AK-Sen: Toobz Banking On The Backlash

Others can speak to their more personal experiences with Alaska, but I'll tell you, this is exactly what I expected to happen upon his (triumphant?) return.

But the crowd at his Anchorage rally seemed to harbor little doubt that Stevens, who showed flashes of both humility and defiance, would beat his challengers. They include Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat, who was holding a dueling rally at a union hall at the same time as Stevens' event.

There was undisguised hostility toward the federal government and the FBI at the Stevens event, with people wearing T-shirts that said "F*#@ the feds, vote for Ted."

"Anyone who thinks you can get a fair trial in the heart of liberalism, Washington, D.C., is smoking dope. He was railroaded," said Mark Kelliher, a retired engineer.

Talk radio host Rick Rydell told the crowd he knows Stevens, a D.C. jury doesn't.

"I don't particularly like it when outsiders tell me what to do," Rydell said, before Stevens took the stage. "You can kiss my Alaska moose-hunting behind."

This is just backlash politics played perfectly. The fact that Stevens has spent the bulk of the past FORTY years in Washington as a US Senator is apparently besides the point.

Obviously being convicted of a felony is a strike against your record, but it would probably be more damaging to an unknown back-bencher instead of the guy who the Anchorage airport is named after. Stevens still has a really good chance to win, even though his Republican colleagues are publicly telling him to resign. And we know that there's a credible scenario of electoral victory followed by resignation that could lead us to Senator Sarah Palin.

So help out Mark Begich if you can. He's at the Blue America page.

Mad Men

I'm watching this maniac Chris Matthews and his courtiers trying to analyze this upcoming debate, and the consensus seems to be that the winner will be whoever has that "zinger" moment (it's really come to who has the best stand-up writers), and Obama has to act like a regular guy instead of giving these complicated answers that reflect the complex nature of the world. Because he can't be seen as too good or too smart, which would be seen as "elite" and "cool". You know, like Chris Matthews.

I'm not sure I disagree totally with this analysis, but it does reinforce my belief that 1) America has the stupidest system for choosing a President as any in the industrialized world, so mind-bogglingly inane that picking a name from the phone book would be more rigorous; and 2) these so-called pundits should be forced to gag themselves inside the 30-day election window for the good of the country.

Baroness Finds Black Man Elitist

I'm supposed to care that the wife of an international banker who calls herself Lady Lynn de Rothschild is endorsing John McCain because she thinks Barack Obama is arrogant and elitist?

LADY LYNN DE ROTHSCHILD?

Pardon me while I laugh hysterically for the next 10 minutes.

...I'll take Lilly Ledbetter over the Baroness as an endorsement, thank you very much.

Sarah Palin, Elitist

Marcy Wheeler gets at something I missed in the first read of Sarah Palin's taxpayer-funded payments to herself for travel to her own home in Alaska:

As Governor, Palin's first purportedly anti-Juneau act came when she took the oath--it in Fairbanks, not Juneau. Then, she told her Commmissioners they didn't have to live in Juneau.

But overall in the last few months she’s seen less of Palin, who’s moved most of her operations up to Anchorage, the biggest city in Alaska and a place much friendlier to the sort of conservative pro-business pro-drilling stance that’s marked her tenure as governor. “She had started off by telling her Commissioners that none of them had to live in Juneau, which makes Juneauites nervous. We’re always convinced that they’re going to try and move the State Capitol again.”

In fact, when Palin called a special legislative session earlier this year to push through her pipeline plan, she wasn't in Juneau that much [...]

But that's just Sarah and her top aides--the Executive--that have effectively been working outside of Juneau.

She has also said she would not veto an ongoing attempt to move the legislature out of Juneau--even though the measure would bypass a measure passed in 1994 that gives Alaskan voters a say in whether the capitol will move or not.

It seems that Governor Palin's a pretty big fan of moving out of Juneau--or at least not being in Juneau.

Wasilla is not actually a small town. It's part of the metro region of Anchorage in what is a small state. It's closer to a suburb, or more to the point an exurb, than a small town. Juneau, which is 600 miles away, has a population of about 30,000 in its metro area, but it's smaller than Anchorage.

