Does American hate the middle class?

A push by Republican Senators, many from the South, killed a proposal to loan money to the three American automakers that had previously passed in the House. A Daily Kos front page diarist had harsh words for Tenn. Senator Corker:

Bob Corker just led the charge to kill the American auto industry, and with
it some 10% of the American economy, because he wasn't allowed to bust the UAW.
As such, Bob Corker is definitionally one of the most traitorous and
despicable human beings ever to track slime across the floors of the
Senate.

For some time, the left has been attempting to persuade the public, and itself that the country is progressive, but are either too dumb or guillible to realize it. The election of Barack Obama was used as further evidence of a shift to the center left. As indicated by the quote above about Corker, the left has set up the bailout as a battle of Left vs Right. The powerful against the working class. In their minds, opposition to this bill is a war on the middle class, is treason and is anti-American. (except for Sen. Tester D-Mont, he is a populist and all.)

This morning, the Washington Post released a poll, that the left must conclude says that a majority of Americans polled are traiters and union busters.

Overall, 55 percent of those polled oppose the latest plan that Chrysler, Ford and General Motors executives pitched to Congress last week, on par
with public opposition to earlier, pricier efforts. But with 42 percent support,
the new request for up to $14 billion in emergency loans has more backers than
previous proposals to secure up to $34 billion in loan guarantees.
But as
with the earlier bids, those who strongly oppose the measure greatly outnumber
those who are strongly supportive.

We have 55% of the country that wants the middle class to drop dead according the left. A majority of Americans are now union busters and all the other evil attributes heaped upon the right. So much for that center left country or that Daily Kos is part of the mainstream.

As a lifelong Michigan resident, I understand all too well about the importance of the domestic auto industry. I know about the mistakes, greed and incompetence on behalf of unions and management. However, these loans are a small price to pay to try to save a vital industry. The money we have wasted over the past decades on foreign policy is staggering. A few crumbs to Detroit is more than fair after what has been invested in Wall Street

Obama on regulation

He is on the Republican's side of this issue, according to his own words

WALLACE: And we are back now with Senator Barack Obama. Senator, one of the
central themes of your campaign is that you are a uniter, who will reach across
the aisle and create a new kind of politics. Some of your detractors say that
you are a paint by the numbers liberal and I'd like to explore this with
you.
Over the years, John McCain has broken with his party and risked his
career on a number of issues, campaign finance, immigration reform, banning
torture. As a president, can you name a hot button issue where you would be
willing to cross (ph) Democratic party line and say you know what, Republicans
have a better idea here.

OBAMA: Well, I think there are a whole host of areas
where Republicans in some cases may have a better idea.

WALLACE: Such
as.

OBAMA: Well, on issues of regulation, I think that back in the ‘60s and
‘70s, a lot of the way we regulated industry was top down command and control.
We're going to tell businesses exactly how to do things.
And I think that the
Republican party and people who thought about the margins (ph) came with the
notion that you know what, if you simply set some guidelines, some rules and
incentives for businesses, let them figure out how they're going to for example
reduce pollution. And a cap and trade system, for example, is a smarter way of
doing it, controlling pollution, than dictating every single rule that a company
has to abide by, which creates a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and oftentimes
is less efficient.
I think that on issues of education, I have been very
clear about the fact, and sometimes I have gotten in trouble with the teachers
union on this, that we should be experimenting with charter schools. We should
be experimenting with different ways of compensating teachers. That
--
WALLACE: You mean merit pay?
OBAMA: Well, merit pay, the way it has
been designed I think that is based on just single standardized I think is a big
mistake, because the way we measure performance may be skewed by whether or not
the kids are coming in the school already three years or four years
behind.
But I think that having assessment tools and then saying, you know
what, teachers who are on career paths to become better teachers, developing
themselves professionally, that we should pay excellence more. I think that's a
good idea. So --
WALLACE: But, Senator, if I may, I think one of the concerns
that some people have is that you talk a good game about, let's be
post-partisan, let's all come together -- just a couple of quick things, and I
don't really want you to defend each one, I just want to speak to the larger
issue.
The gang of 14, which was a group -- a bipartisan coalition to try to
resolve the nomination -- the issue of judicial nominations. Fourteen senators
came together, you weren't part of it. On some issues where Democrats have moved
to the center, partial-birth abortion, Defense of Marriage Act, you stay on the
left and you are against both.
And so people say, do you really want a
partnership with Republicans or do you really want unconditional surrender from
them?
OBAMA: No, look, I think this is fair. I would point out, though, for
example, that when I voted for a tort reform measure that was fiercely opposed
by the trial lawyers, I got attacked pretty hard from the left.
During the
Roberts --
WALLACE: John Roberts, Supreme Court.
OBAMA: John Roberts
nomination, although I voted against him, I strongly defended some of my
colleagues who had voted for him on the Daily Kos, and was fiercely attacked as
somebody who is, you know, caving in to Republicans on these fights.
In fact,
there are a lot of liberal commentators who think I'm too accommodating. So here
is my philosophy. I want to do what works for the American people. And both at
the state legislative level and at the federal legislative level, I have always
been able to work together with Republicans to find compromise and to find
common ground.

Banking Problems

John McCain has been trying to pull off a move to the right in the past year, including boasts of being against regulation. His detractors have tried using his words against him to tie him to deregulation in the banking industry and therefore to the current credit crisis. The facts don't really back either side.

In Bush's first term, his administration attempted to enact more supervision on Fannie Mae. From the New York Times:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory
overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a
decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a
new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision
of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the
two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

Opposition to this plan was voiced by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a
bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National
Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter
regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing
low-income and affordable housing.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said
Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the
Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the
more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of
affordable housing.''

The proposal was never enacted. Republicans, including John McCain tried again three years ago to impose some control on Fannie Mae in a Senate bill. McCain stated the following:

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform
Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE
regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will
continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose
to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a
whole.

