CNN.com: "Moderates to blame for GOP losses, conservative leader says"

Ha! This is hilarious. On The News Hour with Jim Leher, David Brooks has been predicting that his crippled party will likely need to endure ten-to-fifteen years of working out the kinks before it's able to get back on its feet ideologically or politically. A conservative named Tony Perkins is already proving Brooks right:

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told CNN that conservatives need to take back control of the GOP if the party is to return to its winning ways.

"Moderates never beat conservatives. We've seen that in past elections," he said.

Rejecting suggestions that the conservative movement was viewed as being out of touch with the electorate, Perkins says the Republican Party needs to go back to basics.

"It's a return to fundamental conservative principles that Ronald Reagan showed work and that people can be attracted to," Perkins said. (Full article on CNN.com)

This is exactly the kind of dream-world nonsense Brooks is referring to. It's going to be very entertaining to watch from the sidelines as the GOP keeps this up! And as it continues to lose election after election after election....

Sound the Death-Knell for Dixie (Part One)

Media are speculating about whether or not Barack Obama's electoral landslide represents a reconfiguration of voting alliances and the redrawing of the national political map. Is Obama's victory the end of the era of Culture War-besotted politics ushered in by Nixon's appeals to "the silent majority" (i.e. racists)? Have electoral demographics shifted such that we are putting behind us the politics of fear, hate and neo-McCarthyism behind?

Much has been made of the swift rise in populations within the ranks of the cosmopolitan, professional class in the large cities and suburbs in the Southeast and West. This population boom, combined with Obama's unprecedentedly robust ground game, are said in varying degrees to account for Obama's victories in formerly Republican-voting states like Nevada, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, and even in states in which Obama failed to prevail, yet was surprisingly competitive, like South Carolina and Georgia.

(Map credit: FiveThirtyEight.com [updated 11/8/08])

To be sure, there are innumerable other factors, including strong turnouts -- and strong support for Obama -- among young voters, first-time registrants and, of course, voters of color. In the latter group, we mustn't neglect to include Hispanic populations, which voted to an unprecedented extent overwhelmingly Dem. (The GOP repelled these voters with its shrill anti-immigrant turn...a hard line to which McCain eventually -- and famously -- caved.) And no doubt high turnout among black voters helped Obama pull off the feat of prevailing in the state of Indiana: something that no Democratic presidential candidate had done previously.....that is, since Lyndon Baines Johnson's resounding defeat of Barry "Crazy, Nuke-loving Cracker" Goldwater in 1964.

We'll continue discussing LBJ in Part Two of this post. But first, let's return to the demographics of Obama's victory. Crucially, Obama outperformed preceding Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and Al Gore in his support from among white male voters. Politico:

Obama performed slightly worse with white women, 39 percent of voters, than Al Gore did in 2000. McCain won the votes of white women, 53 to 46 percent, perhaps an indication of the historical [sic] candidacy of his running mate, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska.

Obama compensated for the drop-off in white female support with the strong 41 percent support from white men. No Democrat since Carter had until Tuesday’s election earned more than 38 percent of the white male vote.

In 2000, white women split between the two parties while Republicans won white men by 24 percentage points. That white male gap was dramatically narrowed Tuesday to 16 points, a trend that began with the financial crisis, and one that allowed Obama to split the male vote overall. (Rest of the article.)

In other words, fears expressed among many in the chattering caste of the "Bradley effect" -- wherein there exists a disparity between how voters said they would vote and how they in fact did vote -- appear not only to have been misplaced, but at times reflected the reverse of what ended up occurring. In fact, in Ohio and Pennsylvania -- Obama was much more successful at capturing the white vote than any polls had indicated. Overall,

Mr. Obama lost white voters by 12 points, but that is the same margin Al Gore lost them by in 2000 and better than the 17-point margin John Kerry lost them by in 2004. (New York Times; here's the full article.)

And remember, we're talking about percentages here, not raw numbers. The expansion in nationwide participation that characterized the 2004 election, and again the 2008 election, means that by definition, the head count of Obama's support among these voters exceeds Gore's.

Where and who are these white men that are switching to the Dems? Well, the speculation to which my opening paragraph refers is in fact mostly correct. The Republicans are losing suburban and, as it were, 'ex'-urban (far-out suburbs [not 'far-out' in the psychedelic sense, but rather in the boondocky one-way-ticket-on-the-bridge-to-nowhere sense]). This trend is striking both in the newly blue states I mentioned above and in historically Democratic-yet-conservative states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

This Washington Post piece is worth quoting at length:

Nothing demonstrates this reversal as clearly as the Democrats' ascendance in the suburbs and among the moderate, college-educated voters who dominate them. Obama won 50 percent of suburban voters, three points higher than Sen. John F. Kerry's showing in 2004 and the most by a Democrat since exit polling began in 1972, swelling his margins in a number of battleground states.

In Virginia, Obama offset losses in the rural parts of the state by not only winning Fairfax County, as Kerry did, but also the big outer suburbs of Prince William and Loudoun counties, home to many high-tech workers and government contractors. Obama visited Prince William County, which has been hit hard by the real estate bust, on the first day of his general-election campaign and the last, as well as in between. He also easily won the big Richmond suburb of Henrico County, a largely white community that Republicans had sewed up for years.

In Pennsylvania, Obama fared worse than Kerry in many steel towns around Pittsburgh. But he ran up such big margins in the formerly Republican suburbs of Philadelphia that he was able to run away with the state, by more than 10 points.

In Colorado, he gained 100,000 votes over Kerry in three big suburban counties outside Denver. In Ohio, he achieved a narrow majority in part by reducing the Republicans' margins of victory in the outer suburbs of Columbus and Cincinnati.

In Florida, he won partly by improving on Kerry's numbers among suburban voters in the Interstate 4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando and in Indiana and North Carolina, his showing with suburban voters improved by about 20 points in each state, far exceeding his gain among rural voters. Obama nearly carried the most iconic Republican suburb of all, Orange County in Southern California.

And what do these Democratic inroads in the nation's suburbs add up to for the Republicans, who'd formerly relied upon these politically moderate and economically middle-class voters to shore up their "fear of terrorism" vote and their "we're afraid of taxes" vote? Remember that even four years ago, George W. Bush continued to enjoy broad support from voters in those electoral districts. Apparently, the economic meltdown and Bush's continued neocon foreign policy shenanigans finally started to piss these people off. And good for them, say I, for articulating their displeasure.

But where did that leave McCain? Toward what audience was the fractured, intellectually and ideologically barren Republican Party of John McCain to aim its mouth-breather rhetoric and robo-calls? The Post article lays it out, and the brutal facts ain't pretty:

The Democrats appear to have built a majority across a wide, and expanding, share of the electorate -- young voters, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities, and highly educated whites in growing metropolitan areas. The Republicans appear at the moment to be marginalized, hanging on to a coalition that may shrink with time -- older, working-class and rural white voters, increasingly concentrated in the Deep South, the Great Plains and Appalachia.

