McCain Not Fit

Comments?

What's Changed?

Answer in the comments.

By the Way

Yesterday during Hardball, I swear to Christ I saw a 527 ad featuring a contemporary of McCain's from the Hanoi Hilton that accused the Maverick of being too angry, too temperamental and too rash to be allowed to occupy the White House.

Is it on? Has anybody else seen this ad?

Broken face

It appears that the Eleventh Commandment might no longer be operative:




(h/t tbogg)

To be sure, there's a bit of self-interest reflected in these vids. The former is the beta testing for Mitt! v.2012 (see update below). I have a sneaking suspicion that the latter reflects the propagandists at FOX recognition that their ratings bread will be buttered by flinging poo at an Obama administration rather than carrying water for Bush's third term.

However, I think there's something more interesting going on here (and with Rove's recent posturing) that lies beneath the surface. As dr has pointed out, there is a ferocious power struggle within the GOP right now, with three different constituencies fighting over who will control the party's corpse.

It's not news that McCain is not a particularly popular figure with the party faithful, and his campaign strategy of running against the GOP while promoting the party's ideas seems to me an impossible task. But with his selection of Palin, he's essentially sold his soul to the social conservatives who are a big enough plurality of the party so as to call the shots.

There's also a lack of recognition among the GOP about the bankruptcy of conservatism as a governing philosophy (a point which Obama is starting to hammer) - they basically think that their shit is an essential ingredient in eau de toilette.

All of this is to say that I think the internecine backstabbing within the GOP is to prepare McCain as a patsy for a loss in November. You'll note that Palin, despite her inexperience, corruption, and cronyism, is spared any criticism from the right, presumably in the belief that she is the amiable Bush-like character who can sell the extremist Republican agenda four years down the road. Should the GOP ticket lose in November (a possibility which many Republican pooh-bahs either recognize or are now actively abetting), the blame can be fixed on McCain's inept campaigning rather than the obvious shortcomings of conservatism (which, of course cannot fail - it can only be failed).

updated: via kos and Stoller, the Mitt! video is from the primaries. But I'll still stick with my conspiracy theory.

Holy Fucking Shit!

I know we try to make the political analysis a little more sophisticated than "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!," but in this case, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!1!!11one1!!"

I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

RIP Richard Wright.

The Times, They Are A'Changin'

We have GTF in the office rocking the pink polo with the popped collar, over-sized sunglasses on the head, scruffy beard. He's from Buffalo.

The OG v. the Eighth Commandment

The results are in...and we're going to hell!

Number of readers who openly admit to breaking the eighth commandment: 4 -- 20 Hail Marys

Number of readers who admit to breaking the eighth commandment, but with shame in their hearts: 7 -- 10 Hail Marys

Number of readers who break the eighth commandment, but seem to think there's a "really good reason" clause in the bible: 5 -- 20 Hail Marys, 10 Our Fathers

Number of readers who cop to the sin of ignorance: 2 -- 4 Our Fathers

Number of readers who walk the righteous path, but will enevitably fall because no person is without sin, might we mention pride?: 3 -- 1 Our Father

Postmodern Bank Runs

from Krugman:

as the unknown unknowns have turned into known unknowns, the system has been experiencing postmodern bank runs. These don’t look like the old-fashioned version: with few exceptions, we’re not talking about mobs of distraught depositors pounding on closed bank doors. Instead, we’re talking about frantic phone calls and mouse clicks, as financial players pull credit lines and try to unwind counterparty risk. But the economic effects — a freezing up of credit, a downward spiral in asset values — are the same as those of the great bank runs of the 1930s.

What is next, investors jumping out of virtual windows, or mmorpgs for soup and bread???

Unfortunately, the pain is very real.

PRM

Lips' latest mix directly inspired this PRM, making me dig around the YouTubes for some vintage Stevie Wonder. It also made me realize that we don't have nearly enough Stevie on hand around the casa de wobs.

"I Don't Know Why"


"Living for the City" - even Taylor Hicks couldn't ruin this song for me.


And a "Superstitious" that makes Sesame Street more funky than it has any right to be. Seriously, where the fuck are the 6+ minute funkathons on Barney?

What Digby said...

Wobs, I feel for you. I have a fundamentalist cousin who sounds much like your sister.
On that topic, I just came across this at Hullabaloo:

Rove's job, and by extension McCain's job, is to basically nuke reality and leave everything open to question. In a world where there is an objective reality, Republicans can't function and certainly can't run their electoral strategy. They need two things - ignorance and an unknowable truth. That's been true since well before the Mayberry Machiavellis arrived in Washington and will be true long after they leave.

