Electile Anxiety Disorder

May 15th, 2008

I saw a bizarre thing yesterday: CNN pundits … at least one reputable reporter … going 3 against 1, trying to convince that John McCain was an environmentalist, a major greeny, almost liberal in his outlook … and a guy who will appeal to the newly-green evangelical movement. Paul Begala minced no words, bless him — I don’t remember his exact comment but he indicated Mac was a fraud; straight up. He cited the NRDC rating for conservation votes, giving John 20-some percent, as opposed to Obama’s 80-some. It seems that because McCain is not a Pub-clone, one of those never-go-off-message Stepford’s that Bush has depended on to march in lock-step … he’s finagled his way into the media’s hearts and minds as a liberal hero, a magnet for Indy’s and conservative Greens.

When we finally get around to campaigning against McRib, we better make short work of illustrating the HUGE differences between the positions being offered this country. The press loves ‘em some barbecue.

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma had a comment on the Pub losses that is FINALLY something of a reality check:

“When you lose three of these in a row you have to get beyond campaign tactics and take a hard look and ask if there is something wrong with your product.”

Well, hell. Ya THINK SO? When I think of all the national angst, sweat and tears of progressives everywhere to send that message loud and clear … or just yours and mine … I marvel at all the time lost, the opportunity squandered, the victimization and brutishness that the nation has endured, the loss of liberty and treasure, the assault on the Constitution — the disrespect to the world and the muddying of our reputation.

Something wrong with the product??? Lord save us, these folks are dense.

The United Steelworkers Union came out for Obama today. I’m very pleased, of course, at Edwards stepping up to get his back — this is being analyzed to death, but I’d think the “hard-working white” dialogues got to him, especially after the numbers tell us only a lightning bolt from the Thunder Gods will change the result of the nomination. Edwards was meticulous about playing above the negative spin — slander not only annoyed him, he thought it a waste of valuable time. There’s buzz he is interested in the AG position, and … wow! … wouldn’t that be something? A Republican nightmare!

And that’s our subject, today — with their hastily acquired new slogan, “The Change You Deserve,” also the trademark slogan of a popular anti-depressant … perhaps that will be a good reminder for them of what they need now, given their gloom. Deserved gloom, I’d add — they’re lucky they aren’t in orange jumpsuits … and probably worried that, out of power, they’ll end up in one. Be still, my heart.

So, let’s look at the Pubs and their ‘maverick’ champion, Johnny McRib … who has a hair-trigger temper and who has been diagnosed with an “overdeveloped superego.” Yeah — he would make a terrific Bush44. [Roy Blunt ... my own Boss Hog ... said as much, below, still plumped up with pride in his Decider; but then density is his forte ... and my state is caught in a stilted National ID storm, typical of the Hog's influence.]

These reads give us a peek at important Johnny-topics — health, Supreme’s, plans, taxes, bias and record. Mac has been given no hurdles to jump in the last weeks — he’s just droned on, ignored by the Left and observed by the reluctant Right … who have begun to panic. But don’t worry, kids — he’s not really George Bush … why, today Johnny even said he might have most of the troops home by 2013.

Jude

America Network Decides
Mark Fiore ‘toon

McCain Iraq 2008
Mark Fiore ‘toon

Agitated? Irritable? Hostile? Aggressive? Impulsive? Restless?
Dana Milbank, WaPo
Thursday, May 15, 2008

House Republicans may be heading off a cliff in November, but give them credit for perseverance. Even after the new slogan they floated — “The Change You Deserve” — was discovered to be trademarked ad copy for the antidepressant drug Effexor, GOP leaders decided to go with the rollout anyway.

“The Republican agenda, ‘The Change You Deserve,’ is directed at America’s families,” Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) announced at a televised news conference with House Republican leaders yesterday morning. “And you may be a little surprised at this agenda.”

Why, yes, we are. And Democrats are manic over the medicinal mantra.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called reporters into his office. “Democrats, not drugs, is what the American people need,” he said. He flashed the Effexor side effects on a large flat-screen television. “Nausea, up to 58 percent,” Hoyer said. “Actually it’s higher than that for Republicans.”

“Are depression symptoms keeping you from where you want to be?” Effexor’s maker, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, asks in its promotions. “Not feeling as good as you used to?”

For House Republicans, the diagnosis is obvious: They are suffering from Election Anxiety Disorder. Tuesday night, they lost the third special election in a row to Democrats in heavily Republican congressional districts. Eighty-two percent of Americans say the country is on the wrong track, and they’re largely holding President Bush and his party responsible. This week, panicked House Republicans defied Bush and voted with Democrats to pass a farm bill and to divert oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Leaving the weekly House Republican breakfast meeting yesterday in the basement of the Capitol, the congressmen wore grim faces. “How’s it going in there?” a reporter asked.

“Hard to tell,” said Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.), brushing past.