That McCain (and Palin) embraced demagogic tactics, race-baiting and condescending, cynical fear-mongering wasn't -- as we all know -- an accident. The traditional GOP playbook insists that the candidate must first and foremost flatter its intended audience. And you can't flatter an audience on any but that audience's terms, irrespective of its median IQ.

As sure as eggs is eggs, you can't count on their vote unless you give 'em what they want. And if that group of voters tends to be rural, uneducated, racist, and excruciatingly provincial, well Sir, ya gotta serve up some good old-fashioned deep-fried nuggets of HATE. That's when you get all of the the Bill Ayers shit. And you know, calling people socialists and terrorists and such.

I will comment on this dynamic more fully in Part Two of this post, wherein I shall explore the Republicans' ineffective stab at creating an electoral majority out of these barely conscious redneck hordes, this strategy's rhetoric, and its persisting dialectic between "cosmopolitan snobs" and "real folks." (I shall argue that this dialectic constitutes little more than a half-baked update of the rhetoric and ideology of the secessionist -- and subsequently, segregationist, and eventually "Dixiecrat" -- South.)

One last point should be made before I conclude Part One. Although Obama's white support -- and particularly white male support -- was considerably weaker in the deep segregationist South, which is and was to be expected, Obama didn't perform all that badly among rural and blue-collar voters in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio; including in areas that are known to include communities infamous for their entrenched racism.

For example, there is much encouragement to be found in the strong support among union workers enjoyed by Obama in many battleground states. The AFL-CIO provided "key support" in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, and even ratcheted up its efforts to get out the union vote in Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, according to this report:

Union voters played an important role in President-elect Obama's historic victory, delivering a critical bloc of support in swing states that helped propel Obama and other working family candidates to big wins last night, election-night polling released by the AFL-CIO today showed. Calling the victory in the presidential race and the expansion of majorities in the House and Senate a working families' mandate for broad-based economic change, AFL-CIO leaders vowed to continue the large-scale mobilization to push through broad economic reform....

...AFL-CIO union members across battleground states supported Obama by a whopping 68-30 margin, according to an election night survey conducted for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates....

So, although Obama's victories in these states had their foundation partly in his newly robust support among suburbanites, we cannot discount the impact of this refreshingly effective union activity, which anecdotal reports in Ohio and Pennsylvania declare to have actually changed the hearts and minds -- and raised the political consciousness of -- many white blue-collar workers who'd not initially been of the mind to countenance the presidency of someone named Barack Hussein Obama. That's very exciting, says me. Makes my bleeding heart bleed all the more.

I conclude Part One of this discussion with a sample of data appearing in this article on the impact of union voting initiatives:

• Obama won among white men who are union members by 18 points while losing that group by 16 points in the general public;
• Obama won among union gun owners by a 12-point margin while losing that group in the general public by 25 points;
• Union veterans voted for Obama by a 25-point margin. He lost among that group in the general public by nine points;
• Working America members voted 67-30 for Obama. Working America gun owners (33% own guns) voted 23 points for Obama; general public gun owners voted 25 points for McCain;
• Sixty percent of union members identified the economy and jobs as their top issue with 84 percent saying strengthening the economy was the most important factor in their vote.....

A recent email exchange about Powell's Obama endorsement, veering into discussion of the unconscious assumptions that comprise American "comon sense."

Below is a recent thread of email correspondence between a friend of mine and Yours Truly. I was going to use its raw material as a basis upon which to descant, but in the interest of not wanting to go to that trouble, I have decided instead simply to reproduce it.

It is, of course, redacted, to protect the identities of those whose permission has not been sought. (Permission has been obtained. From Stephen Schlei, anyway. But the full identity of 'Kevin' shall remain, for the moment, a mystery...)

From: Steve
Subject: Powell endorses Obama
To: Tom
Date: Sunday, October 19, 2008

I'm sure you've heard about this already. Both of the videos on this page are incredible:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/colin-powell-endorses-oba_n_135895.html

In my lifetime I don't believe I've heard a Republican speak more eloquently.

My brother and I were talking about politics, and he brought up an interesting point. I was (am) appalled by the way Americans misunderstand a socialized health care system, and vote against their own interests to support an ideology (capitalism) that doesn't give a fuck about them. We were talking about some other stuff too, but here's what my brother had to say about it, and I think he's on to something:

My theory: people attach themselves not to the ideals and practices of what would apply to them, but to their perceived and possible future situation (that happens to be much better). They won't vote for a healthcare plan that will increase their meager benefits because they believe that they are losing the possibility of benefits that the rich can afford (which they could possibly have one day). It's the same reason no one stops gambling in Vegas, even when they're up. They don't see it as a growth from their starting position, but rather a pittance compared to a huge win.

It's why ordinary people defend big business. It's why they like trickle down economics. It's the entire foundation of the GOP's low class voting base.

I think the Republicans have been selling that dream world for a long time, where you too can be a millionaire (and who should stand in your way?) and all babies are born to loving families.

Steve


On Mon, Oct 20, 2008, Tom wrote:

Yeah, I totally agree with you and Kevin. I have become very interested over the last few years in the period in US history stretching from the beginnings of the US industrial revolution through to the Gilded Age. Part of the reason I have been investigating this period is because it contains the origins or perfection of many of the myths upon which the GOP (and really, in a wider sense, all of us, because they sit, often unexamined, in the American consciousness, I think) and its ideology are based:

• the myth of meritocracy, of 'classlessness';
• our particular American attitude toward private ownership;
• a preference for empirical and positivistic thinking over critical or theoretical thinking,
• suspicion toward intellectualism and even contempt for ideas more generally (which, as David Brooks points out, sees its apotheosis in the person of Sarah Palin);
• Social Darwinism;
• the equation of social justice with 'charity' and suspicion of 'wealth redistribution';
• the equation of everything from education to religion to friendship to governance with private consumption;
• the assumption that 'status' or wealth are earned and/or deserved, rather than conferred;
• the idea of the inexorability of progress;
• suspicion toward 'expertise'; and
• the tendency to blame oneself for one's own poverty, squalor or misfortune.

We could of course go on with such a list forever, but its upshot is that almost every one of these myths seems more or less grounded in the task of masking from view -- that is, both from the view of those who are successful/happy and those who are unsuccessful/unhappy -- the pervasiveness and power of the very structural inequalities that the myth seeks to negate. If (and to the extent that) you benefit from the system, you're living in denial of your complicity in injustice and harm done to others. If (and to the extent that) we get screwed by the system, it provides for us the means by which we acclimatize ourselves to our surroundings, to our fate.

