We Won!

Our opponent gave one of the most gracious concession speeches.  I only wish his campaign had been as classy.

Thank you, Senator McCain, for trying to bring America together behind our new president-elect.

Voter suppression is the real problem

As much as ACORN and voter fraud have been mentioned in the conservative media lately, you'd think community organizers are out stealing this election for the poor (and Democratic).  Too bad there's little evidence of that.

The Department of Justice, which according to the attorney general has "made enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority," convicted only 24 people between 2002 and 2005 for voting fraud, an average of eight people a year.

But voter suppression is another way to undermine democracy, and it is being propogated on a much larger scale.

Voter suppression by election officials and state governments -- is widespread and validated. "Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law," the New York Times recently concluded after its own investigation.

And of the specific allegations against ACORN?  Well, the same allegations were made in 2004 and every lawsuit was dismissed.

WASHINGTON - December 14 - Today, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) announced that the last of three politically-motivated lawsuits filed against the group in the wake of its successful 2004 voter outreach drive has been "dismissed with prejudice." Each of the three cases (two in Florida and one in Ohio) were brought by partisan law firms based on unfounded allegations of "voter fraud" against the organization -- and all three cases have been dismissed.

In other words, this "voter fraud" claim is bullshit, just like 2004.  It's a politically motivated tactic to suppress Democratic voters.  And it's a campaign tactic we have to fight. 

What's the Word? Tinklenberg.

Michele Bachmann is a nutter, and now her opponent is featured in a rap.  What a race.

A moment of silence

Ever had the TV on for three minutes with no ads, taglines, splash screens or network music segments?

I tuned into the presidential debate on C-SPAN, and for the last three minutes prior to the debate, it was just a camera on the auditorium. 

How Racism Works

Thanks to MJE for the email, and to Kelvin LaFond for writing this letter to the editor on Sept. 5, 2008 in the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said 'I do' to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the 'Keating 5'? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

-Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

If you're more of a "compare the stats" person, try this from the email I received (if you're part of the anti-intellectualist wing of the Republican party, don't bother.  I know you think education is worthless):

Educational Background of Candidates
  Obama:
  Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
  Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

  Biden:
  University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
  Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

   vs.

  McCain:
  United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

  Palin:
  Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
  North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
  University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
  Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
  University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Palin, patriotism, and (payroll) taxes

Gov. Palin made a big stink in the VP debate about taxes and patriotism:

You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America...that’s not patriotic. 

I couldn't disagree more, and Thomas Friedman has a great column today explaining why paying taxes is in fact far more patriotic than anything else Gov. Palin has suggested we do:

Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan...

I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first. (emphasis mine)

A lot of Republicans consider it a given that taxes must go down, and then spending.  But we've tried that for every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan, and each time it's simply led to deficits and massive increases in the national debt. 

This is the issue: we currently spend what Americans expect from their government, but we don't ask them to pay for it.  Cutting spending means cutting programs Americans want, from defense to health care. 

It's time to do like the American family does in a pinch - try to make more money - and raise taxes.  Because it is patriotic to earn your living.

Election 2008: a chance to conquer unconscious racism

The studies show that conscious prejudice has been on the decline for years, but that unconscious prejudice has been fairly steady.  The problem is that the prejudice rarely happens in a clear-cut fashion:

Whites are particularly likely to discriminate against blacks when choices are not clear-cut and competing arguments are flying about...

For example, when the black job candidate is highly qualified, there is no discrimination. Yet in a more muddled gray area where reasonable people could disagree, unconscious discrimination plays a major role.

White participants recommend hiring a white applicant with borderline qualifications 76 percent of the time, while recommending an identically qualified black applicant only 45 percent of the time.

The subconscious prejudice unfortunately plays out in the election campaign:

a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white

It may seem that solving this problem is beyond us. 

But another lesson, a historical one, is that we can overcome unconscious bias. That’s what happened with the decline in prejudice against Catholics after the candidacy of John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Sarah Palin's Debate Flow Chart

Now you, too, can be a Vice Presidential candidate and successfully navigate your first debate.

Thanks to EJ for the email and to Huffington Post for the image. 

Debate: Palin better than before, still not qualified

CNN did the fastest post-debate polling:

• Palin: 84% of debate watchers thought she overcame expectations (she stood, she breathed, success), but less than half think she's qualified to be President.  
• Biden: Debate viewers also thought Biden performed better, overwhelmingly agreed that he's qualified to be president, and thought he sounded more intelligent.

Neither candidate told the truth the whole way - get the debate facts at FactCheck.org.

My reactions:

• Palin stuck with the strategy of "if I don't know the answer, I won't give an answer," falling back to talking points and slogans.  She's great at slogans.  Won't help much if she becomes president (see: Current Occupant), though I'm glad she wants to put "country first, government on the side of the people, be a maverick, blah blah blah."
• Biden clearly showed he knows what running the country involves, particularly with the nuances required for good foreign policy.  His best line was probably in describing the McCain health care plan that will tax $12,000 in benefits in exchange for a $5,000 tax credit - "that's a bridge to nowhere."

If the election were held today and the polls were accurate, Obama would win in a landslide.  I don't think Palin did enough to change the game.

Foreign policy: can experience temper belligerence?

Times columnists Nicholas Kristof frequently writes on international issues and rarely on politics, but he breaks from that tradition to warn how Sen. McCain may be a return to the foreign policy of the first Bush term.

Although he is frantically trying to distance himself from President Bush, Mr. McCain, by his own accounting, would be more Bushian in foreign policy than even Mr. Bush is now.

