BUICKBOY57:
“ McCain admitted in his RNC acceptance speech that he had overflown his mission target, with the consequences being shot down and held as a POW for 5 & 1/2 years. By going deeper into enemy territory than authorized, he was insubordinate, disobeyed orders, and was hot-dogging for his own sheer pleasure. He paid dearly for that joy ride, but has no one to blame but himself ...
After his release, unable to take a command at sea because of his injuries, his naval career stalled at Captain, because in order to make Admiral you have to complete a sea command. That meant he failed to continue his family legacy and, coupled with a lifelong disrepect for authority and rules, is it any wonder that he seems so angry?
The base of McCain's favorite word, deregulation (the mantle of his Senate career), is regulate, for which he has continually shown disdain and contempt.. Are we now to believe that he will do an about face and be an agent of change?
The stakes in this election are far too important, and that is a gamble none of us can afford to take.
Heartened that my Dad is voting for Obama but my sister and niece aren't. Why a reasonably intelligent woman would buy into "crying wolf" a third time from a lying Imperial Presidency is beyond my understanding. And my niece's choice is baffling.
Amb. Richard C. Holbrooke Friday's unique free-form debate format offered the best insights so far into the vast differences, values and style of Barack Obama and John McCain, and how they would approach the challenges that only a president can decide. It was the stunning contrast in personal behavior, not their answers, that was most revealing.
Given the time spent on the economic crisis, Jim Lehrer had time for only five "lead" questions on national security--on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, and homeland security. Other major issues will have to await later debates. But there was enough time for many intense and revealing exchanges. With a command of both the facts and the underlying issues, and a reassuring manner, Obama convincingly passed the key test of the debate--is he qualified to be Commander-in-Chief? But the real insights came in the revelations about the way each man thinks under pressure, and the way they interacted.
First, note a recurring pattern: With the exception of Iraq, where the disagreement began with Obama's opening sentence, Obama usually began by laying out broad themes, often mentioning instances of agreement with McCain--frequently using phrases like "John is absolutely right"--before going on to stress their differences. This is unusual, and part of what makes Obama a unique leader; I do not recall any previous major party candidate in a debate volunteering so many instances of common ground with his opponent. McCain's response struck me as odd and even ungracious; he has often proclaimed he would work across the partisan divide, but he undermined his own claim by completely ignoring Obama and his comments. Instead, he attacked Obama repeatedly, using phrases such as "Senator Obama just doesn't understand. . ." at least ten times.
The manner in which each man approached problems was strikingly different. McCain understandably emphasized his own personal experiences, but almost never made clear what he thought was the larger purpose of policy. Each problem was treated on its own, and McCain's proposed policies were invariably confrontational. John McCain's world focuses almost entirely on threats. Obama usually agreed with McCain on the nature of these threats, but his proposals for action were more insightful, sophisticated, and comprehensive, and, unlike McCain's, included the use of diplomatic and economic and moral power.
These striking differences were not simply debate tactics; they highlighted differences between the two men that are in their DNA. One is the product of the brawling traditions of the United States Navy, and survival under unimaginable conditions in a Hanoi prison. John McCain has prevailed in life not by seeking common ground (ironically, the most notable exception was his historic voyages of forgiveness to Vietnam). What has kept him energized (and alive) is his enormously combative style, which he proudly calls "maverick," and his quick, sometimes pre-emptive attacks on opponents. It is not a criticism to say that he is a gambler; he said so himself in his memoirs and in the debate.
Although Barack Obama articulates his positions in a calm, methodical, and understated way, he is clearly just as tough as McCain, or he would never have come this far in life, against unbelievable odds. But he thinks about how to solve problems in a manner much more conducive to successful governance than McCain. While he made clear he is ready to use military force if necessary, his life and career embodies the search for common ground between peoples of different backgrounds, different races, different points of view. During the debate he often emphasized the non-military aspects of American power--including diplomacy backed by American muscle, the restoration of respect for the nation, and the direct link between America's economic strength and its national security.
Astonishingly, McCain had virtually nothing to say on any of these issues--yet these are the tools that must be precisely balanced and deployed with skill if the nation is to regain its leadership position in the world.
This difference was reinforced by the much-noted failure of McCain to look in Obama's direction or address him directly during the debate, and by the grim looks that left many viewers with the impression McCain was just plain angry.
The overall effect was exactly the opposite of what McCain hoped to achieve: Obama showed that he could handle the frontal assaults of an aggressive and seasoned senator-war hero in the very area McCain was perceived to be strongest. Obama offered the larger vision for the nation--and a reassuring sense he would approach issues with the seriousness they required. The gambling, brawling style of John McCain has its attractive side to Americans, but it is not what we need in the White House in these troubled times.
George Will: Palin Is Not Qualified
Famed conservative columnist George Will told a gathering of Senate aides on Monday that Gov. Sarah Palin is "obviously" not prepared to assume the presidency if necessary, two event attendees told the Huffington Post.
Appearing at a Senate Press Secretaries Association reception at the Cornerstone Government Affairs office, Will offered a harsh assessment of John McCain's running mate.
Palin is "obviously not qualified to be President," he remarked, describing her interview on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric as a "disaster."
Will did state, according to a second source, that Palin has received rough treatment from the media; arguing that the Alaska Governor would have been "skewered" by the press if she had made some of the same gaffes as Sen. Joe Biden has in recent weeks. But his sympathies only extended so far.
Will has already been critical of the other half of the Republican ticket, calling McCain's handling of the financial crisis "un-presidential" just one week ago. And in offering his take on Palin, the longtime Washington scribe becomes the latest in a list of respected conservative figures who have now soured on the Palin pick.
