A Kossack Takes on the New York Times and I Feel Better.
Daily Kos Diarist, SLANGIST writes in response to yesterday’s New York Times’ Editorial slam of Barack Obama for his recent centrist bent on a number of high visibility hotbutton, social issues. Mr. Slangist is in the total and complete Defense of Obama mode here, which I’m not sure is a completely defensible position, but his piece dissects the Times editorial point by point quite nicely, and made me feel so much better about all of it. So, to that end, I am presenting the complete post here. You can decide for yourself whether you feel better or worse for having read it. (Of course, there’s an all out flame war going on over there at Daily Kos right now over Barack’s support of the FISA compromise. Just spend an hour or so following the comment thread for this diary and you’ll have a complete blow by blow understanding of all sides of the FISA issue and you’ll also get an earful --or an eyeful-- of pure META--childish blog blather between the various combatants. If you have ever wondered why the Hog Blog doesn’t have a comments section, now you know. I don’t have time to referee flame wars --although I’m always happy to hear from you, my dear readers, anytime about anything, by e-mail, which you can negotiate by clicking on the contact link above.)
I swear, with all my America-loving heart, I’m dying to win this election; I have to believe that the Obama political team has this thing figured out. They know there is very little room for error here. It’s going to be a tough election, no matter what the polls look like now. The country is divided. People are angry. Anything could happen at the last minute. There is strategy at work here to put some red states in play. And I think it is going to work. But it’s bound to boil the hair off of some liberals (like me) along the way, because some of the things that have to be said and done to get that strategy to work will be anathema to the left. But just on the gun issue alone, I see how it’s going to work. That gets one of my brothers and half a dozen of my friends here in South Carolina into the Obama boat. That’s all they needed—that’s what they were waiting for. Now I take that, not as a political betrayal, but as a beautiful political tactic to put red states in play for us. How great is that?
OK. Here’s Mr. Slangist:
Gene McCarthy used to say that the function of liberal Republicans was that, when they saw a drowning man, they would throw him a rope exactly halfway too short to reach him. Under the ironclad economic rule that there are no progressive multimillion dollar corporations, the New York Times is now, and always has been, a liberal Republican paper. In the editorial today, "New and Not Improved," the Times is letting its desire to appear loftily superior outrun the facts. Just as it did when it permitted the discredited Judith Miller to shill for the Iraq war, the Times is now flacking for the Republicans with today's arguments. As usual, it does so just to create the appearance of being evenhanded while proclaiming a nonexistent equivalence of disreputability between the candidates.
As reported extensively on DailyKos, Sen. Barack Obama has never promised to use public funds. Sen. John McCain not only promised to, he undertook a legal obligation to do so when he pledged future public funding to a bank for a loan during the primaries. McCain is actually violating the election law, which is far worse than not accepting public funding.
Obama would be silly to give up the advantage in grassroots donors obtainable through the internet whom McCain can never reach. The internet has proved to be a better, more widespread method of campaign financing than the tax form checkoff system. The claim that Obama reneged on a pledge to accept public funding is a Republican talking point, not a fact. What happened was that Obama said he would talk to McCain to see if they could jointly agree to a package involving public funding and both-candidate-enforced limits on 527s and other swiftboaters, but McCain refused to relinquish the swiftboaters. So no deal -- not through Obama's inaction but McCain's.
(And because of the internet we are also going to beat McCain at independent expenditures through 527s this year, as well as on small contributions, so McCain's self-proclaimed ignorance of the internet is going to bite him right where it hurts every Republican the worst, in the wallet.)
Given the Republican habit of calling Democrats traitors since at least 1946, Obama would have also been silly not to let others take the lead on defeating the FISA rewrite, even though it would legitimize the administration's use of telcos to illegally spy on Americans. Obama actually understands being a senator, as McCain does not, and is letting Feingold and Dodd do the heavy lifting on filibustering telco immunity. We don't need a sacrifical lamb for a nominee. We need a guy tough enough to get elected. As I have said before, I have to give Obama FISA just like I had to give JFK his reluctance to push for civil rights. They're leaders and get to make calculations like that, which is not the same as rolling over supinely.
When Arlo Guthrie was born the nurse asked Woody what faith to fill out on the birth form. He said, "'None.'" The nurse said, "Sir, you can't do that." Woody said, "In that case, make it 'All.'" I actually like Obama's turning the faith-based movement against the right wing by funding some services by all religions, not just the fundamentalists. However, he limits it, as the Rethugs do not, to outsourcing certain governmental purposes. (Outsourcing may be inherently a bad idea -- but we do it in so many other areas, why avoid it only in this set of human services?)
