GA Congressman is a Moron

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

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

"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

Literally.

Who's a socialist?

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

Really?

Economic Events and the McCain Campaign

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

halloween comes early...

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

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?

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

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

Voting for Bush's Third Term

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bias Canard

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

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.