Last week, Kathleen Parker of the National Review penned a column calling on the Alaska Governor to be dropped from the ticket. New York Time's columnist David Brooks and former Bush speechwriter David Frum have also expressed their doubts about Palin's capacity for the vice presidential post.
Will, who did not return requests for comment., had also been previously critical of McCain's choice of Palin, writing a week after it was announced: "The man who would be the oldest to embark on a first presidential term has chosen as his possible successor a person of negligible experience." One week ago, meanwhile, Will penned a blistering op-ed about McCain, accusing him of practicing "fact-free slander," holding a "Manichaean worldview," and "characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence."
Pebble's LAT story getting traction! Palin Claimed Dinosaurs And People Coexisted
The LA Times reports:
Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.
Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.
The idea of a "young Earth" -- that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on -- is a popular strain of creationism.
Though in her race for governor she called for faith-based "intelligent design" to be taught along with evolution in Alaska's schools, Gov. Palin has not sought to require it, state educators say.
In a widely-circulated interview, Matt Damon said of Palin, "I need to know if she really think that dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago. I want to know that, I really do. Because she's gonna have the nuclear codes."
The Questions for Perot about McCain and Gambling
Yesterday's New York Times front-page investigative story about John McCain's long time ties to the nation's gambling industry ("For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling"), jogged my memory about an unsettling bit of information I was given by Ross Perot in 1995.
In November 1995, my wife and fellow author, Trisha, and I, interviewed Perot for several days for an unauthorized biography (Citizen Perot: His Life & Times, Random House, 1996). During one of our conversations, outside of the 'on the record' taped interviews, Perot discussed with us how he had utilized private investigators to uncover information about other people. Perot never used, from what I could determine, any of the personal details he assembled about others. Rather, he was merely a collector of information, never knowing when it might come in useful.
I discussed this with my editor, Bob Loomis. Without independent reporting, much of it was no more than informed gossip. Perot had passed along personal details about Barbara Walters family, Clinton chief of staff Leon Penneta, and business tycoon Peter Ueberroth, someone Perot had seriously considered as a vice-presidential candidate in his own 1992 presidential run.
From our interviews with Perot about the Vietnam POW/MIA issue, it was clear there was no love lost between Perot and a number of public officials who opposed his efforts to keep looking for soldiers he believed had been left behind and were alive. On Perot's most disliked list was George Herbert Bush, who as Reagan's vice-president had shut the door to any further government probe on the matter. Richard Armitage, George W. Bush's ex-deputy Secretary of State, had earned Perot's eternal animosity because of his conclusion that there were no MIAs left in Southeast Asia. And the final person to earn Perot's enmity was John McCain, who as a decorated war hero, and then Senator, had also closed the door to any further MIA investigations.
Bob Loomis and I decided that I should not report Perot's personal details about these men and women, with two exceptions. Regarding Ueberroth, I wrote in Citizen Perot that one Perot campaign insider had concluded that "Ueberroth was the perfect match," but that "Perot and Mort Meyerson (Perot's top business executive at EDS) personally made inquiries about him and eventually opted for a stand-in candidate."
And as for Armitage, Perot's information was so detailed, including even surveillance photos of Armitage in supposedly compromising situations, I did report it. And Armitage was generous in giving me extensive interviews that helped explain the background and put into context Perot's one man war on him.
I am only reporting now Perot's rumor/information about McCain because of today's New York Times story. Perot told me that McCain had a gambling problem and he had uncovered details that McCain was bailed out in the late 1980s from a big gambling debt by his wife, Cindy.
If true, it raises a question as to whether McCain's gambling might ever have put him in a situation where he was pressed to repay his debt through Senatorial favors.
An enterprising reporter has to ask Ross Perot if he will acknowledge what he shared with me 14 years ago, and if so, if he will now provide the evidence to back up the assertion. Perot hasn't talked to me since I published my unauthorized biography, so unfortunately, I am not the person to ask. And some reporter should ask McCain, directly, if he has ever had a gambling debt that his wife had to pay off. American voters have a right to know.
The Mother Of All Expectation Games
First rule of thumb in presidential politics: if a GOP operative is saying it, it's not true.
That's why I'm disinclined to put much credibility in the WSJ's article today about GOP fears that Palin won't be able to pull off the Thursday debate.
The article doesn't feature a single GOP operative speaking in Palin's defense. Meanwhile, the article cites several examples of Plain "flubbing" mock debates, whatever that means.
Those leaks have to be coming from McCain-land. You never see that kind of stuff coming from a campaign unless it's planned, and their plan couldn't be more obvious. They are playing pre-debate spin wars, and they are doing it big time, workign feverishly to lower expectations for Palin's performance.
I'll give them some credit: they have done a great job of lowering expectations. They've made lemonade out of the CBS interview lemon, and it just might pay off in some small degree.
While there is always a chance Palin could gaffe during the debate, it's far more likely that she will do just fine, in large part because the debate's format is so rigidly structured (a fact that should also benefit Joe Biden, who is a gaffe-monster himself).
But even though they've managed to lower expectations, they haven't really dealt with the fundamental problem that they face, which is that at a time when the McCain campaign needs a game-changing moment, the best they can hope for in the debate on Thursday is that it isn't a calamity.
Fortunately for them, it probably won't be a calamity, but even if Palin wins the debate it won't mean much for the campaign. Remember Lloyd Bentsen's demolition of Dan Quayle in 1988? Take a look:
I'd be surprised as anybody if Palin won the debate as thoroughly as Bentsen did in 1988, but we all know what happened in 1988. (Similarly, if Biden wins like Bensten it won't change much.)
