Wednesday Oct 15 # 7
[3 Weeks to Election ]
RC session 8 AM to 9AM
Election Politics: The Politics of the Presidency; SEVENTH EDITION. by Joseph A. Pika, John Anthony Maltese, ch 2 "Election Politics"
RC & VSPU session 9AM to 11:15 AM
Week of Oct 15 to Oct 21
a. Polls
b. Wed Oct 8
Daily Show
OReilly: Who won Debate?
The GOP Peddles Economic Snake Oil
Suddenly Republicans are against market values?
By THOMAS FRANK, Wall Street Journal
Over many years of ascendancy, conservative Republicans have filled government agencies with conservative Republicans and proceeded to enact the conservative Republican policy wish list -- tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing federal work, and so on.
And as a consequence of these policies our conservative Republican government has bungled most of the big tasks that have fallen to it. The rescue and recovery of the Gulf Coast was a disaster. The reconstruction of Iraq was a disaster. The regulatory agencies became so dumb they didn't even see the disasters they were set up to prevent. And each disaster was attributable to the conservative philosophy of government. . . .Consider also the perverse incentives that such a logic would establish. If we validate Mrs. Palin's thoughts on federal bungling by electing her to the high office she seeks, we are encouraging her to bungle everything that comes her way. After all, by her thinking, such bungling will not discredit her doctrines but rather confirm them, demonstrate the need for more Sarah Palins down the road. We will be asking for it, and it's not much of a stretch to predict that we will get it.
October 8, 2008
Op-Ed ColumnistPalin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN; New York Times
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
Fox News: Tell McCain to "Take it to Obama"
Colbert talks with Scarborough: Ayres story
Anti McCain ad: Keating associations
c. Thurs Oct 9
Daily Show--"Fox News"
But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.
Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.
What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.
The political effects of this trend have been obvious. Republicans have alienated the highly educated regions — Silicon Valley, northern Virginia, the suburbs outside of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Raleigh-Durham. The West Coast and the Northeast are mostly gone.
The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.
October 10, 2008
Op-Ed ColumnistMoment of Truth
By PAUL KRUGMAN; New York Times
But on Wednesday the British government, showing the kind of clear thinking that has been all too scarce on this side of the pond, announced a plan to provide banks with £50 billion in new capital — the equivalent, relative to the size of the economy, of a $500 billion program here — together with extensive guarantees for financial transactions between banks. And U.S. Treasury officials now say that they plan to do something similar, using the authority they didn’t want but Congress gave them anyway.
The question now is whether these moves are too little, too late. I don’t think so, but it will be very alarming if this weekend rolls by without a credible announcement of a new financial rescue plan, involving not just the United States but all the major players.
Why do we need international cooperation? Because we have a globalized financial system in which a crisis that began with a bubble in Florida condos and California McMansions has caused monetary catastrophe in Iceland. We’re all in this together, and need a shared solution.
Why this weekend? Because there happen to be two big meetings taking place in Washington: a meeting of top financial officials from the major advanced nations on Friday, then the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting Saturday and Sunday. If these meetings end without at least an agreement in principle on a global rescue plan — if everyone goes home with nothing more than vague assertions that they intend to stay on top of the situation — a golden opportunity will have been missed, and the downward spiral could easily get even worse.
What should be done? The United States and Europe should just say “Yes, prime minister.” The British plan isn’t perfect, but there’s widespread agreement among economists that it offers by far the best available template for a broader rescue effort.
MSNBC; Keith Olbermann, McCain financial plans
Colbert Report: Negatives hurt
Palin attack on Obama: Lowers ratings of McCain and Obama
McCain ad: Hits Obama and Bill Ayers
d. Friday Oct 10
Daily show: review week
Playing Frisbee on a Precipice
America's political class lacks the seriousness this moment demands.
By PEGGY NOONAN; Wall Street Journal
Oct 10, 2008
But these were not the great causes. Neither party has clean hands. Or rather, both parties have dirty hands. Here is the truth, spoken by the increasingly impressive Sen. Tom Coburn: "The root of the problem is political greed in Congress. Members . . . from both parties wanted short-term political credit for promoting homeownership even though they were putting our entire economy at risk by encouraging people to buy homes they couldn't afford. Then, instead of conducting thorough oversight and correcting obvious problems with unstable entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, members of Congress chose to . . . distract themselves with unprecedented amounts of pork-barrel spending." That is the truth.
And yet at the debate, when one citizen-questioner invited both candidates to think aloud about the responsibility of our representatives in Washington, they both gently suggested she was cynical.
She was not cynical. She was informed.
Why would anyone trust either candidate to help dig us out of this if they can't speak frankly about what got us into it?
