Shots heard ’round the world, the campaign, the marriage bed

Shock ‘n Awe of the unexpected kind has us hopping today — Russia is running a ruthless blitzkrieg on South Ossetia, aligned with Georgia; the US is airlifting Georgian fighters out of Iraq and bringing them back home, but they’ve taken heavy casualties and are pleading for a truce. Today the Russians have taken a Georgian military base. Putin has demanded surrender — and told the US to butt out.

Dubby, schmoozing with the Chinese at the moment, thinks its not a problem; Uncle Dick, on the other hand, is jones’ing for a fight … his eye, no doubt, on the pipeline that makes its way through that area.

Talking heads have it that with Bush so lethargic and the elections so near, this was Putin’s moment to move … waiting would put him face to face with a militant McCain who wants another cold war, or Obama who would seek to rally the free nations to intercede diplomatically. The issues are unclear at this point; and Obama has yet to give something definitive … he’d better get on that. McCain is making hay with his NeoCon fist-waving.

Ambassador Marc Ginsberg discusses the situation here and Digby gives us a wrap-up here.

McRib has his chest puffed on this one, but in another senior moment he can’t quite remember who the Russian president is … he may gain points in hard talk to the Right but then again, how many people know diddly about former Soviet satellite states? This is kind of like the Falkland incident … where was that, again?? And [wag the dog] why????

This SHOULD be ‘dead air’ time for the candidates — that lull before the storm. Obama, vacationing in Hawaii with family, has two new ads out — the first is a keeper on environment; the next, entitled “Embrace,” is the counterattack on Mac’s Hilton ad … it’s smart, gets BBQ Boy pinned to Bush again and again.

Hands

Obama’s Celeb Ad Adopts McCain Line Of Attack
Embrace

Meanwhile, the Edwards situation sucked air out of the Olympics [and who'd thought anything could?!] I’ve been watching this develop for months … is it true, ain’t it, yadda; I’m more of an Enquirer believer than most — they’re brilliant at getting the obvious and overlooked pinned down, then they embroider with salaciousness. But when you pare it down, the original point often has merit [excepting anything about Elvis.]

There’s a statement from Elizabeth Edwards below, and its prompting another round of the “stand by yer man” crapola; her decision, pro or con, is PLAINLY none of our frikkin business!

A Digby article and a couple of Huffy posts rail about the double standard here — McCain not only has his ex-mistress on his arm [and feels free to offer her for a topless exhibition] but MSM swallowed up the early reports of him and his little lobbyist friend earlier this year with nary a belch of indigestion; if I was an investigative reporter, I’d be on that gal’s trail right now! As well, Edwards is not running for anything at this point, so the coverage is a bit overblown, Anna Nicole fashion. Mac is tip-toeing around this one carefully, not adding to the drama … he has a history of cheating on an ailing wife, himself.

It’s sad, really — Edwards would have made a crackerjack AG.

And ya know — if we were gonna get excited over a scandal, wouldn’t it be refreshing to jump George over his involvement in creating a fraudulent letter to take a nation into war? It will be interesting, however, to watch this develop — I’m getting a sense that people don’t have enough outrage to spare in caring about this issue. Perhaps we’re at the place where the majority of us can let this be between the two people and actual family members it impacts. One can only hope.

The bonus material speaks to the campaign, and Obama’s financial chops — even the WSJ approves his commentary. It will still be the economy driving this race, unless Iran explodes … and Mac’s economic plan for effective change is MIA, no pun intended [but evidently a reoccurring theme.]

Jude

Elizabeth Edwards’ statement about affair
The Associated Press
2 days ago

Text of Elizabeth Edwards’ statement about husband’s admission of affair:

Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some most recently caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.

John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private. The pain of the long journey since 2006 was about to be renewed.

John has spoken in a long on-camera interview. Admitting one’s mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do. I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. The toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet unknown. But now the truth is out, and the repair work that began in 2006 will continue. I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time. ++

The Rulz
digby, Hullabaloo

I realize that everybody gets excited about sex scandals. It’s human nature. But it’s important to keep in mind that John Edwards didn’t even come close to winning the nomination and this is just another sleazy tabloid story with absolutely no serious significance other than the sickening spectacle of the prurient slavering of the mainstream media now that they have finally found their hook: it’s because he lied to the press about his sex life. How could he???

(Lying to the press about the anthrax killer and WMD in Iraq, well, not a problem.)