Once again, the bill was never enacted. Of course it is impossible to say whether this regulation would have prevented was has since happened, but it does prove that McCain was no asleep on the regulation front. He was co-sponsoring a bill to bring about more regulation.

In the Spring of 2007, Austan Goolsbee, who is now a high ranking economic advisor to Barack Obama, praised deregulation of the financial sector as good for the people.

Also, the historical evidence suggests that cracking down on new mortgages
may hit exactly the wrong people. As Professor Rosen explains, “The main thing
that innovations in the mortgage market have done over the past 30 years is to
let in the excluded: the young, the discriminated against, the people without a
lot of money in the bank to use for a down payment.” It has allowed them access
to mortgages whereas lenders would have once just turned them away.

So a Republican was pushing regulation while the Democrat was fighting it. Even Bill Clinton remarked on the trouble he had getting Democrats to help, and tied himself to Republicans.

Bill Clinton on Thursday told ABC's Chris Cuomo that Democrats for years
have been "resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I
was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac" (video
available here, relevant section at 2:45).

VP for McCain

The pick of Gov. Palin is one that surprised me. His campaign is not currently facing the huge disadvantages faced by Mondale when he made a similar pick of an obscure female politician in 1984. I mentioned to a friend that perhaps McCain is picking her because she successfully ran her campaign railing against corruption. He pointed out her current nepotism scandal, however I assumed the campaign vetted her in connection to this and other issues. Apparently, that wasn't the case, which makes this even riskier.

Imagine her image as a reformer being dismantled weeks before the election. Instead of looking like a maverick Republican, she may look like a corrupt, big city mayor. Perhaps this pick portrays a bit of arrogance on behalf of McCain since it is a pick that is meant to throw a bone to the base rather than independents. The arrogance is in McCain thinking that he has the right stuff to sway the independents in spite of this VP pick.

UPDATE:

Her daughter is knocked up, which may provide a temporary sympathy swing, especially given that some on the left have been behaving in a sleazy manner with all the rumors. However, it is just another episode of the constant cuts that have inflicted her since the announcement. After a while, the cuts add up.

Progressive street cred

Among some on the left, Sen. Obama has been seen as a bit too centrist at times, best exemplified by his decision to vote for Pres. Bush's FISA bill after stating he was very against telecom immunity. Liberal voices are now about two months away from the election, so they have decided that now is not the time to turn wobbly. The more progressive voices are now starting to say, "He is one of us". Kos described it as "a full-throated defense of progressive principles". He went further to say

"To be honest, this is the speech -- aggressive and unabashedly populist --
I expected Biden to give. I couldn't be more pleased to have gotten it instead
from the standard bearer himself."

Biden the populist? The senator who the Netroots refer to as the Senator representing MBNA and championed the Patriot Act? So much for reality having a liberal bias. Another blogger, who is far more populist, David Sirota seems to be in general election mode as well, proclaiming that Obama is now following the Sirota script.

If his convention speech tonight is any indication, Barack Obama has (finally) signaled that progressive economic populism is going to be the central thrust of Democrats campaign in the stretch run of the 2008 election.

This is not the first incarnation of Obama as the populist though. He spent some time in the primaries bashing NAFTA, only to be undercut by an aide who told the Canadians that it was just talk. After the primaries, Obama even admitted the free trade rhetoric got overheated.

So now the Dem blogs are in full general election mode, this is summed up in an interview with Naomi Klein. She goes after liberal institutions

But a huge amount of the progressive infrastructure, in terms of policy institutes, think tanks, magazines, blogs, is pretty much part of the Obama machine and is sort of suspending a fair bit of their critical thinking. They're kind of in war mode, they're in crisis mode, and it's "We have to keep McCain out, and if we have to sacrifice some of our honesty and integrity to do that, then so be it. We'll deal with it after the vote."

She details that Obama is not anti-war and that Moveon.org is failing its members by not pointing this out to them, and are reduced to the role of "cheerleader". Klein points to democrats on Wall Street who want Obama to soften his tax plan and describes one Obama advisor as:

Jason Furman is a young economist. I think he's 37 years old. And he's actually best known for his defenses of Wal-Mart. He's written papers, taken on people like Barbara Ehrenreich, saying that Wal-Mart is actually a force of progressive good because of its low prices

Klein has had some problems in the past with the truth, she severely misrepresented Milton Friedman as a neo-con, but I think she has a better grasp of who is with her and who is against her on her own side of the political spectrum. Klein clearly points out how vastly different she is from Obama, yet many of the same websites that heap praise on Naomi Klein, do the same to Sen. Obama. A chart from Politcal Compass Test shows how relatively close Obama and McCain are to each other, when compared to many of the scores Daily Kos posters include in their signature lines. I have no great liking for Naomi Klein, but at least she will state what Obama is and isn't.

Bush, the Taliban and the leftwing blogosphere

When is it ok to let people starve to death? If you are a left wing nutcase, the answer is if President. Bush is the one offering the food. Recent related posts on Daily Kos and Democratic Underground undercut the claims that the left is a force of truth and is a force of compassion. The recommended diary appeared on Daily Kos, trying to slam Bush for providing food assistance to the starving Afghans who suffered from drought and the neglect of the Taliban. Many sources on the left, and even some on the right, stated that the aid was a gift to the Taliban, or was given in cash directly to them. The diarist quoted the Nation magazine spouting a huge untruth:

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State
Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the United States the main sponsor of the Taliban

George Orwell once stated that "political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters." A liberal media blog shot down these mistatements years ago. Spinsanity published rebuttals to these falsehoods from assorted hacks such as Robert Scheer and Michael Moore. Spinsanity pointed out the inconvenient truth that the aid was in the form of food and bypassed the Taliban.

