Politi Blog

GA Congressman is a Moron

2008-11-11T03:45:00.000-08:00

I thought the fear-mongering about Obama being a socialist would certainly stop after election day because no intelligent person could honestly believe it. It can no longer affect the election, so it's just going to make you look stupid in 4 years.

I was wrong. Congressman Paul Broun:

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy."

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Obama is talking about expanding the Peace Corps! Meanwhile, the Bush Administration has overseen the creation of a civilian mercenary force of Americans in Iraq that doesn't seem to concern Broun a bit.

Yes, Broun, you are crazy and off base.

I'm out for 08

2008-11-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

The big one is won. I'm going to try very hard to ignore most politics for the rest of the year. I'll pick it back up soon, but I just need a break. Obama announced his candidacy 20 months ago. My guy won, but I am so tired of the whole thing right now. I'll be back next year.

Voting Lines in Atlanta

2008-11-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

"The other folks are voting."

I admire these people's commitment to the cause, but an 8-10 hour wait to vote is pretty ridiculous. Can't we do something about this?

Of course, I live in a red county so I was in and out, suckers.

UPDATE (11/3): Rachel Maddow calls it the new poll tax.

Joe the Plumber is a Joke

2008-11-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

Literally.

Who's a socialist?

2008-10-30T17:28:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama's a socialist because he's going to "spread the wealth?"

Really?

Economic Events and the McCain Campaign

2008-10-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

A meme developing among the mainstream media and Republicans is that McCain is losing because of the economy and there's nothing he or his campaign could have done about it. Republican advisor Mark McKinnon:

If not for a major economic event that interceded a few weeks ago (for which a strong majority of voters blame Republicans), this race might still be competitive. It isn’t Steve Schmidt’s fault. It’s the economy, stupid.

Branch Rickey, the executive that signed Jackie Robinson, is credited with saying that "luck is the residue of design."

I understand why Republicans want to blame the market collapse for McCain's problems, but I just don't think the idea that it is what killed him holds water.

First, I think it misses the fact that other important things were happening independently in the second half of September. McCain's convention bounce was wearing off, the public was getting to know Palin, and those who had just started to pay attention discovered that Obama wasn't the guy the Republicans had made him out to be (in part because Obama was cleaning McCain's clock in the debates).

Second, and this is related to Palin and the debate performances, McCain himself increased the damage to his campaign from the economic crisis. He entered the general election campaign proposing more Bush-style tax cuts for the rich, inexplicably leaving Obama a wide opening to propose more tax cuts for the middle class. He also failed to become more knowledgeable about economic issues and failed to select a running mate that could help him on those issues, even though it was becoming clear in the summer that the economy would be a major concern. Worse, he continued claiming that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong". Finally, his reaction to the crisis - transparent political posturing - was not reassuring. He took credit for the bailout before it passed even though he contributed nothing to the process, then took credit for slowing it down when it failed. These are self-inflicted wounds.

This was an inhospitable climate for any Republican, but if any Republican could win, the McCain of 2000 had a fighting chance. However, he failed to separate himself from Bush. He should have shifted after the primaries to running as a Democrat with more military and foreign policy credentials. Perhaps, instead of Bush's compassionate conservatism, a tough liberalism. He blew it. Maybe he should have learned something from his idol, Teddy Roosevelt, who went in a new direction following McKinley.

Aggressively Ignorant

2008-10-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

halloween comes early...

2008-10-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

it may be no surprise to anyone reading this blog that i identify as a democrat or that i will be voting for obama in november. but i don't hate republicans. in fact, some of the people i love most in this world are life-long republicans. but some of the vitriol coming out of mccain-palin rallies in these final days makes me physically sick to my stomach. i knew racism and xenophobia and religious hatred still existed in this country-- hell, there are plenty of hate groups out there with multi-million dollar budgets based on the sole goal of making me a second class citizen-- but i had no idea it was this bad. or this blatant. i have never been so sad for our country. and for the first time i actually wonder if i will ever be truly proud of us again.

Nuts Over ACORN

2008-10-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

This is such a ridiculous controversy. The GOP story carried in the liberal media gives the impression that ACORN is actively attempting to file false voter registrations in an effort to steal the election. HuffPo explains that the truth is very different:

The media has been all too happy to pass that garbage on, without bothering to note that, in fact, the organization attempts to authenticate every registration form their workers submit and by law they must turn in every form to election officials -- even if they find a registration to be fraudulent when they call the phone number submitted on the form, or if the forms are otherwise suspect or incomplete.

They do so, and they flag all questionable registration forms as being suspect before turning them in to officials.

ACORN casts a wide net to get as many people registered as possible. Part of that effort is hiring people to register voters and paying per registration form. As a result, they receive some false forms that are in no way going to be used for voting. As Obama notes, the only victim of fraud here is ACORN, who has paid people with the expectation of getting valid registrations.

Nevertheless, registering a million voters and getting tens of thousands of false registration forms is still a success. Yglesias:

I find that an awful lot of problems are caused by people’s inability to understand things like error rates and big numbers. If a pharmaceutical company came out with a new anti-depression drug and gave it to a million people suffering from depression, of whom 970,000 were helped you wouldn’t turn around and conclude that the company was perpetrating a deliberate fraud based on the fact that “tens of thousands” of patients got no relief. You’d say that the medicine was helpful in 97 percent of the indicated cases. ACORN is trying — and succeeding — in an effort to register a lot of new voters.

There’s simply no way to gather over one million new voter registration forms without some of the forms having been filled out with bogus information. You could ask the group to automatically toss out the obviously wrong ones — some guy saying he’s Tony Romo, someone else saying he’s Mickey Mouse — but the law requires them to hand all the forms in to prevent them from tossing out forms filled out by people who say they want to register Republican. Consequently, if you go out and register over a million voters you’ll wind up with a lot of bad forms being submitted. But just as 30,000 is a lot of people and also only a very small fraction of one million people, when you’re talking about registering over a million new voters you’d need orders of magnitude more bad forms to constitute real evidence of a systematic fraud campaign.

I agree with Yglesias that the best solution to this problem is to make it easier to vote instead of requiring registration weeks or months in advance.

Voter suppression, often carried out in the name of preventing voter fraud, distorts the electoral process far more than actual voter fraud. The outcomes of both the 2000 and 2004 elections may have been altered by voter suppression.

What's Scarier Than a Black Muslim?

2008-10-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

Luckovich:

I love this quote from an Obama canvasser in Pennsylvania, reported on Ben Smith's blog at The Politico:

"What's crazy is this," he writes. "I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n----r and mention how they don't know what to do because of the economy."

538 Update

2008-09-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

At 5 weeks out, Obama is in a strong position:

Voting for Bush's Third Term

2008-09-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

I was a strong supporter of McCain in 2000, but I steadily lost respect for him in recent years. His campaign this year has been extremely dishonorable. However, it wasn't until this week that I started to think the previously unimaginable.

Bush has been a disaster, including failing to act on the mortgage crisis for way too long. Nevertheless, when I contrast Bush's leadership in the past week with McCain's empty grandstanding, I would have to consider voting for a third term of Bush over McCain if those were my only two options.

Democrats have tried to paint McCain as a third term of Bush. I'm not sure he wouldn't be worse. McCain wants to give even more tax cuts to the wealthy. Whereas Bush has discovered the art of diplomacy in his second term, McCain wants to pursue an even more neoconservative foreign policy than Bush's first term. Bush is a juvenile frat boy who always seems to think he operates with divine inspiration. McCain is an erratic drama queen who thinks himself more moral than anyone around him. At least Bush seems to have learned from his mistakes.

McCain could accomplish quite a feat by winning this election. He could make me nostalgic for Bush.

Tax Cuts for Wall Street

2008-09-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

The Republicans' have introduced their counter-proposal:

So now they've released their own set of "principles" in the 11th hour, relying on mortgage insurance, injections of private capital into the financial system and free market principles. Many of the ideas are tried and true conservative ideas, like loosening regulations in hopes of freeing up private capital. The thrust of the GOP alternative is essentially a private insurance plan for mortgage backed securities, but it's not clear if such a plan could go into effect quickly enough to salvage the teetering credit markets.

They're relying on the same failed supply-side economic theories that got us into this mess. Brilliant. Is anybody in this party fit to govern?

Palin is no Obama

2008-09-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from a really strong post by Coates (I hadn't heard of him before he replaced Yglesias on The Atlantic, but I'm becoming a fan):

For weeks we heard this ridiculous line of argument that Palin brought the same "excitement" and "energy" to the table as Obama, thus equalizing the race. That is exactly the sort of fatal underestimation that is going to get John McCain murked in November.

Obama isn't Obama because he is more "exciting" or had me more "heat" or "energy." He's Obama because his handlers had a deft understanding of caucus rules, because they understood the promise of the Dean/Trippi internet strategy, because they understood the ground game. Fuck all the rhetorical flourishes, all the talk of "exotic" lineage, all Ivy League pedigree, all the hoary meditation on the impact of a black president. It's all bullshit. If Obama doesn't hang eleven straight on Team Clinton in February then we'd all be talking about the dream of Susan B. Anthony. If Hillary Clinton's people understood the rules the way Obama's people did, then McCain would be running ads attacking The Restoration.

The point is that Palin brings "excitement" and "energy" but nothing else. It's all hot-sauce but no catfish. And now the jig is up.

Bailout

2008-09-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

I basically stand by what I wrote back in June. Don't give away taxpayer money to the reckless. Instead, help lenders and borrowers meet their mutual obligations.

I worry that the initial proposal doesn't do anything for borrowers facing foreclosure. That's the root of the problem here - borrower default and foreclosure. I wouldn't be surprised if this Administration assisted banks at the expense of borrowers and taxpayers. They are supply-siders, and the essence of supply-side economic theory is the false belief that what is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street. Just as tax policy should increase the spending power of the consumers that drive the economy, any solution to this crisis should minimize future foreclosures as much as reasonably possible.