This would be like if Arnold Schwarzenegger decided he would never move to Sacramento and instead run the state out of his home in Brentwood. And then charge taxpayers for his per diem expenses for living at home.

It's actually kind of an elitist pose. She'd rather be with her own near the big city of Anchorage than go down to that cowtown Juneau. That's kind of being missed here.

Uppity

If Democrats can't throw a fit over this, there's something wrong.

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term "uppity" to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

"Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Yesterday, multiple speakers from the podium denigrated community organizing, a pursuit that is often the last line of defense when politicians fail the country and knock out the social safety net. They sneered at Barack Obama's former position as "community organizer" as if it meant "street hustler." Now they are using extremely typical code words to suggest that Obama doesn't know his place.

This is part of the authoritarian mindset. They don't think the people should have any say in the key questions affecting their lives. They don't believe in anyone but them, the wise leaders, having a voice. It is elitist to the extreme, and has characterized the Republican form of government from the founding of the United States onward. We know that it's the community organizers who have beaten back the status quo and offered real hope to this country. We know that without community organizing, there wouldn't be civil rights or labor rights or women's rights or American rights, for that matter. And we know that, when challenged by anyone who comes out of that movement, who comes out of the community and the grassroots, the answer from these moneyed elites is to call them "uppity." To tell them they don't know their place. That they ought not try to empower their community. That they ought to shut up like the boys that they are and sit down and let the adults run things.

We didn't get to this point in history by taking these insults and moving on. An organized community with a group of, yes, "uppity" people working together to create a difference creates profound and lasting change.

Every single Republican should be confronted with this statement and forced to answer for it.

This is a pretty good statement by Sen. Obama, but I think he gets one thing wrong. He's saying that "What you're not hearing is a lot about you," that there's no substance at the convention. True, but you're also hearing an attack on "you," an attack on the very concept of political and social participation and engagement. The Republicans are holding a giant middle finger up to the entire nation. It's time we get mad about it.

UPDATE: True Majority gets it:

Last night, the right wing sank to a new low. Governor Sarah Palin didn't just talk about issues and disagreements over policy; she launched a series of attacks aimed directly at you and me. Here's what Gov. Palin had to say about community organizers:

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."
Gov. Palin was trying to insult Sen. Barack Obama's work history, but she also slurred tens of thousands of Americans dedicated to making their communities better.

This is personal for the TrueMajority/USAction family. Just consider community organizer Chrystal Hutchison from our Florida affiliate. Chrystal grew up as the middle child of two blue-collar parents; her older brother is a Marine and her younger brother is a firefighter. After living in Florida her whole life, she now organizes communities for the Florida Consumer Action Network just a few towns away from where she grew up.

Last fall, Chrystal was working with community members to protect health care for children when she met a little girl named Bethany Wilkerson, whose life had been saved by heart surgery paid for with the government program George Bush wanted to cut. She took Bethany's story to the press, introduced her to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and although she's only 26, Chrystal was a key leader in the successful fight to save the kids' health care program.

Governor Palin just doesn't get that community organizers like Chrystal have led the fight and taken responsibility for fixing the upside-down priorities of right wing dominance in Washington for the last eight years. That's why I'm writing today to ask you to contribute $30 right now to support community organizing.

Link here.

Bling We Can Believe In

Cindy McCain had the price of an average house on her body Tuesday night.

So Exotic

It never got mentioned on Barack Obama's trip to strange and wondrous Hawaii that John McCain met his second wife there.

McCain's Fabulous Life, Day 2

McCain's house gaffe made probably every major paper this morning, and was featured on every nightly newscast. A good example is this USA Today piece, featuring one of the best paragraphs ever:

McCain, who has portrayed Obama as an elitist, is the son and grandson of admirals. The Associated Press estimates his wife, a beer heiress, is worth $100 million. Obama was raised by a single mother who relied at times on food stamps, and went to top schools on scholarships and loans. His income has increased from book sales since he spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention.

Hilarious. Among the other developments: the DNC put out a funny video asking random folks if they remember how many houses they own:



Josh Marshall notices that the McCain household staff budget went up 50% last year to $273,000 a year. Inflation's tough for everybody.