Drawing on work by Bryan Carnell of Leftwatch, Brendan pointed out that the $43 million was not aid to the Taliban government. Instead, the money was a gift of wheat, food commodities, and food security programs distributed to the Afghan people by agencies of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Secretary of State Colin Powell specifically stated, in fact, that the aid "bypasses the Taliban, who have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people, and indeed have done much to exacerbate
it."

The left mocks the right for being uneducated, easily led, and willing to suspend reality for the sake of its ideology. Yet many kossites believed this as can be seen in the comments. The comments expressed outrage, the cliched critiques of the media falling down on the job, too many conspiracy theories to list(including funding 9/11), and even the old one that the US was the main supplier to Iraq in the 1980's (the USSR and the French provided the vast majority of Saddam's military). Another poster, in a complaint about the mainstream media, indicts the lefty press in spreading this falsehood:

Unfortunately,this was written and known for year and no one wanted to listen, when it was brought up (the media or the gov't). But this was definitely on progressive, public and black radio back in 2001+. Especially WBAI, 99.5 FM in NYC. Anytime there's a war, or a
violent act, they get all the experts and info. Air America, was forced to have
many of Pacifica's (their natinal affiliation of public radio) guest, to spread
this unbelievable type news.

The liberal blogs hold themselves out as the last bastion of the truth and they can't get away with spreading lies because their people are too sophisticated, educated and righteous to let falsehoods stand. Yet this bit of arrogance has even begun to be challenged by the leftist bloggers themselves:

I used to think that the Left blogs (and it is something I try to be)were
dedicated to one thing though - accuracy. Maybe we did not report all the facts,
or all the polls or all of the story, but we tried to make sure we were accurate
about the statements, as opposed to opinions, we did make. Especially when writing about Democrats. After the most recent Democratic Primary, no one can claim that that is true anymore.

A few comments in the diary point out the facts about the aid, but they are widely ignored, or have responses that are even more disturbing than the original lies. One poster , as well as the original diarist, was upset that we fed starving people and that it might have freed up money for the Taliban to buy weapons.

Do you not see that when the U.S. and U.N. provided food for Afghanistan, the Taliban didn't have to spend their own $43 million? They
saved their own money and spent it on. . .not food.

If the world community decided to withhold aid to starving people in totalitarian regimes, as these compassionate liberals suggest, then it should be the policy of all right thinking people to let Zimbabweans starve to death because feeding them frees up money for Mugabe to be a thug. But as a couple other posters brought up, the Taliban wasn't bothering to feed their people in the first place.

A thread on Democratic Underground was started based upon this diary. Commentors here also took aim at the media with one poster saying he send this information along to MSNBC's Countdown. Others used this a proof of a right wing media machine suppressing the misdeeds of the Rethugs . So unless the media spreads false, left wing propaganda, it is considered right wing by the nutroots community.

In their quest to be outraged by the deeds of the Bush administration, the clowns should have considered this from the State Department:

Even before this latest commitment, the United States was by far the
largest provider of humanitarian assistance for Afghans. Last year, we provided
about $114 million in aid. With this new package, our humanitarian assistance to date this year will reach $124 million. This includes over 200,000 tons of wheat.

The previous year mentioned in the briefing was when President Clinton was in office. This makes the faux outrage of the left even more foolish.

Tale of Two Press Secretaries

Bush's press secretary, Tony Snow, passed away over the weekend from cancer. One blogger at Daily Kos left a nice diary explaining how Snow was a friend of his liberal preacher's. For the party that claims to hold a monopoly on compassion, kind words for the dead were too much for some of its members. The diary has a slew of comments that blamed Snow for all sorts of sins.

Similar items appeared at other blogs, including Democratic Underground. The original threads dealing with his death led to the moderators warning their members to behave. One topic was a kind tribute from someone I am not overly fond of, Keith Olbermann, but he did a great job of expressing his sorrow at Snow's passing. Other posters were not so kind, blaming Snow for the deaths of US soldiers and Iraqis. One asked the following:

I grieve for 4118 soldiers and a million Iraqis. Without Snow's lies, how
many of them might still be alive?

Kind of an interesting question, how responsibly are the mouthpieces for administrations for their actions. According to many at liberal sites, the spokesperson is quite responsible. Among the more vile statements I have read, more than one condemned Tony Snow to an eternity of hell. Since the left values equal justice, I wonder if we can expect widespread condemnation of the Press Secretary under LBJ during Vietnam. A war that was started based upon a non-existent attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. A war that caused the deaths of nearly 60,000 US soldiers. On the day of Snow's death, another diary was recommended which discussed that Press Secretary, Bill Moyers. Since these are politically sophisticated people, and they claim to value honesty over everything else, I expected the diary to bring up the parallels between Snow and Moyers, Bush and LBJ, and Vietnam and Iraq.

No such luck, the piece was to praise Moyers and those who commented upon the diary heaped all kinds of praise on him, calling him a "national treasure" and "a gem". The press secretary during the most disastrous American war was being praised by the same people who condemned Tony Snow on the day of his passing.

Obama's problem with the authorities

Once again, Jesse Jackson opened his big mouth and exposed how desperate he is to remain relevant. Jackson threatened to chop Obama's nuts off because Obama dared to say that Black fathers are important to their kids' lives and they need to be responsible. Over time, Jackson has become less and less important, but his greatest threat to his imagined image as the leading African American politician has been the quick rise of Barack Obama.

Jackson hasn't been the only former big dog to be eclipsed by Sen. Obama, former President Clinton's drop in standing among many liberals began with his tomfoolery during the primaries. In January, Obama referenced Reagan being a transformational figure in ways that Presidents such as Nixon and Clinton were not. Quite a few on the left, either idiotically or dishonestly, claimed the this was an endorsement of Reaganism rather than an historical comparison.

