FUN-E Papers

ENDANGERED SPECIES

2009-09-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

Prologue: New York City, New York
June, 1990

The workday had ended. It was minutes after eight p.m. on a friday night, and the late shift's maintenance crews had come and gone. Building security personnel were omnipresent but invisible, manning their sophisticated surveillance monitors from within the secure off-limits confines of the fifth floor. On the main floor twelve elevators sat silent behind stainless-steel double-doors, shut down for the weekend. The Harlem Office Building was officially closed. With one exception, that is. For on the top floor, thirty-two stories above Harlem's streets, the Chairman sat working his usual long hours inside his private chambers. A green-shaded antique Tiffany desk lamp--a gift he'd gotten from a dear friend, whom he'd provided a service to many years ago--provided all of the illumination he needed.
A rust-brown colored legal folder lay open on his desk, its contents scattered about the desktop. He'd just completed reading the file for what seemed like the umpteenth time and, admittedly, he was getting tired. He sat back, unfolding his body into the lush comfort of his leather chair. He could feel the tension coursing through his arms, legs, shoulders and neck muscles as he stretched to his full, trim six-feet. Reflexively, he removed his rimless wire-framed glasses. He closed his eyes. They, too, were tired.
It had been another long, exhausting workday. He took two slow deep breaths, filling his diaphragm, expanding his lungs. Aaah, he exhaled slowly. Then, twice more, he repeated the process. He needed to take a break. He was exhausted, mentally and physically. Indeed, the day had taken its toll.
He could recall showering the night before, and then going straight to bed. He'd slept comfortably until his peace was disrupted by the persistent ring of the clock-radio's alarm. He remembered rolling over at least twice before extending his right arm and shutting it off by slapping his hand onto the contraption's control switch.
He was barely awake when he started his daily scheduled thirty minute exercise regimen. His thoughts were somewhere else when he began contorting through a series of disciplined stretches designed to unlimber and prepare his muscles for the calisthenics and isometrics that were to follow. Then, as he did every day for the past eight years, he would jog.
He ran at a respectable, consistent pace, running two full laps, keeping within the perimeter walls that secluded his Sag Harbor Estate. He timed himself, marked each mile with his stopwatch as he aimed to maintain a nine-minute-per-mile pace; five miles in total.
It wasn't easy at his age but he prided himself on meeting his goals. He expected nothing less than success in this as in all things he endeavored. And so, nine minute miles it was.
A hot, steamy bath and a cool shower completed the first phase of his day. Next was a light, wholesome breakfast. Usually, that meant hot oatmeal and a corn muffin. Or sometimes, on rare occasions, he would substitute whole wheat toast and sneak in a tiny dab of margarine. That's because butter was unacceptable, according to Jarvis, his Personal Trainer, who monitored his cholesterol and blood-sugar levels weekly. Fresh-squeezed orange juice and a cup of hot, freshly-brewed Colombian coffee-black with no sugar-topped off his early mornings.
He followed this regimen religiously. Seven days a week, weather not withstanding. It was part of a structured exercise, fitness and diet program that Jarvis had designed for him. It was an appropriate regimen for a man of his advanced age, Jarvis had said. And, indeed, it was. For ever since beginning with the training and diet, he felt newly energized and, accordingly, it made him more capable of dealing with the grueling pace that had brought him the success and power that he wielded. And he felt good, and healthy too.
Maintaining and meeting the challenges of his regimen, that's the way he kept his sixty-four year old body and mind in tip-top condition. He was always ready and able to compete with the young whippersnappers--the newly-minted "just out of business school" hotshots-- who had a mind to challenge his business acumen, whenever and wherever. Yes indeed, his daily regimen kept him sharp.
And yes, this had been another long, trying day, he reminded himself as he set his glasses down onto the desk. Instinctively, his feet commandeered the chair. Moving in slow motion, he spun it around. It rolled silently, circling, effortlessly, upon the thick, golden carpet.
He'd opened his eyes and, now, exasperatedly, he eyed the file. It sat mutely and dispassionately uninformative upon his desk. It was absolutely worthless, far as he'd been able to discern. As were the stack of Freedom Of Information Act documents, and the several still photographs which he'd frustratedly slung across his desk. He'd carefully read every page. He had a verbatim sense of their contents. Hell, he knew the grain of paper and the time frame between shots for each of the photographs in the file too. Still he couldn't get a genuine sense of who the man, the subject of the documents and photos in the file, really was. And that was unacceptable. He didn't like not knowing, not fully understanding who he might be dealing with; and he didn't care, at all, for the quasi-mystery that was Vance Dawson.
And that really irked the Chairman. He did another three-sixty degrees, bringing his chair back to its original position. Disgustedly, he shook his head. Thus far, nothing within the content of everything he'd read provided a single clue as to Dawson's raison d' etre--the man simply wasn't in there. And there were too many unexplained gaps; oftentimes, as much as a year and longer between the substantive data provided in the file. And that was most embarrasiing to the Chairman, as it was totally unacceptable.
He drew another long, slow breath. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly. This was totally unacceptable, this Dawson thing. He knew that he needed much more detailed information than was presently available in this file. For the real persona, the genuine flesh-and-blood character known as Vance Dawson remained an enigma.
He would have to use his personal covert sources. He whirled in his chair, spun it to the right-hand side of his desk, where he brought it to a sudden stop. He pressed several buttons secreted within the cushioned portion of his chair's right armrest. He closed all phone lines, except for his private secured line. Using confidential numerical codes, the Chairman entered his active agency password to gain access. He would forego the mid-level amateurs who'd been unable to provide the necessary information he'd requested. Now he would get some real answers, some pieces to complete the puzzle before him. He completed his coded message. He left his line open.
All he could do now was wait and hope that his good, dear friend was available and would return his call as quickly as possible. He switched on his speakerphone. He would continue working while the connection was being made, because it might take some time before his call cleared the proper channels.
He set one folder aside then began stacking the remaining folders, placing them to his immediate right where he could easily reach them. The words 'CONFIDENTIAL-UNDOCUMENTED INFORMATION' were clearly printed across the front of the file in bold black lettering.
The Chairman exhaled, mightily. He picked up one dossier, flipped the front cover and began reading, trying to retrace Dawson's steps and, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he would discover something that he'd missed...

Inaugural Feedback

2009-01-20T13:12:00.001-08:00

From: wniles@nilesadvertising.com
To: Vaughndobson@aol.com
Sent: 1/20/2009 10:33:27 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: RE: INAUGURAL DAY MOMENTS

Hey Family,

I am getting emails from California, Houston, US Virgin Island, Arizona, Philadelphia, Dominican Republic..... all over. Everyones is pumped-up and so optimistic. I am on my way to Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office Bldg. to share this moment with the Harlem Community. I will continue pray and encourage others to do the same for President Obama, his family and administration. Pray is powerful.

Wendell Niles

President

Niles Advertising

The Inaugural Feedback

2009-01-20T13:03:00.000-08:00

From: Rositakard
To: Vaughndobson
Sent: 1/20/2009 2:44:15 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: our president

Hello Vaughn.
I am just filled with such emotion just having witnessed a president of our United States make his case for our nation to be hopeful of the changes he will usher in to make our country whole. Changes that will give everyone the opportunity to be what they have dreamed of being regardless of who their grandparents were; changes that will honor our gift of freedom by uniting in peace not war; changes that will once again make the United States earn its legacy of the most powerful nation in the world by upholding those "old" values of hard work, compassion, honesty and tolerance; changes that will allow the United States to make alliances and give aide to countries who come to us in peace- I loved the way Obama said that citizens of a country will look to to see what has been built not what has been destroyed. Obama honored over and over again the struggle of race and equality in this "young" nation. His presidency is the absolute culmanation of that long, hard struggle seen in the faces of so many people there.

I truly believe that Obama has the grit and high intelligence to get this job done. Every young African American person I see in my work at Catholic Charities has demonstrated in some form or another that they have HOPE. Obama celebrated and honored his roots. Awesome for young people to see.

The bigots of this country have no place to hide anymore. I really feel that they won't be tolerated.Let's pray that Obama is safe always and God protects him and his family.I have never been prouder to be an American. I have never had more hope in humanity.

Hope to see you soon and give you a celebratory hug.
Rose

President Obama In Living Color!

2009-01-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

Catch the Inaugural Address here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Full Speech Here:

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Thompson for Mayor: The Political Whirl

2009-01-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times:

William C. Thompson Jr. has put it in writing: He’s running for mayor.

In documents filed on Wednesday afternoon with the city’s Campaign Finance Board, Mr. Thompson, the city’s comptroller, formally designated himself as a candidate for mayor, said an aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information is not yet public.

By checking the mayor’s box on the fund-raising forms, Mr. Thompson is “putting to rest any doubts about his plans,” the aide said. “He is running for mayor.”

Mr. Thompson, a Democrat who is the city’s chief financial officer, was roundly expected to drop out of the mayor’s race after the city’s term limits were extended this fall, clearing a path for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to seek re-election. Many predicted that the comptroller, a low-key, mild-mannered politician, did not have the stomach to take on Mr. Bloomberg.

Instead, Mr. Thompson has started waging an unexpectedly aggressive campaign for mayor. Over the last month, he has created a Web site, held a series of fund-raisers and lashed out at Mr. Bloomberg in combative speeches.

Read more...

Before They Were The First Couple

2009-01-20T12:43:00.000-08:00

From The New Yorker:

On May 26, 1996, Mariana Cook visited Barack and Michelle Obama in Hyde Park as part of a photography project on couples in America. What follows is excerpted from her interviews with them.

MICHELLE OBAMA: There is a strong possibility that Barack will pursue a political career, although it’s unclear. There is a little tension with that. I’m very wary of politics. I think he’s too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism.

When you are involved in politics, your life is an open book, and people can come in who don’t necessarily have good intent. I’m pretty private, and like to surround myself with people that I trust and love. In politics you’ve got to open yourself to a lot of different people. There is a possibility that our futures will go that way, even though I want to have kids and travel, spend time with family, and like spending time with friends. But we are going to be busy people doing lots of stuff. And it’ll be interesting to see what life has to offer. In many ways, we are here for the ride, just sort of seeing what opportunities open themselves up. And the more you experiment the easier it is to do different things. If I had stayed in a law firm and made partner, my life would be completely different. I wouldn’t know the people I know, and I would be more risk-averse. Barack has helped me loosen up and feel comfortable with taking risks, not doing things the traditional way and sort of testing it out, because that is how he grew up. I’m more traditional; he’s the one in the couple that, I think, is the less traditional individual. You can probably tell from the photographs—he’s just more out there, more flamboyant. I’m more, like, “Well, let’s wait and see. What did that look like? How much does it weigh?”

BARACK OBAMA: All my life, I have been stitching together a family, through stories or memories or friends or ideas. Michelle has had a very different background—very stable, two-parent family, mother at home, brother and dog, living in the same house all their lives.

Mr. Obama, Here's How You Fix The Economy

2009-01-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times gives the President-elect some advice:

Last week President-elect Barack Obama was asked to respond to critics who say that his stimulus plan won’t do enough to help the economy. Mr. Obama answered that he wants to hear ideas about “how to spend money efficientlyand effectively to jump-start the economy.”

O.K., I’ll bite — although as I’ll explain shortly, the “jump-start” metaphor is part of the problem.

First, Mr. Obama should scrap his proposal for $150 billion in business tax cuts, which would do little to help the economy. Ideally he’d scrap the proposed $150 billion payroll tax cut as well, though I’m aware that it was a campaign promise.

Money not squandered on ineffective tax cuts could be used to provide further relief to Americans in distress — enhanced unemployment benefits, expanded Medicaid and more. And why not get an early start on the insurance subsidies — probably running at $100 billion or more per year — that will be essential if we’re going to achieve universal health care?

Mainly, though, Mr. Obama needs to make his plan bigger. To see why, consider a new report from his own economic team.

On Saturday, Christina Romer, the future head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Bernstein, who will be the vice president’s chief economist, released estimates of what the Obama economic plan would accomplish. Their report is reasonable and intellectually honest, which is a welcome change from the fuzzy math of the last eight years.

Read more...

A Big Step Towards Voter Rights Reform

2009-01-20T12:36:00.000-08:00

From The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to examine whether a central component of landmark civil rights legislation enacted to protect minority voters is still needed in a nation that has elected an African American president.

The court will decide the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that seeks to protect minority voting rights by requiring a broad set of states and jurisdictions where discrimination was once routine to receive federal approval before altering any of their voting procedures.

The Supreme Court has upheld the requirement in the past, saying the intrusion on state sovereignty is warranted to protect voting rights and eliminate discrimination against minorities. But challengers say it ignores the reality of modern America and "consigns broad swaths of the nation to apparently perpetual federal receivership based on 40-year-old evidence."

"It has the potential to be the most important election-law case this court has heard," said Richard L. Hasen, an elections expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, adding that it raises the possibility that "the remedy that was once constitutional is now unconstitutional."

B of A Needs Cash ASAP

2009-01-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

From Financial Times Online:

The US banking sector was shaken on Wednesday by deepening concerns over Citigroup’s financial health and the revelation that Bank of America is counting on a new multibillion-dollar capital injection from the government.

Several people close to BofA said that it had told the government that it wanted to scrap its takeover of Merrill Lynch last month after realising the depth of the investment bank’s losses in the fourth quarter.

BofA, which has already been given $25bn in federal funds, closed the deal on January 1 only after receiving a pledge that it would receive billions of dollars from Washington, they added.

BofA and the Treasury declined to comment. People familiar with the situation said that no final decision on the amount of funds to be injected in BofA has been taken.

A new capital infusion into BofA would mark the third time, after Citi and AIG, that the federal authorities would have had to inject capital into the same company twice. Such a move would raise fears that other banks might ask Washington for additional capital.

Citi shares plunged on Wednesday, closing down 23 per cent to $4.53, the lowest level since the government’s $300bn bail-out of the troubled financial group in November. At this level, Citi, once one of the world’s largest financial groups, is worth just $24.7bn.

The cost of insuring against a default on Citi’s debt soared, raising concerns that the government might have to take additional steps to buttress the bank.

On Tuesday, it emerged that Vikram Pandit, Citi’s embattled chief executive was poised to split off a third of the company – including some of its major US consumer finance operations – into a “non-core” unit in an attempt to ensure its survival.

Bush: Goodbye, Cruel World

2009-01-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

From the Huffington Post:

President George Bush gave his final primetime address to the nation on Thursday, January 15th. Below are a copy of his prepared remarks.

Also check out Jason Linkins' Farewell Address live blog.

----

As Prepared for Delivery

Fellow citizens: For eight years, it has been my honor to serve as your President. The first decade of this new century has been a period of consequence - a time set apart. Tonight, with a thankful heart, I have asked for a final opportunity to share some thoughts on the journey we have traveled together and the future of our Nation.

