Category: US election 2008

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made numerous mistakes in the crucial early phases of his response to the current crisis. (Not to mention the antecedent mistakes he and his predecessors made that served to cause the current crisis. Supporting the continued deregulation of the markets being a key one there.)
Paulson’s mistakes in September were mistakes of both policy substance and political style. Substance-wise, it’s pretty clear that his aversion to the federal government taking equity in the troubled banks was a big mistake. Krugman has a pithy comment on that here.
Without the government getting equity, the fears about the viability/solvency of the big troubled banks simply remained in place. But throughout September and until recently Paulson saw the government getting equity as “a sign of failure”– whereas he claimed his $700 bailout was “about success.”
Excuse me? The taxpayers were being asked to provide a $700 billion lifeline to the banks because they’d succeeded??
Paulson has since then reversed course. Now, he apparently sees the need for the government to purchase bank equity.
So he’s wasted nearly three weeks now barking up the wrong tree.

Continue reading “The costs of Paulson’s mistakes”

Like, apparently, 27 million other Americans, last week I received an unsolicited copy of the DVD “Obsession” in my mailbox. The original movie from which it is taken was made in 2006 and has the sub-title “Radical Islam’s War Against the West”.
It’s a crude piece of anti-Muslim hate propaganda. (I tossed my copy straight in the trash.)
Why is someone mailing out 27 million copies now? Who is funding and organizing that huge operation?
Kudos to NPR’s Peter Overby and Will Evans who’ve been following up that story, and to Richard Silverstein who’s taken the investigation into the people who did the distribution even further (1, 2, and 3.)
Silverstein’s very well-documented bottom line: that the organizations Clarion Fund, which made the movie, and Front Line Strategies, which apparently organized the $50-million or so DVD distribution effort, both have extensive ties to the Republican Jewish Committee and to a rightwing Jewish group headquartered in New York called Aish HaTorah.

Continue reading “Anti-Obama hate machine escalates attacks”

10:02 Audience member Phil Elliot asked how the US’s economic woes will affect the country’s ability to be a peacemaker. McCain answered totally about the US’s ability to field an effective military.
When he ended (with a jab against Obama’s claimed lack of experience), Brokaw asked the same question again but again in terms of the US having military effectiveness.
Actually, Obama answered very effectively, including noting that McCain had been quite wrong on going into Iraq and noting the huge cost of that decision.
Brokaw asked a follow-up question about (military) “humanitarian intervention”, citing the example of DR-Congo. Obama answered it well, saying there will always be atrocities that the US can’t combat on its own and therefore it needs to have good relations with many others around the world.
A question about Pakistan… Obama says his previous thing about “not coddling Pakistan.”
Obama: “We will kill Bin Laden, we will crush Al-Qaeda, and that has to be our number one priority.”
On substance, McCain is answering this one better. “We need to get the support of the Pakistani government and go into Waziristan– where I’ve been– and win the support of the people there.”
Interesting little exchange about who’s less bellicose. McCain said he would be like Teddy Roosevelt: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Obama recalled McCain’s “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”, his threat to annihilate North Korea, and his pre-2003 eagerness to invade Iraq…

9:40 Obama’s been doing very well explaining his tax policy proposals in a clear and compelling way.
The questions have virtually all been about the economy until now.
McCain’s been very unspecific and very accusatory.
The stage-managing of the event looks complex. They’re in a small circular pit with audience around two-thirds of it and Brokaw at a small table in front of them. The two candidates each has a sort of home-stool to sit on but also gets to walk around. McCain uses the space in a wooden way, jabbing his arm out and often speaking in a jerky, breathless way.
Obama looks relaxed and speaks slowly and thoughtfully. But perhaps, a little too slowly sometimes.
9:46 I just heard McCain extolling the virtues of nuclear power as being safe.
Obama just made a smart but very even-voiced jab at McCain as criticizing “Washington” for its inaction on the environment over the past 30 years, “But he doesn’t say he’s been there for 26 of them.”

