cognitive dissident

Obama's campaign has finally taken the gloves off by launching a website called Keating Economics that focuses on McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal:

Remember that the youngest tier of the electorate was barely out of diapers when the Keating Five scandal broke, and likely has no idea what it was all about--at least until now.

The 13-minute documentary, "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis," isn't bad, although the audio track sometimes drops out during the ethics investigation into McCain's shenanigans. (It's a little slow-paced, too.) I'd like to see 30-second and 60-second versions for TV spots, where they could do the most good.

Here's their primer:

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

links:
Charles Keating
Keating Five
JohnMcCainRecord.com bullet-points other issues (the economy, education, health care, Iraq, taxes, etc.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are a few fact-checks of Palin's performance last night:

Palin: "we also have John McCain to thank for bringing in a bipartisan effort people to the table so that we can start putting politics aside, even putting a campaign aside, and just do what's right to fix this economic problem that we are in."

Fact: In no way did McCain "put his campaign aside." (See ThinkProgress here and here.)

Palin: "Barack Obama and Senator Biden also voted for the largest tax increases in U.S. history."

Fact: I'm not sure what she's referring to, unless it's the expiration of Bush's temporary 2001 and 2003 tax cuts--which were sold to the public on the condition that they expire in 2010. As FactCheck noted in an article about McCain's similar (and similarly false) accusation during primary season:

"By the measure most economists prefer, McCain is wrong in his claim that Sens. Clinton and Obama want to implement "the single largest tax increase since the Second World War;" it would be the fifth largest. At a more basic level, it's misleading to tag Clinton and Obama for something that was scheduled during the Bush administration - the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which by law will occur at the end of 2010"

Palin: "the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives"

Fact: If Palin thinks that her family is in the middle class, she's been hanging around the McCains for too long. As the AP noted, "The Palins' assets seem enviable: a half-million-dollar home on a lake with a float-plane at the dock, two vacation retreats, commercial-fishing rights worth an estimated $50,000 or more and an income last year of at least $230,000. That compares to a median income of $64,333 for Alaskans and $50,740 for Americans in 2007, according to the Census Bureau."
(An income of $230K puts the Palins within the top 2½% of American households.)

Palin: "Barack Obama still can't admit the surge works."

Fact: Actually, Obama said just that more than a month ago to Faux News:

"I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated...I've already said it's succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

Palin: "I had a good conversation with him [Dr. Henry Kissinger] recently. And he shared with me his passion for diplomacy."

Like he shared it with Cambodia, Chile, and East Timor? I wouldn't meet Kissinger without handcuffs, leg irons, extradition papers, and a jet ready to take him to The Hague--but Palin apparently has a double standard for meeting with war criminals. (Republicans are OK; foreign heads of state are unacceptable...)

Palin:

"...there's a time, too, when Americans are going to say, 'Enough is enough with your ticket,' on constantly looking backwards, and pointing fingers, and doing the blame game. There have been huge blunders in the war. There have been huge blunders throughout this administration, as there are with every administration.

But for a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there's just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that's where you're going. Positive change is coming, though. Reform of government is coming. We'll learn from the past mistakes in this administration and other administrations."

Huh? She's going to "learn from past mistakes" without "looking backwards"....that's quite a trick. Later on, she tried again with "Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again," but repeating a talking point doesn't make it true.

Palin: "Oh, yeah, it's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider."

No, it's obvious that you don't know what you're talking about...but one-third of the country will still applaud your spurious accusations, misstatements, and question-dodging. Politico noted this morning:

...she got out alive, though there were white-knuckle moments along the way: questions that were answered with painfully obvious talking points that betrayed scant knowledge of the issue at hand and sometimes little relevance to the question that had been asked. [...]

On at least 10 occasions, Palin gave answers that were nonspecific, completely generic, pivoted away from the question at hand, or simply ignored it: on global warming, an Iraq exit strategy, Iran and Pakistan, Iranian diplomacy, Israel-Palestine (and a follow-up), the nuclear trigger, interventionism, Cheney's vice presidency and her own greatest weakness.

Palin called McCain a "maverick" four times and twice referred to his campaign as a "team of mavericks." (That makes as little sense as talking about "symphony of soloists," but let's leave that contradiction aside for a moment.) The incessant reference to John (90%) McCain as a "maverick" is a myth that has needed to be deflated for a long time; by the time Palin bragged that McCain has "taken shots left and right," I was about to start taking shots...the kind in short (or not-so-short) glasses. Thankfully, Biden had also had enough:

BIDEN: I'll be very brief. Can I respond to that?

Look, the maverick -- let's talk about the maverick John McCain is. And, again, I love him. He's been a maverick on some issues, but he has been no maverick on the things that matter to people's lives.

