http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. en-us mark@samefacts.com 2008-05-09T01:38:40-08:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/05/early_june.php That's when Terry McAuliffe says it will be over. I can live with that. 6040@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Campaign 2008 Mark Kleiman 2008-05-09T01:38:40-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/_/2008/05/the_yavapai_ranch.php Matthew Mosk of the WashPo has it: Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers. Taxpayer ripoff: check. Environmental disaster: check. Lobbying checks for McCain's once-and-future staffers: check. Benefits to McCain's fundraisers: check. Participation by Cindy McCain: since her tax returns are secret, how would anyone know? Just another carefree day on the Straight Talk Express. 6039@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Mark Kleiman 2008-05-09T01:01:29-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/05/lame_comeback_of_the_week.php When a pilot (let's just say, to choose an example at random, of a Navy A-4 Skyhawk) goes off course and can't figure out where he his or which direction he's headed in, he is said to have "lost his bearings." When a candidate who promises to run a "respectful campaign" smears his opponent by trying to falsely associate him with a foreign terrorist group, that candidate can fairly be described as being off his intended course. Saying that he has "lost his bearings" seems appropriate, especially if that candidate used to fly A-4 Skyhawks. Nothing about the phrase "lost his bearings" has anything to do with age, directly or by implication. ("Lost his marbles," maybe, though I associate that phrase with insanity rather than dementia. But "lost his bearings"? No. That's about navigation, not aging.) So when Marc Salter of the McCain campaign accuses Barack Obama of "raising John McCain's age as an issue," you can only conclude that the McCain team had no decent defense for McCain's smear and wanted to change the subject. (Think about it: since Hamas presumably understands U.S. politics, the natural implication of an "endorsement" of one candidate by a Hamas spokesman is that Hamas very much wants to see the other candidate elected. Given how wonderful two Bush terms have been for Hamas and its allies, it's not surprising that they should be eager to see a third Bush term under McCain. But since when do we let foreign terrorists choose our leaders for us?) But if your candidate is 72 and having senior moments all over the place, why on earth would you want to change the subject from his dishonesty to his age? As Obama's spokesman says, Salter's crazy response just shows that you don't have to be old to lose your bearings. 6038@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Campaign 2008 Mark Kleiman 2008-05-08T23:26:37-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/policy_briefs_/2008/05/cap_and_trade_what_matters_and_what_doesnt.php Kevin Drum says a cap and trade carbon reduction program is only 'real' if the allowances are auctioned to emitters, not given away. He's wrong, so much as I like thoughtful attention to global warming, I need to weigh in, especially given how completely lost his commenters appear to be on this issue. I desperately want to offer a pocket-sized statement of this program: non-specialists have a right to understand something this important without taking a semester course. Something like, "Social Security is basically a bank: you put your money in while you work, and you take it out with interest when you retire." Unfortunately, simple and clear as that characterization of Social Security is, it's entirely wrong, and I can't provide a responsible one-sentence soundbite for cap and trade either. Here are the key elements of greenhouse gas reduction, described from the point of view of a government deciding how to proceed: 6036@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Policy briefs Michael O'Hare 2008-05-08T22:51:59-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/05/who_has_a_record.php Marc Ambinder points to Juan Williams's attack on Obama, which compares to McCain's purported history of "working across party lines" with Obama's "rhetoric and wishful thinking." Williams says of Obama: "He doesn't have a record." Ambinder says of the attack, which he predicts the Republicans will be using in the fall, "The substance is not dismissible out of hand." Dismissible? No. But it's disprovable, and without excessive effort. Obama has more genuine bipartisan achievement to his credit in his short career than McCain does in his long one. Obama has several substantial bi-partisan accomplishments. In Springfield, he sponsored successful bills for children's health care, an earned income tax credit, ethics and campaign finance reform, and videotaped police interrogations (an anti-torture measure). In Washington, it was ethics reform again and work with Richard Lugar on loose nukes. That is not a thin record. (Charles Peters has the details on Springfield, and Hilzoy has two long posts on Obama in the U.S. Senate and on Obama's style of bipartisanship.) Against that , Williams cites two items only from McCain's 25-year career: campaign finance reform and comprehensive immigration reform. McCain did indeed co-sponsor McCain-Feingold, which his campaign is currently violating by exceeding the primary election spending cap after having agreed to take matching funds and gained both financial and ballot-placement benefit from that agreement. McCain also worked on immigration reform, which crashed and burned in the Senate because he couldn't get his own Republican colleagues to stand by him, and which he has now abandoned in favor of an enforcement-only approach that is not bipartisan at all. What else does McCain have? * A long run as Chair of Senate Commerce, where he helped preside over the bipartisan acquiescence in the massive consolidation of media control in the hands of outfits such as Clear Channel and News Corporation. * Opposition to torture, until he switched sides and supported Bush in using torture as long as the CIA rather than the military had to do the dirty work. All that leaves as a real accomplishment is McCain's work with John Kerry to bring reconciliation with Vietnam and discredit the Rambo-powered POW/MIA racket. Both of them deserve great credit for that. But that's not really much of a record for more than two decades on the Hill. And what has he done for us lately? So while I agree with Ambinder that the Republicans will very likely run on the lie that McCain has a record and Obama has a speech, I'm not very worried about that particular lie, because the record refutes it. Obama confounds the distinction famously made for young Carl Hayden by old Frederick Talbott: Obama combines the capacity of a "work horse" with the style of a "show horse." 6037@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Campaign 2008 Mark Kleiman 2008-05-08T22:15:42-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/05/embracing_hatred.php There's no way we could elect a President who deliberately embraces a preacher of hatred. Is there? Well, technically, yes there is. It depends the object of the hatred. 6035@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ John McCain Mark Kleiman 2008-05-08T12:50:24-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/john_mccain_/2008/05/question_for_john_mccain.php ... that I'd like, but don't expect, to see reporters asking relentlessly: If the multimillionaire second wife who has financed your entire political career continues to refuse to release her tax returns, what assurance do we have that your official actions have not favored her business associates, as they so clearly did in the case of Charles Keating? 6034@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ John McCain Mark Kleiman 2008-05-08T12:36:35-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/macroeconomic_policy_/2008/05/growing_credit_card_debt_dims_economic_picture.php As Paul Krugman points out, all of the "economic growth" in the first quarter consisted of inventory build-up: consumers aren't buying stuff as fast as factories are turning it out. Worse than that, purchases of goods actually fell; the "growth" was mostly in the imputed rental value of owner-occuped housing and in medical care. But wait, it gets worse: consumers can't even afford the amount of spending they're now doing. U.S. consumer borrowing jumped more than double the amount economists forecast in March, indicating a slowing economy is forcing Americans to accumulate credit-card and other forms of debt. Consumer credit increased by $15.3 billion for the month to $2.56 trillion, the biggest monthly rise since November, the Federal Reserve said today in Washington. In February, credit rose by $6.5 billion, previously reported as an increase of $5.2 billion. The Fed's report doesn't cover borrowing secured by real estate, such as home-equity loans. Consumers are turning to credit cards after banks tightened standards for home-equity loans and other borrowing. The March figures brought U.S. consumer borrowing in the first quarter to $34 billion, the most since the first three months of 2001, when the economy entered its last official recession. And no, they really can't afford it. They're falling behind on their bills. Overdue payments at the six largest U.S. credit-card lenders reached the highest since November 2004, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. An average of 4.11 percent of loans were at least 30 days late in February and March, according to reports filed by American Express Co., Bank of America Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Discover