Let's start with Iran, with its theocratic regime, hatred of Israel, and interest in nuclear armaments. 

Iran seems determined to continue its uranium enrichment and will be vexing for any president. But Mr. Bush, under the influence of Bob Gates and Condoleezza Rice, has realized that the best hope is diplomacy and negotiation. In contrast, Mr. McCain denounces Barack Obama’s call for direct talks with Iranian leaders and speaks openly about the possibility of bombing Iranian nuclear sites. 

“There’s only one thing worse than military action against Iran, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran,” Mr. McCain has told me and others, repeating the line regularly. That’s a nice sound bite, but it suggests that if Iran continues to enrich uranium he would feel obliged to launch airstrikes...

So if Iran continues its policies as most expect, we might well find ourselves under a McCain presidency headed toward our third war with a Muslim country.

And then there's the newly belligerent Russia.

Russia underscores Mr. McCain’s penchant for risk-taking, theatrics and fulmination. Most striking, he wants to kick Russia out of the Group of 8.

Mr. McCain’s lead-with-the-chin approach to Russia reflects the same pugnacity that resulted in obscenity-laced dust-ups with fellow Republican senators, but it’s less endearing when the risk is nuclear war. Do we really want to risk an exchange of nuclear warheads over Abkhazia or South Ossetia? The Spanish prime minister, José Zapatero, told me a few days ago that what he fears most under a McCain administration is a revival of the cold war with Russia.

Anyone recall the ad, Daisy?

Palin: ready to lead

A great debate

If you missed it, you can still catch the first presidential campaign debate here.  The best?  Plenty of time for the candidates to go back and forth, to challenge inaccuracies and to provide point-counterpoint.  It was a DEBATE.

I hope the other two live up to this.

Oh, and if you haven't, always follow up your debate watch with a visit to Factcheck.org.  Get the truth.

Comparing presidential tax plans

Which do you prefer, tax cuts with debt or tax cuts that are paid for?  That's your choice in the tax plans of the campaign.  McCain's plans skews to the rich (in percent of income and absolute dollars) and will increase the deficit.  Obama's plan offers tax cuts skewed toward the middle class and pays for it with an income tax surcharge on the very rich.

 

2008 Campaign: Some media are aware of the lies

A stunning piece in TIME Magazine looks at the persistence of lying the presidential campaign, singling out Senator McCain for:

a ceaseless assault on his opponent's character and policies, featuring a consistent—and witting—disdain for the truth.

It's not as though the Democratic campaign and Senator Obama are innocent of the typical political monkeying with truth, but McCain has taken the lying to a new level by unreproachfully repeating falsehoods even when confronted with truth. 

John McCain has raised serious questions about whether he has the character to lead the nation. He has defaced his beloved military code of honor. He has run a dirty campaign.

What do you call...

Seen on Slashdot:

What do you call a hockey mom who preaches abstinence only?

A grandma

The sin of symmetry

An interesting piece from the Washington Post that notes the media's penchant for symmetry (instead of being objective, truth seekers) and how it's allowing the McCain campaign to run roughshod over the truth.

The most outrageous of McCain's distortions involve Obama on taxes. He asserts that Obama's new taxes could "break your family budget," and that an Obama presidency would inflict "painful tax increases on working American families." Hardly. Obama would lower taxes for most households, and lower them more than McCain would. The only "painful tax increases on working American families" would be on working families making more than $250,000.

Likewise, the McCain campaign has its story about Sarah Palin, and it's sticking with it -- facts be damned. She said "thanks but no thanks" to that "Bridge to Nowhere," except that she didn't: She backed the bridge until it was unpopular, then scooped up the money and used it for other projects. More than a year after McCain began railing against the bridge, Palin, then a gubernatorial candidate, said the state should build it "now -- while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." 

 Obama's not innocent of stretching the truth, but he's also got enough of a conscience to stop lying when he's caught.  McCain, on the other hand, is "playing to win."

White privilege and this election

From Tim Wise, an excellent writer and thinker on racism in America:

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

• White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
• White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
• White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
• White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."
• White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
• White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.
• White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.
• White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."
• White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
• White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.
• White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
• White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.
• And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem. 

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull. For review copies or interview requests, please reply to publicity@softskull.com

The presidential debate schedule

This is where a lot of Americans end up making their voting decision - the debates.  A chance to see candidates speaking unfiltered by the media and unvarnished by advertising polish.  Mark your calendars!

First presidential debate:
Friday, September 26
University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS

Vice presidential debate:
Thursday, October 2
Washington University in St. Louis, MO

Second presidential debate:
Tuesday, October 7
Belmont University, Nashville, TN

Third presidential debate:
Wednesday, October 15
Hofstra University, Hempstead, N

Things you probably (don't) know

It's a new era in presidential campaigns: lie until you get caught...then lie some more. What might you believe if they stopped lying?

• Gov. Palin did support the bridge to nowhere, before the feds cut the funds.
• Barack Obama's economic plan will cut taxes for 95% of Americans. If you read are reading this blog, that's you.
• McCain's economic plan will not take money from public schools.
• McCain no longer says the economy is sound.

This takes me back to a FactCheck.org story I meant to blog about ages ago: when we hear lies about the candidates, they tend to stick, even after they've been debunked. Not only that, we may even attribute the falsehood to the debunker (e.g. I heard that on FactCheck.org!). Crazy.

Palin - unfiltered

Prepare yourself for a "blizzard of words."