TW3 — plus Joe’s and Deeds and Reads

August 22nd, 2008

That Was The Week That Was … full of blood and bluster. We’ll be lucky-ducky’s if we can side-step a complete meltdown into a new Cold War … but we got us a preview of the McRib presidency, didn’t we!

I’m not happy about “Gordon,” either, or the kanga’s — examples of humankind mucking around with their options. As well, gun-slinging in Texas is hardly new, but it shouldn’t happen in Kindergarten. And, oh yes … update … the Big Foot business was fraudulent.

In other news, Obama’s set to name his VP, perhaps today … the odds are on Biden. Actually, that’s a Joe I can get behind [as opposed to that other one.] I know he’s Hawkish, and a blurter and consequently, carries some gaffe baggage — but seriously: Biden IS the Straight Talk Express, genuine article.

As Obama suffers that Neptunian enigmatic issue, having a tell-it-like-it-is guy on board to interpret him would energize the campaign, and put a lid on the experience and military stuff; Joe’s a lunch-bucket Dem, too … he’s got the little guys back. I worry about the others on the short list; no name recognition. They say a Veep doesn’t count for much; maybe this time it does. We’ll find out soon enough.

McCain will name next week, on his 72nd birthday. I hope when he gets up there he remembers who he picked — it would be quite a fumble to announce Lieberman when he’d really chosen the Mitt [or would it?! At least Traitor Joe could be the "McCain Whisperer" ... and whisper us right into Iran and Russia on the back of a missile.] Joe is going to speak at the Pub Convention — Gail Collins writes an amusing article about the Veep picks in the Times today, and said this about Mac’s possible Joe pick:

This would give Lieberman a unique niche in American history — one politician who was the vice-presidential nominee for both parties. We would speak of it with awe, like that story about the two-headed turtle in Brooklyn.

Mac’s gaffe of the week was not knowing how many houses he owned — it’s one thing, as a member of the Limousine class, not to know how much milk or a tank of gas costs; forgetting your various residences takes some talent … or brain slippage — either/and. Even if you don’t think getting to a quick-count of real estate investments is an issue, this certainly puts the “elitist” nonsense in perspective. Arugula in one mansion — or barbecue in any one of ten: piffle!

R.J. Eskow over at Huffy made up a number “McCain Houses” jokes — I like this one:

Hey, John McCain can’t remember how many houses he has! It’s not his fault, though. He had the number written down but he left it in his other plane.

Memory seems to be an ongoing problem with the McCain power couple — Cindy can’t remember how many sister’s she’s got. Can you say dysfunctional family, boyz and girls??

Hillary is turning in a lethargic performance on Obama’s behalf, and even her supporters are concerned. Maureen Dowd, Distructo-Dame, wrote a snarky editorial about what that might mean, here.

The bonus reads are on McDingbat — the first, by Eugene Robinson, is mild and moderate enough to clip ‘n pass around to Right-leaning undecideds … if MSM won’t go after Mac for the delusional aspects of his campaign, we have to do our part to make the public scratch it’s head. There’s a good Krugman here, too, if your correspondents have an open mind, and a handful of telling links.

Other reads are on the “house” tit/tat’s, the constant use of POW rhetoric [some elders live in the past, they say*] and a couple of Mac’s fellow-POW’s opinion of him as presumptive. I particularly liked the post by Mitchell Bard over at Huffy.

Here’s a Tom Toles ‘toon to start your weekend.

Have a good one, dearhearts; rest up. The Dog and Pony Show starts Monday!

Jude

* link to weekly

HARPER’S WEEKLY
August 19, 2008

After more than a week of fighting and one failed
cease-fire, Russia and Georgia signed a revised cease-fire
agreement, but Russian troops remained within 25 miles of
the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Russian President Dmitri
Medvedev promised French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who
negotiated the agreement, that Russian forces would soon
withdraw from Georgia. He also insisted that troops would
remain in the breakaway Georgian territory South
Ossetia. “The superpower showed that she was able to
defend her people,” said Marina Katayeva, a 30-year-old
Russian doctor. “Now we will be more respected.” Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili said Russians were
“twenty-first-century barbarians” who had essentially
raped his country; “Can you say that, you know the victim
of a rape is to be blamed for the rape because she wore a
short skirt?” While reporting live from Gori, Tamara
Urushadze, a 32-year-old Georgian TV reporter, was shot in
the arm by a sniper. Urushadze looked down at the bloody
scratch, then collapsed onto the ground, then, moments
later, resumed her broadcast. In response to the crisis,
President George W. Bush postponed a vacation trip to his
Texas ranch by one day. Vesti FM, a Russian state-run
radio station, reported that the South Ossetia conflict
was part of a plot by Vice President Dick Cheney to
prevent Barack Obama from being elected president of the
United States, while in the United States it was suggested
that John McCain’s speech on Georgia was partly cribbed
from Wikipedia. Aides to McCain said there are only so
many ways to state historical facts.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf resigned. The United
States and Poland finalized a deal that would allow the
United States to build a missile-interceptor base on
Polish territory, and Ukraine offered the U.S. use of its
missile-warning system. Poland, said Russian general
Anatoly Nogovitsyn, “is exposing itself to a strike–100
percent.” The musical designer for the Beijing Olympics
admitted that Lin Miaoke, the nine-year-old Chinese
schoolgirl who, suspended on wires, performed “Hymn to the
Motherland” at the games’ opening ceremony, lip-synched
the song after Chinese officials decided that the actual
singer, seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, was too ugly and
buck-toothed to perform before billions. Michael Phelps,
the American swimmer who won eight gold medals in Beijing,
revealed that he consumes more than 12,000 calories a day
by eating three egg sandwiches with fried onions, a
five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French
toast, three chocolate-chip pancakes, two ham-and-cheese
sandwiches, two pounds of pasta, and an entire pizza. It
was reported that few of the 9 million overweight or obese
children in the U.S. could afford weight-loss summer
camp. In a joint statement, Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton announced that her name would be included in a
state-by-state roll-call vote at the Democratic
Convention, and economists at the University of Maryland
found that more than one million votes for Obama in the
Democratic primaries could be attributed to Oprah
Winfrey’s endorsement. At a forum for the presidential
candidates hosted by Reverend Rick Warren, Barack Obama
and John McCain were asked to define “rich.” Anyone making
$250,000 or more, said Obama. “If you’re just talking
about income,” said McCain, “how about 5 million?” British
scientists unveiled Gordon, the world’s first robot
controlled by living brain tissue.