And so it makes sense to think that some of these poor-to-lower-middle-class racists at McCain/Palin rallies are so very offended at the idea of that these myths will be exposed for what they are. They've lived their entire lives aspiring to something that the system tells them can be theirs one day, be it in the form of success later in life or in the form of success for one's children. But it's a very precise set of aspirations that they've been sold throughout their lives, and they are -- and long have been -- resentful of the idea that someone will take it away from them.

As far as I can tell, the only answer to this huge problem is education. Well, there's one other answer, which is sad, but true (sad AND true!): these people are a dying breed. They don't have the power they once had because they don't enjoy the decent middle-class wages they once had but most importantly they don't have the numbers. And the final irony is that it's the GOP which has been the most aggressive force in destroying them: it's the GOP's doing that is turning their neighborhoods into ghost towns. Thanks for the thought-provoking email. Hope all is well...

Best,
Tom


On Mon, Oct 20, 2008, Steve wrote:

Your ideas are great, and I love the way you put them. The subject deserves serious attention. This idea of the American Dream is so strong a myth that it is a reality, or a form of reality -- not the one most people would like if they could pull back the veil. ....

... Anyway, I can't believe how positive I feel about the prospect of Obama winning the election. It'll be like a great weight is lifted from this country, and I think I'll actually walk down the street differently (I'm not kidding!). McCain is down in the polls, and I'm hoping the negativity we've seen recently means they don't have anything up their sleeves which could significantly sway the election. The GOP is desperate and floundering. To me, Powell's statements have been the nail in the coffin, and have revealed to the world just how out of touch the Republicans are. We can only hope that they get so thoroughly crushed in this election that they have no choice but to start changing their party line. ...

Steve


From: Kevin
Date: Tue, Oct 21, 2008
Subject: Re: Powell endorses Obama
To: Steve

Tom precisely explains the extent to which the American Dream has served to suppress progress in this country. I just watched Sick Around the World and it's clear that the only things that have stopped us from pursuing a universal health care system are the myths that Tom listed.

Take the 'myth of meritocracy.' On NPR there was a social analyst that was researching ideological differences between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives, on the whole, subscribe to the idea of fairness in the world. The (particularly brutal) example he gave was that conservatives tend to assign blame to rape victims: that they were 'asking for it' by their attire, social activities, acquaintances, etc. Therefore the rape had some sort of logical justification. Applied to health care, it isn't that people are unjustly denied healthcare by businesses who can choose not to supply it, it's that these people do not work hard enough to earn better jobs that do offer health care. Therefore they don't deserve it - it's only fair.

On a side note, the 'suspicion of expertise' is an interesting one. A study (lost the link, sorry) has shown that people become more insistent about false assumptions if they are given proof to the contrary. For example, let's say a group of people have a 30% certainty that Iraq has WMDs. If they are given the reports and investigative results that clearly show no evidence of WMDs or WMD production, their certainty goes UP to 65%.

It explains why the GOP only has to plant ideas (which to us seem ludicrous) and they gain so much traction. If you insist that Obama associates himself with terrorists, when the campaign produces factual evidence to the contrary it works to your advantage. In this case, you have to give credit to Obama's campaign managers who have masterfully dealt with these attacks. (This also applies to the healthcare thing - those who have fears about waiting lists and expensive govt. run programs will only be more insistent after watching the Frontline episode.)

I'm curious to see if Tom's right about these people being a dying breed. I have faith in the fact that we're moving away from a television-based society to the Internet addicted information junkies of today. Multiple news sources can only be a good thing from here on out, and counters the effect made by choosing only one news source that shares your world view. But I do have fears that the strength of the temptations created by these persistent myths will only continue to fester and grow. I mean, come on. If ever the pendulum was pulled WAY out of line to the absolute limit of bad judgment, it's now after 8 years of GWB and a full on economic collapse. We should be seeing it flying the other direction, but instead we're having to push as hard as we can.

Kevin


From: Steve
Date: Tue, Oct 29, 2008
Subject: Re: Powell endorses Obama
To: Tom

Sorry, I meant to forward on my brother's response to the response you wrote that I forwarded to him. I feel like I'm moderating here. The program "Sick Around the World" that he mentions is a Frontline episode that you can watch off of their website. It's really interesting, and talks about how universal health care works in 5 or 6 other countries, so check it out.

The reason this popped back into my mind is that I was thinking about how much racism there is in this country and how standardized and widespread it is. This "American dream" fallacy supports those racist theories. African Americans aren't economically underprivileged because they're still recovering from hundreds of years of inequality that was only truly addressed 40 years ago, they're just lazy. And all the crime in the ghettos? That's because black people are morally inferior. In this country they have all the same opportunities as me, and look at where they've gotten themselves.

Steve

Transcript of Colin Powell's Oct. 19 Obama endorsement.

I'm tardy in getting to this, but behold -- if you've not yet done -- Four-Star General Colin Powell, in a moment of eloquence. Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press on October 19, Powell endorsed Barack Obama for the Presidency of the United States. Powell, recall, was and is a steadfast Republican, having served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and as Secretary of State under George W. Bush.

Powell's most recent act of significance had been making the Bush Administration's case for the invasion of Iraq before an assembly of the United Nations on February 5, 2003. His case had, of course, been based upon the notion that Iraq presented an imminent threat to world peace, in that it was close to obtaining 'weapons of mass destruction'. That this notion was based upon faulty, patchy and forged evidence was clear for all to see in a matter of weeks.

Anyway, Powell's done much to redeem himself, I think, with this Obama endorsement. Not simply because it was he who made the endorsement (although that's not to be sneezed at), but because he stated his case so eloquently. Excerpt:

In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn't have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had. And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She's a very distinguished woman, and she's to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He's crossing lines--ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He's thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

And I've also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that's been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he's a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they're trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that's inappropriate.

Now, I understand what politics is all about. I know how you can go after one another, and that's good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It's not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift. I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that's what we'd be looking at in a McCain administration. I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards--Purple Heart, Bronze Star--showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

So, when I look at all of this and I think back to my Army career, we've got two individuals, either one of them could be a good president. But which is the president that we need now? Which is the individual that serves the needs of the nation for the next period of time? And I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities--and we have to take that into account--as well as his substance--he has both style and substance--he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming into the world--onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama.

Read or watch the entire endorsement on MSNBC's Web site.

Why Obama's campaign is justified -- morally & tactically -- in bringing up McCain & Keating Five.(That is...in my opinion.)