On the other hand, if Palin turns in a debate performance worthy of James Stockdale in 1992 (Ross Perot's "what am I doing here" running mate) McCain would suffer real demage, damage that no amount of pre-debate spin can counteract.
Again, a repeat of Stockdale 1992 probably isn't in the cards.
Most likely, on Friday morning we'll probably be looking at a race that's fundamentally unchanged. If it is changed, however, it won't be a good thing for McCain.
One-In-Four Chance McCain May Not Survive 2nd Term
Read More: New Urgency Over McCain Medical Questions As Election Nears
WASHINGTON — If John McCain is elected and goes on to win a second term, there's as much as a one-in-four chance America could see its first woman president _ Sarah Palin.
It's actuarial math.
The odds highly favor either McCain or Barack Obama completing a first term in good health. After that, McCain's odds still are still fairly solid, but his chances of dying or being in poor health go up faster than Obama's, mainly because of his age.
An Atlanta actuarial company specializing in individualized estimates of life and health expectancy has run the numbers for McCain, 72, and Obama, 47. The firm, Bragg Associates, calculated the odds of the candidates dying in office, adjusted for their known health problems.
McCain would be the oldest president to begin a first term in office. By the end of a second term, Jan. 20, 2017, he would have a 24.44 percent chance of dying, compared with 5.76 percent for Obama, the firm estimates.
"Can either candidate expect to serve two terms in a healthy state? The answer is yes," says James C. Brooks, Jr., an actuary with the firm. "They're both in outstanding health for people of their age."
Illness is another issue.
Because chances of developing a serious ailment are higher for any person than are the chances of dying, Bragg used the candidates' medical information to estimate how many years of good health might be in store for each. After all, a debilitating illness could force a president to step down.
The firm estimates that McCain has a health expectancy of 8.4 years, while Obama can expect another 21.9 years of good health. The calculations are from January, 2009, covering two terms in office for either candidate. McCain, if he's like others in his age group, would have a cushion of just about five months.
But no one really knows. Actuaries like Brooks make statistical calculations for insurance companies, based on numbers culled from large databases. No matter how sophisticated, they can't predict anyone's future.
"There a randomness to it that we don't know," said Ron Gebhardtsbauer, who directs the actuarial science program at Penn State's Smeal College of Business.
For example, he said, "if McCain is president, he'll get the best health care in the world. I can't crank that into any of my numbers."
Health expectancy calculations, although relatively new, are becoming increasingly important as people buy long-term-care insurance.
"We've done thousands of these health expectancy calculations for financial planners," said Brooks. "People, especially those with high net worth, are concerned more about the risk of living too long than about what happens if they die prematurely. What if they need long-term care?"
The firm's estimates for McCain and Obama relied on medical information disclosed by the candidates. Bragg Associates has no partisan agenda, said Brooks: "We don't have a dog in this hunt."
He classified the Democrat as a smoker with minor upper respiratory problems, probably linked to his smoking. Obama announced in February that he was trying to quit smoking again, with the aid of nicotine gum.
"We don't consider you a nonsmoker until you stay quit for 12 months," said Brooks.
In the spring, the Obama campaign released a letter from the candidate's doctor declaring him to be in excellent health. He had very good cholesterol levels, his EKG was normal, his pulse was 60 beats per minute, and his blood pressure was an outstanding 90 over 60. Obama also exercises regularly.
But Obama has a family history of cancer. His mother died of ovarian cancer and his maternal grandfather died of prostate cancer. Obama's PSA screening test for prostate cancer showed no sign of abnormalities.
For the Republican, Brooks took into account a history of skin cancer, degenerative arthritis from his Vietnam war injuries, moderately high cholesterol, mild vertigo and that McCain is a former smoker who quit in 1980.
McCain allowed reporters to review eight years of medical records, more than 1,000 pages. They show that he is cancer-free, has a strong heart and is generally in good health. As a three-time melanoma survivor, his biggest health worry is a recurrence of that cancer. But he is closely watched by his dermatologist, and any future melanoma should be caught in time to be treated successfully. McCain maintains a healthy weight and blood pressure, and takes medication for his cholesterol.
Vice presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin have not released their medical records, although Biden has promised to. Biden, 65, had surgery 20 years ago to repair a life-threatening brain aneurysm. He was out of the Senate for seven months while he recuperated but says he's fine now. Palin, 44, a mother of five, gave birth earlier this year to a son, Trig, who was born with Down syndrome.
Unearthed Video: McCain Pushed Bush Iraq War Agenda Two Months After 9/11
Recently unearthed video shows that just two months after 9/11, John McCain was not only fully aware of the Bush Administration's Iraq War Agenda, but also that he actively helped make the argument for war.
In an interview broadcast November 28, 2001 on ABC News Nightline, McCain:
* Said that the Bush Administration would build a case for military conflict with Iraq, and expressed his support for such action
* Advanced false claims made by the Bush Administration about the threat of Iraqi WMD
* Connected Iraq with 9/11 by repeating the false claim that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta had met with Iraq intelligence authorities in Prague before 9/11
Here's the video:
The Sarah Palin pity party
Everyone seems to be oozing sympathy for the fumbling vice-presidential nominee. Please. Cry me a freaking river.
By Rebecca Traister
Sep. 30, 2008 | Is this the week that Democrats and Republicans join hands -- to heap pity on poor Sarah Palin?
Gov. Sarah Palin pauses during her speech in Golden, Colo., Sept. 15, 2008.
