Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Campbell Soup

Big Media appears determined to milk the 2008 election to the last drop. There's a lot of ad money at stake next Tuesday night, so they're more than banking on a tight race. This explains the kind of oversampling that keeps the polls relatively close. It would also explain CNN's Campbell Brown.

After Team McCain brought Sarah Palin on board, Brown was the first cable-news vamp to question the vice-presidential candidate's qualifications. Her line of questioning so offended staffer Tucker Bounds that a subsequently-scheduled interview with McCain was cancelled.

Today, Ms. Brown turns around and slams Barack Obama for "breaking his promise" to accept public campaign financing. This story is old, almost as old as Brown herself, and has already been butchered by some of the bloodiest right-wing hacks in the business.

"He pledged," she posts on CNN's website today, "to accept public financing and to work with the Republican nominee to ensure that they both operated within those limits. Then it became clear to Sen. Obama and his campaign that he was going to be able to raise on his own far more cash than he would get with public financing. So Obama went back on his word."

Earlier this year, such vagary was put to bed by fact-checkers at the Washington Post: "The Obama campaign is correct in arguing that there is nothing in the Feb. 1 letter to the FEC that can be fairly interpreted as committing the campaign to accepting public financing." (Two Pinnochios.)

What Obama actually "pledged" was to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." Whether or not Obama pursued this pledge (or how aggressively) is neither here nor there.

The real question is easy: Why did donors, who banked so very heavily on two Bush campaigns, leave McCain out in the cold? Big business, small business, ordinary individuals, the plumbers' union - all gave of their earnings to support the Democrat this year.

It's easily enough understood, despite all the feigned shock among conservatives, never mind Campbell Brown. Monied interests believe that Obama is going to win the election. Does a good gambler bet on his favorite team, or the favored one?

It's called "smart money", just as Obama's separation from McCain's level of financing is smart money. Why would he hobble himself, something no other candidate has ever done or been asked to do, and why would the media want or expect him to?

Could it be due the obvious - if this election were a prizefight, a blue-shirted referee would have stepped in long ago to pull Obama off of the stumbling, flailing, glassy-eyed McCain? Such would be a humane response to a lopsided contest, the outcome of which is no longer much in doubt.

pH 1o.28.o8

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Hit or Myth

There are still a couple of myths floating around the Amerisphere with regard to a potential Obama presidency. The best thing to do would be to puncture them now, let all that gas escape, and watch things settle down.

First is the stomach-turning notion that Barack Obama will be assassinated. This fear is particularly acute among the African-American community, and is understandable given our recent inability to learn anything from history. Take my word for it, though; ain't gonna happen.

I know the opposition's shelf is stocked with crackers and nuts, but assassinating the Democratic nominee before the election would backfire in the worst way. Who was the second-highest recipient of primary delegates? That'd be Hillary Clinton. They don't want that.

Even if it happened after the election, Vice President Joe Biden would ascend to the Oval Office, and who would he then choose as his VP? Hillary! Then - because he's old, you know - Biden would resign over health issues, or to spend more time with family, whatever, leaving Hillary in charge.

That much is obvious, even to those peering out from under the steepest of sloping brows. And it wouldn't be the usual Hillary, either, but a Hillary with a public mandate to emasculate all things conservative.

They can negotiate with Obama. They'll take their chances against him in 2012.

The other myth, far more laughable, is the idea that the U.S. would be attacked by terrorists under President Obama. Conservatives point to just such a remark made last week by Biden. But you know Biden - he borrowed that line from Joe Lieberman, who used it last June when he was hoping his old friend John McCain would select him to be his running mate.

Why haven't they attacked us again under George W. Bush, by the way? Because he gave the terrorists everything they wanted. Safe haven in Pakistan's tribal areas. A recruiting magnet and training grounds for jihadists in Iraq. A leader who waxes more and more like a theocratic dictator with each passing week.

In response to 9/11, the Bush administration moved us more in the direction of those despotic states that support terrorism. They torture; we torture. They lie to their people; we lie to our people. They rig elections; so does the GOP. We're now a debtor nation, one that remains addicted to oil, and the oil money is their skim.

Going forward, it may well be that we are attacked again, and may even be more likely under Obama; I'll take my chances in the light. It's no myth that al-Qaida would see an Obama victory as a sign that the Americans are moving in the direction of freedom again.