Five days from now, the world will witness the vitality of American democracy. In a tradition dating back to our founding, the presidency will pass to a successor chosen by you, the American people. Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose story reflects the enduring promise of our land. This is a moment of hope and pride for our whole Nation. And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife Michelle, and their two beautiful girls.

Tonight I am filled with gratitude - to Vice President Cheney and members of the Administration; to Laura, who brought joy to this house and love to my life; to our wonderful daughters, Barbara and Jenna; to my parents, whose examples have provided strength for a lifetime. And above all, I thank the American people for the trust you have given me. I thank you for the prayers that have lifted my spirits. And I thank you for the countless acts of courage, generosity, and grace that I have witnessed these past eight years.

And, just what is it that she STANDS for...?

2009-01-05T14:55:00.000-08:00

From The Washington Post:

An Associated Press report this morning citing two anonymous sources suggesting New York Gov. David Paterson would pick Caroline Kennedy as the replacement for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton set off a tumult of speculation about whether the high-profile appointment process had come to an end.

No so fast, Paterson spokesman Errol Cockfield told the Post's Shailagh "Shazelle" Murray this afternoon. "The AP story is incorrect," said Cockfield. "There is no front-runner, and the governor is not on the verge of any decision."

Regular Fix readers know we have made the case for and the case against Paterson picking Kennedy to replace Clinton. And, we still believe that Kennedy has the strongest chance -- thanks to her last name and, especially, her ties to President-elect Barack Obama -- to be the pick.

Some New York political leaders have been publicly skeptical about Kennedy -- particularly after her rocky debut with Upstate voters last month. But, political reality may well be setting in as uber powerful state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver dropped his opposition to a Kennedy appointment earlier this week.

Photo Credit: (AP Photo/Don Heupel)

Mortgages in 2009: BusinessWeek Edition

2009-01-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

From BusinessWeek:

With all the doom and gloom over housing, you might be surprised to know that this is a fantastic time to get a mortgage. Not if you have poor credit, to be sure. But you can get a great deal on a 30-year, fixed-rate, conforming loan these days if you have a solid FICO score, a manageable debt burden, and proof positive of a reliable income.

You have to go back to around 1961 to find a time when 30-year mortgages had rates this low, according to Keith Gumbinger, a vice-president at financial publisher HSH Associates in Pompton Plains, N.J. For that, thank the U.S. government, which is trying to jump-start the stalled housing market by buying up mortgage-backed securities. On Dec. 31, Freddie Mac reported that average rates on 30-year fixed mortgages dropped to 5.1% for the week, down about 1.3 percentage points since late October and the lowest since its survey began in 1971.

Rates are probably headed even lower in 2009, raising the question of whether you should borrow now or wait for a better deal. The experts are sharply divided over this one. Put it this way: If you're a gambler, wait. If you can't sleep at night worrying that rates will go up from here, borrow now.

Here are some key things you need to know about today's mortgage market:

Now More Than Ever, Shop Around

In ordinary times, one loan is about as good as another because most lenders' offers on 30-year loans are clustered within around a quarter of a percentage point. Not now. With the economy so shaky, lenders are all over the map in how much risk they're willing to take in making loans. So it really pays to shop around. And keep checking, because rates are constantly changing. One day in late December 2008, Wells Fargo (WFC) was offering 30-year conforming loans at 5.0% plus one point, while Bank of America (BAC) was offering the same kind of loan at 6.625% plus one point, according to Cameron Findlay, chief economist of LendingTree.com. No offense to Bank of America, but only a sucker would have borrowed from it instead of Wells Fargo that day.

A Possible Cease-Fire In The Works

2009-01-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

From The Times Online(UK):

Israeli warplanes and gunboats blasted more than two dozen Hamas positions today, targeting weapons storage facilities, training centers and homes of leaders as its offensive against Gaza's Islamic militant rulers enters a second week.

There were tentative signs that the fighting may end as most of the airstrikes hit empty buildings and abandoned sites, suggesting Israel may be running out of targets.

Ground troops remained massed on the border, waiting for the signal to invade Gaza, but international ceasefire efforts were also gaining momentum.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is visiting the region next week, and US President George W Bush and UN chief Ban Ki-moon both spoke in favour of an internationally monitored truce.

srael launched the offensive last week in response to intensifying rocket fire by Hamas militants in Gaza. The operation has killed more than 430 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians. Four Israelis have also been killed and rocket attacks on southern Israel persist.

In the latest attacks, the army struck the homes of two Hamas operatives, saying the buildings were used to store weapons and plan attacks. Hamas outposts, training camps and rocket launching sites also were targeted, it said.

A night watchman at a Gaza City school was killed, and four people, including a mid-level Hamas commander, died of wounds sustained earlier, Gaza health officials said.

Photo Credit:(Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty) for Times Online

Looking at CIA Transitions Past

2009-01-05T14:35:00.000-08:00

From CQ Politics:
In light of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden's virtual plea to be kept on in the Obama administration, it's interesting to look back at a similar instance in 1976, when George H.W. Bush tried to get President-elect Jimmy Carter to retain him as his spy chief.

Carter loved the CIA briefings he had been getting during his campaign against President Gerald R. Ford, according to the agency's official history of presidential transitions.

Sometimes the sessions, which usually took place at his modest home in Plains, Ga., went on for six hours.

"Carter was a very careful and interested listener and an active participant," writes longtime CIA official John L. Helgerson, the study's author.

"All who were present remember that he asked a great many questions, often in minute detail. He was especially interested in the nature of the Intelligence Community's evidence, including satellite photography of deployed Soviet weapons."

Later, after winning the election, Carter "seemed to enjoy and benefit from the substantive discussions held at Blair House during his visits to Washington in the transition period."

Not so, though, when Bush, a future president himself, came to Plains looking to keep his job as DCI.

Carter was cold, Helgerson writes.

"Carter was unambiguous in his response after Bush finished his discussion of the pros and cons of his staying on as Director. The DCI had finished with an observation that -- all things considered -- he probably should be replaced. The President-elect, according to Bush, 'simply said, okay, or something like this, with no discussion, no questions about any of the points I had made.... As in the rest of the briefing, Carter was very cold or cool, no editorializing, no niceties, very business-like."

Read more...

FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY

2009-01-05T14:32:00.000-08:00

From Fortune Online:

(Fortune) -- With a new year of recession-fighting upon us, it's a fitting time to do a performance evaluation of America's policymakers. How well did they handle a true crisis? The credit-market crisis that erupted in early September has been aptly described as a once-in-a-lifetime event that quickly reverberated through the global financial system, bringing it uncomfortably close to a complete meltdown. Along the way, it wreaked havoc with economic growth, throwing most of the industrialized economies into a deep recession.

Such a tumultuous environment calls for unusual and sometimes extreme measures by policymakers to cope with a unique set of complications. So how have America's twin pillars of economic policy, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, fared in their response to contain the crisis? There is no single answer to that question -- in fact, there are two, because the quality of their response to the crisis could not have been more diverse.

The Fed, on balance, has shown forcefulness, imagination and steadfastness in dealing with the financial market turmoil, while the Treasury's response has been largely sluggish, unfocused, and woefully incoherent.

Looking first at the Fed's performance:

Fed chief Ben Bernanke's monetary policymakers deserve high marks for having worked methodically and tirelessly from the very beginning to contain multiple aspects of the crisis. It needs to be recognized that the most recent, headline-grabbing phase of the crisis since September was largely the culmination of a long process that started with the subprime mortgage debacle in the summer of 2007. That more moderate (at least, in hindsight) crisis caused severe strain in the financial system in late 2007, with interest-rate spreads widening sharply as the first cracks in major financial institutions started to appear.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS!

2009-01-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

Don't Bother They're Here...

From The Washington Post:

Following an election that has left Republicans with no clear vision about how to regain power, the normally low-profile race to head the GOP's national committee has turned into a six-man showdown that has opened rifts along racial, regional and ideological lines.

As Republicans debate their future, the contest for chairman of the Republican National Committee has become a proxy for the major questions at the center of the party's challenges: how to attract young and minority voters, win outside the South and counter an increasingly powerful Democratic majority.

After Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman, sent party members a CD that included the song "Barack the Magic Negro," he received sharp criticism from former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and other Republicans who worry that the party is losing touch with the moderate, suburban voters who are key to winning national elections. But nearly all of the candidates are facing intense scrutiny from party factions, as GOP officials view the next chairman as a vital figure in the post-Bush era.

The hopefuls are campaigning as though they were running for president, bombarding RNC members with calls and e-mails, appearing on national cable shows, enlisting allies to rally support and, in Saltsman's case, piloting his Piper Arrow plane around the country to meet with committee members.

Read more...

Barack To The Future!

2009-01-05T14:27:00.000-08:00

From the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — In his selection of four top scientific advisers, President-elect Barack Obama has signaled what are likely to be significant changes in policies governing global warming, ocean protections and stem cell research.

“It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology,” Mr. Obama said in a radio address on Saturday, when he announced the appointments.

John P. Holdren, a physicist and environmental policy professor at Harvard, will serve as the president’s science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology. Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which overseas ocean and atmospheric studies and performs much of the government’s research on global warming.

Dr. Holdren will also be a co-chairman the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology along with the Nobel Prize-winning cancer research Dr. Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Eric S. Lander, a genomic researcher.

Read more...

WHITE COLLAR CRIMES: "The World Is Not Enough"

2009-01-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

From the Herald Tribune:

By the end, the world itself was too small to support the vast Ponzi scheme constructed by Bernard Madoff.

Initially, he tapped local money pulled in from country clubs and charity dinners, where investors sought him out to plead with him to manage their savings so they could start reaping the steady, solid returns their envied friends were getting.

Then, he and his promoters set sights on Europe, again framing the investments as memberships in a select club. A Swiss hedge fund manager, Michel Dominice, still remembers the pitch he got a few years ago from a salesman in Geneva. "He told me the fund was closed, that it was something I couldn't buy," Dominice said. "But he told me he might have a way to get me in. It was weird."

Madoff's agents next cut a cash-gathering swath through the Gulf, then Southeast Asia. Finally, they were hurtling with undignified speed toward China, with invitations to invest that were more desperate, less exclusive. One Beijing business executive who was approached said it seemed the Madoff funds were being pitched "to anyone who would listen."

The juggernaut began to sputter this fall as investors, rattled by the financial crisis and reaching for cash, started taking money out faster than Madoff could bring fresh cash in the door. He was arrested on Dec. 11 at his New York apartment and charged with securities fraud, turned in the night before by his sons after he told them his entire business was "a giant Ponzi scheme."

White vigilante groups blockaded small town in post-Katrina New Orleans and murdered blacks

2009-01-05T14:18:00.000-08:00

From Think Progress:
Earlier this week, A.C. Thompson of The Nation revealed that after Hurricane Katrina, white vigilante groups patrolled New Orleans, blockaded streets, and shot at least eleven black men. It “was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it,” said one vigilante. Color of Change is organizing a campaign to tell Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and state officials to investigate the shootings, as “Louisiana’s broken law enforcement agencies have refused to investigate these crimes.” Watch Thompson’s video on his report here.

QUEENS: YOUR NEW STATE SENATOR!

2009-01-05T14:12:00.000-08:00

From the Daily News:

Hot-tempered city councilman Hiram Monserrate was accused of slashing his girlfriend's face with broken glass Friday, leaving her with 20 stitches and a black eye.

Wearing black Adidas sweatpants, a Mets cap and a black wool jacket, the 41-year-old ex-cop from Elmhurst, Queens, looked weary as he stood before Judge Toko Sarita at his arraignment in Queens Criminal Court.

He did not speak during the brief hearing and was released on $2,500 cash bail after his lawyer, James Cullen, entered a not guilty plea.

Monserrate was charged with assault and weapons possession for allegedly attacking his girlfriend during a "boisterous argument," Queens District Attorney Scott Kessler said.

The city councilman claimed the injuries were accidental. "I brought her a glass of water, I leaned over and tripped," according to a statement read in court.

Kessler said Monserrate's girlfriend, Karla Giraldo, 29, first told hospital staff he broke a glass in his hand during a heated argument and stabbed her in the face with the shards. She later changed her story and said it was an accident.

"She doesn't want him to go to jail," Kessler said, adding that police found blood-soaked towels and broken glass in Monserrate's apartment. "She doesn't want protection."

But Sarita told Monserrate he cannot contact her and must stay at least 100 yards away.

Monserrate was elected to the state Senate last month and is scheduled to be sworn in Jan. 1. He would automatically lose his seat if convicted of a felony.

Columbia Expansion Gets Go-Ahead from State

2009-01-05T12:46:00.000-08:00

From the NY Times:
Columbia University cleared a major hurdle on Thursday in its effort to expand its campus into Manhattanville when state officials voted to approve the project, opening the door for the use of eminent domain to allow the university to acquire land from holdout owners.

Columbia already owns most of the 17-acre expansion zone in the largely industrial neighborhood in western Harlem, where the university’s $6.28 billion expansion plan would build a new campus over the next 25 years.

The vote, by the board of directors of the Empire State Development Corporation at its offices in Midtown, came after two hours of impassioned testimony against the plan by more than two dozen people, including residents, local business owners and their lawyers.

Norman Siegel, the prominent civil rights lawyer who represents Nicholas Sprayregen, one of the last holdout landowners, immediately declared they would file a lawsuit challenging the ruling.

“We’re not against development; we’re not against Columbia University,” he said. “We just don’t think it’s legal, constitutionally, to employ eminent domain.”

A Columbia spokeswoman, Victoria Benitez, would say only, “We’re pleased that the Empire State Development Corporation has approved the general project plan.”

Columbia’s expansion plan has sparked opposition from residents and business owners in the development zone, as well as from community leaders in Harlem and some Columbia students. For the past several years, the university, whose endowment was reported in June at $7.1 billion, has bought land from dozens of property owners. The area in dispute is bounded roughly by Broadway on the east, Riverside Drive on the west, West 129th Street on the south and West 133rd Street on the north.

Read more...

White Collar Crimes: The Foible of Marc S. Dreier

2008-12-23T08:48:00.001-08:00

From the New York Times:
Marc S. Dreier knew the 45th-floor conference room of Solow Realty well. He had been in it many times as a trusted lawyer for the company’s founder.

So nothing seemed amiss when he showed up one afternoon in October and told a receptionist he had a meeting with her boss, people associated with Solow say.

Mr. Dreier was elegantly dressed, as always, the people said. He had three people with him. The receptionist ushered the group past her desk. They were sitting there, visible inside the glass-walled room, a few minutes later when the boss, Steven M. Cherniak, happened to walk by.

Mr. Cherniak would later tell people at the company how surprised he had been to see Mr. Dreier. He had not scheduled any meeting with him, and he had no idea what Mr. Dreier was up to.

But people there gave little thought to Mr. Dreier’s odd visit until November, when the company’s founder, Sheldon H. Solow, received a disturbing call. The caller wanted to let Mr. Solow know that Mr. Dreier had offered him the chance to buy promissory notes that had been issued by the company, people associated with the firm said.

