Now Let’s See You Beat That.

Pretty damn great speech, huh? I’ll have more analysis tomorrow. I’m sure there will be lots of viewable clips and mashups available soon for us to talk about. But for tonight, suffice it to say, this event, this speech, this whole week, was the Republican Party’s worst nightmare.

I had fun on the Seed Show (radio program) this morning with my old friend, community organizer, environmentalist, peace activist, little d democrat and attorney for the little folks, Tom Turnipseed. I will be returning every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 8:30 from now until the election to talk about politics. That is AM 1230 in Columbia, WOIC. (It is streamed live at www.strnetwork.com)

On Fridays, I am on Frank Knapp’s show at 3:45 in the afternoon on the same station.

Temper, Temper

This hasn’t gotten any play in Denver this week, but there has been plenty of talk about McCain’s famous flyboy short fuse. He is said to have resorted to profanity-laced tantrums and even violent physical confrontations on the floor of the United States Senate on more than one occasion. Here’s what Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid has to say about the prospect of a John McCain Presidency.

Americablog:

Harry Reid on John McCain: "I just think he doesn't have the temperament to be president" -- and GOP Senators think that, too. Harry Reid was his usual blunt self talking about John McCain with Nevada reporter Jon Ralston. Reid has worked with John McCain for 26 years, so he speaks with experience. This is why we like Harry Reid. He says it like it is: "I just think he doesn't have the temperament to be president," Reid told Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston during the taping of "Face to Face," in Denver on Wednesday. The show airs on a Las Vegas, Nev., cable channel. "I've served with the man 26 years," Reid said. "Do I have the ability to speak with experience about someone who has abused everyone he's dealt with? Someone who does not have the temperament to be president, who's wrong on the war, wrong on the economy, wrong on nuclear waste. What am I supposed to do? Walk around talking about what a great guy he is? I don't believe that. .... " "There isn't a Republican serving in the Senate that's happy he's the nominee. Now, they're all supporting him, but I'll tell you they have told me. I've had Republican senators tell me they don't think they'll vote for him," Reid said. When Ralston asked if Reid thought it would be "dangerous" to let McCain be president, Reid answered: "Well, if you said it, I wouldn't correct you." "Is that right?" Ralston asked. "You really think that?" "That's right," said Reid, who predicted that Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama would carry the battleground state of Nevada by 5 percentage points. We need more Senators who know McCain to be honest about him. This is exactly the kind of insight the American people need. Exactly. John McCain is George Bush, but unstable, angry, abusive and dangerous. That's even worse than Bush.

The Big Dog Hunts.

Click on the image to ENLARGE it.

 

"People around the world have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power."  William Jefferson Clinton August 27, 2008

Mother Hillary Earns Her Democratic Sainthood.

Wake up America!

Here’s a great 6 minute barnburner from Dennis Kucinich in Denver.

KO to Scar: “Why Don’t You Just Get A Shovel”

Joe Scarborough can’t stop bloviating and patting Steve Schmidt on the back because he’s finally gotten John McCain on the Low Road. They're all crowing now and are convinced that it’s working because of some miniscule movement in some of the daily trackers, even though their man hasn't cracked the 45% threshold anywhere. So last night, Joe is on his high horse and Keith Olbermann apparently doesn’t know his microphone is open when he cracks wise about the amount of bullshit Joe is dishing up. This results in the following hilarious exchange. Joe doesn't know what to say when Keith points out that the newly released "likely voter" poll from USA TODAY, which had McCain up by 4 points last month, now has Obama up by 3-- a SEVEN POINT SWING IN FAVOR OF OBAMA!