If there's anything Americans still know, it's how much the terrorists hate freedom. Maybe that's what makes Bush do the things he does. Maybe that's why McCain subscribes to the same mythology. They say, "freedom isn't free". And then they ask us to give it away.

pH 1o.25.o8

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Breaking Up Isn't Hard To Do

The 2008 election will be remembered as a new chapter inscribed in the American journal, historic for two reasons. One is the remarkable candidacy of Barack Obama. The other, which will reveal itself over time, is less obvious but just as certain.

Like the ice sheet that has for so long covered the North Pole, the Republican Party is breaking up, melting in its own heat. The calving of Colin Powell last Sunday (and the ensuing conservative backlash) is the most recent signal that the GOP is in full disintegration mode.

This didn't begin with the defections among conservative media, but that's what got everyone's attention. Columnist Kathleen Parker started the food fight, writing that Sarah Palin was "out of her league", an opinion which attracted death threats to her e-mailbox.

If she was surprised, she shouldn't have been. Alarmed, maybe. Even so, David Brooks followed in her footsteps, labeling Palin a "cancer" on the Party. Bill Kristol, resident neo-con at the New York Times, publicly advised John McCain to "fire his campaign".

George Will said McCain made some Republicans "fearful". Opposition to the McCain-Palin ticket even cost Christopher Buckley his job at the National Review, the publication founded by his celebrated father. All of this indicates just how ruffled are the feathers of the right wing.

The splinter groups are easily identified, even personified in the field that ran in the GOP primary. Fiscal conservatives preferred Mitt Romney. Evangelicals backed Mike Huckabee. Rudy Giuliani was the favorite of the security/immigration crowd. Libertarians had Ron Paul. And Fred Thompson appealed to Law and Order conservatives.

With so many choices, and all the degrees of overlap, they settled on McCain because they felt he had the best chance to win (they apparently didn't realize their own responsibility in the matter). We're two weeks out and they remain divided, unsure, while Obama has opened a double-digit lead in the latest polls.

Scattershot, too, is the McCain campaign's message; now the Democrat is being painted as a Socialist. Last week he was a Terrorist. Before that he was an Elitist. By November 4th, he'll probably be a Communist, as well.

In the wake of George W. Bush, the rank and file have scrambled out from under the Big Tent that Ronald Reagan constructed three decades ago. Canvas and lumber, not to mention dreams of a permanent majority, lie trampled in dust. This is what happens when the clowns are allowed to run the circus.

pH 1o.21.o8

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Mailbag Material

A communique from my old buddy Al, which came with an attached magazine cover (American Rifleman, November 2008), which extolled the horrors of a President Obama where gun rights are concerned:

Paul... I do not know how else to say this, except to say I have great misgivings regarding Obama's intentions. He is, simply put, not good for this country and its people. I am ashamed of the Democrats and what they have become, and what they are doing to America, and how it all is viewed by other 'stinking' countries...

***

Al, I recall the same hysteria about Bill Clinton... And we all suffered so mightily in the '90s, didn't we?

Clinton didn't take our guns away. Jimmy Carter didn't take our guns away. Lyndon Johnson didn't. JFK didn't, either. Neither did Harry S Truman or Franklin Roosevelt. Simply put, no Democrat has ever taken our guns away. It's propaganda to say that Obama will, and actually, it's about the most scurrilous, un-American thing that can be said about any president.

If anyone has damaged our fundamental rights - wiretapping, torture, overturning posse comitatus - it's the Bush administration. Here's a more interesting question: Name the last Republican who did NOT leave the Oval Office and the United States in a complete shambles at the end of his term...

You can't. One doesn't exist, not even the first Republican, Abraham Lincoln. But I still think Honest Abe would be proud of us today, on the brink of putting a Black man in office. That reflects the words of the Constitution - that all men are created equal.

As for the Second Amendment, there's nothing that Obama or anybody could do that would make it past the Supreme Court. The only Justices who might retire at this point are liberal ones, which a president Obama would replace (obviously) with younger appointees - apples for apples.

Basically, there's no chance of the Second Amendment being overturned in my lifetime. Don't buy into the right-wing hype, Al. It's not worth the price of admission anymore.

pH 1o.19.o8

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

We're Number Two!