They were fake notes, and shortly thereafter, lawyers for Solow Realty — different lawyers — were in touch with federal authorities, reporting their suspicions that Mr. Dreier might be engaged in financial fraud.

Read more...

HUD Man Saw the Sub-Prime Writing on the Wall

2008-12-23T08:38:00.000-08:00

From Politico's 'The Crypt':

Barack Obama's pick for HUD -- former New York City Housing Commissioner Shaun Donovan -- was one of the earliest public officials to foresee the magnitude and destructive capacity of the subprime crisis.

In the middle of 2004, I sat down with Donovan (I was at Newsday at the time) for a chat about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's initiative to tackle the shortage of low- and middle-income housing in the city.

To my surprise, Donovan brushed aside my questions about the city's initiatives and began talking at length about the coming "flood" of foreclosures he anticipated among highly leveraged apartment buildings purchased by recent immigrants -- and a looming subprime crisis for one- and two-family homeowners in up-and-coming neighborhoods in southeast Queens and central Brooklyn.

I left the meeting a little shaken: At the time housing prices in previously depressed parts of the city were booming and the city had been able to sell off almost of all its once-massive stock of foreclosed properties to private owners and investors. The future looked bright to almost everyone -- but not to Donovan, who was planning for the looming disaster.

Bloomberg's housing program has received mixed marks from advocates, but Donovan is extremely well regarded among groups that have often clashed with City Hall, in part, because he's focused on improving conditions in rental housing at a time when many officials spurned such initiatives.

And, unlike many Clinton-era housing officials, the 42-year-old financing expert never subscribed to the prevailing (and deeply misguided) belief that low-income homeownership was the panacea for all the nation's housing ills.

Mr. Donovan Goes to Washington

2008-12-23T08:35:00.000-08:00

From The Huffington Post:

CHICAGO — In naming his choice for housing secretary, President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday rounded out his economic team and gave new prominence to the mortgage crisis that has dragged the country into a recession.

The selection of Shaun Donovan as secretary of Housing and Urban Development puts the current New York City housing commissioner at the forefront of one of the more nettlesome economic challenges confronting the new administration _ the soaring foreclosures that are threatening homeownership nationwide.

The Federal Reserve estimates that lenders are on track to initiate 2.25 million foreclosures this year, more than doubling the annual pace before the crisis set in. What's more, falling housing values and a plunging stock market have contributed to $2.8 trillion in lost household wealth in the third quarter.

Donovan joins a team led by Tim Geithner, Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary, and Larry Summers, who will chair Obama's National Economic Council. Obama has his team working on an ambitious economic recovery plan that includes saving or creating 2.5 million jobs over the next two years.

White Collar Crimes: Madoff The Wizard of Wall St

2008-12-23T08:25:00.000-08:00

From the NYTimes:
For years, investors, rivals and regulators all wondered how Bernard L. Madoff worked his magic.

But on Friday, less than 24 hours after this prominent Wall Street figure was arrested on charges connected with what authorities portrayed as the biggest Ponzi scheme in financial history, hard questions began to be raised about whether Mr. Madoff acted alone and why his suspected con game was not uncovered sooner.

As investors from Palm Beach to New York to London counted their losses on Friday in what Mr. Madoff himself described as a $50 billion fraud, federal authorities took control of what remained of his firm and began to pore over its books.

But some investors said they had questioned Mr. Madoff’s supposed investment prowess years ago, pointing to his unnaturally steady returns, his vague investment strategy and the obscure accounting firm that audited his books. Read more...

Fix a flawed judicial process

2008-12-23T08:20:00.000-08:00

From El Diario: La Prensa

Governor David Paterson has recognized that a judicial nominations process that excluded Hispanics and women was grossly flawed. But he doesn’t have to allow it to proceed that way.

Paterson expressed outrage at a state judicial commission that presented candidates for replacing Chief Judge Judith Kaye as head of the New York State Court of Appeals. The commission produced a list of six white men and only one African American.

Well before the commission drew its list, Assemblyman Peter Rivera alerted Paterson about the under-representation of Latinos in judicial appointments and the lack of diversity on related commissions.

Latinos are 27 percent of New York City’s population and 16 percent of the state’s population, but as judges, have little say over housing litigation to family disputes to criminal justice proceedings. Rivera cited the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage in reporting that only a handful of the 1,200 judges in the state are Latino.

The exclusion in the recent nominations process is even more glaring considering that several Latino bar associations had supported the candidacy of Senior Associate Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick.

Rivera says that if Paterson is unhappy with the list, he should request a new one. That is exactly what Florida Governor Charlie Crist did with an all white-male list of judicial candidates submitted to him. This has opened a test for fairness and equality in that state, as should be done here.

Paterson should move to diversify the nominations for chief judge and the membership of state commissions. He should also put forth strong and balanced legislation for governing the nominations process.

Several news reports have mentioned that historically, governors have not turned back recommendations from judicial commissions. But there is a first time for everything, especially when the outcry is for fair and just treatment.

America The Beautiful: The Oklahoma Commission

2008-12-23T08:10:00.000-08:00

From Tulsareparations.com:
The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission originated in 1997 with House Joint Resolution No. 1035. The act twice since has been amended, first in 1998, and again two years later. The final rewriting passed each legislative chamber in March and be came law with Governor Frank Keating's signature on April 6, 2000.

In that form, the State of Oklahoma extended the commission's authority beyond that originally scheduled, to February 28, 2001.

The statute also charged the commission to produce, on that date, "a final report of its findings and recommendations" and to submit that report "in writing to the Governor, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and the Mayor and each member of the City Council of the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma." This is that report. It accounts for and completes the work of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission.

A series of papers accompanies the report. Some are written by scholars of national stature, others by experts of international acclaim. Each addresses at length and in depth issues of expressed legislative interest and matters of enormous public consequence. As a group, they comprise a uniquely special and a uniquely significant contribution that must be attached to this report and must be studied carefully along with it.

Nonetheless, the supporting documents are not the report, itself. The scholars' essays have their purposes; this commission's report has another. Its purpose is contained in the statutes that first created this commission, that later extended its life, and that each time gave it the same set of mandates. That is why this report is an accounting, presented officially and offered publicly, of how Oklahoma's 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission has conducted its business and addressed its statutory obligations.

Its duties were many, and each presented imposing challenges. Not least was the challenge of preparing this report. Lawmakers scheduled its deadline and defined its purpose, and this report meets their requirements. At the same time, four years of intense study and personal sacrifice surely entitle commission members to add their own expectations. Completely reasonable and entirely appropriate, their desires deserve a place in their report as well.

Together, then, both the law's requirements and the commissioners' resolves guide this report. Designed to be both concise and complete, this is the report that law requires the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission to submit to those who represent the people. Designed to be both compelling and convincing, this also is the report that the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission chooses to offer the people whom both lawmakers and the commissioners serve.

Politricks: Charlie Still Smiling!

2008-12-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

From The New York Observer:

Charlie Rangel's perch as the chairman of the mighty House Ways and Means Committee is in danger. Supposedly.

The 78-year-old Harlem Democrat, a fixture on Capitol Hill since 1971, has been the subject of a stream of revelations about potential financial and ethical improprieties, the sort of never-ending scandal that would pose a serious threat to his electability if he represented a marginally competitive district. But New York's 15th District is tailor-made for an entrenched Democratic incumbent to stay in office as long as he wants, so Rangel need not fear the wrath of the voters.

The only real threat to a congressional lifer like Rangel is internal, from within the ranks of his fellow Democrats in the U.S. House. If they want to strip him of his powerful Ways and Means gavel, they can. And, technically, that is what they are now mulling, with the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct -- otherwise known as the ethics committee -- set to report back on his supposed misdeeds just before the new Congress convenes in early January. But don't hold your breath waiting for any drama.

Even if Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a majority of the Democratic caucus were inclined to remove Rangel from his post -- and, as of now, it doesn't seem that they are -- numerous obstacles, including the obstinate chairman and his allies and some recent history within the Democratic caucus, would make it a trying experience for them.

Start with the the ethics committee itself. It's no accident that Rangel is the one who actually requested that the panel review his case, or that he declared this week, "Am I confident? You're damn right. I'm the one who asked for it."

It's The Economy, Stoopid: The 'Big Cars, Big Money' Edition

2008-12-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

From AOL Money:

Chrysler LLC, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. have ditched their corporate jets for hybrid cars and replaced vague pleas for federal help with detailed requests for their second crack at persuading Congress to throw them a lifeline.

Congressional leaders are reviewing three separate survival plans from the automakers in preparation for hearings Thursday and Friday, as they weigh whether to call lawmakers back to Washington for a special session next week to vote on an auto bailout.

Officials at the White House and the Treasury and Commerce departments are also scouring the automakers' plans. White House press secretary Dana Perino said it is "too early to say" whether the companies have outlined a path toward viability that justifies new federal assistance.

"It sounds to me like the companies have given this a lot of thought and are willing to make some tough decisions," Perino said. "We just need a little more time to pore through the documents."'

She said the administration also is waiting to see how lawmakers react to the automakers' testimony this week, and what sort of support their bailout requests generate.

"That remains a little bit of a mystery," Perino said. "It is really important to see what kind of support they can get on Capitol Hill."

Henderson acknowledged Wednesday that the initial appearances by the heads of the car makers was a public relations failure.

"Yeah, it certainly was not our finest hour," he told NBC. "We were not as clear about what we wanted to do." He also conceded that the decision by the executives to travel to Washington by private jet "was a problem" for lawmakers.

In blueprints delivered to lawmkers on Tuesday, GM and Chrysler said they needed an immediate infusion of government cash to last until Jan. 1, and both said they could drag the entire industry down if they fail. Ford is requesting a $9 billion "standby line of credit" that it says it does not expect to use unless one of the other auto makers goes bankrupt.

Read more...

Say What? Charlie On The Spot...Again!

2008-12-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

From Yahoo News:

He may fear “death by a thousand cuts” — a stream of damning newspaper stories, private grumblings from Democratic colleagues, a pending ethics investigation — but insiders say House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel has no intention of giving up his powerful post.

To the contrary, the New York Democrat is launching a concerted counterattack against The New York Times, which reported last week that Rangel helped retain a multimillion-dollar tax loophole for an oil drilling company at the same time that the company’s CEO was pledging $1 million to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, is denying GOP charges that she has interfered with the House ethics committee’s investigation into Rangel by promising that the panel’s probe would be completed by the end of the 110th Congress.

Although Pelosi said last week that she’d received “assurances” that the committee would finish its investigation before Jan. 3, her office says she was referring to assurances from her own staff that the committee typically completes its investigations that quickly — and not to any inappropriate, inside communication she received from committee members themselves.
That Pelosi’s office felt obliged to respond to the GOP complaints underscores the degree to which the continuing furor over Rangel — with new allegations of improprieties now surfacing regularly — has become a major problem for the speaker and her colleagues in the Democratic leadership. Republicans have tried to tie Democrats to Rangel, and some Democrats have begun to say privately that Rangel should step down in order to allow them to press ahead, undistracted and untainted, with President-elect Barack Obama’s plans for dealing with the economy.

How 'Bout A Shadow Government!

2008-12-08T09:12:00.001-08:00

Real Talk: GrandDaddy, Prescott, was a fascist; George H.W. is a white supremacist; Neil is a thief and responsible for the greatest Savings and Loan scandal in mid-western history (Silverado Savings and Loan Scandal); the current president, Alfred E. Newman look-alike, George W. Bush, is a complete incompetent and abject failure; while this guy, JEB BUSH distinguishes the family's illustrious history by espousing the very same seditionist, treasonous pronouncements as had his grand father - stoopid is as stoopid does.

Latest News from The Huffington Post:

"Marc Ambinder is reporting that Jeb Bush is considering a run for the Senate to replace the retiring Mel Martinez:

Two sources close to Jeb Bush, including one who has spoken to the former Florida governor within the past few hours, say he is seriously considering a run for Senate now that incumbent Republican Mel Martinez has retired.

"He is receiving a lot of encouragement from both in and out of the state," an longtime Bush adviser said tonight. "He is going to take his time and approach this very methodically." Bush will weigh, according to this adviser, how a run would impact his family, his business, and whether the Senate would be the best platform for the causes he'd advocate -- education, immigration, GOP solutions to health care and energy.

Bush did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

If he decides to run, Republicans expect the field to clear for him. Maybe. Gov. Charlie Crist, with whom Bush has not had the warmest of relations, is said to be interested in moving to the Senate. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is weighing a bid, as is former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, Orange County executive Richard Crotty, and U.S. Rep. Connie Mack.

Via ThinkProgress, in an interview with NewsMax, President Bush's brother Jeb says the Republican party should not cave to a Democratic majority. Rather, they should set up a "shadow government" to provide a counter-agenda.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tells Newsmax that the GOP must broaden its appeal to avoid becoming "the old white-guy party," and recommends that Republicans create a "shadow government" to engage Democrats on important issues as the incoming Obama administration seeks to enact its agenda.

In a wide-ranging interview with Newsmax, the popular former governor and younger brother of President George W. Bush said the 2008 election was neither "transformational" nor a landslide. For example, he noted that Barack Obama's significant fundraising advantage over John McCain played a key role in Democratic success this year.

Bush urged Republicans not to abandon their core conservative principles in favor of a "Democratic-lite" agenda. Still, the GOP does need to do some real soul-searching, he said."

Photo Credit: Huffington Post

The Bush Library: Plunging Economy Edition

2008-12-08T09:11:00.001-08:00

From the NYTimes:

"In six and a half hours on Monday, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index declined nearly 9 percent — the type of collapse that, historically, has taken years to occur. But in 2008, a year that has now been officially declared to be in recession, the drop registered with a resigned sense that, yes, this awful year still has yet another month to go.

The sell-off, which erased nearly all the gains enjoyed by the stock market in Thanksgiving week, came as investors flocked to the safety of government notes, driving their yields to near record lows as concern mounted that the economy could get much worse before it improves.

Investors have long assumed that the country was in recession, and analysts said that after last week’s gains, including the biggest five-day rally in decades, a sell-off was to be expected. But perhaps not this fast — and not this deep.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 679.95 points or 7.7 percent, all but wiping out a 783-point gain built up last week. The S.& P. 500 gave back 80 points of the 96-point gain from the same period. The Nasdaq composite index was also off 9 percent.

“I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that we unwound much of last week’s gains,” said Douglas M. Peta, an independent market strategist. “But it was a surprise that the unwinding was all in a single session.”

Anxiety is mounting that a quick recovery for the economy no longer seems probable. The nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, charged with officially dating recessions, has declared that the economy had been languishing in one since December 2007. "

Read more...

CHANGE WE GOTTA BELIEVE IN: Obama's Confidence in Clinton

2008-12-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

From The Nation:

So it will be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The senator from New York, who lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama because she supported authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq when her rival from Illinois opposed the move, will now be the face of President Obama's foreign policy.