Despite the fact that by its very nature, it contradicts Obama's asserted platform that shuns 'negative' campaigning, here's why I believe Obama is justified, both morally and tactically, in presenting this documentary and information to the voting public:

The McCain campaign, particularly in the form of Sarah Palin's memorized talking points, has been unrelenting in the outright mendacity, slander and lies lies lies -- not to mention tons of coded racism -- of its outrageous and ridiculous attacks against Obama for his supposed connection to "terrorist" Bill Ayers: which is just downright disingenuous and everybody knows it. The McCain camp knows it's a lie too, but they have claimed time and again that they 'have no choice' but to continue spreading lies. You do too have a choice, Senator. You could save all of us a lot of headache and take a cue from your recent decision with respect to Michigan: withdraw your cranky-old-racist-asshole operation from other swing states. How 'bout it?

We've seen this kind of irresponsible and deeply dishonest activity from the McCain campaign so much over the last few months, that it has become difficult and tiring at times to bother to care. But we have to care and respond, just as Obama must care, and Obama must respond, even to the kinds of lies and tactics whose coarseness and spuriousness would -- in the company of civilized adults (that is, company in which the likes of McCain and especially Sarah Palin would be fish out of water, to be extra-generous) -- represent the kind of 'discourse' that one does not glorify with a response.

Think I'm exaggerating the level of desperation and dishonestly being perpetrated by Palin and McCain? (Of course you don't, unless you've been living under a rock...) Here's some objective proof for you, from Bloomberg News:

Over the weekend, McCain's running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, repeatedly linked the Democratic presidential candidate with a domestic terrorist group from the 1970s, telling supporters Obama used to ``pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,'' a reference to his acquaintance with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground group that carried out a series of bombings in the early 1970s. Obama served on a charity board with Ayers and has denounced the bombings.

Obama ``is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country,'' Palin, 44, told donors at a fundraiser Oct. 4 in Costa Mesa, California. ``This, ladies and gentleman, is not the kind of change that I think we should be believing in.'' McCain adviser Greg Strimple said last week that they were "looking for a very aggressive last 30 days.''

"We're looking to turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's liberal, aggressively liberal, record and how he will be too risky for the Americans,'' Strimple told reporters on an Oct. 2 conference call.

So, as this McCain-minion Greg Strimple -- even his fucking name sounds shady -- points out: this is a strategy of out-and-out "aggression." Translation: McCain's filthy campaign wants now to play even filthier. And what that means is not an "aggressive last 30 days," but, rather: '30 days of LIES'. Even when it's stated in Strimple's simple-minded, Orwellian PR terminology, that's an awfully weird thing for a campaign to be admitting out loud, isn't it? Why not just say that McCain's going to endorse a liberalization of federal, state and local prohibitions on lynching.

This fucking Ayers bullshit just gets my goat, man. It is SO dishonest, I can barely believe that self-respecting journalists and politicos -- even those on the far, far Right, can sleep at night after spending a day repeating and spreading these lies and trying cast it as somehow credible. (Which is a difficult feat to pull off when you have zero credibility.) Whatever the details of his life as a young man, in the midst of the politically toxic and contentious political climate in the 60s and 70s, as a younger man -- during which time Obama was EIGHT YEARS OLD and nowhere near Chicago!! -- , William Ayers is a fucking Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. How Establishment can you get? Plus, he does good scholarship and, with his wife Bernadine Dohrn -- a law professor at Northwestern University -- is active in fighting poverty and working to combat racial and economic injustices.

The Ayers thing pisses me of for personal reasons, as well as the obvious moral, intellectual and political reasons. First, because I -- that's ME, y'all, along with my lovely wife and our two cats -- am a resident of the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. I don't live in the same section of town as Ayers, which is an area with nice houses -- some of them truly posh, but the majority of them just everyday nice houses -- in which lots and lots of professionals and academics live with their families.

A number of these professionals and academics are connected to, in some way or another, the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Hospital, institutions which are, of course, located in Hyde Park. Many of the residents of the neighborhood are not connected to the University of Chicago, and simply live there because it's a nice neighborhood in which to live, or because it's got the kinds of houses that many people looking for houses are looking for. I shouldn't have to add that this place is NOT BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION some kind of hotbed of radicalism. I've met some of the people who live there, and I've read the books of others. It is as close to the ESTABLISHMENT as you're likely to find. Trust me.

And, as if that wasn't enough, have people forgotten that the University of Chicago is the home of the Chicago School of economics, whose figurehead and intellectual architect was none other than the most influential proponent of extreme laissez faire economics that this country has ever seen? The Milton Friedman in whose name a shiny new economics/business-school building is soon to be erected on the University of Chicago campus as an enduring and no-doubt-well-funded monument to the conservative movement that gave us the Reagan Revolution, the Bush Administration(s) and with them, the Iraq War, the privatization of public infrastructure, the mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina, and the recent crash of the stock- and credit markets, which might ultimately usher in a SECOND GREAT DEPRESSION?? Nobody's gonna tell me that my neighborhood is some kind of hotbed of crazy radicalism. If it is, then man, nobody's inviting me to the party, because I sure don't see it anywhere.

Here's Thomas Frank -- former longtime resident of Hyde Park --, back on August 20, 2008, in his column in The Wall Street Journal, describing the soon-to-be constructed Milton Friedman Society. And here's Frank in that same column, on August 16, talking about the cynical, mendacious Republican ploy of portraying Hyde Park as an 'elitist' neighborhood, which..... I mean that's just prima facie the most ridiculous notion. For one thing, as I mentioned previously, I live in fucking Hyde Park.

I am way way way too poor to be an elitist.

But beyond that, the idea of Hyde Park as an elitist neighborhood in preposterous if you compare it to the real elite neighborhoods of Chicago. You want ELITE? Try Chicago's exclusive northern suburbs: Evanston, Glenview, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Highland Park, Lake Forest, Hoffman Estates; try western suburbs like: Oak Park, Naperville, try old money urban districts like the Gold Coast, and continue by considering the skyrocketing cost of living in the recently gentrified and continually gentrifying neighborhoods of River West, parts of Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square, Logan Square, Lakeview, Andersonville, the South Loop.....I could go on, but I think maybe my point is kinda clear, at least?

Hyde Park is to be distinguished from most of Chicago's opulent/posh/trendy neighborhoods not by reference to its supposed 'elitism', but precisely by its comparative diversity: economically, racially, generationally/agewise and according to whatever metric of class, background, or level of education you can throw at it. It includes, over on 53rd Street, a commercial center that has historically and continues to be associated with the black professional class. Oh, by the way, in and around Hyde Park reside members of the South Side's increasingly large black professional class.

In contradistinction to the many posh neighborhoods I cited above, gentrification in Hyde Park is fairly marginal, to the extent that it could really be said to exist at all. I mean, it's not an 'opulent' place: when Hyde Park's lone, solitary grocery store -- one of the oldest (and most mis-managed [although I feel like a jerk pointing it out!]) food co-ops in the country -- went out of business last year, the entire neighborhood was left high and dry (that is to say, we had no grocery store anywhere nearby) for a matter of months -- as many as four or five, if memory serves -- before a replacement owner moved in and set up shop.