The solutions that I proposed, voluntary renegotiation of mortgages and personal loans to cover negative equity, would go a long way to breaking the credit crunch and housing market stagnation. Banks could take more confidence in borrowers' ability to pay the renegotiated notes. Borrowers in upside-down homes could finally sell, spurring the market, and banks would receive loan payoffs that could serve as capital for lending to the new purchasers.

Finally, too many executives have escaped any accountability. Former executives are probably untouchable unless they committed fraud, but new regulations should allow the federal government to seek penalties from future executives of businesses that eventually must be bailed out.

Banking is McCain's Model for Health Care

2008-09-20T04:00:00.001-07:00

Priceless (McCain in the Sept/Oct 2008 issue of Contingencies):

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

In his defense, he was referring to allowing consumers to purchase health insurance across state lines, which would presumably provide more nationwide competition and replace much of the state regulation with federal regulation. But I don't think that more choices of innovative products in mortgages (ARMs, 100% loans, interest-only loans, balloon payments) turned out to be a good thing for the banking industry or its customers, necessarily. And McCain here seems to be strongly advocating deregulation. He doesn't mention adding more sensible federal regulation, just eliminating state regulation.

Crazy Pastors

2008-09-17T19:42:00.001-07:00

Obama's pastor believes that white racism exists. One of Palin's favorite pastors is an African evangelical who believed it necessary to rid a Kenyan town of witchcraft. Clearly, Obama hangs out with nutjobs and Palin is just an All-American girl.

$66 Million in August

2008-09-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds worried Democrats that Obama knows what he's doing:

The Bias Canard

2008-09-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

If there is no reliable source for the truth, you don't have to acknowledge reality. Any opinion or report that contradicts with your worldview can be dismissed as biased. John Cole, who points out that Rove is now after the fact checking organizations, is catching on to the purpose of the Republicans' assault on sources of independent expertise:

There is no truth. All things are relative. The truth is a lie. All politicians lie, so why are you so worked up about the McCain campaign? You see how this works, don’t you?

And that is exactly what they want, because once they have destroyed every component of society that Americans trust, then they can simply do whatever they want. It has worked everywhere else they have tried it- intellectuals are dismissed scornfully as coastal elites, Universities dismissed as havens of bias.

There is no consensus on evolution- just different opinions. Sure, they say that McCain’s plan will be bad for the health of the nation, but those are just different opinions, and you are biased anyway. it is just your opinion that there are no WMD in Iraq. Who knows, they may have moved them all to Syria and we were right. Your anti-Bush bias is showing. Starting to see how this works, yet?

More Voter Fraud Nonsense

2008-09-11T20:17:00.001-07:00

This is reprehensible.

The Republican Chairman in a swing Michigan county is going to use a list of foreclosures to block people from voting. I'm guessing people who have recently undergone foreclosure have more important things to worry about than updating their voter registration addresses or committing voter fraud. But I suppose I could be wrong.

MSNBC

2008-09-08T19:50:00.001-07:00

MSNBC has decided to reduce Olbermann's and Matthews' roles in their election event coverage.

I don't particularly enjoy Olbermann. He's an obnoxious arrogant blowhard. While it's sometimes nice to have him on the air as an answer to Fox News and the idiocy coming from the right, this post isn't necessarily a defense of Olbermann. As for Matthews, the right hasn't been paying enough attention if they think he is a lefty.

But I have to say I disagree with MSNBC's decision, although I'm not terribly upset by it. MSNBC is cable news, where opinion is more acceptable, but they are tied to an NBC News organization that must maintain a high level of credibility. I get that. So, while I think they could argue that MSNBC is separate and distinct, I can understand NBC News' nervousness about Olbermann's prominence. That said, this is one more example of the supposedly liberal media's complete fear of the right.

Glenn Greenwald explains that MSNBC has caved to the right in making a decision contrary to its ratings (in a much longer post):

This decision by MSNBC is as alarming as it is illustrative. They just implicitly chided and overtly demoted their most popular and valuable news personality because the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right demanded that they do so. It's fine for Brit Hume to host a "news program" and for hard-core right-wing ideologues to dominate cable news. The fact that Dick Cheney (understandably) viewed Tim Russert's Meet the Press as the ideal forum to allow the White House to "control the message" bothered nobody outside of a few online critics, and didn't remotely impede the perception of Russert as the Beacon of Tough and Objective Journalism. But MSNBC's ratings-based decision to feature Keith Olbermann is a grave threat to modern journalism and must be stopped. So decrees the White House and the McCain campaign, and so the GE-owned MSNBC complies.

If they're looking for respect and deference, we can add the freedom of the press to the rights that Republicans aren't so fond of.

False Equivalency

2008-09-08T19:41:00.000-07:00

I have noted before that the media often attempts to look balanced by presenting both sides as equally meritorious when they objectively are not. The Washington Monthly picked up on this in a fact-checking article in The Washington Post:

In the Post's fact-checking piece, these two claims, Biden's and Palin's, are offered as relative equivalents. The reader is left with the impression that all the candidates for national office are fudging and spinning on the campaign trail.

But this is a false equivalency. Biden's claim is completely accurate -- McCain really has voted with Bush 95% of the time. Palin's claim is complete false -- she really didn't reject earmarks.

Why lump them both together as "questionable claims"?

Why I Hate Republicans...

2008-09-05T20:10:00.001-07:00

in under 6 minutes (I know this video has already made the rounds, but it really is classic):

Giuliani Sticking Up for Small Towns

2008-09-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

Giuliani complains that Obama doesn't think Wasilla, Alaska, is big enough? He was the mayor of one of the largest cities in the world!

According to Giuliani, Obama disrespects Wasilla by not thinking it's cosmopolitan enough. I'd be willing to bet that Giuliani has touted NYC's cosmopolitanness. Let's run it through Google...

Yep:

The Mayor hailed New York as "not only the world's most diverse city but also the world's most cosmopolitan and tolerant city."

Palin's Convention Speech

2008-09-03T20:11:00.001-07:00

Give me a break? Is this all the Republican Party is now? Sneering contempt in a culture war against celebrities and elites? Are they dragging out that bitter crap, again?

They act like it's been another party running the country into the ground for the last 8 years.

After Obama and Biden showed tremendous class towards Palin the past few days, she comes out obnoxiously attacking them with total condenscension for Obama. I'm sorry, what the hell have you done, Palin? Please.

If she wants to play hardball, that's fine. I hope Obama and Biden take the f'ing gloves off now. When they do it, I don't want to hear any more sexist crap from the "liberal media" about how Biden needs to be careful not to bully poor little Sarah.

Oh, and if the family is off-limits, don't parade around the Downs Syndrome baby and talk about how much Sarah's and Bristol's pregnancies confirm their pro-life values.

Watching the Republican Convention

2008-09-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

Mitt and Rudy have reminded me why Obama has to win. A party this detached from reality and impervious to logic can never have power.

Republicans, go rediscover why you ever had power (e.g. limited government, fiscal conservatism, foreign policy realism) and come back to me in 4 years.

Palin Defends Us From Russia

2008-09-02T03:57:00.000-07:00

Cindy McCain reminds us that Alaska is close to Russia.

And the McCain campaign points out that Palin is commander of the Alaska National Guard.

Thank goodness for Sarah Palin. She is the only thing preventing Russia from marching down through defenseless Canada and kidnapping Mariner Moose.

Sarah Palin?

2008-09-01T02:44:00.000-07:00

She seems like a generally decent person, but she's not experienced and perhaps not the reformer she has been made out to be. My main thoughts are below. For more on Palin from up close, see this blog. There's also the potential issue of the suspicious pregnancy. And she's not gonna be as strong with women as McCain probably thinks.

Foreign Policy Experience

For months, McCain has been saying that, not only is Obama less experienced than he is, Obama is dangerously inexperienced in a time of terrorism and global conflict. Of course, McCain people will argue that Obama is inexperienced, too. Anybody that says that Obama is no more qualified to be president than Sarah Palin is just being dense.

First, Obama just has more experience. Palin was a city council member and mayor in a town of 5000 for a decade before becoming Governor of Alaska. She has been Governor for less than 2 years. In contrast, Obama represented part of the third largest city in the nation in the Illinois state legislature for eight years before being elected to the U.S. Senate. Republicans like to end Obama's experience in January of 2007, the moment he began his presidential campaign. But the fact remains that Obama had already been in the Senate for 2 years when Palin took office as Governor. Since that time, Obama has been serving in the Senate and on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

More importantly, Obama has spent the past year and a half explaining to a skeptical public why he should be commander-in-chief. During that time, he has studied foreign policy issues thoroughly, traveled abroad, taken questions from reporters and voters, and participated in more than 20 debates against candidates including Biden, Clinton, and Richardson. He earned the confidence of the Democratic party during the course of that campaign. There is no evidence that Palin has even thought about foreign policy.

Some will point out that Palin's experience as Governor is executive experience. Hilzoy explains why any doubts about Obama's executive skills have been put to rest by his stunningly well-run campaign. Meanwhile, Palin has managed a tiny population flush with oil revenues.

Government Reform

McCain is touting Palin as a fighter for honesty and accountability in government. However, there is currently an investigation into the firing of a public safety official as part of a personal vendetta against a state trooper. Even if the investigation reveals no wrongdoing, some of her denials have been proven false. Here is a rundown of the story and Palin's trouble with the truth:

Previously, as mayor, she fired a police chief for what appeared to be purely political reasons. That action nearly led to a recall.

McCain likes to claim that she killed the Bridge to Nowhere. In fact, she was a very strong supporter of the project until it became unpopular.

McCain

The bottom line is that Palin is not a known quantity to McCain or anybody else. McCain has selected a person with no foreign policy credentials to be one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. The decision was made impulsively and recklessly with, by all accounts, essentially no vetting. He claims to always put his country first, but this decision seems to put his political campaign ahead of the national interest. Either he does not believe what he says about the dangers of Obama's inexperience, or he is willing to jeopardize national security for political purposes. I'd rather have the judgment of Obama, who rejected attractive options in battleground states to select a VP ready to step in "on day one". Obama looks to be the careful, steady hand while McCain looks to be the unpredictable gambler. I'll take the former.