The final detail of the plan to put Clinton in charge of the State Department -- an agreement by former President Bill Clinton to work with the Obama transition team to address potential conflicts of interest arising from his international financial dealings -- has been settled. Obama made the announcement Monday morning in Chicago, at a press conference where he confirmed that he'll retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates and name retired Marine General Jim Jones as his national security adviser, former deputy attorney general Eric Holder as attorney general, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as homeland security secretary and Obama campaign foreign-policy aide Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

It was Clinton who stood at Obama's side.

And the President-elect was as enthusiastic about his selection of the woman who tried to block his way to the Oval Office as he has been about any of his selections -- perhaps more so.

Describing Clinton as "an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence," Obama said, "Hillary's appointment is a sign to friend and foe of the seriousness of my commitment to renew American diplomacy and restore our alliances. I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton is the right person to lead our State Department and to work with me in tackling this ambitious foreign policy agenda."

CHANGE WE GOTTA BELIEVE IN

2008-12-08T09:09:00.000-08:00

From Politico:

Latinos unhappy with Obama picks

If there is one message President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has broadcast about Cabinet picks, it is that ethnicity and gender will not be the first considerations when filling the slots.

Credentials over tokenism, after all, was a fundamental principle of Obama’s presidential campaign that highlighted his ideas and community values over his African-American background. Still, if all goes as planned, Cabinet members with hefty résumés will present a picture of diversity.

Hispanic political leaders agree. Their expectations for seats at the president’s top policy table are not about meeting quotas but about advancing the reality that within this fastest-growing ethnic group are seasoned policy experts who understand the economic, foreign and domestic policy concerns shared by everyone.

Obama promised hope and change, and Hispanics hoped for the usual two Latinos in the Cabinet. And heck, why not three or four? Now that would be a change.

But at this early stage in the appointments process, there is a trickle of disappointment running through the Latino community.

Read more...

Politricks: All Eyes On the Illinois Governor

2008-11-15T18:38:00.000-08:00

From the New York Times:

CHICAGO — The task of filling President-elect Barack Obama’s seat in the Senate offers Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois a rare chance to wield influence in Washington.
It also offers Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat in his second term, the rare chance to focus public attention on something other than his litany of problems — a federal investigation into his administration, his icy standoffs with the Democratic-controlled State Legislature and his dismal approval rating (which, according to a Chicago Tribune survey last month, has sunk to 13 percent, worse even than some approval marks for President Bush).
“Compared to everything else, this is good publicity,” said Kent Redfield, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Springfield. “Now it’s a matter of doing something on it that helps him politically. He needs to.”
Since Election Day, Mr. Blagojevich’s decision, assigned to him under Illinois law, has become this state’s political parlor game, one buried in layers deeper than just which Democrat will best guard the seat until the 2010 election.
Among the many political concerns: Should another African-American finish the term of Mr. Obama? Should the replacement be a caretaker with no expectations of re-election, or someone who dreams of staying on? And how might Mr. Blagojevich navigate the choice in such a way that might shore up some specks of support for his own political future?

Photo Credit: M. Spencer Green/Associated Press for the New York Times
Read more...

America, The Beautiful

2008-11-15T18:23:00.000-08:00

As we enter post-presidential election mode, let's examine the issues and proponents of "THE SOUTHERN STRATEGY" that corrupted, and eventually, bankrupted the Grand Old Party. In this "Obama Generation", the FUN-EPAPERS.COM will unveil national, state and locally-based leaders and acolytes within the GOP whose racist, homophobic and oligarchic postulates catalyzed the death knell for a party whose primary operating thesis was the politics of polarizing divisiveness and overt white supremacy.Steve Kornachi from the New York Observer begins to trace the rise ,and following a decisive mandate from the 2008 electorate, its inevitable demise:

In the middle of the 20th century, the national Democratic Party was being pulled in two radically different and fundamentally incompatible directions, the most loyal components of its coalition divided by racial politics.

Since the Civil War, the party’s most reliable base of support had been in the South, where voters were known to boast that they’d sooner cast a ballot for a yellow dog than for a Republican. At the same time, Democrats also leaned on big-city machines in the North, whose leaders – heeding the cries of liberals like Hubert Humphrey – had concluded that their continued hegemony depended on reaching out to black voters.

For a while, the party tried to finesse the dispute, with mixed results. In 1948, Southerners walked out of the convention and nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond to run as a third-party candidate; he snagged four states worth 38 electoral votes, but – amazingly – Harry Truman still managed a slim Electoral College majority. The South largely returned to the Democratic fold in 1952, 1956 and 1960, but in 1964 President Lyndon Johnson was forced to choose once and for all between the two regions. As he prophesized at the time, his signature on that year’s Civil Rights Act essentially signed the South away.

From that point, a decades-long political realignment unfolded, one that mostly favored the Republican Party. A solid South helped elect one G.O.P. president after another, and ultimately produced a Republican Congress in 1994. By 2004, when George W. Bush and that Republican Congress were reelected with essentially unanimous Southern support, G.O.P. boasts of a “permanent Republican majority” were widely accepted as fact.

Funny Isn't It! Freedom Road...

2008-11-15T18:22:00.001-08:00

Profiles in Courage

2008-11-15T18:20:00.000-08:00

A Look at 'Barackfest in New York'

2008-11-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

The New Observer offers a play-by-play
deconstruction of election day in New York City from the opening of the polls to the exuberant celebrations that followed soon after most news outlets announced that Barack Obama had won the election:

" As election night neared, New York’s power elite—but also its creative class, its political class, its partying class, lurched to find the center of gravity for election night.

The premonition that New York’s obvious choice, Barack Obama, was likely to win was not the smallest consideration here.

And then there were those who attempted to provide the city with its own massive town square, to hold election night, for the first time in eight years, as a massive, citywide, public event.

ABC did Times Square, NBC of course did Rockefeller. Harvey Weinstein and Georgette Mosbacher cultivated a list, checked it twice, added a bunch of plus ones and basically accounted for every boldface name in town.

Then there were the churches, the political power centers of Black New York, which suddenly realized they might have the first black president on their hands. Charlie Rangel would spend some time in midtown with the Democrats, but then planned to go uptown, and try to move the center of gravity there.

Every neighborhood bar put up a sign: free hot dogs, CNN all night. And New York put on its suits and frocks and went out for a risky, big, historic night.

But the day began early in the morning, with floods of New Yorkers eschewing habit to pull themselves out of bed well before the break of dawn to get themselves to their polling places, often, like Joseph and Mary, in some obscure neighborhood they have long since outgrown, and sometimes, in the very same place their family has voted for generations. The lines were long and the passions were high—ask Tim Robbins!—but the historic day had begun. "

[Photo courtesy of New York Observer]

Profiles in Courage: Post Election Edition

2008-11-12T07:23:00.001-08:00

Day After Highlights...

2008-11-12T07:19:00.000-08:00

November 5th proved a big day for newspapers all over the country and the globe announcing Barack Obama's clinching of the presidency. Below is the front cover of the Wall Street Journal courtesy of Poynter Online. Be sure to check out the front pages of over 20 papers as well:

Yes We Did!

2008-11-12T07:09:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama's Victory Speech and Text:

FULL TEXT:
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldnt vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when womens voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

In Memoriam....

2008-11-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

Rest In Peace

Friends and Family,

Words cannot express our thanks for your thoughtfulness, prayers and well wishes during this most difficult time.

Below you will find the information for the viewing and funeral.

Please don't feel obligated to attend but I'd appreciate you keeping Freida in your prayers.

KBT

Viewing--Sunday, November 9th--2-6:30pm

Unity Funeral Home
2352 Eighth Avenue
126th Street

Funeral--Monday, November 10th--10am

St John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Avenue
Bet 110th & 112th Streets

Rest in Peace

Rocking The Vote, Not The Voters...

2008-11-12T06:57:00.000-08:00

Although New York has one of the most antiquated election day voting setups in the United States, voters stood their ground to cast a ballot that would change the course of history. The New York Times elaborates on the long lines and breakdowns that ensued:

"New York City’s antiquated voting system buckled, groaned and occasionally even gave way on Tuesday as millions of people thronged the polls to cast votes in the presidential election. Persistent problems from past elections — broken machines, long waits and confusion among poll workers — were made even worse, voters and election observers said, by an exceptionally heavy turnout.

The city’s mechanical-lever voting machines, in use since 1962, broke down in neighborhoods from Washington Heights, Harlem and the Upper West Side in Manhattan to Cobble Hill and Crown Heights in Brooklyn and Long Island City, Queens. While the Board of Elections dispatched teams of technicians around the city, voters who had already waited for hours had to wait even longer to fill out emergency paper ballots.

“It’s a mess,” said Marjorie Press Lindblom, a partner at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, who ran one of the New York emergency phone lines for Election Protection, a nonpartisan national voter protection program. “People have had to wait hours. Machines are breaking down. There’s confusion about the use of emergency versus affidavit ballots. Voters are not showing up on registration lists. And poll workers haven’t all been trained properly.”

By the late afternoon, Election Protection had received roughly 3,000 complaints from voters across the five boroughs, with Brooklyn and Manhattan accounting for about two-thirds of the total.

Despite the troubles, there were no complaints of widespread disenfranchisement or fraud.

Valerie Vazquez-Rivera, a spokeswoman for the Board of Elections, acknowledged the complaints, which she attributed in part to “an unprecedented number of voters at the polls.” The city’s 34,000 poll workers, who are paid $200 to $300 for a day’s work, tried their best to help voters at 1,351 polling sites, she said."

Read more...

Profiles in Courage

2008-10-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

The Foreign Policy Challenges That Lie Ahead

2008-10-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

From Richard N. Haass of Newswee k:

MEMORANDUM

TO: The president-elect
RE: Foreign policy
FROM: Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations

There are only two and a half months—76 days, to be precise— between Election Day and your Inauguration, and you will need every one of them to get ready for the world you will inherit. This is not the world you've been discussing on the trail for the last year or more: campaigning and governing could hardly be more different. The former is necessarily done in bold strokes and, to be honest, often approaches caricature. All candidates resist specifying priorities or trade-offs lest they forfeit precious support. You won, but at a price, as some of the things you said were better left unsaid. Even more important, the campaign did not prepare the public for the hard times to come.

There will be days when you will wonder why you worked so hard to get this job. What will make it so difficult is not just all that awaits, but the constraints that will limit what you can actually do. When George W. Bush became president nearly eight years ago the world was largely at peace, the U.S. military was largely at rest, oil was $23 a barrel, the economy was growing at more than 3 percent, $1 was worth 116 yen, the national debt was just under $6 trillion and the federal government was running a sizable budgetary surplus. The September 11 attacks, for all they cost us as a nation, increased the world's willingness to cooperate with us. You, by contrast, will inherit wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tired and stretched armed forces, a global struggle with terrorism, oil that has ranged as high as $150 a barrel, a weaker dollar (now worth 95 yen), substantial anti-American sentiment, a federal budget deficit that could reach $1 trillion in your first year, a ballooning national debt of some $10 trillion and a global economic slowdown that will increase instability in numerous countries.

You will take office two decades after the end of the cold war. What some dubbed the unipolar moment is history. Economic, political and military power is held by many hands, not all of which belong to states, not all of which are benign. This does not mean the United States is weak. To the contrary, this country is still the single most powerful entity in the world. But the United States cannot dominate, much less dictate, and expect that others will follow. There are limits to U.S. resources; at the same time the country has serious vulnerabilities. Enron, Abu Ghraib, Katrina and the financial crisis have taken their toll: America's ability to tell others what to do, or to persuade them through example, is much diminished.

Read the complete memorandum here...

Hold The Presses Please!!!

2008-10-31T13:29:00.000-07:00

From The Wall Street Journal:
(Photo Credit: WSJ.com)

The case for Barack Obama, in broad strokes:

He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.

A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd "I have no comment," or "We shouldn't judge." Instead he said, "My mother had me when she was 18," which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn't have to.

There is something else. On Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama won the Alabama primary with 56% to Hillary Clinton's 42%. That evening, a friend watched the victory speech on TV in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, saw on the screen "Obama Wins" and "Alabama." She said, "Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school." She said, "That's where they used the hoses." Suddenly my friend saw it new. Birmingham, 1963, and the water hoses used against the civil rights demonstrators. And now look, the black man thanking Alabama for his victory.

This means nothing? This means a great deal.

PROFILES IN COURAGE

2008-10-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

Get Out And Vote!

2008-10-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 Vote for Barack Obama for President in 2008

These 'Financial Times' Call for a Clear Choice

2008-10-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Editorial Board for the Financial Times offers this endorsement for Barack Obama:

US presidential elections involve a fabulous expense of time, effort and money. Doubtless it is all too much – but, by the end, nobody can complain that the candidates have been too little scrutinised. We have learnt a lot about Barack Obama and John McCain during this campaign. In our view, it is enough to be confident that Mr Obama is the right choice.

At the outset, we were not so confident. Mr Obama is inexperienced. His policies are a blend of good, not so good and downright bad. Since the election will strengthen Democratic control of Congress, a case can be made for returning a Republican to the White House: divided government has a better record in the United States than government united under either party.

The Governor Sarah 'APPALLIN' Series presents..."Alaska For Obama"

2008-10-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

From the Alaska Daily News:

"...Alaska's founders were optimistic people, but even the most farsighted might have been stretched to imagine this scenario. No matter the outcome in November, this election will mark a signal moment in the history of the 49th state. Many Alaskans are proud to see their governor, and their state, so prominent on the national stage.

Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency -- but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand. The same cannot be said of Sen. McCain..."

Read more...

A Profile In Courage

2008-10-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

From NY Times:

From his days leading The Harvard Law Review to his presidential campaign, Barack Obama has always run meetings by a particular set of rules.

Everyone contributes; silent lurkers will be interrogated. (He wants to “suck the room of every idea,” said Valerie Jarrett, a close adviser.) Mention a theory and Mr. Obama asks how it translates on the ground. He orchestrates debate, playing participants off each other — and then highlights their areas of agreement. He constantly restates others’ contributions in his own invariably more eloquent words. But when the session ends, his view can remain a mystery, and his ultimate call is sometimes a surprise to everyone who was present.

Those meetings, along with the career they span, provide hints about what sort of president Mr. Obama might be if elected. They suggest a cool deliberator, a fluent communicator, a professor with a hunger for academic expertise but little interest in abstraction. He may be uncomfortable making decisions quickly or abandoning a careful plan. A President Obama would prize consensus, except when he would disregard it. And his lifelong penchant for control would likely translate into a disciplined White House.

Photo Credit: NY Times
Read more...