Let’s assume that the rules now say that denying an affair to the press is a cardinal offense that merits endless bloviating about dishonesty from a bunch of hypocritical celebrities who protect their “sources” when they lie about torture and war. Fine. But this guy actually may very well be president and they took his word for it:

I’m very disappointed in the New York Times piece. It’s not true. And I’ll be glad to respond to any questions you might have.

QUESTION: Senator, did you ever have any meeting with any of your staffers in which they would have intervened to ask you not to see Vicki Iseman or to be concerned about appearances of being too close to a lobbyist?

MCCAIN: No.
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QUESTION: No meeting ever occurred?

MCCAIN: No.

QUESTION: No staffer was ever concerned about a possible romantic relationship?

MCCAIN: If they were, they didn’t communicate that to me.

QUESTION: Did you ever have such relationship?

MCCAIN: No.

QUESTION: Senator, can you describe your relationship with Vicki Iseman?

MCCAIN: Friends. Seen her on occasions, particularly at receptions and fund-raisers and appearances before the committee. I have many friends in Washington who represent various interests and those who don’t, and I consider her a friend.

QUESTION: But do you feel like, in terms of your relationship with lobbyists in general, you were closer to her than with others?

MCCAIN: No, no.

I have many friends who represent various interests, ranging from the firemen to the police to senior citizens to various interests, particularly before my committee. And I had meetings with hundreds of them and various interests. And that was my job to do, to get their input.

And, obviously, people who represent interests are fine. That’s their constitutional right. The question is is whether do they have access or unwarranted influence. And certainly, no one ever has in my conduct of my public life and the conduct of my legislative agenda.

QUESTION: Senator?

MCCAIN: Yes, sir?

QUESTION: Did John Weaver, who is one of your former top aides — is quoted on the record saying that he had a conversation with her saying — basically telling her to butt out.

Do you not know of that conversation? Do you know why John Weaver would go on the record describing such a conversation?

MCCAIN: I did not and I don’t know anything about it.

Many people, especially in the press, jumped to defend McCain against the evil New York Times on that one and there has been no follow up. But considering how everyone is excusing the flogging of this Edwards story on the basis of the fact that he lied to the press, I’m not sure it’s in the country’s best interest not to ask McCain about this again and talk to the women herself. What if it comes out that it was true after he’s president? Why surely the press will be as honor bound to obsess over it as they were about Clinton and now Edwards, right? It’s not about the sex — it’s about the lying, remember? (They’ve been saying on a loop that John Edwards was a breath away from the presidency, after all and he got about four delegates.)

I personally don’t care who and of these people are sleeping with (especially McCain). Marriage is a very complicated institution and I don’t pass judgment on how others conduct theirs. I think this is all bullshit. But if the media has decided that even a failed politician who has no chance at the presidency can be subject to this kind of scrutiny, then they need to be a little bit more vigilant about pursuing someone who is the nominee of his party and has been very publicly linked to a specific woman by the paper of record, not the National Enquirer. If these are the rules, then this guy is a far more likely subject of scrutiny than Edwards.

Update: I just heard Barnicle say on Hardball that it was only “a matter of time before they ask Barack Obama and McCain — well McCain’s talked about his past — Barack Obama, if he’s ever had an affair.” IOKIYAJM. ++

[IOKIYAJM = It's OK if you are John McCain - J]

Hiding the Scumbag
Jane Smiley, HuffPo
August 9, 2008

So, John Edwards had a brief affair with a woman who is over forty, and it’s a scandal. Elizabeth Edwards was ill at the time, and so John is especially naughty for being so callous, and yes I gave money to his campaign, but then, I never thought adultery was a big deal in the abstract, because, as we all know, I am a liberal, and I think denying people healthcare, swindling the taxpayer, starting an unnecessary war by forging documents and lying, and stealing the oil belonging to other nations is a lot worse than adultery. If every working person in America were to be free to join a union and if we had mastered that global warming thing, then I could start worrying about adultery, and be glad of it.

So, John McCain had a lengthy affair with a young rich woman, left his wife for her when she was crippled from a car accident, and went on to live off the new wife, for decades, and it’s not a scandal. Why is that? Why is a misstep, followed by anger and reconciliation, a scandal, while actual bona fide betrayal followed by abandonment (and, let’s say, a parasitic lifestyle) is just one of those things?

It is said that the first Mrs. McCain has forgiven her former husband. It is said Elizabeth Edwards has forgiven her current husband.