It's tempting for some to say that if you've ever been to a typical college neighborhood, you've been to Hyde Park. But that isn't quite right. Hyde Park is a much more down-to-earth, more diverse and more FRIENDLY place than most college neighborhoods. There is a spirit of goodwill here, and almost none of the stuffy elitism that one notices immediately upon entering -- for instance, Evanston, Illionois -- which is the wealthy suburb far to the north along Chicago's endless lakefront, on the other side of town, where Northwestern University is located.

In closing, I leave you with the words of an acquaintance of both Obama and Ayers, and additionally a colleague of the latter, in his former capacity as a high-profile administrator at University of Illinois at Chicago: Stanley Fish. Fish, who served as Dean of UIC's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 1999 to 2004, is a man whose politics I would describe as conservative. He's really a bit of a contrarian, in that self-satisfied, Socratic-method, law-school-professor-way. In his scholarship on law, he is just a bit too close to Antonin Scalia for comfort.

These quirks notwithstanding, he is and has always been an intellectually honest man. And so, Stanley Fish's take on this whole Ayers thing -- as published in his column on The New York Times Web site on April 27, 2008, in reference to the use of these 'Ayers-connection' fabrications and innuendo by both Hillary Clinton and John McCain during the primaries --, is eloquent and convincing. In my opinion, Fish is absolutely correct in his characterization of this sleazy political tactic as a new form of "McCarthyism."

Or more specifically, Fish says: "'McCarthyism' and 'Swiftboating' have come together in a particularly lethal and despicable form. I refer to the startling revelation — proclaimed from the housetops by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns — that Barack Obama ate dinner at William Ayers’s house, served with him on a board and was the honored guest at a reception he organized." Fish's response to this 'shocking' revelation, particularly in light of his own professional and regional encounters with Obama and Ayers, should, in my view, be considered definitive. I quote at great length in the hope of demonstrating this beyond a shadow of a doubt (I'm particularly fond of Fish's reference to the fact that the ultraconservative Judge Richard Posner is also among Ayers's neighbors):

Confession time. I too have eaten dinner at Bill Ayers’s house (more than once), and have served with him on a committee, and he was one of those who recruited my wife and me at a reception when we were considering positions at the University of llinois, Chicago. Moreover, I have had Bill and his wife Bernardine Dohrn to my apartment, was a guest lecturer in a course he taught and joined in a (successful) effort to persuade him to stay at UIC and say no to an offer from Harvard. Of course, I’m not running for anything, but I do write for The New York Times and, who knows, this association with former fugitive members of the Weathermen might be enough in the eyes of some to get me canned.

Did I conspire with Bill Ayers? Did I help him build bombs? Did I aid and abet his evasion (for a time) of justice? Not likely, given that at the time of the events that brought Ayers and Dohrn to public attention, I was a supporter of the Vietnam War. I haven’t asked him to absolve me of that sin (of which I have since repented), and he hasn’t asked me to forgive him for his (if he has any).

Indeed in all the time I spent with Ayers and Dohrn, politics — present or past — never came up.

What did come up? To answer that question I have to introduce a word and concept that is somewhat out of fashion: the salon. A salon is a gathering in a private home where men and women from various walks of life engage in conversation about any number of things, including literature, business, fashion, films, education and philosophy. Ayers and Dohrn did not call their gatherings salons, but that’s what they were; large dinner parties (maybe 12-15), with guests coming and going, one conversation leading to another, no rules or obligations, except the obligation to be interesting and interested.

The only thing I don’t remember was ideology, although since this was all going on in Hyde Park, there was the general and diffused ideology, vaguely liberal, that usually hangs over a university town.

Many of those attending these occasions no doubt knew something about their hosts’ past, but the matter was never discussed and why should it have been? We were there not because of what Ayers and Dohrn had done 40 years ago, but because of what they were doing at the moment.

Ayers is a longtime professor of education at UIC, nationally known for his prominence in the “small school” movement. Dohrn teaches at Northwestern Law School, where she directs a center for child and family justice. Both lend their skills and energies to community causes; both advise various agencies; together they have raised exemplary children and they have been devoted caretakers to aged parents. “Respectable” is too mild a word to describe the couple; rock-solid establishment would be more like it. There was and is absolutely no reason for anyone who knows them to plead the fifth or declare, “I am not now nor have I ever been a friend of Bill’s and Bernardine’s.”

Least of all Barack Obama, who by his own account didn’t know them that well and is now being taken to task for having known them at all. Of course it would have required preternatural caution to avoid associating with anyone whose past deeds might prove embarrassing on the chance you decided to run for president someday. In an earlier column, I spoke of the illogic of holding a candidate accountable for things said or done by a supporter or an acquaintance. Now a candidate is being held accountable for things said and done four decades ago by people who happen to live in his upper middle class neighborhood. Hillary Clinton and John McCain should know better. In fact, they do know better. To date, Clinton has played hardball, but hasn’t really fouled. I never saw anything wrong or inaccurate about her saying that Martin Luther King’s vision required a president’s action before it could be implemented, or Bill Clinton’s saying that Jesse Jackson won the South Carolina primary twice. He did, and if the implication was that Obama’s base constituency is African-American, that too was accurate and continues to be so.

As for her saying that all Obama had ever done was give a speech, she was being generous: he gave that speech against invading Iraq at a small event featuring other speakers (including Jackson); the local press coverage did not even mention him; and if this was, as his campaign claims, an act of courage, it was a singularly private one, maybe even a fairy tale. Clinton’s exaggerating the danger of her visit to Bosnia (most likely unintentional because, as she said, “I’m not dumb”) came a little closer to crossing a line, but didn’t. Re-telling a story (about a hospital’s refusal to treat an uninsured patient) that turned out not to be true was evidence of faulty campaign organization, not of deliberate duplicity.

But the literature the Clinton campaign is passing around about Obama and Ayers cannot be explained away or rationalized. It features bold headlines proclaiming that Ayers doesn’t regret his Weathermen activities (what does that have to do with Obama? Are we required to repudiate things acquaintances of our have not said?), that Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s senatorial campaign (do you take money only from people of whose every action you approve?), that Obama admired Ayers’s 1997 book on the juvenile justice system, that Ayers and Obama participated on a panel examining the role of intellectuals in public life. That subversive event was sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals, an organization that also sponsored an evening conversation (moderated by me) between those notorious radicals Richard Rorty and Judge Richard Posner (also a neighbor of Ayers’s; maybe the Federalist Society should expel him).