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: Allow Me To Introduce Myself...Again...And Again

2008-10-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times:

On the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 24, John McCain convened a meeting in his suite at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Among the handful of campaign officials in attendance were McCain’s chief campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, and his other two top advisers: Rick Davis, the campaign manager; and Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime speechwriter. The senator’s ears were already throbbing with bad news from economic advisers and from House Republican leaders who had told him that only a small handful in their ranks were willing to support the $700 billion bailout of the banking industry proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The meeting was to focus on how McCain should respond to the crisis — but also, as one participant later told me, “to try to see this as a big-picture, leadership thing.”

As this participant recalled: “We presented McCain with three options. Continue offering principles from afar. A middle ground of engaging while still campaigning. Then the third option, of going all in. The consensus was that we could stay out or go in — but that if we’re going in, we should go in all the way. So the thinking was, do you man up and try to affect the outcome, or do you hold it at arm’s length? And no, it was not an easy call.”

Read more...

NY Times for Obama!!!

2008-10-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times:

"Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.

The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.

As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States. "

Read more...

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: Mutilation of the Truth

2008-10-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

From the Huffington Post:

It had drawn wide local and national -- even political attention, with the McCain and Obama campaigns weighing in -- but now the Ashley Todd story has fallen apart. Police in Pittsburgh have now declared the tale a hoax and the woman, who has confessed, now faces charges for her deed.

Earlier today, John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News, commented on his blog there that "this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

He titled his posting: "Moment of Truth." Indeed.

It started yesterday afternoon with Matt Drudge screaming at the top of his site this afternoon in red type -- but no siren -- that a Pittsburgh campaign worker for McCain, age 20, had been viciously attacked and the letter "B" carved into her face, presumably by a Barack Obama fan. Her name, it soon emerged, was Ashley Todd and she had come to Pittsburgh from College Station, Texas, to help out.

'Bloomie' Gets His Way...For Now

2008-10-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

Politicker NY was in the trenches covering the city council votes as they happened. Here's a rundown of the votes in favor and against extending term limits:

The vote is still going on, but the 26th vote was just cast by Tom White--who was term limited in 2001 and came back into office in 2005. Here's the (lightly annotated) roll call:

Addabbo-N
Arroyo-Y
Avella-N
Baez-Y
Barron-N (Bloomberg's "legacy is tainted," he said.)
Brewer-N
Como-N (Also voted against the amendment to send this to the voters.)
Comrie-Y
De Blasio-N
Dickens-Y
Dilan-Y
Eugene-N
Felder-Y
Fidler-Y
Foster-Y
Garodnick-N
Genanro-N
Gentile-N
Gerson-Y
Gioia-N
Gonzalez-Y

Read the full list here...

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: 'I Inherited Kunta Kente's Foot'

2008-10-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

From the South Florida Times:

In the rural Teoc community of Carroll County, Miss., where the ancestors of Sen. John McCain owned enslaved Africans on a plantation, black, white and mixed-race family members unite every two years for their Coming Home Reunion, on the land where the plantation operated.

Some of McCain’s black family members say they are not sure exactly where they fall on the family tree, but they do know this: They are either descendants of the McCain family slaves, or of children the McCains fathered with their slaves.

White and black members of the McCain family have met on the plantation several times over the last 15 years, but one invited guest has been conspicuously absent: Sen. John Sidney McCain.

“Why he hasn’t come is anybody’s guess,” said Charles McCain Jr., 60, a distant cousin of John McCain who is black. “I think the best I can come up with, is that he doesn’t have time, or he has just distanced himself, or it doesn’t mean that much to him.”

Other relatives are not as generous.

Lillie McCain, 56, another distant cousin of John McCain who is black, said the Republican presidential nominee is trying to hide his past, and refuses to accept the family’s history.

“After hearing him in 2000 claim his family never owned slaves, I sent him an email,” she recalled. “I told him no matter how much he denies it, it will not make it untrue, and he should accept this and embrace it.”

She said the senator never responded to her email.

Read more...

Zakaria Offers 'The Case for Barack Obama'

2008-10-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

From Newsweek:

It has become fashionable to lament the state of presidential politics and decry the tenor of campaigns. But in fact, this election has been a pleasant surprise. In the last debate, as the candidates discussed their respective health-care plans in some detail, the danger was that the American people would be turned off not by negativity but by boredom.

Compare this election to the one in 1988—when the Pledge of Allegiance, Willie Horton, flag factories and Belgian endives dominated the campaign. Or contrast the relatively brief appearance of William Ayers with the barrage of Swift-Boat attacks on John Kerry. Some of this is because the American people have clearly tired of slash-and-burn campaigns. But much of it is because the two candidates are men of decency and honor.

John McCain is brave, and this courage has manifested itself not simply in the prisons of Vietnam. Over the past two decades he has broken with his party and president on global warming, campaign finance, government spending and the use of torture. He has chosen, for the most part, to forgo the racial coding that the Republican Party had used for decades in its campaigns. But despite these tremendous strengths, as a candidate for president in 2008, he is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time.

When In Doubt Blame Race...

2008-10-28T07:26:00.000-07:00

Some conservatives were so rocked by Colin Powell's endorsement for Barack Obama they completely shunned his strong indictment against Senator McCain's campaign tactics but rather focused on a rather familiar scapegoat. Namely, race. The Huffington Post rounds up a smorgasboard of these criticisms:

" Colin Powell's decision to endorse Barack Obama has sparked a mini-debate of sorts over both the significance of the endorsement itself and the role that race has and will play during this campaign.

In the immediate aftermath of his appearance on Meet The Press, several prominent GOP officials - ranging from the established to the extreme - defined the announcement more by skin color than ideology.

The most crass interpretation came from talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who wrote the Politico's Jonathan Martin the following:

"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race... OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."

Later in the day, Pat Buchanan echoed Limbaugh's refrain. "Alright, we gotta ask a question," he declared on MSNBC, "look would Colin Powell be endorsing Obama if he were a white liberal Democrat..."

Read more...

Tribune Picks Up First Democratic Endorsement Ever

2008-10-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times 'Caucus':

" For the first time in its 161-year history, the Chicago Tribune is endorsing a Democrat for president.

The newspaper, which has links to the Republican Party that date back to the founding of the G.O.P., said Friday that Senator Barack Obama is the strongest choice “to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.”

With that startling departure, the Tribune joined a growing list of large daily newspapers across the country that have stated a preference for the Democratic nominee over Senator John McCain, his Republican rival. A quick survey shows Mr. Obama winning the backing of an overwhelming majority of dailies with circulations over 100,000 that have already made endorsements. Mr. McCain has won the endorsements of The New York Post and The Boston Herald, among others.

Several of the newspapers that have endorsed Mr. Obama cited his youth and freshness on the national scene, along with Mr. McCain’s age, as factors in their decision. "

Read more...

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!

2008-10-28T07:20:00.001-07:00

From the NY Times 'Caucus':

" The A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s leaders voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to endorse Barack Obama for president, saying the federation would spend more than $50 million and deploy more than 250,000 volunteers in this fall’s campaign.

John J. Sweeney, the federation’s president, said, “Barack Obama’s record demonstrates he is a champion for working families and his proposals will improve life for generations of working people and our children.

The federation, a grouping of 56 unions with 10 million members, had stayed on the sidelines during the primary season because union leaders were so divided between Senator Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

For Mr. Obama, labor’s vocal and enthusiastic backing is important because some Democrats fear that his support is weak among many working-class voters.

In its statements on Wednesday, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. repeatedly made the point that Mr. Obama is a good friend of America’s workers and is familiar with their problems. "

Read more...

HOLD THE PRESSES!!!!

2008-10-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times 'Caucus':

" Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president on Sunday morning as a candidate who was reaching out in a “more diverse and inclusive way across our society” and offering a “calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach” to the nation’s problems. The endorsement, on the NBC public affairs program “Meet the Press,” was a major blow to Senator John McCain, who has been a good friend of Mr. Powell for decades. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has advised Mr. McCain in the past on foreign policy."

The Daily News Falls In Line with Obama Endorsement

2008-10-28T07:14:00.000-07:00

From the Daily News:

" The need for a fresh start in America has grown markedly in the two years of this presidential campaign, and became imperative as the crippled financial system punishes workers, families and retirees in the country.

The U.S. is in want of leadership that repairs a damaged economy, restores faith in government as an engine for the common good and returns competence to the White House after the spectacular failures of the Bush administration.

Barack Obama holds the greater promise of accomplishing the mission than does John McCain. The Daily News endorses the 47-year-old Democrat, the first black American to win a major party nomination, for President."

These Endorsements are 'Muy Bueno' for Barack Obama

2008-10-28T07:03:00.000-07:00

Several newspapers including a NYC Spanish language publication are all endorsing Barack Obama. Here are a couple excerpts from papers in the heavily contested state of Pennsylvania:

The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News endorsed Obama on Oct. 26:

''Where McCain, the self-described 'maverick,' is inclined to go it alone when he believes he's right, Obama is much more likely to seek counsel from those offering a different perspective.

''It is such 'intellectual curiosity' and 'intellectual vigor,' to use Gen. Colin Powell's terms, that this nation clearly needs in its leaders in this troubled time.

''Most of all, if America is to successfully confront the great challenges we face at the moment, it will require a unity of purpose and spirit that only rarely manifests itself among our diverse population. There's no better example than his campaign to showcase Obama's ability to bring people from all stations in life together for a common purpose.

''Barack Obama has clearly demonstrated the judgment and the temperament to be a good president.''

------

The (Scranton, Pa.) Times-Tribune endorsed Obama on Oct. 26:

''America's problems call for new leadership. In that regard, Mr. Obama has the potential to be a truly transformational figure.

''There has been much speculation about the potential impact of race on the election and an Obama presidency. But the truer transformation in his election would lie in a different demographic. He represents a generational shift and a view definitively rooted in the future rather than the past. He will strive to heal our wounds abroad and call Americans to common purpose at home.

''His time is now.''

Read the full list here.

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: If He Walks and Talks Like Bush

2008-10-28T06:48:00.000-07:00

From the Huffington Post:
Barack Obama is out with the first post-debate campaign ad. He goes directly after what was perceived to be one of John McCain's best lines from Wednesday night -- his proclamation that he is "not President Bush" -- and, in the process, highlights some of the more peculiar facial expressions made by the Arizona Republican.

Check out the ad:

Even Haters Want Change They Can Believe In

2008-10-28T06:34:00.000-07:00

Obama 'Hater' Christopher Hitchens writes:

I used to nod wisely when people said: “Let’s discuss issues rather than personalities.” It seemed so obvious that in politics an issue was an issue and a personality was a personality, and that the more one could separate the two, the more serious one was. After all, in a debate on serious issues, any mention of the opponent’s personality would be ad hominem at best and at worst would stoop as low as ad feminam.

At my old English boarding school, we had a sporting saying that one should “tackle the ball and not the man.” I carried on echoing this sort of unexamined nonsense for quite some time—in fact, until the New Hampshire primary of 1992, when it hit me very forcibly that the “personality” of one of the candidates was itself an “issue.” In later years, I had little cause to revise my view that Bill Clinton’s abysmal character was such as to be a “game changer” in itself, at least as important as his claim to be a “new Democrat.” To summarize what little I learned from all this: A candidate may well change his or her position on, say, universal health care or Bosnia. But he or she cannot change the fact—if it happens to be a fact—that he or she is a pathological liar, or a dimwit, or a proud ignoramus. And even in the short run, this must and will tell.

On “the issues” in these closing weeks, there really isn’t a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their “debates” have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week’s so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: My Baby Wrote Me A Letter

2008-10-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

From Politico.com:

"Since the mid-1980s, there’s been almost no attention paid to John McCain’s long-ago association with a controversial group implicated in a secretive plot to supply arms to Nicaraguan militia groups during the Iran-Contra affair.

But now, with the Republican presidential candidate stepping up his negative blitz against Democratic opponent Barack Obama, some Democrats are hoping that the group — the U.S. Council for World Freedom, and its founder, John Singlaub — will become for McCain what Bill Ayers has become for Obama: a fleeting past association used as ammunition for political broadsides.

Over the past few days, a handful of Obama allies — none directly associated with his campaign — have called attention to McCain’s ties to the council to rebut the McCain campaign’s increasing focus on Obama’s ties to Ayers, a founder of the 1960s radical Weather Underground." Read more...

Below is the letter from 1985 which has McCain on its letterhead despite his resigning a year earlier :

Let The Voters Decide, Mike!!!

2008-10-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

Editor's Notes:

The New York Civic has released an article speaking about Michael Bloomberg's decision to seek a third mayoral term by making changes to the term limits. Henry J Stern writes:

"Most of the city knows that the basis of the Mayor’s decision to seek a third term is based, in part, on his continuing personal desire for relevance and attention. The more such wishes are gratified, the more they grow. The quest for fame, recognition and approval is as addictive as the craving for drugs, alcohol, and inappropriate sex. These feelings do not fade with time. This mayor is far from the worst in this area, it is simply that his ambition plays out on a grander and more public scale."

Now that Mayor Mike has unilaterally determined that he's the only person in America truly qualified to save this great city from financial wreck and ruin, he's called for a revocation of the citizens' determination - which was certified through public referendum ( twice ) that two four year terms was sufficient. And, of course, Christine "Slu$h Fund " Quinn, whose nom de plume is "Speaker of the City Council", has already stated that she will abort her aforementioned candidacy for Mayor of New York City in 2009 to further facilitate King Mike's ascendancy to the throne - what happened to the Magna Carta?

Her sycophancy on this matter is directly ascribed to the current City Council rescinding TERM LIMITS as her time in public office would end at the cessation of her current term in office, too.

Now, BEFORE Mayor Mike checks out of Bellevue, and formally begins the process of actually running against the stated will of the people of New York City, let's enlighten all of the voting public as to what's really at stake here - there may be an economic downturn, true; but Mayor Mike has enough buck$ in his personal war chest to pay/buy off any and all dissenters who will, rest assured, challenge his claim to this fiefdom in articles in the print and electronic media - that way, when it comes time for their payoff, the price for their sycophancy will be much more than that which he's already granted to Speaker $lush Fund and the litany of other term limited city council members.

Maybe, a public showing of ALL of the term limited council members' resumes, complete with their list of constituent services provided, and their legislative records while serving in office, would be most informative as to why these under-performing civil servants believe that, for some reason, they're the cream of the crop in a city of over eight million people.

As Mayor Mike did with the two previous Mayoralty elections, he's going to spend Big Buck$; whatever it takes to adorn the mantle and the crown of King of New York City; and as a bonus the citizens get good ol' Slu$h Fund and her merry band of lackeys for four more years, also - hey, maybe Rudy G. will return to our great city and, once again, grace us with his particular brand of "Southern Strategy-style" racially polarizing politics, if we ask him to; we may as well get someone genuinely greasy to ease the pain of the outright UNCONSTITUTIONAL shafting that King Mike and Queen Slu$h Fund have in store for us - take it in; a little at a time, Folks.

Read the rest of the New York Civic article...

