Barack has taught us to think not in terms of a "black America" and a "white america", or the "red states" and the "blue states", but in terms of the ONE America that we all know, love, live, and struggle for a future in.
Today, Sarah Palin announced that there is a difference between "pro-American" areas of the country and those that are "not pro-American". If the wife of a former secessionist AIP member wants to talk about being anti-American, I'll have as good a laugh at the sheer irony as anyone else. But once the laugh is over, I'll hold her accountable for impugning my patriotism, and trying to impugn Obama's patriotism again and again on the stump. What, I have to be a farmer to be pro-American? I am not allowed to live in an eastern city, educating the children of farmers and city folk alike in a Catholic University? How dare she. People should see this nonsense for what it is--desperate, politically evil (a special category of evil I've had to coin for this election in order to capture the degree of vile social manipulation happening on the part of the McCain campaign), and morally abhorrent. Coupled with her inflaming her crowds (who come already peppered with bigots and xenophobes) in the direction of aggression and civil strife that cannot help but generate a threat to an Obama administration, this political evil is a nothing short of a national travesty. I will never respect John McCain again, beyond the perfunctory respect I have for any human being who is nonetheless a threat to the rest of humanity.
Later, Palin's introduction of the "anti-American" meme was carried on by Rep Michelle Bachman who pretty much said that liberals were anti-american lefties, dangerous in our midst. Bachman went on Hardball to rekindle the flame of McCarthyism in our national culture. Her performance was an illustration of all that is wrong with the Weimar Right in our country as it sees its dream of a permanent majority going down in flames as the public wakes up to their lies. I just heard that Bachman's opponent got 30,000 in donations since her appearance. That sounds like the right response--drum he vile sorry excuse for a "representative" right out of her congressional seat. Hmm...think I'll go donate myself.
Republican strategist Kevin Madden just said on MSNBC that what Sarah Palin did in last night's debate is return to the "authentic" Sarah Palin that "people were first introduced to at the Republican Convention", and that having done this she could return to the campaign trail as an asset for the remaining weeks.
Huh?
The "authentic" Sarah is the one that has her statements written for her, rather than the Sarah who has to come up with her own answers in interviews as she did with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson?
It is well known that Palin's speech for the convention was scripted for her, and well-rehearsed. If not, then we should rightfully demand her to answer for the presence of quotes in her speech that were taken from a fascist writer who had openly called for the assassination of Robert Kennedy. That Palin's answers in the debate were also scripted for her was almost equally apparent, since her statements were delivered with classic signs of having been memorized statements on topics, and were of course crafted in the weeks of debate preparation she underwent with McCain and Bush advisors. Less smooth were the debate moments where she had to craft transitional phrases to attach the prepared statements to one another. The delivery of prepared statements was no doubt the strategy embodied in her claim that she "might not answer the questions as asked by the moderator" but wanted to talk directly to the American public.
It offends me as someone who has spent some time thinking about the ethics of "authenticity" as advanced by existentialists, Charles Taylor (the philosopher, not the dictator), and numerous other thinkers in moral history, that "authenticity" is being ascribed to the least authentic moments of Palin's public showing. Her moments of what rational people (as opposed to campaign strategists) would call "authenticity"--responses in impromtu settings where all she can draw on is her own mind and personality--are written off as the fake aberrations, deviations from the "authentic" identity conveyed in her reading of sentences crafted for Palin by someone else.
This is nothing short of the "identity" equivalent of saying that "the false is the true". Perhaps I'm a little oversensitive since I am currently reading a paper on Plato's dialogue, "The Sophist", but the substitution of illusion for reality by the McCain campaign has, to my mind, now been made complete. Not only are statements to be twisted into "truth" despite their obvious, established, verified, proven falsehood, but identity itself is now most authentic when in fact most driven by the thinking of other people. Does this betoken simply the evacuation of rational criteria by politics? Is this a sad sexism, where a woman concedes the definition of her authentic being to the male power-brokers who script her public persona? Is it the first salvo in the authoritarian/totalitarian mind-control of a McCain/Palin administration? Who knows? The twisting of truth and identity in such a profound way opens doors to wild speculations like the latter.
Perhaps the "authentic/scripted" Sarah Palin should change her name to "Haras Nilap".
Salvation is Here!
Well, after many thousands of years of being tormented by probably the most common of the Seven Deadly Sins, humanity is about to be rid of one of them thanks to John McCain. He now promises to crush the "Greed" that has driven Wall Street into shambles this year. Whew!
Granted, we'll all probably do a lot better with "Sloth" now that "Greed" and its many shiny objects are out of our way. Granted getting rid of "Greed" will give us a lot less to be "Envious" about. But I can't help but worry that "Lust," "Gluttony," "Wrath," and "Pride" will swell to fill the void left by the abeyance of these other three.
Swollen Leftover Sins
Just look what they've done to McCain's own campaign, for example. Let's assume he's found some way, that he will soon share with the rest of us (like his plans to catch Bin Laden, and his plans to "win" the war, secrets he has kept assiduously to himself for seven long years so they must be really awesome!), to keep Greed at bay; and let's further assume Envy and Sloth have paled along with Greed in his campaign soul such that he is no longer comparing himself unfavorably to Obama's 'celebrity' status (must be Palin's influence...), and no longer idling around while the democrats keep sparring (he was kind of forced from Sloth on that score, but we all have to take inspiration where it comes). But the remaining four Deadly Sins seem to be really weighing down the McCain campaign (or buoying it up, according to your political ethics).
Unbridled Lust for power seems to have forcefully unseated "honor" as the internal justification for campaign strategies and objectives. The "ambition" that McCain himself acknowledged years ago as the source of his Keating Five scandal bad judgment seems to be running at full tilt again. With the Presidency in view, Lust seems to have overcome the 'better judgment' he promised us when the Keating Five debacle embarassed him before us all. Moreover, the McCain campaign has as a key Catholic advisor someone who had to leave a tenured professorship over Lust-ful misconduct with a student (this was/is Deal Hudson, whom McCain refuses to fire from the campaign, and who is quoted in a page one story in today's NYTimes).
Gluttony has certainly replaced originality of insight in the McCain campaign's approach to messaging. It has taken to gobbling up every message that seems to "work" with voters, regardless of whether that message is Obama's ("Change," "Enough") or whether that message is completely contradictory to the principled positions that McCain himself has held for decades (embracing regulatory policy, tax cuts for the rich, overturning Roe v. Wade, embracing 'agents of intolerance', drilling, etc.)
Wrath is about the only word I can come up with for McCain's only stated reason for running such an astonishingly negative campaign. He keeps saying that had Obama appeared with him at Town Hall meetings, the tone of the campaign would have been different. So, the tone of the campaign is negative out of some spiteful sense of revenge for not getting to appear WITH Obama? That's a little weird, but not unheard of among people who have a hard time modulating their hostility, as McCain so clearly does (just ask anyone in the Senate that he's cursed out over the years, or Mika Breszinski whom he attacked unprovoked yesterday at the very start of an interview [I guess that doesn't count as sexism?]). Boy, Wrath is sure confusing!