I don’t see any crimes or even misdemeanors in any of this. I do see civic activism and a concern for the welfare of children. The suggestion that something sinister was transpiring on those occasions is backed up by nothing except the four-alarm-bell typography that accompanies this list of entirely innocent, and even praiseworthy, actions.

As for Senator McCain, in 2004 he repudiated the Swiftboat attacks against fellow veteran John Kerry, but this time around he’s joining in, and if Obama gets the nomination, it seems that the Arizona senator will be playing the Ayers card. Of course, McCain knows a little about baseless accusations and innuendos, given his experience in South Carolina in 2000. And in case he has forgotten what it feels like, he may soon be reminded; for there’s a story abroad on the Internet that says that rather than being a heroic, tortured prisoner of war, McCain was a collaborator who traded information for a comfortable apartment serviced by maids who were really prostitutes. I don’t believe it for a second, just as I am sure that Senators McCain and Clinton don’t really believe that Obama condones setting bombs or supports a radical agenda that was pursued (as he has said) when he was eight years old.

The difference is that I feel a little dirty just for having repeated a scurrilous rumor even as I rejected it. Apparently Obama’s two opponents have no such qualms and are happily retailing, and wallowing in, the dirt. (Link to article.)

No need to add anything to Fish's comments. Case dismissed.

Well, let me add two things. First: whereas the Palin/McCain/Bush/GOP tactic is nothing but slander and innuendo, Obama's calling out of McCain on his role in the Keating Five scandal pertains directly to McCain's claims that he is somehow a pro-regulatory/pro-oversight force with respect to economic questions. I mean, everybody knows McCain's claims are bullshit anyway, but I think Obama does well to fight back against an attack that's wholly devoid of substance with a counterattack that couldn't be more relevant to our current economic/regulatory situation.

Second, and final (and I haven't seen anyone else put it this way): in a way, the Right's childish, bullshit attack against Obama is worse than McCarthyism and worse than Swiftboating.

Why?

Because in essence, McCain's shameless tactic, were it successful -- which there's ZERO possibility of it being, in anything more than maybe a fund-raising sense among LOONY right-wingers -- would ultimately discourage anyone who has lived an actual life, outside of the beach houses and summer houses and ranches and country-clubs of a tiny elite. I live in fucking Hyde Park, and unlike McCain, I don't really have the luxury of choosing not to live here, even if -- let's say -- I disliked so vigorously the ideas of the Chicago School of economics that it caused a strain on me psychlogically to be so near such rightist ideology. Let's say I just hated the idea of buying my fruit and mil in the same grocery store as a Friedman-acolyte, SO MUCH SO that I wanted to move up north to Andersonville, just to avoid association, and thereby, guilt by association.

Guess what? Unlike George W. Bush, who could just move back to the family compound, and unlike John McCain, who can nestle himself comfortably underneath an awning of his choice, in one of nine houses of his choice, and unlike millionaire Sarah Palin, who can move back either to one of her two summer houses or go flying in her expensive airplane or take a snowmobile through the snowiest and most beautiful snowbanks of the expansive Alaskan countryside.....

Unlike these GOP con-artists, I can't afford to move to some other part of the city. Good thing that, unlike McCain and his Rovian goons, I know that 'guilt by association' is a fundamentally dishonest concept. I love living in Hyde Park. It might not be the most exciting or trendy place; it might not be all that near to CTA train routes, but doggone it, it's A-OK by me; just an ordinary, normal, everyday Joe Sixpack, doing regular-old, outside-the-beltway stuff in my humble but happy Midwestern digs. Paying my taxes, and trying to do what's right by the Lord Above.

You -- Gentle Reader -- and I know what's right: voting for Barack Obama this November.

Documentary on John McCain's role in Keating Five scandal on 'keatingeconomics.com'

View this documentary about McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal at the Web site 'keatingeconomics.com'.

The documentary, which was released by Obama's campaign today at noon, is titled: KEATING ECONOMICS: JOHN MCCAIN AND THE MAKING OF A FINANCIAL CRISIS.

Below is reprinted the text that appears on keatingeconomics.com, accompanying the documentary.

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

Randomized Palin response generator!Also: Alaska's Shrillest represents the Boomers' potential betrayal of my generation.

Have you seen this yet?

This brilliant Web site, called Interview Sarah Palin, produces randomized responses to various typical interview questions about the economy, foreign policy, the separation between church and state, etc., etc.

Here's an example of the kind of question and response the site generates:

Q: How will you fix the economy?

Our economy and putting it back on the table. I think if you really think that I have understood the world is and how important it is in this nation at this time. People are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing and kind of grab it all or capture it all and pretend like they have all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that I am the executive of. And there in Russia Diplomacy is about reform of government and these regulatory agencies back on the right reasons and serving for the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, that we work with our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia.

The Web site's creator(s) explains that its "...answers are computer generated based on probabilities calculated from Sarah Palin's actual speech," producing results that are "surprising [sic] close to her actual answers."

As proof of this similarity in outcome, the site provides an example of a typical real-life Palin interview response, taken from her recent hilarious (and frightening) interview with CBS's Katie Couric (for whom I have begun to have tremendous respect, based upon the panache and professionalism with which she interviewed this truly absurd human being who wants to be second in line to the White House):

COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy? Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That's why I say, I like ever American I'm speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy - Helping the - Oh, it's got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. And trade we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Wow. No wonder arch-conservative publications like The National Review have called for Palin to step aside.

It really is quite shocking. Not only the extent to which Palin's responses tend to bear no discernible traces of a relation to the question posed; also that she clearly is reciting -- with varying degrees of success/accuracy -- talking points, words, phrases, etc. that she had been taught to memorize in intensive coaching sessions conducted by Bush's/Cheney's handlers. (I have heard that it is literally Bush's and Cheney's handlers that conduct these coaching sessions.)

What's scary is that she's not even cogitating. There is very little indication that Palin even bothers to try to comprehend the question itself. She's relying on muscle memory; certain words or phrases trigger one kind of response or another, much like the simple computer programs that I used to write back in the 1980's, using the BASIC programming language on my family's Apple IIc. The programs I would write would usually be a prank of one kind or another, tricking my credulous friends and family (in an era in which computer illiteracy was still the norm) into thinking they had wiped out all of the computer's memory, or something. Just simple stuff like: if keystroke x, then y; if keystroke v, then w; if keystroke z, then x; etc., etc.

Another way of saying this is that the level of intellectual competence that Palin demonstrates in her interviews is equivalent, roughly, to that of a Tickle-Me Elmo. (Remember those?) And, come to think of it, in a similar vocal register.