If we were to be exactly as blatant as the Bushies have been, and only funded our allies, just think of all the Hispanic and black churches that could be doing good work with federal money. But if we can go beyond that and trick the evangelicals into taking public funding for daycare, we will have overcome one of their blocks on women's independence; and I surmise we can draw regulations that will make the churches that take federal money do so for useful purposes rather than for antiabortion, homeschooling, etc.
It is a very clever way to drive a wedge between the evangelicals and the Republicans, and I applaud it on that level alone. The fact that under the Democrats it can be used to nourish Democratic constituencies is additionally attractive.
Federal funding is the smallest problem with church-state relations anyway. Until we achieve a level of federal services sufficient to the population's needs we are going to need to use private charitable and religious institutions to accomplish state purposes, which I conceive to be different than "establishing religion." I mean, if we wanted to turn the schools, old folks homes, hospitals, libraries and all of agricultural research back to the churches, like it was in 1800, I would oppose that.
But just because the Rethugs tried to hijack the churches doesn't mean we should let the bastids have them. Let's get some work out of them instead. If we can fund an army so big it can be used for aggression, we can fund church-based daycare and a lot more. I will support severe limits on fed spending with churches for services rendered only in tandem with limits on fed spending on people with guns; not the one without the other.
An unfortunate fact is that, for this generation at least, the voices of progressive civilization have lost on gun control, and we lost long before the activist Supremes spoke of a gun right which no true strict constructionist could bear. But in this case, as Finley Peter Dunne said about the Spanish-American War, "Trade follows th' flag, an' th' Supreme Court follows th' iliction returns." People vote for guns and against gun controls, and if after Gunsaint Reagan got shot we couldn't stop handguns, it is going to take more time to make that possible. For Obama to recognize this rhetorically is just good sense. Let it ride for about 10 years and try again.
Same with the death penalty. Americans are just not enlightened enough to abandon it yet, any more than they are ready to abandon their guns, even though neither does what they are advertised to do and both cause far more pain, suffering, dysfunction and drama than they ought. Once we are cultured enough to criminalize the cultivation, storage, curing, transportation, sale, manufacture, advertising, import, export and packaging of tobacco, tobacco derivatives, tobacco products and tobacco residues anywhere in the US, or the financing, management or corporate oversight of the same, then it will be time to outlaw guns and the death penalty.
On all these things, Obama gets a pass from me for not leading us into fights we can't win today. The weak hearts at the Times need not fear Obama changing on the war, the Supreme Court, or taxes. That they pretend to do so now is just the liberal Republican streak breaking out in them again, half a rope short of usefulness.
A cousin of mine did a YouTube seach and found this interview I did some months ago at the South Carolina Democratic Convention. Go ahead and watch it. It’s short and sweet.They asked me what was the most important issue to me in the 2008 election.
Freed Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt is reunited with her children, Melanie and Lorenzo at a Bogota airport after six years in captivity. Photo: AFP
Timing is everything, I guess, but this is cutting it pretty damn close. Well… McCain’s gotta have Florida, and he can’t pick Jeb Bush so what’s he gonna do?
John McCain's would-be VP Charlie Crist to marry after being dogged by gay rumors
Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida, became engaged on Thursday to Carole Rome, a New York socialite.
They had been seeing each other for nine months and speculation was rife about their future, not least because of its implications for his political career.
His marriage removes a major impediment to a possible McCain-Crist Republican ticket – a bachelor hasn't been chosen as a vice-presidential running mate since 1852.
After a marriage that lasted less than a year before divorce in 1980, Mr. Crist, 51, had not been romantically linked to any woman ever since, prompting speculation that he is gay.
Three years ago, he was asked point-blank if the rumours were true and he denied them, later telling a radio show host: "I love women. I mean, they're wonderful."
In 2006, a 24-year-old Republican party worker claimed he had had a sexual relationship with Mr. Crist and named another man as Mr. Crist's long-term boyfriend. Mr. Crist denied both claims.
He said he met the future Mrs. Crist, the 38-year-old president of her family Halloween costume business.
"She's special in every way. She's brilliant, beautiful and sweet. I'm very lucky," he said.
"I'm very happy and couldn't be more pleased. What a great way to celebrate America's birthday." They had been talking about marrying for "quite a while" after first meeting at dinner, he said.
Mr Crist said he popped the question with a blue sapphire and diamond ring and - despite recent knee surgery - even managed to get down on one knee.
"It was very romantic. God bless her, she said yes," he said.