Trustees for a north Texas school district approved a
policy change that will allow teachers to carry concealed
handguns to class, and data released by the U.S. Census
Bureau showed that minorities will become the majority by
2042. “It’s important to recognize that this is a choice
we’re making,” said Steven Camarota, a researcher at the
Center for Immigration Studies. “This is not weather that
we have no control over.” German researchers raised a
giant reflective screen in the middle of the Swiss Alps in
an effort to slow the melting of the Rhone glacier, and
Australian scientist George Wilson called on people to eat
kangaroo instead of beef to reduce global warming. Penguin
Nils Olav, the Norwegian King’s Guard mascot since 1972,
was knighted in front of a crowd of several hundred people
and 130 guardsmen. Nils, who shat himself during the
ceremony, was, read the proclamation from King Harald the
Fifth, “in every way qualified to receive the honour and
dignity of knighthood.” Two Bigfoot hunters said they had
killed one such animal and were storing its carcass in a
freezer; analysts found that of the two DNA samples that
the hunters provided to prove Bigfoot’s existence, one was
from a human and the other was 96 percent
opossum. Researchers at the University of California,
Berkeley, developed a material for use in invisibility
cloaks, and a community of Welsh Cistercian monks who had
been relying on a dial-up Internet connection opted to get
a broadband connection. “Patience is one of the
characteristics of monastic life,” said Father Daniel van
Santvoort, “but even the patience of the Brothers was
tested by our slow Internet.”

– Claire Gutierrez
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/08/WeeklyReview2008-08-19

weekend reads

Johnny, We Hardly Know Ye
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
Friday, August 22, 2008

There’s a candidate in this presidential race who remains a mystery — hazy, undefined, so full of contradictions that voters may see electing him as an enormous risk. I’m referring to the cipher known as John McCain.

In fact, there are some basic things about McCain that apparently even McCain doesn’t know. Asked Wednesday by reporters from Politico how many houses he and his wealthy wife, Cindy, own, McCain responded, “I think — I’ll have my staff get to you.” The correct answer seems to be in the neighborhood of seven, but who’s counting?

I don’t begrudge McCain his multiple residences or his $520 Ferragamo shoes. I understand that he was just being flippant and unresponsive when he said at the Saddleback forum last weekend that being rich meant having an income of at least $5 million a year. But it’s a stretch, to say the least, for McCain to portray himself as a Regular Joe while painting Barack Obama as some kind of jet-set celebrity.

It’s understandable that McCain would want to fuzz this aspect of his biography; at a moment of great economic dislocation and anxiety, people might question your ability to feel their pain if they know that your net worth may be somewhere north of $100 million. Much less comprehensible, and much more troubling, is McCain’s habit of “Straight Talking” himself into the wilderness.

When it was pointed out that McCain’s pronouncements on the economy often do not conform to his official positions, the candidate’s chief economic adviser indicated that we should pay attention to the authorized version — despite the fact that McCain “has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls” that might deviate.

In other words, don’t pay such strict attention to what McCain says because he doesn’t speak officially for his own campaign. No wonder he was so insistent on trying to lure Obama into a series of town hall encounters, where Obama might feel constrained by such irrelevancies as consistency and arithmetic.

I guess McCain’s unreliability as a spokesman for himself on the issue that voters tell pollsters they care most about should come as no surprise, given his earlier confession — since retracted, sort of — that he doesn’t really understand economics that well. He is supposed to be an expert on foreign affairs and national security, however — and here, too, the cannon has come unbelayed and is rolling perilously around the deck.

