7 posts tagged “mccain”

    This week something remarkable happened: the inauguration of Barack Obama to the White House. And yes, it was truly remarkable, no matter which of the two parties you belong. I listened to his speech and the following jamboree on the radio, since I was at work and was only able to catch a glimpse of the televisions up front. It was good, great, grood even, and it felt good to finally see this thing realized. What, pray tell, do I mean here by "thing"? Well, in fact, a number of things, not the least of which is the induction of a black man to our highest office; that right there has been a long time coming. But perhaps more mundanely I meant simply the inauguration itself. I couldn't bear another morning of waking up to the pundits going on about how he's almost our new president. It's hard to believe two whole months passed since that whirlwind of an election. In fact, I've been thinking lately of that momentous occasion, and just how fast it all really happened.
    On the night of November 4, 2008, I left church and headed over to my friends' house nearby to say hello. When I got there, they were, of course, avidly watching the start of the election coverage on all the major networks. I told them right off the bat I would not be staying to watch. I was merely coming over to say hello, visit a bit, and would be headed home to wait until the next morning to find out the results of the election.
    “Why wouldn't you want to watch?” they wondered. Indeed, to my friends, as to most Americans that night, my aspirations to avoid the election coverage at all costs must have sounded asinine. This was the most important night of the year – the night we had all been waiting for, which seemed to capture practically every bit of journalistic interest for as long as any of us could remember.
    Of course, a part of me did want to watch – and watch I did, for a while. I, like any informed citizen, had tried my best to keep up with the election coverage so as to guarantee my vote would be knowledgeable, sincere and full of conviction. So naturally I was interested in the outcome. But in my gut, however, I knew that it was curiosity that killed the cat, and my gut was not interested in the imminent ulcer several grueling hours of nail-biting news coverage would surely supply.
    I like to think, however, that it was more than just my tummy's well-being that had me so opposed to the carnival of coverage. I hoped there was also in my delinquency an ingredient civil noncompliance, meaning I could abide by the constraint of ideas and principles over and against my personal gratification and the thrill of television at its most unscripted. There was a feeling I just couldn't shake, which mirrored perhaps the feeling you get when, having slept through a long flight, you wake up in a different country and climate, on a different day, and among foreign-tongued civilians. In other words, this election business was all happening so fast. In my own state of Kentucky, polls had opened that morning at 6 AM and closed about 12 hours later. Next, Americans collectively took a breath and held it.  For five hours the nation sat rapt before the flat screen HD TV, spiking network ratings perhaps not seen since the last hotly contested election four years earlier. Then came the most anticipated exhale of the century. That same night we had a new president, not 6 hours after the polls had closed.
    OK, I admit it. I watched the whole damn thing. But let's face it: if I hadn't how could I bloviate on the matter as I am? Perhaps this time around, my nervousness was overcome by disbelief. I simply could not understand how the networks felt confident enough to call a state for McCain or Obama when only 5% of the state's vote had been counted. More mystifying still, how could they call Washington, Oregon, and California for Obama immediately after their polls closed? It's not that I was dissatisfied with the outcome (I had become an avid Obama recruit), but just how was it that they were able to “project” without fail which way every state and commonwealth in the Union would fall, red or blue, Republican or Democrat, McCain or Obama?
    Not only could I not get a grip on the networks' crystal ball clairvoyance, I refused to believe this divination was ideal. Sure, it was nice to know the outcome, to “just get it over with”, to let all those months of anticipation dissipate in buoyant joy or bitter sorrow. But I wondered what were we forsaking in our capitulation to prime time politics? How is it that we were willing to parse down the most important decision of the year, of the next four years, in fact, to a matter of moments? Poor Obama and McCain: so obliged were they to ready themselves for crowning victory or devastating defeat only hours after they left the campaign trail. Gone were the days when each vote was taken singularly and seriously, when the gravity of a nation's resolve outweighed the “urgency of now.” In those days of yore, eager voters had to wait for weeks before every vote was tallied, and a consensus reached. On November 4th, 2008, we could hardly wait till the polls closed before pronouncing our victor.
    I wondered: Was this democracy? Was this our sacred ritual of freedom? Perhaps instead this was a sort of ruse, a comic diffusion done up and digestible for the attention-deficient American public. Rather than any dignified sign of civil liberty, this looked to me much more like Hollywood donning wig and gavel to feed us the plot line which we'd come to crave. Suddenly it made sense that the the dust would settle so quickly. Could we, as 21st century American citizens, really bear the suspense of an actual tally of votes? I hardly thought so. We're the nation of fast food, TV dinners and instant messaging. We've come to expect a happy ending after a couple of hours. In other words, we demand instant gratification, and our presidential elections are no exception.
    There was something else entirely lost in our mad dash to victory that Tuesday night. So much of the drama of it revolved around the either-or sensibility. The good vs. bad, old vs. young, and experience vs. change narratives the media had written for us (and the candidates stuck by) played perfectly into our preconceived paradigm of contest. The United States democratic process has been locked in a two-party system for decades. Ross Perot made a decent run in 1996 on account of his deep pockets. And on occasion, rogues like Ralph Nader are lambasted for “stealing votes” from the two major candidates. In spite of these anomalies, the essence of our political process has long lain at the feet of two very similar giants. Of course, the general public doesn't see them as all that similar. They can be delineated with labels like “big government” and “fiscal conservative” easily enough. It's not that these names accurately describe the parties they are assigned to. It's just a way for us to keep things simple, to eliminate any shade but black and white. We've got to keep things simple or we might get confused. We like our elections like we like our sports: Two teams, one winner. Ties are a necessary evil. But bringing a third team onto the field – or worse yet, a fourth or fifth – just doesn't fit the bill.
    Hence, the vote for third party is often derided as a “wasted vote,” and often the voter's conscience is overrun by pragmatism simply to avoid the spoiler effect. What's the point of voting for someone who's never going to win? Or so goes the logic. This rationale does not reign supreme, however. In every election you still hear of the bleeding hearts out there who hold out hope for a democratic process bigger than just two parties. The evidence is clear. Ralph Nader and company netted nearly 700,000 votes. Bob Barr of the Libertarians caught nearly half a million, and Charles Baldwin, Ron Paul's pick, about 200,000. These are by no means massive or impressive results. But they demonstrate, at least, that the outcasts had captured some interest – well over a million voters' collectively. Racing across the finish line on election night, prematurely calling Obama's or McCain's name for every state completely cuts these contenders out of the race. Why? Because their race is any less valid than the Democrats and Republicans'? Because they're less American than the front runners? Hardly. Most of it comes down to money, and the rest goes to public disinterest. We can't tolerate the wait – especially if the wait involves a pack of nobodies – and so we rush ahead, call the game before we hop in bed, and let the day end.
    By no means do I wish for my critique here to detract from the “historic nature” of the recent election. I've said already that Obama was my man this year, and I'm glad he won. I wouldn't have minded, though, waiting a few more days for things to actually happen, rather than simply letting the talking heads call it for me well ahead of time. I lament, too, that our system can't bear more competition than the little we're provided between two parties. Civilized democracies – and even some third world governments – around the world enjoy three parties. Several European countries boast five or six parties even. At times these separate groups align to form a more powerful coalition and solidify a win. Other times they'll go it alone, resting on the strength of their distinct platforms. But options like these are the name of the game when more than two parties are possible. Voters can indulge in the privilege of deliberation. We, too, have access to said privilege. We need only move beyond black and white and into the shades of partisan gray. This, however, may forever remain too tall an order for Americans, so long we call our elections like we do the Kentucky Derby.