Understanding the 'Bail-Out' Bill

2008-10-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Financial Times details the main points regarding the bill that passed late last week:

After having been thrashed around Capitol Hill for a week, Congress has come up with a compromise bill that retains much of the White House’s original proposal while adding more oversight and control over what the US Treasury can do with the money, and a series of concessions to keep both Democrats and Republicans onside.

$700bn fund The core of the bill is a $700bn (€500bn, £400bn) fund that allows the US government to buy troubled, so-called “toxic” assets from financial institutions, to try to undo a logjam in financial markets that arises from uncertainty as to what the assets are worth.

Governor Appallin's Vice Presidential Performance

2008-10-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

It seems many people watching the Vice-Presidential debate are not quite sure what they were looking at or what they were supposed to be looking for. Even more baffling is the sight of so many McCain supporters naming Governor Palin the victor in this debate. The New York Times editorial breaks down exactly what the smoke-and-mirrors that night were all about. Once again we are posting the whole text as printed by the New York Times on October 2, 2008:

The Vice Presidential Debate

We cannot recall when there were lower expectations for a candidate than the ones that preceded Sarah Palin’s appearance in Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate with Joseph Biden. After a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives about her fitness to serve as vice president, Ms. Palin had to do little more than say one or two sensible things and avoid an election-defining gaffe.

By that standard, but only by that standard, the governor of Alaska did well. But Ms. Palin never really got beyond her talking points in 90 minutes, mostly repeating clichés and tired attack lines and energetically refusing to answer far too many questions.Senator Biden did well, avoiding one of his own infamous gaffes, while showing a clear grasp of the big picture and the details. He left Ms. Palin way behind on most issues, especially foreign policy and national security, where she just seemed lost. It was in those moments that her lack of experience — two terms as mayor of a tiny Anchorage suburb and less than two years as governor — was most painfully evident.

Asked about Israel, Ms. Palin reeled off her support for “a two-state solution, building our embassy also in Jerusalem, those things that we look forward to being able to accomplish with this peace-seeking nation.” Asked about the possible use of nuclear weapons, she declared “nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people and too many parts of our planet.” On Iraq, all she had to offer was the false accusation that Barack Obama wants to surrender. Mr. Biden directly challenged Ms. Palin’s debate prep on Afghanistan — pointing out that the commander there had disagreed with Mr. McCain’s call for an Iraq-style “surge” in Afghanistan. Ms. Palin tried to contradict him, but the most memorable part of her answer was that she got the general’s name wrong. One can argue (and her supporters will) that

Ms. Palin is a newcomer and can’t be expected to know all of the wonkish details, that what matters is the image she projects. Except, anyone who is running for vice president in these very dangerous times needs to have detailed knowledge. When it came to domestic issues, Ms. Palin mainly relied on enthusiasm and humor, talking about hockey moms, soccer moms and Joe Sixpack almost as often as she used the word “maverick” to describe Mr. McCain or herself.But she offered virtually no detail — beyond the Republican mantra of tax cuts — for how she and Mr. McCain would address the financial crisis or help Americans avoid foreclosure or what programs they would cut because of the country’s disastrous fiscal problems. Ms. Palin’s primary tactic was simply to repeat the same thing over and over: John McCain is a maverick. So is she. To stay on that course, she had to indulge in some wildly circular logic: America does not want another Washington insider. They want Mr. McCain (who has been in Congress for nearly 26 years).

Ms. Palin condemned Wall Street greed and said she and Mr. McCain would “demand” strict oversight. In virtually the next breath, she said government should “get out of the way” of American business.There were occasional, disturbing flashes of the old, pre-campaign Sarah Palin. Asked about the causes of global warming, Ms. Palin suggested that man had some role — but she wasn’t saying how much.In the end, the debate did not change the essential truth of Ms. Palin’s candidacy: Mr. McCain made a wildly irresponsible choice that shattered the image he created for himself as the honest, seasoned, experienced man of principle and judgment. It was either an act of incredible cynicism or appallingly bad judgment.

The New Yorker Magazine Endorses Obama

2008-10-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

We felt that this letter from the Editors sums up so well why Barack Obama is the qualified person to lead our nation that we wanted to post the entire text:

The Choice

Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?

The incumbent Administration has distinguished itself for the ages. The Presidency of George W. Bush is the worst since Reconstruction, so there is no mystery about why the Republican Party—which has held dominion over the executive branch of the federal government for the past eight years and the legislative branch for most of that time—has little desire to defend its record, domestic or foreign. The only speaker at the Convention in St. Paul who uttered more than a sentence or two in support of the President was his wife, Laura. Meanwhile, the nominee, John McCain, played the part of a vaudeville illusionist, asking to be regarded as an apostle of change after years of embracing the essentials of the Bush agenda with ever-increasing ardor.

The Republican disaster begins at home. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak. During the Bush Administration, the national debt, now approaching ten trillion dollars, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a half-trillion-dollar deficit, a precipitous fall from the seven-hundred-billion-dollar surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled. Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush Administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top one per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our health-care system, our environment, and our physical, educational, and industrial infrastructure.

At the same time, a hundred and fifty thousand American troops are in Iraq and thirty-three thousand are in Afghanistan. There is still disagreement about the wisdom of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his horrific regime, but there is no longer the slightest doubt that the Bush Administration manipulated, bullied, and lied the American public into this war and then mismanaged its prosecution in nearly every aspect. The direct costs, besides an expenditure of more than six hundred billion dollars, have included the loss of more than four thousand Americans, the wounding of thirty thousand, the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and the displacement of four and a half million men, women, and children. Only now, after American forces have been fighting for a year longer than they did in the Second World War, is there a glimmer of hope that the conflict in Iraq has entered a stage of fragile stability.

The indirect costs, both of the war in particular and of the Administration’s unilateralist approach to foreign policy in general, have also been immense. The torture of prisoners, authorized at the highest level, has been an ethical and a public-diplomacy catastrophe. At a moment when the global environment, the global economy, and global stability all demand a transition to new sources of energy, the United States has been a global retrograde, wasteful in its consumption and heedless in its policy. Strategically and morally, the Bush Administration has squandered the American capacity to counter the example and the swagger of its rivals. China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other illiberal states have concluded, each in its own way, that democratic principles and human rights need not be components of a stable, prosperous future. At recent meetings of the United Nations, emboldened despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran came to town sneering at our predicament and hailing the “end of the American era.”

The election of 2008 is the first in more than half a century in which no incumbent President or Vice-President is on the ballot. There is, however, an incumbent party, and that party has been lucky enough to find itself, apparently against the wishes of its “base,” with a nominee who evidently disliked George W. Bush before it became fashionable to do so. In South Carolina in 2000, Bush crushed John McCain with a sub-rosa primary campaign of such viciousness that McCain lashed out memorably against Bush’s Christian-right allies. So profound was McCain’s anger that in 2004 he flirted with the possibility of joining the Democratic ticket under John Kerry. Bush, who took office as a “compassionate conservative,” governed immediately as a rightist ideologue. During that first term, McCain bolstered his reputation, sometimes deserved, as a “maverick” willing to work with Democrats on such issues as normalizing relations with Vietnam, campaign-finance reform, and immigration reform. He co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Edward Kennedy, a patients’ bill of rights. In 2001 and 2003, he voted against the Bush tax cuts. With John Kerry, he co-sponsored a bill raising auto-fuel efficiency standards and, with Joseph Lieberman, a cap-and-trade regime on carbon emissions. He was one of a minority of Republicans opposed to unlimited drilling for oil and gas off America’s shores.

Since the 2004 election, however, McCain has moved remorselessly rightward in his quest for the Republican nomination. He paid obeisance to Jerry Falwell and preachers of his ilk. He abandoned immigration reform, eventually coming out against his own bill. Most shocking, McCain, who had repeatedly denounced torture under all circumstances, voted in February against a ban on the very techniques of “enhanced interrogation” that he himself once endured in Vietnam—as long as the torturers were civilians employed by the C.I.A.

On almost every issue, McCain and the Democratic Party’s nominee, Barack Obama, speak the generalized language of “reform,” but only Obama has provided a convincing, rational, and fully developed vision. McCain has abandoned his opposition to the Bush-era tax cuts and has taken up the demagogic call—in the midst of recession and Wall Street calamity, with looming crises in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—for more tax cuts. Bush’s expire in 2011. If McCain, as he has proposed, cuts taxes for corporations and estates, the benefits once more would go disproportionately to the wealthy.

In Washington, the craze for pure market triumphalism is over. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrived in town (via Goldman Sachs) a Republican, but it seems that he will leave a Democrat. In other words, he has come to see that the abuses that led to the current financial crisis––not least, excessive speculation on borrowed capital––can be fixed only with government regulation and oversight. McCain, who has never evinced much interest in, or knowledge of, economic questions, has had little of substance to say about the crisis. His most notable gesture of concern—a melodramatic call last month to suspend his campaign and postpone the first Presidential debate until the government bailout plan was ready—soon revealed itself as an empty diversionary tactic.

By contrast, Obama has made a serious study of the mechanics and the history of this economic disaster and of the possibilities of stimulating a recovery. Last March, in New York, in a speech notable for its depth, balance, and foresight, he said, “A complete disdain for pay-as-you-go budgeting, coupled with a generally scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement, allowed far too many to put short-term gain ahead of long-term consequences.” Obama is committed to reforms that value not only the restoration of stability but also the protection of the vast majority of the population, which did not partake of the fruits of the binge years. He has called for greater and more programmatic regulation of the financial system; the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would help reverse the decay of our roads, bridges, and mass-transit systems, and create millions of jobs; and a major investment in the green-energy sector.

On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

There was once reason to hope that McCain and Obama would have a sensible debate about energy and climate policy. McCain was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to support federal limits on carbon dioxide, and he has touted his own support for a less ambitious cap-and-trade program as evidence of his independence from the White House. But, as polls showed Americans growing jittery about gasoline prices, McCain apparently found it expedient in this area, too, to shift course. He took a dubious idea—lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling—and placed it at the very center of his campaign. Opening up America’s coastal waters to drilling would have no impact on gasoline prices in the short term, and, even over the long term, the effect, according to a recent analysis by the Department of Energy, would be “insignificant.” Such inconvenient facts, however, are waved away by a campaign that finally found its voice with the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!”

The contrast between the candidates is even sharper with respect to the third branch of government. A tense equipoise currently prevails among the Justices of the Supreme Court, where four hard-core conservatives face off against four moderate liberals. Anthony M. Kennedy is the swing vote, determining the outcome of case after case.

McCain cites Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two reliable conservatives, as models for his own prospective appointments. If he means what he says, and if he replaces even one moderate on the current Supreme Court, then Roe v. Wade will be reversed, and states will again be allowed to impose absolute bans on abortion. McCain’s views have hardened on this issue. In 1999, he said he opposed overturning Roe; by 2006, he was saying that its demise “wouldn’t bother me any”; by 2008, he no longer supported adding rape and incest as exceptions to his party’s platform opposing abortion.

But scrapping Roe—which, after all, would leave states as free to permit abortion as to criminalize it—would be just the beginning. Given the ideological agenda that the existing conservative bloc has pursued, it’s safe to predict that affirmative action of all kinds would likely be outlawed by a McCain Court. Efforts to expand executive power, which, in recent years, certain Justices have nobly tried to resist, would likely increase. Barriers between church and state would fall; executions would soar; legal checks on corporate power would wither—all with just one new conservative nominee on the Court. And the next President is likely to make three appointments.

Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, voted against confirming not only Roberts and Alito but also several unqualified lower-court nominees. As an Illinois state senator, he won the support of prosecutors and police organizations for new protections against convicting the innocent in capital cases. While McCain voted to continue to deny habeas-corpus rights to detainees, perpetuating the Bush Administration’s regime of state-sponsored extra-legal detention, Obama took the opposite side, pushing to restore the right of all U.S.-held prisoners to a hearing. The judicial future would be safe in his care.

In the shorthand of political commentary, the Iraq war seems to leave McCain and Obama roughly even. Opposing it before the invasion, Obama had the prescience to warn of a costly and indefinite occupation and rising anti-American radicalism around the world; supporting it, McCain foresaw none of this. More recently, in early 2007 McCain risked his Presidential prospects on the proposition that five additional combat brigades could salvage a war that by then appeared hopeless. Obama, along with most of the country, had decided that it was time to cut American losses. Neither candidate’s calculations on Iraq have been as cheaply political as McCain’s repeated assertion that Obama values his career over his country; both men based their positions, right or wrong, on judgment and principle.

President Bush’s successor will inherit two wars and the realities of limited resources, flagging popular will, and the dwindling possibilities of what can be achieved by American power. McCain’s views on these subjects range from the simplistic to the unknown. In Iraq, he seeks “victory”—a word that General David Petraeus refuses to use, and one that fundamentally misrepresents the messy, open-ended nature of the conflict. As for Afghanistan, on the rare occasions when McCain mentions it he implies that the surge can be transferred directly from Iraq, which suggests that his grasp of counterinsurgency is not as firm as he insisted it was during the first Presidential debate. McCain always displays more faith in force than interest in its strategic consequences. Unlike Obama, McCain has no political strategy for either war, only the dubious hope that greater security will allow things to work out. Obama has long warned of deterioration along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and has a considered grasp of its vital importance. His strategy for both Afghanistan and Iraq shows an understanding of the role that internal politics, economics, corruption, and regional diplomacy play in wars where there is no battlefield victory.

Unimaginably painful personal experience taught McCain that war is above all a test of honor: maintain the will to fight on, be prepared to risk everything, and you will prevail. Asked during the first debate to outline “the lessons of Iraq,” McCain said, “I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear: that you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly lose a conflict.” A soldier’s answer––but a statesman must have a broader view of war and peace. The years ahead will demand not only determination but also diplomacy, flexibility, patience, judiciousness, and intellectual engagement. These are no more McCain’s strong suit than the current President’s. Obama, for his part, seems to know that more will be required than willpower and force to extract some advantage from the wreckage of the Bush years.

Obama is also better suited for the task of renewing the bedrock foundations of American influence. An American restoration in foreign affairs will require a commitment not only to international coöperation but also to international institutions that can address global warming, the dislocations of what will likely be a deepening global economic crisis, disease epidemics, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and other, more traditional security challenges. Many of the Cold War-era vehicles for engagement and negotiation—the United Nations, the World Bank, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—are moribund, tattered, or outdated. Obama has the generational outlook that will be required to revive or reinvent these compacts. He would be the first postwar American President unencumbered by the legacies of either Munich or Vietnam.

The next President must also restore American moral credibility. Closing Guantánamo, banning all torture, and ending the Iraq war as responsibly as possible will provide a start, but only that. The modern Presidency is as much a vehicle for communication as for decision-making, and the relevant audiences are global. Obama has inspired many Americans in part because he holds up a mirror to their own idealism. His election would do no less—and likely more—overseas.