No date has been set for the wedding. Miss Rome already has two daughters from a previous marriage.
Even without the rumors about his sexuality, Mr Crist is already reportedly seen as too moderate by some on the right wing of the Republican party.
He has in the past said he supports civil unions for homosexuals, describing himself as a "live and let live kind of guy".
However, there have also been reports of Mr Crist telling voters that he supports a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriages and that he opposes adoption by gay couples.
He campaigned frequently with Mr McCain during the Florida primaries and gave the Arizona senator his endorsement.
Critics have accused him of recently shifting his politics to suit those of Mr McCain, notably in an about-turn on expanding oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which he now supports.
Speculation that he was being considered as a running mate was fuelled after he and two other hotly-tipped names - the Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney - met with Mr McCain at his home in Arizona.
Count on the Brits to set it right out there for you, warts and all.
News Orgs Already Getting It Wrong On Obama's Iraq Remarks
That was quick. Today on the trail Obama suggested that he would "continue to refine" his Iraq plans in consultation with commanders on the ground, and the big news orgs are already getting this wrong.
Democrat Barack Obama opened the door Thursday to altering his plan to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq in 16 months based on what he hears from military commanders during his upcoming trip there.
That's a reckless distortion. "Alter" is a far stronger word than "refine" is. And worse, when you take the stronger word "alter" and put it next to "plan to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq in 16 months," it makes a far, far stronger suggestion than Obama did. Obama merely said he would "continue to refine his policies." The tone of this lede makes it sound like Obama is preparing a wholesale junking of his withdrawal plan.
This is way overstated. It states as outright fact that Obama signaled that he'd backtrack on the time-line. But that didn't happen at all. The Los Angeles Times used this formulation, too, but it at least had the decency to pose it as a question, and not state this as established fact.
All Obama is doing here is defusing the GOP argument that he'd withdraw recklessly and preserving flexibility for himself as commander in chief. These journalistic errors are matters of nuance. But nuance is hugely important here.
Will Obama in fact change his withdrawal policy at any point? I have no idea. Anything is possible. But he certainly didn't say anything today that's even remotely as suggestive or ominous as this reporting makes it seem.
Red Montana: A Weathervane to a New Electoral Map?
Don’t look now but a Rasmussen Poll has Barack Obama leading John McCain by 5 points in Montana (48%- 43%.) WOW. All those early bucks the Obama campaign has been spreading around in red states might mean a lot more than just making the McCain campaign play defense all over the map. This would of course, indicate a pretty major shakeup in electoral politics. There’s no question that Montana alone with a paltry 3 electoral votes isn’t a deal breaker for McCain, but it’s got to be pretty unsettling. After all, George Bush pounded John Kerry by 20 points (59-29) in Big Sky Country four years ago. True, Montana has a Democratic Governor and 2 Democratic Senators but at the Presidential level it has pretty much been lights out for Democrats. Lyndon Johnson won it in a 1964 and Bill Clinton won a plurality in 1992 (38% in a 3 way race with Ross Perot draining off 25% or so from Bush, Sr.)
We’ll see what happens, but I think it’s going to be pretty exciting. Florida is tied right now. Obama is holding an edge in Virginia and even Georgia looks like it could be in play. Then there are other states like Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, which seem likely to break blue. Well, as we all know from past painful experience, the votes are counted in November, not June, and the race has only just begun. But I like the way the map is starting to turn an interesting shade of Purple.
Here is General Wesley Clark’s most recent statement, released today on the website of the organization VoteVets:
"There are many important issues in this Presidential election, clearly one of the most important issues is national security and keeping the American people safe. In my opinion, protecting the American people is the most important duty of our next President. I have made comments in the past about John McCain's service and I want to reiterate them in order be crystal clear. As I have said before I honor John McCain's service as a prisoner of war and a Vietnam Veteran. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. I would never dishonor the service of someone who chose to wear the uniform for our nation.
"John McCain is running his campaign on his experience and how his experience would benefit him and our nation as President. That experience shows courage and commitment to our country - but it doesn't include executive experience wrestling with national policy or go-to-war decisions. And in this area his judgment has been flawed - he not only supported going into a war we didn't have to fight in Iraq, but has time and again undervalued other, non-military elements of national power that must be used effectively to protect America But as an American and former military officer I will not back down if I believe someone doesn't have sound judgment when it comes to our nation's most critical issues."
As a veteran, I am so proud of General Wes Clark for making the distinction between McCain’s honorable service, which nobody disputes, and the judgment and leadership credentials, which McCain so obviously lacks, to be Commander-in-Chief.