“I’m running late,” said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio).

Among the few to emerge smiling was Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia; he’s retiring from Congress and just presented his colleagues with a memo about the many Republican ailments. Reporters asked Davis to diagnose his party.

“Well, this is the floor,” Davis said, stomping on the concrete beneath him. “And we’re underneath the floor.” Without strong medicine, he said, Republicans will lose 25 seats in November. “We’re the airplane flying into the mountain.”

Davis disappeared, and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the man in charge of the House Republicans’ campaign effort, appeared. He looked to be a candidate for mood elevation as he described the meeting he just left. “People are concerned, and legitimately so,” he said. “Clearly we’ve got problems that are deep and serious in terms of how we’re going to do in the fall elections.”

John Boehner, the House minority leader, had a similar case of Election Anxiety Disorder when he arrived a few minutes later in the House television studio. “Well, it was another wake-up call,” he said of Tuesday’s loss in Mississippi, using the same words he used after last week’s loss in Louisiana. His eyes watery, Boehner allowed that “we’ve got to do a better job.”

“Last question,” a staffer called out. The news conference, including opening statements by four officials, was just nine minutes old.

Will “The Change You Deserve” give Republicans the relief they need? Democrats thought it to be a prescription for ridicule. “John Boehner,” Hoyer said at his news briefing, flashing the Effexor brand on the screen, “says he has a new mantra . . . ‘Change You Deserve.’ Interesting where he got that.”

And Hoyer didn’t even mention the warning label, which states that patients should be watched to see if they are “becoming agitated, irritable, hostile, aggressive, impulsive, or restless.”

Hostile? Aggressive? Boehner aide Michael Steel dashed off an e-mail to reporters.

“I heard that Rep. Hoyer showed an image from a pharmaceutical advertisement at his pen and pad, highlighting the GOP’s new ‘Change You Deserve’ message,” he wrote. This, he said, is “foolishness,” a “silly stunt” and “campaign-style hijinks.”

Agitated? Irritable? Adam Putnam (Fla.), the Republican Conference chairman, and Eric Cantor (Va.), the chief deputy whip, held their weekly briefing. They were not themselves. “It’s Monday, isn’t it?” Putnam asked wearily.

“Members are not in a great mood, nor am I,” Cantor added. The assembled reporters pummeled the pair with sharp questions — “So, what are the changes? … How do you possibly address those problems? … How is this different from what you said before you lost Mississippi?” — until it was time for the rollout, on the Capitol steps, of the “Change You Deserve” agenda.

“The Change You Deserve,” announced a sign on the lectern. “The Change You Deserve,” confirmed a poster displayed nearby. Aides distributed a 20-page booklet with “CHANGE YOU DESERVE” printed in red capital letters on the front. Boehner vowed to give Americans “the kind of change they deserve.”

But Election Anxiety Disorder is a serious ailment, and only about two dozen Republican members had the courage to show up for the rollout. Fortunately for the rest of the GOP caucus, the change they deserve is within reach: The recommended starting dosage of Effexor is 75 milligrams a day. ++

Republicans Who Just Don’t Get It
Cenk Uygur, YoungTurks via SmirkingChimp
May 14, 2008

The Republicans lost another crucial election last night. It was their third special election loss in a row. All three were deeply Republican districts in the past. This one was in the heart of Mississippi and was in a district that George Bush won with 62% of the vote in 2004.

The Republicans are in deep, deep trouble. If they lose in these districts (the other two were a Louisiana seat they had kept for three decades and Dennis Hastert’s former seat in Illinois), they can literally lose anywhere. The whole electoral map can be redrawn.

So, what’s their new plan? Go further to the right! No, you schmucks, that’s what got you in trouble in the first place. The problem is the Republican Party has become so extreme there are no moderates left to tell them they should head in the opposite direction.

Usually when a political party is beaten this bad (as they were in 2006 and the elections since then), they correct course by going toward the other side of the political spectrum. They head to the center to pick up lost ground. The Republicans, on the other hand, have been like drunken gamblers who are sure that their next double down bet is going to make it all up. If we just double down one more time…

Well, they did double their bets on these special elections. They spent $1.3 million in Mississippi of the precious $7.2 million the NRCC had left. They brought in Dick Cheney to campaign for their candidate (talk about heading in the wrong direction). And they lost again.

They have got to realize that they are not unpopular because they haven’t been true enough to their principles, it’s because they have. Their principles are merciless and lack all compassion. And it turns out that the American people look for some degree of compassion and competence out of their leaders. So, the Republicans are in a bind.

They wanted to drown government in a bathtub. They did and wound up drowning their own party instead. It turns out the American people want a government.

They think it serves a purpose.