Getting the Knowledge Cart Before the Education Horse

My brilliant friend, Anton Gunn takes on the Republican power structure of South Carolina, who have recently announced their misguided quest to recruit a ‘knowledge based” economy to our state while simultaneously failing to adequately fund public education. Some knowledge, hunh?. As I was sayin’ just the other day, Anton had a nice feature in the current Time magazine which just hit the news stands today, and he’s out in Denver, waiting to see his friend, Barack Obama nominated, I’d say Anton is having himself quite a week. As he should be. Here is his op-ed piece from the State Newspaper this morning:

Knowledge without Education? By ANTON GUNN - Guest Columnist It seems like every time I open the newspaper or turn on the television, there’s more bad news about the economy. The headline is always right there, sandwiched between the predictions of Gamecock and Tiger football and the latest Lindsay Lohan trip to rehab: “Foreclosures on the rise,” “Consumer confidence falls,” “Economy continues to lag.” Unfortunately, here in South Carolina, we’re used to that kind of bad news. Our state has one of the highest unemployment rates and one of the lowest income rates in the nation. For years, we’ve watched the plants close and the jobs move overseas. After nearly a decade, we’ve become immune to bad news as we’ve watched our state’s manufacturing and textile base erode and our state’s political leadership ignore the problem, hoping it will go away or rectify itself somehow. When the doorbell rings, we expect it’s bad news coming to visit again. But good news we don’t expect. That’s why I was so excited when House Speaker Bobby Harrell and Rep. Dan Cooper joined forces with Sens. Glenn McConnell and Hugh Leatherman to unveil a new plan to bring technology-based industries to South Carolina. I was excited because finally, four of the most powerful men in this state were looking past the same old failing strategies and developing a blueprint to put South Carolinians to work for generations to come. I was excited, and I was surprised, because this was good news. They talked about how skilled “knowledge economy” jobs are higher-paying and more stable, raising our state’s per capita income and protecting us from overseas outsourcing. They talked about how competitive this market is and how we need to get ahead of the ball and aggressively recruit these employers. They talked about three key sectors for economic success in South Carolina: manufacturing, distribution and services; tourism; and the knowledge economy. They talked about how a knowledge-based economy will increase our state’s competitiveness. They talked and talked, and I kept agreeing with what they seemed to be saying. Then I started reading the plan. And I realized something was missing. In their rush to schedule a press conference to announce their vision for economic success, the Gang of Four had neglected to make any mention of plans for improving our educational system. Now, perhaps they think public education doesn’t have anything to do with economic development. Maybe they don’t realize that mathematics skills are the most desired among engineering and high-tech employers and that less than 20 percent of our eighth-graders score above basic in that subject. Maybe they don’t know that most of the high-paying jobs they’re talking about require a bachelor’s degree or better and less than a quarter of our labor force meets that mark. Maybe they haven’t heard that more than a third of the students entering the ninth grade today either won’t graduate on time or won’t graduate at all. They may think that these industries are going to invest in a state that won’t invest in its own future — but we know better. Sure, we could argue that Gov. Mark Sanford would rather fight with the Legislature than work with it. But infighting and posturing don’t raise employment opportunities. Sure, it’s painfully obvious that our secretary of commerce was absent from conversation about the knowledge economy — but pointing that out won’t create any new jobs. The Gang of Four can point all the fingers they want. But we all know there’s plenty of blame to go around. So instead of pointing fingers and passing blame, we should be talking about what we do know. We know you can’t build a knowledge economy without an educated workforce. We know we can’t let accusations pass for solutions. We know we need solutions such as recruiting highly qualified teachers to failing schools where they are most needed to raise both standards and achievement. We need solutions that create advanced mathematics and engineering programs so our students can compete with the best of our country, and the rest of the world. We need more computers in the classrooms. We need more parents involved in our children’s education. We need to rebuild those schools that have been crumbling down around us and make education a priority in this state again. Only after we have laid the foundation of a high-quality education can we raise the “three pillars” of economic development. Only then we can begin building the knowledge economy. Only then will we all read a little welcome good news for the future of our great state. Mr. Gunn is a small business owner, former executive director of S.C. Fair Share and candidate for the S.C. House.

Three Questions That Will Stop John McCain’s Surge Bloviating

This is (believe it or not) a condensed version of James Vega’s post at The Democratic Strategist.