At the moment, all signs point to yes, as some strange bedfellows reveal that they have been feeling sorry for the vice-presidential candidate ever since she stopped speaking without the help of a teleprompter. Conservative women like Kathleen Parker and Kathryn Jean Lopez are shuddering with sympathy as they realize that the candidate who thrilled them, just weeks ago, is not in shape for the big game. They're not alone. The New Republic's Christopher Orr feels that Palin has been misused by the team that tapped her. In the New York Times, Judith Warner feels for Sarah, too! And over at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates empathizes with intelligence and nuance, making clear that he's not expressing pity. Salon's own Glenn Greenwald watched the Katie Couric interview and "actually felt sorry for Sarah Palin." Even Amy Poehler, impersonating Katie Couric on last week's "Saturday Night Live," makes the joke that Palin's cornered-animal ineptitude makes her "increasingly adorable."
I guess I'm one cold dame, because while Palin provokes many unpleasant emotions in me, I just can't seem to summon pity, affection or remorse.
Don't get me wrong, I'm just like all of the rest of you, part of the bipartisan jumble of viewers that keeps one hand poised above the mute button and the other over my eyes during Palin's disastrous interviews. Like everyone else, I can barely take the waves of embarrassment that come with watching someone do something so badly. Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem, Sofia Coppola acting in "The Godfather: Part III," Sarah Palin talking about Russia -- they all create the same level of eyeball-squinching discomfort.
But just because I'm human, just because I can feel, just because I did say this weekend that I "almost feel sorry for her" doesn't mean, when I consider the situation rationally, that I do. Yes, as a feminist, it sucks -- hard -- to watch a woman, no matter how much I hate her politics, unable to answer questions about her running mate during a television interview. And perhaps it's because this experience pains me so much that I feel not sympathy but biting anger. At her, at John McCain, at the misogynistic political mash that has been made of what was otherwise a groundbreaking year for women in presidential politics.
In her "Poor Sarah" column, Warner writes of the wave of "self-recognition and sympathy [that] washed over" her when she saw a photo of Palin talking to Henry Kissinger. Palin -- as "a woman fully aware that she was out of her league, scared out of her wits, hanging on for dear life" -- apparently reminded Warner of herself. Wow. Putting aside the massively depressing implication that Warner recognizes this attitude because she believes it to be somehow written into the female condition, let's consider that there are any number of women who could have been John McCain's running mate -- from Olympia Snowe to Christine Todd Whitman to Kay Bailey Hutchison to Elizabeth Dole to Condoleezza Rice -- who would not have provoked this reaction. Democrats might well have been repulsed and infuriated by these women's policy positions. But we would not have been sitting around worrying about how scared they looked.
In her piece, Warner diagnoses Palin with a case of "Impostor Syndrome," positing that admirers who watched her sitting across from world leaders at the U.N. last week were recognizing that "she can't possibly do it all -- the kids, the special-needs baby, the big job, the big conversations with foreign leaders. And neither could they." Seriously? Do we have to drag out a list of women who miraculously have found a way to manage to balance many of these factors -- Hillary Clinton? Nancy Pelosi? Michelle Bachelet? -- and could still explain the Bush Doctrine without breaking into hives? This is not breaking my heart. It is breaking my spirit.
The Atlantic's Coates takes a far smarter, but ultimately still too gentle, approach to Palin in his blog. He writes, compassionately, "There are a lot of us lefties who are guffawing right now and are happy to see Palin seemingly stumbling drunkenly from occasional interview to occasional interview." Coates asserts that McCain "[tossed] her to the wolves" and notes that while she surely had some agency in this whole mess, "where I am from the elders protect you, and pull you back when you've gone too far, when your head has gotten too big."
Where I come from, a woman -- and especially a woman governor with executive experience -- doesn't have to rely on any elder or any man to protect her and pull her ass out of the fire. She can make a decision all on her own. (Palin was more than happy to tell Charlie Gibson that she made her decision to join the McCain ticket without blinking.) I agree with Coates that the McCain camp was craven, sexist and disrespectful in its choice of Palin, but I don't agree that the Alaska governor was a passive victim of their Machiavellian plotting. A very successful woman, Palin has the wherewithal to move forward consciously. What she did was move forward thoughtlessly and overconfidently, without considering that her abilities or qualifications would ever be questioned.
Christopher Orr writes sympathetically about the scenario that Palin may have envisioned, in which she tours the country on the wave of adoration that buoyed her out of St. Paul and through a post-convention victory lap. In his mind, she might well have continued to give winning, grinning interviews, charming the pants off regular folks all across the country, if the accursed McCain campaign hadn't nervously locked her in a no-press-allowed tower. Orr compares Palin to a talented athlete who, as a result of being over-coached, doesn't soar to new physical heights but instead gets "broken down, [loses] confidence in his game, [becomes] tentative, second guessing himself even to the point of paralysis."
Surely if Palin's political muscles were as taut and supple as Orr suspects, the campaign would not have been so quick to put her on a special training regimen.
It was so predictable that we would get to a pity-poor-helpless-Sarah phase. The press was already warming up for it on the day McCain announced her as his running mate, when NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell speculated that McCain's choice was designed to declaw scrappy Joe Biden, whose aggressive style would come off as bullying next to the sweet hockey mom from Alaska. Now, of course, we know about the hockey moms and the pit bulls; the more-powerful-than-expected Palin juggernaut forestalled the pity/victim/mean boy/poor Sarah phase.
So here it is, finally. And as unpleasant as it may be to watch the humiliation of a woman who waltzed into a spotlight too strong to withstand, I flat out refuse to be manipulated into another stage of gendered regress -- back to the pre-Pelosi, pre-Hillary days when girls couldn't stand the heat and so were shooed back to the kitchen.