Pride is about the only thing that has remained intact from the beginnings of McCain's political career, but the time in the spotlight has now caused it to grow to malignancy proportions. A man who writes about "Courage" because, in part, he recognizes himself as Courageous is someone who spends his life courting Pride. I guess the courtship has ended, and a lifetime commitment has taken its place. How many times a week do we hear "I KNOW how to do this," and "I KNOW how to do that" and how often must his family and runningmate remind us that ONLY JOHN MCCAIN can save us from all that people like John McCain have wrought in our lives (well, that may be a little true...if redemption means anything).
Hands Off My Greed!
Looking at these results, I'd have to say that McCain should not focus on eradicating Greed, one of the standing conditions of human nature. The consequence of removing this fundamental motive of human conduct seems to be the dangerously pathological metastases of some other Deadly Sins. Instead, he might focus on the policies and objectives of what effective government might need to do in light of the overwhelming orientation to self-interest that is built into our human nature and the very cornerstone of our market economy. At the very least, I don't see how he could square his pro-greed tax policies with his new anti-greed message, but fortunately for his own balance right now Gluttony has made that contradiction of little import to him. But for the rest of us, these moral and economic tensions are a disaster in progress and a catastrophe in the making. McCain's plan to empanel a 9/11-Style Commission to study the issues that have wrought chaos in our markets and terror at our kitchen tables may betoken one creative idea in his campaign: the final formalization of the new Deadly Sin that Bush/Cheney have been working to instill in the American soul, "Confusion".
Consequences of The Eighth Deadly Sin
Self-inscribed "Confusion" will be the undoing of all of us if we don't get this election right. The punishment will be a country that we won't want to recognize. Fortunately, we might be too confused to recognize it when it comes to pass.
Remember when in August John McCain stood on an oil platform and said that below their feet lay millions of barrels of oil just waiting for us to drill? And how former Governor of Iowa Tom Vilsack said that McCain's attitude that we can just shoot the ground and find all this oil meant that he has "a Jed Clampett energy policy"? At the time that sounded like just a good line but not necessarily a fair charactererization. Today, however, it seems deeply unfair to Hillbillies.
Why? you may ask.
Because the estimates that John McCain and others are using for all that "black gold" waiting for us to shoot at it come from none other than the "Minerals Management Service" of the Department of the Interior. Don't start yawning--it gets good right away! Well, we learned this week that the Dept of Interior has been outdoing Belushi's "Animal House" in sheer sleaze--drugs (cocaine and such), sex (with gas company executives they were courting for illegal gifts as well), and--well, the boring illegal gifts and other considerations. And of course the requisite corruption and mismanagement that is reportedly costing taxpayers billions annually while these people literally put our government in bed with big oil and gas.
So it turns out that the folks in charge of making the estimates about drillable offshore oil supplies are coked-up sexually promiscuous criminals. WHO KNEW!?
These are the people whose judgement John McCain wants to trust so that we can dump tens of billions of dollars into drilling programs to feed our own addiction (to oil, not cocaine)?
McCain's energy policy might be high-test backwoods moonshine, but I think he owes Jed Clampett an apology.
So let me get this straight: The McCain campaign says that even tho Barack Obama was CLEARLY referencing McCain's economic policies when he used the "lipstick on a pig" cliche, just because Sarah Palin called herself a Pit Bull with lipstick, the word "lipstick" now can mean nothing but Sarah Palin? Again, just because voters might have the word "lipstick" still ringing in their ears from her hateful lying speech last week, she is now due an apology for John McCain's non-change-policies being called a pig in lipstick? Am I missing something?
What the McCain campaign is missing is that since they have run a campaign on the basis of distracting voters from the truth and from what happened on any given yesterday, they are not now entitled to claim as theirs anything that happened on any given yesterday or last week. Live by distraction, die by distraction. Those are your rules, Karl--er--John, so man up and abide by them.
Now, if she claimed "lipstick" as all her own, do the cosmetics companies have to halt advertising till after Nov. 4? Can no new wacky colors for lips be named into the marketplace until Sarah's electoral fate has been decided? Or is there some statute of limitations on convention rhetoric that we are supposed to acknowledge? If so, McCain better lay off that "CHANGE" message he stole from Obama's ENTIRE convention, eh? My ears are still ringing from that, so hands off, Karl George John.
Worse still, since she called herself a pitbull in lipstick with her little speech joke, does that mean all talk of Pit Bulls is now the property of Palin and the McCain campaign? No way! Just when Nat Geographic has shown us that even Pit Bulls like those formerly belonging to Michael Vick can be retrained from killers to being family pets, I'm not interested in associating the breed anew with the intellectual violence that is the McCain/Palin/Rove/Bush ticket. I have no interest in seeing the dozens of Pit Bulls currently in my local shelter have to wait for adoption now that their breed is once again associated with attacking and killing thanks to the RNC.
It's time to stop the slander against Pit Bulls!
Adopt a family-friendly Pit Bull today, and lay off the lipstick.
And by the way, if I have it right, the McCain campaign that has ILLEGALLY USED at least FOUR copyrighted songs (i.e. stolen away intellectual property rights from real, registered owners of those rights) is now saying they unofficially lay claim to the word "lipstick" because Barracuda used it in her speech? Does that mean they now officially own the rights to the Jackson Browne song they (really, the RNC of Ohio) stole for a commercial and were forced to take off the air? You see the problem: you can't claim any moral or rhetorical privilege on words when you fail to abide by the law that protects copyrighted words.
As true as it might be that the McCain campaign is so "Running on Empty" as to need to distract us every day from the issues, they are still not entitled to copyrighted or any other words for their exclusive use.
LIPSTICK!
LIPSTICK !
You can't stop me, John McCain. ENOUGH!!!!!!!
Next: "A Defense of Pigs", stay tuned!
So today the journalistically challenged--nix that....the journalistically negligent--media is pretending not to know full well that Barack's "lipstick" comments were clearly, incontrovertibly, absolutely, and with no obscurity or question whatsoever, directed at the BUSH POLICIES OF JOHN MCCAIN, and not at all at Sarah Palin. The sentence leading into the image was the same statement about John McCain's Bush-iness that Barack has been making all week.
Only a willful disregard for all standards not only of reason and truth, but simple journalistic reporting could result in the crap we are seeing in today's media. Only an implicit relish for Rove messaging could justify what print and broadcast media are doing with this non-story, while people lose their homes and their jobs and, in John McCain's case, souls.
McCain, however, has at least twice actually applied the phrase "lipstick on a pig" to Hillary Clinton. Once as recently as this May, and at the beginning of the campaign last November, and who knows how many times in between, given his penchant for message recycling.
There is only one sexist in this race, and its name is John McCain. There is only one campaign camp that owes an apology today, and that is the Karl Rove camp of McCain/Bush/Palin.
I think Obama should have the women in his audience yesterday as he criticized McCain come to the microphone and DEMAND an apology from McRove.