The problem isn’t that conservative principles are never right. Of course it makes sense to lower taxes when the highest marginal tax rate is at 70%, as it was in 1980 when Reagan came into office. But equally obvious is that at some point taxes can be too low for the government to function effectively. And when you have a gigantic national deficit, a government that can’t respond to national emergencies like Hurricane Katrina and a disastrous war you can’t pay for — that might be the point where taxes are simply too low to pay for the government the American people want and expect.

There might be a time for war, but it’s not the answer at all times for any reason at all. We might have to get tough on immigration policies, but we don’t have to crush people’s souls to do it. There might be a time to get tougher on crime, but the answer isn’t always vengeance. The Republicans have lost sight of all moderation.

If the Republicans keep heading due right, they will burn their party to the ground. And someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Charlie Crist will have to rebuild from the ground up as a more moderate, reasonable party. But it will take decades.

Remember George Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” in 2000 and won with lots of smokes and mirrors by convincing people that he was a kindhearted Republican. I think history will look back at 2004 as the aberration. It will be the outlier in history.

In 2000, it was hard to know what Bush was exactly up to and he lied about his intentions (remember his “no nation building” and “humble foreign policy” pledges). But in 2004, we should have known what we were getting into. That election will be known as the Great Mistake.

But right now, as we speak, the American people are looking to correct that mistake. And when the Republicans run their tired, old campaigns based on pessimism, attack ads, fear-mongering and dark outlook, they will get crushed. Bank on it. There is a tidal wave coming in 2008. And apparently, the Republicans have no idea what is about to hit them. ++

McCain outlines vision of Iraq victory, reduced partisanship
GLEN JOHNSON, MyWay
May 15, 08

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - John McCain, looking through a crystal ball to 2013 and the end of a prospective first term, sees “spasmodic” but reduced violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dead or captured and government spending curbed by his ready veto pen.

The Republican presidential contender also envisions April’s annual angst replaced by a simpler flat tax, illegal immigrants living humanely under a temporary worker program, and political partisanship stemmed by weekly news conferences and British-style question periods with joint meetings of Congress.

In a speech being delivered Thursday, McCain concedes he cannot make the changes alone, but he wants to outline a specific governing style to show the accomplishments it can achieve. He was backing up his remarks with a Web ad featuring similar content.

“I’m not interested in partisanship that serves no other purpose than to gain a temporary advantage over our opponents. This mindless, paralyzing rancor must come to an end. We belong to different parties, not different countries,” McCain says in remarks prepared for delivery in the capital city of Ohio, a general election battleground. “There is a time to campaign, and a time to govern. If I’m elected president, the era of the permanent campaign will end; the era of problem solving will begin.”

To the disdain of some fellow Republicans, the presumed GOP nominee has worked with Democrats on legislation aimed at overhauling campaign finance regulations, redrafting immigration rules and regulations and implementing government spending controls.

While that has cultivated a maverick image for McCain, the Arizona senator has also been accused of exhibiting a nasty temper - swearing even at fellow lawmakers from his own party - and unabashed partisanship.

In particular, McCain has clashed with the leading Democratic presidential contender, Barack Obama. After tangling with the Illinois senator on lobbying reforms, McCain questioned Obama’s integrity in a publicly released 2006 letter.

McCain wrote he had thought Obama’s interest in ethics legislation “was genuine and admirable,” before adding: “Thank you for disabusing me of such notions.” He accused Obama of “partisan posturing.”

While calling for Congress to drop mindless partisanship, McCain also chided the media - with whom he has enjoyed a generally positive relationship - for fueling contention with its campaign coverage.

“Campaigns and the media collaborated as architects of the modern presidential campaign, and we deserve equal blame for the regret we feel from time to time over its less-than-inspirational features,” he said.

In outlining potential achievements of a first term, the 71-year-old McCain implicitly was suggesting he would seek a second term, an attempt to mute suggestions he would serve only four years after being the oldest president ever to take office for a first term.

In particular, he sees a world in which:

- “The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.”

- The Taliban threat in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced.

- “The increase in actionable intelligence that the counterinsurgency produced led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden, and his chief lieutenants,” McCain said. “There still has not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.”

- A “League of Democracies” has supplanted a failed United Nations to apply sanctions to the Sudanese government and halt genocide in Darfur.

- The United States has had “several years of robust growth,” appropriations bills free of lawmakers’ pet projects known as “earmarks,” public education improved by charter schools, health care improved by expansion of the private market and an energy crisis stemmed through the start of construction on 20 new nuclear reactors.

- Democrats are asked to serve in his administration, he holds weekly news conferences and, like the British prime minister, answers questions publicly from lawmakers.

McCain also pledges to halt a Bush administration practice of enacting laws with accompanying signing statements that exempt the president from having to enforce parts he finds objectionable.