And even a fount of conventional wisdom like Chris Cillizza gets why this matters:

In politics, there is nothing worse than appearing out of touch.

From time immemorial, a candidate who is effectively portrayed as forgetting about the "little" people, of having "gone Washington," of living higher on the hog than voters, loses.

Class remains a powerful motivator for many voters in the country. Politicians are forever trying to cast their candidacies as closely rooted in the communities from which they sprung -- a purposeful attempt to ensure that voters know that the candidate "understands the problems of people like you." Put simply: The worst thing you can call a politician is an elitist.

And so, seen through that lens, it makes perfect sense why Democrats have picked up on John McCain's comment that he wasn't sure about how many houses he and his wife own -- comments made to Politico's Mike Allen and J-Mart -- and why Republicans have fought back so quickly and so hard.

By the way, the progressive movement needs to take a little credit for this one. We harped on McCain's comment at the Saddleback Forum that $5 million dollars connoted being rich, which Obama connected to the current controversy yesterday. Brave New Films and the AFL-CIO have teamed up to drive the "McCain is the real elitist" angle hard, and they put a video out on Wednesday about his many houses. That clearly prompted the Politico writers to ask the question to McCain, leading to that priceless moment.

And I have to say the Obama new media team has been very solid on this in providing information. This is what can happen when everyone works together.

...I forgot to mention the 9-car entourage to Starbucks for a latte yesterday. McCain is not doing himself any favors. And of course this is ticky-tack, but as I've constantly said, this is how the media works in the modern age, and anyway McCain started this whole "elitist" thing, and being out of touch with what's happening in the world and the economy actually does matter.

Collect All 10!

Hilarious.



If we can get a garden gnome in front of all of them, I can die a happy man.

...I love hey, we only have four houses as some kind of rebuttal. That's not helpful to the cause.

This has bloodied McCain and the right is scratching back like a wounded animal. But they've got nothing. And this is an example of the drip-drip-drip here.

It turns out that a few months ago, a McCain family corporation closed on a second multi-million-dollar beach condo in the same building in exclusive Coronado, California -- at around the same time that John McCain offered his somewhat tone-deaf observation that struggling homeowners were "working at second jobs" and "skipping a vacation" in order to make mortgage payments on time.

Cindy McCain discussed the timing of the second condo purchase in a June interview with Vogue magazine (not online) that's newly relevant in light of the explosive controversy over John McCain's inability to recall how many homes the McCains own.

And in another fun fact that could pour fuel on this controversy, Cindy told her interviewer that the reason they needed a second beach condo in the Coronado building was that the first was too crowded because her kids were staying there and as a result she "couldn't get in the place."

Cindy continued: "So I bought another one."

Also of note: McCain pays $270,000 for butlers and maids.

Glorious.

...you have to love this article where McCain muses that even billionaires can be poor, and calls lobbyists "birds of prey" even though they all work on his campaign.

...here's the infamous audio, by the way.



...too funny.

I Can Answer How Many Houses I Own Right Now

That's the difference between me and John McCain.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

"I think — I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's condominiums where — I'll have them get to you."

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

So his staff is even lowballing it. I've heard as many as ten.

Josh Marshall wants to start a contest - name McCain's homes! I'd like to see a pilgrimage tour.

I should add here that Barack Obama is the elitist.



(the answer for me, by the by, is zero)

UPDATE: As Yglesias says, it's actually a hard question to answer, which should tell you what a man of the people McCain is right there.

UPDATE II: Tim Kaine makes a funny:

"I understand that Sen. McCain was asked yesterday this question, 'how many houses do you own?,' and he couldn't answer that question. He couldn't count high enough, apparently, to even know how many houses he owns," said Kaine.

UPDATE III: Wow, team Obama is quick.



He could also do something fun like this Russ Feingold bit (not with the candidate in it, per se). But that's very good.

The Beltway Rules

Only one of John McCain's eight homes has been featured in Architectural Digest magazine, and sure the pool is big but it's not nearly Olympic-sized. So this cements his reputation as a man of the people. On the other hand, liberal elitist Barack Obama hobnobs with celebrities like his elderly grandmother and sister in exotic locales like the 50th state of Hawaii, which nobody save for 5 million or so West Coasters would ever be able to vacation on. But if you should ever demean the service of the fighting men and women who served at Pearl Harbor on the great American island of Hawaii, you'd be showing your knee-jerk liberal hatred of the military.

This all makes a lot more sense if you live in Washington.

(By the way, good on David Axelrod for taking a swing at McCain's luxurious lifestyle: “Obviously, his strategists met on the portico of the McCain estate in Sedona — or maybe in one of his six other houses — and decided what line of attack they were going to use." Jonathan Martin's whining that McCain doesn't technically have a portico is rich. Leave John McCain ALOOOOONE!!!)

Riddle Me This

If you did a blind test of two families, and one just got their student loans paid off, and both parents were the products of middle-class homes, with one raised by a single mother and occasionally on food stamps...

And the other family is fabulously wealthy, the wife just made a ton of dough from a major multinational merger involving American and Belgian beer companies, and has been recently quoted as saying "In Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane"....

Which family would you consider to be the "elitists"?

(The McCain quote, by the way, specifically refers to how to traverse a large state while campaigning, so that's not necessarily the source of the elitism there, it's the fact that Cindy decided to learn how to fly in response to a mild fear of small planes, and then bought her own plane, which is a response that's kind of out of reach to the average American. Also, will the Anheuser-Busch/InBev merger mean that the Belgians can made Budweiser taste a little less like the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth?)

Ignorant Or Calculating?

At least the latest Clinton pander - her vow to break up the OPEC cartel- has some manner of logical sense in that I can't see anyone in the US being against that if they thought it could actually happen, which, um, it can't. But Yglesias and others are right - the price of gas is not rising because of a cartel, it's rising because global demand is skyrocketing, particularly in China and India, and as demand rises, the price rises. I really don't think there's a whole lot of extra supply out there that oil-producing nations aren't pumping - at $120 a barrel they'd be idiots not to get as much out of the ground as possible.

I'm fairly certain that Clinton knows this, as do most politicians who are afraid of telling the truth to cash-strapped American consumers. But Clinton, at least, isn't really interested in reality, she's interested in using the issue as a blunt instrument to show voters that she's "on their side" and Obama's some elitist fruitcake.

On a related note, Lambert Strether has lost his mind. But in his defense, it made for one of the better Sadly, No posts ever.

Look, forget about the usefulness or uselessness of the gas tax holiday for a moment. Put aside the fact that Obama, unlike Clinton and McCain, is clearly in cahoots with Chevron executives to hoard all the extra ketchup packets that could be feeding working families throughout the Rust Belt for decades to come. Is it not abundantly clear that both Democrats’ plans for phased troop withdrawals from Iraq will save taxpayers orders-of-magnitude more Ramen packets than thirty bucks’ worth? Important as it is to keep the noodle-wolf at bay, is this not the issue upon which we should be judging these candidates?

Indeed.

UPDATE: I could also mention that a gas tax holiday would cost millions of dollars and thousands of highway construction jobs, and that past experience with gas tax holidays suggest that the savings are not passed on to the consumer, but I won't. Oh wait, I just did!

The Clinton McCain 419

This letter at the new site Gas Tax Scam is hilarious.

CONFIDENTIAL/URGENT POLITICAL PROPOSAL

Dear Sir

First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and "top secret".

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

If you accept we will deliver to your a sum of 30 DOLLARS in the summer 2008 in form of a "GAS TAX HOLIDAY". You will then deliver this money to accounts of our friends in Middle East by taking it to your nearby gasoline station where they have information to forward the money. Please supply your bank account, social security number, address and your vote in DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES AND NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION.

It's surprising that a proposal that, after all, at its heart cuts taxes on driving does not have a plurality of support. It's kind of a freak occurrence (a contested primary with few other differences in policy forces the traditional media to actually cover the issue in a substantive way, and the unanimity among experts forces them to insert that into the debate rather than the more expected he-said she-said), but it does show what can happen when people get all the facts and are able to think for themselves. A pander only works when it's actually popular.