Finally, some claim that this is McCain showing his maverick tendencies. I think it is just the opposite. McCain's maverick image was created by taking on the right-wing of the GOP. Calling the religious right "agents of intolerance", opposing Bush's tax cuts, thwarting Bush's efforts on judges, and proposing amnesty-based immigration reform. Sure, there were government reform issues like campaign finance reform, earmarks, etc., where he took on both parties, but those were minor concerns. What really made McCain a maverick was his willingness to take on his own party on partisan issues. Insiders report that McCain wanted a more experienced person like Lieberman or Ridge. Even Romney, who McCain doesn't seem to get along with, would be more ready for VP. Unfortunately for McCain, the base would have vetoed a pro-choice candidate like Lieberman or Ridge, and the evangelicals would have been turned off by Romney. So he dodged and went with Palin, who is beloved by the base for her very conservative positions. This was not the maverick McCain I liked in 2000. It was more of the base pandering McCain that has cozied up to the right wing since 2000.

UPDATE: It looks like rumors that Sarah Palin's pregnancy was faked to pass of her 17-year-old daughter Bristol's child as her own have been put to rest with news that Bristol is actually now carrying a child conceived around the same time as the birth of Sarah Palin's son. I don't really care what Sarah Palin's daughter does, but was inviting this controversy into his campaign a wise decision by McCain?

Biden's Foreign Policy Strengths

2008-08-31T12:44:00.000-07:00

For a long, wide-ranging, and frank interview with Biden on foreign policy, go here. His ego is on full display, but so is his experience and analysis. Here is an account of his trip to Romania by an impressed U.S. Ambassador.

But a large part of foreign policy is being able to see in advance the consequences of our actions. That's what the judgment question is all about. As for his judgment in seeing in advance the big issues of recent years, Iraq and terrorism, here is what I found:

IRAQ

He voted to authorize force so that Bush would have the backing he needed at the U.N, but he understood that the threat of Iraq was exaggerated, that we would need U.N. support, and that the post-war recovery period would be difficult and up to a decade in duration. At the moment before invasion, he cautioned that Bush was going to war recklessly and without leveling with the American people about the costs. His greatest mistake seems to have been trusting Bush with war powers.

08/04/02 - USA Today

"I believe there probably will be a war with Iraq," said Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The only question is, is it alone, is it with others and how long and how costly will it be?"

09/12/02 - FoxNews.com

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., issued the appeal a day before Bush's speech on Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly. Bush is expected to ask the Security Council to compel Iraq to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors. It is not clear whether he will say the United States is prepared to use force against Iraq if the Iraqi president refuses to comply.

Biden, in remarks to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, said he will be "extremely disappointed" if Bush lays out a unilateralist approach in his U.N. speech that conveys the message, "`The world be damned, here we go.' That is not in our interest," Biden said.

He said Iraq has biological and chemical weapons and is trying to add nuclear capabilities. But he said he sees Saddam as someone who would give up his weapons in order to retain power and is not bent on destroying the world.

10/10/02 - Senate floor speech quoted in USA Today on 02/08/07

"There is a danger that Saddam's downfall could lead to widespread civil unrest and reprisals," Biden said on the Senate floor on Oct. 10, 2002.

Biden warned in that speech that "one-third of that population (in Iraq) hates the other two-thirds of the population. They say Iraq will quickly be able to organize itself politically, economically, and militarily, into a peaceful, unified nation, free of weapons of mass destruction. The American people need to know that most experts believe Iraq will require considerable assistance politically, militarily, and economically. Indeed, they say we should speak not of 'the day after,' but of 'the decade after.' "

Fall 2002 - recounted by David Corn in December 2006

Before the vote, Biden tried to craft a bipartisan alternative to the White House resolution that would have partly restricted Bush's authority. That effort failed. Discussing the final bill on the Senate floor, Biden described Iraq's WMDs as a threat to the United States—but he noted that this threat was not immediate and that Iraq was not in league with al-Qaida. He said:
We have time to deal with that problem in a way that isolates Saddam and does not isolate the United States of America, that makes the use of force the final option, not the first one, that produces the desired results, not unintended consequences.
And he claimed Bush believed this, too: “That is the course President Bush has chosen.” Biden hailed Bush's recent decision to ask the U.N. for a resolution that would demand that Saddam accept new inspections. “Thank God for Colin Powell!” Biden exclaimed. As for what might happen after an invasion, Biden said,

There is a danger that Saddam's downfall could lead to widespread civil unrest and reprisals. There is only one thing I disagree with in the President's speech on [October 7]. He said what could be worse than Saddam Hussein? I can tell you, a lot... This is a much more complicated country than Afghanistan.
Biden noted that there would be plenty of challenges in post-invasion Iraq, that meeting them would be tough and costly, and that chaos in Iraq could lead to regional warfare involving Iran and Syria. Bottom line: Biden had a handle on the nature of the threat posed by Iraq and the potential consequences of an invasion; he failed to suss out that Bush was committed to war.

11/11/02 - Meeting with The Trotter Group as reported in USA Today

In separate meetings last week with members of The Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists, Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's national security adviser, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the lame-duck chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, differed over virtually every aspect of this looming conflict.

"The guys who have to fight this war don't think it's a good idea," said Biden, the Senate's leading Democrat on foreign affairs. To buttress his point, Biden recounted a recent conversation he had with an unnamed chairman of one of the military services, who told him that a U.S. war with Iraq would be "the dumbest thing in the world."

Rice, however, rejected the suggestion that any key military leader doesn't back Bush's Iraq policy.

Republicans took "something that nobody, including the president, believes is an imminent danger and moved it up in the election cycle," Biden said of the war resolution Bush got Congress to adopt shortly before this month's midterm elections. (Biden said that after his own more restrictive resolution lost support, he reluctantly backed the one that passed to give Secretary of State Colin Powell the leverage he needed to get the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would slow the Bush administration's rush to war.) There is "zero evidence that Saddam has cooperated with al-Qaeda," Biden told the black columnists.

Rice differed sharply with Biden on this point. She compared Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Saddam's government, she said, "has supported terrorism and harbored terrorists," and as a consequence the Bush administration must be "concerned about the potential union of terrorism, extremism and weapons of mass destruction" because "bad guys travel in packs."

12/10/02 - Larry King Live

And really, Larry, what we found whether we were talking to anyone from our military, and we met a lot of generals in addition to Franks in the region, all the way to, you know, Palestinian reformers and everyone in the region was, It's not going to be the day after, it's going to be the decade after.

And they want to know, are we in for the long haul? Are we going to make sure that country isn't going to disintegrate? It's going to be a very tough job. And establishing a democracy, as the administration is talking about, is going to be a monumental task.

What they really want to know is, If you're going to go get him, are you going to finish the job? And they don't mean just take him down. They mean -- they mean stabilizing the situation after he is taken down.

...

I think the president's got it just right. He's playing this out the way he should play it out because, quite frankly, Larry, the one thing we don't want to do is we don't want to be an occupying power after we take down Saddam. We got to have other folks in on the deal.

We have to have this a civilian run operation somewhat like Kosovo after the fact with U.S. and coalition forces backing it up. Otherwise we're going to be there as the sitting ducks.

And so it's very, very important that we all stay together and the closer we're together, the more the president's in on the deal with the rest of the United Nations, the more likely it is that Saddam is going to yield. It's not likely, but it is more likely.

12/20/02 - Washington Post Op-Ed (with Hagel) titled "Iraq: The Decade After"

Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein’s, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after — or, more accurately, the decade after — Saddam Hussein.

Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill. Various experts have testified that as many as 75,000 troops may be necessary, at a cost of up to $ 20 billion a year. That does not include the cost of the war itself, or the effort to rebuild Iraq.

Americans are largely unprepared for such an undertaking. President Bush must make clear to the American people the scale of the commitment.

02/07/03 - FoxNews.com

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that before any military force is used, the United States should seek U.N. support.

"While we can win the war on our own, we are much better off with the support of the United Nations," Biden said, adding that post-war efforts will require help from "as many countries as possible." Biden and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said that Bush needs to explain to the American people what war with Iraq will require in terms of monetary and personnel commitment.

"I don't think many Americans understand the scope and the magnitude" of what a war will mean, Biden said.

9/11

On September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks of September 11th, Biden warned that the Bush Administration was focusing too much on missile defense and not enough on terrorism. At the National Press Club, he said:

“Sure, we’ll do all we can to defend ourselves against any threat — nobody denies that — but even the joint chiefs says that a strategic nuclear attack is less likely than a regional conflict, a major theater war, terrorist attacks at home or abroad, or any number of other real issues. We’ll have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat, while the real threat comes to this country in the hold of a ship, the belly of a plane, or smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vile in a backpack. And I ask you, if you want to do us damage, are you more likely to send a missile you’re not sure can reach us, with a biological or chemical weapon because you don’t have the throw weight to put a nuclear weapon on it, and no one’s anticipating that in the near term, with a return address saying “it came from us, here’s where we are”? Or, are you more likely to put somebody with a backpack crossing the border from Vancouver down to Seattle, or coming up the New York Harbor with a rusty old ship with an atom bomb sitting in the hull? Which are you more likely to do? And what defense do we have against those other things.

“Watch these hearings we’re about to have. We don’t have, as the testimony showed, a public health infrastructure to deal with the existing pathogens that are around now, we don’t have the investment, the capability to identify or deal with an anthrax attack. We do not have, as ambassador to Japan now, Howard Baker, and his committee said, the ability to curtail the availability of chemical weapons lying around the Soviet Union — the former Soviet Union and Russia — because they don’t know what to do with it. They showed us a report where they showed us photographs of things that look like outhouses, clapboard — clapboard buildings with no windows and padlocks on the door, that have been many chemical weapons in that building, could destroy the bulk of the East Coast, and we’re not spending the money to help them corral and destroy that in the name of this search. The cost estimate was $30 billion over 10 years in this bipartisan commission and it was listed as the most urgent threat to the United States of America.”