Joe Biden being chastised for saying something "true"? Now THAT is a new low. Well, no, it's not a NEW low, it's the same "low" the GOP has been using for years, which is a full-out-Karl Rove assault on truth itself.
It is simply TRUE that if one wants to humanely support the issue of special needs children, one SHOULD support stem cell research. PERIOD. And not only so as to intervene in the process of birth defects developing (I for one don't think special needs should be 'weeded out' of the human community) but primarily to pursue effective treatments and interventions in those needs and to mitigate the suffering they cause. Special needs children could live more beautiful and less painful lives with appropriate scientific advances, and I'm all for that. Stem cell research is some of the most profoundly impactful and promising research for such life-improving advance.
Now, of course part of what's happening here is that Palin is being used as a political bear-trap. She advances a position that HAS an alternative, but since her life story has a personal bearing on an issue, the voicing of the alternative can be called "sexist" or "a new low" as the trap is sprung. I realize Palin herself would probably rather shoot such prey, but the GOP is happy with trapping commenters from the left until they have to gnaw their own legs off to escape.
I for one will neither gnaw off my leg nor wait for Sarah to come shoot and dress me. I'm going to call pigs pigs--and Sarah's positions are pigs. McCain's positions are pigs. As frightening as the image might be, you can put lipstick on the McCain pig, but it's still a pig--it's still a policy disaster (one after another) leading to a still bleaker future than the one Bush/Rove/Cheney have left us with already.
McCain/Rove/Palin ain't catching this liberal in any jaws of death.
And remember everyone, to thank John McCain for turning yet another campaign into "The Karl Rove Show". PUTTING COUNTRY LAST AGAIN, John. Now THAT move is a definite PIG.
I know folks throw that "fascist" label around for everything they don't like and every little thing that sounds even slightly authoritarian. Let me begin by saying that the word 'fascist' should be reserved for things that are, in fact, 'fascist'. I'll set aside the fact that the Wiki entry on fascism reads like it was written to describe the Right Wing in this country (and perhaps was, depending on who edited it), and focus on the kind of merging of corporations, state, and nationalist identity that has traditionally been the cornerstone of fascism.
Here's the statement from Sarah Palin that I've been contemplating all night. It occurs in her discussion (in her church) of the gas-pipeline project she was championing:
"I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.”
She is a political leader telling people what to PRAY for, and that something to pray for is "unifying people and companies" as an instance of necessary divine "will".
That the invocation of God's will for the advantaging of political initiatives is in and of itself fascist could be argued. But Sarah is going even further here into what appears to be explicitly fascist thinking: That God's will demands ("has to be done") the merging of people and companies for the special project of a special political personality (hers and her administration's). Merging people and companies in the name of a nationalist identity, and in the intimate reality that is 'prayer' among believers?? pretty close.....pretty close.
"We the people" are the government, are we not? Whether talking populist about simple pockets of 'folk' or about the state as such, the unification of people and companies for ideological advance via the intimate process of praying is about as close a recommendation of explicit fascist movement as I've seen by anyone in our political menagerie. Wherever the popular "we" are, there too is our form of government. Uniting that "we the people" with "companies" is step one in thinking in a fascist manner about how our system should work.
Of course her openly espoused policy stands, as far as they've been shared with us, do not all lend themselves to the 'fascist' label. But the missionary zeal at the base of her thinking, especially its allegiance to seeing her politics as aligned with God's will (including the Iraq War as a "task from God") and commandable as prayer, is nothing short of alarming. My own vetting process for a Vice President would find this by itself an exclusionary factor for anyone seeking office in this country, no matter what their other merits might be (and in that I grant that Mrs. Palin has many merits). No surface merits compensate for a deep-seated theology that shapes, guides and impels ones entire world-view in the direction of a form of nationalism inimical to America. Her extreme and absolutist position on abortion (no exceptions for rape and incest despite her state having the highest rates of both) pales in comparison to the troubling merger of monied and divine interests in a perfect storm of raw power. At the very least this is a nascent theological fascism, which when fully gestated could not help but spawn a political fascism through, say, being given the keys to the White House--the most powerful "bully pulpit" in the world.
John McCain has mastered audacity this week, while losing himself more or less completely. Let's review!
Exploiting 9/11 for political gain: The film at the RNC was inexcusably vile and inappropriate when all decent outlets had self-imposed a moratorium on such painful and traumatic footage. But since pain and trauma are now campaign strategies of the RNC, it is to be expected of them. Still makes us want to vomit, but to be expected. Kind of like spoiled seafood.
Stolen Message: Absent any ideas of his own, John McCain has now coopted the "change" message of Barack Obama. That's pretty audacious and then some. And quite unbelievable. Hey, there's his slogan: "Change That Is Unbelievable". Listen John, if you haven't managed more than one or two pieces of major legislation in 30 years, and Obama passed one like yours in his first term, I think it's pretty clear who's the change agent in this race. Changing your positions and your moral believability is not the change WE need, though it may have been the change McCain needed to try and win. Maybe a better slogan would be, " A Changed Man :( ".
Lies, big lies, and outrageous lie-bombs: The "Bridge To Nowhere" queen, who kept the money despite her current "no thanks" message about it, has now lied seven times about that boondoggle, five of the lies coming after the debunking of the lie. McCain falsely claims that Obama has never faced his own party on anything, when in fact he confronted both parties with effective ethics legislation, akin to Mccain's ONLY senatorial achievement on campaign finance. The campaign of Mccain keeps falsely claiming that Obama will raise taxes despite the truth being that 95% of Americans will get tax breaks (and despite the tax that McCain will impose on our health care benefits from our employers even as he refuses to extend healthcare in a civilized way). That's pretty audacious, I'd say! Hair-blowing-back audacious. I just change the channel now every time Nancy "Lobbyist-cum-spokesliar" Pfotenhauer comes on the t.v. Oh, there's another lie: the plan to come down on lobbyists when in fact the whole campaign is being run by them. Wooey, thats AUdacious (in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way...).
The new ad on "education": Claiming that Obama's only accomplishment is passing a bill to provide sex education to kindergarteners when in fact that bill was to protect kids from predators is about as politically vile as one can get, and truly marks McCain's departure from the sphere of decency. By the way, I thought his only accomplishment was being a community organizer (say it with a sneer)? McCain can't even keep his lies straight anymore I guess. This ad--exploiting children's protection for political gamesmanship--is such a thick pool of vileness that I lost that last little tiny sliver of respect I used to have for the former hero. Oh yeah, he sacrificed that label this week. Heros don't need to play cynic, and shouldn't. Play cynic, and you are not a hero anymore, sorry.
Cease and Desist? Not!: By my count, McCain has now OFFICIALLY stolen the use of four songs and been asked to cease and desist by all four copyright holders. This week his answer was to just keep using one of them. If he can't be trusted with intellectual property rights, how on earth can he be trusted with our government? It was more important to celebrate the meanness of SP than to abide by the law. But that, truly, is symbolic of the woman, I suppose, as she bent and manipulated whatever laws were inconvenient to her in Alaska.