Sarah Palin is no wilting flower. She is a politician who took the national stage and sneered at the work of community activists. She boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge.
When you stage a train wreck of this magnitude -- trying to pass one underqualified chick off as another highly qualified chick with the lame hope that no one will notice -- well, then, I don't feel bad for you.
When you treat women as your toys, as gullible and insensate pawns in your Big Fat Presidential Bid -- or in Palin's case, in your Big Fat Chance to Be the First Woman Vice President Thanks to All the Cracks Hillary Put in the Ceiling -- I don't feel bad for you.
When you don't take your own career and reputation seriously enough to pause before striding onto a national stage and lying about your record of opposing a Bridge to Nowhere or using your special-needs child to garner the support of Americans in need of healthcare reform you don't support, I don't feel bad for you.
When you don't have enough regard for your country or its politics to cram effectively for the test -- a test that helps determine whether or not you get to run that country and participate in its politics -- I don't feel bad for you.
When your project is reliant on gaining the support of women whose reproductive rights you would limit, whose access to birth control and sex education you would curtail, whose healthcare options you would decrease, whose civil liberties you would take away and whose children and husbands and brothers (and sisters and daughters and friends) you would send to war in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and wherever else you saw fit without actually understanding international relations, I don't feel bad for you.
I don't want to be played by the girl-strings anymore. Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness. It's a disservice to minority populations of every stripe whose place in the political spectrum has been unfairly spotlighted as mere tokenism; it is a disservice to women throughout this country who have gone from watching a woman who -- love her or hate her -- was able to show us what female leadership could look like to squirming in front of their televisions as they watch the woman sent to replace her struggle to string a complete sentence together.
In fact, the only people I feel sorry for are Americans who invested in a hopeful, progressive vision of female leadership, but who are now stuck watching, verbatim, a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
Palin is tough as nails. She will bite the head off a moose and move on. So, no, I don't feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for women who have to live with what she and her running mate have wrought.
How To Fix The Mortgage Mess 101
Here's the problem with the nation's troubled financial system in a nutshell: Americans don't have enough money to pay their mortgages.
President Bush's plan to bail-out the banks by having the US government buy troubled mortgage-backed securities is the wrong way to fix this problem. This is like handing a $700 billion blank check to the people -- bankers and investors -- whose greed and risky behavior caused the problem in the first place. The right way is to help homeowners who've already lost their homes buy them back and to help homeowners on the brink of foreclosure from losing their homes. (And then adopt strong regulations so it won't happen again.)
For the past few weeks, banking and real estate industry lobbyists have been swarming all over Washington, while mobilizing their industry members in Congressional districts to make phone calls, send emails, and write more checks to Congress to get the bail-out they wanted -- one without key pro-consumer provisions that help homeowners.
On Monday, the House of Representatives defeated the industry-backed bill by a 228-205 margin. The bill they voted on didn't include the key pro-consumer language that would provide homeowners with bankruptcy relief . Even so, the Republicans who opposed the plan thought it had too much regulation on lenders, while the Democrats who voted "no" believed that the bill didn't go far enough in helping consumers.
The banking/real estate industry couldn't win the over-all bail-out so far, but they kept the pro-consumer provision out of the bill. It is amazing that this corporate lobby can still exercise so much clout while holding out a tin cup for a $700 billion corporate give-away. The very industry that got us into the current mess in the first place still has enough credibility -- or at least enough money to provide campaign contributions -- to sway many members of Congress to hand banks a huge bail-out check without doing anything to help homeowners. If nothing else, the industry lobbyists deserve an award for chutzpah.
"We are literally spending hundreds of billions of dollars on subsidies for financial institutions," Christopher Mayer, a professor of real estate finance and vice dean at the Columbia School of Business told the New York Times recently. "This won't do anything to help the housing market. This plan is about buying mortgage-backed securities, not mortgages, and there is a big difference."
There are several ways to help homeowners, restore balance to the housing market, and stabilize the financial system. First, give homeowners cash or a one-time tax break, requiring them to use it to make their mortgage payments. Second, have the federal government buy the troubled mortgages directly and write them down, paying for it with a future tax on the financial services firms once the industry rebounds. Third, require banks to renegotiate mortgages on terms that existing homeowners can afford by lowering the interest rate or the loan amount, and by turning "adjustable rate" mortgages into long-term fixed-rate loans. (This is better than the Bush/Paulson approach, which is to urge lenders to do this voluntarily -- a scheme that so far hasn't worked, for obvious reasons.) FDIC chair Sheila Bair took this approach in July when she seizeed IndyMac bank and refinanced subprime loans at affordable rates, rather than foreclose on borrowers.
Helping homeowners directly is a lot cheaper, more direct, and more cost-effective than handing banks $700 billion. It focuses on consumers, not lenders. It stimulates demand, but requires banks to provide home loans that consumers can afford. It doesn't reward banks and investors for their greed and mismanagement, but reduces the toxic mortgages that are now turning Wall Street banks into a house of cards. (Congress could limit help to homeowners with incomes under, say, $200,000.)
Senator Barack Obama and other Congressional Democrats had proposed one tool to do this -- allow bankruptcy judges to reduce an owner's loan amount or interest rate in the same way they now decide how much money most other creditors receive. (Since 1978, bankruptcy laws have prohibited judges from changing the terms of mortgages primary residences.)