“I will respect the responsibilities the Constitution and the American people have granted Congress,” the senator said, “and will, as I often have in the past, work with anyone of either party to get things done for our country.” ++

How Healthy Is John McCain?
Michael Scherer and Alice Park, TIME Magazine
Wednesday, May. 14, 2008

It was the size of a dime and as thick as a nickel—a discolored blotch on John McCain’s left temple. He didn’t pay it much mind during the heat of the 2000 Republican primary campaign. But after losing the nomination to George W. Bush, the Arizona Senator found himself with time to spare. So as Bush celebrated victory, McCain headed to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to have the spot checked out.

Less than three weeks later, McCain endured 5½ hours of surgery to remove a patch of skin including the blemish, roughly 5 cm (2 in.) wide. The diagnosis: Stage 2A melanoma, an invasive form of skin cancer that claims the lives of up to 34% of those diagnosed within 10 years. Doctors also made an incision down his left cheek to remove lymph nodes in his neck in case the cancer had spread; they found it had not. The surgery left a large scar, and for weeks McCain retreated from public view to recover.

Losing the GOP nomination in 2000 gave McCain time to catch and treat the cancer at an early stage, which possibly saved his life. “If it was left alone, the risk was high that that melanoma would not just have become thicker but would also almost certainly have spread to the lymph nodes,” says Dr. Jeffrey Lee, a cancer physician at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who did not participate in McCain’s care. “And the assumption would be that could occur within a period of a few months, if it hadn’t happened already.”

Eight years later, McCain at 71 finds himself on his way to another Republican Convention, and the questions about his health are no longer secondary to his political fortunes. If he were to win in November, he would become the oldest first-term President in U.S. history. To make the issue more pronounced, his likely opponent is young enough to be his son; at 46, Barack Obama hopes to become the fifth youngest President ever.

McCain’s handlers know his age is both a strength and a weakness, one that his campaign is acutely sensitive about. Early this month, aides pounced on Obama’s suggestion in a television interview that McCain was “losing his bearings as he pursues the nomination” by making negative attacks. Within hours, adviser Mark Salter had released a blistering memo saying the comment was a “not particularly clever” knock on McCain’s age. “We have all become familiar with Senator Obama’s new brand of politics,” Salter concluded.

But if McCain intends to make his experience a plus with voters, he must also make sure that his health is at the very least not a negative. And so, after weeks of delay, the McCain campaign plans to deal with the issue later this month, with a release of his medical records and a briefing by his various doctors in Arizona, where he underwent the surgery. Though details are still being firmed up, the campaign says it expects to offer enough documents and medical opinions to lay to rest any concerns about the candidate’s condition. “What you are going to find is that he is in good health,” says Charlie Black, a senior adviser to the campaign.

On the trail, McCain likes to deflect questions about his age and health with jokes. “I’m older than dirt—more scars than Frankenstein,” he says, often before telling a story about the spry antics of his still vibrant 96-year-old mother Roberta. At a recent meeting with newspaper editors in Washington, McCain pretended to fall asleep when asked about his age. Humor aside, the campaign has clearly decided that the candidate is his own best defense. “Obviously, I think there will be a greater observance of me,” he said about his age while on a bus tour through Iowa last year. “Whether it has an impact or not will be directly related to my performance.”

He is religious about taking precautions. When outdoors, he usually dons a baseball cap, even in the dim light of winter. His chalk-pale skin is a testament to the care he now takes in the sun. “I hope everyone has some sunscreen,” he told the traveling press at a recent campaign stop in the coal hills of Kentucky. His doctor checks for new blemishes every few months, with his last announced checkup taking place in March. “Everything’s fine,” McCain said the following day.

The campaign schedule, meanwhile, has provided McCain with perhaps the best opportunity to try to prove that his age is not an issue. With alacrity, he has routinely worked 16-hour days and six- or seven-day weeks for more than a year.
While other candidates recline in privacy in the bus or on the plane between events, he grabs a candy bar or a bag of potato chips and engages reporters for hour-long interviews. Asked during one bus-ride gabfest if the issue of age had been raised by anyone during the campaign, McCain deadpanned, “Yeah, especially by my wife.”

In fact, McCain has spent the majority of his life living with the physical disabilities and the mental trauma he suffered as a young Navy pilot. When his plane was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, McCain broke both his arms and his right leg at the knee. He was stabbed twice by a bayonet, had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt and endured the angry kicks and punches of the mob that discovered him.

Those injuries, along with the more calculated torture that followed during 5½ years of captivity, left him unable to raise either arm more than 80 degrees.
Depending on the weather, his right knee aches, causing a visible limp.

After his release from Vietnam, McCain was evaluated for years by Navy psychiatrists and deemed on the whole to be coping well with the horrors of his captivity, which included malnourishment, regular beatings and two suicide attempts. Doctors determined that he had an “overdeveloped superego” and an “unrealistically high” need for achievement, two characteristics that have put him in the mainstream of presidential candidates. In 1999, before his first White House bid, McCain released 1,500 pages of medical records dating back to his days in the Navy, as well as the psychiatric evaluations he received after his return from Vietnam. He has long maintained that he never suffered flashbacks or posttraumatic stress disorder, though he admitted in his memoir that “for a long time after coming home, I would tense up whenever I heard keys rattle,” a sound made by his prison guards.