What most distinguishes the candidates, however, is character—and here, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama is clearly the stronger of the two. Not long ago, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” The view that this election is about personalities leaves out policy, complexity, and accountability. Even so, there’s some truth in what Davis said––but it hardly points to the conclusion that he intended.

Echoing Obama, McCain has made “change” one of his campaign mantras. But the change he has actually provided has been in himself, and it is not just a matter of altering his positions. A willingness to pander and even lie has come to define his Presidential campaign and its televised advertisements. A contemptuous duplicity, a meanness, has entered his talk on the stump—so much so that it seems obvious that, in the drive for victory, he is willing to replicate some of the same underhanded methods that defeated him eight years ago in South Carolina.

Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary, and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.

The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.

By contrast, Obama’s transformative message is accompanied by a sense of pragmatic calm. A tropism for unity is an essential part of his character and of his campaign. It is part of what allowed him to overcome a Democratic opponent who entered the race with tremendous advantages. It is what helped him forge a political career relying both on the liberals of Hyde Park and on the political regulars of downtown Chicago. His policy preferences are distinctly liberal, but he is determined to speak to a broad range of Americans who do not necessarily share his every value or opinion. For some who oppose him, his equanimity even under the ugliest attack seems like hauteur; for some who support him, his reluctance to counterattack in the same vein seems like self-defeating detachment. Yet it is Obama’s temperament—and not McCain’s—that seems appropriate for the office both men seek and for the volatile and dangerous era in which we live. Those who dismiss his centeredness as self-centeredness or his composure as indifference are as wrong as those who mistook Eisenhower’s stolidity for denseness or Lincoln’s humor for lack of seriousness.

Nowadays, almost every politician who thinks about running for President arranges to become an author. Obama’s books are different: he wrote them. “The Audacity of Hope” (2006) is a set of policy disquisitions loosely structured around an account of his freshman year in the United States Senate. Though a campaign manifesto of sorts, it is superior to that genre’s usual blowsy pastiche of ghostwritten speeches. But it is Obama’s first book, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (1995), that offers an unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of a potential President. Obama began writing it in his early thirties, before he was a candidate for anything. Not since Theodore Roosevelt has an American politician this close to the pinnacle of power produced such a sustained, highly personal work of literary merit before being definitively swept up by the tides of political ambition.

A Presidential election is not the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize: we elect a politician and, we hope, a statesman, not an author. But Obama’s first book is valuable in the way that it reveals his fundamental attitudes of mind and spirit. “Dreams from My Father” is an illuminating memoir not only in the substance of Obama’s own peculiarly American story but also in the qualities he brings to the telling: a formidable intelligence, emotional empathy, self-reflection, balance, and a remarkable ability to see life and the world through the eyes of people very different from himself. In common with nearly all other senators and governors of his generation, Obama does not count military service as part of his biography. But his life has been full of tests—personal, spiritual, racial, political—that bear on his preparation for great responsibility.

It is perfectly legitimate to call attention, as McCain has done, to Obama’s lack of conventional national and international policymaking experience. We, too, wish he had more of it. But office-holding is not the only kind of experience relevant to the task of leading a wildly variegated nation. Obama’s immersion in diverse human environments (Hawaii’s racial rainbow, Chicago’s racial cauldron, countercultural New York, middle-class Kansas, predominantly Muslim Indonesia), his years of organizing among the poor, his taste of corporate law and his grounding in public-interest and constitutional law—these, too, are experiences. And his books show that he has wrung from them every drop of insight and breadth of perspective they contained.

The exhaustingly, sometimes infuriatingly long campaign of 2008 (and 2007) has had at least one virtue: it has demonstrated that Obama’s intelligence and steady temperament are not just figments of the writer’s craft. He has made mistakes, to be sure. (His failure to accept McCain’s imaginative proposal for a series of unmediated joint appearances was among them.) But, on the whole, his campaign has been marked by patience, planning, discipline, organization, technological proficiency, and strategic astuteness. Obama has often looked two or three moves ahead, relatively impervious to the permanent hysteria of the hourly news cycle and the cable-news shouters. And when crisis has struck, as it did when the divisive antics of his ex-pastor threatened to bring down his campaign, he has proved equal to the moment, rescuing himself with a speech that not only drew the poison but also demonstrated a profound respect for the electorate. Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of “mere” words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one––something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s “mere” speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.

We cannot expect one man to heal every wound, to solve every major crisis of policy. So much of the Presidency, as they say, is a matter of waking up in the morning and trying to drink from a fire hydrant. In the quiet of the Oval Office, the noise of immediate demands can be deafening. And yet Obama has precisely the temperament to shut out the noise when necessary and concentrate on the essential. The election of Obama—a man of mixed ethnicity, at once comfortable in the world and utterly representative of twenty-first-century America—would, at a stroke, reverse our country’s image abroad and refresh its spirit at home. His ascendance to the Presidency would be a symbolic culmination of the civil- and voting-rights acts of the nineteen-sixties and the century-long struggles for equality that preceded them. It could not help but say something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the country, about its dedication to tolerance and inclusiveness, about its fidelity, after all, to the values it proclaims in its textbooks. At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

—The Editors

Brokaw: The New McCain News Broker?

2008-10-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

From The Huffington Post:

Tom Brokaw wants to serve as mediator between the McCain camp and NBC news in attempts to thaw what the campaign saw as a chilly relationship:

"His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate's aides that -- despite some negative on-air commentary by Mr. Olbermann in particular -- Mr. McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Mr. Brokaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide, whom he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates -- until his name was invoked.
"One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated, they said, 'If it's an NBC moderator, for any of these debates, we won't go,' " Mr. Brokaw said. "My name came up, and they said, 'Oh, hell, we have to do it, because it's going to be Brokaw.' "

Read more...

The Misadvenures of Senator John McSame:"Wait A Minute, Mr. Postman!!!"

2008-10-06T08:30:00.001-07:00

From Politico.com:

"One day after roiling negotiations over an economic rescue package, House Republican Leader John A. Boehner urged Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday to consider a proposal two of his members crafted in a late-night scramble earlier this week - even though it remains little more than a statement of principles.

In his letter to the speaker, Boehner threatened that "a large majority of Republicans cannot - and will not - support Sec. Paulson's plan" unless she actively considers some of the measures offered by his working group.

"In the interest of the men and women we represent in Congress, I hope it does not come to that conclusion," Boehner said in his letter to the speaker.

With Republicans still overwhelmingly opposed to Treasury's bailout proposal - as well as the principles House and Senate Democrats agreed to on Thursday - Democratic leaders can't do much until GOP leaders iron out concerns on their side of the aisle."

Read more...

Did McCain Really Say That?

2008-10-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

Just in case you thought we made this stuff up...Senator John McCain did admit that he did not understand the economy as well as he should. If he indeed is putting 'Country First', perhaps he should step aside and let someone who IS qualified take the steering wheel of our economy. Here's the clip:

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame:"My Economic Plan..."

2008-10-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

From The Huffington Post:

"There are several reasons why Senator Obama is enjoying a double-digit lead in the "honest and trustworthy" category (47 percent to 36 percent according the new ABC News/Washington Post poll). First, Senator Obama doesn't, you know, lie to the American people every damn day. Second, Senator Obama didn't vote with the dishonest, corrupt Bush administration 90 percent of the time.

But one of the main reasons why the nation appears to be lining up against Senator McCain's insanely obvious lack of integrity could be because his very serious and mavericky campaign strategy can be described in four simple words:

Blurt Out Random Crap."

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: Economics & Judgment Gone Wrong!!!

2008-09-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

From NYTimes:

"On Monday morning, as the financial system absorbed one of its biggest shocks in generations, Senator John McCain said, as he had many times before, that he believed the fundamentals of the economy were “strong.”

Hours later he backpedaled, explaining that he had meant that American workers, whom he described as the backbone of the economy, were productive and resilient. By Tuesday he was calling the economic situation “a total crisis” and denouncing “greed” on Wall Street and in Washington.

The sharp turnabout in tone and substance reflected a recognition not only that Mr. McCain had struck a discordant note at a sensitive moment but also that he had done so with regard to the very issue on which he can least afford to stumble.
With economic conditions worsening over the course of this year and voter anxiety on the rise, Mr. McCain has had to labor to get past the impression — fostered by his own admissions as recently as last year that the subject is not his strongest suit — that he lacks the experience and understanding to address the nation’s economic woes.

In the most recent case, he first sought to explain away his remarks about the economy’s fundamental soundness by saying he had been referring to the American people, almost daring his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, to contradict him on that score. But within hours his aides were scheduling appearances for him Tuesday on all the morning television news shows so that he could try to erase the notion, being promoted aggressively by Democrats, that he was out of touch. "

Charles Rangel: Clock Ticking Til Checkout Time

2008-09-16T08:38:00.000-07:00

From the NYTimes:
"Mounting embarrassment for taxpayers and Congress makes it imperative that Representative Charles Rangel step aside as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee while his ethical problems are investigated.

This recommendation does not come easily, considering the New York Democrat’s four decades of service in Congress. But Mr. Rangel himself has felt obliged to request three separate House ethics inquiries of his behavior. While denying serious improprieties, Mr. Rangel concedes that he has not lived up to the “higher standard” expected of members of Congress.

His latest admission is that as chief of Congress’s tax-writing committee, he was “irresponsible” in failing to disclose $75,000 in rental income and pay federal and state taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic.

His temporary yielding of the gavel is an urgent necessity for a Democratic Congress elected two years ago on promises of an ethical housecleaning. The villa dealings only add momentum to the investigations of two earlier controversies — Mr. Rangel’s favored treatment in occupying four rent-stabilized apartments in Manhattan, and his improper use of official letterheads to solicit support from charities and corporations for an academic center to memorialize his career in public service..." Read more...

White Collar Crimes: Assembly Seat For Sale!

2008-09-16T08:18:00.001-07:00

From The New York Times:

"According to federal prosecutors, Mr. Seminerio realized that he had done favors for people in the health care and hospital industry, and that those people sometimes made thousands of dollars from those favors.

So he decided to start charging for his services, prosecutors say, even though they were part of his job as a legislator..." Read more...

White Collar Crimes: Albert Jack Stanley and Haliburton!!!

2008-09-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

From The Huffington Pos t:

"The Justice Department said Albert "Jack" Stanley entered a guilty plea Wednesday in federal court in Houston to conspiring in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials in return for engineering and construction contracts...." Read more...

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: 'Meet John Bush'

2008-09-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

Palin the Reformer? Not So Fast!

2008-09-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

From The Observer:

Is Sarah Palin the implacable pit bull of government reform, lipstick and all? The latest Republican campaign commercial pictures her in heroic terms at the side of John McCain as one of the “original mavericks,” declaring that she “stopped the bridge to nowhere.”

The fate of that canceled span—which would have used nearly $400 million in federal funds to connect the tiny Alaskan island of Gravina to the mainland town of Ketchikan and the rest of the state—is meant to symbolize her aggressive opposition to wasteful spending.

But even cursory examination shows that her posturing is wildly exaggerated and her campaign claims veer toward fraud. Details are important in these matters, especially when the lobbyists and consultants surrounding Senator McCain are so intent on blurring the truth.

The true story of the Ketchikan bridge begins, like most fables of Alaskan government run amok, in the offices of Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young, the formerly powerful, ethically dubious Republican duo brought low by investigation and indictment. Although her gubernatorial campaign Web site once featured endorsements from both men, Governor Palin has long since dumped them as inconvenient baggage. But her appetite for the federal dollars they brought back to her state was no less voracious than theirs—until the state’s reputation for budgetary gluttony became embarrassing to her.

As Congressional Quarterly points out, in its impeccably nonpartisan style, Ms. Palin continued to campaign enthusiastically for the “bridge to nowhere” long after Mr. McCain and others first exposed the project three years ago. Indeed, she literally campaigned for the Ketchikan project while running for governor in 2006, evidently because she believed that her support would draw votes in southeastern Alaska. By then Congress had already repealed any requirement that the state spend any money on the project, but she didn’t care.

[Photo Credit: The Observer]

Charlie's Caribbean Villa in D.R.

2008-09-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

From the Gothamist:

Ever since the NY Times reported that Representative Charles Rangel had four rent-stabilized apartments--three for living quarters and one for an office--his real-estate holdings have been scrutinized. Now the NY Post puts a dozing Rangel on its cover for a story about his vacation property in the Dominican Republic.

Rangel owns a beachfront villa that is apparently rented out to resort goers at the Punta Cana Hotel, but the Post says he "has only sporadically declared income on the property in federal filings." The three-bedroom, three-bath villa "is rented for between $500 in the low season to $1,100 a night in the busiest tourist season." The hotel's staff says that Rangel's villa had been available in 2006 and 2007 (the hotel is "always booked solid" on Rangel's villa), but Rangel claimed, "I have not received any rental income. There wasn't any rental income."

Rangel did report rental income on the villa between 2001 and 2005. One possible explanation is that rental income was put back into the resort (for repairs or other maintenance), but a watchdog group tells the Post that reinvesting rental income "would have to be disclosed." [Photo Credit: NYPost]

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: Deconstructing Cindy-rella McCain

2008-09-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

From Just Another Blog from L.A. :

From the very front page of the newspaper that only the finest families in Southern California use to line their cat pans & bird cages comes the tale of Cinderella Stepford Hensley McCain, the beer heiress whose family business may cause some conflict if (Fat chance!) her hubby John were to win the presidency.

A close look at Hensley shows that the company has opposed changes that critics of the beer industry say were intended to help Americans drink responsibly.

[...]McCain has avoided problems in the Senate by recusing himself on alcohol issues, according to executives at the Distilled Spirits Council, the liquor industry's trade association."Sen. McCain has been very, very fair to this industry," said Frank Coleman, senior vice president for the council. "He stays an arm's length away from issues that benefit the family business."

Already causing problems, if he has to recuse himself from law-making. And may cause problems w/ the "clinging to guns & gawd" base, as well.

For some, abstinence -- and a disdain for the industry -- is religion-based. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has more than 16 million members, expressed "total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing and consuming of alcoholic beverages" in the church's most recent resolution on the matter."

I am sure for some individual Southern Baptists, [the McCain family's involvement in the beer business] would be a concern," said Roger S. Oldham, vice president of Southern Baptist Convention relations.

The Misadventures of Senator John McSame: Do As I Say, Not As I Do!

2008-09-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Curiously enough the same man convicted on several civil racketeering charges, Charles H. Keating Jr., began a foundation against child abuse...

From the Citizens For Decency Through Law:

Citizens for Decency through Law (CDL), one of the first major anti-pornography organizations in the United States, was founded in 1956 by lawyer and future financier Charles H. Keating Jr., after his daughter was sexually attacked in the 1950s. Believing that PORNOGRAPHY causes violence and CHILD ABUSE, CDL members have endeavored to stop the sale of pornographic material and close movie theaters that show sexually explicit movies by pressuring politicians and judges into enforcing OBSCENITY laws.