The Audacity of Soullessness
Barack has conveyed the audacity of hope to many of us over the past few years, but the new audacity is really all McCain's (another theft, I suppose)--the audacity of being a lying, politically savage dishonorable man whose soul is now permanently tarnished. I don't use "soul" language or moral recrimination lightly--I really mean it when I say it. This will be the week we all remember how good a time John McCain had out on the trail with Sarah, selling his soul to Karl Rove for the enjoyment of saddling our country with another four years of war, and a 25% chance (those are the mathematics of VP succession) of being governed by a bigger liar and more mean-spirited person than himself.
McCain/Bush Morph
The audacity of all this is such as to leave our jaws dropped. How...on...earth....could....he.....?? we might say. But McCain has learned the lesson of his master, GWBush: you can because you CAN and because you DO. It's a particularly vile example of the Jesuit maxim, "Better to ask forgiveness than permission". Except the Bush--Rove--McCain strategy is "Better to do the unpermitted and unforgiveable" and thumb your nose at those who might morally balk at the strategy. I think even the press is stunned, but since they've been semi-neutered for years by the emergence of the reality-challenged right-wing alter-press, they barely know what to do. Asking some real questions would be a start, thnx.
John McCain (really, Karl Rove is behind this, but it's YOUR campaign, John), you have sacrificed your manhood, nay your very humanity, this week. It's a tragic fall story about a former hero. It's ugly, it's vile, and it excites people who are moved by the lizard brain. Congratulations, Mr. McCain, for exciting your "base". How base.
So, in order to keep tabs on the right, I get email from TownHall.com. Last week, they sent a vile, lying email about Obama attacking Christianity, just because he questioned how one would pick and choose biblical verses to turn into legislative action (the problem the right faces). Leaving that insanity behind, let's look at the startling topic for today:
Today, they sent an email letter from JohnMcCain, asking for donations. Wait, I said. Donations? Isn't he only allowed public financing as of last night?
APPARENTLY NOT!!
The link in the email leads to a donation page that says the following:
McCain-Palin Victory 2008 is a joint fundraising committee by the McCain-Palin Compliance Fund, Republican National Committee, and Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania Republican Parties. Because the McCain-Palin Campaign is participating in the presidential public funding system, it may not receive contributions for the any candidate's election. However, federal law allows the McCain-Palin Campaign's Compliance Fund to defray legal and accounting compliance costs and preserve the Campaign's public grant for media, mail, phones, and get-out-the-vote programs. Contributions to McCain-Palin Victory 2008 will go to the Compliance Fund, and to participating party committees for Victory 2008 programs.
Aside from not even proofreading their own donation page ("for the any candidate's election"), this statement is an obvious example of the kind of loophole exploitation that is sure to typify McCain governance. It has certainly typified the governance of Sarah ("I don't want your earmarks but I'll keep the money, thnx!") Palin and McCain's (still) economic advisor Phil Gramm (of the Enron Loophole fame).
So how much of the "campaign" is actually run under this "Compliance Fund"? It turns out it is kind of hard to say. For a brief tutorial on how this "Compliance Fund" works, see:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/04/qa-the-cost-of-compliance.html
To see how McCain has already figured out a way around the campaign limits he has allegedly wrapped himself in like a flag, see the following, from McCain's own website:
Contributions to McCain-Palin Victory 2008 ("Victory 2008") are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. Victory 2008 allocates contributions to the Republican National Committee ("RNC"), the state parties’ federal accounts, and McCain- Palin Compliance Fund ("Compliance Fund") in conformity with federal limits. Unless a contribution would exceed federal limits or a contributor designates otherwise, Victory 2008 will divide contributions as follows: For Individuals - The first $28,500 will go to the RNC, the next portion will be divided evenly between the Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania state parties’ federal accounts up to a maximum of $9,250 for each Committee, and the final $2,300 will go to the Compliance Fund. For Federal Multicandidate PACs - The first $15,000 will go to the RNC, the next portion will be divided evenly between the Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania state parties’ federal accounts up to a maximum of $5,000 for each Committee, and the final $5,000 will go to the Compliance Fund. Contributions to the Compliance Fund will be used solely for legal and accounting services to ensure compliance with federal law and not for campaign activities. Compliance funds may defray a portion of broadcast advertising, national and state office "overhead", and computer/website expenses. Contributions from corporations, labor unions, federal contractors, and foreign nationals without permanent residency status to Victory 2008 are prohibited. *Federal law requires us to report the name, address, occupation, and employer of any contributor who gives more than $200 in an election cycle (for Compliance Fund contributions) or more than $200 in a calendar year (for RNC and state-party contributions).
And diary in yesteday's DailyKos (where the above is also reprinted:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/3/121153/4361) asks, like I am asking: what on earth do giving limits mean, when in fact this allocation system shows that the campaign is funnelling donations into avenues that are in fact campaign channels, including television ads?
JOHN MCCAIN IS NOT IN FACT LIMITED TO HIS ALLEGED 83 MILLION, period. Giving limits mean nothing.
Obama Donors: GIVE ALL YOU CAN POSSIBLY GIVE, now that the fundamentalist coffers have opened for Mr. McCain, who has sold his soul to the fundamentalists he once decried.
GIVE GIVE GIVE GIVE GIVE!!!! If this post inspired you, why not use MY donation page?
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/dashboard/main/
Since the GOP considers itself the party of unfettered free-markets, I thought I'd address their convention in terms of the marketing of a product (an executive branch of government) to consumers (American citizens), with an eye to the general markets concerning national leadership.
Watching as a consumer of government, I have to say I come away unsure what the product was that was being offered to me. For two of the three nights left to the convention after the irony of hurricane Gustav, what we saw was unfettered hostility and numerous attempts at mockery.
MOCKERY: OK, I like mockery (who doesn't think SNL is funny, after all?), so is this mockery I could buy into? Well, no--it seemed to be directed mainly at the audience inside the arena rather than me at the other end of the broadcast. No matter how much fun Giuliani and Thompson had delivering their red meat to the hungry folks in Minneapolis, the mockery failed to reach through to me even at the level of a small chuckle. Mocking community organizers who help real people in real need just seems.....sort of.....mean and desperate. Nope, not buying that.
HOSTILITY: OK, so what about hostility--all humans have untapped wells of hostility, so maybe this was something I could buy a piece of. So thinking back over Rude-y and Freddie "Kruger" Thompson and Sarah Im-Palin, could I fuel my hostility reserves with their stuff? Hmmm.....seems they are hostile to the very idea of government (gosh, that sounds alot like Bush, and an awful lot like Mike "Helluvagoodjob" Brownie on t.v. this week during Gustav who told me government is necessarily incapable of helping people in disasters...). And hostile to ordinary people who work for the good of others at low pay and high good will...well gosh, that sounds psychologically disturbed. Lots of hostility towards "Foreign" oil and foreign governments....oooh, that sounds sort of dirty and dangerous. Everybody knows that oil is the problem, not its foreignness; that markets in oil are controlling its price, not its actual present scarcity (which has been manipulated by the oil companies who insured minimal refining capacity in order to raise profits, like good businesses do). Foreign governments....oh boy, I'm tired of being at war in the middle east....and not much less tired of being mocked and derided by most of the rest of the world for our national belligerence. No, I can't buy into that kind of toxic hostility towards things that are "other".