I missed the first 25 minutes but saw all the rest. Bottom line: Sarah Palin had evidently been very thoroughly prepped for it, and spoke with much more familiarity about a range of national and international issues than I’ve ever seen her show before. (Though she did make some mistakes, and dodged a few questions.) Lack of self-confidence is not her problem! She has a manner that sometimes seems very attractive, sometimes too gratingly faux-folksy. Including all those dropped ‘g’s, as in “That’s what senator McCain and I are aimin’ to do!”
She also talked a bit about using “nucular” weapons for deterrence, as though “using” them is something quite normal and everyday.
Thinking of her and nuclear weapons made me very scared indeed.
Compared with her Biden looked– I have to say this– old. As old as McCain. And not old-and-distinguished as much as old-and-tired.
To his credit he did not patronize her or try to correct her when, for example, she mis-stated the name of the US commander in Afghanistan. They were both gracious and respectful towards each other.
I thought he did fairly well, but not spectacularly so.
Another very scary thing she said was that she considered that the Constitution would give her some leeway to play an even larger role in “presiding over” the Senate than has traditionally been played.
Think Progress has a good play-by-play here. (It has lots of great links.)

Even as we enjoy new capabilities for gauging political opinion around the world, a nagging technology development haunts opinion polling here in the USA. The uncertainty suggests room for “surprises” come November.
Americans are increasingly ditching conventional telephones in favor of “cellular” and “internet phone” options. (“skype,” vonage, etc.) 15% or more of the American voting population now uses cellular phones only. The trend away from land lines may be accelerating, now that major telecommunications carriers (like Verizon) permit customers to sign up for DSL (or FiOS) without having a conventional phone line.
Pollster are aware of the potential problems, but most polling has shied away from sampling cellular-only citizens. Why? Practically, it’s considerably more expensive. First, there’s the difficulty of accessing cell phone listings. Second, regulations forbid automated calling of cell numbers. Then too, what does a statistician do with those who keep their old cell phone numbers when they move to new locations? And most disconcerting, how do you convince someone to stay on the line to answer a survey, when that person may be paying 25-50 cents per minute for the call? Answer: — you have to compensate them. (assuming subjects don’t hang-up first!)
How do pollsters rationalize excluding 15% of the population? I gather that received wisdom deems the sampling problem to be theoretical — that is, of no consequence, a “wash.”
Yet we do have new data suggesting otherwise. Consider a recent Pew Research Center for the People & the Press analysis of three Pew presidential surveys that included cellular sampling:

In each of the surveys, there were only small, and not statistically significant, differences between presidential horserace estimates based on the combined interviews and estimates based on the landline surveys only. Yet a virtually identical pattern is seen across all three surveys: In each case, including cell phone interviews resulted in slightly more support for Obama and slightly less for McCain, a consistent difference of two-to-three points in the margin.

I’m not quite squaring the phrase “not statistically significant” with “virtually identical pattern.” Furthermore, the study observes:

in each of the three polls, the cell-only respondents were significantly more supportive of Obama (by 10-to-15 percentage points) than respondents in the landline sample. For example, in the September survey Obama led McCain by a 55%-to-36% margin among cell only voters, but the candidates were tied at 45% in the landline sample.

Pew isolates “age” as the explanation for this considerable difference: “In large part, this reflects the fact that a substantial minority of the cell-only sample is younger than 30 – a demographic group that has consistently backed Obama this year.”
If I were a pollster, I’d be starting to sweat. Some firms apparently are debating “adjustments” to account for the youth/cell factor – the one that supposedly is not yet “statistically significant.” (If any jwn readers can explain that solution in “plain english,” please chime in.)
By way of disclosure, I’m about to cancel my own land-line. I’m the last hold-out in my family. While I too am tired of the daily push-poll calls from this or that candidate (another subject!), my motivation is personal – I’m getting even with Sprint/Embarq for never delivering dsl. If the pollsters want to find me, they’ll have to call my unlisted cell.