Well, it's official. Barack Obama will be president. It's pretty amazing, really. Ryan mentioned in a voice mail to me that "something happened that I wanted to happen". Somehow, he thought, the Republicans were going to eke out a dirty win again like they seemed to have done in the past two elections. I admit I had a similar fear, irrational as it may have been. 

I'm glad Obama will be president. Very glad, in fact. In Obama I see someone who is at least willing to think about things and is committed to dialogue, and someone who is intelligent enough to conduct that dialog without preposterous epithets and blanket accusations. No more "coalition of the willing" and "axis of evil" speak. The fact that John McCain could utter the belief that America must "defeat evil" as exemplified in Islamic terrorists to rousing applause really bothered me. How can Islam and its adherents constitute evil in this world to American Christians when St. Paul spoke of our adversaries as spiritual when he said to the Ephesians:  For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 

Furthermore, the Apostle often referred to our very selves as "the enemy". Our sinful passions, the "flesh", which war within us is what must be defeated, and never the "other", the foreigner who believes differently from us, even if he is willing to point and shoot at us: If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

This notion -- that there is evil in the world which must be confronted and defeated -- strikes me as a very UNchristian belief, unless the locus of that evil is within ourselves. Until we are able to confront the evil that is within us, we are only pointing fingers, reaching for the speck in our brother's eye. 

This is not to say that men and women do not DO evil things in this world. The Muslim extremists who insist on destorying themselves and everyone around them are I believe a true manifestation of evil in this world, and I believe it is important that we act within our means to keep them from trampling upon the helpless. But our actions must never be out of self-righteousness, and in this case, I think I fall much more in line with how Mr. Obama responded to Rick Warren's question regarding evil: ...I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil. You know a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil… In the name of good and I think one thing that’s very important is having some humility in recognizing that. You know, just because we think our intentions are good doesn’t mean that we’re going to be doing good.

I'm willing to bet that most of the Christians at Rick Warren's convocation were not hardcore fundamentalists, bent on the idea that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. I'm willing to bet most if not all of them were your average, conscientious mainline Protestant. Yet McCain's response to Warren's question on evil was what stirred their hearts so to resounding applause, while Obama's registered not even an audible "Amen". Could it be that what they so heartily approved of was more American than Christian, more Romantic than Redemption? Are we indeed pursuing Christ in our pursuit of the heathen extremist? Is this Christianity?