Of course, this is not really about the gas tax, but about Clinton's gambit to paint Obama's supporters as not real people. It's code for the "elitist" label that she's clearly been trying to stamp on him. And none of this changes the fact that superdelegates keep moving against her and the window of opportunity to actually win the nomination is closed. It just pisses off those Democrats who have been paying attention. Understand that this entire gas tax kerfuffle only aids Republicans in their effort to perpetuate a stereotype against Democrats.

Can Arnold Pass The High School Exit Exam?

The fallout from Gov. Schwarzenegger's demeaning comments about small-town Californians continue to reverberate. Chairman Torres weighed in, and noted that rural Californians don't exactly use a horse and buggy to get around, and some of them even have the teevee and the Internets!

“The Governor’s comments are insulting,” Torres told PolitickerCA.com today. “California does not have villages. This is not Austria, this is California. Voters in Central California and others from small towns have more on the ball than Arnie!”

State Senator Dean Florez, from the small Central Valley town of Shaffer, went a step further, introducing a resolution to have the Governor take the high school exit exam.

Like every other kid around the state, small town students take the same graduation tests as big city kids to show competency. Rural kids can make the grade. Given the Governor’s distasteful comments, what’s unanswered is whether he can make the grade.

That’s why, today, I’m introducing a senate resolution asking the Governor to take the high school exit exam. If the Governor fails the test, then we certainly have a capable Lt. Governor who can assume his duties until the Governor successfully passes the exam.

I hope that he accepts this challenge and that he doesn’t cower behind some excuse. This is a serious effort to bring attention to the divisiveness of placing labels on people based on who they are, how they live or where they come from -- or even how well they do on a test.

If it is a good enough test for our twelfth graders, then certainly it is a good enough test for the Governor to demonstrate his competency.

And after he takes the exam, maybe he’ll think twice about the massive cuts to education funding he's proposing -- he just may have to return to school to brush up for the test.”

I would pay money to sit in while Arnold fills in the bubbles on the Scan-Tron sheet. Can we get this on television? It'd be the first time local news covered state politics all year!

Schwarzenegger: You Hicks Know What An Air-O-Plane Looks Like?

I almost get what the Governor was trying to say, but the fact that it was a proud endorsement of lobbyist-paid junkets, as well as the demeaning stance toward small-town Californians, doesn't come off well:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday encouraged lawmakers -- especially those from small towns -- to do more globe-trotting on the dime of special interests.

Speaking at a forum on global economics held by the nonprofit Milken Institute, the governor suggested lawmakers would be more willing to embrace his plans to privatize the building of roads, schools, high-speed rail systems and other public works if they could see how effectively it has worked in other countries.

"Some of them come from those little towns, you know what I am saying, they come from those little towns and they don't have that vision yet of an airport or of a highway that maybe has 10 lanes or of putting a highway on top of a highway," Schwarzenegger said. "They look at you and say, 'We don't have that in my town. What are you talking about?'

"So they are kind of shocked when you say certain things. So I like them to travel around."

Remember, folks, it's Barack Obama who's the elitist. Arugula!

What shouldn't get lost here is that Schwarzenegger made this little comment to justify what he has done multiple times since entering public office - jetsetting around the world on trade missions paid for by shadowy interests who expect a return on their investment.

There's a virtue and value in world travel, and the country could go a long way to fostering it by providing grants for international study, for example. If he wants to build a program like the "overseas experience" they have in New Zealand for California's young people, great. But Schwarzenegger isn't really endorsing that. He just wants his secret free trips. The "y'all are hicks" part is just frosting on the cake.

The Simple Life

John McCain is extremely rich. Not just a little bit rich, but fabulously wealthy. This leads to awkward moments like this which are likely to be replayed throughout this "Forgotten Americans" tour.

Standing before a nearly shuttered factory pocked with broken windows, John McCain on Tuesday urged Americans to reject the "siren song of protectionism" and embrace a future of free trade.

He used his own recent political fortunes — a dramatic fade followed by an unexpected comeback to secure the Republican presidential nomination — to illustrate that depressed Rust Belt cities such as Youngstown can have bright futures.