He voted four out of five times for George Bush's budget, which put us a half a trillion dollars in debt this year and over $3 trillion in debt since he's got there.

He has not been a maverick in providing health care for people. He has voted against -- he voted including another 3.6 million children in coverage of the existing health care plan, when he voted in the United States Senate.

He's not been a maverick when it comes to education. He has not supported tax cuts and significant changes for people being able to send their kids to college.

He's not been a maverick on the war. He's not been a maverick on virtually anything that genuinely affects the things that people really talk about around their kitchen table.

Can we send -- can we get Mom's MRI? Can we send Mary back to school next semester? We can't -- we can't make it. How are we going to heat the -- heat the house this winter?

He voted against even providing for what they call LIHEAP, for assistance to people, with oil prices going through the roof in the winter.

So maverick he is not on the important, critical issues that affect people at that kitchen table.

That was the highlight of the debate for me; the low point was when moderator Gwen Ifill failed to follow up on her question about same-sex couples. When Biden and Palin each expressed a lack of support for marriage equality--although both claim to support--Ifill just let it drop: "Wonderful. You agree. On that note, let's move to foreign policy." In doing so, she overlooked a major difference between the campaigns: the Obama ticket supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and would end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the "Defense" of Marriage Act.

As a side note, Palin was wildly inconsistent in her pronunciation of "nuclear," sometimes getting it right and sometimes using Bushspeak ("nuke-ulur"). Offhand, I'd estimate her ratio at about 1:1, which leads me to suspect that she was unaware of the correct pronunciation until fairly recently. (I'm guessing about five weeks or so...)

Palin proved that she could regurgitate a string of talking points until her 90 seconds were up, but she had little of substance to say...and a folksy delivery only goes so far. (Among the talking points that she refused to relinquish in the face of the facts were "Obama will raise your taxes," "Obama voted against funding the troops," and "Obama will sit down with dictators." Her incessant repetitions of them became increasingly nauseating as the evening wore on.)

Ron Chusid has an excellent analysis at Liberal Values, with this observation:

At one point Palin said, "I think we need a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there, brought to Washington, D.C." Does she mean bring the reality of the metamphetamine capital of Alaska to Washington, D.C.? The idea that "reality from Wasilla Main Street" is any substitute for actual knowledge of the issues contributed to Palin's defeat in the debate.

I don't want to see Palin in another campaign debate.

For any office.

Ever.

links:
CNN's transcript of the debate is here

FactCheck's analysis is here

Posted by cognitivedissident at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Andrew Sullivan posted this photo, from Austin TX:

Welcome to the reality-based community!

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This mock slideshow (h/t: Brendan Kiley at Slog) of Biden's preparation for tonight's VP debate made me laugh, so I'm sharing it with you.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The video "Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?" attempts to blame Wall Street's failures on the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, but the facts are not in agreement with the thesis that the 31-year-old CRA caused the Bush-era housing crisis:

"Contrary to the accusation that the CRA is responsible for the current crisis, experts have said that approximately 80 percent of high-priced subprime loans were offered by financial institutions that are not subject to the CRA. Moreover, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco earlier this year said the CRA has actually increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households" ("Media conservatives baselessly blame Community Reinvestment Act for foreclosure spike," MediaMatters, 30 September 2008)

"CRA didn't bring about the reckless lending at the heart of the crisis. Just as sub-prime lending was exploding, CRA was losing force and relevance. And the worst offenders, the independent mortgage companies, were never subject to CRA -- or any federal regulator. Law didn't make them lend. The profit motive did"
(Robert Gordon, "Did Liberals Cause the Sub-Prime Crisis?" American Prospect, 7 April 2008)

"The CRA was at its strongest in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, a period when subprime loans performed quite well. It was only after the Bush administration cut back on CRA enforcement that problems arose, a timing issue which should stop those blaming the law dead in their tracks."
(Aaron Pressman, "Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis," BusinessWeek, 29 September 2008)

The video's breathlessly paranoid style

...And Political Speech Is Still Free!

At Least Until January...

does nothing to bolster its credibility, and neither does its claim that

Everything In This Video Is Fact

especially when it recycles the Franklin Raines myth:

...And You'll Never Guess?

Who Barack Obama

Gets Advice From...

On Housing Issues...

Meet Franklin Raines...

Oops! I guess they didn't read this AP article, which mentions:

"Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything -- ever."

Deregulation is a far more plausible culprit for the current crisis, as admitted in this Barron's article:

Wow, we've made quite a mess of things here on Wall Street...[b]ut here's a news flash for you, D.C.: We could not have done it without you. We may be drunks, but you were our enablers: Your legislative, executive, and administrative decisions made possible all that we did. Our recklessness would not have reached its soaring heights but for your governmental incompetence. [...]