Temporary AFK

2008-08-26T22:22:00.000-07:00

I know it's convention season, and it's when I should be paying lots of attention. However, I'm headed overseas in 3 weeks for 3 weeks. To be able to afford this I'm forced to work many extra shifts these days. I'm just not going to be able to devote the time to this blog that is required to post intelligently. So, with your forgiveness, I'm going to disappear until I return from Vietnam in October. Please continue to argue in my absence.

Know Only Enough to Be Afraid

2008-08-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

I have heard that, whatever Ayers did in the past, he has distinguished himself since as a serious academic and is an unavoidable player in Chicago Democratic politics. However, I can certainly understand concerns about Obama's relationship with him and questions as to how he can associate with a radical terrorist.

That said, this ad is disgusting. Not because it questions his relationship with Ayers, but because it suggests that Obama himself may be a terrorist. Why even mention 9/11, which has nothing to do with Ayers, except to tie Obama directly to Islamic terrorists like Osama bin Laden? And why the suggestion that there's something dangerous we don't know about Obama?

A legitimate ad would be about Obama's unprincipled association with radicals for political gain. This ad goes farther in suggesting that Obama shares Ayers support for terrorism.

I don't think this group wants people to know more about Obama. Then they might not be so scared of him.

Obama is trying to keep the ad off the air. He also has a response ad:

McCain's Houses

2008-08-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's good to see Obama hitting him on this.

This is the kind of bullshit issue Americans really care about.

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Biden

2008-08-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'm happy with the pick, but honestly a bit nervous. Things are definitely gonna be interesting!

Is McCain's cross story true?

2008-08-17T16:23:00.001-07:00

Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the forum with Pastor Rick Warren:

The Vietnamese kept us in prison in conditions of solitary confinement, or two or three to a cell. They did that because they knew they could break down our resistance. One of the techniques that they used to get information was to take ropes and tie them around your biceps, loop the rope around your head and pull it down beneath your knees and leave you in that position. You can imagine it's very uncomfortable.

One night, I was being punished in that fashion. All of sudden the door of the cell opened and the guard came in. The guy who was just -- what we call the gun guard -- just walked around the camp with the gun on his shoulder. He went like this and loosened the ropes. He came back about four hours later and tightened them up again and left.

The following Christmas, because it was Christmas day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes. In those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other, although we certainly did. And I was standing outside, for my few minutes outside at my cell. He came walking up. He stood there for a minute, and with his sandal on the dirt in the courtyard, he drew a cross and he stood there. And a minute later, he rubbed it out, and walked away.

For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshipping together. I'll never forget that moment.

Here, he uses it in an ad:

A DailyKos contributor calls bullshit. Apparently, it matches a story from The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, of whom McCain is a big fan. Sullivan points out that it is absent from McCain's 1973 account of his imprisonment.

Obama's VP Options

2008-08-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

This is my ranking of the top 5 of the rumored short list with a bonus off-the-radar dream pick at the end. I'm not going to mention my favorite choice, Jim Webb, or my least favorite choice, Hillary Clinton, because the word is neither is on the short list. I'm also not going to mention Sam Nunn because I don't think there's any chance for him, but I'd put him around the middle of the pack.

I should point out that, while my top 2 are foreign policy picks, I don't think Obama necessarily needs a foreign policy VP. Obama is completely capable of handling foreign policy. Picking a foreign policy guy could even have the detrimental effect of confirming the idea that Obama himself is lacking in that area. However, there are certainly voters out there who worry about Obama in foreign affairs and I think the right VP could help just as Cheney helped Bush get elected. That's just a long way of saying that whether a person knows or doesn't know foreign policy wasn't a major factor in this list.

5. Evan Bayh (Senator from Indiana)

He could actually deliver a state that McCain expects to win with his family's name and may help elsewhere in the Rust Belt. I'm not sure he is much more than a name, though. He is a good politician, but a little too much of a typical politician. He's very boring, and supported Hillary and the War in Iraq. Those two things aren't terrible in themselves, but they indicate that he has no political courage. I wouldn't blame Obama for making the pick, but I really dislike Bayh.

4. Kathleen Sebelius (Governor of Kansas)

By some perverse Clinton logic, any other woman as VP would be a slap in the face to Clinton. That's one reason I like Sebelius! For another, she has almost impossibly high approval ratings in a deeply red state. And she plays into a Democratic Western Strategy. She may also help Obama remind voters that his mother's family is from Kansas. She personally is the daughter of a popular politician from the battleground state of Ohio. She and Obama seem to get along very well and she was an early ally. Unfortunately, she seemed extremely boring in the State of the Union response.

3. Tim Kaine (Governor of Virginia)

I can't figure out if he looks creepy or down-to-earth. He has a law degree from Harvard, was an early endorser and reportedly gets along very well with Obama, and hails from an important state. He has very little experience, though, even in domestic politics. He is personally pro-life but says the right things about favoring pro-choice policies. The Democratic Party is going to be pro-choice, but Obama and Kaine may be able to soften the image created by folks like NARAL. He has seemed fine in interviews.

2. Wesley Clark (Retired General)

He got into trouble and Obama was quick to denounce him a while back, so I'm thinking he's not a likely pick. He is not even expected to be at the convention, but that could be a fake out. If he is the VP, the fact that he is a Clintonite could help unite the party. His background is very impressive. Seriously, check out his Wikipedia page. West Point valedictorian. Rhodes Scholar. Vietnam War hero. His master's degree thesis was a precursor to the Powell Doctrine. Strong leadership as he moved up the ranks in the Army. Supreme Allied Commander during Kosovo. He shores up Obama's military and foreign policy credentials real quick. I'm not totally comfortable with Clark, but there are worse options.

1. Joe Biden (Senator from Delaware)

He was my second choice in the primaries. He has extensive experience working in the Senate where he will preside as VP. He has a lot of foreign policy experience as a result of his activities in the Senate and is eager for a fight on foreign policy. He would be great at attacking McCain and it would be even more powerful coming from Biden as they have worked together and been friends for many years. He would kill anybody in the VP debate, one of the most important qualifications of a VP candidate. He doesn't pull any punches. His "a noun, a verb, and 9/11" comment about Giuliani was genius. I like that he doesn't seem to have much of a filter on what he says, but that is his biggest drawback as a VP candidate. He will say something very controversial between now and November, and it is not Obama's style to take risks. Delaware is almost a Southern state, so Biden would probably be good at connecting with conservative independents. If I had confidence that Biden could avoid causing problems for Obama, he'd be far and away my favorite option. As it is, he's only slightly preferable to the others.

*. Brian Schweitzer (Governor of Montana)

I haven't read anywhere that he is on the short list. He's probably more a part of the Democratic Party's future than its present. But he's an exciting politician. I have only seen a few interviews with him, but he seems intelligent, genuine, and mainstream. The picture is Schweitzer downing a shot to celebrate after personally delivering the liquor license to allow the re-opening of a Montana bar made famous by Kerouac. The Democrats have a better chance of turning the West blue than the South. He could help. On energy policy, he is a big advocate of coal gasification and liquefaction. Oh, and he speaks Arabic! Here's the case for Schweitzer from FiveThirtyEight.com.

Should Obama Sue?

2008-08-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

The Obama Nation, a new book about Obama from the guy behind Unfit for Command, is full of lies.

Usually a public figure will not sue for defamation for 2 reasons: (1) it increases the profile of the defamatory statement; and (2) it is likely to be unsuccessful.

The first reason may not apply here because the book is already a bestseller sure to be used by the conservative noise machine.

The second reason is grounded in the fact that, while an ordinary person need only prove the falsity of the statement, the Supreme Court has held in NY Times v. Sullivan that a public figure has to also prove that the statement was made with actual malice (i.e. knowledge of the falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). Obama has enough money that he need not really care whether he wins so long as the public relations result is to effectively challenge the accuracy of the book. Also, I suspect that actual malice could be proven here. The author has made no secret of the fact that his goal is to destroy Obama.

I would probably conclude that the risk of seeming whiny and overly litigious outweighs the potential benefits of filing suit, but I don't know that Obama should automatically reject the idea of a lawsuit.

Here is Obama's 40 page response.

Obama's Tax Plan

2008-08-14T17:05:00.001-07:00

Obama advisors Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee state the case in his favor in the WSJ:

Overall, Sen. Obama's middle-class tax cuts are larger than his partial rollbacks for families earning over $250,000, making the proposal as a whole a net tax cut and reducing revenues to less than 18.2% of GDP -- the level of taxes that prevailed under President Reagan.

Both candidates for president have proposed tax plans. But they are starkly different in their approaches and their economic impact. Sen. Obama is focused on cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses, and investing in key areas like health, innovation and education. He would do this while cutting unnecessary spending, paying for his proposals and bringing down the budget deficit.

Troop Donations Favor Obama

2008-08-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

OpenSecrets:

According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul.

I don't think this is particularly important, but I'm quite confident that Republicans would find it important if the ratio were reversed.

Effective Government

2008-08-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

Yglesias' response to Ryan's question.

Beinert's Paradox

2008-08-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

Matthew Yglesias' post about "Beinert's Paradox" is clever but wrong. Yglesias, responding to Beinert's suggestion that Obama woo racist Democrats by favoring class-based affirmative action, argues:

But of course on the merits of the issue, abandoning race-based affirmative action makes sense to the extent that we don’t think present-day racism — as opposed to economic issues that may in some cases reflect the legacy of racism — is a substantial problem. But if racism really is a huge barrier to Obama’s electoral prospects, that suggests that present-day racism really is a substantial problem and we should probably maintain some focus on race per se.