During the 2004 campaign, both Kerry and Dean failed to outshine President Clinton, but Obama has clearly moved past him in the hearts and minds of most Democrats. Bill Clinton lives for attention and the adulation of crowds, so seeing a one term Senator take over must sting. Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton are relics of another era, while Obama is the politician of the moment and more than likely, of the future.

Orwell and Olbermann

On a recent episode of Countdown, host Keith Olbermann drew the scorn of lefty commentator Glenn Greenwald for Olbermann's hypocrisy on FISA. Olby went into hysterics decrying Bush months ago for pushing FISA wiretapping changes, yet excused away Obama's support of the FISA bill.

Olbermann's support has been almost entirely on the left side of the political spectrum, though not all progressives are happy with him. A fair amount of feminists were none to pleased with his disparaging remarks about Paris Hilton, and his constant slamming of Hillary Clinton led Bob Sommersby to label him more of a propagandist than Fox News.

We’re stunned each night by Olbermann’s show (when we can force ourselves
to watch him). It points the way to a troubling future. We’ve never seen such
pure propaganda, even on any particular Fox News Channel show. Is this how news
orgs of the future will work? If so, Keith will be a hog in slop. It seems he
was born to play liberals.

This week, the Obama bootlicking went to an embarrassing extreme. It is characteristic of what George Orwell described in his essay "Notes on Nationalism". Orwell used a broader definition of nationalism than just a race or country and applied it to any unit "placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests". Olbermann's "-ism" is Obamaism, and Barack Obama can do no wrong, can't go back on his word and is a force of only good and righteousness.

Orwell stated "Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should". So when Obama went back on his pledge on campaign financing, Olbermann said Obama didn't go back on it (when even Mother Jones liberals said he did)and used it to incorrectly attack McCain.

This was very minor compared to his recent outing when Olbermann discussed Obama's change of heart on FISA. Orwell described nationalists as having an indifference to reality: "Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them". So when Bush pushed for telecom immunity, Olbermann described it as "textbook example of fascism" and even brought the comparison to Nazis :

This is no longer just a farce in which protecting telecoms is dressed up
as protecting us from terrorists conference cells. Now it begins to look like
the bureaucrats of the Third Reich, trying to protect the Krupp family, the
industrial giants, re-writing the laws of Germany for their benefit.

But when Obama decided to back it, we were spared the Olbermann special commentary to denounce Barack Obama as a fascist enabler. Instead, Olbermann decided to praise him and have another Obama worshiper, Jonathan Alter, on to praise all things Obama. Glenn Greenwald described it :

There wasn't a syllable uttered about "immunizing corporate criminals" or
"textbook examples of Fascism" or the Third Reich. There wasn't a word of
rational criticism of the bill either. Instead, the two media stars jointly
hailed Obama's bravery and strength -- as evidenced by his "standing up to the
left" in order to support this important centrist FISA compromise:

So in Olbermann's world, FISA was leading us towards a reincarnation of the Third Reich, until the all powerful Barack Obama supported it. Now all that talk about the fourth amendment being overturned are inoperative. Alter praised the Senator's decision as being one of strength as opposed to weakness, yet was totally detached from reality when he didn't realize that the decision was in fact, a flip flop.

ALTER: Yes. This is part of the message that is consistent across the last
couple weeks and it comes down to one word -- strength. The United States is not
going to elect a president that perceives to be as weak. You look weak if you're
flip-flopping. You look weak if you're not taking actions that seem to be
securing the United States against terrorists. And you look weak if you don't
fight back against your political adversaries.

While other liberal commentators criticized the bill for ruining the fourth amendment, Alter said it saved the Constitution:

So, there was tremendous urgency to get the FISA court back into the game.
And does this bill do it imperfectly? Yes. But it does do it and it restores the
Constitution, which is a point that's not getting made very much.

This was one of the more ridiculous examples of Olbermann's Obamaism, but the following night, Keith decided that Justice Scalia was the Worst Person of the Day for his decision to overturn the Washington DC gun ban. It was a decision that Obama stated he agreed with. When Scalia was against the gun ban, he was vilified, when Obama supported Scalia's decision, Olbermann was silent.

Orwell described this bit of ignorance in the following manner: " In nationalist thought, there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unkown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes" This would explain why Olbermann would neatly allow Obama to escape his wrath on the gun matter, as well as everything else.

Pimping this campaign

David Shuster pissed off the former First Lady, Sen. Hillary Clinton, with his silly use of the term "pimping" in regard to Chelsea Clinton. The dumbest part was that Shuster thinks that campaigning for your mother is somehow unseemly. The Clinton campaign needs her on the trail instead of in Manhattan. It would look bad if Chelsea was on her job at the hedge fund practicing ruthless capitalism, while her mother tries to trick the working class into thinking that she stands with them. The usage of "pimping" is a little offensive, but MSNBC has let Keith Olbermann use it without punishment, so it isn't banned from MSNBC's airwaves.

Shuster is a young dude, so he has probably read quite a few political blogs, more than likely has listened to talk radio, and the language used on those media are far different than what David Brinkley and Edward R. Murrow would have used.

Yet, with many things involving the Clintons, they really pushed their outrage too far. They have threatened to boycott MSNBC's debates because of this and these threats have even offended liberal talk show host Ed Schultz. On Feb. 12th, shortly after 1:00, he compared Hillary's actions to those of Sen. McCarthy.

So today we have Ed Schultz comparing Hillary to McCarthy, and yesterday, Paul Krugman said Obama people were Nixonian. More proof that policitians use the same tactics, deceit, and lies no matter what the party.

Who cares about democracy now?

While the recounts and court cases were going on in 2000, Democrats played it as if they were trying to save democracy and only cared about getting the vote correct. Which at the time was false, since one of the Democratic motions was to just recount certain counties in Florida, but the situation was pretty much just rooting for the home team.