Consumer, labor, and community groups like the Consumers Union, the Center for Responsible Lending, and ACORN have been pushing for months to get Congress to take this approach (called a "cram down") as a way to cut through legal red tape and give consumers more bargaining power with banks and other mortgage lenders. This is what consumer advocates and politicians mean when they say that Congress should focus on helping "Main Street" not "Wall Street."
In a speech in Colorado on September 16, Obama said: "Unlike Senator McCain, I will change our bankruptcy laws to make it easier for families to stay in their homes. Right now, if you're a family that owns one house, bankruptcy judges are actually barred from helping you keep a roof over your head by writing down the value of your mortgage. If you own seven homes, the judge is free to write down any or all of the debt on your second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh homes. Now that may be of comfort to Senator McCain, but that's the kind of out-of-touch Washington loophole that makes no sense. When I'm President, we'll make our laws work for working people."
Not surprisingly, Wall Street -- meaning the banking and securities industries and their friends in the real estate industry -- don't agree. And in the past few weeks, they've used their lobbying clout to make sure that the Democrats' cram-down provision was removed from the bail-out bill. In particular, the American Bankers Association, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce used every tool in their political warchest to kill the cram-down provision.
The Bush administration and Congressional Republicans, including John McCain, took the industry's side. But why did the Democrats -- who have a majority of votes in both the House and Senate -- let them get away with it? Why not pass a pro-consumer bill, put it on President Bush's desk, and dare him to veto it?
As documented by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the finance, insurance and real estate sector has been the largest campaign contributor in federal politics, giving more than $2 billion to federal candidates and political parties since 1989 -- 55% to Republicans and 45% to Democrats. In this election cycle alone, members of the House and Senate have received more than $180 million from PACs and individuals associated with finance, insurance and real estate -- the industries with the most at stake in the ongoing legislative debate.
With the Democrats now in control of Congress, however, the lobby groups recalculated their partisan priorities, directing 57% of their campaign donations this year to the Democrats.
Handing out $180 million to Congress this year is a pretty sweet deal if they wind up giving the industry a $700 billion bail-out. That's almost $4,000 in bail-out bucks for every dollar contributed to Congress. Even John McCain, whom the New York Times has documented is an inveterate casino gambler, can't do that well at the black-jack table.
Republicans, including McCain, have long been in the pockets of the financial services industry in addition to sharing an ideological view that opposes government regulation of business to make them act responsibly toward consumers, employees, and the environment. But the Democrats generally support more consumer-friendly laws. Indeed, both Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), the chairs of the banking committees drafting the legislation, included the "cram-down" provisions in their original bills, even though they are both major recipients of industry funds.
So what happened to gut this important pro-consumer provision from the compromise bill that the leaders of both parties hoped to enact this week, with President Bush's blessing?
Why did so many Democrats, including the leadership, support the bill even after the pro-consumer provisions had been eliminated? The fact that 140 Democrats voted "yes" to the industry-backed proposal requires a deeper look into the dynamics of the legislative process.
For sure, some Democrats believed the Wall Street "chicken little" propaganda that unless Congress passed a bail-out bill quickly, the entire U.S. economy would go into free fall. They wanted to put the bail-out on the fast track and were willing to eliminate the pro-consumer provisions in order to keep more banks from failing and the credit crunch from imploding even more.
Even Obama reluctantly agreed last week to support a bail-out bill that didn't include the bankrtupcy relief, viewing the provision as a deal-breaker. As the Los Angeles Times reported: "Some analysts saw Obama's statement as a practical recognition of political reality: Republicans would never accept the bankruptcy provision, and the bailout plan was too important to the economy to jeopardize."
Given Obama's long-standing advocacy for the cram-down law, it is probably accurate to view his willingness to compromise as political pragmatism. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that some Democrats, especially those from "safe" districts who don't face serious contests for re-election, simply caved in to the finance lobby -- and stopped fighting to keep the pro-consumer "cram-down" provision in the bill -- because of the industry's generous campaign contributions.
As CRP documented, the 140 Democrats who voted "yes" on Monday to the bail-out package -- the version that had eliminated the pro-consumer "cram-down" provision -- have received, on average, $792,744 over their careers (since 1989, when CRP began collecting this data) from the finance/real estate/industry sector and an average of $188,572 in the current election cycle. The 95 Democrats who opposed the bill have received $420,686 over their careers and $105,878 in most recent cycle. In other words, the Dems who voted to support the industry-backed bill received significnatly more funds than those who opposed it.
The funding gap among Republicans between the "yes" and "no" voters was considerably smaller. According to the CRP, the 65 Republicans who backed the President's no-strings-attached bill have collected an average of $1,078,533 from the finance sector in their careers and an average of $185,461 in this election cycle so far. The 133 Republicans opposed the President's bailout plan have collected, on average, $705,297 over their careers in Congress and $150,381 in this election cycle alone. Despite these Republicans "no" votes this time, the corporate lobbyists are likely to keeping filling their campaign coffers anyway.
There was a time, not too long ago -- before the free-market fundamentalists like George W. Bush, Phil Gramm and John McCain took over the White House and Congress -- when Washington did regulate banks. The Depression triggered the creation of government bank regulations and agencies, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Home Loan Bank System, Homeowners Loan Corporation, Fannie Mae, and the Federal Housing Administration, to protect consumers and expand homeownership. After World War II, until the late 1970s, the system worked. The savings-and-loan industry was highly regulated by the federal government, with a mission to take people's deposits and then provide loans (at a government-regulated profit) for the sole purpose of helping people buy homes to live in. Washington insured those loans through the FDIC, provided mortgage discounts through FHA and the Veterans Administration, created a secondary mortgage market to guarantee a steady flow of capital, and required S&Ls to make predictable 30-year fixed loans. The result was a steady increase in homeownership and few foreclosures.