And so Sarah Palin's ignorance of the Bush Doctrine is OK, because most Americans don't know what it means either. In fact, the less knowledge a world leader has, the better, because they can't be muddled up with all those facts about how occupied countries historically resist occupation or how countries become interdependent or which country wields power over their sphere of influence, or such related nonsense. Candidates who have little interest in foreign affairs are "authentic" and the kind of reg'lar folks we need to rule with their gut-level belief.

If ruling from the gut is good, voting from the gut must be divine...

In happier news

The Cubbies have the best record in the National League, the biggest run differential in the majors, a magic number of seven and shrinking, and they seem to have snapped a nasty early September slide. On top of that, Zambrano throws the first no-hitter for the Cubs in 36 years.

I've moved beyond cautious optimism into the "fuck yeah!" stage of baseball fandom.

Arguing with god

I recently commented on a post by ash that, via Facebook, I found out my sister was on the Maverick Express and that I planned on asking her why. Which I did in as friendly a way as I could (sis could, of course, be the one providing the bone marrow for a transplant one of these days).

I should mention that my sister doesn't pay much attention to politics, which is no big shakes, considering she's right there with the majority of the electorate. Her reasons for supporting McPalin were that 1)she's conservative, 2)McCain has more experience, and 3)she's concerned that Obama "changes his mind" too much. Admittedly, I did want to sway her, but knowing that lecturing someone isn't the most effective way to change minds, I asked further questions.

What does it mean when you say you're a conservative?

What is it about McCain's experience that appeals to you?

What has Obama changed his mind about that concerns you?

She responded by telling me that she's a Christian conservative, that 20+ years in the Senate plus military experience is greater than 4 years in the Senate, and that Obama's flip-flopping on the war concerned her (she doesn't believe in Obama's plan to "pull out in one day"). She also had a "gut feeling" that Obama wasn't the right person for the job and, as they say, you should "always listen to your gut."

So far, all well and good. I'm on terrain where I'm comfortable. While I might vehemently disagree that people should base political decisions on religious values (whether they be on the left or the right), I've had enough churchin' and independent study to be able to argue about politics on religious grounds. The experience angle is a legitimate point that can be mooted. And the flip-flopping objection is clearly a factual error that should be pointed out for reconsideration.

Knowing that my sister really isn't in to these sorts of conversations, I decided to not go overboard with my response. I left her still very vague definition of conservatism alone and ignored the experience argument. I did, however, let her know that Obama has never been for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and that his position, as shown in legislation introduced in the Senate and from his campaign policy positions, has been remarkably consistent. I also told her that she should rely on her head rather than her gut in making important decisions like this. At this point, I said I'd leave her alone, but offered to talk to her more about it if she's up for it.

Two days later, I get a note from my mom asking me to leave sis alone with the politics. Trés third grade, to be sure, but old familial habits from childhood die hard, I suppose. That would have been the end of it if mom hadn't included in there word that sis wouldn't vote for Obama unless "god told her to." The quotes are from my mom.

This, needless to say, has seriously shaken me up. I can't argue with god, and I sure as shit can't argue with someone who thinks that god is talking to them.

I keep asking myself where the hell this came from. My parents are both religious people, but I'm almost certain that they don't believe that god talks to them. They're more of the "god gave you a brain to make decisions, you know from the good book what god thinks you should do, so it's up to you to do the right thing" school. And while they're socially conservative, I wouldn't put them anywhere near the Dobson camp. They're simply not ideologues. On top of that, sis has a college degree from a Research I public university - it's in finance, to be sure, but it's not like she went to Liberty U.

It's one thing for me to think that a member of my family is making decisions with recourse to values that she's learned that are at odds with my own. Again, there's enough of a common ground to engage and have a serious discussion. It's a whole 'nother ball of wax to have a family member who eschews even the smallest amount of research because she knows how god wants her to vote. I've been stewing all weekend thinking that not only is sis crazy, she's actually a danger to our democracy. She's literally one of the people against whom I've been fighting for my entire adult life.

I keep telling myself I'm overreacting, that she's like any other of the millions of low-information voters out there who will cast their votes on the most dubious of grounds. Maybe it's because she's kin. But this is far beyond anything I've been faced with before, and it's no fun thinking that my sister is a complete fool.

Um... holy shit

I'm not up on my current analyses of finance capital, but I'm fairly certain that this is what political economists call a clusterfuck. Consider this the official OG bat-signal for lips to make some sense of this. Or, alternately, use the comments thread to begin dancing on the smoldering ruins of capitalism.