One had the sense this week that our entire political class is playing Frisbee on the edge of a precipice, that no one is being serious enough, honest enough, that it's all too revved, too intense, and yet too shallow. I have grown impatient with the strategists from the campaigns, the little blond monsters who go on cable TV to give us their bouncy, aggressive, tendentious talking points. They are like the men on the plane, the gargoyles with BlackBerrys who think the race is about them and their personal win/loss ratio, who think history is their plaything, who stay up with the press in the bar sipping Perrier and calling it seltzer, and who advise their candidates, in essence, to talk down to the voters, to the American people. They treat every crisis as if it is a political fact to be used for gain or loss, and not as a real crisis, something that deserves a response of gravity and seriousness.McCain's Chilling Dance With the Dark Side
Jonathan Capehart; Washington Post
Oct 10, 2008So the McCain camp is trying to raise doubts about Barack Obama -- even though the Illinois senator has been on the national stage for four years and has been under the presidential campaign microscope for the last 20 months. They seem to have no qualms appealing to the cultural fears of their agitated, and now energized, base by practically branding Obama as un-American or anti-American. And this is eliciting an ugliness at McCain-Palin events that is justifiably raising alarms that some nut job is going to act on the Republican ticket's cynical campaigning.. . .
Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to ask questions about Obama's relationship, such as it was, with Bill Ayers. Or with Tony Rezko or with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Just as it wouldn't be inappropriate to raise questions about McCain's association with G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate burglar whose colorful history includes telling listeners to his radio show in 1994 to shoot federal agents in the head. When McCain went on Liddy's radio show in November 2007, he told Liddy, "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family... It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."
Rachel Maddow: Financials continue to collapse
News: Palin abused power (5:51min.)
News: MSNBC Luke Russert-Young voters crucial
e Sat. Oct 11
MSNBC McCain defends Obama
Saturday, October 11, 2008
GALLAGHER: Obama's truth deficit
Maggie Gallagher, Washington TimesBarack Obama was only 8 years old when Mr. Murtagh's house was bombed. Mr. Obama has nothing to do with the terror and the trauma John Murtagh and his family went through.
"It's a sensitive issue for us. My mom is still alive - she's 83. She literally had to snatch her children out of the house in the middle of the night because her house was on fire," John told me.
But Barack Obama was not a child - he was a grown man - when he decided his personal path to power and influence lay through Bill Ayers' connections.October 11, 2008
Op-Ed ColumnistThe Mask Slips
By BOB HERBERT; New York Times
The first is how wrong conservative Republicans have been on so many profoundly important matters for so many years. The second is how the G.O.P. has nevertheless been able to persuade so many voters of modest means that its wrongheaded, favor-the-rich, country-be-damned approach was not only good for working Americans, but was the patriotic way to go.
Remember voodoo economics? That was the derisive term George H.W. Bush used for Ronald Reagan’s fantasy that he could simultaneously increase defense spending, cut taxes and balance the budget. After Reagan became president (with Mr. Bush as his vice president) the budget deficit — surprise, surprise — soared. . . .Just as they were wrong about trickle down, conservative Republican politicians and their closest buddies in the commentariat have been wrong on one important national issue after another, from Social Security (conservatives opposed it from the start and have been trying to undermine it ever since) to Medicare (Ronald Reagan saw it as the first wave of socialism) to the environment, energy policy and global warming.
. . .
The G.O.P. has done a great job masking the terrible consequences of much that it has stood for over the decades. Now the mask has slipped. As we survey the wreckage of the American economy and the real-life suffering associated with the financial crackup of 2008, it would be well for voters to draw upon the lessons of history and think more seriously about the consequences of the ballots they may cast in the future.
By Talk About the Meltdown
Eugene RobinsonWashington Post
Saturday, October 11, 2008;I'd like to know how the presidential candidates view this economic crisis, and I don't want any boilerplate about how American workers are the best in the world. Is this a temporary setback or a fundamental shift? When the volatile markets settle down, as they eventually will, is the United States going to be a poorer nation than it was? Will the next generation of Americans lead lives of less affluence and comfort, rather than more?
I want to know whether this is some kind of final reckoning for living so far beyond our means. Is the bartender finally presenting us the the bill?
I'd like Obama and McCain to really get their minds around what's happening and explain what they think we ought to do. They both know that we've borrowed trillions of dollars, a good deal of it from China, to pay for our expensive habits. They know that the United States, Europe and Japan have transferred massive amounts of capital to the oil-producing countries. McCain and Obama know that the tallest building in the world is in Dubai. They know that high prices for oil and natural gas have given Russia back its status as a great power.
e. Russian News on Vote 2008:
