Debate tonight.

I like watching ABC for the debates.  Maybe I’m just a sucker for George Stephanopoulos since Sam Seaborn’s soaring rhetoric was rumored to have been written after him.  That is not confirmed by IMDB.com though.  Whatever, I like him.

Here are some of the many maps that follow the only 270 votes that really matter.

Politico: Obama 207, McCain 163, Toss-Up 168.
Rove.com: Wait, who?!? Obama 273, McCain 163 Toss-Up 102.
Pollster: Obama 320, McCain 163 Toss-Up 55
270towin: Obama 264, McCain 163 Toss-Up 111
Real Clear Politics: Obama 264, McCain 163 Toss-Up 111

That is a grand average of: Obama 265.6 McCain 163 Toss-Up 109.4

This of course means next to nothing but it does give you a picture of the quickly decreasing time between now and the election.  It seems that everyone is agreed on McCain’s states -odd really- and no one really agrees on Obama’s.  While I’m sure there is a reason it is something to consider.

~Forth

Foreign Policy Foreign Policy Foreign Policy

I’ve been asked (more than once) what my focus in history was.  Since I have a degree in it people assume, I think, that I was given a large choice of classes to become an expert in a specific sort of history.  Unfortunately, that is not the case with a bachelor’s degree.  It is the Masters and Doctorates that get to be that specific -dare I say lucky.  Yes, yes, I was given some choice and I inevitably chose foreign policy when I could, including as many polisci classes as I could get away with.  Few people know that before I landed on history and English – I was going to be history and political science, I was ten credits deep before they told me they couldn’t license me to teach political science.

All of this is why I’m excited to see The Office this week… No actually I meant to say the debate at the University of Mississippi on Friday.  (I just wanted to get an Office plug in there; I’d like to see its poll numbers. Good enough to make these two candidates blush, I’d wager.)

“He doesn’t share my worldview” is a phrase I’ve inserted into a few comments and posts, which, while it may see to indicate the world around me, I usually think of as how we deal with the world as a nation.  This questions concerns me more today because I used to feel pretty secure.  Growing up I saw America as the large friendly dog in a small room.  Good natured and well meaning but when it wagged its tail a vase got broken.  I’ve learned better since though and I no longer wish to hear the phrase from ignorance comes bliss.  The past hundred years have seen the nation turn into what is termed a crusader state and the “with us or against us” attitude of the current administration as a manifestation of that crusade.  The idea that we need to practice global meliorism – the belief that America has a responsibility to nurture democracy and economic growth around the world – is older than this administration.

Make no mistake, George Bush’s foreign policy isn’t Texan.  The press and history may like to describe him as a cowboy but his advisors on foreign policy and his education in it come from somewhere else.  The United States is slowly coming down from a precipice where it was unrivaled in the military, manufacturing and technology sectors.  Today, the Chinese are awakening to their dominance in manpower and manufacturing while the Russians are practicing what is known as power politics with the world.  Both have seized on an opportunity handed to them not by George W. Bush -though he certainly did us few favors – but by history, geography, and progress.

Why is all of this important to 08 08 08?  Because, while John McCain was right about the surge and is certainly a military minded man (not a general or admiral by any stretch but at least raised by a couple), I don’t see the world policy of the next 4 to 8 years as that of war.  The war fatigue we are experiencing is one of the reasons John McCain is not performing as well as he thought he would.  Americans aren’t looking for a general and while I’d like those in power to know how to win a war, I’d rather have someone in power who can prevent a war.

The foreign policy of America must start looking to within the borders to improve our standing outside of our coasts.  John Quincy Adams said “Americans don’t go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”  Now, of course, he was talking about a different world but today we are still setting an example for those around us.  We set an example of materialism and greed, of abuse of power, and of course of militarism just as much as we set an example of economics, governance and philanthropy.  It has always concerned me that America is so shocked when the world is brutal, when they are in effect imitating the history of the world.  I wasn’t even that shocked by the NYC terrorism seeing as though it was preceded by a attacks on embassies and military installations around the world.  Tragic, yes.  Unexpected, no.  Few from my generation remember the attacks in Beirut or the detonation of a military barracks in 1983.  I doubt the men who planned and carried out 9/11 have forgotten it.  We are insulated by time and distance but were it to happen today how would we react?