1999: The Financial Services Modernization Act repealed Glass-Steagall, a law that had separated the commercial-banking industry from Wall Street, and the two industries, plus insurance, came together again. Banks became bigger, clumsier, and hard to manage. Apparently, risk-management became all but impossible, even as banks had greater access to larger pools of capital.

2000: The Commodities Futures Modernization Act defined financial commodities such as "interest rates, currency prices, and stock indexes" as "excluded commodities." They could trade off the futures exchanges, with minimal oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission, nor the Federal Reserve, nor any state insurance regulators had the ability to supervise or regulate the writing of credit-default swaps by hedge funds, investment banks or insurance companies.
(Barry Ritholtz, "Uncle Sam the Enabler," Barron's, 29 September 2008)

The closing claim of this hyper-partisan hackwork video, that McCain's continuation of Bush's failed policies should somehow be classified as "change," is so ridiculous that it practically rebuts itself.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I knew it was time to dive back into the troll-heavy waters of my local newspaper letters-to-the-editor page when I read this gem:

Obama's constitutional writings are troubling

In Barack Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope," we get a view of the senator that the McCain camp has ignored.

Obama calls the Constitution "stodgy traditions of a distant past." He says the idea that the original intention of the Constitution can and must be followed if we would have a safe republic is a "myth." He states that "fidelity to these rules will not guarantee a just society."

Also rejected, Obama claims, is "the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology." Really? What about the Bill of Rights, the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and freedom of worship?

Obama regards the Constitution as "a conversation to be had" with "all citizens" to "test their ideas against an external reality." Whose reality? Whose final decision?

[name and address redacted]

I responded with this:

misinterpretations of Obama's writings are troubling

A recent letter misinterpreted Senator Obama's view of the Constitution, and twisted his words to make them appear to mean the opposite of what he wrote. Whether done accidentally or deliberately, the letter imputed a relativistic view to Obama that contradicts his actual words. These misrepresentations need to be corrected.

In the third chapter of The Audacity of Hope, Obama expresses a sensible middle ground between a myth-based strict constructionism and a foundationless relativism. Far from believing the Constitution to be "the stodgy traditions of a distant past," Obama clearly repudiates that view, calling it:

the freedom of the relativist, the rule breaker, the teenager who has discovered his parents are imperfect and has learned to play one off of the other--the freedom of the apostate.

And yet, ultimately, such apostasy leaves me unsatisfied as well.

I can't do justice to all of Obama's constitutional views here, so I encourage anyone who wants to know what he really thinks about the Constitution to read The Audacity of Hope. The incessant false rumors about Obama--claiming that he's a Muslim, a socialist, the Anti-Christ, a foreign-born Kenyan citizen who won't recite the Pledge and snubs our soldiers overseas--discredit those who create and spread them, and debase our political discourse.

Can we stick to the facts, please?

Posted by cognitivedissident at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

FactCheck is on top of the claims made by Obama and McCain at last night's debate, with an overview of both candidates' debatable claims. (The AP has a briefer version here.) CNN has a transcript available here, which will do until the Commission on Presidential Debates posts the official one.

Obama was less dynamic overall than I had expected, and he expressed agreement with McCain far too often. By way of contrast, I counted 7 variants of McCain's claim that "Senator Obama doesn't understand." This appears to be his campaign's new mantra, and was almost as annoying as his continued misinterpretation of Obama's "without preconditions" statement, countered by Obama's correct quotation of the odious Henry Kissinger.

One error of McCain's seems to have gotten comparatively little attention:

Right now, the United States of American business pays the second-highest business taxes in the world, 35 percent. Ireland pays 11 percent.

The GOP's corporations-are-overtaxed meme is false, and Obama's response was very much on target:

John mentioned the fact that business taxes on paper are high in this country, and he's absolutely right. Here's the problem: There are so many loopholes that have been written into the tax code, oftentimes with support of Senator McCain, that we actually see our businesses pay effectively one of the lowest tax rates in the world.

According to this recent GAO study (2.7MB PDF) of tax years 1998 through 2005, two-thirds of corporations paid no income tax, including one-quarter of large corporations (those with at least $250 million of assets or at least $50 million of receipts). An effective tax rate of 0% is, as far as I can tell, unbeaten by any other nation. (While we're discussing facts, McCain was wrong about Ireland's corporate tax rate; the Irish Times notes that it is actually 12.5%.)

The remaining debates, which I hope will be more decisive than last night's opener, are as follows:

Thursday 2 October: VP debate Washington University in St. Louis, MO (Gwen Ifill)

Tuesday 7 October: second presidential debate (town meeting)
Belmont University in Nashville, TN (Tom Brokaw)

Wednesday 15 October: third presidential debate
Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY (Bob Schieffer)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Question: What's wrong with this picture? [Answer below]

It's the same meme as this David Horsey cartoon I mentioned in January:

I'd avoid overdrawing the comparison, but it does address the "inexperience" argument rather dramatically.