Yanked from the NY Times Op-ed Columnist, Nicholas Kristof.

John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated.

“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”

That’s a widespread conservative belief. Mitt Romney compared the threat of militant Islam to that from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Some conservative groups even marked “Islamofascism Awareness Week” earlier this month.

Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.

“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.

An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.

Read MORE.

My friend Justin's new blog, In 3rds, has become my most reliable source for the ridiculous measures certain presidential and vice-presidential campaigns are taking this election year. To add to the list, the McCain campaigns feels obligated to grossly exaggerate the size of the crowds it draws. Here's a very amusing video illuminating the recent discovery:

 

Why should he feel obligated to lie about this? Aside from the obvious: that Republicans aren't drawing this year, even with Palin the Pitbull as a sensational sideshow act.

To wit, here's a list of things the McCain campaign has fabricated or flabbergasted voters with since the introduction of Palin to the ticket, only three weeks ago.

+ Sarah Palin said "Thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere, when really she supported it up until the point it was shown to be a natioanl scandal. Even after it was proven that she did not refuse funding for the intended bridge, and was called out for it in her interview with Charlie Gibson, she continued to use that "thanks but no thanks" line at rallies.

+ Sarah Palin has repeatedly said she has refused to entertain any lobbyist while she was Mayor and Governor of Alaska, and would not accept earmark "porkbarrel" dollars, when in fact her state this year has garnered more money for earmarks than any other, and she even hired lobbyists to help procure the funds.

+ Sarah Palin is quoted in saying "Keep up the good work!" to her husband's avowed sessessionist movement, whose founder is quoted in proclaiming, "The fires of hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American Government!"

+ Sarah Palin attempted to have a librarian fired when said librarian of Wasila Public Library refused to ban certain books from the shelves.

+ Sarah Palin pressured the Wasilan police chief to fire her brother-in-law, who had mistreated her sister.

+ Sarah Palin sought $15,000,000 in earmarks in order to build a train from her town of Wasila to now-indicted Alaskan senator Ted Steven's ski resort.

+ Sarah Palin cited her foreign experience as being able to see Russia from the shores of Alaska. She procured a passport two months before becoming the veep pick, and aside from her noble trip to Iraq to show her support for the troops, she's only ever visited Canada and Mexico.

+ Sarah Palin, in her interview with Gibson, denigrated the experience of other presidential and vice presidential campaigners, suggesting the American people weren't interested in a president (or vice president) who could flout a "big fat resume" that included a familiarity and working rapport with several foreign heads of state.

+ Sarah Palin claimed that the Alaskan state jet, which she sold on Ebay after three tries, turned a profit, when in fact it sold at a loss of $.6 million.

The list actually goes on, but I get really tired of this type of harangue, especially from my own lips. And in fact, as much as this list has to do with Sarah Palin, a mere vice president when all is said and done, the point is that the campaign Palin is working for has authorized and endorsed every measure, defended every falsehood as truth and every blunder as intentional. It's the campaign that brings Palin to the ticket, touting her as a "Washington outsider", a "reformer" and someone you can trust. And who's running this crazy campaign? Well, theoretically it's McCain, but conventional wisdom suggests there are others behind the scenes. Important neocon big wigs who want everything just right. Either way, it suggests something entirely too ominus for the Republicans: either McCain is running this campaign and making grave and wanton mistakes in judgment, or he's as much a puppet as Bush has been the last eight years. 

 

In a technological age, how do people ever think they can get away with this? Do they simply forget what they said a few months before? Hardly, but what they count on is that you have forgotten...

 

While it may be hard to bring yourself to trust any politician, at least some of them make sense. I was pretty happy with Joe Biden's assesssment of the downright redonkulous display at the Republican National Convention last week:

 

But I digress. The hot news item of late is the controversy over just how reform-minded folks like Sarah Palin and Senator McCain really are. Every day they travel the campaign trail together, McCain the protective discipler of his neophyte Palin, never letting her out of his sight and creating "truth squads" to wrangle in anyone who wants too much information out of her. Anyone remember the "bridge to nowhere"? That fantastic plot to build a 400 million dollar bridge to an Alaskan island of less than 10,000 inhabitants, but which was halted in its tracks by Sarah Palin, Professional Maverick? Sure you do! Palin's been nursing her Republican bambinos on that milk for nearly two weeks now. But wait... a dirty rumor has started that in fact she was on board with the whole project until it was exposed for the scandal it was. 'Cept it's not a dirty rumor. It's a documented fact. How is the Palin Truth Squad going to handle this one?

 

 

  

It's not easy to make the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential campaign seem benign. But suggesting that Barack Obama is the Antichrist might just do it.

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects.”

It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point “where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics” that it would turn its back on the next great global industry — clean power — “but that’s exactly what is happening.” If the wind and solar credits expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made.

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. “Last year, we were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets.”

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.