How to Challenge John McCain’s “Stay until We Finish the Job” Narrative about Iraq The Neo-conservative fantasy was to make Iraq a stable, pro-western state economically oriented toward the U.S. and favorable to U.S. interests. To accomplish this inescapably implied a very substantial long-term U.S. military presence – possibly for decades - and any timetable for withdrawal or other explicit agreement that U.S. forces had to leave the country had no part in the Neo-con plan. Hence John McCain’s “Stay until we finish the job.” mantra which has three basic parts to it: a. That there have been vast improvements in the last year and we are “on the verge of victory or success” or that we have already “won” b. That, nonetheless, the success is still weak or “fragile” and could be reversed by renewed ethnic conflict, a military coup or unemployment and poverty c. That, as a result, Iraq still needs to have substantial U.S. forces stationed there for an extended indeterminate period until stability has been insured. Barack Obama has correctly responded with a “take advantage of the opportunity to redeploy” narrative, also with three elements: a. That the Iraqi demand that we agree on a timetable for leaving actually represents a unique opportunity for the U.S. to honorably pass responsibility to the Iraqi people and to redeploy our forces to Afghanistan and elsewhere to better combat global terrorism. b. That the U.S. should replace open-ended support for the Maliki government with conditional aid and assistance that encourages political accommodation between the ethnic groups of Iraq and provides incentives for stabilization. c. That the U.S. should systematically redeploy some residual forces to relatively remote, well-protected bases in Iraq and the bulk to Afghanistan and elsewhere over a period of approximately one to two years. Now, to my way of thinking, this seems like a pretty straightforward choice for American voters. I think I know how they will respond if the question were to be put to them just like that. But you know you can count on John McCain to put it another way. He will continue to insist that any discussion of a timeline is the equivalent of surrender and is tantamount to “cutting and running with our tails between our legs.” The appropriate strategy for Democrats, in consequence, should therefore be to point out that there are indeed very substantial problems that may lie ahead if we insist on trying to stay in Iraq long enough to “finish the job”. In fact, even respected military experts who support a “stay until we finish the job” strategy openly admit that there are major dangers. In a major article in the fall issue of Foreign Affairs, for example, Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack note the following: That even as the US continues to provide payments of 300 dollars a month to over 100,000 of our new-found Sunni allies, there are already very disturbing signs of growing tension between them and the Shia-dominated government and army (like for instance they are arresting them.) That, as the Iraqi army has grown substantially in size and armament, there is increasing concern that at some point military officers might push aside the weak political parties and take power in a military coup. That while the armed militias of Moqtada al-Sadr have been substantially weakened, this has left increasingly adrift thousands of youths in major cities that are unemployed, frustrated and angry. Democrats should therefore challenge McCain to honestly admit that there are very real potential dangers in his “stay until we finish the job” strategy. To do this most dramatically, they could pose the three key questions below in full-page ads in major media like USA today and the Washington Post. 1. If renewed sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shia breaks out in Iraq will McCain order our troops to turn against our new Sunni allies and attack them or will he order US forces to militarily support them against the Shia-dominated Iraqi army? Will US troops actively participate in combat to support one side or another or remain neutral? If US troops remain neutral, what purpose will be served by keeping them in harm’s way? 2.  In the event of a military coup, will US troops be ordered into battle to attempt to restore a civilian government or will they be ordered to provide active support for a new military junta? 3.  If unplanned urban riots break out and US forces are confronted by angry mobs of young people throwing rocks and bottles as occurred in the occupied territories during the Palestinian “intifadas”. will US forces be deployed as riot control police? Will they be ordered to open fire with their weapons on angry urban youths? A simplified version of these same questions can be used in the format of a TV spot on, for example, Fox News, making it impossible for McCain to ignore. The McCain campaign will desperately want to avoid discussing questions like this. They will not want to admit the possibility that the current lull in violence may be temporary rather than permanent. They will try to avoid it by saying “None of these things is going to happen”, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll keep all our options open”, “we’ll trust the men at the scene to make the decisions” or “it’s not helpful to speculate about matters like this” (they might even consider arguing that “its unpatriotic or treasonous to ask such questions in wartime” but this would leave their triumphant “we’ve already won” storyline badly undermined) These kinds of responses by the McCain campaign will therefore make possible a second round of attack ads such as the following. John McCain says we should stay in Iraq until the job is done but he refuses to say what he will do if the most basic and obvious problems arise – potential problems like a renewal of sectarian violence, a military coup or urban riots by unemployed youth like the Palestinian intifada. He says you don’t need or deserve to have any answers to those questions. Just leave it to the soldiers and the experts, he says -- in other words, don’t ask any questions, just leave everything to him. But these aren’t battlefield issues of strategy and tactics - they are basic issues of U.S. foreign policy and voters have a right to know what a candidate for President plans to do about them if they arise. Ask yourself this question – why won’t the man who calls himself “Mr. Straight Talk” tell the voters what he would do about the most important problems that could arise in Iraq if we try to stay until the country is finally stable. Does he not have any contingency plans to deal with problems like these, or does he have plans about which he doesn’t want you to know? Either way, ask yourself, is this the way a candidate for President should behave? Is this leadership? Is this the kind of person you want running the country for the next four years? The basic strategy being suggested here has one objective – to make voters who would under ordinary circumstances be attracted to the “finish the job” narrative to stop for a moment and think: “It would be great if we could permanently stabilize Iraq, but we could also get stuck in a mess over there like we were just one or two years ago. The truth is that the calm over there probably won’t last forever and things could easily go to hell again. Maybe we oughta take advantage of this opportunity to get out while things are calm.” This is the question the McCain campaign will most desperately want to prevent its potential supporters from considering. Democrats therefore should seek in every way to bring it to the forefront of their minds.