I guess that's the genius of the Interview Sarah Palin Web site. It spotlights the extent to which Sarah Palin is like a rusty old Apple IIc personal computer. This fits in unsurprisingly with the overall fact of Palin's existence: she's not a candidate; she's not even a human being. She's a cluster of images, projections, psychological associations, emotional triggers and mental short-cuts. She's a brand, like Pepsi. But without the cola. The (il)logic of the McCain/Palin ticket is that it is selling a bizarre kind of nostalgia for a time that never was and, in any case, could never again be.

My God Would We Be Fucked, were this ridiculous Palin gambit to actually work. It looks less and less likely that it will work, with each passing day. But it's still scary as hell. If McCain were to win, I believe that entire generations of Americans under the age of -- say -- 45 -- an already-disillusioned and cynical group of voters of which I am a part and which for the most part lacks a voice, lacks money and lacks representation -- will truly lose all faith in the idea of functioning, representative democracy in the United States of America. My god, that would be depressing.....

A McCain/Palin win would represent the ultimate betrayal of my future, at the hands of a myopic, ideologically tone-deaf and frivolous Baby Boom generation.

(Sorry to leave you on such a sour note....)

Obama kicked ass last night and everybody knows it.

I wrote the following paragraphs as a comment on a blog called Media Nation, in which I agreed with an article the blogger had written that the media -- particularly in Washington -- have given too much credit to McCain's performance in last night's presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi, and it's not a surprise that polls are now showing that the public -- particularly undecided voters -- see it the same way I do. What was I doing, you ask, commenting on somebody's blog? My answer is that I've become a complete and utter dork, and it's this election business that done me in.

Those who credit McCain with continually "putting Obama on the defensive" miss the point.

The pundit caste has made a cliche of this notion of "putting the other guy on the defensive." The problem with cliches, of course, is that people forget what they mean. Some of the commentary on last night's debate exemplifies this tendency. This tactic means nothing by virtue of its deployment per se, but rather, as a means by which to gain certain advantages. If those advantages don't accrue to you, then putting the other guy on the defensive means nothing.

McCain's attacks/challenges to Obama's credibility were, one after another, disposed of quickly and tidily by Obama. Obama appeared calm the entire time, while McCain looked at all times to be straining to come up with novel forms of slander. Oftentimes, McCain's soliloquies would stray far off the topic, and he appeared to be hogging microphone time, while Obama patiently waited, exchanging polite glances with Lehrer.

Lastly: while Obama expressed, at appropriate times, his agreement with one or another premise of McCain's answers, while interjecting his differences, McCain appeared at all times to be nervously guarding his territory against ANY possibility that Obama could utter something credible. This had the effect of making Obama appear all the more 'presidential', calm and reasonable. Obama was careful to mitigate McCain's rhetorical excesses and over-the-top insinuations with fair-minded, calm rebuttals.

The overall effect, in other words, is that McCain's assiduousness in striving to "play offense" MADE HIM LOOK DEFENSIVE. Like an impetuous child, throwing a tantrum. The overly nasty and petty nature of many of McCain's attacks became in and of themselves REAFFIRMATIONS of Obama's credibility, savvy and strength of judgment and character.

Think of it this way: poor McCain, in patting himself on his back for his own 'maverickness' and even his own service to his country, his endless repetitions, his inability EVER to cede ground to his opponent, looked like someone who, nervously and twitchily, is scared to death that you're not going to believe him, and even that HE's worried about losing the ability to believe HIMSELF.

I think the media completely missed most of what matters about the debate; they are far too generous in their appraisal of McCain's performance.

In my view, the debate was nothing short of a triumph for Obama. He looked like a responsible adult. McCain looked like an inflexible old coot. I can't imagine a single swing-voter being swayed by McCain's performance. Obama, on the other hand, showed his stuff. He came across as competent, credible and--perhaps most importantly--honest.

Citing McCain's "boiling moralism & bottomless reservoir of certitude," conservative George Will questions McCain's fitness to occupy Oval Office.

A recent Crib From This post discussed the growing number of conservative journalists and Republican politicians who have expressed serious reservations about supporting McCain or have withdrawn their support outright. On last Sunday's This Week on ABC, longstanding conservative columnist/commentator George Will described McCain's recent behavior as "unpresidential," concluding that "John McCain showed his personality this week...and made some of us fearful."

Will reaffirms his criticisms of McCain's temperament and character in today's Washington Post:

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama. ....

For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17; and the New York Times of Sept. 19.)....

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases." ....

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

This is not mild criticism. That it comes from perhaps the most stalwart, respected and intellectually honest figure in American conservatism is a significant development. I mean, seriously. If George Will is starting to lean toward supporting Obama, it means there's hope that pretty much any conservative -- even my parents -- could be convinced to support the Democratic candidate in November.

Crib From This unveils titular 'depression' reference #2.

I seriously wish I were exaggerating in using the 'D Word'. And I hope it turns out that I am.

I, doubtless like many others, have for the last couple of days been conducting a self-education in economics in order to better comprehend various of the enormous ongoing fiscal crises. I have been scurrying around, to and fro, hither and thither on the Web site of The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, and also some instances of financial bloggery. It brings me no particular joy, but hey, even Karl Marx had go about the ugly business of teaching himself economics...

One Web site / blog that I have found to be exceedingly instructive not only for its candor -- the Federal Reserve, the Executive and Legislative Branches and the media have been drastically understating the severity of the situation in order not to cause panic, mass liquidations of accounts, etc. --, but for its lucidity. It's called Naked Capitalism, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's hype.

So, I would like to recommend a few of items that have been posted today on Naked Capitalism, items that are characteristically candid and lucid. Here's how I'll give it to you: I've got good news and bad news.

First the good news: there isn't any.

And the bad news is:

1) The Fed's bailout of AIG to the tune of $85,000 has done nothing to slow the downward spiral of the credit markets (the mysterious, opaque, unregulated markets I blathered about in my previous post).

2) On the basis of a strange article in The Chicago Tribune, Naked Capitalism contributor Yves Smith expresses concern that Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of The Federal Reserve, has no idea what he's doing.

3) Morgan Stanley appears poised to take a cue from Lehman Brothers. Which is to say, tank.

4) Or possibly a merger with Wachovia? And Washington Mutual (a.k.a. WaMu) is likely to tank any day now.

By the way, did you know that we may well be on the verge of a second Great Depression?

First of all: if you are like me and tend not to understand anything about the economy, you owe it to yourself as a citizen, but more importantly as a voter in the upcoming presidential election, and even more importantly as someone who can help inform undecided voters (a constituency that J has often remarked that she doesn't "get," and I agree that it's one of life's great mysteries, like how come anyone likes this person?), to listen to today's highly informative episode of Fresh Air, hosted by Terri Gross.

Warning! In addition to being highly informative, this listening experience exposes to the listener the cynicism, corruption and incompetence that has caused the shocking shockwave of economic strife, Sturm und Drang and the like that has befallen the United States of America. And in this respect, it's pretty infuriating. But, it's the good kind of infuriating, wherein you finally feel like you have a basic sense of what the fuck is going on with Ye Grande Olde Economie, thanks to the success of decades of Grand Old Party ideological warfare. This is the ultimate consequence of the Reagan Revolution, and you got what you wanted, America! Assholes....

But anyway, subject yourself to this unusually informative radio program, and you'll come away armed with the kind of terrifying knowledge that energizes you to spread the word, or perhaps to spread your wings and fly, or perhaps simply to start bar fights. Not surprisingly, you'll also be equipped with a convincing yet subtle set of basic arguments as to why anybody who cares at all about the economy had better get off her ass and vote for Barack Obama.*

As if the fact that no less formidable paragon of bleeding-heart Marxism than Alan Greenspan recently said that the country "can't afford" John McCain's economic platform isn't all the proof we needed? Speaking of which, enjoy this simple but eloquent cartoon, which came to my attention through the blog of the, erm, festively monikered Barack OBlogger:

(By the way, I've discovered that there are a number of political cartoons on the Web site of the Ventura County Star that are after my own bleeding heart in a sort of simple, satisfying old-school way. The cartoonist is Steve Greenberg.)

Terri's guest is the very lively and lucid Michael Greenberger, a professor of law at the University of Maryland, and the former Director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In which capacity "he was responsible for supervising exchange traded futures and derivatives" (michaelgreenberger.com). What this means is that he knows lots and lots about the shady, irresponsible business practices that is causing the economy to tank, and he describes it from the perspective of a regulator. And from that perspective, things don't look good. (I wonder which perspective John McCain is viewing it from?)

Turns out the Republican Party economic ideology of deregulating everything and its mother, as practiced and expanded continually during all GOP presidencies since Reagan, and which McCain fully and ernestly intends to continue, has profoundly fucked the country. Shadiest of all has been the Bush/Cheney administration, which has been eager at every turn to run up larger and larger and larger deficits, and which espouses explicitly (and, at times, furtively) a policy of opacity: in other words, the administration has clamored, maneuvered, lied and used subterfuge at every opportunity to hide from the American people the true state of the country's finances, as well as the inevitable consequences of their irresponsible behavior with respect to the bottom line of an average American household.

For example: did you know that Cheney/Bush, in attempt to hide the yearly deficit expenses of the Iraq War -- which according to The Washington Post is certain to exceed $3 trillion --, tried to keep these expenses off the books? Specifically off of Congress's yearly report to the American taxpayer of spending and deficits. Fortunately, that plan was thwarted by Congress. And sure enough, the Bush Administration also wanted to keep the Federal Reserve's $200 billion taxpayer-funded bail-out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac off the books. The idea, you see, is that if that menacing figure of $200 billion -- which is being supplied out of the pockets of the taxpayers -- is prevented from appearing on the books, then the taxpayers wouldn't have to go through the psychological turmoil of knowing that it is indeed they who are strapping to their backs the burden of this awesome sum. Thankfully, Congress again told Cheney/Bush: "Fuck off."

And now, here's something that's sure to put an even bigger bounce in your taxpaying step. In today's Fresh Air interview, Greenberger explains that the Fed's $85 billion loan to bail out insurance giant AIG is backed up by -- that is to say, it uses as collateral -- AIG's considerable assets. In the Fed's public statements, it has used this fact as a means by which to reassure the US taxpayer that he won't have to shoulder this burden.

But wait, what do AIG's 'assets' consist of, exactly? The assets that are being used to back up the US Government's $85 billion loan? Why, AIG's assets consist of the insurance policies of its customers. Bet that makes holders of AIG policies feel cozy and warm. Or perhaps, a bit toasty.

Now, these policies are for the most part held not by AIG itself, but by smaller, subsidiary companies under AIG's umbrella. Wow. So, what does that mean, that the risk is spread around a lot or something? I'm going to answer no, even though I don't really understand my own question (you have to forgive me, because I'm of necessity reconstructing Greenberger's

comments from memory, as the Web version of the show to which I have provided a hyperlink will not begin functioning until later in the day on which I'm typing these words).

Turns out that AIG, like apparently everyone else, held a lot of subprime mortgage-backed securities. Remember: this means that it invested a significant percentage of the life insurance policies of its customers in those sketchy-ass subprime mortgage loans. So, when the housing sector tanked -- as it would do inevitably, given that the sector was skyrocketing exclusively due to incompetent oversight and lack of governmental regulation (of which, if you want more, vote for John McCain, who's always been in favor of more and more DE-regulation and shows no sign of changing tack in any sense other than rhetorically) -- so AIG's fortunes tanked.

But here's what's even more sinister: Greenberger describes an additional reason for AIG's southward turn: credit-default swaps. Credit-default swaps are a kind of insurance policy against defaults on loans, particularly risky loans (like subprime mortgages, etc.). If that doesn't make sense, and I'm sure it doesn't, just listen to Greenberger talking to Terri Gross, and it will become clear. So: anyway, despite occasional clamors from responsible people, the federal government has made it its policy to exercise virtually no regulation and no oversight with respect to credit-default swaps, or CDS. Therefore, there is zero obligation of transparency on the part of the entities involved with these transactions.

AIG has made a regular and frequent part of its business to issue CDS, a practice that is apparently unusual for insurance companies; for an insurance company to make such risky investments would be unthinkable in an environment with the appropriate oversight, transparency and regulation. Especially since oftentimes, if not in the majority of instances, the buyers of these swaps did so to protect against the risk of a default or bankruptcy on subprime mortgages!

This unregulated, mysterious CDS market is several times the size of the stock market!

Wow. If McCain manages to fucking win this election -- I know this is a clichee, but --, I'm sorry but anybody with any sense would pack up and leave for Canada. We can avoid that, but only if we stay in the faces of those who are undecided in this election and explain to them what the consequences will be if McCain wins.

Not to mention that in this economy, if the American people were to vote the same party of the last eight years into office all over again, it would be the biggest act of collective masochism the world has ever seen.

Okay; off to take a shower to wash away the self-righteousness..... But it just won't wash awaaaay / No, it doesn't ever wash awaaaayaayayayay, / Darlin', pleaeeeeeeese. To be sung in the style of Bryan Adams, ca. 'Everything I Do I Do It For You'. And that's a wrap.

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* And, also to remind Barack supporters to register to vote ; it's unbelieveably easy and quick to put the requisite paperwork together, thanks to this kickass feature on Barack Obama's Web site. Remember: this election could very easily turn on whether or not a sufficient number of young people show up at the polls on election day. So don't hold back out of politeness: remind your friends; get in their faces and make sure they vote.