I have made a similar argument to Beinert's on this blog. I think Yglesias' counterargument is too simplistic.

Part of the problem is that Beinert seems to overstate the number of Democrats and Democratic leaners out there who will completely refuse to vote for Obama solely because of race, leading Yglesias to characterize racism as a "huge barrier" to Obama. It may be that race is a factor for close to 20% of these voters, but as Beinert points out, these voters would be willing to vote for a black candidate who they believe shares their values, whatever the hell that may mean for each voter. The prejudice is still worrisome, but less racist than it might be in that these voters are ultimately voting based on the content of a candidate's character and not the color of his skin.

The main problem with Yglesias' logic is that he equates opposition to race-based affirmative action with racism. A reasonable fair-minded person could oppose race-based affirmative action. And I don't think it is irrational to worry that an African-American would be too inclined to favor race-based preferences. There also exists some white resentment based opposition to policies such as affirmative action that I can understand as being nonracist even if I disagree with it.

Hot Chicks Dig Obama

2008-08-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

Some are accusing McCain of exploiting fears of miscegenation with his new ad:

I'm thinking Obama really shouldn't have said this:

Voter Fraud Fraud

2008-08-13T19:39:00.001-07:00

Ohio is trying to make it easier to vote with election day registration. Of course, the Republicans are threatening to prevent more people from being engaged in the process.

Between their continuous attempts to mislead the public and their constant efforts to make it more difficult to vote, Republicans are showing that they have no respect for democracy. They don't want us to vote. If we do jump through the hoops and get to the polls, they want us to exercise our right based on misinformation.

I.O.U.S.A.

2008-08-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

Deficit spending only a Republican could get away with:

Edwards

2008-08-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

I don't care that he cheated on his wife. That's between John and Elizabeth.

I am pissed that he pursued the Democratic nomination knowing this potential scandal was out there. Can you imagine if he were the presumptive nominee today? Or worse, if this came out after the convention nominated him? It would be total disaster.

Even if he had managed to get into the White House before this story broke (which I can't imagine given the increased scrutiny on the nominee), it would have severely weakened him and his chances of enacting the policies he supposedly believes so strongly in.

The affair was very reckless for him personally. The subsequent candidacy jeopardized his entire party. Besides being a despicable husband, he is a selfish narcissistic jerk.

I write this as someone who strongly supported Edwards in 2004.

Obama Returns Fire

2008-08-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

A very powerful ad airing on radio in Ohio:

Good for Barack. They need to get this thing on TV there.

The McCain campaign is clearly freaked out by it.

McCain's Respectful Campaign

2008-08-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

McCain is looking less and less like the candidate of 2000 and becoming more indistinguishable from Bush.

His latest TV ad, "Painful", blatantly lies about Obama on taxes:

Here's that darn chart again:

Newsweek:

McCain released three new ads with multiple false and misleading claims about Obama's tax proposals.

A TV spot claims Obama once voted for a tax increase "on people making just $42,000 a year." That's true for a single taxpayer, who would have seen a tax increase of $15 for the year – if the measure had been enacted. But the ad shows a woman with two children, and as a single mother, she would not have been affected unless she made more than $62,150. The increase that Obama once supported as part of a Democratic budget bill is not part of his current tax plan anyway.

A Spanish-language radio ad claims the measure Obama supported would have raised taxes on "families" making $42,000, which is simply false. Even a single mother with one child would have been able to make $58,650 without being affected. A family of four with income up to $90,000 would not have been affected.

The TV ad claims in a graphic that Obama would "raise taxes on middle class." In fact, Obama's plan promises cuts for middle-income taxpayers and would increase rates only for persons with family incomes above $250,000 or with individual incomes above $200,000.

The radio ad claims Obama would increase taxes "on the sale of your home." In fact, home-sale profits of up to $500,000 per couple would continue to be exempt from capital gains taxes. Very few sales would see an increase under Obama's proposal to raise the capital gains rate.

A second radio ad, in English, says, "Obama has a history of raising taxes" on middle-class Americans. But that's false. It refers to a vote that did not actually result in a tax increase and could not have done so.

These ads continue what's become a pattern of misrepresentation by the McCain campaign about his opponent's tax proposals.

ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE!!!!

2008-08-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

Obama as the Antichrist

2008-08-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

As ridiculous as it sounds, there is real fear of this among some, and McCain's "The One" ad may be deliberately exploiting that fear:

As the ad begins, the words "It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: "We Are God") and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we've been waiting for."

The visual images in the ad, which Davis says has been viewed even more than McCain's "Celeb" ad linking Obama to the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, also seem to evoke the cover art of several Left Behind books. But they're not the cartoonish images of clouds parting and shining light upon Obama that might be expected in an ad spoofing him as a messiah. Instead, the screen displays a sinister orange light surrounded by darkness and later the faint image of a staircase leading up to heaven.

Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign's red-white-and-blue "O" logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

The Ad:

In Case You Were Confused

2008-08-07T18:44:00.000-07:00

Toby Keith is a Democrat opposed to the Iraq War. Yeah, that Toby Keith:

Keith still bristles at how the song painted him as a gung-ho right-winger when he's a lifelong Democrat. It also associated him with a war he never supported.

CBS News:

"When the Iraq war started, I was a little mad because we didn't finish what we started in Afghanistan," he said. "Our troops had to move on into Iraq. Our government asked them to go do it for whatever reason. We won't know for probably 0 or 30 years whether it was the right thing to do or not."

Although Keith has supported President George W. Bush, he says he is not a conservative.

"It's amazing how many Republicans call me for support. And then they go, 'You're a Republican right?' And you go, 'Well I'm actually a lifetime Democrat,'" he said. "And then they go, 'Oh, sorry.' And the Democrats want so bad — the real liberals really want to hate me. And then they go, 'I still hate you, but I can't believe you're a Democrat.' So I'm not a real political guy. I'm a very patriotic guy."

I don't know how I could ever have been mistaken.

Obama Does the Pledge of Allegiance

2008-08-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

Obama responds to a heckler and refutes a rumor at the same time with some great theater:

Here's more of the heckler, who seems unhinged:

His dad fought in World War II!

ExxonMcCain

2008-08-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

It's silly, but no sillier than a lot of the useless garbage coming fron the Republicans (e.g., tire gauges).

McCain Goes Nuclear

2008-08-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

McCain toured a nuclear power plant today:

Senator John McCain toured a nuclear power plant in Michigan on Tuesday to highlight his support for the construction of 45 new nuclear power generators by 2030, a position that he said distinguished him from his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama.

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, portrayed his support of nuclear energy as part of an “all-of-the-above approach” to addressing the nation’s energy needs at a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline. He called it “safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation and in our mission to eliminate over time our dependence on foreign oil."

It's important to point out that Obama agrees that nuclear power should be considered.

I've said before that I think talking about nuclear power as a solution to dependence on oil is simply an excuse to blame the left. The implication is that we wouldn't be in this mess if we could get rid of those darn environmentalists who prevent nuclear power plants.

I am not opposed to nuclear power, but it will not reduce oil prices. Oil is primarily used to make goods and fuels that would not be replaced by nuclear power. Yes, if everyone drove electric cars nuclear power may be part of the electricity supply to charge those cars. But the combination of off-peak charging and coal power could allow us to charge those cars without nuclear power.

I think a big reason for nuclear power's popularity is that many people don't understand off-peak electricity generation capacity. Electric companies must constantly be able to provide power to you so that when you flip the switch, the light comes on immediately. During the day, we use electricity to run our offices and factories. During the evening, while everyone has the lights on and is running the TV, DVD player, cable box, dishwasher, clothes dryer, computer, etc., the power companies have to be able to meet the demand during those peak hours. The problem is you can't store electricity during off-peak hours to meet peak demand. The companies have to buy enough electricity generation capacity to meet maximum energy usage, but during the night this electricity generation capacity is essentially wasted while we sleep. The fact that plug-in electric cars would normally be charging at night allows us to finally use this off-peak capacity. We could replace most gas-powered cars with electric cars without increasing our electricity infrastructure at all. And while nuclear power is better than other power plants in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, our current electricity grid is better than the internal combustion engine on that front. Replacing the internal combustion engine with a battery charged by electricity currently reduces grenhouse gas emissions by 40%.

In the article, McCain describes his energy policy as "all of the above." But offshore oil drilling shouldn't even be considered part of a multi-pronged effort to deal with the energy crisis because it is actually counterproductive for several reasons: (1) billions of dollars invested in offshore drilling is money that could be invested in alternative energy; (2) by increasing the profit margins of oil, we encourage continued investment in oil by energy companies; and (3) to the extent that it reduces prices, and I don't think that it will, it disincentivizes the use of alternative energy. Remember, the purported benefits of offshore drilling won't be seen for a decade. This isn't a temporary solution to ease the burden on consumers. It is a long-term commitment to oil.

UPDATE:

Pride in Being Ignorant

2008-08-05T15:50:00.001-07:00

Dissembler in Chief

2008-08-05T10:00:00.001-07:00

Politico has read Ron Suskind's new book:

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.
Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”

Politico has more interesting stuff about the workings of the White House and the deliberate use of Cheney to preserve willful ignorance on Bush's part as to the illegal actions of his administration.

We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For

2008-08-04T04:11:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan explains what the line really means:

But I think some have missed a nuance. The phrase is actually a self-indictment as well as a self-congratulation. The point is surely that we shouldn't wait for someone else to save us, or lift us up, or fix our problems or address our fate. We are the only ones who can do this. And we're responsible for our own failure. The sentence is actually a criticism of Obama's own supporters.

More from McCain's Respectful Campaign

2008-08-04T03:10:00.000-07:00

This is just silly.

The "symbol" quote is a gross misrepresentation, and the McCain campaign has to know it.

I'm sure this is doing a lot to contribute to the debate over energy policy, economic growth, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, education, global warming, deficit spending, entitlements, etc.