Liberal website "Open Left" admits that a large number of Democrats have little concern for democracy, the Clinton and Obama partisans just care about their own home teams. Chris Bowers writes about team Clinton and team Obama:

What I am not convinced of is the campaigns themselves, by extension many
of the activist supporters whom those campaigns lead, are respecting democracy.
Specifically, it is remarkable how quickly a statement of
principles--partisanship only derives from intra-party democracy--turns into an
argument over Clinton and Obama.

He also adds

Still, among many of those who dominate our public discourse in the party,
I'm starting to see that there is no actual democracy in the Democratic Party,
only Clinton and Obama. The arguments we are witnessing have nothing to do with
democracy, or party bylaws, or super delegates, or the will of voters, or the
rights of Michigan and Florida Democrats, or any of that.

And more

It is in this sense that we have already reached a crisis of legitimacy in
the Democratic Party nominee. Campaigns and supporters alike cherry pick
democratic principles as they see fit in order to better make the case for their
candidate.

Most of what Bowers said could have been applicable to Gore and Bush in 2000. Outrage is very selective on any side, be it Obama vs. Clinton, Republican vs. Democrat, or Duke vs. North Carolina. Rivalries often make people demonize the opponent while the self declared "good side" is nearly above reproach. It can be seen in the left with the ignorant "Bush=Hitler" signs, and on the right with conservatives who think homosexuals are monsters and liberals hate America.

Hostile Media Effect

A theory exists which attempts to explain how two people can view the same story and get a very different view out of it. The hostile media effect has shown that people often think the media is biased against their point of view, no matter what that view is.

In the aftermath of super Tuesday, this effect is in full force on the liberal web site Democratic Underground. Clinton and Obama supporters are whining and fighting each other over who is getting the short end of the stick on MSNBC.

MSNBC = Obama CNN = Clinton

Left wing hacks like Media Matters for America have tried to push this false story on the public that the mainstream media is dominated by conservative interests. The thinking goes, for example, that MSNBC is owned by General Electric, so they wouldn't allow any voices on the air that go against their interests. If this is to be believed, then Keith Olbermann should be called a GE spokesman instead of the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow.

Yet there are voices who have declared that MSNBC is in the tank for Sen. Obama. Clinton supporter Lanny Davis complained to conservative Tucker Carlson that Carlson's show was the only fair one on the network

LANNY DAVIS: I certainly read the polls that she's ahead in many states,
tied in many states, and the national gap is tightening. But these are two great
candidates and I'm not surprised. But I did want to start the show by thanking
you, Tucker. You're about the only show on MSNBC that consistently allows a
Clinton perspective to be expressed.

Liberal talk show host Ed Schultz blasted CNN for its Clinton bootlickery on his Feb. 5, 2007 show. Schultz complained that a Clinton supporter sent a question to CNN that was used for an interview with Obama. Schultz dismissed CNN as the "Clinton News Network" in the noon hour of his show.

In other media news that might make the heads of those at Media Matters explode, a non-partisan media research group recently declared Fox News to be the most substantive

The Fox Factor
Perhaps surprisingly, coverage of the candidates
on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Brit Hume” was very similar to that
of the broadcast networks. FOX’s coverage of Hillary Clinton was evenly balanced
– 50% positive and 50% negative comments, compared to 51% positive and 49%
negative on the “big three” networks. The tone of FOX’s coverage of Romney and
Obama was also within one percentage point of the broadcast
networks.
Instead, FOX stands out for having the heaviest and most
issue-oriented election coverage. The first half-hour of “Special Report”
has devoted 7 hours 52 minutes to election news since mid-December, an average
of over 11 minutes per night, nearly half the newscast after commercial breaks.
By contrast, the broadcast networks have averaged 5 hrs 8 min, or seven minutes
a night.
FOX was also twice as substantive as the broadcast networks. Almost
one-third of all stories on FOX (30%) dealt with policy issues, nearly double
the proportion (16%) on the networks. FOX also carried less coverage of the
horse race and candidate tactics than any of broadcast networks.

Biased Media during the Primaries

Last week saw the exit of John Edwards from the Presidential race. Some of his strong supporters blamed the media and their lack of attention towards Edwards's run for his poor showing. Their arguement claimed that the corporate media froze out their man because Edwards was running a populist and anti-big business campaign. A report by a group affiliated with the Pew Research Center showed shows Edwards got significantly less coverage than his opponents.

Sen. Obama got the most coverage according to the survey, followed by Sen. Clinton. Former President Bill Clinton came in third, so even he beat out Edwards. But one problem with this line of thinking by Edwards supporters is that the top three in terms of coverage were all democrats, while republicans were in the back of the pack with Edwards. If coverage equates with bias, then the media really hates evangelicals, because Huckabee finished in last place in coverage. Conservatives don't fair much better with the media because Romney is basically tied with Edwards. Which is even more damning of the media because Romney is one of the two frontrunners on the Republican side and he got similar treatment than a third string democratic candidate.

A few dumb things

Mitt vs. McCain

As Mitt Romney's losses mount, the McCain backlash from conservatives is growing. Bob Novak describes it in his latest column. There are a whole slew of issues that I disagree with McCain, I voted for him in the last two primaries (2000 and 2008). So I don't mind when McCain has his positions scrutinized. What I don't like is that it is from those who support Romney. He was the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. One doesn't get that position by being a hard right winger. Romney had more liberal views on gay rights and abortion rights than most conservatives, yet he escapes this scrutiny.







Bill the Jet Setter

The New York Times has reported that in 2005, Bill Clinton flew on a private jet to the home of Borat. He was flown there by a Canadian businessman, and Bill used his charms on Khazakhstan's dictator and helped his friend land a sweet mining deal.

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda
coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s
bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports
democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign
policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among
others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton of New York.
Within two days, corporate records show that
Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements
giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by
Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

What did Clinton get in return?

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s
charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from
Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The
gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the
William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a
place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs
in which friendship with the former president has its
privileges.