… by Bush’s little address this morning. As I wrote last night, he still doesn’t seem remotely as if he has a handle on the broad social, political, economic, and geostrategic issues involved in dealing with the current crisis.
We need a clear alternative view of how the country should proceed. No more pandering to big bankers! Yes to the kinds of policies I was addressing in last night’s post.
I hope Obama gets on the airwaves and starts describing a vision something like this in simple and compelling terms. Otherwise, what with all the fear that the crisis (and Paulson and McCain) have generated throughout the country, we could have an upsurge of narrow jingoism and mean-spiritedness in the coming weeks.
By the way, go to this new blog “5 reasons why I’m voting for Obama-Biden”, to see my five reasons.

Virgil Goode, the hard-right GOP candidate in my own district’s congressional race has come out with a television ad that literally tries to “smear” Democratic candidate Tom Perriello as being dark-complected and wearing a bushy full beard. (HT Satyam at Think Progress.)
What kind of deep-held, atavistic fears of “the negro men rising up against the whites” is Goode playing to here?
Tom Perriello as Nat Turner, anyone?
Turner was a deeply religious (Christian, Baptist) man who organized a violent uprising of Virginia’s enslaved negroes in 1831. Even earlier than that, though, white Virginia slaveowner Thomas Jefferson penned numerous warnings about the possibility of the enslaved people– who in many parts of the state decisively outnumbered the whites– rising up against their “masters.” Those fears of the autonomous, untrammelled activity of Americans of African origin may have sprung in some part from the slaveowners’ guilt. But they still run deep in the psyches of some white southerners today.
For what it’s worth, Tom Perrillo is a light-skinned man of Italian heritage.
Virgil Goode should be ashamed of himself.
(But does this mean he’s running a bit scared of losing what until recently looked like a fairly safe seat?)

There’s been quite a flurry in the blogosphere over some well-authenticated reports that the Republican Jewish Coalition has been conducting a poll of Jewish voters in selected states in which the pollsters request responses to some blatantly untrue statements about Barack Obama and others, including Pres. Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Jonathan Cohn of TNR’s The Plank blogged the details of the call he received, which was from a company claiming to be simply a netural polling company.
He wrote:

The caller ran through a list of politicians, to ask whether I viewed them favorably or unfavorably. All the people you’d expect were on the list: George W. Bush. Barack Obama. John McCain. Sarah Palin. Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden. Joe Lieberman.
But then there was an odd inclusion: Jimmy Carter.
I can’t say I made much of it at the time…
But soon enough I understood why they were asking about Carter. After going over some more issues and confirming the fact that I was likely to vote for Obama, the caller made a series of rather pointed inquiries. Would it affect my vote, he said, if I knew that
Obama has had a decade long relationship with pro-Palestinian leaders in Chicago
the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, expressed support for Obama and his hope for Obama’s victory
the church Barack Obama has attended is known for its anti-Israel and anti-American remarks
Jimmy Carter’s anti-Israel national security advisor is one of Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisors
Barack Obama was the member of a board (sic) that funded a pro-Palestinian chartiable organization
Barack Obama called for holding a summit of Muslim nations excluding Israel if elected president

My notes are pretty close to verbatim. (I started typing as soon as I realized I was getting polled.) When the caller was finished, I got a supervisor on the phone and asked if he would tell me who was sponsoring the survey. He said he couldn’t reveal that information.
All he would tell me was that he was calling from Central Marketing Research Inc. in New York City…

So this morning, there was a small demonstration of outraged pro-Obama Jewish Americans outside the Manhattan HQ of Central Marketing Research. And later today, according to Ben Smith of Politico, the Republican Jewish Committee ‘fessed up to the fact that it had commissioned this “poll.”
David Kurtz of TPM considered the question as to whether this was what’s called a “push poll”– that is, an interrogation designed not to test the views of potential voters but to plant certain smears in their minds about opposing candidates. He concluded that they probably weren’t “push polls” at all, but perhaps polls designed to test-run some negative messages that the RJC or the McCain campaign might be planning. However, Kurtz’s major argument on this point had to do with the relative costs of the two different kinds of interrogation:

The easiest way to tell which is which is by how long the call lasts. If you’re trying to reach a large number of voters, you keep the calls short and dirty: plant the seed of the smear and move on; otherwise, the costs of phone calls becomes prohibitive. The accounts so far are of calls that last upwards of 15 minutes.

But what if the organization running the polling has stacks of money and is dealing with a fairly sophisticated audience in which a quick-and-dirty operation of planting the smear and moving on could be far less effective than conducting a poll that seemed to be serious, objective, and in-depth before it moved to the smear-planting? How would you tell the difference then?
And the smears certainly have been planted, and have been reverberating for a good chunk of the day around the blogosphere.
.. Including the smear that Carter’s national security adviser Zbig Brzezinski, can appropriately be labeled as “anti-Israel.”
Excuse me????
For example, in Ben Smith’s Politico article, he repeats the entire list of questions that Jonathan Cohn wrote down, as noted above, including the one about “Jimmy Carter’s anti-Israel national security adviser.” Then Smith writes:

Most of [these] statements are true, at least in part. Obama was friendly with pro-Palestinian leaders in Chicago in his early days in politics, but they denounced him years ago for his support of Israel. Obama’s church bulletin ran articles sympathetic to the Palestinian cause; Brzezinski is an informal advisor to Obama; the Woods Fund, whose board he served on, gave a grant to a community center in Chicago founded by Palestinian activists; and he did propose a summit of Muslim nations.

Thus, Smith left quite unchallenged the proposition that Brzezinski is somehow “anti-Israel.” (He and most other US bloggers also left unchallenged the assertion that Ahmed Youssef is “the leader of Hamas.” These guys are all so incredibly ignorant about Palestinian politics, and they don’t even realize how ignorant they reveal themselves to be!)
So let’s just think about a few salient facts about Brzezinski, and Carter, and the policies that the two of them oversaw when Carter was president… Including the fact that that was the team that brokered Israel’s first-ever peace agreement with an Arab country… And not just any Arab country, but Egypt, which is by far the most strategically weighty Arab country of all, and whose enmity to Israel had been the dominant fact of Israel’s strategic geography from 1948 through 1978.
“Flipping” Egypt from a stance of hostility to Israel to one of full, formal peace with Israel transformed Israel’s strategic position overnight. But Smith and others let stand in their writings the idea that Brzezinski is somehow “anti-Israel”?
(Full disclosure: Back in the day Bill the spouse was Brzezinski’s staff person on Arab-Israeli issues and was deeply involved in his very successful peace diplomacy.)
Sadly, when Pres. Clinton came into office in 1993, the pro-Israeli operatives who surrounded him persuaded him to have nothing at all to do with anyone who’d worked on Jimmy Carter’s successful Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Instead he relied on Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, and all those other pro-AIPAC ideologues, who thereupon proceeded to waste nearly all the great opportunities Jim Baker and the Norwegians handed them for further peacemaking breakthroughs… One of the few things those ideologues succeeded in doing, however, was planting in the minds even of many Democrats that Brzezinski had somehow been “anti-Israel.” What utter nonsense.
Well, it’s interesting to see that the Republican Jewish Committee has been forced to stoop to such low tactics as these phone calls purporting to be neutral “opinion research” that oh, by the way, just along the way have the effect of spreading so many blatant untruths about Obama, and Brzezinski, and others.
Let’s hope that means that the RJC is actually getting pretty desperate?

Alaskan blogger AKMuckraker has been doing some excellent blogging about Sarah Palin from her home state. In this post, she describes a big anti-Palin, pro-Obama rally that materialized with very little pre-planning in Anchorage, on Sunday. (Hat-tip Ruth B.)
AKM wrote:

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.

In that post she also has a video clip taken by (a supportive) someone driving by the demonstration, which gives a good idea of its size and energy, and a number of still photos from it.
In other recent posts AKM has been delving into various aspects of Palin’s record in the state.
I have to confess that viewing the video clip made me nostalgic for all those long weeks and weeks and weeks I would stand out on the sidewalk waving my antiwar sign. Maybe it’s time to get back onto the streets and do a bit more “public witnessing” again.