Two Ads in Texas

It’s going to get a lot dumber than this before it is over.

Now there must be one floating around somewhere that has Bill answering the phone and trying to sneak out the back door.

Food For Thought

From Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michale Pollan:

The great turning point in the modern history of corn, which in turn marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food, can be dated with some precision to the day in 1947 when a huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, switched over to making chemical fertilizer. After the war the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principle ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America’s forests with the surplus chemical, to help out the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: Spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on poison gases developed for the war) is the product of the government’s effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes. As Indian farmer activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, “We’re still eating the leftovers of World War II”.

Corn produced by ammonium nitrate has been in super abundance since the policies of the Nixon Administration set it off, and prices have usually been depressed even as farmers grew more and more. But corn is now selling for over $5.00 a bushel, the result of yet another government program – ethanol. Government is now using up the surplus it created. The snake is consuming its own tail.

Before free market enthusiasts respond that this is yet another example of government meddling screwing things up, think back to that time in our history, the Great Depression, when farmers produced so much that they had no market for their product. Market economics in agriculture, as in health care and utilities and education and mail delivery, apply wonderful academic theories to a real world that simply doesn’t respond.

Enough!

We all understand at this point that John McCain is really just a Politician… he’s going to do what it takes to get elected.  But can we stop with the bus metaphors?

Please?

We understand that that “Straight Talk Express” has either:

A.  Lost its wheels

B.  Hit a roadblock

C.  Broken down on the side of the highway

And the importance of the metaphor is not lost on me.  It’s just been overplayed.  Time to move on.

Just sayin’.

The Money Game

Where have I seen this before … where? It appears as though Barack Obama is playing the numbers game. He claims that 90% of his donations come from small donors. At the same time, the Federal Election Commission says that half of the money he has raised comes from heavy hitters – contributions of $1,000 or more.

Who’s right?

It’s and old game. Both are telling the truth, though Obama is deliberately trying to mislead us. Of all the people who have given him money, 90% have done so in small increments. But of all of the money he has raised, half of it came from large donations.

Obama is talking about the number of donors, the FEC about the amount of money raised.

Obama is trying to give us the impression that he is running a little guy’s campaign. Not true.

Reflections on the “Debate”

I listen to the Thom Hartmann show – not every day for sure, so I could be wrong about this. He has tried throughout the course of the campaigns to have all of the candidates on. He says, however, that certain of them refused to come on unless they could control the format. They wanted control over which questions could be asked. He doesn’t do that. He would not say who set these conditions, but Hillary or Obama, so far as I know, have never appeared on his show.

It reminds me of another show I saw during the 2004 campaign. It was called a “Town Hall Debate”, and the premise was that Bush and Kerry would be fielding questions from the audience, rather than the reporters who usually act as buffers. But there were ground rules, which were accepted without question: People had to write out their questions in advance, and the questions the candidates wanted to answer were preselected. People would be allowed to read their questions, but if they deviated from the way the question was written and accepted, the mike would be cut off. The normal journalist-buffer was replaced by censors.

Bush one time (I think he was in New York) decided to accept questions from innocent bystanders. I can imagine his aids scurrying, the phone calls behind the scenes, the raw panic. And sure enough, right away, a woman asked him how many civilians he had killed in Iraq. “Oh, I don’t know – twenty or thirty thousand?” It obviously was not something he thought about much. But more importantly, it was not a question any self-respecting journalist would have asked. That’s why they are chosen to moderate these debates – they protect the candidates from the public.

Democrats have debated twenty times now, and we’ve come to accept the format. There is always some famous journalist moderating. And to become famous in journalism, a reporter has to establish with the politicians that he is dependable, that he won’t ask any hard questions. The big names – Brokaw, Jennings, Russert, WIlliams, Blitzer, Cooper – are all dependable. Dan Rather was once dependable, but got uppity one time and lost his job. They form a club of sorts, a protective shell around the candidates. Sure, they supply a little heat now and then, but we’re used to that – they make a big deal out of little things. They don’t talk about the big stuff.