[Answer: Lincoln was a Representative, not a Senator.]

Posted by cognitivedissident at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have undeniable proof that McCain already won tonight's debate!

How is that possible, considering that only reversed his chicken-out decision within the last hour? Easy: he's already running ads making the claim, and his supporters are all-too-willing to believe GOP claims without evidence (WMDs, mission accomplished, Swift Boat Liars, et al).

Here is McCain's ad (h/t: Ron Chusid at Liberal Values):

(The full screenshot is here.)

Liberals will want to actually watch the debate (assuming that McCain doesn't flip-flop again) before making any assessments.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I received several questions about my support for Obama:

There is one fact that is irrefutable
Obama is a first term US Senator
He has served almost 3 years and out of that three years he has been campaigning about 18months
Therefore, he has been actually "Senatoring" for 18months
Prior to that he never ran anything

As a law professor he never published any papers - unheard of in academia

So what is it about him that makes you think he is a good candidate for President of the Unites States?

I ran my own multi million dollar business for [x] years
I made payroll for [x] years
I employed hundreds of people who supported their family with the jobs I gave them
I'm [x+y] years old and have experience in "life matters" that come with age
Am I not more qualified to run this country than Obama?

What makes him so special to you?
Is it because he's a great orator?
Or is it because he's the Democratic nominee?
I think it's the latter

I think the Democrats would support Mickey Mouse if he was the parties' nominee

There are several misconceptions here, which I will address in order. First, not being published isn't "unheard of" for part-time faculty (remember that he was a lawyer, and later a state Senator, during that time period). Obama did manage to write (not ghost-write) a pair of books after turning down a tenure-track offer and leaving academia for politics.

Also, your claim that Obama "never ran anything" is false. He directed the Developing Communities Project, was president of the Harvard Law Review, directed Project Vote, and served on the board of directors of at least eight other organizations. Although unknown nationally four years ago, Obama created a campaign that beat the heavily favored Hillary Clinton political machine. (So much for his never running anything.)

Why do I think Obama is a good candidate? Most important to me are Obama's positions on the issues; while not perfect, they are uniformly better than McCain's. I read Obama's "Blueprint for Change" (600KB PDF) six months ago, and have no qualms about supporting his brand of progressivism against the regressive Republican ticket. Here are a few examples:

• Obama has promised to end the Iraq war, close Gitmo, restore habeas corpus, and "finish the fight against Al Qaeda."

• Obama's proposed tax cuts would benefit most Americans, as contrasted with McCain's continuation of Bush's top-heavy trickle-down failure. Obama also supports universal healthcare coverage and opposes Social Security privatization.

• On LGBT issues, there's no comparison. Obama recognizes that equality is a "moral imperative," supports ENDA, and opposes both DADT and DOMA. Until last year, McCain didn't understand the acronym LGBT.

• His experience as a professor of constitutional law gives Obama an advantage in understanding the document that he will swear to "preserve, protect, and defend." Also, his legal background will aid him in making sensible judicial appointments, repudiating Bush's torture regime, ending warrantless wiretapping, and returning the rule of law to Washington.

Age and "life matters" experience do not equal wisdom, and youthful inexperience does not equal lack of leadership potential. (Here's another irrefutable fact: like Obama, Abraham Lincoln had only a single term in Congress to his credit before becoming president.)

Business experience doesn't necessarily translate into good governance, because the nation isn't a for-profit enterprise; its goals are fundamentally different from siphoning off the value of workers' efforts to reward investors and give jobs to executives. Besides, the results of our current CEO presidency are so poor that McCain is trying desperately to run away from Bush's record rather than trumpeting his all-too-close association with it. (And no, you're not "more qualified to run this country" than Obama is. You were joking, right?)

Besides, what valuable experience does McCain have that would make him a good president? Getting shot down 40 years ago, divorcing his crippled wife to marry an heiress, getting involved in the Keating Five scandal, surrounding himself with lobbyists, and supporting the deregulation that led to the current financial fiasco? McCain may have plenty of experience, but it's all of the wrong kind; Josh Marshall at TPM handles this canard well:

"Let's face it. On major economy-imperiling financial scandals brought about by lax regulation and help from lobbyist-encrusted politicians, McCain really is the candidate of experience."

Don't assume that Obama is "so special" to me merely because I debunk GOP lies about him. If the media hadn't been so complicit in Bush's machismo mirage, all the misinformation they spread about Gore and Kerry during the 2000 and 2004 campaigns wouldn't have had the disastrous effect of putting Bush in the White House; I'm just doing my (small) part to help prevent another catastrophe.