The deregulation frenzy that began in the 1980s -- first pushed by the S&L industry (like Charles Keating, owner of the Arizona-based Lincoln S&L, whose name will forever be associated with McCain's as part of the "Keating Five" corruption scandal), and later by the commercial banks -- wiped out the once stable and sound system of requiring banks to help homeowners buy homes rather than act like gamblers at a casino.
We're in the current mortgage meltdown mess -- the escalating wave of home foreclosures, the growing number of bank failures, and the tightening credit crunch -- because Congress tore down the last remaining legal barriers to combining savings-and-loans, commercial banking, investment banking and insurance under one corporate roof. Banks, insurance companies, credit-card firms and other money-lenders became part of a giant "financial services" industry. Washington walked away from its responsibility to protect consumers with regulations and enforcement. While federal regulators looked the other way, banks and private mortgage companies indulged in risky loans and speculative investments. They invented new "loan products"--such as subprime loans and adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) --that put borrowers, and their own banks, at risk. Wall Street packaged these loans to investors without scrutinizing their risk. Deregulation encouraged the industry to create this house of cards. Every aspect of the financial industry was so short-sighted and greedy that they didn't see the train wreck coming around the corner. Now major Wall Street banks are imploding.
As Obama said in a speech last week, "The American people should not be spending one dime to reward the same Wall Street CEOs whose greed and irresponsibility got us into this mess."
The way to fix the problem is to require banks to act responsibly toward consumers, particularly homeowners, some of whom were victims of illegal "predatory" lending scams while others were simply seduced by lenders offering subprime loans and ARMs with too-good-to-be true interest rates, assuming that their incomes and home values would steadily increase so they could afford to make the monthly mortgage payments even after they "ballooned" upwards. But the stagnating wages of the Bush years -- along with the widening economic gap between the rich and everyone else -- turned the dream of homeownership into a nightmare for millions of Americans.
The Democrats who opposed the bail-out for Wall Street -- and who resisted the banking industry's arm-twisting -- are right. The lenders who gambled with high-risk loans and paid executives outrageous compensation packages have to be held accountable. If these lenders are to survive, they have to learn to live with more regulations that protect consumers and restrict wanton speculation. By helping homeowners keep their homes, Congress will get to the root of the problem, dramatically right-sizing the mountains of bad loans now plauging Wall Street, and removing those "for sale -- foreclosure" signs from all those Main Streets across the country.
By Rebecca Traister
Composite image: Gloria Steinem attends an Equal Rights Amendment rally outside the White House on July 4, 1981. (AP Photo/Scott Applewhite) Collaged with Reuters images of Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, who did not attend.
Sep. 11, 2008 | I have been dreaming about Sarah Palin. (Apparently, I'm not alone.) I wish I could say that I'd been conjuring witty, politically sophisticated nightmares in which she leads troops into Vancouver or kindergartners in the recitation of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." But, alas, mine have been nonsensical, kiddie-style doozies in which she kidnaps my cats, or enjoys a meal with my girlfriends while I bang on the restaurant window. There's also a chilling one, in which a scary witch stands on a wind-swept hill and leers at me.
What troubles me most -- aside from the fact that there is suddenly a Republican candidate potent enough to so ensnare my psyche -- is my sense that these are dreams in which it matters very much that Palin is a woman.
I have been writing about feminism for more than five years; I have been covering the gender politics of the 2008 presidential election for more than two. And I am absolutely gobsmacked by the intensity of my feelings about Sarah Palin. I am stunned not only by the way in which her candidacy has changed the rules in the gender debate, or how it is twisting and garbling the fight for women's progress. But I'm also startled by how Palin herself is testing my own beliefs about how I react to women in power.
My feelings about Palin have everything to do with her gender -- a factor that I have always believed, as a matter of course, should neither amplify nor diminish impressions of a person's goodness or badness, smartness or dumbness, gravitas or inconsequence. Why are my rules changing?
I am still perfectly capable of picking out the sexism being leveled against the Alaska governor by the press, her detractors and her own party. Every time someone doubts Palin's ability to lead and mother simultaneously, or considers her physical appeal as a professional attribute, or calls her a "maverette," I bristle.
But that's the easy stuff. The clear-cut stuff. I'm far more torn about the more subtle, complicated ways in which Palin's gender has me tied in knots.
Perhaps it's because the ground has shifted so quickly under my feet, leaving me with only a slippery grasp of what the basic vocabulary of my beat -- feminism, women's rights -- even means anymore. Some days, it feels like I'm watching the civics filmstrip about how much progress women made on the presidential stage in 2008 burst into flames, acutely aware that in the back of the room, a substitute teacher is threading a new reel into the projector. It has the same message and some of the same signifiers -- Glass ceilings broken! Girl Power! -- but its meaning has been distorted. Suddenly it's Rudy Giuliani and Rick Santorum schooling us about pervasive sexism; Hillary Clinton's 18 million cracks have weakened not only the White House's glass ceiling, but the wall protecting Roe v. Wade; the potential first female vice president in America's 200-year history describes her early career as "your average hockey mom" who "never really set out to be involved in public affairs"; and teen pregnancy is no longer an illustrative example for sex educators and contraception distributors but for those who seek to eliminate sex education and contraception.
In this strange new pro-woman tableau, feminism -- a word that is being used all over the country with regard to Palin's potential power -- means voting for someone who would limit reproductive control, access to healthcare and funding for places like Covenant House Alaska, an organization that helps unwed teen mothers. It means cheering someone who allowed women to be charged for their rape kits while she was mayor of Wasilla, who supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, who has inquired locally about the possibility of using her position to ban children's books from the public library, who does not support the teaching of sex education.