Last night’s debate was no different. I found very little that Obama and Clinton disagree on – they both accept the woefully inefficient private insurance model for health care. Neither will do anything about NAFTA. (Well, they’ll study it – another way of saying it.) Both offer unqualified support for Israel. Both will keep troops in Iraq, committing only to a drawdown that will likely never happen. Both agreed that Bill Clinton did a good thing when he illegally attacked Kosovo in 1999. Both agree that the Russians are now officially a bad actor, now that they have dissed the U.S. (On a humorous note, Obama was spared having to answer a question about Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s likely successor. Clinton fielded that one, and Obama meekly agreed with her comments. Phew!)

Anyway, these candidates do not disagree on anything that I can discern.

So it comes as no surprise that the journalists in the aftermath find themselves analyzing minutia. Was Clinton out of line in complaining about getting the first question? Did Obama land any punches? Was she churlish? Peevish? Why doesn’t his charisma come through like it does when he has an audience all to himself?

And, of course, the questions that are not asked. Who’s paying for your campaign? Senator Clinton, how can you say you’re going to fix our health care system when you take more money from the health care industry than any other candidate? Senator Obama – what’s with you and the Wall Street financial houses? (Campaign finance reform is never discussed – ever.) What are your plans for Social Security? Will either of you attack our inequitable tax system which punishes working people? Scale back the tax cuts for the wealthy? Go after the USA PATRIOT Act? Fight immunity for telecoms? Attack Iran? Privatize Iraq’s oil?

The list goes on, but that’s why the journalists are there – to make sure these questions don’t get asked.

I’d like to see a debate some time where they open up the floor to the audience, uncensored, and no planted questions, please, Hillary. But that will never happen – we saw what happened when Bush so foolishly did it. He got real and hard questions. He was embarrassed. And so too would our candidates be embarrassed as people held their feet to the fire about Iraq, single payer, NAFTA and outsourcing and immigration. That’s why we pay these journalists – not to ask these questions.

PS: Washington Rule #8: You can agree with any concept or notional future option in principle, but fight implementation every step of the way.

The Final Word

Jay Stevens put up his “last” Nader post for this election cycle, and I will do the same. After this, no more. Just a few points to make:

1. Ralph Nader is passé. His time to shine was in 2000. He did well that year, at times garnering as much as five percent of the vote in the polls. He laid the groundwork for many state Green Parties, including Montana’s. But the Greens have subsequently blown it, refusing to confront Democrats head on, opting instead only to run hard where a Democratic victory is assured. Such weakness does not pay dividends, and the Greens, like so many other third parties, will soon enough vanish. They chose weakness. That’s no way to run a party.

2. Nader did not “cost Gore the election”. After seven years of Bush, people naturally look back on 2000, and Gore’s activities out of office, and claim that we passed up something really valuable there. But Gore while in office was no liberal, and he chose to run as a centrist in 2000, ignoring his base. He chose a conservative as his running mate. He refused to deal with Nader or debate the issues Nader raised. The 2000 election was his to lose, and even though he won it, he didn’t win big enough, and it slipped away. But Democrats are basically whiners, and have since demonized Nader, projecting their own defeat on him. As if …

3. We don’t know what Gore would have done in the wake of 9/11. The elements of the USA PATRIOT Act sat in dusty files. It didn’t just spring up overnight – such onerous legislation merely needs an event to spring it loose. It likely would have passed under Gore as well as Bush. There was incredible pressure brought to bear on Clinton while he was in office to attack Iraq, and he did bomb the country for his eight years in office and maintain the murderous sanctions. Conquest was obviously in the cards – occupation? We’ll never know, but I suspect Gore, like Bush, would have attacked Iraq as well. The reason is bipartisan, just as support for the war is bipartisan. It’s about oil and bases. I doubt Gore would have overcome the intense pressure to grab such a strategic asset when the time was ripe. In my view, he likely would have instigated the attack himself.

4. The United States desperately needs a viable third party movement. But it is not in the cards at this time – liberals are so cowed by the Bushies that they are completely willing to accept the Democratic Party as a comfortable alternative. For so long as we have a false dichotomy, with “evil” Republicans on one side, and “weak” Democrats on the other, a third party will not gain traction. People have to see the Democrats for what they are – false leaders. Until they do, we’re stuck.

So Nader is a nice subject for debate. He had a good idea. And somebody needs to do what he is doing. The frustrating thing is this: There’s no one else. He’s been sheepdipped and demonized, and has lost his usefulness, but there is no high profile leader to take his place. That is the sad bottom line. At this time in American history there is no pressure being brought to bear on the two-party oligarchy, so change is not in the cards.