America is seldom reflective and while we as individuals may consider how these attacks could have been stopped, I wonder if we consider how they could have been prevented.  I ask why are people attacking us rather than how can we stop them.  A movie that I feel tries to get into this idea is Syriana.  The movie in itself has been indicted as… liberal.  I guess I consider that a stamp of approval though.  At the heart of the movie was the fact that all of the main characters from the many sides of the oil issue are essentially family men (and women) reacting to the world around them.  They aren’t good they aren’t evil, they are just human.  While we should not base our foreign policy on a few scattered movies, we should consider what the message is saying about the world we live in.

To that end, before I had settled on Sen. Obama (D-Il) I heard a report from abroad.  The NPR reporter had spoken with people in the Middle East and had discovered what I consider to be a remarkable notion.  That should America elect Barack Obama these people would be forced to change their worldview of us.  Many balked at the idea that the United States would truly let it happen.  Now I can hear the naysayers already; those who mocked Obama for speaking in Germany, and those who contend that George W. Bush hasn’t damaged our reputation abroad.  They are saying, “You really want to decide on our president by what the rest of the world thinks?”  No, I don’t.  But I will say it would be a nice bonus to our world image if they stopped thinking of us as a bunch of white supremacists hell bent on recreating a world in our image?

~Forth

Update: McCain doesn’t want to debate in the midst of crisis.
The story here. My response as posted on my Google Reader is this: “I’m sorry, this IS the time for politics. Politics isn’t a dirty word. Politics are how we make decisions in this country and these are big decisions. On Message: McCain is slipping in the polls and he doesn’t want to be flippant about the economy. Under Message: McCain is slipping in the polls and he doesn’t want to go on TV and possibly make it worse.
This is just what George Will was talking about. John McCain is an “off with his head” politician. We pay these men to be able to vote on the economy while still being able to talk about foreign policy. That’s the job.”

Should the handbasket arrive…

Should John McCain ever become President of the United States of America, I wouldn’t mind getting the hell out of dodge. Forth joked about it once, but I, the one with the disposable job, am fer seriously:

FRANCE: J’taime la France. I can speak it a little (3 years in high school reduced to two notebook pages full of remaining knowledge) and I’ve always wanted to go. So, why not live?

SWITZERLAND: The country is tiny and neutral and Forth has some beautiful pictures from when he visited in high school, so why not? Besides, I hear their army knives and drinking water are the best around.

MYKONOS: I will never be able to afford a Grecian honeymoon, but maybe we can live there instead? I could eat Mediterranean food all day. All. Damn. Day. Oh, and the architecture is astounding.

So there you have it: my expatriate destination dream list, lest this country come under the control of a wheezy old gun-toting, tech illiterate coot. I thought of adding London, but that’s overdone. And God knows I could never live in Canada.

**Back.

Dark and Deary

I haven’t posted lately because, while I’ve been given the bug to complain about this or that in politics, I’ve felt an enormous weight on me as we settle into the interminable homestretch.  I read a good amount of the news that crosses the politics ticker every day and it just seems to be getting worse and worse.  Today I’d like to highlight some of the major downers of my afternoon.

(Not) Push Polling admitted to by Republican Jewish Coalition.  The crux of the story is that a call is placed to likely voters and then aggressively pursues an agenda in the form of questions.  These questions basically follow the fomat of “Would it effect your vote is you knew [candidate x] had invited the Prince of Darkness to tea?” or some such.  As you can tell from the groups name candidate x is Barack Obama in this case.  No worries though, in 2000 it was John McCain’s turn to be hit by Karl Rove in the face.

Et tu, Cohen? A Washington Post columnist details why people used to call him “in McCain’s pocket” and why now he is writing about how McCain “confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. ‘I broke my promise to always tell the truth,’ McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.”  I sympathize with Cohen.  I’ve never intended to vote Republican but I was always a bit respectful of McCain’s ability to appear better than his Republican counterparts.  The moment for me that turned it was back in the spring.  Sen. Honorable, as some in the press have started to derisively call him, voted the party line against a bill concerning the treatment of prisoners.  For a former PoW that must have been hard, but lately John McCain is making it look easy.  From Cohen: “Karl Marx got one thing right — what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.”

