The Rest Of The Week In Review

I'm kind of ambivalent about writing tonight, but this'll probably flow anyway. On to what I missed:

• I've been wanting to write about Joe Biden's comment about paying taxes being a patriotic act for a while now, but haven't gotten the chance. He is absolutely right, and it's the most daring thing I've seen anybody say in this campaign. Forget Social Security, unvarnished talk on taxes is the real third rail of American politics, but at some point, Democrats have to have the courage to say that they are the price we pay for a free society. The McCain campaign predictably savaged Biden for having the gumption to say this, even putting out an ad about it. But of course, back when McCain was a "maverick", he was willing to tell the truth about taxes, specifically Bush's tax cuts for the rich. By the way, in response to McCain's taunting ad, Biden gave no quarter. He's going to make Sarah Palin look silly on Thursday.

• Speaking of Palin, Fareed Zakaria, a pretty good weathervane for the conventional wisdom, makes mincemeat of her in Newsweek. He notes her absolute gibberish about the bailout and the middle class, which Tina Fey actually used verbatim, as a punchline, in last night's SNL sketch. Meanwhile, conservatives have a new Palin strategy - they're going to close their eyes and shove cotton balls in their ears and pretend she's not there. Confidence!

• There was a bit of good news from Iraq this week. The Parliament finally approved a provincial elections law, which is great news for Anbar Province and other areas where Sunnis boycotted the first elections in 2005 and the leaders do not match the makeup of the population. The tough question of Kirkuk, however, was put on the back burner and left out of the agreement. Still, Marc Lynch is pretty impressed. Good news. Can we leave now?

• Another set of documents in the anthrax case were released, and these quote Bruce Ivins claiming that he knew who the anthrax killer was. Given the shoddiness of the investigation, it's no surprise that the FBI never bothered to ask him.

• Just to tie up some debate loose ends: Bill Schneider on CNN thought Barack Obama's reminder that John McCain refused to say whether he would meet with the Prime Minister of Spain was a cheap shot, even though McCain's foreign policy adviser said yes, McCain would not in fact meet with the P.M. of Spain; Wingnuttia was in high shrieking mode about the bracelet Obama was given by a grieving mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq - they said the mother didn't want Obama wearing the bracelet any more - and wouldn't you know that turned out to be completely untrue; McCain's insistence that Henry Kissinger never called for meetings with Iran without pre-conditions is wrong, and he trotted out Kissinger to rebut a statement that Obama never said, compounding the lie.

• By the way, we torture here in the United States, and our leading officials knew about it as far back as early 2002. And they did it because they wanted to extract confessions, and it didn't matter at all whether or not they were true. This is just an expansion of the ABC report from a couple months back, but it never fails to sicken. What is new is that Special Forces in Iraq were requesting the same torture techniques to use on their prisoners that were used in Guantanamo. Torture was practically an industry with these moral lepers. In a related story, Russ Feingold has some good thoughts on restoring the rule of law.

• If you want to know if you're better off than you were eight years ago, CEPR has a handy chart. Or you could just learn that nuclear waste is piling up at our nation's hospitals and health care premiums continue to rise and the EPA is unconcerned about limiting rocket fuel in drinking water and families are abandoning their kids in Nebraska as part of a "safe haven" law. The question of "are you better off' is almost an insult these days.

• Not everything that Congressional Democrats do is wrongheaded and misguided - they did manage to stop that horrible Iran resolution from seeing the light of day.

• This story about mine workers who went on a temporary strike after management sent an NRA-backed film crew to their worksite to get their negative reactions to the Democratic nominee kind of restored my faith in humanity a bit. That it happened in West Virginia, where Obama got smoked by Sen. Clinton in the primaries, restores it even more. And actually, Obama is pretty competitive in West Virginia these days, believe it or not. See that "are you better off" bullet point above.

• Pulitzer winner Sidney Schanberg wrote a long piece for the Nation Institute about John McCain's coverup of information about POW's left behind in Vietnam. This will generate approximately no traction, but it's a pretty well-researched piece.

• This one sort of needs no comment:

People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative political positions on many hot-button issues, according to unusual new research published yesterday.

Booga-booga!

• RIP Paul Newman. As an actor, he was just fine (my favorites were The Hustler and The Verdict), and as a human being who delivered millions to charity through he's Newman's Own brand, he was even better. Plus, he was a great progressive who always put himself on the line for causes he thought were just.

• I'm actually not Sarah Silverman's biggest fan, but her Great Schlep video asking kids to visit their grandparents and get them to support Obama is great. As the grandson of two 80 year-olds wary of the Illinois Senator, I could do some schlepping myself.

• And finally, Clay Aiken is gay. I figure that tidbit gives me enough shocking, out-of-nowhere breaking news to last the rest of the year. He said he finally relented because he wanted to be truthful to his new son. I think once the kid passed the teething stage he would've figured it out. On the other hand, the fact that John McCain's chief of staff was outed this week received far less notoriety than I expected, and the whole world didn't know that one already.