Quite a few liberals are not amused, one diarist at Daily Kos labelled it "Borat-Gate"

The Iraq Recession?????

From the perspective of much of the left, if something bad happens, it must be Bush's fault. The latest example of this can be found in the leftwing blogosphere's latest attempt at dishonest spin to tie in a slumping economy to the Iraq War. I googled "Iraq Recession" and here are the top six results:

Open Left

From MoveOn.Org

Mother Jones

The It List (basically a rehash of the above)

Think Progress

MYDD


Many of the above stories reference economic predictions from 2002 and 2003 saying the Iraq war will cause recession. A few of them stated that the slow down would happen pretty quickly.
From the Mother Jones website:

hink Progress reminds us that before the Iraq War, economists were
predicting that a prolonged occupation could lead to a recession here at home
and around the world. Witness:

"A war against Iraq could cost the United
States hundreds of billions of dollars, play havoc with an already depressed
domestic economy and tip the world into recession because of the adverse effect
on oil prices, inflation and interest rates, an academic study [by William
Nordhaus, Sterling professor of economics at Yale University] has warned."
[Independent, 11/16/02]

"If war with Iraq drags on longer than the few weeks
or months most are predicting, corporate revenues will be flat for the coming
year and will put the U.S. economy at risk of recession, according to a poll of
chief financial officers." [CBS MarketWatch, 3/20/03]

"If the conflict wears
on or, worse, spreads, the economic consequences become very serious. Late last
year, George Perry at the Brookings Institution ran some simulations and found
that after taking into account a reasonable use of oil reserves, a cut in world
oil production of just 6.5 percent a year would send the United States and the
world into recession." [Robert Shapiro, former undersecretary of commerce in the
Clinton administration, 10/2/02]

I must have slept through the Great Recession of 2004. It is now January 2008, and it is far from clear that we are even yet in a recession. The web site Carp Diem has a chart showing Jan 08 unemployment claims and constrasts them to prior recession starts. Jobless claims actually fell in January 08 compared to December 07. Of course, with all things economic, things can change quickly.

But even if the country falls in recession, the left wing has gotten their marching orders from MoveOn to tie it to the Iraq War. From Open Left's Matt Stoller:

I wanted to test out the 'Iraq Recession' frame, which Moveon put out in an email a few
days ago when discussing the stimulus.

But what does an economist think? Not a right winger, not even a moderate or one that could be labelled as a DLCer. Instead, I picked one just about universally praised by those on the left, Paul Krugman. On his blog:

An Iraq recession?
One thing I get asked fairly often is whether the
Iraq war is responsible for our economic difficulties. The answer (with slight
qualifications) is no.

So according to Krugman, this whole Iraq Recession talking point is a fraud. Many of these blogs like to claim that they are the bearers of truth, for those who are smart and brave enough to hear it. But they spin the facts just like the same politicians they denounce. Krugman even sets aside another constant falsehood of the left, that the high oil prices are the fault of the two oilmen in the White House.

There is one caveat: high oil prices are a drag on the economy, and the war
has some — but probably not too much — responsibility for pricey oil. Mainly
high-priced oil is the result of rising demand from China and other emerging
economies, colliding with sluggish supply as the world gradually runs out of the
stuff. But Iraq would be exporting more oil now if we hadn’t invaded — a million
barrels a day? — and that would have kept prices down somewhat.

While he does place some of the rise in oil on Iraq, he correctly points out the much larger causes. I read a few more of his blog entries and came across another interesting one. He takes out another common bit of spin from many on the left, that bad things in the economy are Bush's fault:

But while I yield to nobody in my Bush-bashing, I can’t actually see the
channels through which Bush admin policy has caused all the the bad things going
on. So I’m looking a bit at other factors, outside the administration’s control,
that may have caused the economy to perform worse in the Naughties than it did
in the Nineties.
And one thing that immediately comes to mind is that the
international environment was a lot more favorable in the 90s.

Another left wing talking point (lie) destroyed by the left's favorite economist.

Backlash against Crazy Feminists

Quite a few feminists have complained that the male dominated media and conservatives have so demonized feminism, that many women don't want to be associated with the movement, even though they agree with large portions of the cause. Or at a minimum, would benefit from some of feminism's policy goals.

It was far more easy for women's groups to blame the patriarchy than to look at themselves and question whether there are other reasons for a lot of women ignoring or working against feminism. A few liberal female bloggers have pointed out that the overheated rhetoric, nastiness, and belligerence. A Daily Kos diarist responds to the silly complaining by New York State NOW's President with the following

This sophomoric whine is Exhibit #1 in the ineffectiveness of
chip-on-the-shoulder identity politics. And when polls
show that while a vast majority of women believe the women’s movement has
been of benefit to themselves and this country -- and yet fewer than a quarter
are willing to identify themselves as "feminists" -- something’s gone terribly
wrong with the public face of the movement. This press release shows why. I
don’t want to be associated with the authors either.

In the comment section, another poster agrees that the radical elements of the movement has pushed women away from groups like NOW.

There were plenty of men in my chapter in 1975, too, but by 1979 the shrill
voices had taken over, the men and the married women were pretty much gone,
driven out by openly hostile hyper-feminists, the agenda was radically altered,
and most of the us straight single women walked down the street to join Women
Employed.
I want to live in the future, not in the past.
by Involuntary Exile on Tue Jan
29, 2008 at 09:47:30 AM PST
[ Parent

Complaints about NOW's radicalism were discussed by Clinton toady, Taylor Marsh.

As for NOW alone, I recall when I was nineteen, about to be twenty, and I
was at the Miss America Pageant. Coming out of my hotel one day I was confronted
by a NOW spokeswoman and dozens of cameras and media. This was at the height of
feminism when the revolt against traditional things women did was at a frenzy.
The NOW girl got in my face to scream, "How can you demean yourself like this?
You should be ashamed." To which I simply replied, "Do you want to pay for my
college tuition?" Then off I walked to my limo, which then whisked me away to a
pageant rehearsal. The truth is that without pageant scholarships I couldn't
have gone to college; they begat other aid, on which I was completely dependent.

