'A pen warmed up in hell' | Reality-based commentary about Phoenix, Arizona, and the nation.
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5Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has been trying to push back against the media meme that the FBI has solved the anthrax case with the suicide of scientist Bruce Ivins. The government released its heavily redacted evidence today. It’s unclear whether it will answer questions raised by one of the few skeptical stories to appear, in the New York Times. Or the AP report of the high-pressure tactics the Feds used on Ivins and his family.
Let’s put this into context. We now know that the Bush administration fabricated intelligence to capitalize on the national trauma of 9/11 and to gain a pretext for war with Iraq. Even more evidence comes from a new book by Ron Suskind, who has been spot-on in reporting the inside intrigues of this White House. The head of Iraqi intelligence was working for the CIA and reported that Saddam had no WMDs. He was paid $5 million of your tax dollars to disappear before the invasion. Later, the CIA was pressured by the White House to fabricate a memo from the Iraqi spook saying that 9/11 terrorist Mohammad Atta had trained in Iraq (he hadn’t) and that Saddam was buying yellow-cake uranium in Niger (he wasn’t).
The Bush administration, with its unprecedented secrecy, power grabs, torture and rendition, had created a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists, notably about 9/11. Unfortunately, as facts keep emerging it’s clear that the skeptics aren’t all kooks. Skepticism should be mainstream. Do you believe we know all the facts behind 9/11? And why did the administration oppose creating an independent commission to study the attacks — then carefully steer it and ignore it?
6Air America’s Tom Hartmann had a fascinating take on the McCain-Rove attack commercials, especially the ad that calls Obama "the One." While critics like David Gergen say they are code for uppity, designed to get out the racist vote, Hartmann said "the One" ad is code for end-time evangelicals.
A small group? They bought 68 million copies of the Left Behind series. The code of the highly misleading ads is that Obama is the Antichrist. These "communities of interest" are big enough to tip an election — or make it close enough to steal — especially when the corporate media continue to give McCain a free ride on the issues.
Obama may be running a very smart campaign: refusing to get in the gutter, showing a willingness to compromise on drilling if it also wins support for alternative energy and accountability for the oil companies. But enough Americans may be too addled, too addicted to promises of instant gratification, too ignorant to pay attention. Does that mean it’s foolish to hammer McCain on the issues? Not at all.
Here’s a partial list of what Obama and Democrats should be relentlessly pushing:
3Part of me wants to nap until election day — and I’m a political junkie. The campaign coverage has descended to such a level of distraction and foolishness, especially in the electronic media, that it’s difficult to bear. Unfortunately, most people will be sufficiently indoctrinated by this sideshow, and I give you President-elect McCain. Where he is the truly risky choice, the media must have Obama in that box. Where the election should be a referendum on the now incontestable consequences of the Republican policies McCain will continue, it will be a referendum on Obama. I give you: President-elect McCain.
And he’s the "conservative." Yet he is no impostor. He is the same kind of "conservative" that has run the country for years.
This perhaps is the biggest irony in the room. A quarter century of "conservative" rule — including Bill Clinton and the Gingrich Congress — have given us a larger government, huge deficits, a crippling debt, debased culture, overseas adventures and imperial presidential power (We’re Americans: we torture) that would make Calvin Coolidge, Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater cringe. It is even counter to the ideas of Ronald Reagan as a political thinker (and, yes, he was a formidable one). By way of context, Ike, Nixon and George H.W. Bush were right-of-center pragmatists, not conservatives.
The heirs of Buckley bravely carry water for today’s "conservatives," but Buckley couldn’t have died a happy man, to see where his counter-revolution led (he became a vocal critic of the Iraq adventure). Burke and Russell Kirk are spinning so fast in their graves as to provide new data to particle physicists.
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1The corporate media, particularly the electronic division, keeps repeating certain shorthand, whether it’s true or not. One example, on display almost daily, is that "John McCain’s the maverick." I’ve gone to great lengths on this blog to disprove that notion. McCain is a fairly conventional "conservative" who once or twice bucked his party when it didn’t really matter. You can check his voting record. This is no secret.
McCain’s utter hostility to helping the state he claims to represent deal with the problems of rapid urbanization and funding the illegal alien surge that was so profitable to Republican businessmen shows how he will govern domestically. Likewise his "straight shooter integrity" image is shattered by the facts, from the Keating Five onward. (Check the McCain File to your right for more).