Next thing you know, Obama will be promising world peace:

Boy, what a jackass that guy was!

Who Benefits from a Consensus for Withdrawal?

2008-08-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

Michael Crowley says McCain because it allows him to shift the debate from his unpopular advocacy of a long-term stay to who will be better at wrapping up.

Polling shows that McCain is basically even with Obama on Iraq. On other foreign policy issues, McCain leads by a wide margin. On practically every other issue, such as economic policy, Obama leads. Therefore, Iraq is a drag on McCain's only strength. If McCain can get Iraq out of the way, he has a cleaner shot at Obama on foreign policy.

The McCains - Just Regular Folks II

2008-08-03T18:57:00.001-07:00

McCain has $520 loafers that he wears everywhere. I'm sure an elitist like Obama has several pairs of $520 loafers.

Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting point that the super-wealthy McCains probably stand to gain millions from his tax cuts for the wealthy. I wouldn't accuse McCain of self-dealing, but I think it's legitimate to ask whether McCain really understands the financial circumstances of many in Middle America.

Who's more like Britney?

2008-08-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

In a recent ad McCain compares Obama to Britney and Paris in an essentially substance free attempt to what exactly? I'm not sure.

However:

A full vote? Really?

2008-08-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

I'm your fan. I'm going to vote for you. I've even gone so far as to say I think you might be a real departure from politics as usual. Then this? Of course you want a full vote when you're the only nominee left.

Executive Immunity

2008-07-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

Finally, a court stands up to the Bush Administration and their legal arguments that are completely unsupported by any precedent.

Gulf of Tonkin II?

2008-07-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

If true, this is outrageous. Think Progress:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

Black People Show Me Love When I'm Up on the Block

2008-07-30T19:54:00.000-07:00

Ludacris' music video on Obama:

Obama says Ludacris should be ashamed of the lyrics. They seem pretty tame to me.

Terrorists as Criminals

2008-07-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

Yglesias cites a new Pentagon-funded study in defense of Kerry.

Media Cowardice

2008-07-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

The headline - Analysis: Obama, McCain both have lobbyist ties - and tone of this CNN article imply that McCain and Obama are equally influenced by lobbyists. But I'd say this is a real difference:

During this campaign, lobbyists and trade groups donated $181,000 to McCain, while Obama received $6,000, according to the New York Times.

The article goes on to explain that those numbers "only include registered lobbyists and trade groups -- not big companies that could have lobbyist ties." Well yes, but there's an important difference between a collection of individuals who happen to work for a large company and a person who is explicitly paid to represent companies, industries, or other groups on their behalf with regard to legislation and other government policy.

The right has worked the refs so well that the media is completely afraid to call 'em like they see 'em. Instead, they lead the public to believe the Nader line that both parties are exactly the same when there is an objective difference.

Politicizing Wounded Soldiers

2008-07-28T19:10:00.000-07:00

Obama canceled a visit to wounded troops for fear of politicizing the troops, and then his cancellation of the visit was politicized by McCain in a dishonest ad. FactCheck:

The Obama campaign canceled the visit with wounded troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, Obama says, when he learned that the Pentagon would not allow him to bring along a retired Air Force major general who is serving as a foreign policy adviser to the campaign. Obama says that "triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political."

Screw McCain.

Tennessee Church Shooter

2008-07-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

Some people are just crazy, but maybe we ought to consider the possibility that demonizing political opponents has consequences:

Adkisson targeted the church, [Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still] wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."
...
Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

Opposite of a Sound Counterinsurgency

2008-07-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

Daniel Larison's takeaway from a post at The American Prospect:

Lost in the frequent back-and-forth over whether John McCain understands what the “surge” was or whether he knows when the Anbar Awakening happened (answers: apparently not and no) is the more basic point, made here by Matthew Duss, that the Anbar model has succeeded for the time being by pursuing the opposite of a sound counterinsurgency...

Corrupt Idiots

2008-07-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

WaPo:

Former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely broke the law by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs as immigration judges and line prosecutors, according to an inspector general's report released today.

Goodling was part of an effort to give a large number of highly sought-after Justice Department jobs to law school grads from her alma mater, Pat Robertson's bottom-tier Regent University:

The infiltration by mediocre graduates of a poorly rated faith-based law school into key positions in the Department of Justice is just plain scary. The New Republic website, referring to the Goodling affair, observed with uncharacteristic understatement: “That a recent graduate of one of the worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the [Department of Justice].”

Reduced Violence in Iraq

2008-07-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

To borrow from Obama, we've gone from an unacceptable level of violence up to a horrifying level of violence and now back down to an unacceptable level of violence. That's not a tremendous accomplishment. Yglesias:

If you look back to the summer of 2005, you'll see that few people at the time regarded conditions in Iraq as "good" or even acceptable. And yet things got so much worse over the course of 2006 and early 2007, that improvement in 2008 to bring us back to the kind of level of violence we had three years ago -- except with more walled-off and ethnically cleansed neighborhoods in place -- is now represented as a great triumph. James Vega has a forceful post up at The Democratic Strategist reminding us of how perverse this is.

And then you get things like today's newspaper headline "Bomb Attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk Kill Dozens". The essence of the "success" of the surge is that, as in 2004 and 2005, you only sometimes read about that kind of thing, whereas at its worst you read about it frequently. That's not nothing, but people should understand that even in its "better" state Iraq is very much a shattered society featuring an unenviable quality of life.

Patriotism Differs Between Conservatives and Liberals

2008-07-28T04:29:00.000-07:00

This article by Peter Beinart is a pretty good attempt at describing the difference:

What both campaigns understand is that American patriotism wears two faces: a patriotism of affirmation, which appeals more to conservatives, and a patriotism of dissent, particularly cherished by liberals. Both brands are precious, and both are dangerous. And in this campaign, the candidate who embodies the best of both will probably win.

I agree that I tend to think dissent more patriotic than affirmation. However, while Beinart tries to be very evenhanded, I don't agree with some of the other characterizations of liberal patriotism.

A liberal patriot is fully capable of recognizing past American greatness, but there is also something conservative about not needing that belief in American greatness to be patriotic. My country doesn't have to earn my patriotism by being perfect or sufficiently great.

And liberal patriotism can distinguish Americans from others with the same values and American interests from foreign interests. There is value in moral duty to your community.

Here are the primary sources of my patriotism:

American ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and expressed by others throughout the years.
Past American social, economic, and military accomplishments.
My family and friends are Americans, and the future of myself and my family depends upon American success.

The second and third sources on the list may be classified as conservative patriotism by Beinart, but they are perfectly compatible with liberal patriotism.

Another False Attack Ad from McCain

2008-07-27T19:29:00.001-07:00

I had hoped for an honest and honorable campaign from McCain. I guess knowing he's going to lose is making him desperate. FactCheck.org:

The McCain campaign is running a TV ad attacking Obama with statements that are literally true but paint an incomplete picture.
It says he "voted against funding our troops." He did – exactly once. Obama cast at least 10 votes for war-funding bills before voting against one last year, after Bush vetoed a version that contained a date for withdrawal from Iraq.
It says he "hasn't been to Iraq for years." He was headed there at the time the ad was released, however, and had been there in 2006.
It says he "never held a single hearing on Afghanistan." It was the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee, not Obama's subcommittee, that had the hearings on this global hot spot, and Obama attended one of those. Over the same time period, McCain himself attended none of the Afghanistan hearings held by the Armed Services Committee on which he serves.

Study: Media Tougher on Obama

2008-07-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

James Rainey at the Los Angeles Times:

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.

You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.

During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

Lest you think the researchers have a liberal bias, the article noted that Lichter is a former Fox News contributor whose past findings have been touted by conservatives:

It might be tempting to discount the latest findings by Lichter's researchers. But this guy is anything but a liberal toady.

In 2006, conservative cable showmen Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly had Lichter, a onetime Fox News contributor, on their programs. They heralded his findings in the congressional midterm election: that the networks were giving far more positive coverage to the Democrats.

Disbar Alberto Gonzales

2008-07-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Besides being a bad lawyer, he has broken the law and advised his client to break the law. He has been involved in most of the major abuses of power of the Bush Administration, as shown by this Slate diagram (follow the link for the interactive diagram):

Time for a Surge in North Fulton County

2008-07-26T08:04:00.001-07:00

The AJC reports on car bombs in Milton:

In fact, there were six incidents involving Molotov cocktails -- incendiary devices made of gasoline-filled bottles plugged with rags -- starting at 10:30 p.m. Thursday until 2:30 a.m. Friday. Three cars were heavily damaged. Two driveways were set on fire.
Another device was found that caused no damage, according to Milton authorities. There were no injuries and no damage to homes.

What If We Had Left Iraq?

2008-07-24T02:38:00.000-07:00

Matthew Yglesias suggests that 2005 would have been the perfect time to leave Iraq:

Instead, the reason given for why we had to stay in Iraq was that if we left Iraq there would be civil war, sectarian violence, and ethnic cleansing. Since we know all of that happened anyway it seems reasonable to second guess the decision-making that led us to stay.

Deaths per day in Iraq from suicide attacks and vehicle bombs by year:

Deaths per day in Iraq from gunfire and executions by year:

Of course, it can be argued that these violence levels would have been even worse without the U.S. presence, but it's hardly clear that staying through 2006 and 2007 accomplished our goals.

Global Warming and the Surge

2008-07-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

On Global Warming, the political right constantly reminds us that correlation isn't causation. When you present evidence of rising temperatures and more greenhouse gases as proof of anthropogenic climate change, the right raises the possible influence of other factors such as solar variation and climate cycles. The left insists that rising temperatures occur in conjunction with greenhouse gases because both are related.

On the Surge, the political right ignores other possible factors and attributes the recent drop in violence to a greater troop presence solely because both happened at the same time. Here, the distinction between correlation and causation is practically nonexistent on the right. The left, on the other hand, notes the Sunni Awakening, the Sadr cease-fire, and other internal forces in Iraq.