“We are all Georgians,” McCain said in response to the Russian invasion. It was an attempt to define the moment with a memorable line, reminiscent of JFK’s famous declaration in Berlin. If McCain was just trying to burnish his commander-in-chief credentials while Obama vacationed in Hawaii, okay, fine, that’s politics. If he was serious, though, he needs to clarify the unsettling implications of what he intended to be a stirring phrase. Precisely what was being stirred?

Not the hopes and ambitions of the people of Georgia; by then, they had already realized that despite all the Bush administration’s freedom rhetoric, nobody was coming to save them. Certainly not war-weary American voters.

What McCain successfully roiled was the nationalism and bitter nostalgia for great-power status that simmer below the surface of Russian public opinion. Strongman Vladimir Putin plays these sentiments like a violin. A candidate for president of the United States should not further strengthen Putin’s hand — and thus make the next president’s job that much harder.

For months, McCain has been arguing for measures that would isolate Russia. He then called the Georgia invasion “the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.” If he doesn’t want to help start a new Cold War, you can’t tell from his loose rhetoric.

I’m leaving aside his mini-misstatements in which he confused Sunnis with Shiites or otherwise garbled salient facts about Iraq. What alarms me is the pattern of inconsistency. One day he’s soothing, the next he’s abrasive. One day he makes a flat-out pledge not to raise taxes, the next he says that everything is on the table as far as Social Security is concerned. One day the buck stops here, the next he’s not authorized to speak for, ahem, himself.

It’s true that John McCain has been around a long time. But do we really know what he’d do as president? Do we really know who he is? ++

Now That’s Rich
PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT
August 22, 2008

Last weekend, Pastor Rick Warren asked both presidential candidates to define the income at which “you move from middle class to rich.” The context of the question was, of course, the difference in the candidates’ tax policies. Barack Obama wants to put tax rates on higher-income Americans more or less back to what they were under Bill Clinton; John McCain, who was against the Bush tax cuts before he was for them, says that means raising taxes on the middle class.

Mr. Obama answered the question seriously, defining middle class as meaning an income below $150,000. Mr. McCain, at first, made it into a joke, saying “how about $5 million?” Then he declared that it didn’t matter because he wouldn’t raise anyone’s taxes. That wasn’t just an evasion, it was a falsehood: Mr. McCain’s health care plan, by limiting the deductibility of employer-paid insurance premiums, would effectively raise taxes on a number of people.

The real problem, however, was with the question itself.

When we think about the middle class, we tend to think of Americans whose lives are decent but not luxurious: they have houses, cars and health insurance, but they still worry about making ends meet, especially when the time comes to send the kids to college.

Meanwhile, when we think about the rich, we tend to think about the handful of people who are really, really rich — people with servants, people with so much money that, like Mr. McCain, they don’t know how many houses they own. (Remember how Republicans jeered at John Kerry for being too rich?)

The trouble with Mr. Warren’s question was that it seemed to imply that everyone except the poor belongs to one of these two categories: either you’re clearly rich, or you’re an ordinary member of the middle class. And that’s just wrong.

In his entertaining book “Richistan,” Robert Frank of The Wall Street Journal declares that the rich aren’t just different from you and me, they live in a different, parallel country. But that country is divided into levels, and only the inhabitants of upper Richistan live like aristocrats; the inhabitants of middle Richistan lead ample but not gilded lives; and lower Richistanis live in McMansions, drive around in S.U.V.’s, and are likely to think of themselves as “affluent” rather than rich.

Even these arguably not-rich, however, live in a different financial universe from that inhabited by ordinary members of the middle class: they have lots of disposable income after paying for the essentials, and they don’t lose sleep over expenses, like insurance co-pays and tuition bills, that can seem daunting to many working American families.

Which brings us to the dispute about tax policy.

Mr. McCain wants to preserve almost all the Bush tax cuts, and add to them by cutting taxes on corporations. Mr. Obama wants to roll back the high-end Bush tax cuts — the cuts in tax rates on the top two income brackets and the cuts in tax rates on income from dividends and capital gains — and use some of that money to reduce taxes lower down the scale.

According to estimates prepared by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, those Obama tax increases would fall overwhelmingly on people with incomes of more than $200,000 a year. Are such people rich? Well, maybe not: some of those Mr. Obama proposes taxing are only denizens of lower Richistan, although the really big tax increases would fall on upper Richistan. But one thing’s for sure: Mr. Obama isn’t planning to raise taxes on the middle class, by any reasonable definition — even that of the Bush administration.

O.K., the Bush administration hasn’t actually offered a definition of “middle class.” But in May, the Treasury Department — which used to do serious tax studies, but these days just churns out Bush administration propaganda — released a report purporting to show, by looking at the tax bills of four hypothetical families, how the middle and working class would be hurt if the Bush tax cuts aren’t made permanent.

And when the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looked at the report, it made an interesting catch. It turns out that Treasury’s hypothetical families got all their gains from the so-called middle-class provisions of the Bush tax cuts: the Child Tax Credit, the reduced tax bracket for lower incomes and marriage penalty relief.