CEO's and Guns
The CEO of the GOP Company talked last night....he seemed kind of feeble, to be honest. Didn't give me a lot of confidence in executive product. A feeble guy who brought a bitter Barracuda on board.....whooey, that seems kind of....uncomfortable to watch. I heard alot about getting beaten by Vietnamese people, and falling out of a plane for the fourth time....which struck me as really sad and admirable, but certainly nothing to buy in a President nearly forty years after the fact. He offered to "fight" for me on the heels of (and before repeating) all that military fighting....which makes me think he's selling me more wars. That sounds expensive. And he asked me to do a lot of "fighting"......Nope.
Anything to buy at all??
Weren't there any positive products being offered to me? All I saw was a promise of more oil. But I am not interested in buying or investing in the energy systems of the past. Sure, we need oil in some other products in our markets, but we sure don't need to keep getting our auto-industry's clock cleaned by Japan and other countries that seem to know how to build more efficient cars. Oh wait, American auto companies DO make more efficient cars--only they sell them overseas. So, I can only assume that there is some back-room motivation for why we remain married to over-consuming cars.....nah, this oil market being offered to me sounds bad and shady all around.
I didn't hear about any jobs programs I could buy or invest in....which in light of today's shocking job-loss numbers strikes me as kind of stupid in terms of business strategy. Why on earth WOULDN'T they sell us jobs in such an economic environment? I didn't hear about education, which I assume might have to do with the poor educational backgrounds of both people on the top of the ticket, but for the rest of us interested in having an exceptional education system accessible to all, seems like an opportunity for a big sale was passed up.
I didn't hear about any initiatives besides tax cuts.....but looking over the historical data, we see that these tax cuts have actually demonstrably failed to trickle down into the main-street areas where I live and to benefit me in any way. So I certainly don't want to buy into that business model that has been good only for a few fat-cats at the top.
Well, looks like there's nothing to buy and nothing to invest in here except a bitter hostility to more than half the population, the media, foreigners, and many of the values I have. It all sounds unhealthy.....and since I didn't hear about health care, that seems like it would be stupid to buy.
In the Check-out Line
Hey, wait a minute--isn't this the party that has screwed up the market in executive leadership in the first place? The party that ran up bills that cannot be paid, sold our economy to foreign governments, and mismanaged every subsidiary industry they supervise, to say nothing of potential criminal violations? WHOA.....that's like trying to let some new foxes run the henhouse that the existing foxes already savaged. Bad business, that.
I think I'll invest in Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who every day are selling jobs, infrastructure, cooperation, widespread prosperity-producing tax policy, health care, education and peace.
If like me you're old enough to remember the movie "Victor/Victoria" (a 1982 Blake Edwards gem), you might be feeling a strange resonance between the film and the current campaign season, and yet be a little unclear about what that resonance is. Today, that resonance became much clearer to me with John McCain's astonishing selection of Sarah Palin as VP.
Victor/Victoria Go to Washinton
To refresh memories, "Victor/Victoria" was a musical comedy about a struggling singer named Victoria Grant (played by Julie Andrews) who teams up with a gay nightclub singer named Toddy (Robert Preston, RIP) to pull a fast one on the Paris cabaret circuit and make a boatload of money. When he watches Victoria--hair slicked back after a bath--break his ex-lover's nose (long story), Toddy has an epiphany and hatches the plan: Victoria will pretend to be a female impersonator, and Toddy will manage her as they perpetrate the associated lie that they are lovers. Victoria will become "Count Victor Grezhinski" and Paris will go wild! Victoria objects to the preposterousness of the idea. "A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman--it's absurd--they'll know he's a phony!" Toddy replies, "That's right--they'll know HE'S a phony." Under Toddy's sparkling-eyed persuasion, Julie Andrews becomes Victor/Victoria.
Often over the past several years I've found that exchange rattling around in my mind as a description of Bush/Cheney politics. I realized that the preposterousness of the behavior of the Bush administration was calling into my suspicions the sense that a gigantic charade was being perpetrated on us. The strategy of Bush/Cheney has been to do or say the most outrageous things, and count on people's gullibility to not think too hard about the picture before their eyes because to suspect the extent of the lie represented in our government would ruin the entertainment of thinking we are a democracy, as well as ruining the usual entertainments of everyday life. They have made a lot of money and power for a handful of people while we in the audience watched and wonder what on earth we were watching, but hoping in the end it was all for our gratification.
McCain's 'Preposterous' Lies
More recently, I've found myself thinking about the Victor/Victoria deception as McCain has morphed into someone unrecognizable to those of us democrats who used to consider voting for him one day. But it never quite fit.....sure, there were preposterous claims, like "Obama wants us to lose in Iraq", which part of the willing public would eat up because a certain portion of that public thinks Obama is in league with dangerous Arabs (!). "Obama wants to raise your taxes" which is utterly false for 95% of the public, but seems believable enough to a public weaned on the myth of the tax and spend democrat during this era of tax-hating but fanatical spending republican administrations. Surely the public would see through all this? But no, the entertainment was too engaging and the charade just far enough on the other side of preposterous as to appear true. Still, tho, the "Victor/Victoria" fit felt imperfect.
Gender-Bending Takes Shape in McCain Nation
Today, however, the fit took shape. By announcing Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has stepped out on the other side of preposterousness in full gender-obscuring Victor/Victoria form. Playing the consummate "Toddy," McCain rolled out his "feminist" running mate designed to capture the attention and the allegiance of disaffected Hillary voters. She walked up to the microphone with her hockey-mom narrative all in place (a narrative which, unlike Victor/Victoria's, has been getting crafted over several months as an official self-descriptor for the governor-of- Alaska-qua-potential-VP), and made her pitch to all those women who still had glass in their hair from putting all those cracks in "highest, hardest glass ceiling" as she called it. That Mrs. Palin enunciated "highest. hardest" with a male sexual suggestiveness complete with fist pump was not even the worst of the gender lie taking shape. It was the utter charade of this Vice Presidential pick being trotted out as entertainment for an over-stimulated media (un)fresh from the Democratic Convention and for the for-profit duping of women who dream of one day having the role they so deserve in the Executive branch.
Sarah Palin is woman, pretending to be a "woman" pretending to be a feminist. No real feminist would stand with the policy agenda of George Bush, much less the policy agenda of PAT BUCHANAN, for whom Palin was a member of the cozily-named "Pitchfork Brigade" in the late 90's as he sought to kick American culture back into the 1940's. This policy agenda, now ensconced wholesale in the platform of John McCain, has eviscerated the dreams of millions of American families, taken the lives of the children of 4000+ sets of parents whose kids never came home from Iraq, and made sure that national health care would remain a mere distant rumor in our lifetime. This before we even consider the issues of reproductive rights about which McCain has just served ultra-right-wing notice. Hillary feminists and countless women of honor are being asked to believe that this "female runningmate"--the "woman" on the ticket--represents their dreams' fulfillment, when in fact it represents the reinforcing of the glass ceiling they have spent so much energy cracking for so many years. Women are being asked to accept that a certain configuration of secondary sex characteristics is all we care about as we consider our sacred votes. Last I checked, that was more what certain men--especially misogynists like John McCain--care about.