New Old Sunday Tape, entitled "Still the Same, Mapes"

(This is a mixtape made for Thanksgiving 2007, subtitled 'yachats2.' Due to troubles re: "partitioning" my external hard drive, my archival, monthly playlists have been mangled and lost. Luckily, hard copies still remain. Anywho, this means that I will be getting a little craftier about "music posts" on this Board. Get ready for extensive use of the vinyl-to-cd burner, and get ready for some rock writing that tries to "return the favor" to the likes of Detailed Twang, Hardcore for Nerds, Zen and the Art...etc. Anyway, download this 29-song "event" that premiered at a weekend rental on the Oregon Coast: it is as close to a "desert island" thing as i can ever imagine myself getting. Except for that it's not. Anyway, it's a chunky file, but worth it. We're covering a lotta ground, here.)

1. Waylon Jennings Brand New Goodbye Song Listen to the pocket that forms between the drums and bass on this track. What genre of music is this, with the deep pockets and the wash-y, phased telecaster? A standout track on Ol' Waylon, which is a half-great, half campy covers album.
   
2. The Walkmen Good for You's Good for Me Again, I said there were "desert island" qualities to this song selection. People who drop the U2 comparison are way off, because this stuff is sonically more interesting and lyrically more sophisticated. This music is dour like Rod Stewart doing "Cindy Incidentally" and Lou Reed doing the '69 Live version of "Some Kind of Love." Is it just me?
3. Shutout Walker Brothers, The Yeah, that's a fucking galloping bass, there. Oh, the comeback Walker Brothers album! Scott belongs alongside your Bowie and your Roxy when it comes to insane, disco-y Pop antics.
   
4. It's All Around You Tortoise Heavy hitters, friends. They should be on Blue Note, don't you think?
5. Sounds Don't Come Around Here Testface One of my hometown heroes here. What a guitar figure.
   
6. Superman (Where Were You When I Needed You) Stevie Wonder Yes, I actually would say that Music of My Mind is my favorite Stevie. The live shit from this period goes really well alongside the (admittedly brasher) Miles fusion stuff. This is way out there American soul expressionism. What do you want?
   
7. Stones Sonic Youth Speaking of American institutions...this is from my beloved Nurse. God, there were so many awesome gtr departures generated during the Jim O'Rourke era.
8. When the Sun Hits Slowdive An all-time great. The guitar sounds following the chorus, folks. I have decided that my next album will have unprecedented amounts of overdubs and sparkly haze, partially under the effects of classic albums like Slowdive's Souvlaki, which is like the shoegaze Bad Moon Rising.
9. Farewell Farewell Sandy Denny And now a beautiful and frightening woman will make you wretch from feeling too much.
10. What Sin Replaces Love Cardinals Cardinals have moved on from their doctrinaire Dead worship into more of a mixed bag (lotsa Sonic Youth, Crazy Horse and Faces in there, too)... but this tune should not be forgotten. This is their take on a late 60s Dead, Viola Lee Blues vibe.
11. Love is the Drug Roxy Music Did I mention Pop-Art disco? I need this song on 12", if anybody's wondering about me and the holiday season.
    
12. Fool to Cry Rolling Stones Real Stones fans know that Black and Blue and Goat's Head Soup contain real wonders, right?
    
13. Whoo! Alright-Yeah....Uh-Huh Rapture, the I cannot find my cd copy of the so-awesome Pieces of the People We Love, which bums me out because this is the ultimate ex-urban-christmas-shopping music. You know what I mean. Are they the biggest Gravity band ever?
    
14. Poptones Public Image Limited Lest we forget that most of the great rock of the last half-century was made in the 1970s. Maybe "rock" is not the word for this. Maybe "punk" isn't either. I'm a Sex Pistols fan, but I don't think that classic stuff even gets near the greatness of the first 3 PIL albums. Maybe you disgaree?
15. Psychic Power Control Pitchblende Underrated DC math warriors. I love the changes. 'Saw them, Chisel and the Monorchid one enchanted evening at the Cooler.
    
16. Haunt You Down Pavement In my mind, this is Pavement's high-water mark. This was the A-side of the bonus 7" that accompanied Crooked Rain. The gtr solo, the haunting moog, and SM's vocal delivery haunt me. Haunt, haunt, haunt! The ultimate sleazy, creepy sex music for overeducated prudes.
    
17. Tony Baines Oxes Speaking of braniac rock, this is the music I listen to while taking comprehensive exams. 'Gets me psyched, gets me active and gets me agile. The oxes rock way more than most math bands, I think.
    