These all happen to be provisions that Mr. Obama proposes leaving in place. In other words, the Bush administration itself implicitly defines the middle class as consisting of people making too little to end up paying additional taxes under the Obama plan.

Of course, all the evidence in the world won’t stop Republicans from claiming, as they always do, that Democrats are going to impose a crippling tax burden on ordinary hard-working Americans. But it just ain’t so. ++

McCain: ‘There Are Too Many Lobbyists In Washington’ — But 160 Of Them Run My Campaign
Think Progress

McCain Campaign Cites America’s Richest County As Proof Economy Doing Well
David Sirota

McCain Voted For Earmark He Rails Against In Ad
Huffington Post

McCain Camp Plays POW Card On House Gaffe
Huffington Post
August 21, 2008

Facing a Democratic Party positively giddy over his recent admission that he didn’t know how many houses he owned, John McCain quickly returned to a political trump card: his POW experience.

Speaking to the Washington Post, aide Brian Rogers, in full damage-control mode, acknowledged that his boss had “some investment properties and stuff,” but added: “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison.”

That the McCain campaign could incorporate his service in Vietnam into a campaign spat over his property portfolio is not so surprising. The Senator has, rightfully or not, used his history as a POW shrewdly and repeatedly throughout this campaign. Earlier this week, for instance, amidst speculation that the Senator may have received in advance the questions to a values forum between him and Obama, spokeswoman Nicole Wallace declared: “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”

When Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Senator John Edwards, ridiculed McCain’s health care policy, his aides didn’t respond with a substantive retort. Rather, they declared that their boss knew what it was like to get inadequate care “from another government.” Even earlier, when the topic was about earmarks, McCain criticized Sen. Hillary Clinton for proposing funds for a museum celebrating Woodstock. He didn’t know what there was to celebrate, he said, because he was “tied up” during the music festival.

The Senator has even brought his military record into discussion of his music tastes. Explaining that his favorite song was “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, he offered that his knowledge of music “stopped evolving when his plane intercepted a surface-to-air missile.” Dancing Queen, however, was produced in 1975, eight years after McCain’s plane was shot down.

Preceding this election, there was a fairly wide-ranging belief that McCain was hesitant to use his POW experience in a political context. The Senator himself, during the 2004 election, said he was “sick and tired of re-fighting” the Vietnam War.

“It’s offensive to me, and it’s angering to me that we’re doing this,” he said. “It’s time to move on.”

But during this campaign, it seems such reluctance is no longer an issue, with the POW line sneaking into many of the campaign’s commercials and — more subtly — their foreign policy attacks. Much of this strategy has come at the urging of GOP operatives. Karl Rove, for example, wrote an April 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed urging the presumptive Republican nominee to “open up more” on his Vietnam days or “many voters will never know the experiences of his life that show his character.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have been torn over what is an appropriate response. While many attack-oriented strategists have been pleading a more head-on rebuttal (applauding, for instance, Gen Wesley Clark for declaring that one’s time as a POW had no relevance to being commander in chief), the Obama campaign seems more willing to deflect any and all attention from this part of McCain’s biography.

“The fact is, we respect Senator McCain’s service and his courage in Vietnam, but we continue to believe that this election is about who is the best president to lead in the 21st Century,” Philip Carter, Obama’s veterans director, told the Huffington Post. “As you heard on the phone today with the veterans, the critical issue is who understands the threats facing this country and who will make the right decisions about war and peace. That person is Barack Obama, not Senator McCain.” ++

McCain Spokesman’s Retort: Obama Lives in “a Frickin’ Mansion”
Michael D. Shear, WaPo
8/21/08

SEDONA, Ariz. — A spokesman for Sen. John McCain vowed to retaliate against today’s story about how many houses the GOP candidate owns with a renewed focus on Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to a Chicago developer and charges that Obama is an elitist.

“We’re delighted to have a real estate debate with Barack Obama,” said spokesman Brian Rogers, adding that the press should focus on Obama’s house. “It’s a frickin’ mansion. He doesn’t tell people that. You have a mansion you bought in a shady deal with a convicted felon.”

The felon reference was to Tony Rezko, a former Obama friend and financial backer who was convicted on fraud and bribery charges this year. Rogers vowed to intensify efforts to link Obama to Rezko in the coming days.

“That’s fair game now,” he said. “You are going to see more of that now that this issue has been joined. You’ll see more of the Rezko matter from us.”

The McCain campaign was in full damage-control mode as the housing story took off today. Rogers tried to play down the story, saying that reports of the many McCain houses were overstated.

“The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff. It’s not as if he lives in ten houses. That’s just not the case,” Rogers said. “The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use.”

Those four include an apartment in Arlington, a ranch in Sedona, and two condos, in California and Phoenix, he said. The others include “some investment properties and things like that.”

He also added: “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

Rogers called the house story “by far the most personal attack” of the campaign, and said “it comes from a candidate who said he was against this kind of thing.”

He predicted that the story would not “stick” with the American people.