The Cynical Betrayal of Women With a "Woman"
But breasts and a vagina and a near six-pack of children no more guarantee a defender of the needs and interests of Hillary women than Victor's overdone frilly skirts meant that the successful lounge-singer was a woman, or even a man pretending to be a woman.
This appointment is a cynical plot hatched in the awareness that a preposterous lie fed to an entertainment-hungry audience just might work. Unlike the delightful ruse of Victoria and Toddy, this is an obscene instance of a woman being used by a man (or team of men) to pull the wool over the eyes of women everywhere, and to use them in turn as as stepping-stones to power and more wealth for the team of men and rich women who are in charge of the charade.
John McCain should stop running a cross-dressing campaign and figure out who he is, before he uses someone else to confuse the rest of us women about who we are. Shame on you, John McCain. And Sarah--wake up. You are no more second in command here than Dan Quayle was in 88. You should stay home and be the honorable mother of your new son and the governor of your beautiful state rather than being the tool of misogyny and a preposterous lie. Stay Victoria, rather than getting tangled up in the fictional Victor's fictional life.
We have a convergence happening.....two converging storms, one might say. One is a general election season that promises to be one of the hardest-fought and maybe ugliest on record. This storm is destructive in its own way, and despite the bristling energy it might provide for some, is no healthy thing for our democracy. It is full of lightning strikes and the flooding of public discourse with bile and misinformation. The other is named Gustav, heading, with cosmic irony and increasing atmospheric fury, for New Orleans. Not only New Orleans, but New Orleans during the Republican Convention. Jokes about 'how you know God hates Republicans' (part of the flooding of public discourse by that other storm) already abound in the blogosphere.
Since it was Katrina, less than the war, that helped our population see the incompetence of the current administration, this meteorological irony is stunning. The snarky Obama campaign supporter in me, the one angry about the "Ayers" ads and the "empty suit" accusations, reacts thus: serves them--the GOP--right. But the human being in me, the one that is not swept into the campaign storm, feels shame that the campaign storm produces or allows such anger and schadenfreude to enter the psyche or even one's sense of humor. The human me very much does not want another human and physical tragedy of biblical proportions to make a point that is all too clear already about the fierce incompetence of the Bush world, and the strident indifference of Republican policy to needs of ordinary Americans. Republicans are not indifferent, but the economic and foreign policies are, even if unintentionally, and these policies (and the rhetoric used to endorse them) have in many cases made Americans indifferent even to their own needs. But our civil discourse should be where we find that conversation, not in the suffering of cities and embarassment of conventioners if--God forbid--another hurricane ruin parts of New Orleans or the oil rigs of the Gulf Coast.
I hope dearly that the news 'split screen' between Gustav and McCain will be a story of two near misses, to go with the two storms. One near miss as Gustav glances off the coast and leaves only a few broken trees and some minor storm surge; another near miss as government by the GOP loses the close election in this season of history-making events and real human need. Should Gustav retain and increase its fury with a land hit, I hope and know that we will all come together as one regardless of party to help everyone who is affected by damage and loss to come back to themselves. And if the election goes against how any of us want it to, I hope the same thing.
I think we saw in Obama's speech why he actually beats John McCain in polls concerning leadership, which is pretty remarkable given all of McCain's claims about "experience". In the acceptance speech that marks a real transition in our national history, we saw a man who knows how to LEAD. That is doubtless why the official talking points of the conservative blogosphere and talk radio are aimed at making us Obama supporters into a bunch of lemmings and Obama into some latter-day Caesar. Leadership frightens those who would rather preserve the current authoritarian system. Authoritarians don't lead, they dictate. Leaders frighten them. But let them wail on--it tells us over and over again how empty their prospects are and how dangerous their power is.
Leadership means getting people around you ready and willing and able to work to bring about the policies and initiatives that need our country's attention.
Leadership is getting systems to work.
Leadership is understanding systems in relation to the people who will make them work and who need them to work.
That's leadership.
I went to John McCain's website, and looked around for what leadership I could find there. Under the "About" tab, we find the encapsulated case for "Why McCain"--so I clicked on that to find out why McCain should be "leader" of the free world. I was surprised to not even find the words 'leadership,' 'leader,' or 'lead' anywhere in the discussion. There are many statements about what will be accomplished in McCain's presidency, but not a clue about just how except his promise to listen to anyone with a good idea and to work with anyone. I came away not knowing how on earth a man who has been so at odds with his own party for so long and who has now completely alienated everyone in the other party expects to have any substantive policy initiatives brought into being. And I don't see how the American people are part of that model of government, especially given how much we know about the role of lobbyists in McCain's life, legislative history, and campaign, and especially given our exclusion from our government for the past eight years of rule by Bush/Cheney (who also promised to listen to all good ideas and proved unable to do so). It sounded, from McCain's own "Why" statement, more like policy would be somehow "authorized" into being. More of the same?
We have been told again and again by the McCain campaign that he is a "maverick", but that maverick has managed to actually "lead" very little in his legislative life. Standing up to your party is admirable, but it doesn't tell us how someone will actually get something done. Defiance of party ideology is not leadership--it's defiance. Defiance can be important, but it's just NOT leadership. McCain showed leadership in getting McCain-Feingold into law despite the tricky terrain of campaign finance. But really leading on the issue of campaign finance ethics and law would have generated a public initiative and broad finance policy that would not have allowed clever 527s and loophole exploiters to continue to corrupt our electoral process. What kind of "leader" has a convention that ten of 40-something Republican Senators decide not to even attend? What kind of "leader" inspires one of the loudest, shrillest people in his own party (Anne Coulter) to promise to campaign for democrats if he is the nominee? Maverick status seems to have eaten way into McCain's capacity for 'leader' status.
Then there's the timing issue. Being on "the right side of history" and of facts on the ground is important. That Obama is more on the right side of history than McCain is evident. Basic political and social temperaments show them to be rooted in forms of thinking that represent the stark contrast between the 20th and 21st centuries. But there's also the fact that a leader needs to be on the right side of facts on the ground--people have to be willing to be called to act by a leader. Enthusiasm and initiative in Republican quarters is at a low I've not seen in my life-time, with the exception of an elite few who take it upon themselves to make the rounds of media appearances--but given what we know, their enthusiasm can't help but sound forced and blustery; and their recourse to mockery of all things Democratic pretty much proves the emptiness of inherent Republican enthusiasm. Whose energy can McCain tap into right away to start getting things done in the one term he is likely to be able to do? The political physics of this just don't add up.