Now two more "givens" are in the teleprompter scrips. First is the idea that McCain is a national security expert, ready to be commander in chief on "day one" — Sen. Clinton helpfully said it herself. The second is that McCain is a "Theodore Roosevelt Republican."
There’s just one problem: Neither is true.
2Obama’s win in the Democratic primary showed him to potentially be one of the most gifted politicians in American history. Yes, he gives a good speech — something that is underrated, particularly after the embarrassingly inarticulate George W. Bush. If we’re to have any chance to address the historic challenges facing the country, we’re going to need an inspiring leader at the bully pulpit.
But he also ran a great ground game, outflanking Hillary’s admittedly badly run operation, and showed he could push back effectively against Rovian tactics. After the disaster of conservative government on display everywhere and every indication this should be a Democratic year, why can’t I come out an admit I was wrong about Obama?
I hope I can. Unfortunately, he has several things going against him, which may prove insurmountable. Remember, Michelle said, "this is it, one campaign and no more," or words to that effect. If Nancy Reagan had said the same thing in 1976, no book would be called "The Age of Reagan," however gifted that orator and politician was.
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When I moved to Dayton, Ohio, in 1986, it was the first time I lived in a real city. It was far smaller than Phoenix or San Diego, the then sleepy but populous places I'd been, but it seemed bigger. I lived in a leafy city neighborhood of old houses and took the bus to work. The downtown was a compact mass of skyscrapers held in a bend of the Great Miami River. The newspaper was there, in a lovely old building enchanted by history, with a newspaper bar right next door and a bustling historic domed arcade across the street. Two department stores were a block away. Across the square was the old courthouse where Lincoln had spoken. Nearby, a jazz club.
The economy was robust. The "Rust Belt" was reinventing itself as an innovative superpower and Dayton was no exception. While National Cash Register had shut manufacturing of the old machines — a trauma affecting thousands — it had become a successful global computer giant. Mead, the paper company, was headquartered in a downtown tower and starting a data operation that became LexisNexis. Dayton had the second largest concentration of General Motors employees in the world, and its factories were being retooled and reinvented, often with UAW bosses as leading innovators. Hundreds of suppliers provided well-paid, high-skilled jobs that were as productive as any in the world. The airport hosted an airline passenger hub for the best-run carrier in America, Piedmont, as well as a freight hub for Emery Worldwide. For a kid from the West, this introduction to the Midwest was a heartland epiphany.
Those assets are almost all gone now. And when I wonder why Ohio seems so crazy — how it could have voted for Bush in 2004, if indeed it did; why it fell for Hillary's Wellesley girl Norma Jean routine; why it could now be a tossup for McCain (?!). When I wonder all these things, I think about Dayton.
12The FDIC, one of those "liberal" "socialist" things foisted on free-market America by Franklin Roosevelt, had to step in Friday to avoid a major bank run. More failures are expected and — dirty little secret — only about $2.5 trillion of the $7 trillion deposited in U.S. banks are actually federally insured.
Seven trillion sounds like a lot. But Americans are in hock to $12 trillion in mortgage debt as housing prices have collapsed, the last big factory of America (making houses) has all but shut down, and foreclosures are reaching records. The Iraq war will cost another $3 trillion. The U.S. national debt is $10 trillion (nearly double from 2001). That ought to tell you something about the mess we’re in.
What’s being little reported about the seizure of IndyMac "Bank" is that the institution is a bastard child of Countrywide, Angelo Mozilo’s death star of subprime calamity (now a boulder around the neck of Bank of America). IndyMac was spun off because it was collatoralizing mortgages too big to be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now on federal life support. The bubble was so huge, fed by so much fraud and bad policy, that the barons had to find "innovative" ways to keep it going. And all that time, the regulators waved it on. This is the mess we’re in.
4Let’s get this straight at the outset: Phil Gramm, President-elect McCain’s chief economics adviser, did not misspeak when he said the only thing wrong now is a "mental recession" and America is a "nation of whiners." The corporate media, to the extent they are covering the story at all, are leading with McCain’s disavowal of Gramm. McCain has said the same kinds of things. He also said Social Security is "an absolute disgrace." This is what Republicans believe. Imagine if Obama had said such things?