Financial Services. So we have (1) measured economic growth (some of it fictitious imputed rents) not fast enough to keep up with the growth in the labor force plus normal productivity gains; (2) based on inventory build-up, which puts downward pressure on next quarter and the quarter after; (3) financed by unsustainable consumer debt, which puts more downward pressure on next quarter and the quarter after. "Recession"? I think so. h/t Peter Cohan 6032@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Macroeconomic Policy Mark Kleiman 2008-05-08T08:51:16-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/religion_/2008/05/mine_eyes_have_seen_the_glory.php In church on Sunday, after a string of impeccably orthodox and instantly forgettable Ascension-tide hymns, I was woken up by the amazingly incorrect but rousing Battle Hymn of the Republic. Wow! You think. Go Sherman! Go Grant! Die, evil slaver Rebs! But then you realize: this is what it feels like to be a crusader, a warrior in the name of God - a jihadi. 6033@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Religion James Wimberley 2008-05-08T08:38:43-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/barack_obama_/2008/05/milwaukees_worst.php The Telegraph says that Obama has figured out how to connect with the working man: Pabst Blue Ribbon.At the Raleigh Times bar in downtown Raleigh yesterday, Mr Obama arrived in the late afternoon with his wife Michelle only to find himself momentarily beerless. "Where's my beer?" he asked, loud enough for the reporters to hear. 6031@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Barack Obama Jonathan Kulick 2008-05-08T05:27:56-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/lying_in_politics_/2008/05/lunatics_all_over_the_place.php It's always amazing what crazy sh*t normally intelligent people will believe when fear and hatred and group prejudice get the better of them. Why, I can think of a highly-educated, insightful, brilliant black preacher who believes that the U.S. government invented HIV to destroy black folks. And I can think of a law professor at a legitimate university, who also commands a blog audience of 100,000 readers a day, who thinks that Barack Obama is a socialist. Yes, that's the same Barack Obama whose most admired economic thinker seems to be Alexander Hamilton and who supports the market-oriented cap-and-trade approach to containing global warming. These are not information problems. These are psychiatric disorders, or cynical manipulations appealing to the ignorance and psychopathology of the audience. Footnote And no, using the word "fascist" to describe an administration that practices torture, distrusts reason, despises the legal system, and believes that in wartime the Leader has ultimate power is not comparable. It's not a label I'd use &#8212 "fascism" properly speaking is corporatist, which Bushism isn't &#8212 but it's not a bad shorthand description of a major set of tendencies. No one who wants to leave the means of production in private hands can sanely be called a socialist. 6030@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Lying in politics Mark Kleiman 2008-05-07T22:17:16-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/05/the_finale_when_and_how.php I've wanted the primary season to be over for a long time. But Marc Ambinder is right: how is more important than when. If Hillary Clinton were to go back to waging a positive campaign (which, in Democratic terms, includes full-throated criticism of McCain) and leash her attack dogs so they stop talking about how white people won't vote for Obama, having her concede after Obama's big win in Oregon on May 20th or even after his likely wins in Montana and South Dakota June 2nd would be even better than having her concede now. Among other things, now that the Clinton camp has planted the notion that enforcing the DNC's rules is "disenfranchising" the voters of Michigan and Florida, those delegations have to be seated in some form, and it's better for a deal to be reached before the race is formally over. It's easy to see that running a clean, positive campaign from here on out &#8212 losing gracefully &#8212 would be in Senator Clinton's interests, and those of her staff and her husband. But is it in their character? So far, the evidence isn't encouraging. They seem more interested in creating talking points for Rush Limbaugh. Of course, Limbaugh sounds natural saying "working class" when he means "white working class." But what does a Democratic operative think he's doing when he uses that language? Update It gets worse. Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic catches this doozy from Thursday's USAT. Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters — including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests. "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." "There's a pattern emerging here," she said. Why, yes. There is a pattern emerging: a pattern of the Clinton campaign appealing more and more blatantly to racial prejudice. "Hard-working Americans, white Americans"?! No one who's black works hard? Either HRC has completely lost her moral and political senses, or she's just so tired she's not capable of saying what she means. In either case, it's time to get the hook. 6029@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Campaign 2008 Mark Kleiman 2008-05-07T19:38:54-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/05/the_supreme_court_as_a_november_issue.php The other day John McCain, pandering to the wingnuts, went after Barack Obama for voting against confirming John Roberts as Chief Justice. That would we the same Justice Roberts who decided to disenfranchise a bunch of elderly nuns in Indiana for the crime of not having driver's licenses or passports in order to "prevent" a form of voter fraud of which there is no evidence in the first place. If I were Obama, I would be comfortable having that argument. And if I were John Conyers, I'd want to have some hearings with videotape of those nuns. 6028@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Campaign 2008 Mark Kleiman 2008-05-06T22:25:20-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/05/sexism.php Clinton supporter James Carville says that Barack Obama isn't man enough to be President, but that Hillary Clinton is. "If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two." Clinton supporter Taylor Marsh cheers him on, and links gleefully to a story about how Clinton is "ballsy" and has the "testicular fortitude" Obama lacks. Now can we hear some more from the Clinton camp about the misogyny being deployed in this race? 6027@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Campaign 2008 Mark Kleiman 2008-05-06T22:22:43-08:00 http://WWW.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/05/innc_wrapup.php 1. Obama +15 (232,000) in North Carolina. Clinton + 1.8 (22,000) in Indiana*. There's still a tiny bit out in Indiana from Obama's strong areas; final margin might be near 20,000. (*Update: near-final numbers: Clinton spread in Indiana down to 18,500, or just under 1.5%. Updated update: final spread 13,000, or 1%. In NC, Obama's spread shunk a little, to 223,000 or 14%.) 2. Obama's NC margin more than balances out Clinton's margins in Indiana and Pennsylvania. So even if you believe that "total popular vote" means something in a mix of primaries and caucuses, and even if you want to count Florida, Clinton now can't catch Obama on that metric. 3. Obama now within 200 delegates of clinching the nomination. With his shares of the 200 pledged delegates and 60 add-ons still to be chosen, he needs about 40 of the roughly 220 currently uncommitted ex officio superdelegates to get there. 4. Tim Russert on Ms-NBC "We now know who the Democratic nominee will be." 5. Clinton has reportedly cancelled all of the public appearances she had scheduled for tomorrow. 6. Obama gave a pitch-perfect speech, starting out with gracious congratulations to HRC on winning Indiana and with kind words about his supporters in Indiana and the voters there, and then launching into his general-election stump speech. This fall, we intend to march forward as one Democratic Party, united by a common vision for this country. Because we all agree that at this defining moment in history &#8212 a moment when we’re facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril &#8212 we can’t afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush’s third term. We need change in America. ... and then to a litany of all the people who need help and "can't afford four more years" of Bushism. He's learning how to link his soaring oratory to voters' bread-and-butter concerns. 6. Clinton continues to threaten a scorched-earth campaign focused on Michigan and Florida, but promises to work hard for the Democratic nominee in November. Others have described the speech as rambling and disconnected; I'm no fair judge of a Clinton speech; you can watch and judge for yourself. Two things struck me: she mentions campaigning in West Virginia and Kentucky, but omits Oregon, the largest to the remaining primaries; and she claims that she would carry Kentucky in the November, which is more likely than having the Rapture occur before then, but only barely so. 7. It appears that the new Clinton campaign management team of Wolfson and Garin managed to violate Mencken's Law: on the gas tax holiday, they lost votes by underestimating the intelligence of the voters. (And also gave Obama a chance to play to his strength and change the topic from Jeremiah Wright.) Footnote Obama hit his 1.5-million-donor target sometime yesterday evening. 6026@http://WWW.samefacts.com/ Campaign 2008 Mark Kleiman 2008-05-06T21:46:43-08:00