The sunburns that blistered McCain’s skin as a child may prove far more of a threat to his longevity than his time as a prisoner. McCain’s 2000 brush with melanoma wasn’t his first and, experts say, may not be his last. He had a melanoma removed from his left shoulder in 1993 and had other noninvasive skin cancers removed from his upper left arm in 2000 and his nose in 2002. All were picked up and treated in the earliest stages of the disease, but because melanoma is one of the more unpredictable types of cancer, doctors say he remains at risk for not only spread from the excised cancers but new growths as well. “We know that there is a 40% risk of melanoma coming back with metastases even though the primary lesion is taken out,” says Dr. Antoni Ribas, a cancer surgeon at UCLA Medical Center, who has not treated the Senator.

If either happens, McCain has several options. New lesions could be removed by surgery, as his previous ones were. Recurrent growths are trickier, since they are more likely to originate not on the skin but deeper in the body. Once melanoma spreads, it generally cannot be effectively treated with surgery or radiation, which are designed to target contained growths. Chemotherapy drugs and medications that stimulate the immune system are options, but some may not be suitable for McCain, doctors say, because of his age and the toxicity of the treatments.

As for his general health, McCain says he tries to get exercise when he can, like hiking with his wife and children in Arizona, including an August 2006 trek with his son 30 miles (48 km) through the Grand Canyon over three days. “In the Senate, I try to walk up the stairs most of the time,” McCain says. “I don’t take the subway.” On occasion, he swims, and the old Navy captain still endeavors to do his sit-ups and push-ups, though the exact number is a matter of some discussion.

“I can do at least 30 or 40,” he said last spring of the push-ups, as his campaign bus crossed the countryside. “But it’s pretty easy to cheat on a push-up.” He paused, aware that he had grabbed the attention of his traveling press. “I would never do such a thing, of course,” he added, smiling. ++

McCain and the ‘Unitary Executive’
Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews
May 13, 2008

If John McCain wins the presidency – and gets to appoint one or more U.S. Supreme Court justices – America’s 220-year experiment as a democratic Republic living under the principle that “no man is above the law” may come to an end.

To put the matter differently, if a President McCain replaces one of the moderate justices with another Samuel Alito – as McCain has vowed to do – then Justice Department lawyer John Yoo’s extreme vision of an all-powerful Executive could well become the new law of the land.

On May 6 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, during a speech aimed at appeasing conservatives, McCain promised to appoint justices in the mold of George W. Bush’s selections, Justice Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, expanding the court’s right-wing faction that also includes Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Those four justices already have embraced the Bush administration’s radical notion that at a time of war – even one as vaguely defined as the “war on terror” – the President possesses “plenary” or unlimited powers through his commander-in-chief authority.

As expressed in classified memos by Yoo when he was a key lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, there should be, in essence, no limits on what a war-time President can do as long as he is asserting his duty to protect the nation.

Alito also is associated with this concept of a “unitary executive,” holding that a President should control all regulatory authority, define the limits of laws via “signing statements” and – at his own discretion – override treaties, the will of Congress and even the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

Under this theory, a President can cite his commander-in-chief powers to spy on citizens without warrants, imprison people without charges, authorize torture, order assassinations, and invade other countries without congressional approval.

With just one more Alito, that view would claim control of the U.S. Supreme Court and allow a new five-to-four majority to, in effect, rewrite the Constitution. The founding principle of the United States – that everyone possesses certain “unalienable” human rights – would be history…

‘Activist’ Judges

All this would occur under the right-wing assertion that McCain was appointing justices who “strictly interpret” the Constitution. It has been a long-held tenet of the conservative movement that “activist” judges were at fault for outlawing racial segregation and other statutes that discriminated against minorities.

More recently, the Right has concentrated its wrath on Supreme Court rulings that struck down laws criminalizing abortion and homosexual acts.

But the “strict constructionist” phrase is really a euphemism for a double standard, objecting to judicial decisions that conservatives don’t like while justifying judicial activism when it serves right-wing causes, such as giving President Bush authority to brush aside the Constitution as he prosecutes the “war on terror.”

Even if the clear intent of the Founders was to avoid a tyrannical Executive by placing key war-making powers in the hands of the Legislature, right-wing legal scholars have favored overturning those principles in the name of an all-powerful President.

So, on one level, McCain might choose another Alito or two in order to reverse Roe v. Wade or allow states to crack down on homosexual rights. But he also would be enshrining the concept of a “unitary executive.”

Thus, perhaps more than any other question, the November election will settle whether a future Supreme Court will reshape the United States into an imperial system both at home and abroad – or roll back President Bush’s expansion of executive power in the direction of the Founders’ original vision.

