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Last look at Gen. Clark

By Libby

I posted on this yesterday at the Detroit News but didn't get around to rounding up what appears to be the last of the controversy over Clark's statement on McCain's experience. Clark to his credit didn't back down despite being undercut by the Obama campaign's almost immediate embrace of McCain's unwarranted criticism. It may well be that Clark was encouraged to hold his ground by the outpouring of support from the public, particularly from other war veterans. Steve Audio collected some pertinent reactions from the latter group and also pointed us to a letter of support from VoteVets. I would urge everyone to encourage such courageous truthtelling by signing onto that letter.

Meanwhile, in the midst of their caterwauling about the "horrible insult" to McCain's war record, a McCain surrogate, aptly named Orson Swindle, took the opportunity to issue a actual attack on Clark's own military service.

On a conference call with reporters, Mr. Swindle pointed out that Senator McCain has been endorsed by scores of former military generals, admirals and prisoners of war. “General Clark probably wouldn’t get that much praise from this group,” Mr. Swindle said. “As high ranking as he is, his record in his last command was less than stellar.”

Clark's last command was as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and as Zenpundit points out in comments to this post, he did receive some criticism during his tenure, but it's telling that Swindle avoids mentioning Clark's service in Vietnam where he commanded a large combat unit in Vietnam and led his men into a successful counteroffensive against a Viet Cong force while he was bleeding from four AK-47 wounds. McCain's supporter Swindle also fails to note that Clark graduated from the military academy at the top of his class while McCain barely made it to graduation at the very bottom of his own.

You can be certain, if Clark was speaking in support of McCain, they would be touting his superior credentials to the high heavens. But even putting all that aside, it's useful to remember that McCain himself repeatedly stated that military service shouldn't be used as a criteria in judging a candidate's fitness for the office of president. I guess the McCain campaign doesn't have to worry about the price of fueling their fleet of vehicles since the "Straight Talk Express" appears to be running on pure hypocrisy.

Problems with simple data

By Fester:

Brad Delong is looking at the expected increase in short term unemployment rates due to the passage of an additional three months of unemployment extension and forces himself to chuckle at the fact that President Bush signed a good piece of policy with severe negative political repercussions for John McCain:

The rule of thumb, IIRC, is that the average duration of an unemployment spell increases by 1/4 of the increase in the duration of unemployment benefits. Thus a 13-week increase in unemployment insurance duration should increase the average unemployment spell by 3 weeks. With current mean unemployment spell duration at 17 weeks, and with roughly 2/3 of the unemployed eligible for UI, this would produce a 3/17 * 2/3 * 5.5% = 0.6% increase in the measured unemployment rate.

It seems to me likely that--whatever happens to the economy--George W. Bush has just produced four bad unemployment-rate headlines on the Saturdays August 2, September 6, and October 4. This cannot be news that John McCain is happy to hear.

I think the unemployment benefit extension is excellent policy on multiple grounds.  First, it massively reduces stress for unemployed workers and their households.  Finding a job that replaces most of an individual's lost wages is tough right now, so extra time is valuable.  Secondly, this policy provides significant reassurance to the vast majority of people who currently have jobs but fear that they could lose their jobs.  Increasing the contingent safety net of unemployment benefits allows people to breathe slightly easier when they make a discretionary purchase that they otherwise would not have made.  Finally as a stimulus measure, unemployment benefits are targeted to people who are cash flow constrained and are very likely to spend the additional income.  This produces a very high multiplier effect which stands in contrast to the low multiplier, untargetted impacts of general rebate checks.  This is good policy.

It will have its impact in encouraging people to find a better job rather than any job.  This will increase the unemployment rate.  It also illustrates the problems of tracking a single number to describe the whole picture.  A more comprehensive and accurate look at the US labor market would look at the unemployment rate, the workforce participation rate, the number of discouraged workers, and changes in hours worked and total compensation.  This more thorough look will show a summer labor market that will continue to slacken as governments begin to cut back, manufacturers down shift as inventory is too high, and energy is poised to consume 10% of GDP.  However it will not be quite as bad as the simple headline statement of the unemployment rate will imply. 

Why McCain's war record matters

By Libby

I agree with Cernig that McCain's war record shouldn't be an issue in this election. Unfortunately, McCain himself has made it one by running as a "war hero" and that refrain has been echoed endlessly in the media narrative. His time in Vietnam is being touted as a credential, an example of his experience, a test he successfully passed that in some way is supposed to better qualify him to lead us in "a time of war." 

Just look at the tag line that his campaign is promoting these days. I've seen this one everywhere. "John McCain is proud of his record of always putting the country first — from his time in the Navy, in Vietnam and through to today." Talk about empty words. What does that even mean?

Today the talking heads on the teevee are in a dither over Gen. Wesley Clark's remark that riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is not a qualification to be president. It's being painted as a 'swift boat' attack but in essence it's a simple statement of fact, not an attack on the quality of his service. Surviving five years in a cage in the jungles of Vietnam, is just not the same as making command decisions on how to prosecute a military conflict yet this is the experience McCain waves around on the campaign trail daily and uses to deflect any criticism of his current stance on military policy.

McCain in having adopted the war hero persona is the one making his military service an issue and I don't really see how we can avoid addressing it. As I said in my Detroit News post this morning, if we're to judge McCain's fitness for office by his military service, then shouldn't it be material that he graduated from the military academy at almost the very bottom of his class and he left the service and went into politics instead, when it became clear that he would never be promoted to admiral because his superiors judged he just didn't have what it takes to be a leader? And if he wasn't fit for a high ranking military command, why on earth should "his record" be used as a credential to prove his fitness for the highest office in our nation? If anything, it proves the opposite.

That's not attacking the quality of his service to our country, as the GOP swiftboaters did to Kerry. It's assessing the value of the credential McCain is using to proclaim his superior life experience, which in fact, in terms of the presidency, is effectively worthless.

More On McCain's War Record

By Ron Beasley

"Who started this rumor that [John McCain] was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?" ~Gore Vidal

McCain gets a pass because is supposedly “a hero.” I’ve never been sure why he is a hero. He graduated 4th or 5th from the bottom of his class. He wrecked three of his own aircraft (if I remember correctly) and he was captured in Viet Nam. Unless I missed the part where he jumped on a grenade to save the lives of his fellow servicemen, I don’t know where the hero part comes in. ~ John Cole

This is a follow up to Cernig's post below.  It just goes to show how broken our system is that it's OK to Swift Boat a real war hero, John Kerry, but it's not OK to ask legitimate questions about John McCain's military record.  The corporate media was at best enablers and more likely supporters of the effort to lie about Kerry's record but become indignant when anyone even asks questions about St John's war record.  I have already asked a few questions myself on these virtual pages a few days ago. 