The Presidency is fundamentally a leadership position. It is clear who is more ready to lead in the way that our country needs leadership right now, and that is Barack Obama. A leader needs an energy base to tap into as he undertakes reforming our broken and hijacked systems--Obama has that fanning out across the country right now, while McCain doesn't even have a ground-campaign, much less an energy base in the public to get things done nationally. A leader needs managament skills that hearken to inclusivity and wise organization--Obama has assembled extraordinary bi-partisan advisory teams tasked to build a government of competence and effective meeting of the needs of people, while McCain has managed to assemble a campaign of exactly the people who brought us Bush/Cheney twice, complete with organizational initiatives with the same brutality and cheapness as the Rove era and an economic advisor that considers the rest of us to be "whiners".
I want to stand up and work for my government behind a leader who has shown me that standing up and working for my government is his plan. That man is Barack Obama.
We have a convergence happening.....two converging storms, one might say. One is a general election season that promises to be one of the hardest-fought and maybe ugliest on record. This storm is destructive in its own way, and despite the bristling energy it might provide for some, is no healthy thing for our democracy. The other is named Gustav, heading, with cosmic irony and increasing atmospheric fury, for New Orleans. Not only New Orleans, but New Orleans during the Republican Convention.
Since it was Katrina, less than the war, that helped our population see the incompetence of this administration, this meteorological irony is stunning. The snarky Obama campaign supporter in me, the one angry about the "Ayers" ads and the "empty suit" accusations, reacts thus: serves them--the GOP--right. But the human being in me, the one that is not swept into the campaign storm, feels shame that the campaign storm produces or allows such anger and schadenfreude to enter the psyche or even one's sense of humor. The human me very much does not want another human and physical tragedy of biblical proportions to make a point that is all too clear already about the fierce incompetence of the Bush world, and the strident indifference of Republican policy to needs of ordinary Americans. Republicans are not indifferent, but the economic and foreign policies are, even if unintentionally. But our civil discourse should be where we find that conversation, not in the suffering of cities and embarassment of conventioners if--God forbit--another hurricane ruin parts of New Orleans or the oil rigs of the Gulf Coast.
I hope dearly that the news split screen between Gustav and McCain will be a story of two near misses, to go with the two storms. One near miss as Gustav glances off the coast and leaves only a few broken trees and some minor storm surge; another near miss as government by the GOP loses this close election in this season of history-making events and real human need. Should Gustav retain and increase its fury with a land hit, I hope and know that we will all come together as one regardless of party to help everyone who is affected by damage and loss come back to themselves. And if the election goes against how any of us want it to, I hope the same thing.
OK, so everyone's pants are in a twist because the McCain campaign has labelled the Dem Convention, "A Mile High and an Inch Deep". This on the heels of slamming Obama as a "celebrity" for weeks.I think we now have some clues to pull together for the right wing's new, improved language to assault all things non-republican. Note the following paragraph in Jonah Goldberg's assessment (in early august) of the recent ESPY award being given to the two black athletes who raised their fists on the Olympic medals podium in 1968:Goldberg writes, "The stench of self-congratulation surrounding ESPN's decision [to honor Smith and Carlos] is thicker than the air in a locker room after double overtime. The argument that Smith's and Carlos' critics must dine on their denunciations rests on an inch-deep nostalgia and the triumph of celebrity culture." (for full reporting on Goldberg's nonsense about this, see: http://zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18326)Sounds to me like Mr. Right Wing Talking Points Goldberg has nicely nutshelled the official narrative tack of the Right for us: "inch deep" and "celebrity culture" are the memes of note that will be hurled around at everything they hate. They are not reserved for the campaign but part of the broader cultural strategy afoot. The culture war will buttress the campaign memes and vice versa, especially just in case Obama wins and they need to keep trying to diminish him.It's another incarnation of their general strategy of projection: The anti-intellectual set accuses the smart guy of being shallow; the "I have more listeners/viewers than god" blusterers in right wing media accuse the interesting guy that people like of being a "celebrity". It's brilliant and effective, especially because it plays on the general public's being too busy to think much about the complex psychological game they are sucked into by these people. "The bully who thinks little must be right, because it's the easiest thing to think and aligning myself with the bully makes me feel strong."
The Right realizes that intelligence possibilities are ratcheted up by the blogosphere and wide availability of information on the net; so that has to be innoculated by pre-framing all liberal content as "shallow" and predicated on mass-thinking (hence the ratcheting up of "socialism" talk in conservative blogosphere). So, let's innoculate against the innoculation and pre-meme the memes, shall we? Let's "frame" McCain's exceptionally shallow "I'LL DEFEAT IT!" response to all questions that he cannot answer with "I was a POW"....let's frame his 'celebrity' over and over again with the clip of him calling the media "his base". This coming week should be a good start.
In the aftermath of Rick Warren's forum last night, it sounds like the narrative the media is gearing up to run with is the "audible gasp" that is reported to have occured when Obama did not answer the quesiton of "When Life Begins". Obama said answering that question is "above his pay grade". The gasp--and the narrative--betray the obtuseness embedded in our national discussion of abortion.
Everyone in the audience last night knew that Obama supports Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade was decided on the basis of the court's reasoning that it cannot be determined with constitutional precision when constutionally relevant and protected human life begins. So, Obama gave the answer that is utterly consistent with the constitutional argument that he supports.
Basically, the audience gasped at the fact that Obama's christianity did not override his constitutional reasoning. They gasped, in other words, that he did not invite incoherence into his legislative thinking on this. That the audience gasped indicates that they expected him to be incoherent, by saying life begins at conception (as the alleged 'christian' position maintains), while constitutionally eschewing such a decision. They fully expected him to say "I believe X" and "I don't believe X". That is the scope of unreason we have become used to. Enough to 'gasp audibly' when the unreason does not come.
And this morning the media is poking around at the "buzz" around this answer. They seem poised to dig in and and drive home the invitation to incoherence, since they fail to look at this issue in anything like a nuanced way. Maybe they'll back off this emerging narrative. Unless something newsworthy happens, tho, I wouldn't count on it.
Constitutionally protected human life is hardly as obvious as the "at conception" argument would have it. The justices who decided Roe v. Wade had the humility and scientific honesty to admit that, and so does Obama. The presumption that a multicellular organism has equal constitutional weight as a fully functional adult human female is a remarkable piece of certainty, and the one I am more apt to "Gasp" at.
Politics is traditionally referred to as the "art of the impossible". John McCain has apparently taken the "impossible" in hand, but has lost touch with the "art" part along the way.
The headline promises and objectives of the McCain campaign have congealed around several things that can reasonably be called "impossible".
1. Summer gas tax holiday: While the call for this is waning, the fact that ANY strategists still put this out there (and they do) indicates just how profoundly attached to impossibility the campaign is. Labor Day is almost here, and this is STILL on the agenda? But worse, it was NEVER possible. It would have had to be voted into play by those who would never do it. NO proposal for summer gimmicks is based in reality in a presidential campaign year, as no such proposal could be voted on. Especially one that was, from the outset, economically undesirable as assessed by most experts. So on this one, McCain is guilty of a triple commitment to the impossible.
2. New Nuclear Power Plants--43 of them--will help solve our energy problem and the economic woes those entail. Considering the fact that we would be starting from "zero construction plans" and aiming at "43 construction projects", there is a baseline impossibility factor attached to this proposal in terms of the simple inertia of current processes. Beyond that, there is the astronomical cost involved not only in the construction of each plant (many billions per plant in raw capital expenditures), but in the preparatory studies required, land acquisitions, legal costs of fighting the challenges that would almost definitely arise, costs of disposal, evacuation planning in the event of catastrophe, etc., as well as of course the ongoing cost of maintaining the plants. While nuclear power may be economical once under way per kilowatt hour, that McCain thinks the kind of outlay 43 plants would entail makes for a good strategy for an economy that is at present drained by war and the basic underlying debt of consumers and government alike is a sure sign of his commitment to impossibility as a political strategy.
3. Drill Here Drill Now! The oil industry has busily been closing refineries for over a decade now, opting for greater efficiency in remaining refineries and opting for the deliberate restriction of supply in order to keep prices at a profitable level (tho of course there are other factors in current price rises). While refineries have some current wiggle room to take on new crude, it is in no way the case that refineries exist or are even proposed or wanted by the oil industry in the U.S. Now, factor in the enormous expense and risk associated with building new offshore platforms, and it is truly unlikely that the oil companies who would have to build these platforms (but don't seem to want to, since they haven't built them on their existing lease spaces) will in fact go ahead and construct them, no matter how favorable tax policy may be for them.
To these three embraces of the impossible as potential policy we can add the mounting pile of untruths the McCain campaign has emitted about the Obama campaigns policy proposals. When you substitute a lie for the truth, you are in fact embracing the "impossible". For example, when you KNOW that Obama has put out a multi-dimensional energy policy, and then put out a tire-pressure-gauge and describe it as the whole of that energy policy, you are embracing a contradiction: A & not-A. That's impossible. The logic of this campaign has come to be the logic of impossibility.
Finally, when you embrace the non-sequitur you are also thumbing your nose at the possible or the likely. When strategists are sent out, as they have been this week, to repeat a non-sequitur as your official campaign argument (it is official because McCain himself said it too), you are embracing the illogic of impossibility: McCain and the "strategists" (there are other words for what it means to misrepresent and spread illogic on the air, but let's go with their official label for now) are spouting essentially the following when the issue of negative campaigning comes up this week: "We would not have had to campaign negatively [let's call this 'A'] if only Obama had acccepted the invitation to do town halls [let's call this 'B']." The "if" implies a connection between A and B, and yet there is absolutely none, except perhaps spite. Negative campaigning in no way follows from Obama's decision not to do Town Halls with McCain. And yet, that's the line of the week in defense of the indefensible, which is the character-assailing, lie-promulgating and generally trivializing string of ads McCain and his party have released in the past two weeks.
Finally, we barely need to mention the inartfulness of McCain's recent conduct of his campaign (with the exception of the polish and humor of their bad ads themselves). The flat-footed and confused look of many of McCain's campaign stops would never evoke the appellation 'art' from an objective observer. That they (the McCain team) have been politically artful in the character assassination campaign may be argued, but I would be inclined to refuse the term "art" to the enterprise of base behavior that is called negative campaigning. Not all clever conniving is "artful". It's just clever and conniving.
It is my hope that the sensibilities of the public have not been so twisted in the direction of the "impossible" as represented by this kind of politics as to not be able to see through it. The jury is out on that. It is certainly my hope that the kind of aspiration towards the seemingly impossible human aspirations embraced by the Obama campaign will outstrip, in the imaginations of the public, the gross economic and logical impossibilities embedded at every level of the McCain campaign. I really did expect better from McCain once he got his chance, but sometimes our expectations turn out to also have been based on impossibilities unbeknownst to us.
I hereby challenge Obama fans to identify and argue--via blog posts--for who deserves a weekly "Rita Skeeter Award" for the most vile and distorted reporting against Obama on this election.
All media and internet "reporting" is eligible for nomination.
Who has used the most acid green quill to defame Obama?
Who has transformed themselves into insect-like smallness to report in illegitimate ways on Obama?
Who has insinuated themselves into important discussions in the most unhelpful way?
For those uninitiated, Rita Skeeter is the vile reporter for the Daily Prophet in the Harry Potter series, who publishes lies about Harry in Goblet of Fire and comes to write a scathing and unfair autobiography of Dumbledore in the series finale, The Deathly Hallows.
Having mentioned Skeeter's biography of Dumbledore, let me get us started:
I hereby nominate Jerome Corsi, author of The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. From samples released in the media, the book appears to be filled with falsehoods and distortions along with whatever legitimate analyses may also be there. So, the job for the week is to access this book in a bookstore (read it on site, not buying it) and evaluating it for the award. And should Simon and Schuster get a co-award ("The Daily Prophet Prize"?) for promoting the book with distortions from inside it as if they were established fact?
On Morning Joe this morning, the now infamous recent "Interview with Bill Clinton abroad" was discussed. As yesterday, one topic was his oblique response to the question of "Do you regret anything about your role in the primaries?" Bill said, "Yes but not the things you think...etc". The Morning Joe team were all very keen to pick up on Bill's clever way of answering a question that was not really asked. He was asked if there was "anything" he regretted, but answered mainly in the frame of "I am not a racist". And the press willingly got this, that Bill Clinton answered a question that wasn't asked in order to exonerate himself for something he is alleged to have done in the primary.
So, today they talk about another question that was asked of Clinton: "Do you think Obama is ready to be President?". Clinton gives the evasive answer about how "You could argue that no one is ready to be president really--I certainly learned things once I had the office...etc." The talking heads pick up on this how? "OOOH--Bill Clinton won't say 'Yes, Obama is ready to be president'."'Not only is this an example of their willing or blind complicity in the right wing/Clintonian talking point that the narrative about Obama is "he's not ready". But it is also an indication of selective inattentiveness to Bill Clinton's ongoing self-defense.
Granted, the Morning Joe team readily recognized that Clinton's answer on the readiness question was about an "alpha-dog" conflict between him and Obama, and about general Clinton legacy/ego/future-Hillary-electoral-plans, so in some sense they saw that the answer was about him, in how it was delivered. But they failed to pick up on its fundamental continuity with the other answer: The response on "readiness" was just as much a self-defense about things that happened in the primary as was the "regrets" answer. In both cases, Clinton has been accused (outside the actual interview in question) of attacking Obama: one on race issues, and one on questioning his readiness. Both answers by Clinton were attempts to legitimate what he had done in the primaries as something other than low tactics.
So, while Clinton consistently answered both questions with primarily an eye to self-exoneration, the Morning Joe team only heard/reported on his "regrets" answer that way, allowing the "readiness" answer play right into the RNC agenda.
If that is inadvertent, then they should be more attentive to the consistently self-justifying nature of Clinton's responses; if it was intentional, they should be chided for it. And that applies not just to this show, but all media selectiveness in attending to political discourse.