Where to Find A Thousand Judgmental White Folks in One Picture

I ran across this picture of the audience at the Brokeback Saddleback Church event. This would have been approximately Barack Obama’s POV while he was getting the religious third degree from Preacher Ricky last week.

This must be the point in the program where the Big Daddy Confessor has just asked Homesboy John about his greatest moral failure and John has confessed that it was the failure of his first marriage. Senator Huckleberry is sitting there hoping somebody doesn’t ask him the same question, because he’s got no first marriage to fall back on.

Senator Sam Brownback (seated next to Lindsey) must be the most confused Religious Wingnut in the Congress. Here is the Wikipedia entry on his religious affiliation. See if you can make heads of tails of it:

Brownback told Rolling Stone that he had moved from mainline Protestantism to evangelicalism before his 2002 conversion to Catholicism, and that in 1994 he became involved with The Fellowship, a conservative Christian U.S. political organization. Raised as a Methodist, Brownback later joined a nondenominational evangelical church, Topeka Bible Church, which he still regularly attends, even though in 2002, he converted to Catholicism. He joined the Church through Opus Dei priest Father C. John McCloskey in Washington DC.[6][7] Brownback himself, however, is not a member of the Opus Dei organization.[8].

Senator Sam and Homesboy McCain have another thing in common. They both married ultra rich heiresses. Sam hitched himself a ride with the granddaughter of media magnate, Oscar Stauffer. The family biz, which sold the year Sam became a Senator, had 31 newspapers and broadcast companies in 11 states. Pay attention, Lindsey. These guys will teach how to do it. Better hurry though; you're not getting any younger.

Will We See The Lion in Denver Tonight?

I’ll bet Park Place and Board Walk against two of John McCain’s condos that we will. And it’ll be a moment none of us will forget. Have plenty of Kleenex available.