And my personal favorite: the economy is not good and it is deregulation that has apparently gotten us there.  What irks me the most is that I am being told … well I’m being told a lot of things … but mostly I’m being told its not that bad.  In reality it is that bad.  Deregulation means in McCain’s words: “Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”  You know get rid of silly things that might stop the CEOs at the top from lining their golden parachutes with money while the plane is in a free fall.  The first article I linked by Joe Klein said it best: “This has been the long-standing Republican bait and switch–scaring small businesses with the threat of new regulations if the Democrats win, commiserating with larger businesses about the evils of environmental and plant safety rules, while lifting as many regulations as possible governing the financial titans whose credit should be at the heart of new economic development. But that hasn’t been happening: the financial titans have been going for the quick buck rather than the sound one.”  Well hell, I could have told you that…  well maybe not.

~Forth

Straw Men

Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~Oscar Wilde

In a recent Foreign Policy article a few of Sen. McCain’s worst ideas were laid out.  Ten in fact.  It is here that I found my latest post.

We start with the gas tax holiday, which I’ve always been against:

“I propose that the federal government suspend all taxes on gasoline now paid by the American people—from Memorial Day to Labor Day of this year. The effect will be an immediate economic stimulus—taking a few dollars off the price of a tank of gas every time a family, a farmer, or trucker stops to fill up.”  This was in a speech in April.

The problem I saw with this was always that at the end of the holiday prices would jump and that would cause a big time drawback.  Foreign Policy adds to my thoughts by pointing out that dropping the 18.4 cent tax would hurt the Highway Trust Fund.  That is frightening because I only just saw an article the other day which said that the fund is near bust as it is.

We’ll move on though.  Next: “Drill Baby Drill” or “Drill right here, right now.”

“Gas prices are through the roof. Energy costs have seeped into our grocery bills, making it more expensive to feed our families. … It is time for America to get serious about energy independence, and that means we need to start drilling offshore.”  This statement and the “right here” quote came less than a month ago, while the infamous “Drill Baby Drill” from a surrogate a week or two ago.

Of course the whole time the Base has been chanting this the “angry left” has been pointing at the government studies that say “production of the new supplies would not even begin until 2017 and would have little effect on what Americans pay at the pump anyway—just a few cents a gallon by 2030 under the best-case scenario.”  Even better is the Thomas Friedman quote where he says, “When I hear McCain pounding the table for ‘drill, drill, drill,’ it reminds me of someone pounding the table for IBM Selectric typewriters on the eve of the IT revolution.”  I don’t know what people think would happen if we opened drilling.  It’s not Jed Clampett out there.  This is a tough job.

This one infuriates me: “The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit.”  What the hell does that even mean?  We have been borrowing to pay for the damn wars in the first place.  How can we “profit” from victory?  Besides which the article in FP points out that McCain isn’t even willing to say what “victory” would be.  I don’t think winning a war is a sensible deficit reduction plan.

I don’t know much about this next one but I sure had a good laugh over the answer.  McCain on contraceptives: “Asked on the campaign trail if he thought grants for sex education should include instruction on contraception, McCain turned to an aide for help, saying, ‘Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception—I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.’ The reporter asked, ‘Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?’ After a long pause, McCain replied, ‘You’ve stumped me.’”  To be fair that quote came back in ‘07 before Davis and McCain had raised the iron curtain.  I don’t blame the man because there are a metric ton of issues but it is comical none the less.

Here’s another that makes me angry, “If I am elected president, I will set this nation on a course to building 45 new reactors by the year 2030, with the ultimate goal of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America.”

The article points out that by the time we build these 45 plants they may be obsolete -not to mention vastly more expensive- but I have another point  to add.  I’ve read articles about this subject and one of the major problems is that fissile material is not exactly cheap and available.  With China going nuclear it is at an even higher premium then it was ten or even five years ago.  Beyond that there is the environmental impact from the coal plants it would take to run the nuclear plants.  That’s right, the process of enrichment is so energy heavy that some of the largest polluters in America are actually providing energy for nuclear enrichment plants.

There are others on the list but these were the ones that tripped my trigger.

~Forth

P.S. Tropic Thunder was better than Pineapple Expres, and Tom Cruise was spectacular.