For the time being, we really do have to choose between the lesser of evils, and the rudderless and vacillating Democrats are the only viable alternative. Yeeech!

But it is what it is.

Missing the Point

The question: Why does Barrack Obama appeal to so many Americans? By most accounts, that’s not an easy question to answer. Like everything, there’s different answers for different people. America is, if anything, a diverse country and people have all kinds of different reasons for supporting their respective candidates.

But wait! The answer is simpler than we think!

Mike Harris over at TLBP is kind enough to inform the American people why Barrack Obama appeals to them. Of course, one might think it is silly to ascribe a single motivation or personality type to millions of people, but that kind of stuff comes easy for Mike:

We all want to matter. We all want to have meaning in our lives. We all want to be relevant to something, and a lot of these people don’t feel that about themselves. They feel empty, and they’re trying to fill the emptiness, fill the void. And Obama does. Obama gives them hope that they’re going to be something, but that’s even not it. Obama gives them hope that he is going to make their life substantive and have meaning by virtue of his presence, his messianic vision — by virtue of his existence alone. They’re not going to have to do anything. Basically you could say that Obama is saying this to these cultists out there in his campaign gatherings, “I will do my best to take wealth from those who generate it in our country and give it to you, who are hoping for change.”

*snip*

…I’m not out there looking for a Schwarz Führer to assuage the white guilt I’m told I should have but have never been able to muster.

I’m sorry, but are you kidding me? I feel like I’m back in Catholic school again, listening to my religion teachers tell me that people who don’t accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior do nothing with their lives except attempt to “fill the void” with things like drugs, gambling, and sex. Apparently, I can now add Barrack Obama to that list.

I am perfectly willing to admit that it’s possible (probably even likely) that the reason most of us are attracted to Obama is that he’s pitching us a different kind of bullshit than we’ve been pitched by politicians in the past. But that doesn’t mean that listening to him is not a breath of fresh air. And, as I’ve said before, I don’t have a very good idea of what the man will do if he’s elected to office. But I’ll take him just because he’s different, and that difference could be a good one for all I know.

But yeah, Mike. I’m just a lazy liberal “filling the void” hoping that Obama changes everything in this country so that I don’t have to work for a living and I can accept checks from the Government… In fact, why don’t you just start writing them directly to me instead of having Uncle Sam as an intermediary? That’d be a whole lot more convenient for the both of us. I’ll use that money on all of the other nasty habits I’m using to “fill the void.”

Is it possible to miss the point more entirely?

Obama, Lieberman, and the DLC

Note: The following post ran on January 18, 2007, and has been one of the most widely read since we started this blog. It seems appropriate to run it again. We know as much about Barack Obama now as we did then.

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I’ve been suspicious of the Obama parade from the beginning – it’s been my experience that ‘attractive’ Democrats whom the media fawns over and regard as safe can usually trace their roots back to the Democratic Leadership Council, otherwise known as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Obama’s no easy case, though. There are messages in the smoke.

Alexander Cockburn, as left as left can be, has written a couple of pieces on Obama. This was before the media discovered him. That’s a recent phenomenon.

Here’s Cockburn:

It’s depressing to think that we’ll have to endure Obamaspeak for months, if not years to come: a pulp of boosterism about the American dream, interspersed with homilies about “putting factionalism and party divisions behind us and moving on.” I used to think Sen. Joe Lieberman was the man whose words I’d least like to be force fed top volume if I was chained next to a loudspeaker in Camp Gitmo, but I think Obama, who picked Lieberman as his mentor when he first entered the U.S. Senate, is worse. I’ve never heard a politician so desperate not to offend conventional elite opinion while pretending to be fearless and forthright.

That’s right – Joe Lieberman is Obama’s mentor, and Lieberman brags that Obama picked him, not the opposite.

Cockburn also notes that Obama, around the time that Murtha was making a stink about Iraq, spoke before the elite of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Democrats fled Murtha, few with more transparent calculation than Obama who voyaged to the Council on Foreign Relations on November 22, there to ladle out to the assembled elites such balderdash as “The President could take the politics out of Iraq once and for all if he would simply go on television and say to the American people ‘Yes, we made mistakes’”, or “we need to focus our attention on how to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq. Notice that I say ‘reduce,’ and not ‘fully withdraw’”, or “2006 should be the year that the various Iraqi factions must arrive at a fair political accommodation to defeat the insurgency; and , the Administration must make available to Congress critical information on reality-based benchmarks that will help us succeed in Iraq.”