I'm not using this comparison to prove that either side is right or wrong on either issue. I just think it's sort of interesting.

CBS Covers-Up McCain Error

2008-07-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

Your liberal media at work:

The Irrelevance of Gaffes

2008-07-22T20:32:00.000-07:00

If Obama made these gaffes, the right would claim that they are evidence of inexperience.

However, nobody suggests that these gaffes are evidence of McCain's lack of experience because we don't question his experience. They also are not evidence of McCain's age.

McCain's gaffes are evidence of the fact that such gaffes are completely irrelevant to evaluating a candidate's preparedness for office.

McCain's Despicable Attack

2008-07-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

McCain: "I had the courage and judgment to say that I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Sen. Obama would rather lose the war in order to win a political campaign."

This is what class looks like, McCain:

Despite differences with his Republican counterpart, Obama said that he and McCain both want to see success in Iraq.

"John McCain doesn't want to see us take a wrong strategy when it comes to fighting the war on terror," he said. "I think John McCain wants to see America safe, just like I do. And so, I respect his best judgments in many of these issues, but I think it's important to recognize that, on the majority of issues that we've faced in terms of foreign policy, not just over the past four years, but over the past six, seven years, that my batting average is pretty darn good."

Surge Fraud

2008-07-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

I feel like I am stepping in front of an avalanche of Republican triumphalism here, but I have to dissent from the idea that the Surge has been a success.

Obama is being hammered by the right for refusing to acknowledge the success of the Surge, which they accept as an irrefutable truth. But I don't think the Surge has been such an undeniable success.

First, let's take a look back at Obama's judgment in late 2006 given what he knew then. Obama was highly critical of the Surge but stated that additional troops could help suppress the violence while failing to solve its root causes. We should also remember that, at the time the Surge was proposed, Rumsfeld had only recently announced his resignation and had not yet been replaced. Gates became Secretary of Defense in December of 2006 and Petraeus did not become the top commander in Iraq until January of 2007. Americans had not only lost patience with the war, they had lost confidence in the Bush Administration. There was no indication at the time the Surge was proposed that the Pentagon would dramatically overhaul its strategy and tactics in Iraq in conjunction with the Surge.

Second, Iraq cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Continued investment in Iraq comes at great cost, and Obama has consistently maintained that Iraq was a distraction from the more important war in Afghanistan.

On the Surge itself, there are two broad reasons to doubt its success: (1) the purported relationship between the Surge and reduced violence is speculative, at best; and (2) there is no evidence that the Surge has resulted in political progress.

Reduced Violence

In addition to the Surge, candidates for credit for reduced violence are the Baghdad Wall, the Sunni Awakening, strengthened Iraqi Security Forces, and the completion of ethnic cleansing.

While the Surge and those other factors may have contributed, I would suggest that the most likely reason for the reduction in violence in Iraq is the cease-fire called for by Shia nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on August 30, 2007. Note that date: August 30, 2007. Here is a chart showing the number of violent deaths in Iraq from January 2006 through December 2007:

Here is the timeline for the Surge:

January 10, 2007: Troop level at 132,000 when Bush announces surge.
March 20, 2007: Troop level reaches 152,000 (approx. half of surge troops have arrived).
June 15, 2007: Troop level reaches 160,000 and surge operations commence. "All the forces initially identified as part of the surge have completed their strategic movements into theatre in Iraq."
August 2007: Surge troops expected to be operating at full capacity.
September 2007: Troop level peaks at 168,000. Surge results disappointing.

While the drop in violence followed the Surge, it coincided more with the Sadr cease-fire. Additional troops from January to June appeared to have no impact. In the summer, with all Surge troops in Iraq and the Surge reaching full strength, violence remained at previous levels. In September, after the call for cease-fire by Sadr, the violence dropped dramatically.

Political Progress

As stated above, Obama was concerned that political progress would not be advanced by the Surge. He was probably wrong in stating that the Surge would hinder political progress, but there is no evidence that the Surge is responsible for political progress. Even if there has been substantial political progress, and the Iraq Study Group says there has not been, the political progress is not necessarily a result of the Surge.

Impeachment

2008-07-22T16:07:00.000-07:00

Kucinich is continuing in his efforts to impeach Bush and getting no cooperation from the House Democratic leadership.

While I agree with the Democrats' decision not to impeach, I am going on record as saying that impeachment of Bush would not be inappropriate. Bush's actions (e.g., torture, trumped up case for Iraq, politicization of the Justice Department, violations of civil liberties, evasion of Congressional oversight; executive signing statements; Valerie Plame) are far worse than Clinton's and probably worse than Watergate.

However, I tend to think that impeachment is probably outdated. In addition to facing re-election after four years, presidents are now limited to two terms. The country can survive four to eight years of all but the most egregious abuses. The divisiveness and disruption of impeachment proceedings probably outweighs the potential benefit.

With Clinton, and to a certain extent with Bush, the impeachment movement is partially based upon politics and frustration with failure to defeat the President upon re-election. As I said, there are grounds for impeachment, but at this point the only purpose of impeachment would be to try to override the election and embarrass the President. That doesn't justify the national trauma of impeachment.

The Conservative Realism of Obama's Foreign Policy

2008-07-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Neoconservatism has its roots in the left. Its signature foreign policy event - the invasion in Iraq - is grounded in liberalism, not conservatism. The idea that you can quickly and easily remake the world in America's image and spread freedom and democracy is the sort of enormously idealistic and interventionist thinking that you would expect from a "bleeding-heart liberal". Obama favors the traditional conservatism most recently exemplified by George H. W. Bush. Fareed Zakaria:

Obama talks admiringly of men like Dean Acheson, George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, all of whom were imbued with a sense of the limits of idealism and American power to transform the world. "In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative," wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in her profile of him for The New Yorker. "There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It's not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good."

Adopting Obama's Foreign Policy

2008-07-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Hilzoy has a great post showing how Obama's positions on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are gaining support.

On Afghanistan, McCain has said in the past that Iraq is the focus in the war on terror and that any additional troops in Afghanistan should come from NATO, not the U.S. Recently, he has copied Obama's call for three additional brigades in Afghanistan, saying only that he would be open to the additional troops coming from NATO.

On Iran, Bush is now negotiating with the second coming of Hitler.

On Iraq, McCain has claimed that Obama is wrong because he does not know the facts on the ground, but now Maliki, the guy who really knows the facts on the ground, agrees with the 16-month timetable (the weak backtrack under pressure from Bush notwithstanding). Hilzoy:

By two days ago, McCain was left with basically two messages: (a) timetables would be a disaster, and Obama's embrace of them just shows how naive he is; and (b) McCain got the surge right and Obama got it wrong. It's a pretty weak foundation for a candidacy.
It was against this backdrop that Maliki comes out in favor of Obama's proposal to withdraw combat troops from Iraq in 16 months (though he is careful not to endorse Obama.) McCain has to call Obama naive on Iraq. But that is a lot harder to do if Maliki agrees with Obama. It's hard to say that Maliki is insufficiently familiar with the facts on the ground. It's hard to call him naive. And whatever you think of Maliki's motives, it's also a lot more complicated to make the case that he doesn't know or care what's best for his country. In Presidential elections, uncomplicated cases are key. "Obama has only been in the Senate for three years; he doesn't have the experience to get Iraq right" is an uncomplicated case. There is no such uncomplicated explanation for Maliki's being wrong.
***
Worse, lot of the more obvious ways of responding to Maliki's statement are fraught with danger for McCain. Responding that Maliki either doesn't know what he's talking about or is somehow untrustworthy and bad directly undercuts our reasons for staying in Iraq. We are there in support of the Maliki government, which we are hoping will become capable of running the country without our presence. The more ignorant, untrustworthy, or otherwise bad Maliki is, the less likely it is that he will succeed, and the less clear it is why we should try to help him.
Saying, as McCain has, that Maliki only supports a timetable for political reasons is almost as bad, since it rather obviously implies that the Iraqi people really want us to leave. (As, in fact, they do.) Again, this raises the question: what on earth are we doing there? If the Iraqi people want us out, and their Prime Minister is asking for timetables, why not just take 'yes' for an answer?
If the Iraqi people want us out, we have two choices. First, we leave. As McCain said four years ago, "I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people." McCain does not seem to have seriously considered this option, which would deprive him of yet another distinction between himself and Obama.
Second, we continue to occupy Iraq whether the Iraqi people and their government want us to or not. We have not paid much attention to the wishes of the Iraqi people for some time now -- in fact, I'm always struck, listening to Bush and McCain, by the way in which they consistently describe the question how long we stay in Iraq as one to be answered solely by them, in consultation with the commanders on the ground, as though Iraq's government and its people had no say in the matter at all.
This has, of course, always been true. This administration has never cared much about what the Iraqi people think. But Maliki's comments might make it clearer to the American people that it's not enough to ask whether a candidate supports staying in Iraq; you need to ask whether he supports staying in Iraq even if the Iraqi government asks us to leave. Asking McCain that question would force him to chose between maintaining our presence in Iraq and maintaining the idea that that presence has something to do with helping the Iraqi people.
Moreover, explaining why it would be OK to override the wishes of the Iraqi government presents yet another problem for McCain. The obvious default position is that when a country's government asks us to withdraw our troops, we should do so. To say that that's not true in a given case, like Iraq, you need to provide some sort of explanation. Part of that explanation would normally be: the government is unrepresentative or dysfunctional or awful in some way, and so its wishes do not carry the weight they would in, say, Switzerland.
But saying something like that about the Iraqi government -- that it doesn't really speak for the Iraqi people, or isn't capable of making its own decisions about Iraqi territorial integrity -- would undercut McCain's claims about progress in Iraq. Again, McCain would have to choose: does he say that Iraq's government has made some real political progress, and is capable of making its own decisions? In that case, he should accept its wishes. Does he say that he can disregard its requests on matters of Iraqi sovereignty? In that case, he undercuts a lot of his claims that the surge has enabled real and lasting progress in Iraq.
As I see it, Maliki's statement is all upside for Obama. It neither poses risks for him nor presents him with problems. But it's a minefield for McCain. And this will, I think, become clearer as time goes on, when people begin to ask him these sorts of questions.