Politics for Idiots

Sure Forth does all this politic stuff and I usually never mention anything about it. I’ll tell you why this is: I’m a political moron. Literally. I don’t know shit about politics. Since I’m so free to admit this, I’ll give you the rundown of the 2008 election based on the idiotic thought processes that occur to my simple brain:

McCain/Palin: Mmm k….Republicans are generally bad. The one who is running this country right now hasn’t done a great job, so why should any other person of the same party? There are a lot of republicans in my hometown. The reason is, they are simple people who like good down-home boys to relate to. My dad says he likes Sarah Palin because you could sit down and have a beer with her. I can sit down and have a beer with my dad but that sure as hell doesn’t mean he should be playing first mate at the helm of this country. Besides, McCain is old as dirt. He’s going to die and then not only will the country be fucked, but it will be fucked with an inexperienced GILF calling the shots. This ticket is like putting Charleton Heston and Lynne fucking Spears in charge of the country–It’s bad news either way.

Obama/Biden: Obama is the opposite of George W. Bush. So what’s the real problem? Obama knows how to hold the attention of thousands of people for more than ten minutes and he’s really good at it. Since it’s time to shake things up regarding the old white guy as president thing, we might as well have a non-white male running the country if it can’t be a cuckolded woman. Obama was raised in the midwest, he pushed his way through lots of shit to make it to the top, and he knows what has been going on, what’s wrong with it, and how to make things alright again. Plus, he’s a handsome man–in sort of a JFK way, and since we all loved that guy, why not Obama?

Nader: Give it up. We appreciate the decades of effort, but seriously.

Bristol Palin/embryo: First of all, keep this shit out of the media. The last thing we want to hear about is Jamie Lynn 2.0. But since it’s out there, I’m going to comment. Do they not have the Pill in Alaska? Can it not be flown up on a rusty Cessna or something? Do you understand the words Trojan? Durex? LifeStyles? I mean, having visited the fair state of Alaska last summer, I can understand there being nothing for you crazy teens to do there but bone, but next time try to shack up with someone other than Three-Pump Chump, k?

In other unrelated polical news, Forth and I recently saw Tropic Thunder, which none of us were particularly thrilled about, but it ended up being far better than Pineapple Express. And as for Tom Cruise…well, he was better at life than he has been since Jerry Maguire.

Show me the goddamned money.

**Back.

Pale in Comparison

So… It is hard to blog about the latest developments in politics and ignore the fact that the news of Palin’s daughter but that isn’t really why I’m here today.
Instead lets talk about the poor choice of the McCain Campaign and why I’m still worried.
Here are the facts: Gov. Palin is the chief executive of Alaska, est. 2006 pop. 670,053. Prior to becoming governor in *cough* *cough* 2006 she was mayor of Wasilla, est. 2008 pop. 6,715.  Here’s a picture from a fellow WordPress Blogger in Alaska, Mudflats.

For reference, ForthandBack International Headquarters and Resort is located in Milwaukee.  Milwaukee County, which also has an executive, has a est. 2006 population of 915,097.

Also of interest, is the fact that her acceptance speech in Dayton was in front of a crowd of 15,000, which is twice the size of the town she has lived in virtually her whole life.  I have nothing against the small town since both Back and I comes from small towns, but I have to say, I am uncertain that I’ve met anyone in either of those towns I felt capable of becoming the Vice President in under two years.

What has the selection of Gov. Palin done that is positive for the McCain campaign?  Excitement, conservatism, and of course unconventionality.

The excitement gap has been discussed at length in the conventional news media.  John McCain has been at a disadvantage for a long time when it comes to energizing anyone to follow him.  His message of honor and commitment to the nation is that of a bygone era.  While we may seek to regain that sentiment it is unlikely that anyone will become excited when Sen. McCain talks about staying the course and sacrificing for the greater good.  The surprise of Palin has spun out a message-less kind of excitement because it was so surprising.

Sarah Palin is not Hillary Clinton and will not be welcoming to the tent hoards of Hilary supporters.  If the McCain campaign thought as much, Palin’s second speech in which she was booed for mentioning Hilary Clinton is proof enough.  No, instead Palin brings in conservatives.  What worries me is not that McCain wasn’t going to get the conservative vote, but instead that this selection will get a few more out than he might have before.  There was always the chance that some would just refuse to vote.  That chance had always worked in Obama’s favor since he has been registering and energizing more new voters than previous campaigns.  Some of that effect may be mitigated now though by the excitement brought on by what seems to be the highly conservative VP pick.  On the major divisive issue she is Anti-Abortion, Pro-Guns, and Pro-Drilling.  She will attract those highly conservative members of our country that I frankly don’t trust.  On the more intimate matters it seems she is the conservative leader of America’s most conservative state.  Her 90% approval rate has fallen to 65% but is still very high.  On the plus side, this state was so conservative that it was never even considered in play for Sen. Obama.  Whereas Biden (D-DE) makes Pennsylvania playable, Palin brings McCain no states.  Of course, Biden didn’t bring Delaware since it was already blue.

