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.

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?

False Equivalency

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...

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

Should Obama Sue?

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.