“In terms of who’s an elitist, I think people have made a judgment that John McCain is not an arugula-eating, pointy headed professor-type based on his life story.” ++

August 21, 2008: The Day John McCain’s Campaign Died
Mitchell Bard, HuffPo
August 21, 2008

No, unfortunately, I don’t think that John McCain’s campaign is really over. But there has been an amazing confluence of events in the last 24 hours that have undermined every key basis of McCain’s campaign, so much so that it is hard to see how anyone who is not an extreme right-wing Republican could even consider voting for him. If McCain survives the last 24 hours, I’m not sure what it will take to stop him. You start to wonder if he could drop his pants in the middle of a town hall and still suffer no consequences.

Just think, in the last 24 hours:

Iraq

McCain has made Iraq and national security the center of his campaign. He has unabashedly flouted his support of the war in Iraq, and he has repeatedly suggested that Barack Obama does not have the judgment necessary to be president because, among other things, he supports timetables for the withdrawal of American troops from the country. He has accused Obama of trying to “legislate” defeat.

Well, first, in July, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq was necessary, seriously undermining the whole Bush-McCain strategy for staying in Iraq. McCain brushed off Maliki’s remarks as the Iraqi prime minister just playing politics, not expressing his true beliefs.

But now McCain’s biggest nightmare has come true. Today we find out that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice appeared with the Iraqi foreign minister to announce that the two countries have agreed that a timetable should be set for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

McCain now stands alone. After all his criticisms of Obama’s judgment on this issue, the Iraqis and even the Bush administration have now been forced to concede that a timetable for withdrawal is necessary (essentially adopting Obama’s long-held position). McCain’s criticisms have blown up in his face. Anyone paying attention would have to laugh off his claims now that his judgment on Iraq is superior to Obama’s (especially considering that Obama opposed the war, while McCain told Americans it would be an easy victory, we would be greeted as liberators, and we would only be faced with a short engagement).

Afghanistan

Throughout the campaign, Obama has hammered home the point that the real war on terror is based in Afghanistan, and that more troops were needed there to secure the country. In July, McCain mocked Obama’s position, calling him naive and premature. Again, McCain used Obama’s plan as an example of his lack of judgment.

McCain also had maintained that the war in Iraq was not affecting the ability of the U.S. to send a sufficient amount of troops to Afghanistan, something that was directly contradicted in early July by Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he said, “I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq. Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there.”

Mullen’s repudiation of McCain’s position didn’t knock him off his high horse, but yesterday’s actions by the Pentagon sealed McCain’s fate on this issue. The military announced (quietly, with little media coverage) that 11,000 soldiers would be sent to Afghanistan.

Once again, Obama took a position, McCain mocked him and claimed it showed bad judgment, and then, ultimately, Obama’s stance was proven to be correct and was adopted. What can McCain say now?

How Many Houses?

Moving from the substantively important to America’s obsession with silliness, when John Kerry was photographed windsurfing during the 2004 campaign, he cemented his image with voters of being an upper-class elitist, out of touch with the day-to-day lives of the common folks. The judgment wasn’t based on policies, since Kerry’s positions were unquestionably more in tune with those of the average blue collar worker than the stands taken by George W. Bush. But in our image-is-everything culture, the photo resonated with many voters, confirming that Kerry was not one of them. (The need for a candidate to be “average” is insane, but that’s a discussion for a different article.)

Yesterday, McCain had his windsurfing moment. When asked how many houses he and his wife owned, McCain said he didn’t know and would have to check with his staffers. After the McCain campaign said the answer was at least four, Obama later happily pointed out that, in fact, the McCains had seven homes. If McCain’s remark last week at Rick Warren’s values forum about $5 million being the threshold for being “rich” (watch for yourself here) didn’t sink the idea of McCain as a “man of the people,” then not knowing how many houses he owns should put McCain’s regular guy status over the edge. Maybe once and for all people will realize that McCain is a man of extreme wealth. To borrow the famous Seinfeld phrase, “not that there’s anything wrong with it,” but being rich is not the image the McCain campaign likes to project for its candidate.

Can you imagine if Obama ever said he didn’t know how many homes he owned? He would be done. This should be McCain’s windsurfing moment. Let’s see if the media and the public treat McCain the way they treated Kerry.

The Draft

Yesterday, a woman in a town hall meeting in New Mexico, after a long list of thoughts, said that she didn’t see a way to go after Osama bin Laden without reinstating the draft. McCain responded by saying, “I don’t disagree with anything you said.” (Watch for yourself here.)

Clearly, such a policy would not be popular with a huge percentage of young people and parents. Maybe McCain really is in favor of bringing back the draft, and maybe he is not. If he’s called on it, I’m sure he’ll try to dodge the issue and deny that he even said it (after all, he never suffers consequences for his lies, so why should he stop?).

But for a presidential candidate to say that he “doesn’t disagree” with reinstating the draft is a major gaffe. Again, if Obama made such a statement, it would be all but game over for his campaign. Let’s see if McCain survives it.

All and all, not a banner day for McCain’s ambitions (yes, he has them) for the White House.