Blacks Less Hardworking, Intelligent, Trustworthy

2008-07-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

I know I post about racism a lot. I do think it is a very minor factor in modern society, but I think we take too much comfort in the false idea that it has been sufficiently eliminated or stigmatized.

I frequently encounter whites who harbor prejudices against racial minorities but would certainly befriend, hire, or vote for individual blacks as long as that black person does not exhibit the characteristics found in the racial stereotypes. Many even take a certain pride in their racial open-mindedness when they find an acceptable black individual. Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and Bill Cosby are a few of the more famous blacks that have distinguished themselves from their race. I think Obama has the potential to do this (the frequent talk about personal responsibility is key).

That is the reason why I don't consider race to be a major factor in the success of African Americans despite these poll results referenced in the title above:

Respondents were given “a seven-point scale on which the characteristics of the people in a group can be rated.” Whites, blacks, Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans were to be rated in terms of how hardworking, intelligent, and trustworthy they are. Any score of 1, 2 or 3 means the respondent thinks - more or less - that most members of the various groups are hardworking, intelligent, and trustworthy. Here are the results (in terms of the percentage of respondents saying 1, 2, or 3) for whites, blacks, and Hispanics:

Hardworking
Whites - 53.9%
Blacks - 28.1%
Hispanics - 48.5%

Intelligent
Whites - 58.3%
Blacks - 35.4%
Hispanics - 33.5%

Trustworthy
Whites - 49.2%
Blacks - 29.6%
Hispanics - 32.3%

One interesting result that you see if you follow the link is that blacks are slightly inclined to say that blacks are less hardworking and intelligent than whites.

While whites are readily prepared to distinguish individual blacks from the stereotypes, it's hard to imagine that these prejudices don't have some effect on blacks in our society.

I also think that a large amount of the hostility to social welfare programs is tied to the idea that blacks receive a disproportionate amount of the benefits and that they receive the benefits because of the characteristics in the stereotypes. This chart from the book Why Americans Hate Welfare (p. 69), using the same scale as the poll linked to above, shows that support for welfare spending decreases the more a respondent views blacks as lazy:

Negative Externalities and Energy Policy

2008-07-17T19:11:00.000-07:00

Our co-blogger has asked why the government needs to be involved in an energy solution. I have pointed out negative externalities in comments on this blog here and here. Another thing to consider is the impact that government policy has on the choices that we make as energy consumers:

Americans can optimize their personal consumption decisions all day long, but without a policy in place to internalize social costs, they’ll still end up creating costly traffic jams and devastating climate change.

Along these same lines, I'm constantly annoyed that people insist that public transportation pay for itself. Gas taxes and vehicle taxes go a long way in paying for roads, but we also heavily subsidize the use of oil by spending income and sales taxes on roads. In addition, local governments provide services such as sewer, water, fire protection, schools, etc., to outlying suburbs. It is more expensive to provide these services over a larger geographic area, so local taxpayers subsidize the use of oil through local taxes.

A lot of people live in suburbs in part because it is cheaper. You can get more house and more land for less money. That wouldn't be the case if the costs of our automobile culture were not so hidden from individuals.

I'm not suggesting that we all be required to live in urban areas. I commute over 20 miles each day, love my car, and enjoy my few acres in the middle of nowhere. But aligning individual costs more with social costs makes sense.

Democratic President = Economic Growth

2008-07-15T22:42:00.001-07:00

I don't know the explanation, or if there is a satisfying one given the variety of factors and the potential impact of Congress, and I am willing to concede the possibility that Democrats are occasionally reaping the benefits of Republican policies (though I highly doubt it), but the numbers are clear enough to raise important questions:

[Follow the link for more charts.]

* Even Carter outperforms every Republican except for Nixon's first term.

Is Obama Another Carter or Reagan?

2008-07-15T22:31:00.001-07:00

Many conservatives like to paint Obama as another Carter on foreign policy. Eli Lake, noting that Obama advisers Richard Clarke and Rand Beers are influenced by the Reagan Doctrine, says Reagan is the better comparison:

Clarke and Beers in effect were drawing on a time-honored tradition of foreign policy that goes back to the Gurkhas: finding proxies to fight an enemy. It was a tradition for America that found its apotheosis in the Reagan Doctrine of the 1980s, which was defined by Charles Krauthammer as "unashamed American support for anti-Communist revolution," regardless of whether or not such support respected the sovereignty of communist states. It was a policy that manifested itself in U.S. support for the Nicaraguan Contras, Jonas Savimbi's insurgency in Angola, and the Afghan mujahedin. In a sense, the Reagan doctrine was a full-throated rejection of the Carter era. It was Kirkpatrick's Commentary essay put into practice. So here we arrive at the central irony of the charge that Obama will revive Carterism: The two most important architects of his counterterrorism policy came of age at the height of the Reagan Doctrine, and that thinking continues to inform their strategy.

Obama's Latest on Foreign Policy

2008-07-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

An op-ed on Iraq in the New York Times:

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

And a speech on his overall national security strategy with a look back at the missed opportunities of the past eight years:

Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11.

We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan.

We could have secured loose nuclear materials around the world, and updated a 20th century non-proliferation framework to meet the challenges of the 21st.

We could have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in alternative sources of energy to grow our economy, save our planet, and end the tyranny of oil.

We could have strengthened old alliances, formed new partnerships, and renewed international institutions to advance peace and prosperity.

We could have called on a new generation to step into the strong currents of history, and to serve their country as troops and teachers, Peace Corps volunteers and police officers.

We could have secured our homeland—investing in sophisticated new protection for our ports, our trains and our power plants.

We could have rebuilt our roads and bridges, laid down new rail and broadband and electricity systems, and made college affordable for every American to strengthen our ability to compete.

We could have done that.

Instead, we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats – all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Is it possible to have a liberal media bias...

2008-07-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

...if the ubiquitous AP is rooting on the Republicans?

In a Strange Way This is Cool

2008-07-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

I like the fact that both wacko Presidential candidates are from Georgia.

Energy Solution Questions

2008-07-13T15:42:00.000-07:00

1. Why does the government need to be involved in this anyway?

2. If it's so important that we do this why don't we cut all programs a certain amount to pay for it?

3. Why do we need new taxes to pay for this?

The FDIC what?

2008-07-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

Isn't necessary because of the free market Ryan?

What about when banks COLLAPSE?

The Media's Love of McCain

2008-07-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

Max Bergmann at the Huffington Post says the events of this week should have mortally wounded McCain's campaign:

This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain's efforts to become the next president of the United States. But you wouldn't know it if you watched any of the mainstream media outlets or followed political reporting in the major newspapers.

During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him.

John Cole adds to the list.

Appreciating Regulation

2008-07-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

The Bush Administration is reportedly considering a takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. E.J. Dionne sees a dramatic shift in favor of regulation and income equality:

The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades.
Since the Reagan years, free-market cliches have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing.
You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn't matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to "grow the pie" is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is "protectionism."
The old script is in rewrite.

Dionne went on to quote Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke:

Bernanke said the Fed needed more authority to get inside "the structure and workings of financial markets" because "recent experience has clearly illustrated the importance, for the purpose of promoting financial stability, of having detailed information about money markets and the activities of borrowers and lenders in those markets." Sure sounds like Big Government to me.

Disclosure requirements are a relatively unobtrusive way to maintain some oversight in the market.

Excess and Language

2008-07-10T16:56:00.001-07:00

Another blog I enjoy. He usually talks about pop-culture but today he made some good points about Costco and learning Spanish.

Uh Oh!

2008-07-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

Maybe we shouldn't build all those nuclear power plants I want.

Is Obama too Old to be President?

2008-07-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

A little fun on another boring July campaign day.

And this.

Obama Denies Shift to Center

2008-07-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Obama in Powder Springs, Georgia, as reported by the New York Times' The Caucus:

“I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive and put me squarely in the Democratic camp,” he said. But, he noted, he does not believe that the active hand of government is a replacement, say, for parental responsibility in education.

“I believe in personal responsibility, I also believe in faith,” he said. “That’s not something new; I’ve been talking about that for years. So the notion that this is me trying to look” – he waves his hands around his head – “centrist is not true.”

Several months ago, I was constantly refuting attempts by my conservative friends to paint Obama as some sort of radical left-wing liberal. I argued that he is liberal but exhibits a very centrist pragmatism in his positions, traditional values in his approach to things like personal responsibility, and a careful conservative incrementalism. He may be more liberal than Gore or Kerry, but after the last eight years, liberal positions are more mainstream. My arguments were dismissed.

Now, I find myself arguing to those same conservatives that Obama has not significantly shifted to the center. That he has been saying the same things all along. Again, my arguments are being dismissed. He is a flip-flopper, they say. Now they are eager to hear every hint of centrism that they disregarded before.

Surely you can understand my frustration.

The Costs of Sounding "Black"

2008-07-08T21:29:00.001-07:00

There is more evidence that, while overt racism is no longer a major issue, racial prejudices still exist. Sounding black has a negative impact on wages. Blacks who do not sound black earn the same amount as whites. Steven Levitt:

Fascinating new research by my University of Chicago colleague, Jeffrey Grogger, compares the wages of people who “sound black” when they talk to those who do not.

His main finding: blacks who “sound black” earn salaries that are 10 percent lower than blacks who do not “sound black,” even after controlling for measures of intelligence, experience in the work force, and other factors that influence how much people earn. (For what it is worth, whites who “sound black” earn 6 percent lower than other whites.)

I also found support here for my theory (not yet discussed here) that African-Americans and rural Southern whites have a lot more in common than either side would like to admit. The study found that sounding southern is almost as bad for your wages as sounding black.