18. You Can't Escape the Hands of Love Otis Clay Otis Clay, telling you the truth.
    
19. Between the Bars Mojave 3 Wispy, strummy sadness from the Slowdive people a decade on.
20. Ain't No Use Meters (live) Guitars everywhere.
    
21. Wailing Like Dragons Lungfish Coincidentally or no, I stopped listening to GBV once I started listening to Lungfish.
    
22. Hey Cowboy Lee Hazelwood From Cowboy in Sweden, this sexual conversation is overdetermined by the piercing, unrelenting "Land of the Midnight Sun." Let me explain to you that I have never used powders or pills, so I cannot hope to identify with the vapid kind of panic just below the surface of Hazelwood's smirking, "easy" delivery. I would like to hand a large brass trophy to whoever produced this recording session. Maybe the best horns ever?
23. Summer Madness Kool and the Gang You've been down this road with me before... I love the escalating synth shards!
    
24. Out of this World John Coltrane From Live in Seattle, an album of massive personal significance for me and my fictive kin. Coltrane and Pharoah are out of hand early on this track, and McCoy Tyner's (late Modernist) way of "holding it down" with thick, elegant and minor chords. This is music made by people looking for a needle in the flamestack.
    
25. Chinatown Jets to Brazil Blake S. from Jawbreaker telling a Gen-X-cum-beatnik story about the boys down in New York City.
    
26. Escape-ism James Brown 'Speaks for itself.
    
27. Move on Up Curtis Mayfield A life-affirming anthem. We all have Curtis, right?
    
28. Radio Towers Boys Life Creepy, momentum-building, momentum-stifling operations from a band with some of the best dynamics of any of the post-Spiderland 1990s crop. Their epic Departures and Landfalls was recorded by Bob Weston, from Shellac of North America .
29. Balanced on its Own Flame Labradford If anybody actually lives up to the desire that rock critics call "post-rock," it is Labradford. From the early, excellent A Stable Reference, this really sounds like a punk band playing Eno's Music for Films.

When you've lost Turd Blossom

Even Karl Rove thinks McCain has a small problem with the truth:



Parsing that out, it's clear that Rove doesn't have a problem with lying per se, but rather lying in campaign ads that have the imprimatur of McCain approving the message. Had the lies come out in, say, an ad put out by a 527 or in a push-poll, I'm sure he would have been high-fivin' Chris Wallace after delivering his "objective" analysis.

SEIU anti-McCain

What.a.weird.commercial.

Is the bit about keeping your kids "looking nice" supposed to cut right through the moral semiotics of Working America?

Around the Horn to the Left

• I am indulging in Jameson on Jameson, as of yesterday. "We could say, following the initial Frankfurt School account of the "Culture Industry," that capital is in the process of colonizing the most remote part of the mind - the aesthetic - that traditionally seemed to resist its logic (being governed, as a classical aesthetics taught us, by "purposefulness without a purpose"): on Mandel's account, then, consumer society would be a thoroughgoing push into this area of the mind - culture the unconscious, whatever you want to call it - and a final rationalizing, modernizing, industrializing, commodifying, colonizing, of the non- or precapitalist enclave left surviving there. But that does not mean the "end" of culture: on the contrary, it might just as plausibly be argued that the conquest of culture and its traditional spaces and instruments by capital now determines an enormous expansion in culture proper - its semi-autonomy lost, its isolation a thing of the past (neither praxis nor knowledge, Kant told us), it now becmoes coterminous with the social field as a whole, and everything becomes in that sense "cultural" - politics, economics, law, ideology, religion, daily life, sexuality, the body, space, et cetera, et certera. "
  

• • Doug Henwood revieiwing Robert Kuttner's The Squandering of America. Henwood does not give Kuttner an easy time, and wonders aloud just who, exactly, Kuttner is writing to. This is a relevant question, given the "socialist Democrat" posture some people sometimes assume:
    

  Kuttner nonetheless imagines that a full-throated populist appeal could win the Dems millions of votes. The only things stopping them are their timidity and their donors. Unlike many liberals who complain about the Democrats’ alleged lack of spine, Kuttner is fully aware of the influence of big money on their vertebral integrity. But he repeatedly forgets that influence to land in some kind of unspecified hope that the party will just come to its senses. And like many liberal analysts, he underestimates the appeal of laissez-faire economic policies to many white Protestants, who view the market as an admirable and tireless system of punishment and reward, perfect for a fallen humanity given to shirking and freeloading.