There is no doubt that McCain’s candidacy has been on an upswing, and recent Rasmussen polls have shown him gaining in key battleground states like New Hampshire. But by every measurement, the last 24 hours should be devastating to the McCain campaign. He has been undermined and proven wrong (and worse, Obama has been proven correct) on his bedrock issue of national security, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan; he has exposed himself to the electorate as wealthy and out of touch; and he has advocated for, of all things, reinstating the draft. If McCain survives the last day, I fear it means that voters, for whatever reason, don’t want to hear the truth about John McCain.

Is today the day that McCain’s campaign dies? It should be. Let’s see if it is. ++

Senator McCain Would Forget His Head If It Wasn’t Attached
Bob Cesca, HuffPo
August 21, 2008

It’s probably time for the Republicans to panic.

Reason the first: despite all of the McCain campaign attacks of the last six weeks and, naturally, Senator McCain’s whiteness and military service, the McCain campaign can’t, as Pat Buchanan likes to say, “close the deal.” He can’t overtake Senator Obama in the polls given the roster of assaults on Obama’s patriotism and character as well as the continued accusations that Obama, according to the McCain campaign and the barbecue media, is a skinny, exotic, infanticidal, egg-headed evildoer.

Reason the second, and more importantly: Senator McCain appears to be losing his shpadoinkle. When he admitted that he doesn’t know how many houses he and his heiress wife own, it might not have been because he owns too many houses to count. Instead, it could be that he simply couldn’t remember how many houses he owns.

Brit Hume once called this kind of glitch “a senior moment,” but how many senior moments can a guy have before we seriously begin to question whether, for example, in the middle of an international crisis, he’s going to forget who the president of Russia is and then bomb Berlin thinking that Putin is the president of Germany. Oh. Wait.

Ask any homeowner how many houses they own and they’ll probably answer correctly — or, if they’re crazy rich, they’ll at least answer within the margin of error (+/- one house). Ask Senator Obama and he’ll probably answer correctly (one). Yet Senator McCain simply couldn’t remember. Slipped his mind. Even if he had answered, but answered incorrectly, it still would’ve been a problem, but nowhere near this level.

“I think — I’ll have my staff get to you. It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”

He could’ve totally invented a number like Grandpa Simpson, “I got ‘dickety’ houses! Why ‘dickety’? Because the Kaiser stole the word ‘eight’!” But McCain blanked. “It’s condominiums,” was the extent of the information he could muster. That’s sort of like asking your bank for your checking account balance and they reply, “Errrm. It’s dollars.”

It’s no wonder he’s considering Senator Lieberman to be his running mate. He’ll need someone around who can remind him of important facts — such as when he forgets that Bin Laden is a Sunni, and that Iran is predominantly Shi’ite.

To put it frankly, Senator McCain is showing the signs of being too old for the gig, and his recent history of forgetting things (whether simple details like the number of houses he owns, or more complicated facts like Sunni vs. Shia) ought to be the source of some serious panic inside the Republican loop — far more panic, by the way, than is being generated by the prospect of a pro-choice running mate.

The numbers agree. A Gallup poll from last year indicated that Americans are only slightly more comfortable with a 72-year-old president than they are with a gay president. (72 years of age: 57, 42. A homosexual: 55, 43.)

Of course, we’re all well-aware of the Republican Party’s proud record of homophobia, so when Senator McCain underscores his soon-to-be 72 years by forgetting how many mansions he owns, it’s really no wonder why he can’t seem to “close the deal.” Never mind that he owns more houses than most of us will own in a lifetime — so many houses that it’s impossible for him to remember the exact number — and this during an economic and housing foreclosure crisis no less. Never mind that he ostensibly needed his hired help to count his many, many mansions for him.

And while we’re here, never mind that even though he couldn’t remember how many mansions he owns, and needed a cue card to remember the price of milk, he boldly claimed to know the exact metaphysical instant when an eternal soul enters a zygote — an awesome display of televised omnipotence that exceeded the holy powers of the Pope himself.

Speaking of holy powers, for the last eight years we’ve suffered the antics of a super-rich president who’s repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for basic rationality and reason (for the sake of contrast, President Bush owns just one multi-million-dollar estate). And take a look around at the consequences. We’ve had a president who, despite his intellectual shortcomings and the speculative evidence of some form of neurological infirmity (what was that jaw twitching thing from 2005?), has overcompensated by making ludicrous decisions based on his gut.

Now imagine more of the same thing, but this time from a president who’s caught in the grips of some kind forgetful dementia — in addition to his spastic hair-trigger rage. In other words, the most dangerous combination of character traits possible.

And yet it’s only August, 2008. Senator McCain hasn’t even had to endure the stresses the office yet — the mental and physical rigors that go along with being the nation’s chief executive. What would he be like a year from now? Two years from now? For someone in his condition, nuance and diplomacy is likely an abandoned set of options. The easiest approach is for bellicosity. For attack. It’s the most basic, instinctive, direct approach — one that’s easily grasped by men of limited capacity. So I suppose the more important question is: what would America be like a year from now, or two years from now if McCain and the Republicans end up winning this thing anyway? How many more wars will you fight, Senator McCain?

Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to ask a tricky numbers question. ++

John McCain Needs to Lay Off the POW Talk
Brandon Friedman, HuffPo
August 21, 2008

When John McCain revealed that he didn’t know how many houses he and his wife currently own (they have at least eight properties), the Obama campaign pounced. They accused him of being elitist and disconnected and launched an ad within hours. The McCain campaign–realizing this was trouble–retorted the only way they knew how: With a truly stupefying response from McCain spokesman Brian Rogers:

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

Yes, you read that right. McCain justified not knowing how many houses he has by saying he was a POW in Vietnam, four decades ago. I have some things to say about this:

1. Being a POW is not an excuse for everything.

The bottom line is that we’re sick of hearing about this as a justification for everything John McCain does or doesn’t do. This instance is only the latest example, as others have noted.

The fact is, John McCain’s service during Vietnam was honorable and he sacrificed a great deal. But his service to the country carries no more weight than that of any other POW. Likewise, while McCain has given so much to his country, thousands of veterans–past and present–have given as much or more. In this war alone, thousands of troops have lost limbs, been paralyzed, and been burned beyond recognition. So to see McCain resort to playing the POW card when answering legitimate questions, in my mind, cheapens that experience. And by cheapening his own experience in war, he degrades all of our experiences in war. He turns the horrific incidents we’ve all seen, touched, smelled, and felt into a lame excuse to earn political points. And it dishonors us all.

And while Spencer Ackerman is not a veteran himself, I think he sums up what many combat vets are feeling today after hearing the campaign’s statement:

What McCain went through in the North Vietnamese POW camps is an unimaginable, unfathomable horror. The word “heroism” doesn’t really capture it sufficiently. It is a singular experience, and it defies human nature to expect that it wouldn’t have been the crucible through which McCain’s essence was formed. But it’s becoming a verbal tic, the equivalent of Rudy Giuliani’s noun-verb-9/11.

Does it honor or cheapen that experience to use it to bat away unrelated questions about, say, how many homes you own, or whether you truthfully entered a cone of debate-silence or what influences your musical taste? By bringing up the POW experience at opportunities like these, McCain is clearly trying to bait Obama into seeming to attack that experience. That’s a really unfortunate move that’s entirely beneath the character of a man who endured what McCain endured.

I agree. But there’s also another issue here:

2. Thousands of veterans are homeless–that is, they have ZERO homes.

John McCain seems to forget that while he and his wife own at least eight houses, there are currently over 150,000 homeless vets on America’s streets. The only “houses” they own are cardboard boxes under a bridge. Many of these vets served alongside John McCain in Vietnam. Some might have even been POWs. Either way, thousands of them have suffered immeasurably overseas, in the service of their country.

Therefore, to justify owning eight homes by saying he was a POW for five and a half years is disingenuous at best, outright repulsive at worst. If McCain thinks so highly of the wartime experience, perhaps he has some floor space to spare for a few homeless vets in a handful of his many homes.

John McCain owes troops and veterans more respect than he seems to be giving them. Whether it’s cheapening the POW experience, opposing the Webb GI Bill, or blustering for more wars, he’s doing a disservice to all veterans.

John McCain knows things about war that civilians can never know. He has sacrificed more and suffered more than most Americans ever will. John McCain is a war veteran. Just like the rest of us who’ve served in combat. He should get no special treatment and no free pass that any other veteran couldn’t get. And he needs to lay off the POW talk. ++

McCain’s POW Defense: Devaluing Our Service and His Own
Lt. General Robert G. Gard Jr. (USA, Ret.), HuffPo
August 21, 2008

The McCain campaign has spent weeks trying to portray Obama as out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans. Today, an interviewer at Politico.com asked McCain how many homes he and his wife owned, to which he responded that he was not sure but would get someone from his staff to answer.

Contrary to what many will tell you, this does not make McCain out of touch with ordinary Americans, as many families today are in trouble with their banks and trying to figure out how many homes they have - zero or one.

Still, it’s the campaign’s defense we find deeply troubling:

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison.”

We obviously honor and respect McCain’s service and the five-and-a-half years of horror that he went through at the hands of the North Vietnamese; but it’s not an excuse for everything. He has already used it to explain away his infidelities in his first marriage. He’s used it to defend his healthcare plan. He just the other day used it to deflect accusations of having skirted the rules of the Saddleback forum.

It’s time for the Senator to stop cheapening the war experiences of thousands of vets and his fellow POWs, and his own as well, by stretching the boundaries of logic to make his POW status a wild-card rebuttal to all accusations or an answer to all difficult questions.

We are veterans who like John McCain, who served honorably, but and we continue to serve our country honorably by not using our military experiences as unjustifiable necessary shields or stepping stones. John McCain has faced and will continue to face many difficult questions that he does not have an answer for, and problems to which that he will provides no solutions to, in the 70 days between now and the election. When he uses his status as a veteran to deflect legitimate questions and concerns, it devalues not just his service to our country but ours as well.

So today, we ask not as Veterans for Obama, but as Veterans of America that Sen. McCain respect the service of his fellow POWs and combat veterans, and stop cheapening their service by hiding behind his own. ++

Lt. General Robert G. Gard Jr. (USA, Ret.) is the steering committee chairman of Vets for Obama. Visit their official site or join them on Facebook.