I wouldn't call Obama a "great" orator, but he's at least a competent one. The fact that he can read a speech from a TelePrompTer doesn't make him a good candidate, although it does elevate him slightly over the illiterate president to which we've become accustomed. I'm looking forward to the debates--assuming McCain doesn't chicken out--as a chance to compare his oratory head-to-head against McCain's.

You may believe that I'm supporting Obama because he's the Democratic nominee, but you're wrong; I do not support Democratic candidates blindly, and I am not a Democrat. (Blind faith isn't exactly a primary quality of the Left, by the way...you might want to check the other side of the aisle for some prime examples of that particular lemming-like habit.)

I think the Republicans would support an out-of-touch double-talking faux-populist plutocrat if he were the party's nominee. (Oops...I guess that's not really a hypothetical situation, given how many times it's happened lately.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not a big Maureen Dowd fan, but in this case (h/t: Ron Chusid at Liberal Values) I'm glad to make an exception. Dowd imagines a dialogue between Obama and Martin Sheen's West Wing character, President Jed Bartlet:

OBAMA They pivoted off the argument that I was inexperienced to the criticism that I'm -- wait for it -- the Messiah, who, by the way, was a community organizer. When I speak I try to lead with inspiration and aptitude. How is that a liability?

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn't extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

[...]

You were raised by a single mother on food stamps -- where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I'd ask them what their problem is with excellence.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sam Harris recognized Palin's lack of qualifications for VP in "Average Isn't Good Enough:"

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. [...] This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get.

He ruffled enough feathers to pen a follow-up piece to defend himself against 'sexist pig and liberal shill' accusations, and now he's drawing the ire of Newsweek's nattering nabobs with this article:

The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.

[...]

Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth--in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Limbaugh is now taking the lead in lying about Obama, claiming that "he's not black:"

Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood? [...] He's Arab. You know, he's from Africa. He's from Arab parts of Africa. He's not -- his father was -- he's not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly brings the smackdown, noting that Limbaugh's claim is "demonstrably ridiculous:"

First, it's probably worth noting that Obama is not "Arab" "from Africa," he's American from Hawaii. [...] Second, his father is from Kenya, and Kenya isn't an Arab part of Africa. Third, "African American" generally refers to black people in the United States of African lineage. "The last thing that he is is African American"? Please.

But let's not overlook the point here -- far-right hacks aren't quite done with the smear. The efforts to label Obama "Arab" is just the latest twist in a larger effort launched by those motivated by fear and bigotry.

In the interest of being reality-based, here's some relevant information from the "Demographics" section of Wikipedia's article on Kenya:

Kenya is a country of great ethnic diversity. Most Kenyans are bilingual in English and Swahili, also a big percentage speak their mother tongue of their ethnic tribe.

Ethnic groups:
Kikuyu 22%, Luhya 14%, Luo 13%, Kalenjin 12%, Kamba 11%, Kisii 6%, Meru 6%, other African 15%, non-African (Asian, European, and Arab) 1%

Religious affiliation:
Protestant 45%, Roman Catholic 25%, Islam 10%, Traditional Religions 10%, Orthodox 1%. Others include Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and the Bahá'í Faith.

To summarize: Kenya (the homeland of Obama's father) is 1% ethnically Arab and 10% Muslim. Using that slim shred of information to call Obama Arab is, well, just about what I expect from Limbaugh and his legion of listeners.

Simply pathetic.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The infamous Wall Street bailouts now total $1.8 trillion, making them a deeper money pit than Bush's Iraq debacle. Check out this nice graph of US bailouts (h/t: Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise) from 1970 to the present:

The enormous magenta circle represents the 1989 S&L bailout, and the four to its right are all Bush-era bailouts:

• Airline Industry, 2001 ($18.6 billion)
• Bear Stearns, 2008 ($30 billion)
• Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac, 2008 ($200 billion)
• AIG, 2008 ($85 billion)

There appears to be additional turbulence ahead, so please keep your seatbelts fastened and your trays in their fully upright position.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had an exchange that began with an email linking to a Slate article on Jim Johnson and Frank Raines (formerly of Fannie Mae) and making these claims:

This guy is Obama senior advisor

Also Frank Raines is another top Obama advisor and both are close personal friends

I responded:

That's typical executive-suite greed, all right...Obama's economic advisers are a bit too right-of-center for my tastes, so I'm not surprised that there are a few scandals in their closets.

If you're going to complain about overpaid execs with a history of shameful economic decisions, how about McCain's advisers Phil Gramm (the Enron loophole, financial deregulation) and Carly Fiorina (fired from HP, $21 million severance package)?

What's good for the goose...

In yet another self-taught lesson in verifying email claims before assuming their veracity, I did a little more research and followed up with this:

I erred in accepting your assertions about Johnson and Raines; neither of them advises Obama on economics or anything else.