Obama-Clinton Battle

There is also a political component on the Democratic side to McCain’s May 6 promise to Republicans that he will help the Right consolidate control of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court.

While many supporters of Hillary Clinton – especially middle-age white women – have told pollsters that they won’t vote for Barack Obama if he wins the Democratic nomination, that position might ensure that a core feminist principle, “reproductive rights,” will be struck down by the Supreme Court.

In other words, to show their anger over the defeat of a female presidential candidate, Clinton supporters might end up contributing to a historic defeat for feminist rights, including the possible outlawing of abortions in many states.

However, beyond the issue of abortion and other privacy rights, Democrats and all Americans will be faced with a fundamental question when they vote in November:
Will they continue the noble experiment of a democratic Republic with “unalienable” rights for all, what the Founders envisioned with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution of 1787?

Or, do Americans want to go down the path marked by the likes of Yoo, Alito and Bush – ceding virtually all power to one individual who can operate beyond all laws and outside the rules of human behavior – and do so with the blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court? ++

The Most Important Piece of Paper in America
Jared Bernstein, HuffPo
May 11, 2008

I hold in my hand one of the most important pieces of paper in America: Table T08-0071, an analysis of candidate John McCain’s tax plan.

OK, it’s not really in my hand because I’m typing, but I’m looking at it carefully, and you should too. It is a table constructed by the Tax Policy Center’s steely-eyed tax analysts, and it reveals nothing less than McCain’s secret plan to diminish the US government beyond recognition. If he gets his way, conservatives will finally be able to say they’ve achieved the goal set out by Grover Norquist: to get government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

The numbers in the table show the revenue loss to the Federal government from McCain’s proposed tax cuts. In the far right corner is the 10-year total: -$5.7 trillion.

People deride the Republican candidate as “McSame,” implying a continuation of Bushonomics as well as the president’s foreign policy. But from the perspective of domestic policy, it’s much worse. Sure, McCain extends the Bush tax cuts but that’s the least of it. At $1.7 trillion they amount to less than a third of the damage.

Note also that the big ticket tax cuts-eliminating the alternative minimum tax and lowering the corporate tax-both follow on another Bush tradition of exacerbating market-driven (i.e., pre-tax) inequalities by cutting high-end taxes the most.

As I stresshere , McCain’s plans to pay for these tax cuts amount to filling a crater with a teaspoon of sand. Earmarks won’t get you there, so he’ll have to go after discretionary spending. In fact, he’s already suggesting a freeze in such spending, excluding defense, of course. Sound inoffensive until you consider that we’re talking about kids’ health care, education, child care, training for displaced workers, environmental and labor protections, and dozens more programs that lots of people actually need and care about.

Plus, he can’t fill the hole he’s dug with cuts in these programs either, which leads you to the inevitable punch line of all this: his target is the entitlements, Social Security and Medicare. Those programs have always been the big enchiladas for the Norquist shock troops and they’ve never recovered from their Social Security privatization defeat. Well, they’re back, incognito.

McCain’s top economist, a number cruncher of great integrity named Doug Holtz-Eakin, responds to the Tax Policy’s analysis here, and he makes a good point or two, especially regarding the way they score the AMT, but his counterpoints amount to little more than quibbles. In fact, one can’t help wonder if Doug, who used to inveigh against supply-side nonsense, has been drawn to the economic dark side. When recently asked about the extent to which these numbers fail to add up, his response was: “I think what [critics] ought to do is remember that the proposals are going to engender economic growth, which is the best thing you can do for near-term budget improvement.” That’s pure hand waving of the type with which the old Holtz-Eakin had no patience.

This story has yet to catch the fire it should, and hopefully will, once the D’s get focused on McCain and his dim vision of government. But the point born of these numbers is as simple as it is compelling:

For seven long years, we’ve tried entrusting our government to those who discredit it, defund it, and fundamentally disbelieve in its role, except when they seek a lucrative contract or a bailout. We gone down the road-and it is a crumbling road, with potholes and failing bridges — where the solution to every problem is a tax cut, where critical agencies are staffed with cronies at best and opposition lobbyists at worst, where secrecy trumps transparency and cynicism rules, where budget resources are never available for expanding children’s health care, but always there for war.

Table T08-0071 is a road map to taking us far, far deeper into this morass. We must not go there. ++

BIGOTRY, APOLOGY, REPEAT AS NECESSARY
The Rise of John McCain
Ted Rall, Yahoo
Wed Apr 9

NEW YORK–In the 1993 film noir “Romeo is Bleeding,” the late Roy Scheider plays a mob boss. “You know right from wrong,” he tells a hopelessly corrupt cop portrayed by Gary Oldman. “You just don’t care.” It’s a perfect summary of John McCain’s political career.