I Spent Years as a POW with John McCain, and His Finger Should Not Be Near the Red Button
A fellow Vietnam POW of McCain’s warns of the candidate’s “quick and explosive temper” and suggests McCain is exaggerating his imprisonment.
Phillip Butler, Military.com via Alternet
August 21, 2008

John McCain is a long-time acquaintance of mine that goes way back to our time together at the U.S. Naval Academy and as Prisoners of War in Vietnam. He is a man I respect and admire in some ways. But there are a number of reasons why I will not vote for him for President of the United States.

When I was a Plebe (4th classman, or freshman) at the Naval Academy in 1957-58, I was assigned to the 17th Company for my four years there. In those days we had about 3,600 midshipmen spread among 24 companies, thus about 150 midshipmen to a company. As fortune would have it, John, a First Classman (senior) and his room mate lived directly across the hall from me and my two room mates. Believe me when I say that back then I would never in a million or more years have dreamed that the crazy guy across the hall would someday be a Senator and candidate for President!

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. John had me “coming around” to his room frequently during my plebe year. And on one occasion he took me with him to escape “over the wall” in the dead of night. He had a taxi cab waiting for us that took us to a bar some 7 miles away. John had a few beers, but forbid me to drink (watching out for me I guess) and made me drink cokes. I could tell many other midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact he barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.

People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always “No - John McCain was a POW with me.” The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 1/2 years later, so he was a POW for 5 1/2 years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW.

John’s treatment as a POW:

1) Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969. After September of 1969 the Vietnamese stopped the torture and gave us increased food and rudimentary health care. Several hundred of us were captured much earlier. I got there April 20, 1965 so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years. President Ho Chi Minh died on September 9, 1969, and the new regime that replaced him and his policies was more pragmatic. They realized we were worth a lot as bargaining chips if we were alive. And they were right because eventually Americans gave up on the war and agreed to trade our POW’s for their country. A damn good trade in my opinion! But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals.

2) John was badly injured when he was shot down. Both arms were broken and he had other wounds from his ejection. Unfortunately this was often the case — new POW’s arriving with broken bones and serious combat injuries. Many died from their wounds. Medical care was non-existent to rudimentary. Relief from pain was almost never given and often the wounds were used as an available way to torture the POW. Because John’s father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW’s suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda.

3) John was offered, and refused, “early release.” Many of us were given this offer. It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to “admit” that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was “lenient and humane.” So I, like numerous others, refused the offer. This was obviously something none of us could accept. Besides, we were bound by our service regulations, Geneva Conventions and loyalties to refuse early release until all the POW’s were released, with the sick and wounded going first.

4) John was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds in combat. This heroism has been played up in the press and in his various political campaigns. But it should be known that there were approximately 600 military POW’s in Vietnam. Among all of us, decorations awarded have recently been totaled to the following: Medals of Honor — 8, Service Crosses — 42, Silver Stars — 590, Bronze Stars — 958 and Purple Hearts — 1,249. John certainly performed courageously and well. But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many — not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.

John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty and tenacity. More that 600 of us did the same. After our repatriation a census showed that 95% of us had been tortured at least once. The Vietnamese were quite democratic about it. There were many heroes in North Vietnam. I saw heroism every day there. And we motivated each other to endure and succeed far beyond what any of us thought we had in ourselves. Succeeding as a POW is a group sport, not an individual one. We all supported and encouraged each other to survive and succeed.

John knows that. He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60’s and 70’s. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John’s age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush’s war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John’s views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

I’m disappointed to see John represent himself politically in ways that are not accurate. He is not a moderate Republican. On some issues he is a maverick. But his voting record is far to the right. I fear for his nominations to our Supreme Court, and the consequent continuing loss of individual freedoms, especially regarding moral and religious issues. John is not a religious person, but he has taken every opportunity to ally himself with some really obnoxious and crazy fundamentalist ministers lately. I was also disappointed to see him cozy up to Bush because I know he hates that man. He disingenuously and famously put his arm around the guy, even after Bush had intensely disrespected him with lies and slander. So on these and many other instances, I don’t see that John is the “straight talk express” he markets himself to be.

Senator John Sidney McCain, III is a remarkable man who has made enormous personal achievements. And he is a man that I am proud to call a fellow POW who “Returned With Honor.” That’s our POW motto. But since many of you keep asking what I think of him, I’ve decided to write it out.

In short, I think John Sidney McCain, III is a good man, but not someone I will vote for in the upcoming election to be our President of the United States. ++

Doctor Phillip Butler is a 1961 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former light-attack carrier pilot. In 1965 he was shot down over North Vietnam where he spent eight years as a prisoner of war. He is a highly decorated combat veteran who was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legion of Merits, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Heart medals. After his repatriation in 1973 he earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at San Diego and became a Navy Organizational Effectiveness consultant. He completed his Navy career in 1981 as a professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is now a peace and justice activist with Veterans for Peace.

“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