Jim Johnson was part of Obama's VP search committee, but was not an adviser.

Neither was Frank Raines: "Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything -- ever." (Source: AP)

Economists for Obama has a list of Obama's actual economic advisers, in case you're interested...

Mother Jones observes the GOP's hypocrisy this way: "McCain Attacks Wall Street Greed--While 83 Wall Street Lobbyists Work for His Campaign." There are 177 lobbyists "working for the McCain campaign as either aides, policy advisers, or fundraisers:"

...at least 83 have in recent years lobbied for the financial industry McCain now attacks. These are high-paid influence-peddlers who have been working the corridors of the nation's capital to win favors and special treatment for investment banks, securities firms, hedge funds, accounting outfits, and insurance companies. Their clients have included AIG, the newest symbol of corporate excess; Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy on Monday sending the stock market into a tailspin; Merrill Lynch, which was bought out by Bank of America this week; and Washington Mutual, the banking giant that could be the next to fall.

The DNC's report "No Reformer" (600KB PDF) looks at McCain's team of lobbyists and their financial power:

McCain's herd of lobbyists have made over $930 million over the last decade representing every major industry, from oil and gas to health insurance, telecommunications and pharmaceutical companies and a host of foreign governments, including dictators and despots guilty of murder and egregious human rights abuses. McCain has taken nearly $12 million in contributions from donors and PACs affiliated with clients represented by those lobbyists.

Massie Ritsch at Open Secrets has a good summary of the financial industry's contributions to both candidates:

Overall, the securities and investment industry has contributed about $10 million to Obama and $7 million to McCain. To all federal candidates for president and Congress, and to political parties, the industry has contributed more than $101 million in the 2008 election cycle, 56 percent of it to Democrats. The Democrats' edge is a relatively recent development, however; Republicans had the advantage for most of the last 10 years. Contributions from the commercial banking industry are roughly split between Obama and McCain -- $2 million for the Democrat, $1.9 million for the Republican. The banking industry has contributed about $25 million in this election cycle to federal candidates and parties, giving 52 percent to Republicans.

The cynic in me wonders: Are those contributors going to get their money's worth from Obama, or are they just hedging their bets against a McCain loss?

Posted by cognitivedissident at 8:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This chain email (seen at AmericaBlog and Liberal Values, and which appears to have originated with John Ridley at HuffPo) is grounded in fact, rather unusual for its genre:

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
• Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

• If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
• Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

• Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
• Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

• If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
• If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

• If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising two daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

• If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
• If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
• If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

Other than the complete irrelevance of Mr Palin's education, that's a great email...even better than the Republican chickenhawks email from 2004!

Posted by cognitivedissident at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Matt Shepherd has posted "The Mavericking Maverick Mavericks More," a series of McCain photos with captions from Frank Miller's classic graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (h/t: Paul Constant at Slog). It's well worth checking out:

Bravo!

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are 52 of McCain's lies, (h/t: AmericaBlog) aggregated from various exposés:

How high will he go before Election Day?

Posted by cognitivedissident at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Obama's newest ad finally takes aim at the firehose of fabrications being spewed by the McCain camp:

The ad's only drawback is being one step removed from the scandals: instead of juxtaposing McCain's/Palin's lies with reality, the ad features various media quotes about their dishonorable campaign of deception. This could play into both the GOP's persecution complex and their "liberal media" mythology, and gives them a way to deflect the facts yet again.

Let us hope that voters are finally beginning to pay attention.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dale (Parenting Beyond Belief) McGowan has a great piece on the Right's "Inconvenient Commandment," (i.e., the biblical prohibition against lying) and how much trouble they seem to have following it. Here's the comment I left for him:

I, too, find it interesting (ironic?) that those with the seemingly strongest prohibitions against lying seem to do more of it than we of the godless-heathen/moral-relativist persuasion...rather like some other "moral problems" that tend to be worse in highly religious states, such as teen pregnancy and divorce. A cross-national study I mentioned three years ago (I apologize for the link-whoring, but it's relevant!) noted that "higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion."

I've seen speculation that--like the menopausal grandmother who insists that everyone should wear a sweater when she shivers--religious voters want to legislate "morality" (anti-choice laws, anti-LGBT, anti-divorce, pro-censorship, etc.) not because society as a whole needs them, but because they themselves do.

I'd like to answer your last question with another question: doesn't shame require a conscience?