The complaints of some of the feminists is similar to those of some liberals who claim the right wing and the media have done the same job on the term "liberal".

Interesting admission about progressives

I was reading a feminist blog in reaction to the crazy rantings of New York State's NOW President who felt that Sen. Kennedy betrayed women. The blogger is not pleased with her comrade's anger and idiocy, she even uses tag lines like "assholes" and "stupidity", but she doesn't totally sell out the cause.

**I should also be clear that I think she has a legitimate point about how
coverage of the candidates is unbalanced. I do think that media sources —
including progressive sources — are much harder on Sen. Clinton. I think it’s
too bad that point was obscured by all the other stuff she wrote.

Her ending note is interesting for a couple reasons. One is that quite a few liberals love to act superior and pretend like they are without prejudice, yet the feminist blogger hints at sexism in the progressive media. The second point is the nature of the media. Liberal critics of the mainstream media have used past harsh media treatment of the Clintons as evidence of a conservative media. It is more likely that the media was harsh on the Clintons because they deserved that kind of treatment and the Clinton White House was fairly hostile towards the press. Bill's recent bad behavior has gotten him slammed in the media by the right and left (except for Clinton suckasses like Media Matters and Craig Crawford)

The left blogosphere has been buzzing with disgust over the Clintons, very often echoing many of the right wings complaints about the Clintons' lack of honesty, willingness to do anything to win an election, and their corruption. Jonathan Chait wrote an opinion piece on liberals turning on the Clintons.

Something strange happened the other day. All these different people --
friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept
saying the same thing: They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary
Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an
irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.

The media had a much closer view of the Clinton's in the 90's than the rest of the people, maybe it just took longer for certain liberals to realize the nature of their character.

Myth of the first black President

Author Toni Morrison' s recent endorsement of Barack Obama has caused a re-examination of her previous claim that Bill Clinton was the first black President. One commentator wants the repetition of this claim to end.

Once we stop rehashing this term out of context, we can stop accepting as a
given that African-Americans have already had their black president, and focus
instead on this actual African-American candidate we have before us, Barack
Obama

A Princeton assistant Professor of political and African-American studies goes ever farther. She claims that a lot of credit President Clinton receives from Black Americans is undeserved and the perception differs greatly from the reality of the nineties.

By the time Clinton left office, many African-Americans incorrectly
believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. In the '80s,
barely 5 percent of blacks believed blacks were economically better off than
whites. By 2000, nearly 30 percent of African-American respondents believed that
blacks were doing better economically than whites. This belief is simply wrong.

She also states that those who had a stronger affection for Clinton were more likely to believe the falsehood that blacks were doing better than whites. Also pointed out in this article is that the poorest of blacks did not fare very well during the era of prosparity during the 90's.

As Clinton performed blackness, real black people got poorer. The poorest
African-Americans experienced an absolute decline in income, and they also
became poorer relative to the poorest whites. The richest African-Americans saw
an increase in income, but even the highest-earning blacks still considerably
lagged their white counterparts. Furthermore, the '90s witnessed the continued
growth of the significant gap between black and white median wealth.

While I have always thought that most of the factors driving inequality are outside the control of the President, this is not a belief held by many liberals and economic populists.

How sick of health care are Americans?

Mike Moore's Sicko was widely promoted last summer and some, including Moore, thought it would pave the way towards a single payer system in the United States. Proponents of such a system must be disappointed with the plans put forth by the leading Presidential candidates, because none are promoted such a large scale reform.







One reason reform has not be enacted is because the overwhelming majority of people are happy with the quality of their own health care. From an ABC, USA Today poll:

According to the survey, 44% of adults said they were satisfied with the
quality of health care in the U.S. and 89% said they were satisfied with the
quality of their own health care.

The striking part about these numbers is that there are large amounts of people who are happy with their own health care, but assume that most are getting crappy care. If 89% are satisfied, it is more difficult to convince them to change. Even making small changes has proven difficult. In Oregon, a proposal was put on the ballot in the fall of 2007 to make changes in health care for children and the cost would be placed upon smokers. Sounds like something that would pass according to those on the left. The United States has supposedly moved towards the left recently and this proposal was in a Blue State. It was narrow in focus, only dealing with children, and taxed those damn dirty smokers. It lost 60-40%.



The argument could be raised that the evil cigarette companies bought that election. That is a point that might float somewhere else, like in North Carolina or Tennessee, but not in a sophisticated Blue State like Oregon. Democrats have the governorship in that state and both Senators. Since when are that many Democratic voters moved by the words of Big Tobacco, especiallly when children's health is on the line? Also, just because money is spent opposing a ballot proposal, doesn't mean it will be defeated. Those opposed to Michigan's ban on affirmative action outspent those who wanted to stop AA, and Michigan voters still strongly supported the ban, 58-42%.

Populism pays well

As John Edwards campaign appears to be reaching its end, its relevance has been debated. Some think that his run has pushed the centrist candidates towards his line of populism. Blame the greedy corporatists for the failings of the middle class. Sen. Clinton recently described her cure, though in rather vague terms, to build up the middle class. As noted in the interview:

She said that economic excesses — including executive-pay packages she
characterized as often “offensive” and “wrong” and a tax code that had become
“so far out of whack” in favoring the wealthy — were holding down middle-class
living standards.

While reading the Wall Street Journal online, there was a story of yet another outrageous executive-pay package that might be labelled as offensive and wrong.

Former President Clinton stands to reap around $20 million -- and will
sever a politically sensitive partnership tie to Dubai -- by ending his
high-profile business relationship with the investment firm of billionaire
friend Ron Burkle.

For some perspective, compare that to average CEO pay in 2006.

The average CEO of a large U.S. company made roughly $10.8 million last
year, or 364 times that of U.S. full-time and part-time workers, who made an
average of $29,544, according to a joint analysis released Wednesday by the
liberal Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

So Bill stands to make almost twice as much as the average CEO. Would that mean he is twice as greedy as the average corporatist?

But Sen. Clinton's husband's hobnobbing with billionaires and wealthy foreigners aside, what about the substance of her argument. She complains about Bush era policies that have led to these imbalances between bosses and workers. If Clinton has been honest, then the numbers should show that CEO/worker pay ratio would be much higher under Bush than under the Clinton/Clinton administration.

That gap is down from 411 times in 2005 and well-below the record high of
525 times recorded in 2000

So the rich did better under Clinton. Looks like Hill should reverse the policies of Bill instead of Bush. While the average CEO did better under Clinton, in comparison to the average worker, there is one business man who is doing better under Bush. Bill Clinton only made $200,000 in 2000, he now stands to pull in a quick $20 million.

The upside of recession

An interesting article in the Washington Post describes 5 myths about recessions. The number 4 myth was the most interesting:

4. Recessions are bad for your health.
David Mamet once told an interviewer that he got the inspiration
for his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross" from an account
of a salesman's fatal heart attack, caused by a recession "so vicious the
competition was for jobs and sales, especially among older men." However, for
most Americans, the story is quite the opposite. Americans get healthier as the
economy gets worse. Unemployment tends to increase during recessions, but
economist Christopher J. Ruhm of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has found that a
temporary one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate leads to a 0.5
to 0.6 percent reduction in the mortality rate, or about 14,000 fewer deaths per
year.
Why the health benefits? With more free time and less money on their
hands, people tend to consume less tobacco, exercise more, prepare healthier
meals and lose weight. In addition, they are much less likely to have car and
other accidents, and to catch communicable and sometimes fatal diseases such as
influenza. Among the top 10 causes of death in the United States, only suicide
rates show a substantial unemployment-driven increase. Even deaths caused by
heart disease fall substantially.

I wonder how this would play out during an extreme downturn. It would seem like someone who is unemployed and hasn't given up on his outlook would cut back on bad behaviors because of temporary money issues and more time on his hands might lead to more exercise. But if the layoff goes on and on, the person has a high risk of becoming poor and the poor have more health problems and lower lifespans.

Barack "Reagan" Obama

A month ago, Sen. Hillary Clinton received the endorsement of former Senator Bob Kerrey. During Kerrey's endorsement speech, he made mention of Clinton's opponent, Sen. Barack Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama". Dropping the H bomb is no big deal in the Clinton camp (unless a Republican uses it), but it was questioned by some in the press and even more harshly by others in the blogosphere :

Kerrey said that, then he made the "Hussein"/"Muslim" remark. Message:
Ahem, 95%
white Iowa and 96% white New Hampshire, Barack Obama is black in the way
those shiftless black teenagers who haunt your nightmares are black. And he's a
camel jockey named Hussein as well.

Fast forward a month, and Sen. Obama made a statement that made a general comparison of his movement to that of Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1980. No where in that statement did Obama praise policies of Reagan, rather, he made a nuanced point (by nuanced, I mean the kind of point only liberals claim to understand) about a politician's place in a certain point in American history and a general shift in a nation's point of view. Obama pointed to the growth of government and the resulting backlash. The backlash wasn't a product of Reagan, instead, Reagan was a product of that backlash.

As an example, deregulation of business preceded the election of Ronald Reagan. President Carter deregulated the airline industry in 1978 and followed it with more legislation to lessen the role of government. However Ronald Reagan capitalized on the frustration with large government just as he did with the anti-tax sentiment that preceded his election, evidenced by the passage of Proposition 13 in California during 1978.


Obama's statements were met with criticism by John Edwards and Clinton, which is pretty understandable, yet hypocritical. Edwards's wife once compared him to the very conservative Sen. Jesse Helms , while Sen. Clinton has a story on her website that states she places Reagan among her favorite Presidents:

But no president can do it alone. She must break recent tradition, cast
cronyism aside and fill her cabinet with the best people, not only the best
Democrats, but the best Republicans as well.. We’re confident she will do that.
Her list of favorite presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both
Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan - demonstrates how she thinks.
As expected, Bill Clinton was also included on the aforementioned list.

Obama caught quite a bit of crap from the "you are with us or against us" extreme partisan hacks who feel that Republicans should only be brought up in the most negative of terms. Both Reagan and Gingrich were allowed to speak in glowing terms of Franklin Roosevelt without such backlash and demands for conformity, yet they are in the party that is supposed to be narrowminded and authoritarian

No controversy would be complete without some words of wisdom from Pres. Bill Clinton, who said :

"Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the
good ideas," Clinton told a crowd in Pahrump this morning. "It goes along with
their plan to ask Republicans to become Democrats for a day and caucus with you
tomorrow, and then go back and become Republicans so they can participate in the
Republican primary. I'm not making this up, folks."

Except Clinton is making it up. I am not a Democrat, so I can't call Bill Clinton a liar without being called a hater, dittohead or accused of mindlessly stating right wing talking points. So I will let a lefty call Bill Clinton out as a liar at the following link. Kos even calls out Edwards for being dishonest:

A nicely crafted straw man argument, if I've ever seen one. Bravo, John,
for being an ass and dishonestly distorting what Obama said!

The weirdest thing about having Bill Clinton run this kind of attack is that he is the man who neatly summed up the discontent at government that Obama referenced, when Clinton said it loud and said it proud: "The era of big government is over". Pres. Clinton pushed through a series of acts that were to the right of what Reagan accomplished: welfare reform, media deregulation, banking deregulation, and capital gain tax cuts.