I was inspired by this photograph by Stephan Savoia of the Associated Press, whom one presumes must follow the Senator around from house to house through an endless maze of inlaid Teak and Mahogany hallways and secret passageways which lead to magnificent libraries with secret compartments behind fake book shelves designed for playing spy games.  And I imagine the Senator loves to show off those California Beach views to his special friends from AP and all the other other bootlicking MSM orgs (Jessica and the gang, ya know,) who even stick around the house(s) on weekends for cookouts and other benefits of being a McCain Home(s)ie! In any case, I thought the image just needed a bit of color, a title and (of course) a wider audience. So here it is with some alternative titles following.

Click on the Image to ENLARGE it.

Homes Sweet Homes

O Give Me Some Homes Where the Buffalo Roam

Homes Are Where the Heart is (Hearts Are?)

A Man's Homes Are His Castles

Sunday Riches: Rebooting Obama

I’ve come to the conclusion that Frank Rich is the only Sunday newsman worth listening to. Tom Brokaw should have stayed retired; George Will, Bob Schiffer and Cokie Roberts should have quit years ago. Chris Wallace is just a godamned TOOL. There is no other word for him. Stephanopoulos, well…. at least he had the small amount of gumption it took to stand up to the sissified Mark Halperin, who now insists that the Democrats’ attacks on McCain’s ‘ 7 Houses’ situation makes Obama fair game for any kind of attack from the right—Rezco, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, you name it—as if that wasn’t already going to be in play, big time (PULEEEEEZZZ!!)

Frank sez, and I think I quite agree with him that it’s high time for Barack to take off the gloves and get after McCain as the one who is UNQUALIFIED to be President because #1, it’s true, and #2, a majority of the voting public already believes that it’s true.

Here’s Frank:

As the real campaign at last begins in Denver this week, this much is certain: It’s time for Barack Obama to dispatch “Change We Can Believe In” to a dignified death. This isn’t because — OMG! — Obama’s narrow three- to four-percentage-point lead of recent weeks dropped to a statistically indistinguishable one- to three-point margin during his week of vacation. It’s because zero hour is here. As the presidential race finally gains the country’s full attention, the strategy that vanquished Hillary Clinton must be rebooted to take out John McCain. “Change We Can Believe In” was brilliantly calculated for a Democratic familial brawl where every candidate was promising nearly identical change from George Bush. It branded Obama as the sole contender with the un-Beltway biography, credibility and political talent to link the promise of change to the nation’s onrushing generational turnover in all its cultural (and, yes, racial) manifestations. McCain should be a far easier mark than Clinton if Obama retools his act. What we have learned this summer is this: McCain’s trigger-happy temperament and reactionary policies offer worse than no change. He is an unstable bridge back not just to Bush policies but to an increasingly distant 20th-century America that is still fighting Red China in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the cold war. As the country tries to navigate the fast-moving changes of the 21st century, McCain would put America on hold. What Obama also should have learned by now is that the press is not his friend. Of course, he gets more ink and airtime than McCain; he’s sexier news. But as George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs documented in its study of six weeks of TV news reports this summer, Obama’s coverage was 28 percent positive, 72 percent negative. (For McCain, the split was 43/57.) Even McCain’s most blatant confusions, memory lapses and outright lies still barely cause a ripple, whether he’s railing against a piece of pork he in fact voted for, as he did at the Saddleback Church pseudodebate last weekend, or falsifying crucial details of his marital history in his memoirs, as The Los Angeles Times uncovered in court records last month. What should Obama do now? As premature panic floods through certain liberal precincts, there’s no shortage of advice: more meat to his economic plan, more passion in his stump delivery, less defensiveness in response to attacks and, as is now happening, sharper darts at a McCain lifestyle so extravagant that we are only beginning to learn where all the beer bullion is buried. But Obama is never going to be a John Edwards-style populist barnburner. (Edwards wasn’t persuasive either, by the way.) Nor will wonkish laundry lists of policy details work any better for him than they did for Al Gore or Hillary Clinton. Obama has those details to spare, in any case, while McCain, who didn’t even include an education policy on his Web site during primary season, is still winging it. As David Leonhardt observes in his New York Times Magazine cover article on “Obamanomics” today, Obama’s real problem is not a lack of detail but his inability to sell policy with “an effective story.” That story is there to be told, but it has to be a story that is more about America and the future and less about Obama and his past. After all these months, most Americans, for better or worse, know who Obama is. So much so that he seems to have fought off the relentless right-wing onslaught to demonize him as an elitist alien. Asked in last week’s New York Times/CBS News poll if each candidate shares their values, registered voters gave Obama and McCain an identical 63 percent. Asked if each candidate “cares about the needs and problems of people like yourself,” Obama beat McCain by 37 to 23 percent. Is the candidate “someone you can relate to”? Obama: 55 percent, McCain: 41. Even before McCain told Politico that he relies on the help to count up the houses he owns, he was the candidate seen as the out-of-step elitist. So while Obama can continue to try to reassure resistant Clinton loyalists in Appalachia that he’s not a bogeyman from Madrassaland, he must also move on to the bigger picture for everyone else. He must rekindle the “fierce urgency of now” — but not, as he did in the primaries, merely to evoke uplifting echoes of the civil-rights struggle or the need for withdrawal from Iraq. Most Americans, unlike the press, are not obsessed by race. (Those whites who are obsessed by race will not vote for Obama no matter what he or anyone else has to say about it.) And most Americans have turned their backs on the Iraq war, no matter how much McCain keeps bellowing about “victory.” The Bush White House is now poised to alight with the Iraqi government on a withdrawal timetable far closer to Obama’s 16 months than McCain’s vague promise of a 2013 endgame. As Gen. David Petraeus returns home, McCain increasingly resembles those mad Japanese soldiers who remained at war on remote Pacific islands years after Hiroshima. Economic anxiety is the new terrorism. This is why the most relevant snapshot of voters’ concerns was not to be found at Saddleback Church but at the Olympics last Saturday. For all the political press’s hype, only some 5.5 million viewers tuned in to the Rev. Rick Warren’s show in Orange County, Calif. Roughly three-quarters of them were over 50 — in other words, the McCain base. By contrast, a diverse audience of 32 million Americans tuned in to Beijing that night to watch Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal. This was a rare feel-good moment for a depressed country. But the 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. It is not a story of endless conflicts abroad but a potentially inspiring tale of serious economic, educational, energy and health-care mobilization at home. We don’t have the time or resources to go off on more quixotic military missions or to indulge in culture wars. (In China, they’re too busy exploiting scientific advances for competitive advantage to reopen settled debates about Darwin.) 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. Even as it points to America’s future, the Obama campaign also has the duty to fill in its opponent’s past. McCain’s attacks on Obama have worked: in last week’s Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll, Obama’s favorable rating declined from 59 to 48 percent and his negative rating rose from 27 to 35. Yet McCain still has a lower positive rating (46 percent) and higher negative rating (38) than Obama. McCain is not nearly as popular among Americans, it turns out, as he is among his journalistic camp followers. Should voters actually get to know him, he has nowhere to go but down. The argument against Obama’s “going negative” is that it undermines his message of “transcendent politics” and will make him look like an “angry black man.” But pacifistic politics is an oxymoron, and Obama is constitutionally incapable of coming off angrier than McCain. A few more fisticuffs from the former law professor (and many more from his running mate and other surrogates) can only help make him look less skinny (metaphorically if not literally). Obama should go after McCain’s supposedly biggest asset — experience — much as McCain went after Obama’s crowd-drawing celebrity. It is, after all, not mere happenstance that so many conservative pundits — Rich Lowry, Peggy Noonan, Ramesh Ponnuru — have, to McCain’s irritation, proposed that he “patriotically” declare in advance that he will selflessly serve only a single term. Whatever their lofty stated reasons for promoting this stunt, their underlying message is clear: They recognize in their heart of hearts that the shelf life of McCain’s experience has already reached its expiration date. 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.