Smooth as syrup. There’s a wave of discontent int his country, voiced in the November elections, that we want out of Iraq – no redeployment or scaleback, but o-u-t. No worthy politician can ignore this. But the war from the beginning has been an elite undertaking with unstated objectives. Americans have only been cajoled and frightened into following, and are seeing more clearly now.

It is going to take a politician of considerable skill to 1) heed to public demand to get out, and 2) keep us in. The media, subservient to power as always, will glom on to any politician who can serve those objectives. So, for now, Obama is their man.

[Obama] lobbed up the first signal flare during the run-up to his 2004 senate race, when his name began to feature on Democratic Leadership Council literature as one of the hundred Democratic leaders to watch.

The DLC doesn’t necessarily pre-select candidates, but they do keep an eye out for possibilities. Obama has been on their watch-list for some time. Now that they see his sex appeal, they may rally behind him. He could be Hillary without the polarizing effect, a real possibility to hold the office.

Obama has voted to close filibuster on both of Bush’s Supreme Court selections, to re-up the Patriot Act, for “tort reform”. He’s sent up plenty of signals that he could be Republican-lite enough to be ‘electable’ – code word for no threat to power.

Obama is one of those politicians whom journalists like to decorate with words as “adroit” or “politically adept” because you can actually see him trimming to the wind, the way you see a conjuror of moderate skill shove the rabbit back up his sleeve. Above all he is concerned with the task of reassuring the masters of the Democratic Party, and beyond that, the politico-corporate establishment, that he is safe. Whatever bomb might have been in his head has long since been dis-armed. He’s never going to blow up in the face of anyone of consequence.

There’ll be other candidates testing the wind. Vilsack, another DLC guy, might catch on. Anyone of the left need not apply – Feingold has already ascertained that there is no support among those who matter for a man who really would get us out of Iraq, who really would change our health care system, who really cares about campaign finance reform. We’re pretty much stuck with the DLC, sex appeal, and no substance.

Obama had his fingers stuck in the wind as always. He bends to every breeze, as soon as he identifies it as coming from a career-threatening quarter. This man is no leader.

Reflections on Lawlessness

There’s been quite a stirring in Belgrade, Serbia. Serbs have attacked the U.S. embassy there, and the U.S. is now lecturing the country it chose to illegally bomb in 1999. It’s lecturing it on legal conventions and lawful behavior, and on being reprehensible. Stuff like that. The U.S., it seems, has such high moral standing in the world that its representatives feel it their duty to let others know what is acceptable behavior, what is not.

Serbians attacked the Belgrade embassy after the State of Kosovo announced its independence from Serbia last week. This is the culmination of a long process that started before Clinton’s 1999 attack. His bombing campaign caused a massive migration of Albanians, which the U.S. then blamed on the Serbs. He then sent in troops to ‘protect’ these Albanians. The result was Camp Bondsteel, a new U.S. military installation in Kosovo that just happens to be guarding an oil pipeline as well.

Clinton also bombed the Chinese embassy during that 1999 attack. Nice touch.

It’s high comedy. Here’s what Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns had to say:

“They’d better get it, because they have a fundamental responsibility to protect our diplomats and our embassy and to protect American citizens. What happened yesterday in Belgrade was absolutely reprehensible.”

“This kind of thing should not happen in a civilized country. It doesn’t happen in the United States of America. It doesn’t happen in most world capitals. So the Serb government needs to reflect seriously about the responsibility it has under the Vienna Convention.”

Burns makes no mention of the Chinese embassy bombing, and in the audio, when he says “Vienna”, he does a Freudian, and says something like “Veneva”, blending “Geneva” and “Vienna”.

Said the Serbs: “The “new paradigm” of the 1999 American attack on Serbia and the Chinese embassy bombing render obsolete Vienna’s strict limitations on embassy protection and render quaint some of its provisions.”

Mittens Remembers Mommy

“My mom made pancakes every single morning at our house,” he said, with a smile of fond reminiscence. He stopped abruptly. “My wife!” he corrected. “I called her my mom. My wife.“

– Mitt Romney hands a nice Freudian slip to Dana Milbank.
(2/1/2008)