Time after time, McCain weighs a decision. Then, after careful consideration, he chooses evil over good. In the short run, evil gets him what he wants. Later, when the devil comes to collect his due, McCain issues a retraction.

Running for president in 2000, John McCain squared off against George W. Bush in the key South Carolina primary. Asked whether the Confederate battle flag should continue to fly over the state capitol, McCain sided with the rednecks: “Personally, I see the flag as symbol of heritage.”

A few months later, he’d lost South Carolina and quit the race. He apologized–not to the African-Americans he’d offended, but to a friendly audience of Republicans.

“I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary,” he admitted. “So I chose to compromise my principles.” It wasn’t the first time, or the last.

Also in 2000, McCain insulted Asians. “I hate the gooks,” John McCain hissed, “and I will hate them for as long as I live…and you can quote me.” After a few days of negative press attention, he took it back: “I apologize and renounce all language that is bigoted and offensive, which is contrary to all that I represent and believe.”

What does McCain “represent and believe”? In 2000 McCain attacked George W. Bush for speaking at Bob Jones University, a freaky institution that smeared Catholics, banned jazz and interracial dating. Six years later, however, it was McCain’s turn to suck up to the Christianist right. He appeared at the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s extremist Liberty University, which–like BJU–bans gays and denies pregnant students the right to seek an abortion.

No apology for that one.

In 1983, John McCain was a freshman congressman from Arizona, then one of the most right-wing states in the country. In order to appease his Republican Party’s base–racist whites–he voted against the bill that established Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. “I thought that it was not necessary to have another federal holiday, that it cost too much money, that other presidents were not recognized,” he explained in 2000. Do Chester Arthur or Gerry Ford deserve holidays? Anyway, MLK Day didn’t cost employers a cent; Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday were replaced by the generic President’s Day.

He also floated the “states rights” excuse (with its own racist signifiers) that referenced his support for Confederate “heritage” in South Carolina. “I believe it’s an issue that the people of South Carolina can settle, just as we in Arizona settled the very divisive issue over the recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King as a holiday. I resented it a great deal when people from Washington and pundits and politicians and others came to my state to tell us how we should work out a very difficult problem.”

Healthcare is “a very difficult problem.” Iraq is “a very difficult problem.” MLK Day, like the Confederate flag “issue,” was a simple question of right and wrong.

True to his pattern, McCain understood that the racist pandering he used to launch his political career could come back to haunt him in the more enlightened–the John Birchers who contributed to his early campaigns might say “politically correct”–election year of 2008. Time for another apology: “I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona,” he concedes. “We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans.”

A little late?

“Well, I learned that this individual was a transcendent figure in American history, he deserved to be honored, and I thought it was appropriate to do so,” McCain explained about his change of, um, heart. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968.

McCain voted no on the MLK bill in 1983. That’s 15 years later. How much longer did McCain need to “learn” about “this individual”?

The big question is: Is McCain racist? Or is he pandering to racists? And is there a difference?

His 2007 use of the term “tar baby” pretty much settles it. Unless, of course, you’re a sucker for yet another apology: “I don’t think I should have used that word and it was wrong to do so.”

It’s the 21st century. Even Nazi skinheads don’t use terms like “tar baby.”

God, if you’re up there, please grant us this wish: Don’t let John McCain become president. But if you do, don’t let him meet any foreign leaders who don’t happen to be white. ++ ++

WHO’S THE REAL JOHN MCCAIN?
Bill Press, Tribune Media Services

To all my friends, Democrats and Independents, who have told me they’d consider voting for John McCain in November, I have only two words. PLEASE DON’T.

For the sake of God, country and Mother Theresa, wise up.

Now that it’s clear he’s going to be the Republican nominee for president, it’s time to end our love affair with John McCain.

Don’t feel badly if you were once a “McCainiac.” So was I. We all fell in love with the maverick McCain back in 2000, when he beat the pants off George Bush in New Hampshire. But the McCain of 2000 is not the same McCain we see today. That McCain doesn’t exist anymore.

Yes, McCain’s a likable guy. He’s still an American hero. No one can ever take that away from him. He still has a refreshing, self-deprecating sense of humor. And he was once willing to tell leaders of his own party to go pound sand. But, unfortunately, in order to secure his party’s nomination, McCain tossed his independence out the window. He’s no longer a maverick. Before our very eyes, the once-moderate McCain has morphed into an extreme right-winger.

McCain’s changed his tune on so many issues, he should change the name of his bus from The Straight Talk Express to the Double-Talk Express. There’s not one major issue the new McCain has not been on both sides of.

In 2001 and again in 2003, he voted against the Bush tax cuts, saying at the time: “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief.” Today, he’s the biggest champion of making the Bush tax cuts permanent. He once condemned religious conservatives like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson as “agents of intolerance.” Today, he’s sucking up to them. On Jan. 9, 2000, he called the Confederate flag “a symbol of racism and slavery.” Three days later, he insisted: “Personally, I see the flag as a symbol of heritage.” Today, he says he’ll leave it up to states to decide what to do about flying the Confederate flag.