"A person learns along the way that if you hold on — if you don't quit no matter what the odds — sometimes life will surprise you," McCain said in a speech at Youngstown State University after meeting the five remaining workers at Fabart, a steel-fabricating factory that had more than 100 employees a few years ago.

In other words, "keep working at luring your factory back home, look at me, I had a few less million to spend than Mitt Romney!"

It's really an out-of-touch statement, and the Ohio Democratic Party pounced on it:

The difference between Youngstown and McCain couldn't be starker:

• Youngstown is a working class city; John McCain is one of the richest members of the Senate.

• McCain's plans shred the safety net for Youngstown; McCain's safety net is a rich heiress wife worth $100 million.

"McCain's attempt to compare a poorly-managed campaign budget to the increasing demands on a family's budget shows the bubble McCain lives in," said Kelly.

You cannot analogize the continuing struggles in the manufacturing sector to a campaign fundraising deficit. Especially when you are, as I said fabulously wealthy. John Edwards would say throughout his campaign "We're all going to be fine, the American people won't be." McCain seems to be saying "We're all struggling together, you and I... never mind the beer distributor fortune."



Today we got a sense of how John McCain rewards his elite friends. The story dropped on the same day as the Pennsylvania primary so nobody's paying attention to it, but it's fairly devastating.

Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.

A letter from Senator John McCain may have helped Donald R. Diamond, a longtime friend, gain the rights to develop property at a former Army base. Mr. Diamond has raised more than $250,000 so far for Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign.
When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain’s endorsement as “a close personal friend.”

Writing to officials in the city, Seaside, Calif., the senator said, “You will find him as honorable and committed as I have.”

Courting local officials and potential partners, Mr. Diamond’s team promised that he could “help get through some of the red tape in dealing with the Department of the Army” because Mr. Diamond “has been very active with Senator McCain,” a partner said in a deposition.

We can keep talking about waffles and bowling and shots of Crown Royal, but in truth we have a Republican wedded to the issues of the wealthy, and Democrats discussing issues that affect workers. This is true this year as much as any primary in recent memory. And so we cannot lose sight of that.

See also Tom Frank on this issue.

McCain Big Pimpin'

So, John McCain was apparently doin' some bigtime shopping at Barney's New York in Beverly Hills, but the $2,546.56 bill was credited back to the campaign just recently. And a spokesman says that the campaign's card was stolen.

Because credit card thieves usually run right to Barney's.

Sounds like somebody screwed up, used the wrong card and is trying to hide their lavish, elitist lifestyle.

Also, if the McCain campaign is so bad with money that they can't even handle their own credit cards, do we want him anywhere near the NATIONAL credit card?

(I expect a 10-minute discussion of this the next time Charlie Gibson or George Stephanopoulos interview St. McCain. After all, the people DECIDE on this stuff, right?)

From Academia To Psychology

This is the second time in as many days that John W. McCain has dismissed the real concerns of real people who are struggling, suffering and dying in service to policies he wholeheartedly supports.

You might remember that McCain threw out a concept for a summer gas tax holiday to ease the burden on those paying high prices at the pump (a buck-eighty at a time for a 10-gallon tank... why, that'll end poverty in our time!). It was roundly criticized for providing little to no stimulus for working families, especially when contrasted with his desire to massive cut corporate tax rates. It'd also eliminate every highway construction job in America for three months and cause a spike in gas prices in September right before the election. So to say it was an unserious proposal is pretty on the mark.

Today, McCain tried to explain the rationale for his plan.

I think psychologically, and a lot of our problems today are psychological, confidence, trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, the ability to keep our own home, this might give them a little psychological boost. Let's have some straight talk, it's not a huge amount of money. A little psychological boost, that's what I think it would help.

It must be comforting to the single mother who can't survive on the minimum wage, or the steelworker who just got laid off, that they were offered a psychological boost. Because that's really the whole problem, right? Apparently McCain is taking the Green Lantern theory of geopolitics into the economic arena. Since he analogizes everything to a basic contest of will, it makes sense. We're apparently going to fight the economy through steely-eyed resolve, and improve people's lives through sheer force of command. Never mind the structural inequality problem, or the deregulation that led to a crumbling financial marketplace, or the credit crunch which has led to decreased consumer spending and a wave of bankruptcies, or the massive uptick in foreclosures (I love how McCain thinks the ability to keep one's own home is a "psychological problem" and not, you know, an "I don't have the cash" problem). It is the height of condescension to write off economic struggles as nothing more than something going on inside the heads of the unwashed masses.