Briefly, because I know how valuable your time is, from the Associated Press this morning:

BAGHDAD - American troops acting on a tip killed the No. 2 leader of al-Qaida in Iraq — a Moroccan known for his ability to recruit and motivate foreign fighters — in a raid in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

That's awesome. Any time we can take out the No. 2 guy in a terrorist organization is a good time for America. Hoo-ah. Our troops are so good at what we make them do that some in this country would like to see them doing it indefinitely.

Clearly, the last person anyone would want to be is the No. 2 leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Being No. 1 is risky enough - ask Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's next of kin - but for No. 2, every day could potentially be the last. And it's been this way forever, it seems.

Why, this was the second No. 2 to go down just this year. MSNBC reported that the No. 2 leader of al-Qaida in Iraq was killed on March 2, 2008. I don't know if this success comes from racial profiling, or if these guys wear jerseys, or what.

Whatever the case, on September 28, 2007, it was reported that No. 2 was killed by U.S. troops in Mosul. (He was later deemed the "leader of foreign fighters" in Iraq - sound familiar?) Wait, though... Ten weeks before that, we actually captured the top leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, or so National Public Radio reported.

Naturally, we had already killed the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq in January of that same year. Basically we've been killing either the new leader, or the next leader, of al-Qaida in Iraq since September of 2005. The one time we all know for sure that we got him was in June of 2006 (Zarqawi).

His successor, himself a former No. 2, wound up in a pine box just four months later. Yet another second-stringer was reported captured on September 4, 2006 (same source, that pesky NPR). And that's just the stuff I found in the first two pages of a Yahoo! search.

Yeah, we're winning the war, all right. One No. 2 at a time.

pH 1o.15.o8

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Ms. Sean Hannity

(Oh, there you are.)

As this election cycle draws to its inevitable conclusion, mercifully, one American thing has already changed. In a bipartisan fashion the public has finally learned to mistrust the media.

While this has long been a conservative pet peeve, only in the past few years has the news industry (along with the remoratti of prognosticators and pontificators) truly earned such a jaded filter. From the Iraq war on, the for-profit media's flaws have been clear and multi-faceted.

Forget the ink and paper; everyone else has. Network news has become Sesame Street for adults. The cable channels are something more akin to propaganda instruments. Talk-radio is strictly the stuff of P.T. Barnum. Even National Public Radio has become infected with corporate sponsorship.

Clearly, since you're reading this, you take your chances in cyberspace, but how reliable can that be? On our watch, and at our peril, the Fourth Estate has become predictable and pedestrian. The forest is the trees.

Strangely enough, all of this brings us to Sean Hannity, for there is no better personification of the schmaltz that passes for modern media. Pick your poison - television, radio, print, Internet - it's hard to avoid tripping over the famed broadcaster and ventriloquist.

A better cheerleader than Dubya ever was, he has relentlessly deified the inexplicable Sarah Palin, far beyond the point of suspicion about any mere crush. It obviously goes much deeper than that. You can see it glittering in those dewy gerbil eyes of his.

Simply put, Sean Hannity is Sarah Palin trapped in a man's body. When he looks at her, he's gazing into his own internal vanity mirror. It would complete him if only he could be that hockey mom.

As much as this man has accomplished in the world of jaundice journalism, he still has a dream. He'd give more than his left nut to be the ruler of a petro-state, never mind having the chance to sit in Dick Cheney's chair wearing a skirt. Being Sarah Palin would make Sean Hannity the lord and master of his own fecund womb.

It would also mean more time spent with the hairdresser and makeup artist, and less on the waxing table, and would provide a built-in excuse for those angry spells (s)he seems to have every month. Best of all, (s)he'd get to actually screw a Union steel worker, ever' night.

Their mutual confusions about scripture and the Constitution could dance like angels on their pin of a head. Sean might not make her any smarter, but (s)he would relish the potential for an exchange of talking points with someone in real power, if only at the RNC.

This is all just fantasy to Americans who want to believe that there might be a change in the course that conservatives have beset upon the nation. In the end, whatever happens to the rest of us, Sean Hannity will be left with the same treasures - money, overexposure, political futility...

And still, perhaps, a dream.

pH 1o.11.o8