I know, I know, the National Enquirer never went after McCain. Why is that? When there seemed to be a bit of a smoking gun about John McCain and a lobbyist earlier this year, The National Enquirer didn’t touch it. The lobbyist was disappeared, the New York Times dropped the story, and shhh. NO scandal. Why is that? Wouldn’t I, as a citizen, rather my president slept with a filmmaker than a lobbyist?

Is it just that John Edwards is cuter than John McCain? Is it just that the idea of McCain getting it on makes the press squirm, and so they don’t touch that story? Or do they really have a pro-Republican bias that shows up over and over and over? The press seems to be saying, go ahead, Republicans, trash the country, bankrupt the country, drive the country into a economic, moral, ethical, and military abyss. We don’t care. We aren’t going to hold you responsible for anything, including marital abandonment and cruelty. ++

How is John McCain’s Affair Different from John Edwards’?
Cenk Uygur, Young Turks via HuffPo
August 8, 2008

We have this weird notion in America now that if a politician is caught in an affair that his career is done. We seem to be saying that what he did in his private life effects his policies or how he governs. But we all know that isn’t true. We know that because almost all of our great presidents, and great leaders throughout history, have had numerous affairs. Obviously it didn’t hurt how they governed at all.

I love the idea of someone saying Alexander the Great can’t lead his empire because he’s cheating on his wife (by the way, doesn’t Alexander’s bisexuality single-handedly destroy the idea that gays can’t serve in the military). How about Genghis Khan? He had so many affairs that nearly 1% of the entire world population has his genes. Not fit to lead? And there have also been men of great compassion who led noble fights while still doing ignoble things in their private lives. We are all human at home.

We have now heard the stories of JFK receiving sexual favors after speeches in his limo and partying with several women on a yacht while his wife was delivering. But those are all in the past — so they don’t count. But John Edwards is caught having an extramarital affair and the overwhelming assumption is that his political career is absolutely over. How does that make any sense?

Does John Edwards care less about poor people today than he did yesterday? Would his affair lead him to change his position on NAFTA? How would it alter his policy on Iran?

Some will claim, as they did with Bill Clinton, that it’s not the affair but the lies that went along with it. Really? Did JFK come out and tell the American people - or his wife - “by the way, while my wife was in the hospital I was having an affair with not one, but several women at the same time”? No, of course, he lied too.

Every man that has ever cheated on his wife has lied (and so has every woman who has ever cheated). It is part and parcel of the affair.

Now, we get to the most relevant question - if John Edwards’ political career is done, why isn’t John McCain’s? John McCain had a well-documented affair on his first wife, with his current wife. He has admitted in the books he has written about his life that he ran around with several different women while still married to his first wife. And don’t forget that he left her for a younger, richer woman - multi-millionaire Cindy Hensley who is now Cindy McCain - after she had been severely hurt in a car accident.

So, why are McCain’s actions any more excusable than Edwards’? Because it was thirty years ago? Does that wash it away? Will we be fine with Edwards running for office again in a couple of years because then it will all be in the past? What is the statute of limitations on an affair?

Remember Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan and Ross Perot were so upset with how John McCain dealt with his first wife that they didn’t forgive him for a very, very long time. Perot still hasn’t forgiven him. In fact, he said recently about McCain dumping his first wife for Cindy, “McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory.”

So, I want every pundit who condemns John Edwards today to tell me what the difference between him and McCain is and why John McCain shouldn’t also be run out of politics for his adulterous affairs and what he did to his first wife.++

bonus

Obama as Incumbent
E. J. Dionne Jr., WaPo
Monday, August 11, 2008

The core strategy of John McCain’s campaign is to turn Barack Obama into the incumbent, the man who is too familiar yet still mysterious.

The effort reflects one of the most remarkable aspects of the 2008 campaign: Obama has turned himself into the central figure in American politics. That is an extraordinary achievement, but it comes at a price.

One cost was measured by a Pew Research Center study released last week that found that 48 percent of all those surveyed — and 51 percent of the political independents — said they had heard “too much” about Obama. Only 26 percent (and 28 percent of independents) said that about McCain.

This is understandable: From mid- to late-February until only the past week or so, Obama had received far more media attention than McCain, according to the Campaign Coverage Index produced by Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Obama’s centrality has created an odd dynamic. The most important influences on the campaign are President Bush’s unpopularity and the collapse of public sympathy for the Republican Party, meaning that a majority is inclined to vote for the Democratic nominee unless he is rendered unacceptable.