P.S. Some political trivia: Carter never used the word "malaise" in his famous speech.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I know, I know...you're as tired of posts about the McCain/Palin media mendacity machine as I am. I would be remiss in my blogging duties, however, if I didn't call your attention to Andrew Sullivan's post "Scales. Eyes. McCain." I can't do his fine writing justice by abridging it, so I'll reprint both his introduction and his conclusion:

Reading the "press" in this surreal climate right now, one is tempted to despair. I'm not giving in to it, because I still believe that the actual truth matters in the world. If propaganda could win in the end against truth, then Bush's approval ratings would be somewhere in the high 80s. They are in the lower 30s. In the end, the American people are not fools. And facts are facts. Right now, we are being subjected to an absolutely disorienting blizzard of lies and absurdities (Palin is a lying absurdity) from the McCain campaign. The idea is to so disorient people, to throw so many new concepts, brands, lies, images, marketing and distortions at them that they will not be able to focus on the issues in this election, and the real choices serious people have to make.

[...]

In the end, whatever the power of the religious fundamentalist movement that is now the GOP in simply denying reality, reality wins. And the fact that John McCain is now a serial and shameless liar will also sink in. The question before us is not whether this will be one day understood to be true. The question is whether it will be flushed out in time.

We cannot control these despicable liars in the McCain campaign. We can only tell the truth as fearlessly and as relentlessly and as continuously as we can until November 4. We must do our duty. And if the American people want to re-elect the machine that has helped destroy this country's national security, global reputation and economic health, then that is their choice. But I am not so depressed to think that they will.

We must give them the truth. And that will feel like hell. And we must tell it like Truman told it: cheerfully, passionately and relentlessly.

Sullivan's not right all the time, but he nailed this situation perfectly. If our media had more pundits of his caliber, we'd be much better off.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Overblown stories of Palin's book-banning desires are circulating, and it's time to set the record straight:

Sarah Palin never officially ordered that any books be removed from libraries, although she did fire a librarian who was not sufficiently enthusiastic about Palin's "hypothetical" censorship questions. (The librarian was reinstated after public outcry proved too embarrassing for Palin.)

An interesting incident is revealed in this NYT article about Palin's penchant for secrecy and rampant cronyism in office:

For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

"People would bring books back censored," recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin's predecessor. "Pages would get marked up or torn out."

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book "Daddy's Roommate" on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase [Palin's campaign manager] and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

"Sarah said she didn't need to read that stuff," Ms. Chase said. "It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it."

Palin's attitude is all-too-typical of the Right's animus toward books: learning is scorned, ignorance is preferred to curiosity, and dogma is exalted over knowledge.

Look, I know we liberals badly want to win this election, but let's not start acting like Republicans by circulating bogus emails. We don't need to lie to win, because the truth is more damaging to McCain and Palin than anything else.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Paul Krugman is dismayed at the McCain/Palin campaign's "Blizzard of Lies:"

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks" when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they're all claims recently made by the McCain campaign -- and they're all out-and-out lies. [...]

I can't think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign's lies in 2000 were artful -- you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

McCain's "Double-Talk Express" has veered off the honesty highway numerous times, and often seems to spend more time off the road than on it. The media, however, studiously avoid his erratic path, and are barely able to muster an occasional noncommittal remark about the two campaigns' differing views on what constitutes responsible driving habits.

Fuck that.

The media must start calling McCain's lies for what they are: cynical attempts to manipulate an electorate into making this another cult-of-personality election. If they fail to do so, we as citizens must do it for them. As Anonymous Liberal writes:

John McCain is on the verge of doing one of two things: he's either about to implode under the weight of his own lies, or he's on the verge of proving, definitively, that there is no political downside to telling an endless stream of bald-faced lies. Sadly, I'm beginning to suspect the latter. [...]

The most basic function of the political press is to inform the people and to hold politicians accountable. When blatant lying carries no political downside, that means the press is serving as a conduit for disinformation and, by definition, not holding politicians accountable for their statements. And if that's the case, if all that modern news coverage succeeds in doing is amplifying and rewarding dishonestly, then democracy is actually better off without any coverage at all.

This election is a test of the political media in this country. If journalists can't find a way to dissuade the use of flagrant dishonesty as a tactic, they will have failed this country miserably.

Hmm...where have I heard the term "miserable failure" before?

links:
"McCain and Palin's Top 20 Lies, Myths, and Flip-Flops" (AlterNet)
"John McCain's 42 Flip-Flops" (Think Progress)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my coworkers-in-the-hallway claimed that Snopes is biased because most of the rumors about McCain are true and most of the ones about Obama are false.

I responded that perhaps (since neither of us had seen any false assertions about McCain but several of the false claims about Obama) Snopes' data suggested a Republican proficiency at creating and spreading false rumors. He didn't like that suggestion, but was unable to either disprove it or offer an alternative explanation other than the ever-popular and ever-vacuous "liberal bias."