I am a Vietnam era veteran I a knew some heros.  They were not fighter pilots who dropped bombs on people they couldn't see from several thousand feet. They were the points on long range patrols, they were men like Chuck Hagel who spent a year wading through rice paddies and jungles, they were the men like John Kerry on the swift boats in the delta and in the air it was the helicopter pilots who put their lives on the line everyday to get soldiers in and out of the fight.

As Jeff Klein reminds us   we deserve to see McCains military record if he wants to be Commander In Chief.

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.

Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John Karaagac, "'the Airdales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years at Annapolis distinguished only by his misdeeds and malfeasance, no one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a prized career path.

If John McCain was not the son and grandson of admirals who would have not had the opportunity to get shot down. 

And yes Wes Clark was right

"Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark said.

In fact spending five years in a cage is bound to mess up your head and maybe should disqualify him.

On McCain's War Record

By Cernig

Yes, I think there are legitimate questions to be asked by historians about McCain's account of his war experiences. Witnesses to and participants in some of those events have undercut McCain's version. However, it was a long time ago and is only of historical interest, it shouldn't really be part of the current political debate any more than Kerry's swift-boating should have been. However, I'm with John Cole when he says that the Rightie-tighties howling in outrage today but gleefully participating in smearing Kerry then have nothing under their feet but swamp.

No, I don't think making a big song and dance about it is something that will particularly help the Democratic campaign, for reasons that Steven Taylor explains today.

No, I don't think John McCain's military experience particularly qualifies him to be Commander In Chief. "He was a junior officer a very long time ago. So?" That's all that really needs said.

Other Newshoggers contributors' mileages may vary.

Shorter McCain: Trust me

By Libby

This one had me gagging tonight. McCain had the nerve to say Obama's word can't be trusted, unlike his own.

"You know, this election is about trust, and trusting people's word, and unfortunately apparently on several items, Sen. Obama's word cannot be trusted," McCain said in Louisville, Kentucky. The comment came as McCain criticized Obama for reversing positions on public financing and other issues.

And this on the heels of his having told a Latino audience how much he cherished "the contributions of Hispanic-Americans to the culture, economy and security of the country I have served all my adult life." He was pumping up his support of the immigration bill he has reversed on when he's talking to his fundie base.

I'm with Creature on this one. The hypocrisy is astounding. And the author's failure to point out that McCain has taken the reverse position is not only nauseating, it's inexcusably negligent.

And by the way, if you've been wondering why I've slacked off on McCain here, it's because I have a lot of blogs. I've been concentrating my bashing at the Detroit News.

McSame in more ways than one!

By Ron Beasley

John McCain has much in common with the Bush Family.  Policy is one but the fact that he is not only out of touch with the American people but proud of it is another.  We have this from James Joyner.

In a recent interview with the Orange County Register’s Martin Wisckol, John McCain said that, not only doesn’t he know how much gas costs, it doesn’t matter.

Well he may find that it does matter but probably not.  John Cole says it all:

In the past, this is the sort of thing that has helped to put away candidates- we all remember the silly assertion that George Bush was surprised by a grocery scanner or Giuliani didn’t know the cost of a loaf of bread. While false, the story did help the Clinton team portray him as out of touch and unaware of what people were going through economically. The real question is whether or not the media will dump their mancrush to savage McMavericky straight talk over his lack of awareness the way they would if this were, well, anyone else.

Yes, if Obama had said it you would hear about nothing else on the Sunday talking heads shows and it would be on the front page of all the major papers.  But St John gets a pass.

That said, there are only so many stupid things you can say and get away with it and this doesn't help:

Mrs. McCain, San Diego County Would Like a Word

When you're poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you're rich, it's hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It's a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

Now this all may well be innocent but politicians don't get to make innocent mistakes.  If McCain can't find people to keep his own finances is order why should he be trusted to keep the fiances of the nation in order.

James Joyner sums up the importance of the gas gaff:

I get that McCain is sheltered from many of the mundane details of everyday life because of his position. It wouldn’t bother me in the least if he didn’t know how to operate a modern gas pump. Nor would I expect him to know the price with the specificity that those of us who pump it regularly do. But, given the amazing amount of attention this issue has gotten in recent months — so much so that he’s pandering about “gas tax holidays” and the like — it’s not unreasonable to expect him to answer with something like, “It’s been so long since I pumped my own gas that I don’t remember what it cost. But I do know that it’s now over $4 a gallon and people are pissed.”

McCain - Anti-Troop, Anti-Veteran (Updated)

By Cernig

John McCain was the only Senator other than convalescing Ted Kennedy to not vote on the GI Bill. By his cowardly absence on a matter of principle (he had backed an alternate version of the bill that was defeated), he associated himself with the six radically anti-veteran Republicans who voted no. Apparently, as Brandon Friedman points out, McCain's "admiration, respect and deep gratitude" for veterans doesn't go as far as thanking them by providing for their education after they leave the battlefield.

For shame.

Update: Over at DKos, they have video of McCain taking credit for the bill he opposed, then  missed the vote on. What incredible gall.

I'm happy to tell you that we probably agreed to an increase in educational benefits for our veterans that not only gives them  increase in their educational benefits, but if they stay in for a certain period of time than they can transfer those educational benefits to their spouses and or children. That's a very important aspect I think of incentivizing people of staying in the military.

I suppose there's a possibility the Senile Express forgot he opposed the bill and then forgot that he forgot to turn up to vote...

The Lexington Pork-ject

By Cernig

Yesterday, John McCain released his Lexington Project - which his campaign describes as a long-term plan to end America's reliance on foreign oil imports by 2025, seventeen years from now. He has named it after the town where the notion of America's independence first began and has invoked both the Space race and the victory over the Nazis in describing how his project will "break the power of OPEC over the United States" - "And never again will we leave our vital interests at the mercy of any foreign power."

Leaving aside the observation that Bush's Iraq war of choice and occupation, which Mccain advocates continuing indefinitely, have already overtaken WW2 with no end in sight - - does the Lexington Project, as detailled on McCain's website, stack up as a policy proposal?

Well, the first thing to notice about the Project is how short on detail it is. The whole thing, as my colleague BJ pointed out to me privately, reads like a bad Executive Summary of a policy, with the policy itself nowhere in sight. A bunch of bullet points and a short description of each is all we have at the moment, in a webpage comparable to a long-ish blog post. Not for McCain the inconveniences of long PDFs for his supporters and the media to wade through - and not for McCain the actual dollar figures of how much it will all cost either.

For instance, there's a $5,000 tax credit for every clean emission car bought to encourage automakers to innovate. That's about 20% of the average cost of a new car, per car. McCain doesn't mention how much that would cost the US taxpayer - but somewhere in excess of 12 million new light vehicles are sold annually in the US so this credit alone will have, eventually, a several billion annual pricetag. But McCain also only wants to enforce current CAFE standards by making fines for not following the standards more punitive. He says not a thing about higher CAFE standards nor phasing in more stringent emission standards, but surely a combination of those two could accomplish his "clean car" aim without a multi-billion dollar pricetag.

Then there's his promise to give another $2 billion annually to the coal-powered generation industry to fund R&D in clean coal technologies. The Bush administration just cancelled a power plant which was to be the pilot for such technology, at a projected cost of around $1.5 billion total. Currently, there are no plans for any other clean burning power stations to be built before 2012 at the earliest. The cancelled power plant, FutureGen, was also the only US hydogen production plant on the drawing boards. So much for homegrown hydrogen power.

And then there's McCain's promise to establish a 10% tax credit for corportation's R&D costs. It doesn't mention that this credit will be exclusively to energy R&D, which raises the spectre of, for instance, pharmacy companies getting a tax cut simply for churning out "me-too" drugs. But let's suppose it is exclusive to the energy production and generation sectors. The oil industry alone spends around $2 billion annually on R&D right now and the energy sector as a whole sops up a good deal of the $90 billion plus of non-federal R&D money spent annually. It isn't out of order to expect McCain's tax break to cost the government a couple of billion every year, for research which the government could create a market neccessity for through a legislative enrironment in any case.

Federal handouts to the energy sector already cost the government over $5 billion a year. McCain's Project simply looks to increase that corporate welfare enormously, at least doubling it, while calling for a free market solution to energy independence. That's a con game of monumental proportions.

But he tries to conceal this unpleasant truth behind a vagueness so complete as to be entirely misleading. There are other examples of this - and I'll try later to write about the shell games he proposes to play on behalf of the nuclear industry, the oil/gas producers and on his Cap and Trade proposals too.

For the moment, however, I found the CBS web coverage of McCain's announcement unintentionally amusing in juxtaposition of page sponsor and headline.

Presidential Politics

By Ron Beasley

The American People are not happy.  While we progressives my be increasingly upset with the Democrats and Obama over issues like FISA and the occupation things are even worse on the Republican side - they have George W. Bush to deal with.  According to the latest LA Times/Bloomberg Poll Bush has a record 23% approval rating and in fact only receives approval from 59% of the ever dwindling Republican voters.  And we also have this from the LA Times:

Both Nader -- a consumer advocate who was the Green Party candidate in 2000 and an independent candidate in 2004 -- and former Rep. Barr (R-Ga.) appear to siphon more votes from McCain than from Obama. When Nader and Barr are added to the ballot, they draw most of their support from independent voters who said they would otherwise vote for the Republican.

That's right - Nader is taking more votes from McCain than from Obama.  And Bush is out campaigning for McCain which can't help him much since 75% of Americans blame Bush for the bad economy.

Robert Novak has an interesting column on the Conservatives who are supporting Obama or the Obamacons.

What is an "Obamacon?" The phrase surfaced in January to describe British conservatives entranced by Barack Obama. On March 13 the American Spectator broadened the term to cover all "conservative supporters" of the Democratic presidential candidate. Their ranks, though growing, feature few famous people. But looming on the horizon are two big potential Obamacons: Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel.

Neither Powell, first-term secretary of state for George W. Bush, nor Hagel, retiring after two terms as a U.S. senator from Nebraska, has endorsed Obama. Hagel probably never will. Powell probably will enter Obama's camp at a time of his own choosing. The best bet is that neither of the two, both of whom supported President Bush in 2000 and 2004, will back John McCain in 2008.

Powell, Hagel and lesser-known Obamacons harbor no animosity toward McCain. Nor do they show much affection for the rigidly liberal Obama. The Obamacon syndrome is based on hostility to Bush and his administration and on revulsion over today's Republican Party. The danger for McCain is that desire for a therapeutic electoral bloodbath could get out of control.

We have been hearing for a couple of years now that many Republicans felt that the party must be the victim of an electoral blood bath so the purging and rebuilding can begin.  I wish them the best of luck.

Prizes as incentives

By Fester

I have to disagree with Ron's post on McCain's proposal to award a $300,000,000 prize for improved battery technology.  It is not an inherently bad idea, and furthermore it is intellectually coherent while being reasonably pragmatic.  Prizes as incentives are not neccessarily a bad idea.  I agree with jandrewmorrison that the details matter greatly but this is not inherently a bad idea. 

One of the conservative arguments against direct government research grants is that it 'chooses winners' before there is enough knowledge to actually make a good decision.  This type of critique can be rightfully applied to ethanol policy.  More research on a bad idea can make a bad idea less bad, but at the significant opportunity cost of shutting out other good ideas.

The argument then seeks to rejigger incentives and it goes like this:  One of the problems of researching edgy technologies is the uncertainty of a future pay-off even if everything goes right.  This uncertainty makes finding initial capital difficult which discourages innovation.  Instead of direct fee for service research or royalty sharing research arrangements for basic research and application research, a guarantee of a prize of sufficient size to reduce that uncertainty. From here creative and innovative solutions will blossom. Google is adapting this approach in its Lunar X-Prize competion to get a basic private sector rover on the moon.

This approach has significant flaws when applied to basic research approaches, but when it is seeking applied technology, it is not an inherently bad idea as long as the rule sets, verification requirements and policy objectives are clear, consistent and set at a high enough level to justify the public prize.  And for McCain, articulating a policy proposal that does not contradict previous policy statements and that could actually advance a public policy objective is a step above his normal incoherence. 

 

More BS from McCain

By Ron Beasley

John Cole says he likes this:

McCain looks for energy breakthrough

Senator John McCain on Monday proposed the creation of a $300 million prize for anyone who developed breakthrough car-battery technology and he recommended greater tax incentives for buyers of nonpolluting autos, saying that only a combination of increased oil production, conservation measures and ingenuity could ease the fuel crisis and slow global warming.

As we reported here General Electric, and I'm sure others, are already doing it because there is already big money to made.  I thought the Republicans were the ones who believed in free market solutions.

Attention Getters

By Ron Beasley

When I finally had a chance to check the Internet pipes today a few things jumped out at me. First there was this:

Kristol: Bush Might Bomb Iran If He ‘Thinks Senator Obama’s Going To Win’

Now the only thing that is reassuring about this is Bill Kristol is always wrong.

But Cheney might just do it to leave Obama with an even bigger mess.  I guess the question that will be answered is if Cheney still has that much power.  I suspect that Gates and the rest of the Pentagon residents realize that all hell will break lose in Iraq if they do attack Iran.  Does Gates have the power to stop the criminally insane Dick Cheney?

And we have this from another of the really scary people that live in the Bush/Cheney universe:

Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran After U.S. Election But Before Inauguration, Arab States Will Be ‘Delighted’

I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.

I see this as being more likely but the blow back will be the same and leave Obama with an insurmountable problem.

And we have this from Newsweek's Michael Isikoff:

McCain’s Boeing Battle Boomerangs

Yes, Boeing did some bad things up front but it's also obvious that McCain's indignity is in large part because he is in EADS' back pocket.

Critics, including some at the Pentagon, cite in particular two tough letters McCain wrote to Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England in 2006 and another to Robert Gates, just prior to his confirmation as Defense secretary. In the first letter, dated Sept. 8, 2006, McCain wrote of hearing from "third parties" that the Air Force was about to redo the tanker competition by factoring in European government subsidies to EADS—a condition that could have seriously hurt the EADS bid. McCain urged that the Pentagon drop the subsidy factor and posed a series of technical questions about the Air Force's process. "He was trying to jam us and bully us to make sure there was competition by giving EADS an advantage," said one senior Pentagon official, who asked for anonymity when discussing a politically sensitive matter. The assumption within the Pentagon, the official added, was that McCain's letters were drafted by EADS lobbyists. "There was no one else that would have had that level of detail," the official said. (A Loeffler associate noted that he and Nelson were retained by EADS after the letters were drafted.)

And you shouldn't miss this great take down of David Broder by Steve Soto:

Broder Shows His Colors Early

Mr. Broder, who do you think bears responsibility for the fact that only 14% of the country in your paper’s own poll thinks the country is on the right track? Who bears responsibility for why 84% of the public feels the country is on the wrong track, the highest number on record? You do Mr. Broder; you and all the bipartisan members of your Beltway crowd that have tut-tutted your way through this country’s downward spiral these last eight years into a disaster capitalism economy so detached from Main Street America that 84% reject you and your crowd. And you've been there yourself, cheering along George W. Bush. But now it’s Barack Obama who is responsible for establishing the credibility of an election process you broke?

McCain Energy Policy - Drain America First

By Cernig

We all know that McCain is now following the Bush line to start drilling for oil in Alaska and offshore. It's a flip-flop propelled by campaign donations from big oil, but does it make sense? Well, it might eventually (around 2010) take 6 cents off the price of a gallon but Cheryl Rofer at WhirledView has been crunching some numbers and says that the Bush/McCain policy amounts to a serious national security misstep in that it amounts to a policy to Drain America First.

The first ten countries, in decreasing order of reserves, are

Saudi Arabia
Iran
Iraq
Kuwait
United Arab Emirates
Venezuela
Russia
Kazakhstan
Libya
Nigeria

The United States is number 11.

The first ten countries, in decreasing order of production, are

Saudi Arabia
Russia
United States
Iran
China
Mexico
Norway
Canada
Venezuela
United Arab Emirates

The difference in these two lists suggests that the famous peak oil hypothesis is not the whole story. In some countries, like the United States, production has peaked, due to what a colleague called the drain-America-first policy. He argued that it would have made more sense to keep our oil in the ground and use up other countries’ reserves first. We can see that President Bush belongs to the drain-America-first faction, urging that American production be increased, when it is already high in proportion to our proved reserves. Russia is following a similar policy of depredative nationalism.

Notice the big reserve holder who isn't on the big producer list? Iraq. Spencer Ackerman notes a NY Times report today that says Iraq is about to award no-bid contracts to Western oil giants.

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

The invasion of Iraq wasn't just about oil or even oil money, but it certainly seems as if McCain is following Bush's lead in wanting to treat Iraq as America's strategic oil reserve. After all, they "broke it so they own it."

Non-coincidentally, big oil campaign dollars this cycle are flowing into Republican coffers at the rate of three to one over donations to Dems - a ratio repeated in the McCain/Obama race. Always follow the money.

War Hero?

By Ron Beasley

The logic of those who claim suicide bombers who kill people are cowards but those who drop bombs on people from several thousand feet are heros has always escaped me.  That brings us to John McCain. Sully quotes Gore Vidal:

"Who started this rumor that [John McCain] was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?"

John Cole chimes in:

McCain gets a pass because is supposedly “a hero.” I’ve never been sure why he is a hero. He graduated 4th or 5th from the bottom of his class. He wrecked three of his own aircraft (if I remember correctly) and he was captured in Viet Nam. Unless I missed the part where he jumped on a grenade to save the lives of his fellow servicemen, I don’t know where the hero part comes in.

John McCain claims he knows war.  He certainly knows about the prisoner of war part but what about the rest?  Chuck Hagel knows war from his time wading through rice paddies and jungles and seeing the soldiers around him wounded and killed.  And yes, in spite of what the swift boaters may say John Kerry knows war.  And Bob Dole is a hero who knows war.  But can you really see war from 10,000 feet?

  But what about his military career?    Over at the Huffington Post Jeffrey Klein gives us some information on McCain's Naval record.  For starters it looks like McCain would never have seen the inside of a cock pit if he hadn't been the son and grandson of admirals.

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.

Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John Karaagac, "'the Airdales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years at Annapolis distinguished only by his misdeeds and malfeasance, no one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a prized career path.

As Klein points out only 17 pages of McCain's 636 page Naval record has been released.  Since he wants to be Commander in Chief should the American people be able to see the rest?

Uncoded

By Cernig

Some shill at the Politico today helps catapult the latest Republican narrative that "Democrats are talking in code about McCain's age". Not that the article mentions the codewords - which makes it all an enormous watse of space.

Look, like Brendan Fraser's character in The Mummy, I am not a subtle man. McCain is old. Not only that, he's had a hard life and is showing signs of his mileage - - and that's before he takes office.

James Joyner writes:

...concerns about McCain being “too old” are much less about prejudice than honest fear that he won’t be up to the strains of the job. Rather than whining about how unfair it all is, it’s up to Team McCain to demonstrate that there’s no reason to worry.

That seems to me to be absolutely correct. McCain and his ideas are as old now as Reagan was when he ran for his second term. Remember what that was like? here's a refresher:

And while we're on the subject of "talking in code" - just how coded is this button sold at the Texas Republican Party convention?

No Take-Backs on the Soul-Selling

By BJ

John McCain once had the most powerful brand in American politics.

He was often called the country's most popular politician and widely admired for his independent streak. It wasn't too many years ago that "maverick" was the cliche of choice in describing him.

But that term didn't even make the list this year when voters were asked by the Pew Research Center to sum up McCain in a single word. "Old" got the most mentions, followed by "honest," "experienced," "patriot," "conservative" and a dozen more. The words "independent," "change" or "reformer" weren't among them.

Voters have notoriously short memories, but it could be argued that McCain cheapened his own brand.

No shit. Turns out that the constant shilling for Bush has actually had an effect, something I wasn't entirely certain would happen with the media continuously uttering the "maverick" theme. Still disappointing to see "honest" up there, of course, but I'm willing to bet that will change as people see more stuff like this.

I guess you really can't fool the people all of the time.

Who Will Be McCain's Millstone?

By Cernig

No wonder John MCCain, who has had the nomination sewn up for months, is taking his own sweet time about picking a running mate. He's got to have figured out by now that whoever he picks to placate his extremist base is going to be a millstone around his neck in the general. As VP candidates go, it's likely that any choce accepatble to social conservatives and neocons alike will make Dan Qualye and Dick Cheney look like paragons of sanity and moderation by comparison.

The current front runner appears to be sometime-exorcist and intelligent design pusher Bobby Jindal - who my good friend Kyle Moore thinks would be the very best pick...from the Democrats' point of view.

I've got another candidate in mind. Pantswetting idiot Newt Gingrich. He plays well to both the warmongers and the seven-day-Earthers, and he's already backed Jindal so you get a two-fer. He and McCain could run on a platform of fearmongering, spouse-cheating and gaffes together. What's not to like?

Oh Look, What A Surprise - Not!

By Cernig

Carly Fiorina, who (supposedly) halted her long-time work as a Republican loyalist to be a fifth columnist working to torpedo Hillary Clinton's campaign from within with race-baiting statements, has now gone back to her first love.

Republican John McCain enlisted the high-profile help of Carly Fiorina, once the most powerful businesswoman in the United States, on Saturday to try to get women behind his campaign for the White House.

...Fiorina, a top economic adviser and head of a Republican get-out-the-vote effort, empathized with the former first lady's experience when she took questions from across the country during a McCain campaign "virtual town-hall meeting."

...Texas-born Fiorina has become an increasingly visible advocate for McCain, speaking publicly about his economic positions and ripping into Obama over tax policies and Iraq.

...Fiorina became the head of Hewlett-Packard Co. in 1999 and in 2002 oversaw the then-largest merger in the U.S. technology sector when Hewlett-Packard bought rival computer maker Compaq Computer Corp. The company's poor performance forced her exit as chairman and chief executive in 2005.

"She usually tells me what to say," McCain quipped about Fiorina on Saturday.

...But McCain was quick to point out political differences with Clinton, saying he thought the Supreme Court decision in "Roe vs Wade" on abortion was a bad one.

All emphasis in the excerpt above is mine, but that last bit really is the proof, were it truly needed, that Fiorina was never more than a GOP viper at Hillary's breast. It's OK for women to control their careers but not their bodies? Mr McCain and Ms Fiorina, pull the other one.

Geneva For Thee But Not For Me

By Cernig

John McCain was a POW, and was tortured while in detention. You'd think he of all people would know that the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees and are judicially enforceable in habeas proceedings. The Conventions specify that any combatant is to be designated a POW until their status is determined by a judicial review and enshrine detainees rights of habeas corpus for the purposes of such a review. By virtue of the U.S. being a signator to the Conventions, by constitutional provisions for such treaties to be U.S. law, and by specific acts of U.S. law upholding the provisions of the Conventions and other international treaties, habeas rights in respect of challenging unlawful detention or detention for torture are encoded in American law in an indelible manner - they cannot be wiped out by sophistry or parsing.

Yet McCain, along with the rest of the American Right, is trying to do exactly that by following former AG Gonzales assertion that non-citizens have no rights under the U.S. constitution whatsoever. Despite that document, in several places, making the distinction between "persons" and "citizens" in affording the former rights, they insist that anyone who is not a citizen is not a person under the constitution.

That, not the Supreme Court's action yesterday, is "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country". McCain has joined with those in the Bush administration who have broken the international laws of war - war criminals - and given up any pretense at the moral high ground afforded by his past.

The Supreme Court's majority got it right. That their getting it right may well mean some bad people walking free is the fault of the Bush administration's course (and now McCain's) in pursuing illegal detentions beyond legal oversight, rather than of the Court.

Within hours of the court's decision in the combined cases known as Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, attorneys were preparing to demand hearings for detainees long held without charges.

These habeas corpus hearings before federal judges will force the Bush administration to reveal its evidence and expose publicly how the detainees have been treated. Some attorneys think that the administration simply will start releasing detainees to avoid the potentially embarrassing hearings altogether.

"Frankly, I don't think the government is going to want to continue to hold these detainees," predicted Matthew MacLean, co-counsel for a detainee named Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad al Odah.

Eugene Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, agreed that the court ruling would provide "additional incentive for the administration to repatriate as many people as possible."

MacLean, a former Army prosecutor, noted that 100 to 200 detainees have had habeas corpus petitions on hold waiting for the Supreme Court to rule. Now that it has, Odah and others can pursue their cases before an assortment of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

...Kennedy and four other justices further concluded that the detainees deserved full habeas corpus access to federal courts, despite congressional efforts to curtail it. Through habeas corpus hearings, prisoners can challenge the legal basis for their incarceration.

In the hearings, the burden will be on the government to show that it has sufficient evidence that the men are enemy combatants and can be charged with crimes. While it's unlikely that any of the detainees will appear at the hearings, they'll be able to offer exculpatory evidence. Judges can settle on remedies that include ordering release.

Clueless and Out of Touch

By Ron Beasley

E.J.Dionne writes today about a Democratic Tide on The Rise

At the moment, Barack Obama is winning a smaller share of Democrats than John Kerry did on Election Day four years ago. Yet Obama is beating John McCain by six points in the latest Gallup Poll. How can this be?

For all the talk this year about bipartisanship, a sharp shift in partisan loyalties toward the Democrats, visible in a series of polls this week, could prove the defining fact in November.

In a report released yesterday, Gallup found that where McCain was winning 85 percent of self-identified Republicans, Obama was winning only 78 percent of Democrats.

Yet Obama led McCain 48 percent to 42 percent in the survey, which was conducted June 5-10. Obama enjoyed a seven-point advantage among independents, but Gallup noted that even when independents were excluded, Obama still had a five-point lead because Democrats now outnumber Republicans 37 to 28 percent. When independents were asked their partisan leanings, the Democratic advantage reached 13 points.

To find out why this might be we have to go no further than Dionne's own paper and an Op-Ed by uber neocon Charles Krauthammer,  who suggests that McCain should make the election about the occupation of Iraq.  Krauthammer demonstrates that he is out of touch with the American People and the situation in Iraq.  He has a list of talking points he used to prove how much better things are in Iraq.

1. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent the Iraqi army into Basra. It achieved in a few weeks what the British had failed to do in four years: take the city, drive out the Mahdi Army and seize the ports from Iranian-backed militias.

2. When Mahdi fighters rose up in support of their Basra brethren, the Iraqi army at Maliki's direction confronted them and prevailed in every town -- Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriyah and Diwaniyah -- from Basra to Baghdad.

Of course there are a number of problems here.  Number one, the Iraqi army that drove out the Mahdi Army is itself made up of Iranian-backed militias, the Badr Brigade/Organization.  He also fails to note that the Iraqi army was losing until both the British and Americans added air and artillery support.

3. Without any American ground forces, the Iraqi army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold.

The key here is " Without any American ground forces".  Without US air support the Iraqi army could not ave been successful.

5. The Iraqi parliament enacted a de-Baathification law, a major Democratic benchmark for political reconciliation.

Of course the new de-Baathification law made things even worse for the Sunnis and made unification even less likely.

Krauthammers's advice to McCain:

It is a position so utterly untenable that John McCain must seize the opportunity and, contrary to conventional wisdom, make the Iraq war the central winning plank of his campaign. Yes, Americans are war-weary. Yes, most think we should not have engaged in the first place. Yes, Obama will keep pulling out his 2002 speech opposing the war.

But McCain's case is simple. Is not Obama's central mantra that this election is about the future, not the past? It is about 2009, not 2002. Obama promises that upon his inauguration, he will order the Joint Chiefs to bring him a plan for withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months. McCain says that upon his inauguration, he'll ask the Joint Chiefs for a plan for continued and ultimate success.

But this proves just how clueless Krauthammer is:

· As for the Shiite extremists, the Mahdi Army is isolated and at its weakest point in years.

· Its sponsor, Iran, has suffered major setbacks, not just in Basra, but in Iraqi public opinion, which has rallied to the Maliki government and against Iranian interference through its Sadrist proxy.

He simply doesn't recognize that the al-Malaki government is itself an Iranian proxy and would be preferable over Sadr to the Iranians.  In fact as Ned Parker reported in the LAT prominent members of al-Malaki's own Dawa party are ready to tell the US to leave.

BAGHDAD -- Officials in Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's ruling coalition are questioning whether Iraq needs a U.S. military presence even as the two countries press forward with high-pressure negotiations to determine how long American forces will remain.

Some officials in Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party and his larger Shiite United Iraqi Alliance bloc, which has cooperated with the U.S., have spoken in favor of imposing severe restrictions on U.S. forces after the United Nations mandate authorizing their presence expires at the end of the year.

[....]

United Iraqi Alliance lawmaker Sami Askari, who is considered a member of Maliki's inner circle, said the changes in opinions in many cases are gradual.

"There is the camp who still believe that we need the Americans to stay and the other camp that says we don't need them anymore," Askari said. "You can't draw a line, even within the Dawa Party, even within" the alliance, he said.

Shiite officials like Askari have warned there is no way any Iraqi politician could back the current U.S. security agreement proposals.

"If I'm from the group that believes in the need for the Americans to stay, and then they face me with such a draft, then I'll say, look, I'd rather go with the others," Askari said.

Go ahead St John - make it about the occupation!

Update

Apparently even al-Malaki has decided that his puppet masters in Teheran have shorter strings than his puppet masters in DC.

Iraq says talks with U.S. on pact deadlocked

AMMAN (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday talks with the United States on a long-term security pact were at a stalemate because of U.S. demands that encroached on Iraq's sovereignty.

Also Laney in comments makes a good point:

What is really going on here is that Krauthammer continues to do what he has always done -- dishing out whatever propaganda line he thinks will keep America fighting wars in the interests of Israel.

We have noted here before that the only definition of winning in Iraq seems to be not having to leave.  That may be all about the oil but I suspect it is equally all about having a large US force in the region for Israel's benifit.

McCain, Hallucinations and Allegheny County

By Fester:

Watching the John McCain strategy briefing for victory is painful.  It sounds like a senior class project where the student has a predetermined result in mind and is trying to be agile enough to get the right arguments into place even if they don't make sense.  The one thing that lept out at me was the following map from Ohio and Pennsylvania ( about 8:13 in).  I have modified the map a little bit by adding a couple of geographic pointers:

In 2000, Allegheny County was about 6% more Democratic than the nation as a whole, and in 2004, Allegheny County was about 9% more Democratic than the nation as a whole.  And yet this map is projecting that it will flip to McCain, or at least it is implicitly arguing that due to the color schema.  This is not the only type of flip that the McCain camp is projecting.  Erie County is about 4% more Democratic than the nation as a whole, and it is projected to flip.  Beaver and Washington counties were even splits.  The only SW Pa county that went overwhelmingly for Bush and has a significant population was Westmoreland.  Allegheny County floods out the region due to its population and mobilization rates.  A lot of trees and coal mines are in the probable McCain counties, but not a lot of voters.

Ouch, this is just a painful distortion of reality that the McCain campaign wants to persuade its supporters that they can see an effective ten point swing in their favor compared to Bush in Allegheny County.  Their best hope is keeping the margin close but that is an unlikely hope.  Sad....   

Hell No!

By Cernig

Via Matt at Think Progress, who notes that John McCain's always been a fan of Darth Cheney's, comes a Politico revelation that should be word one on anyones list why McSame shouldn't be the next Darth puppet Republican in the White House.

Going further, McCain even told Hayes in comments heretofore unpublished that he’d consider Cheney for an administration post.

Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: “I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

Is there actually a cabinet office of "Puppetmaster"?

A 50-State Presidential Election?

By BJ

As the focus shifts to the general election campaign and the strategies being laid out, the Obama camp in particular is looking to vastly expand the map of battleground states.

Senator Barack Obama’s general election plan calls for broadening the electoral map by challenging Senator John McCain in typically Republican states — from North Carolina to Missouri to Montana — as Mr. Obama seeks to take advantage of voter turnout operations built in nearly 50 states in the long Democratic nomination battle, aides said.

“Nearly 50” thanks to the FUBAR of Florida and Michigan, where they will have to play catch-up. For all of the hoopla centered on seating the delegates, it is this fact that is most likely to do harm to the Democrats in those two states come November.

On Monday, Mr. Obama will travel to North Carolina — a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 32 years — to start a two-week tour of speeches, town hall forums and other appearances intended to highlight differences with Mr. McCain on the economy. From there, he heads to Missouri, which last voted for a Democrat in 1996. His first campaign swing after securing the Democratic presidential nomination last week was to Virginia, which last voted Democratic in 1964.

. . .

While the lengthy, contentious Democratic primary fight against Mrs. Clinton exposed vulnerabilities in Mr. Obama that the Republicans will no doubt seek to exploit, it also allowed him to build a nearly nationwide network of volunteers and professional organizers. While early assertions by presidential campaigns that they intend to expand the playing field are often little more than feints intended to force opponents to spend time and money defending states that they should have locked up, Mr. Obama’s fund-raising success gives his campaign more flexibility than most to play in more places.

Mr. Obama’s aides said some states where they intend to campaign — like Georgia, Missouri, Montana and North Carolina — might ultimately be too red to turn blue. But the result of making an effort there could force Mr. McCain to spend money or send him to campaign in what should be safe ground, rather than using those resources in states like Ohio.

Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said that the primary contest had left the campaign with strong get-out-the-vote operations in Republican states that were small enough that better-than-usual turnout could make a difference in the general election. Among those he pointed to was Alaska, which last voted for a Democrat in 1964.

“Do we have to win any of those to get to 270?” Mr. Plouffe said, referring to the number of electoral votes needed to win the election. “No. Do we have reason to think we can be competitive there? Yes. Do we have organizations in those states to be competitive? Yes. This is where the primary was really helpful to us now.”

Mr. Plouffe also pointed to Oregon and Washington, states that have traditionally been competitive and where Mr. Obama defeated Mrs. Clinton, as places the campaign could have significant advantages .

Still, the Republican Party has a history of out-hustling and out-organizing the Democratic Party in national elections. The question is whether the more organically grown game plans that carried Mr. Obama to victory in Democratic primaries and caucuses can match the well-oiled organizations Republicans have put together.

To some extent, this is a carry-over of the strategy that allowed Obama to defeat Clinton in the primaries. The math is different in the general though, where coming close in a state doesn’t offer any proportional advantage. Despite that, there are advantages to running such a broad-based campaign, and Matt Yglesias noted one of the major ones.

Bush talked in 2000 about the problems of poor minority children in school not so much because he thought he was going to get huge numbers of black people to vote for him, but to signal to voters everywhere that he was “a different kind of Republican,” caring, etc. Even if Obama doesn’t have any realistic prospect of winning North Carolina or Montana he certainly wants to win in places like Minnesota and Virginia and parts of Minnesota are like Montana, parts of Virginia are like North Carolina and an image as a broad-minded person who campaigns everywhere can be helpful. After all, Obama’s eruption onto the national stage was a critique of the red/blue politics of cultural division, so it’s good to dramatize that by running a nationwide campaign.

Beyond that, the more places you campaign the more places you’re in a position to take advantage of unexpected good fortune. If for some reason McCain commits some kind of horrible gaffe that alienates the people of the big empty square states, it’s good to have laid the groundwork to take advantage of that. Or maybe Bob Barr will catch fire in the Deep South. In a narrowcast campaign, you need to guess in advance how things will unfold over the next several months and that’s just difficult to do. If you have the cash to run a wide-focus campaign, then you can simply try to respond competently to events as they unfold however they unfold.

The other major advantage of a broad-based national campaign is that such a focus should give a boost to many of the down-ticket Dems fighting for House and Senate seats. As Fester noted a little while ago, both the Republican brand, and even more so their ideas, are in the toilet, and that means the Democrats are poised for some major pick-ups.

It is this kind of strategic thinking that I’ve always liked about the Obama-Dean style of organization. Of course, that only works if Obama wins, in which case he and Dean are organizational geniuses. If they lose, they’ll be pilloried for wasting resources in states they couldn’t win.

At the Presidential level, so long as the focus is one just McCain and Obama, the likelihood of a blow-out is slim, but if the campaign turns into a national referendum on the policies of the Republicans over the last eight years, we may yet see a serious pummeling.

Senile?

By Cernig

John McCain thinks Putin is president of Germany!

(h/t Oliver Willis)

McCain IS Different - He Plays Golf During Wartime!

By Cernig

Jason Linkins at the HuffPo explains McCain's most important departure from the Bush line over Iraq:

Remember how Bush suffered a bunch of injuries and had to stop playing gold so he lied and told people that she stopped playing golf "for the troops?" Well, McCain isn't having any of that! If you are lucky enough to not have to fight in any of McCain's endless wars, the least you can do is show McCain a little gratitude by golfing with some McCain-branded golf gear!

And how important is it to McCain that you lucky duffers golf your asses off? Take a look at his website, where "Golf Gear" is raised to the same level as "strategy," "general election", and "decision center." The terrible golf gear includes a bag and a towel and three balls and six tees and a divot tool and it all costs $50. Surely you can put off servicing that subprime mortgage another month to stimulate McCain's economy!

Let's all remind ourselves of Bush's words: "I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

So why won't McCain make the sacrifice par none? Why won't he support our troops by refusing to tee off even as he tees the troops off by backing Dubya's refusal to give them a pay rise? Why does he want you to "send the wrong signal" too? Does he hate America?

Signs of the Unity "Bounce" Begin

By BJ

Gallup's Daily tracking poll puts Obama 2 points ahead of McCain, 46% to 44%, which is statistically insignificant. The significant point comes when you read the analysis:

Within the current five-day rolling average, Obama has exceeded McCain by a fair margin in each of the last three individual nights of Gallup polling, all conducted since Hillary Clinton announced she would be ending her bid for the Democratic nomination. It appears that her exit decision had the immediate effect of releasing some of her supporters to back Obama in the general election. If this continues in interviews conducted Sunday, Obama should have a clear lead over McCain in Monday's release.

I figure it will take at least a couple of weeks to see how many of the Hillary supporters who were saying they'd support McCain if Hillary didn't win actually meant it. It is a safe bet that some of them did, but it is nice to see that at least some of those are starting to rally around the Democratic nominee.

Mr. Invisible

By BJ

John Cole noted yesterday that the most invisible person this election cycle so far seems to have been John McCain:

For all Hillary’s talk about invisible voters, it really seems like there is one person who is actually invisible this election cycle- John McCain. I have had the news on since 7 am, and I honestly do not think I have heard his name so much as mentioned. it is as if the race in the fall is a fight between Obama and Clinton. Still.

And when he is mentioned in the press, it is not flattering. Either it is his flip-flopping on wiretapping, concerns about his inability to be competitive with Obama in fund-raising, or stories like this about his disastrous speech:

As one of the commenters noted, "As a political strategy for McCain, invisible is good", and it would appear as though Matt Stearns at McClathchy agrees:

But the intense media focus on Obama and Clinton may have worked to McCain's advantage, Ornstein said.

"He had the great luxury of not only time, but of flying below the radar, so he could send discordant, contradictory messages and not have them immediately thrown back in his face," Ornstein said.

That meant that some missteps may not have mattered much outside Washington's chattering class and some ever-angry bloggers.

For example, McCain's first speech on the housing crisis, in which he said that the federal government had little role to play, was such a dud that he essentially offered a do-over a few weeks later, calling for more federal action.

In Iraq, McCain repeatedly said that Shiite-led Iran was training Sunni al Qaida; a traveling friend, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, had to whisper a correction in McCain's ear. That undercut McCain's claim to superior international experience.

The campaign was beset for days over a controversy about lobbyists advising it. That narrative was especially dangerous for McCain, given his efforts to present himself as a reformer. Infuriating the McCain camp, media coverage all but ignored the fact that Obama also benefits from the advice of corporate lobbyists.

McCain also was forced to renounce endorsements from two prominent evangelical pastors, John Hagee and Rod Parsley, whose inflammatory comments on Islam and other issues proved offensive.

Then, in a week when McCain had hoped to focus on the environment and his distinction from Bush on that increasingly popular issue, he felt forced instead to embrace Bush when the president gave a speech in Israel that implicitly compared Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who declared "peace in our time" after he met with Adolf Hitler.

That last example is a telling one because it was the first hint of what an united front for the Democrats could do. The appeasement angle has been the go-to weapon for the Republicans since 9/11 to shoot down Democratic candidates. This time, Obama fired back, and the rest of the party, including Hillary, lined up with him in pushing back. The result was a Democratic victory on the foreign policy debate, something I think we'll see more of in more policy areas as the debate turns to a one-on-one between Obama and McCain.

Of course, how long it will take for the media to get over the Clinton-Obama speculations, including; How sincere will Hillary's endorsement be? How what will Obama have to do to get those Clinton supporters vowing to vote McCain? Does Hillary want the VP slot and will Obama give it to her? Will that satisfy Hillary's supporters? And so on, and so on.

In the meantime, the GOP and its supporters will be pumping out massive piles of excrement to throw at the Obamas, which McCain will eventually get around to condemning parts of so he can maintain the illusion of being a fair and clean campaigner.

It should be interesting to see if McCain can keep from tripping himself up with the spotlight finally starting to shift towards him, but it will be a long five months, regardless.

It's The Economy

By Ron Beasley

Are you better off than you were seven years ago?  Are you better off than you were even a year ago?  Only a quarter of Americans say they are better off.

Voter pessimism over finances likely to influence polls

WASHINGTON — Americans are more downbeat about their personal financial situations now than they've been in decades, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, an attitude likely to dominate this year's presidential and congressional elections.

A 55% majority of those surveyed say their families are worse off financially than they were a year ago — the highest number since Gallup first asked the question in 1976 and a jump of 11 percentage points since February.

Just 26% say they are better off.

As the presidential primary season ends today with contests in Montana and South Dakota, the nationwide survey finds Illinois Sen. Barack Obama beginning to consolidate Democrats' support as the issue landscape for the fall is being shaped.

Obama now edges the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, by 47%-44% among registered voters. A month ago, McCain was ahead by 47%-45%. Both leads are within the margin of error of +/— 4 percentage points.

As I have pointed out here before John McCain is not just "McSame" when it comes to reckless foreign policy he is "McSame: when it comes to reckless economics as well.  His association with his chief economic adviser, Phil Gramm, and Gramm's involvement with every economic catastrophe in the last seven years cannot be emphasized enough.

Update

I'm glad to see that the big guns are picking up the Gramm story.

The Left Coaster

Washington Monthly

Some Good Advice

By Ron Beasley

We all know that the so called fact finding trips to Iraq by politicians are little more than taxpayer funded photo ops at a dog and pony show.  That said it appears that Barack Obama may be forced to make such a trip to shut up John McCain.  Juan Cole has some excellent advise on how to turn it into a real fact finding mission and at the same time make it backfire on McCain and the neocons.

See if a meeting can be set up with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani has enormous moral authority in Iraq and is known for his support for national unity. No one could slam Obama for meeting with the Grand Ayatollah. Paul Bremer corresponded with him. He is not a radical and is well respected by the US military. And, when Obama comes to debate McCain, the Grand Ayatollah would give him a trump card. "Senator McCain speaks of having US bases in Iraq for a hundred years. Grand Ayatollah Sistani and other key Iraqi leaders told me to my face that any such plans are completely unacceptable to them. How likely is it that the McCain fatwa can be more popular or legitimate in Iraq than the Sistani fatwa?"

Sistani doesn't meet many foreigners. But he has met UN special envoys and a wide range of politicians. It isn't beyond the realm of possibility that he would meet Obama. Providing security in Najaf could be done. US Ambassador Ryan Crocker was in Najaf recently. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim could set it up and help guarantee it.

He also recommends a trip to Jordan to meet with the half million Iraqi refugees in that country which would bring some visibility to that aspect of the occupation and civil war.