But with Bush fading into the background, McCain’s campaign has been more about Obama than about himself. In recent weeks, McCain’s advertising tossed one charge after another at the man painted serially as “the biggest celebrity in the world,” “Dr. No” and “The One.” McCain’s attacks, which helped build Obama fatigue, continued over the weekend.

Yet Obama has absorbed the assaults and headed to his holiday in Hawaii holding an advantage of four to six percentage points — roughly the same margin he has enjoyed all summer. This led political strategists in both parties with whom I spoke in recent days to challenge the conventional wisdom of an Obama campaign that is “underperforming.”

Obama has been criticized for not responding quickly enough to the McCain offensive. But the past two weeks have solidified voters’ perceptions, measured in recent polls, that the Republican campaign is far more negative than Obama’s. This opens space for Obama to respond forcefully to McCain without being accused of initiating the attacks.

Moreover, a candidate who spends all his time defining his opponent has not spent much time defining himself. McCain is living off his maverick image. This has fed voter perceptions that he is moderate and independent, allowing him to run more competitively with Obama than any of McCain’s primary opponents could have.

Despite McCain’s longevity in the public eye, though, a CBS News poll last week found a third of voters still undecided in their opinion of McCain or saying they didn’t know enough to form one. (Roughly the same proportion said this about Obama.)

This leaves room for Democrats to define McCain as a conventional conservative and a Bush supporter. And some Republicans wonder if McCain, by absorbing so many Bush operatives into his campaign, may have limited his maneuvering room to declare his independence from an unpopular president.

In the past two weeks, McCain has succeeded in narrowing the economic discussion to energy and oil drilling, forcing Obama to respond defensively. But “drill, drill, drill” is not a slogan that can carry McCain through November, given the range of the electorate’s economic discontents.

There is a certain shrewdness to the McCain campaign’s effort to turn Obama’s strengths — the energy he excites in crowds, the historic nature of his candidacy and the interest he has created overseas — into weaknesses.

“They’re trying to make lemonade out of a lemon,” said one Democratic strategist who is not working for the Obama campaign. “It’s not a bad thing to do, but it’s a sign of weakness.”

Thus the effort to turn Obama into the incumbent. McCain loses if the race becomes a referendum on Bush. He is running behind on most issues. And he has yet to generate the commitment among those who say they’re for him that Obama has inspired among his own supporters.

The one contest McCain can win is an election about Obama. Paradoxically, Obama’s imperative at his convention is to reassure voters about who he is while also moving the spotlight off himself. ++

Barack and the Buck
Wall Street Journal
August 8, 2008

The underreported economic news of the week is that Barack Obama favors a stronger dollar. Even better, he thinks a stronger greenback would help to reduce oil prices.

That at least is what the Democratic Presidential candidate told a town hall forum in Parma, Ohio, on Tuesday. “If we had a strengthening of the dollar, that would help” reduce fuel costs, he said, according to a Reuters dispatch ignored by most of the media.

This ought to be a bigger story. In linking the dollar to oil prices, Mr. Obama is pointedly at odds with the Bush Administration and Federal Reserve, both of which blame high commodity prices on supply and demand, despite falling demand due to slower global growth. Fed officials — in particular, Vice Chairman Donald Kohn — have expressly rejected any strong link between the dollar’s collapse and the oil price surge since last August.

This conveniently absolves the Fed and Bush Treasury of responsibility for the consequences of what has been their destructive and all but explicit dollar devaluation strategy. If the Illinois Senator rejects greenback debasement, that’s the best news to date about Obamanomics.

Reuters also quoted Mr. Obama as saying “The way to strengthen the dollar is for us to get our economy back in shape.” On that point, he has it backward:

Strengthening the dollar would help the economy — by making the U.S. a destination for capital, and especially by reducing the inflation in food and energy prices that has pounded the American middle class. Those price hikes may yet tilt the economy into a recession it could otherwise avoid.

We don’t know who is whispering in Mr. Obama’s ear about the dollar, but he’s on to a rich political vein. Americans know instinctively that something is wrong when the Canadian loonie is worth more than the greenback. Over to you, John McCain. ++

Why You Want a Progressive to Be Running the Economy
Unlike the GOP, progressives have a coherent economic agenda offering not only higher growth, but also social justice.
Joseph Stiglitz, The Guardian
August 11, 2008

Both the left and the right say they stand for economic growth. So should voters trying to decide between the two simply look at it as a matter of choosing alternative management teams?