In this "Handmaid's Tale"-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we're witnessing "a new creation ... of the feminist ideal," the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it's now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: "put a skirt on." "I want her watching my kids," says Deutsch. "I want her laying next to me in bed."
Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party's nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.
What Palin so seductively represents, not only to Donny Deutsch but to the general populace, is a form of feminine power that is utterly digestible to those who have no intellectual or political use for actual women. It's like some dystopian future ... feminism without any feminists.
Palin's femininity is one that is recognizable to most women: She's the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much. The kind of woman who, as Jessica Grose at Jezebel has eloquently noted, achieves her power by doing everything modern women believed they did not have to do: presenting herself as maternal and sexual, sucking up to men, evincing an absolute lack of native ambition, instead emphasizing her luck as the recipient of strong male support and approval. It works because these stances do not upset antiquated gender norms. So when the moment comes, when tolerance for and interest in female power have been forcibly expanded by Clinton, a woman more willing to throw elbows and defy gender expectations but who falls short of the goal, Palin is there, tapped as a supposedly perfect substitute by powerful men who appreciate her charms.
But while the Republicans would have us believe that Palin can simply stand in for Hillary Clinton, there is nothing interchangeable about these politicians. We began this history-making election with one kind of woman and have ended up being asked to accept her polar opposite. Clinton's brand of femininity is the kind that remains slightly unpalatable in America. It is based on competence, political confidence and an assumption of authority that upends comfortable roles for men and women. It's a kind of power that has nothing to do with the flirtatious or the girly, nothing to do with the traditionally feminine. It is authority that is threatening because it so closely and calmly resembles the kind of power that the rest of the guys on a presidential stage never question their right to wield.
The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin's nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin's candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.
Perhaps that's why my reaction to Palin is so bone-deep, and why she is shaking some of my convictions about how to approach gender. When, last Sunday, I picked up the New York Post, with its front-page headline "Ladykiller: Hillary to Check Hockey Mom" next to photos of Palin in porno librarian mode and Clinton with her teeth bared, I didn't roll my eyes in disgust at the imagined cage match. Instead, I envisioned it. And I enjoyed it. I was overcome by the desire to see Clinton take on Palin, not only checking her but fouling her, smushing her, absolutely crushing her. Get her, Hillary! Don't let her channel all the energy generated by you and your Democratic supporters into anti-woman, pro-God government! You are the only one who can stop her.
It's true that the last time I had this kind of visceral yearning for a politician to save the day was on the evening of Sept. 11, when the only person whose face I wanted to see on my television was Bill Clinton's. Perhaps when the Clintons took office in my 18th year, they became imprinted on my brain as my presidential parent-figures, my ur-protectors. But it's hard not to notice that if that's the case, it's Bill I want to nurture and soothe me, and Hillary I want to show up, guns blazing Ripley-style, to surprise the mother alien just as she is about to feast on independent voters, protectively shouting, "Get away from them, you bitch!"
There I go again with the hyper-feminized anxieties. I think it's mostly that I want Hillary Clinton -- the imperfect history maker whose major selling points for "First Woman..." status, in retrospect, included the fact that she was not a Republican, not pro-life, did not believe in teaching creationism alongside evolution, had never inquired about the feasibility of banning books, understood the American economy, supported universal healthcare and did not kill wolves from planes -- to make Sarah Palin go away and stop threatening to make history I don't want to see made.
It is infuriating that Clinton, her supporters and, yes, also those Obama supporters who voiced their displeasure at the sexist treatment Clinton sometimes received, and also female voters, and also females full stop, are being implicated in feminism's bastardization.
But if we inadvertently paved the way for this, then the Democratic Party mixed the concrete, painted lanes on the road, put up streetlights and called it an interstate. The role of the left in this travesty is almost too painful to contemplate just yet.
For while it may chafe to hear Rudy Giuliani and John McCain hold forth on the injustice of gender bias, what really burns is that we never heard a peep or squawk or gurgle of this nature from anyone in the Democratic Party during the entire 100 years Hillary Clinton was running for president, while she was being talked about as a pantsuited, wrinkly old crone and a harpy ex-wife and a sexless fat-thighed monster and an emasculating nag out for Tucker Carlson's balls. Only after she was good and gone did Howard Dean come out of his cave to squeak about the amount of sexist media bias Clinton faced. That may not be pretty to recall, especially in light of the Grand Old Party's Grand Old Celebration of Estrogen. But it's true. And it's also true that if there hadn't been so much stone-cold silence, so much shoulder-shrugging "What, me sexist?" inertia from the left, if there had been a little more respect (there was plenty of attention, of the derisive and annoyed sort) paid to the unsubtle clues being transmitted by 18 million voters that maybe they were interested in this whole woman-in-the-White-House thing, then the right would not have had the fuel to power this particular weapon.
Which leads us to my greatest nightmare: that because my own party has not cared enough, or was too scared, to lay its rightful claim to the language of women's rights, that Sarah Palin will reach historic heights of power, under the most egregious of auspices, by plying feminine wiles, and conforming to every outdated notion of what it means to be a woman. That she will hit her marks by clambering over the backs, the bodies, the rights of the women on whose behalf she claims to be working, and that she will do it all under the banner of feminism. How can anybody sleep?
How can any sane woman surrender her reproductive rights to someone who thinks the Flintstones correspond with Gospel Truth? I fear for my niece. Does today's youth want to turn off their right to dissent and thinking?
posted by ZenPupDog @ 7:34 PM
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