  It’s not clear who the audience for this book is. At times it reads like it was written for policy wonks (who really cares about the second take on the Basel Capital Adequacy standards?—and I count myself as someone who should). At others it seems pitched to Democratic strategists. The liberal netroots maybe? But they’re less ideological than Kuttner and they don’t read books anyway. Some inchoate popular formation? A popular formation organized around what?
  

  • The excellent left blog Kasama has continually caught my attention with self-effacing, searching criticism of the (mostly Maoist) American "far left." The blog also has a whole crowd of readers and commentors who span the ranks of the american left. En particulier I'd point you to these two seminal discussions on 1) the Far Left Parties en general and 2) the Persistence of "Trotskyite" as an in-crowd perjorative lobbed between factions like so much facepaint. Kasama also led me to related recent engagements on the topic of red-baiting within the 'NEW" SDS. Again, this makes me wanna wonder aloud as to whether or not any of the grad employees among us have engaged with SDS at all....what say you?
    

  • How about the shake-up at MSNBC? I for one am ready for a timeout from Keith -Olbermann-as-news-anchor, who I honestly think fits in better on Football Night in America.
    
  • a must: Balance Sheet on Two Years of Indigenous Post-Neoliberalism in Bolivia. This is very even-handed, I think. Whether you come down on the side of the racist bourgeois oligarchy or the democratic-socialist-indigenous movement is up to you: a matter of Trust, Billy Joel might say.
    

  • I'm glad and sorta surprised (, sorta not) to see that International Socialist Review is still doing lengthy treatments on the Russian Revolution. What could possibly be more relevant for socialism in the United States than that? But you know me, I'll read anything that mentions Trotsky.
  • 

  
  

I ♥ Tina Fey

It's a shame Obama wasn't able to make it to SNL last night, but Tina Fey's guest appearance more than made up for it. In case you need a lighter take on Palin (not to mention a great commentary on the media sexism meme):

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Could we please get less media banter about lipstick on a pig and more of this, please?

The more I learn about Sara Palin, the more she scares the shit out of me. (And by the way, before I go on can I just say that, speaking of learning more about Palin, has anyone else noticed how freaking awesome The Bellman's ongoing dissection of the VP nominee has been? Damn, ya'll. That's some good blogging.) John McCain may represent a continuation of many of the Bush administration's policies (wait, wasn't that the point Obama was making with the "lipstick on a pig" comment?) But it seems more and more clear that Palin represents a frightening continuation of Bush's (really fucking scary) leadership style.

Palin has surrounded herself with friends who are selected for their personal ties and loyalty rather than their competence (to wit, the high school chum who was appointed to direct the State Division of Agriculture based on her "lifetime love of cows."); fired, intimidated, and pursued vendettas against those who cross her (Troopergate being just one example. And by the way, look out, DR: you've probably already been identified and labeled a "hater" and should be getting the "You should be ashamed! Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!” call any day...); has demonstrated a stunning lack of knowledge of crucial issues; is a remote, isolated, and often MIA leader (prompting leaders in Juneau to wear "Where's Sarah?" pins); and operates under an unprecedented veil of secrecy (right on down to insisting that everyone in her administration use private e-mail accounts to conduct significant state business because, as an assistant told her, e-mail messages sent to a private address on a personal device like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”).

Seriously, we can't live through another 4-8 years of this. Or at least I can't. Please, o please could there not be more attention and scrutiny to the completely batshit crazy narrative the McCain campaign (and the governor herself) has constructed about Palin being an experienced, anti-corruption reformer?

I'm not holding my breath. Because as unpopular as George Bush is, he's already primed the electorate to believe that it's no big deal to try to ban a book you haven't even bothered to read because "you don't need to read that stuff." Or that it's perfectly normal to mine your high school yearbook or church directory to replace knowledgeable professionals in key government appointments, arguing that they'll "learn on the job." Or even that being ignorant yourself is not only not a flaw that precludes you from aspiring to the highest office in the land, but actually kinda cute and charming. Someone will always be there to strategically place a color-coded stack of index cards telling you what to say behind your nameplate. And cover up for your mistakes. And guard the evidence of your incompetence (and even wrongdoing) with their lives. And brand anyone who tries to question this as "bad people who are anti-Alaska." And sexist. That's the exciting new twist, I guess.

We can't let this happen again.

UPDATE: Frank Rich characterizes McCain as an even weaker Bush to Palin's Cheney in his column today. Maybe that's what makes her so frightening to me: the melding of the worst elements of the current White House occupants.