Even on his signature issues, John McCain’s all over the place. He angered conservatives by standing with President Bush on comprehensive immigration reform. Today, he says, as president, he wouldn’t even sign the immigration bill he sponsored. Same on campaign reform. In 2004, he denounced the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for the lies they broadcast about John Kerry’s record in Vietnam. Running for president in 2008, McCain, as first reported by The Nation magazine, has accepted over $60,000 in campaign contributions from the same Swift Boat liars. This week, the anti-torture McCain even voted to allow the continued use of waterboarding.

But nowhere is McCain’s change-with-the-wind politics more apparent than in his approach to the war in Iraq. In January 2007, he blasted those who led the American people to believe the war would be “some kind of a walk at the beach.” Yet during the buildup to war, McCain himself told Larry King: “I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short time.” Now, running for president, McCain is the chief cheerleader for the war, asserting it’s OK with him if American troops remain in Iraq for 100 years.

McCain is equally hawkish on Iran, rejecting direct talks with Iranian leaders and holding out war with Iran as a real option. “There is only one scenario worse than military action in Iran and that is a nuclear-armed Iran,” says McCain - which, of course, is the same policy toward Iran advocated by George W. Bush.

Indeed, that’s what’s so surprising about the new McCain: He’s so much like the old Bush. They were once bitter enemies. Today, it’s virtually impossible to tell them apart. Bush praises McCain as a true conservative, while McCain vows to continue Bush’s economic and foreign policies and appoint Supreme Court justices like John Roberts and Samuel Alito. McCain even gushes over the man who engineered Bush’s ugly attacks against him in South Carolina in 2000, praising Karl Rove as “one of the smart, great political minds in American politics.”

Don’t be fooled. Vote for John McCain? You might as well vote to re-elect George Bush and Dick Cheney for another four years. ++

The press polishes the McCain “brand”
Eric Boehlert, Smirking Chimp
May 14, 2008

Roy Blunt Confirms McCain is Third Bush Term: “And I think that’s a good thing”
Nicole Belle, CrooksAndLiars
Sunday, May 11th, 2008

Bless his little heart, let’s have House Minority Whip Roy Blunt on every week to talk up John McCain’s candidacy! Talk about living within a bubble, Blunt thinks nothing of touting the McSame presidency as a Bush third term, despite the record disapproval rating for the man and the vast majority of the country believing that the country is going in the wrong direction under his leadership. Apparently, Blunt didn’t get the memo that McCain is trying to distance himself from Bush and as Rep. Chris Van Hollen points out, on the two most important issues to the American people, McCain absolutely equals Bush. And Roy, that’s not such a good thing.

[open link to watch video]

BLITZER: When it comes to domestic economic issues, what is the major difference between President Bush’s policies, what he wants to do, and what John McCain would do if he were president?

BLUNT: Well, I think what John McCain wants to do is continue these pro-growth tax policies that our friends on the other side have been talking for sixteen months now…

BLITZER: But that’s what President Bush wants to do too.

BLUNT: And there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with that.

BLITZER: So it would be in effect a third Bush term when it came to pro-growth tax policies?

BLUNT: It would be. I think it would be. And I think that’s a good thing. You can’t go out in the country anywhere and find people who believe that doubling the capital gains rate is a good thing, that raising the highest rate on every small business in America is a good thing, that eliminating those bottom brackets, that mean that people at the lower levels of tax pay less taxes than they would otherwise. In fact, I think one of the reasons that the economy has slowed down the way it has is the fact that there’s great uncertainty about how those tax policies move forward.

ThinkProgress:

(I)t’s nice to see Blunt conceding the point. McCain is promising more of Bush’s economic agenda — unaffordable massive tax cuts for the rich that offer no help for the average family.

The McCain economic agenda includes: $1.7 trillion tax cut for corporations, $300 billion a year in tax cuts that aren’t paid for, and a plan that delivers 58 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers and only 9 percent to the bottom 80 percent.

BLITZER: Do you want to respond to that?

VAN HOLLEN: Sure. Look, I mean, the Bush economic policies have helped drive this economy into a ditch. The economy has lost $260,000 in the first four months of this year. And John McCain…

BLITZER: 260,000 jobs.

VAN HOLLEN: Jobs in the first four months. And John McCain does represent a continuation of the Bush economic policy, as Roy just acknowledged. And the fact of the matter is, people are hurting. The one thing this president doesn’t understand and John McCain doesn’t understand is the economic squeeze the families around the country are feeling.

And when it comes to Iraq, again, this is a continuation of the Bush policy.

So on the two biggest issues on the agenda today, the war in Iraq and the economy, he represents a continuation of George Bush. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”

~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves