Month: August 2008

Categories
Election 2008 McCain Politics

Where’s Joe Biden When You Need Him?

[digg-reddit-me]

LENO: Welcome back, Sen. McCain, for one million dollars, how many houses do you have? (Jay laughs, McCain squirms and chuckles)

MCCAIN: You know, could I just mention to you, Jay, and a moment of seriousness. I spent five and a half years in a prison cell, without—I didn’t have a house, I didn’t have a kitchen table, I didn’t have a table, I didn’t have a chair. And I spent those five and a half years, because—not because I wanted to get a house when I got out.

From Ben SmithJonathan Martin at Politico. H/t Andrew Sullivan – who calls McCain’s approach “A Noun, A Verb, and POW”.

For pure incoherence, it’s hard to beat McCain answer. As a demonstration of shameless exploitation of a dark period in his life, it’s hard to beat McCain’s answer.

It’s shameless. I don’t think a parody would have been as effective at eviserating McCain’s over-reliance on his POW status.

Categories
Economics Election 2008 Obama Politics

Obamanomics

[digg-reddit-me]In the past ten years, a Democratic consensus has emerged from opposing poles represented by Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, and Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under Clinton.

The consensus stems from a shared conclusion:

In the past generation, the American economy has been benefiting the vast majority of Americans less and less; and the trends that are causing this cannot be stopped.

There are many factors that have caused, worsened and continued to escalate this core problem:

  • the demise of America’s manufacturing base;
  • the increasing gap between the pay of CEOs and top corporate officials and the average worker;
  • the way the tax code has begun to tax labor at a far higher rate than it taxes capital;
  • the shrinking of organized labor;
  • the increasing instability due to globalization.

All of these are the symptoms and all of these are the causes.

Our economic system is breaking – the middle class is being squeezed; we are transferring a tremendous amount of our wealth to autocracies and our rivals around the world because of our dependence on oil; budget deficits are burdening our government which now practices a nefarious for of socialism, only for the rich; globalization is creating insecurity; our society is becoming more stratified ((Subscription now required.)), with many traditionally class-conscious European countries becoming more socially mobile; our infrastructure is eroding.

Barack Obama’s answer to this – accepting the Democratic party consensus – is a mix of short-term and long-term measures.

  • To alleviate the squeeze on the middle class as certain industries leave America looking for cheaper labor, he proposes to create jobs with infrastructure improvements and to push the development of a green energy industry.
  • To aid small businesses and to reduce the instability created by the greater turnover in jobs in a globalized marketplace, he proposes a universal health care plan that combines a government plan open to all citizens, various incentives for businesses to offer coverage, and various incentives for individuals to get coverage on their own.
  • With regards to taxes, he proposes tax cuts (graph) to those who need it and tax increases to those who have benefited most from our society – those making over $250,000.00.
  • To prepare the next generation for the globalized marketplace, Obama proposes various improvements to education.
  • Barack Obama is also the only candidate who has pledged to protect the foundation of the internet. (John McCain has recently come off the fence to support a policy that directly undermines the architecture of the internet since it began.)

For a more in-depth and reflective look at Obamanomics, check out David Leonhardt’s cover story this weekend in the New York Times Magazine.

Addition: What Obama and the Democrats have been struggling with is a way to frame this in a visceral way that can be easily understood. Here’s my proposition:

McCain and the Republicans want to give big corporations whatever they want – even if it hurts American in the long term. (Offshore drilling; telecom immunity; free trade without sensible provisions regarding labor and environmental regulation; tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy while the government needs more income; opposing the protection of the basis of the web, net neutrality, so that internet providers can make a bigger profit.)

Obama and the Democrats want corporations to do well, but at the same time, they want to protect American society from the destabilizing forces of globalization and to protect what has made America the most prosperous nation on earth – including a stable middle class and social mobility – both of which we are in danger of losing due to reckless Republican policies.

That’s the narrative – it’s not class warfare. It’s about protecting what has made America great against the forces of globalization, overly greedy corporations, and rapid change.

Continue reading “Obamanomics”
Categories
Election 2008 National Security Obama Politics The Opinionsphere The War on Terrorism

Dubya Made Obama Possible

The National Review seems to have come around to my position – that George W. Bush has made Obama’s candidacy possible:

My postulate is that George W. Bush’s presidency has been just bad enough to avoid destroying the core institutions that form the backbone of our society while creating a virtuous backlash that will strengthen these institutions in the long term. Bush has abused his power just enough, and aggravated festering issues just enough, and presided over a decline that was so sudden that he has created near ideal conditions to move the country in a positive direction.

Of course, Seth Swirsky thinks it was George W. Bush’s outstanding leadership and success which have made Americans “feel safe”.

On that, Seth Swirsky and I have differing opinions. The constant fear-mongering by the Bush administration has not made Americans feel safe. The colossal failures of the Bush’s administration’s War on Terror has not made Americans feel safer. The fact that the most significant effort to attack an American city after 9/11 was called off by Al Qaeda for unknown reasons instead of being disrupted by our national security state does not lead to confidence in the Bush administration. Of course, Swirsky write:

Of course, the Left insists that we’re no safer than we were before 9/11. But, until they come up with a number lower than zero, as in the number of attacks against us since then, that argument remains silly.

Is it really considered an “argument” to say:

We have not been attacked again; therefore we are safer.

There are so many assumptions behind that sentiment – many of which are specious; and there are so many alternate explanations to be proferred; and in fact, as the Bush administration and the McCain campaign have said – we will be attacked again. Doesn’t this undercut Swirsky’s point entirely?

The real point is that this is a silly statement used for political effect – and one which demonstrates how circular the Republican propaganda machine has become.

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Reflections

Should. Could. Would.

There will be ups and downs – and the path will be rocky. The Republicans will get in quite a few more good digs – and in the first two weeks of October, I will want to take this back, as the campaign hits new lows. And while over a year ago I decided that Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States; and while less than a year ago, I finally realized that Barack Obama could be the next president of the United States; it was not until tonight that I realized Barack Obama would be the next President.

An excellent speech by Michelle Obama caps off a mediocre opening night of the Democratic National Convention. And somehow, in the midst of all the hubub, it struck me. I think many other people can see it, and can feel it too.

Categories
Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

The Qualities Needed To Succeed

Andrew Sullivan compares and contrasts Obama and McCain in his most recent piece for The Sunday Times:

Obama is politically liberal and temperamentally conservative; McCain is temperamentally liberal and politically unpredictable. Obama is cerebral; McCain is emotional. Obama is reserved, sometimes aloof; McCain is a social gadfly and seemingly terrified of being left alone and silent. Obama wins press adoration but is not close to journalists; McCain is personal friends with hacks of all sorts. Obama makes plans and executes them with sometimes chilling discipline; McCain veers from one passion to another, winging it – and somehow pulling it off…

The difficult question Americans have to ask themselves is not who is the right man – it is who is right for now. After 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, as Russia reasserts itself, as Iran closes in on a nuclear bomb, as Pakistan threatens to crack apart and as the US economy teeters on crisis, which of these two men has the qualities needed to succeed?

If you believe the problem with America’s war on terror is that it has not been ambitious enough, or tough enough, or monumental enough, McCain is your man. If you think the United States needs to be feared more than it needs to be loved, McCain is your man. And if you think that the economic policies of the past eight years – specifically Bush’s low tax rates – are necessary for growth, McCain is the obvious choice.

Categories
Economics

Quote of the Day

The [companies] that are too big to fail may be too big to manage.

Warren Buffett in an interview with Becky Quick on CNBC, commenting on Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns, and other large financial institutions.

Categories
Economics Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Change Before It’s Too Late

Frank Rich in yesterday’s Times coins a new slogan for Obama’s campaign:

…[T]he unsettling subtext of the Olympics has been as resonant for Americans as the Phelps triumph. You couldn’t watch NBC’s weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century. Even before the Olympics began, a July CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans fear China’s economic might — about as many as find America on the wrong track. Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China).

How we dig out of this quagmire is the American story that Obama must tell…Americans must band together for change before the new century leaves us completely behind. The Obama campaign actually has plans, however imperfect or provisional, to set us on that path; the McCain campaign offers only disposable Band-Aids typified by the “drill now” mantra that even McCain says will only have a “psychological” effect on gas prices…

Is a man who is just discovering the Internet qualified to lead a restoration of America’s economic and educational infrastructures? Is the leader of a virtually all-white political party America’s best salesman and moral avatar in the age of globalization? Does a bellicose Vietnam veteran who rushed to hitch his star to the self-immolating overreaches of Ahmad Chalabi, Pervez Musharraf and Mikheil Saakashvili have the judgment to keep America safe?

R.I.P., “Change We Can Believe In.” The fierce urgency of the 21st century demands Change Before It’s Too Late.

Categories
Humor The Web and Technology Videos

I hope that you forget about your MySpace…

[digg-reddit-me]

sweetafton23, also of the offbeat reddit hit, Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ on a ukulele, apparently has some of her own material.

Some sample lyrics:

The years are going by so fast – it really is bewilderin’;
and we’ll be so called ‘grownups’ and have mortgages and children.
I hope we all gain worldliness and wisdom and maturity;
but I hope most of all that MySpace falls into obscurity…

I hope our profiles all go dead, entombed in distant servers –
a monument to our youth, though lacking its observers.
Your page will be an empty shell when no one is behind it
I hope your MySpace stays forever …and i hope that your kids find it.

I hope that you forget about your MySpace;
I hope it slips completely from your mind,
and I hope it stays up long enough for the next generation to find;
and I hope that it embarrasses your children;
I hope their bratty friends all forward it around.
And I hope you forget your password so you cannot take it down…

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics

It’s Joe Biden


[Image by SEIU International licensed with Creative Commons.]

In an email sent out at 3:30 am, the Barack Obama campaign announced that it had picked Joe Biden to run as Barack Obama’s Vice PResident.

Negatives:

Positives

  • He’s been involved in American foreign policy for twenty years.
  • He captured Rudy Guiliani’s essence better than anyone when he said, “Rudy Giuliani — there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11.”
  • He will attack McCain relentlessly.
  • He’s a Catholic (and Catholics are a key swing group.)
  • He’s old, with all the wisdom of being old.
Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics

A Hillary or A Gore

Noam Scheiber over at The Stump saying exactly what I’ve been saying for the past two days:

You can let the suspense build and build if you’ve got a Hillary or a Gore socked away somewhere. Possibly a Biden or a Webb (or some unorthodox pick like a general or a Republican). But you’d better not come with Jack Reed or Evan Bayh after toying with people for over a week.

Drudge reported in big headlines that Bayh was the nomine based on these bumper stickers. But now, he seems to have bought the Obama camps pushback on this and is reporting that Bayh has been informed he’s not the nominee. Once again, Drudge is focusing on Biden and the fact that no one knows for sure who the nominee is.