While McCain is again showing his fundamental dishonesty, and the media are continuing to cover for him, Gramm unambiguously showed the mindset of today’s Republican Party. "Creative destruction" is their mantra, "free markets" their religion. And if you lived Gramm’s life, you might well wonder, "why are people complaining?" The former senator from Texas championed tax cuts for the wealthy, breaks for corporation and deregulation. He was repaid handsomely, most recently with his ties to the giant bank UBS.
Most Americans have paid a huge price. Median incomes have actually fallen in recent years, millions have lost their health insurance, and most average workers are losing the foundation of the middle class: secure jobs at good wages with benefits and pensions. This was partially concealed by the scam of the housing bubble, and now that’s gone. The Republican leaders, who have become wealthy from tax cuts, outsourcing, union busting and community-destroying mergers say, "stop whining."
But will they pay a price in November? I’m not convinced.
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2Former Sen. Jesse Helms died on July 4, and the first inclination might be to ask, "He was still alive?," for he seems so removed from our times. This former television commentator who served 30 years in the Senate, was known mostly for his uncompromising and untelegenic opposition to nearly everything, especially communism and liberalism.
Surely National Review Online, the child of Bill Buckley, would bring some deeper perspectives, or so I thought. He was, the editors wrote, "one of the most consequential conservatives of his generation." They went on:
It is easy to rattle off a long list of what Senator No opposed. First
and foremost was Communism. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, he was an aggressive and outspoken critic of the Soviet
Union. He refused to overlook the evils of Fidel Castro’s regime in
Cuba. During the 1980s, he led efforts to support Nicaragua’s contra
rebels against the Sandinistas and their incipient totalitarianism.
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was against many other things as well: federal funding of obscene art,
ineffective aid to foreign governments, and the continual encroachments
of Big Government on everyday life. One of the things he was against in
the 1960s was, alas, civil rights. His defense of segregation was of
course deeply misguided. But is it fair for this error to have been
placed in the first sentence of the New York Times’s obituary of him? Certainly liberals have forgiven the pasts of other segregationists, from Sam Ervin to William Fulbright…
One might ask, who in either party was for communism? Also, Ervin and Fulbright went on to do heroic service in saving the Constitution from imperial presidents, and in any case, their early positions on civil rights have been well documented. But Helms was a generation or more younger than these men yet had learned nothing. He became a Republican representing North Carolina and helped turn the white South to the GOP with both subtle and overt calls to racism. He succeeded beautifully. But even here, he would have failed had not Lyndon Johnson championed civil rights, handing the South to the Republicans for, in his formula, "a generation." Or more.
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3I’m probably the wrong one to ask for an objective comparison between Barry Goldwater and John McCain. I’ll always love Barry, despite the flaws and misjudgments that were as big as his accomplishments. Attending Kenilworth School in Phoenix — where Barry himself had gone years before — I remember being one of only two kids with the guts to wear Goldwater buttons in 1964. Such was the power of LBJ. But I loved Barry, even at age seven.
Nearly everyone attests to, at best, an arm’s length relationship between the aging Goldwater and the newcomer McCain. John Dean and Barry Goldwater Jr. have a new book that looks at a true "maverick from Arizona." Although McCain brags about being a "Goldwater Republican," younger Goldwater family members are having none of it. Granddaughter Alison Goldwater told the Huffington Post, that Barry felt "deceived" by McCain. She says, "I’m sure if we were to raise his ashes from the Colorado River…he would be going, ‘What? This is not my vision. This is not my party.’ "
McCain is an opportunist where Barry never was. McCain lands in scandals — from the Keating Five to the latest property tax oops — that Barry never would have contemplated. If McCain has principles aside from orthodox 1990s right-wing politics, with an occasional tilt to please the national press, I can’t find them. Most of all, Barry was an Arizonan. He loved Arizona deeply, personally. Starting as a Phoenix City Councilman, he supported every bond issue to make the city better (his name used to be on the plaque at the old library, simply listed as a city council member). He was a true conservationist.
Yet McCain-as-Goldwater isn’t another campaign distraction. It’s a topic worth debate and contemplation, one that says much about the trajectory of America over the past 45 years.
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