Unconventional is my polite way of saying Gov. Palin is a woman.  She makes it hard for the Democratic ticket to attack without looking like bullies and she might bring a few females from the middle that were unsure of Clinton’s liberalism.  Before Palin they might have stayed home.  Here is what I will say about it though.  It feels like cheap politics.  A choice made because she is a woman.  Sen. McCain has spoken of experience, insight, and service.  Gov. Palin was not chosen for those reasons.  She was chosen because of what she is, conservative and feminine.  Hilary Clinton is a woman but she had to work hard for every vote she got.  Gov. Palin was chosen as what looks like a political expediency in the waning months of a campaign that has been able to keep it close but never close enough.  Is this a complement to our better half or a pander?  It is my feeling that Sen. McCain was trying to hit two birds with one stone -the heart strings of women and the purse strings of conservatives.  But sometimes, you miss both birds.  When the luster wears off, as it appears to be doing already, I think we’ll see that McCain is running out of trick plays.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Alaska’s Republican State Senate President Lyda Green: “She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?”  (Green is from Palin’s home town of Wasilla.)

~Forth

Not Much

I don’t have much new to report today.  I’d just like to update a post I threw out earlier.  This is the previous McCain household.

Also, in an effort to be a bit more non-partisan – not by much – I’m linking two campaign ads and underneath of them there is a link to Politico.com’s analysis of their veracity.

The analysis is here.

The most important thing for me is that the McCain advertisement has taken quotes referring to Obama’s willingness to tax the wealthy and made them appear to be talking about the middle class.  You really do need to read the Politico analysis to get the full grasp of this.

~Forth

Fortunate Son

Over on Politico.com there were two shorts recently posted by Martin (Rep Blogger) and Smith (Dem Blogger) that highlights a story line that I hope is starting to gain traction.

The McCain campaign has, rather successfully, been able to paint Sen. Obama as elitist, and not like you.  You may remember this from the Kerry days.  What these two short articles point out though is that Sen. John McCain III is the man who owns six homes, including one on Coronado Island in San Diego overlooking the Pacific.  Much of this has been covered over because of his admirable service and his unfortunate imprisonment.  It has also been pointed out that he declined promotion to Rear Admiral (though I am no authority on this story) which is quite a compliment.  Back and I were just in San Diego for a wedding and we went to Coronado Island.  It is every bit as expensive as it looks.  Too be fair, she did make him sign a prenuptial agreement back in ‘80.

I feel like I’m doing the man a disservice by pointing these issues out but at the same time I feel that some of the McCain ads out there have been… just silly.  I’m particularly tired of the talking point that claims that “tire pressure is not an energy policy.”  As if that is what Obama had said… and have you seen the “The One” ad?  Groan.

Anyway, here is a video about McCain’s “just another guy” lifestyle that I found after reading the two politico ads.

Bonus Video:  The catch is at the end. I bet he was pissed at Russert for this interview.

Enjoy.

~Forth

Throwing out ideas (in two senses)

The authorities will be here soon so I need to get this out to the world before it is too late.  Today, I have three topics articles that show which way this hand basket is traveling and my GOD! Are we in it?

McCain’s Sense of Humor

So the more I read about Senator McCain’s sense of humor the more I cringe for the possible next four years of press conferences.  You thought it was bad when Bush was handing out nick names or swearing on a hot mic, at least he wasn’t making racially and sexually insensitive jokes…

From: Politico
From: ABCNews.com

“Don’t Vote for a Democrat” Billboard

Link: THIS GUY IS INSANE!!!!

NY Times Cover

I’m not sure how I feel about the whole New Yorker Cover-flap.  I guess I agree with many that says hey its satire get over yourself but then I also think that at a time like this lampooning the idiots isn’t going to help our cause.  Instead it is going to fuel the fire of the already hopelessly gullible.

Link: Here is the Daily Show’s reaction.

I get the feeling that Jon Stewart is trying to calm everyone down a little bit by making fun of this.
And Politico seems to agree with him here.

~Forth