I'll tell you what, though. McCain's right about one thing. The country is experiencing major psychological problems. Only thing is that they come from hundreds of thousands of sick veterans who were traumatized during his endless war in Iraq.

Some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries, a new study estimates.

Only about half have sought treatment, said the study released Thursday by the RAND Corporation.

"There is a major health crisis facing those men and women who have served our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Terri Tanielian, the project's co-leader and a researcher at the nonprofit RAND.

"Unless they receive appropriate and effective care for these mental health conditions, there will be long-term consequences for them and for the nation," she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The 500-page study is the first large-scale, private assessment of its kind — including a survey of 1,965 service members across the country, from all branches of the armed forces and including those still in the military as well veterans who have left the services.

Its results appear consistent with a number of mental health reports from within the government, though the Defense Department has not released the number of people it has diagnosed or who are being treated for mental problems. The Department of Veterans Affairs said this month that its records show about 120,000 who served in the two wars and are no longer in the military have been diagnosed with mental health problems. Of the 120,000, approximately 60,000 are suffering from PTSD, the VA said.

We're going to see deeply disturbed Iraq and Afghan war vets on our streets for decades. It's the residual cost of an unnecessary war that did not make us any safer. McCain's present to them is to deride the question of the initial invasion as an academic argument, and by describing the very real economic pain they feel as just "psychological." The fact that he wants to throw military families out of their housing is just a cherry on top.

Somehow, after this set of statements, we're not all talking about how McCain is an elitist. With this kind of corrupt thinking, I can tell you he's certainly not elite.

UPDATE: Barack Obama, of course, wants to give veterans the care and respect they deserve, and also pull our troops out of a dangerous and counter-productive situation in Iraq, just like a SNOB!!!!1!

MoDo Ju-Jitsu

Maureen Dowd today does a little behind-the-back move that you might not notice if you're as dumb as she thinks you are. She kicks off her column by explaining how salt-of-the-earth and chip-off-the-old-block she is, lest you have any false assumptions that a longtime New York Times op-edder would be anything but the common man (or woman).

I’m not bitter.

I’m not writing this just because I grew up in a house with a gun, a strong Catholic faith, an immigrant father, brothers with anti-illegal immigrant sentiments and a passion for bowling. (My bowling trophy was one of my most cherished possessions.)

My family morphed from Kennedy Democrats into Reagan Republicans not because they were angry, but because they felt more comfortable with conservative values. Members of my clan sometimes were overly cloistered. But they weren’t bitter; they were bonding.

They went to church every Sunday because it was part of their identity, not because they needed a security blanket.

See, she's jus' folks, as evidenced by the upbringing in that hick town known as Washington, DC. And the 30 years in journalism including 15 scouring on the cocktail weenie circuit while on the Times' editorial page hasn't changed her.

Now, watch for the behind-the-back move:

Obama did not grow up in cosseted circumstances. “Now when is the last time you’ve seen a president of the United States who just paid off his loan debt?” Michelle Obama asked Tuesday at Haverford College, referring to Barack’s student loans while speaking in the shadow of the mansions depicted in “The Philadelphia Story.”

But his exclusive Hawaiian prep school and years in the Ivy League made him a charter member of the elite, along with the academic experts he loves to have in the room.

See, Obama was changed, fundamentally, by his ascendancy to the higher climes of American life, and now he's an elitist who looks down on the rabble.

This, of course, has most certainly not happened to Maureen Dowd. Just other people who have the exact same story as she does.

Even on her own trivial, willfully stupid level, Dowd can't keep the story straight.

(Also, see Molly Ivors. This whole "Obama talks to Iowans about arugula, heh" meme has come right out of the fever swamps, and nobody bothers to mention that he was talking to arugula farmers, which is just one of the splendid points Molly I. makes, and you shouldn't miss it, especially for the "insufferably shallow superannuated cheerleader" crack.)