If only matters were so easy! Part of the problem concerns the role of luck. America’s economy was blessed in the 1990s with low energy prices, a high pace of innovation, and a China increasingly offering high-quality goods at decreasing prices, all of which combined to produce low inflation and rapid growth.

President Clinton and then-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, deserve little credit for this–though, to be sure, bad policies could have messed things up. By contrast, the problems faced today –high energy and food prices and a crumbling financial system –have, to a large extent, been brought about by bad policies.

There are, indeed, big differences in growth strategies, which make different outcomes highly likely. The first difference concerns how growth itself is conceived. Growth is not just a matter of increasing GDP. It must be sustainable: growth based on environmental degradation, a debt-financed consumption binge, or the exploitation of scarce natural resources, without reinvesting the proceeds, is not sustainable.

Growth also must be inclusive; at least a majority of citizens must benefit. Trickle-down economics does not work: an increase in GDP can actually leave most citizens worse off. America’s recent growth was neither economically sustainable nor inclusive. Most Americans are worse off today than they were seven years ago.

But there need not be a trade-off between inequality and growth. Governments can enhance growth by increasing inclusiveness. A country’s most valuable resource is its people. So it is essential to ensure that everyone can live up to their potential, which requires educational opportunities for all.

A modern economy also requires risk-taking. Individuals are more willing to take risks if there is a good safety net. If not, citizens may demand protection from foreign competition. Social protection is more efficient than protectionism.

Failures to promote social solidarity can have other costs, not the least of which are the social and private expenditures required to protect property and incarcerate criminals. It is estimated that within a few years, America will have more people working in the security business than in education. A year in prison can cost more than a year at Harvard. The cost of incarcerating two million Americans — one of the highest per capita rates (pdf) in the world — should be viewed as a subtraction from GDP, yet it is added on.

A second major difference between left and right concerns the role of the state in promoting development. The left understands that the government’s role in providing infrastructure and education, developing technology, and even acting as an entrepreneur is vital. Government laid the foundations of the internet and the modern biotechnology revolutions. In the 19th century, research at America’s government-supported universities provided the basis for the agricultural revolution. Government then brought these advances to millions of American farmers. Small business loans have been pivotal in creating not only new businesses, but whole new industries.

The final difference may seem odd: the left now understands markets, and the role that they can and should play in the economy. The right, especially in America, does not. The new right, typified by the Bush-Cheney administration, is really old corporatism in a new guise.

These are not libertarians. They believe in a strong state with robust executive powers, but one used in defense of established interests, with little attention to market principles. The list of examples is long, but it includes subsidies to large corporate farms, tariffs to protect the steel industry, and, most recently, the mega-bailouts of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. But the inconsistency between rhetoric and reality is long-standing: protectionism expanded under Reagan, including through the imposition of so-called voluntary export restraints on Japanese cars.

By contrast, the new left is trying to make markets work. Unfettered markets do not operate well on their own — a conclusion reinforced by the current financial debacle. Defenders of markets sometimes admit that they do fail, even disastrously, but they claim that markets are “self-correcting.” During the Great Depression, similar arguments were heard: the government need not do anything, because markets would restore the economy to full employment in the long run. But, as John Maynard Keynes famously put it, in the long run we are all dead.

Markets are not self-correcting in the relevant time frame. No government can sit idly by as a country goes into recession or depression, even when caused by the excessive greed of bankers or misjudgment of risks by security markets and rating agencies. But if governments are going to pay the economy’s hospital bills, they must act to make it less likely that hospitalization will be needed. The right’s deregulation mantra was simply wrong, and we are now paying the price. And the price tag — in terms of lost output — will be high, perhaps more than $1.5trn in the US alone.

The right often traces its intellectual parentage to Adam Smith, but while Smith recognized the power of markets, he also recognized their limits. Even in his era, businesses found that they could increase profits more easily by conspiring to raise prices than by producing innovative products more efficiently. There is a need for strong anti-trust laws.

It is easy to host a party. For the moment, everyone can feel good. Promoting sustainable growth is much harder. Today, in contrast to the right, the left has a coherent agenda, one that offers not only higher growth, but also social justice.

For voters, the choice should be easy. ++

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate, is a professor of economics at Columbia University.

“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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