the good times when Clinton was president. Which raises the question: Why do so many people think the Clinton years were good times for black America?
A hopeful African-American electorate was at the core of Bill Clinton's successful bids for the presidency. In many ways, the scandal-marred, deeply partisan years of the Clinton administration proved disappointing in the face of such early optimism. Welfare reform, the growth of black imprisonment, and the public abandonment of progressive African-Americans like Lani Guinier are some of the most memorable racial disappointments of those years. Even through these disappointments, African-Americans were among Clinton's strongest supporters because many believed Clinton's era was an economic boon.
But there is evidence that Clinton's unmatched popularity among blacks confused many about the true economic impact of his presidency. In a 2005 article I co-authored in the Journal of Black Studies, I analyzed five national surveys from 1984 through 2000. The data show that nearly a third of black Americans held false understandings of black economic conditions during the Clinton years. By the time Clinton left office, many African-Americans incorrectly believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. In the '80s, barely 5 percent of blacks believed blacks were economically better off than whites. By 2000, nearly 30 percent of African-American respondents believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. This belief is simply wrong.
There is no evidence to suggest that African-Americans were in a better economic position than whites at any time in American history, including during Clinton's presidency. In fact, striking gaps in income, employment, and wealth continue to distinguish black economic reality in the United States. Clinton's administration did keep inflation low and reduce unemployment. This was a rising tide that lifted many boats, including some black ones. But it strikes me as bizarre that nearly a third of blacks perceived a reversal in the deeply historically entrenched economic position of the races.
The hypnotic racial dance of cultural authenticity that Bill Clinton performed in office lulled many blacks into perceptual fog. Clinton actively cultivated a unique and intense relationship with black voters. He relished this bond and often acknowledged his honorary blackness. It is important to remember that the description of Clinton as black was prompted by his experience of personal, public humiliation at the hands of his political foes. It is not a claim about his racial heritage, but instead a reaction to his experience with and use of cultural markers that often stand for the denigrated elements of black life in America.
As Clinton performed blackness, real black people got poorer. The poorest African-Americans experienced an absolute decline in income, and they also became poorer relative to the poorest whites. The richest African-Americans saw an increase in income, but even the highest-earning blacks still considerably lagged their white counterparts. Furthermore, the '90s witnessed the continued growth of the significant gap between black and white median wealth.
My research shows that respondents who liked Clinton best were always most likely to mistake blacks as doing better than whites. These attitudes about Clinton are not neutral. Deep racial affection toward Bill Clinton contributed to many African-Americans' misunderstanding the continuing economic inequality faced by the race. Like the idea of Bill Clinton as a black president, these overblown ideas of the massive economic benefits accruing to African-Americans in the '90s were largely an illusion. It is hard to vote your interests if you can't judge your circumstances.