Tallying the results from Snopes for McCain and Obama shows an amazing disparity:

McCain: 5 rumors (2 false, 2 true, 1 undetermined)
Obama: 33 rumors (20 false, 4 true, 3 undetermined, 6 multiple truth values)

It appears that the GOP is not only much more prolific in spreading rumors, they're also much less interested in their veracity.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The ACLU has launched a new campaign entitled "I'm a Constitution voter," writing that "The fundamental rights of Americans need to be a front-and-center issue in this election. Not flag pins, not lipstick and not pit bulls:"

"...on September 17, Constitution Day, we're asking all civil libertarians to flood local and national media with letters to the editor, call-ins to radio shows and comments on the blogs urging them to cover civil liberties issues when talking about the election.

Demand to know more about how the candidates stand on wiretapping, torture, watch lists, political protest, Real ID, reproductive rights, the death penalty and LGBT rights. Let the media know that you care about these issues, and won't tolerate the fluff and mindless sniping that has dominated campaign coverage thus far."

The text of the ACLU's pledge reads as follows:

• I believe that no one -- including the President -- is above the law.
• I oppose all forms of torture, and I support both closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and ending indefinite detention.
• I oppose warrantless spying.
• I believe that government officials, no matter how high-ranking, should be held accountable for breaking the law and violating the Constitution.
• I believe that the Constitution protects every person's rights equally -- no matter what they believe, how they live, where or if they worship, and whom they love.
• I reject the notion that we have to tolerate violations of our most fundamental rights in the name of fighting terrorism.
• I am deeply committed to the Constitution and expect our country's leaders to share and act on that commitment -- every day, without fail.

As always, I am honored to help publicize the ACLU's efforts to preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"....he's not eligible to be president if he was really born in Kenya...and if his mother was only such-and-such age...and if she had only lived in the US for so many years..."

I couldn't resist, and jumped right in:

"You've got to be kidding me...that conspiracy crap is right down in the sewer with black helicopters, faked moon landings, and 9/11 Truther theories. There is no question that Obama is a US citizen: his birth notice was published in the Honolulu newspaper, and his birth certificate--validated by the Hawaii Department of Health--is posted on his website."

"Well, he posted a birth certificate...it might not really be his...and that newspaper could be fake...they're probably all Democrats, so you never know..."

I rolled my eyes, muttered something about the pathetic lies of media smear merchants, and kept walking. I emailed this Snopes link to one of the culprits, but not this post from my blog...I'm trying to combat misinformation, not get fired.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

AlterNet has published a list of "Sarah Palin's 9 Most Disturbing Beliefs," and hopes that we can "shift the discussion to what really matters about her in the context of the White House: her dangerous views." Here's the summary:

1. She doesn't support "explicit" sex education
2. She believes that our Iraq quagmire "a task that is from God"
3. She's anti-choice...even for rape and incest victims
4. She voted for toxic waste and against clean water
5. She a hypocrite on earmarks and the "Bridge to Nowhere"
6. She supports teaching creationism in schools
7/8. She maintains a "drill everywhere" mentality, and vetoed a wind power project
9. She prefers lobbyists to community-based workers

All that leaves me wondering, "Is she on the right side of any issue?" Over at Slate, Juan Cole notes that Palin's values "more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers:

On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts.

He then asks, "What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist?"

The answer: "Lipstick."

Posted by cognitivedissident at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

David Kravets writes at Wired about the alleged Obama-having-sex-with-Ukranian-girls video, which is laden with malware:

While the video plays for 14 seconds, malicious applications are installed on the victim's computer, researchers reported. Voila, a trojan is installed, an information-stealing application, Websense said, that posts a user's data to a compromised Finnish travel site, hxxp://*snip*-hoel.com/.

Stupidity is its own punishment, and I'm not surprised to see credulous wingnuts--ever-eager to reinforce their prejudices--becoming targets.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

GOP operatives stole several thousand American flags from the Democratic convention site in Denver, and Faux News has already swallowed the McCain campaign's manufactured tale about the flags being "rescued." A Democratic official observed:

"It's pretty reprehensible on their part. Someone made an assumption, took the flags, and essentially lied about what was going to happen to them."

(McCain supporters proudly display the stolen flags at a campaign rally.)

update (9/8 @ 10:59pm):
I'm well aware that there is more detail--dare I say nuance?--to this story, but I'm not inclined to cut the GOP any slack...so I'll simply echo the words of David Harsanyi from the Denver Post:

"All I can say is, [the] Republican Party better make sure [that] every image of the flag is properly dealt with at every single rally for the rest of its existence."

Posted by cognitivedissident at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Andrew Sullivan is:

John McCain has demonstrated with this insane decision that he is unfit to be president of the United States. This was an act of near-criminal negligence. If he can behave this recklessly and impulsively with this decision, the idea of allowing him to become president of the United States is only a smidgen less terrifying than thinking of Palin in that position.

Whatever few doubts I may once have still had about this election, they are resolved now.

Obama has to win. The alternative is unthinkable.