CDL has provided legal advice to cities investigating dealers in sexually explicit motion pictures, magazines, and mail-order publications. CDL attorneys have concentrated on helping the police and prosecutors to prepare trials and appeals in obscenity cases, prepare testimony before local, state, and federal legislative committees, and draft model legislation. Between 1963 and 1981, CDL sponsored or wrote AMICUS CURIAE (FRIEND-OF-THE-COURT) briefs for 27 obscenity cases reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Of those cases, 37 percent had rulings favorable to CDL's views...

Excerpts from The Ethics Commission on 'Keating'

2008-09-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

From the NYTIMES:

Following are excerpts from a transcript of today's session of the Senate Ethics Committee's hearings into the conduct of five Senators in the Lincoln Savings and Loan affair. The Federal News Service, a transcription company, recorded the session.

ROBERT S. BENNETT, special counsel to the committee: This is the final portion of the evidentiary presentation, and it deals with Senator Cranston. The evidence will show that on approximately four separate occasions Senator Cranston accepted or solicited several hundred thousand dollars from Mr. Keating for Senator Cranston's voter registration groups and that each of these four occasions was linked by time and circumstance to a request by Mr. Keating for assistance with the bank board. . . .

Mr. Keating, the evidence will show, or members of his family or individuals employed by him, gave about $49,000 to the Senator's -- Cranston's -- campaigns. . . . It appears that all of these contributions were duly reported to the Federal Election Commission. Lincoln also made, in addition to those contributions, a $300,000 line of credit available to Senator Cranston's campaign under unusual circumstances. . . .

Most significantly, Mr. Keating's companies contributed a total of $850,000 to groups closely affiliated with the Senator. These contributions were not required by law to be publicly disclosed, and Mr. Keating had asked that he be listed as an anonymous contributor. These groups were U.S.A. Votes, the Center for Participation in Democracy and the Forum Institute. They were funded, and what they did is they funded or conducted voter registration drives. The Senator's son, Kim Cranston, was a full-time unsalaried officer and director of two groups that benefited directly and indirectly from these contributions. . . .

Read more...

The Keating Court Files

2008-09-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

From the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:

In 1990, Keating was indicted in California state court forviolating sections 25401 and 25540 of the California Corpora-tions Code, which make it a criminal offense to offer or sella security "by means of any written or oral communicationwhich includes an untrue statement of material fact necessaryin order to make the statements made, in light of the circum-stances under which they were made, not misleading. " Thestate contended, in essence, that the bond sellers were misledby Keating's failure to inform them of American Continen-tal's poor financial condition and the riskiness of the bonds,and that they, in turn, unwittingly misled the bond purchasers.It is undisputed that in 1989, when American Continental'sfinancial circumstances had deteriorated to the point wherethe company was no longer able to make payments on thebonds, it filed for bankruptcy and most of the bond purchaserslost the money they had invested.

2 Prior to trial, the judge informed the jury that Keating could be held criminally responsible either as a direct perpetrator orfor aiding and abetting the offense. Before the parties' closingarguments, however, a dispute erupted over whether a directperpetrator theory of liability would be presented to the jury.The defense requested a jury instruction that, because Keatinghad not personally sold or offered the securities to the pur-chasers, he could only be convicted as an aider and abettor.The prosecution objected, informing the court that it plannedto argue both theories to the jury. Keating renewed his protest,pointing out that he had had no face-to-face contact or directcommunication with the individuals named in the indictment,and the trial judge concurred with his skepticism about thedirect perpetrator theory. The prosecutor countered that adirect perpetrator instruction was "supported in an evidentiarysense" if Keating was viewed as the original source of theoffer and of the misleading omission of information. Theprosecution characterized Keating "as the alter ego for thecorporation" and stated that in its view "the gravaman of theoffense . . . is not so much an actual sale as it is the omissionor misrepresentation aspect of it." This theory identified Keat-ing as the source of the failure to notify anyone of the finan-cial risks of the bonds, a material omission that was ultimatelytransmitted to the bond purchasers, and that was "violative ofthe statute just as much as an actual sale." As the judge's dis-comfort with the prosecution's theory of liability becameincreasingly clear, the prosecution urged one last possibleway to view Keating as a direct perpetrator...

Read more...

The Misadventures of John McSame:"The Judgement To Be What?"

2008-09-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

Why is no one bringing up the Keating Five Issue?

Ben Smith From Politico writes:

Carrie Budoff Brown reports that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign distanced itself tonight from some harsh remarks from Congressman Peter DeFazio about Sen. John McCain at a town hall meeting in Albany, Ore. DeFazio, an Oregon superdelegate who endorsed Obama today and introduced him at the event, went on an extended critique of McCain, saying voters could not "underestimate the threat that John McCain poses in this election to our future." DeFazio said McCain's Straight Talk Express should be called the "Trojan horse express." And then, DeFazio raised the Keating Five, a 1980s savings and loan scandal in which McCain was implicated. The Senate Ethics Committee later concluded that McCain used "poor judgment" in the matter. "John McCain has already told us he doesn’t know much about economics," DeFazio told the crowd of 3,000. "He says we need less regulation. Hello? Wall Street, mortgage meltdown, Bear Stearns, taxpayer bailout, Enron. But I guess maybe for a guy who was up to his neck in the Keating Five, and savings and loan scandal, less regulation is better for his friends. No, that is not good for the American people."

Landlord Groups Protest City's Tenant Harrassment Bill

2008-08-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

From the Gotham Gazette's "The Wonkster" Blog:

" Surprise — landlords don’t like the City Council’s tenant harassment bill that was approved five months ago and signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Beyond dislike, they are now trying to throw it out entirely.

Prometheus Realty Corp. and the Rent Stabilization Association of New York City have filed a complaint with the state Supreme Court, arguing that the city unlawfully went out of its jurisdiction when it approved the legislation earlier this year. (Here is a copy of the complaint via the Daily Politics)

The bill allows tenants to pursue legal action against their landlords for harassment, which includes continual interruption in essential services (like hot water) to the damaging of locks. If found guilty, landlords could face fines as high as $5,000. "

Politricks: New York's Power Structure

2008-08-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

From the Gotham Gazette:

In New York, Those in Power, Stay in Power
With the presidential election the focus of so much attention, one could easily forget that all the members of the New York State Assembly and Senate also are up for election this fall. Most of the incumbents want their jobs back, and little seems to stand in their way. As in most years, few sitting members of the legislature face primary challenges, proving once again that, when it comes to elections in New York, nothing is left to chance.

Lack of Competition

As of now, only 23 out of 65 Assembly seats and 11 of 35 State Senate seats in New York City are set to have a primary on Sept 9. This is the number of districts where more than one candidate has filed petitions seeking his or her party's nomination. The number will almost certainly shrink as candidates challenge one another's petitions. The Board of Elections is holding hearings on challenges this week, and inevitably some candidates won't make it through the process.

Previous reports and articles have highlighted how uncompetitive New York's elections are, with nearly all of the incumbents running being reelected to their seats. In many cases this year, incumbents will not face a primary challenger. Most of those who do are expected to beat their opponents rather handily. [Photo Credit: Josh for the Gotham Gazette]

Read more...

Definition of 'Demolition' Affects Rent-Stabilized Tenants

2008-08-27T13:25:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times:

" When is a demolished apartment building not demolished?

That is not a child’s riddle. It was the subject of hours of protest and impassioned oratory at a public hearing in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday about proposed changes to the rules on renovating rent-stabilized housing.

The State Division of Housing and Community Renewal has proposed to define what constitutes a demolition plan, which would allow the owner of a rent-stabilized building to evict its tenants.

For several years, tenants’ advocates have complained that the lack of a precise definition of demolition has allowed landlords to push out low-rent tenants and create luxury condominiums.
But now that the division has come up with a definition, those advocates do not like it. Neither, it seems, do building owners.

Representatives of both groups testified at a public hearing held by the division, and none of them had much positive to say about the proposed regulations, which would define demolition as the complete gutting of a building’s interior — but not necessarily the removal of its outside walls or support beams.

Councilwoman Rosie Mendez of Manhattan said that demolition should be defined as “to be razed down to the floor, so if you can see it, it’s not a demolition.”

Mother Jones Finds Holes in McSame's "No Lobbyists" Promises

2008-08-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

From Mother Jones' 'Mojo' Blog:

"John McCain's declared policy of not having lobbyists as part of his campaign team has always been full of holes and contradictions. But the fact that his top foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann arranged a phone call between his longtime lobbying client, the Georgian president, and the Republican presidential candidate on the same day that Scheunemann's lobbying company Orion Strategies signed a $200,000 lobbying renewal contract with the country really takes the cake for conflict of interest."

Affordable for Who? Rangel & Co. Preserve Harlem Apartments

2008-08-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

From the NYTimes:

"It took Congressman Charles B. Rangel three minutes to make his way across 20 feet of Harlem sidewalk on Tuesday morning, as elected officials and others stopped to greet him, hug him or shake his hand. His smile never faded. His gaze held steady. His raspy voice pierced the drone of passing cars as he bellowed repeatedly: “Good morning. Good morning.”

Mr. Rangel was outdoors on Lenox Avenue and West 115th Street to announce the preservation of almost 400 federally subsidized apartments in Harlem, including units in the building behind him, Canaan IV Towers. The congressman was a key figure in brokering the deal, and received many thanks. City Councilman Robert Jackson bowed to him. Another Council member, Inez E. Dickens, told him, “You have our back, and now we are here for you.” [Photo Credit: NYTimes]

Analyzing the Fall of 'Hill-Camp'

2008-08-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

From the Atlantic.com:

"Hillary Clinton’s campaign was undone by a clash of personalities more toxic than anyone imagined. E-mails and memos—published here for the first time—reveal the backstabbing and conflicting strategies that produced an epic meltdown.

For all that has been written and said about Hillary Clinton’s epic collapse in the Democratic primaries, one issue still nags. Everybody knows what happened. But we still don’t have a clear picture of how it happened, or why.
The after-battle assessments in the major newspapers and newsweeklies generally agreed on the big picture: the campaign was not prepared for a lengthy fight; it had an insufficient delegate operation; it squandered vast sums of money; and the candidate herself evinced a paralyzing schizophrenia—one day a shots-’n’-beers brawler, the next a Hallmark Channel mom. Through it all, her staff feuded and bickered, while her husband distracted. But as a journalistic exercise, the “campaign obit” is inherently flawed, reflecting the viewpoints of those closest to the press rather than empirical truth. "

Read more...

Bklyn Atlantic Yards: The Battle for Eminent Domain Escalates

2008-08-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

From the NY Observer:

Landowners Bring Atlantic Yards Eminent Domain Battle to State Court [UPDATED]

Six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear their federal lawsuit, landowners fighting the use of eminent domain for the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn have filed another suit, this time in state court.

Opposition group Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn put out a release today announcing the lawsuit, filed Friday, which claims the development was approved to benefit a private developer (Bruce Ratner) as opposed to benefit the public (which would justify the use of eminent domain), among other charges.

"Far from emerging from a legitimate democratic process where the public interest is identified and articulated," the suit says, "the Project is the product of a developer's dream-and a conscious effort to bypass City procedures mandating meaningful local review, planning, democratic oversight and community input." (Photo Credit: The Municipal Art Socirty for the NY Observer)

Read the entire article...

POLITRICKS: Rangel in the Crosshairs

2008-08-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

From Politico:

Boehner publicly rebukes Rangel

Days after the Justice Department indicted a senior Republican senator from Alaska, House GOP Leader John A. Boehner called for a public reprimand of Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.).

The Republican leader raised these questions in a privileged resolution on the House floor Thursday afternoon, calling on his colleagues in both parties to censure the powerful New York Democrat who chairs the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

The resolution charges Rangel of "dishonor[ing] himself and [bringing] discredit to the House," according to a copy obtained by Politico.

The House tabled the resolution, 254-138, with 34 members voting present. At least 25 Republicans voted with the Democrats to kill the measure, siding with Rangel over their leader.

The Ways and Means chairman has come under fire in the press recently for renting four rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem high-rise at below-market rates and using congressional stationery to set up meetings with potential donors for an educational center that bears his name.

Read the entire article...

The Misadventures of John McSame: Celebrity Photo Op

2008-08-11T11:38:00.001-07:00

From Time Magazine: At their most basic levels, presidential campaigns are storytelling wars. After John Kerry lost the 2004 election, the Democratic strategist James Carville summed up his candidate's problem this way: "There's a Republican narrative," he said on NBC's Meet the Press. "And there's a Democratic litany." Read the entire article here...

Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely- Alaska

2008-08-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times:

Senator Charged in Scheme to Hide Oil Firm Gifts

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, a legendary political figure closely tied to the rough-and-tumble history of his home state, and who wields outsize influence over federal spending, was indicted on Tuesday on seven felony counts of failing to disclose gifts that he received from an oil services company.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia charged Mr. Stevens, who is 84 and the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, with failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts, including extensive renovations to his house in Alaska, a Land Rover and home furnishings on financial disclosure forms that he filed from 1999 to 2006.

The indictment said that Mr. Stevens “knowingly and willfully engaged in a scheme to conceal” the gifts he received from the VECO Corporation, once one of Alaska’s largest oil field contractors, and its former chief executive, William J. Allen, who last year pleaded guilty in the case. And it comes nearly a year to the day after F.B.I. agents raided the senator’s home as part of a long-running and expansive public corruption investigation in Alaska. (Photo Credit: AP for NYTimes)

Absolute Power Corrupts, Asbolutely- Michigan

2008-08-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

'Family ties dog Kilpatrick's reelection'

From Politico:

In Washington, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) is best known as the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. But back home in Detroit, she is increasingly targeted as the mother and steadfast defender of scandal-plagued Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick — and it’s jeopardizing her prospects for returning to Washington next year.Kilpatrick is facing two credible rivals in the Aug. 5 primary: state Sen. Martha Scott and former state Rep. Mary Waters — and Waters has made the congresswoman’s family ties a key theme of her campaign, potentially changing the narrative of the race. (Photo credit: Associated Press for Politico)

Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely - Newark

2008-08-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

Former Newark Mayor Gets 27 Months

From the NY Times:

NEWARK — A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Sharpe James, Newark’s towering yet controversial former mayor, to prison for 27 months at a simmering five-hour hearing in which he rebuked the prosecution for “heartlessly” adhering to a bureaucratic form of justice.

The sentence was a fraction of the 20 years prosecutors had requested for Mr. James, who was convicted on fraud charges stemming from the sale of city properties to a former companion for a fraction of their cost.

In rendering the sentence, Judge William J. Martini of United States District Court blistered the prosecution, saying he was “shocked and disappointed” by the sentencing request and questioning the contention that the James administration had been corrupt for years.

Read more...

Affordable for Who??? -The Major Rangel Donors

2008-08-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times:

In many ways, Vornado Realty Trust, the Kimco Realty Corporation and Apollo Real Estate Advisers represent the real estate vanguard of the new Harlem.

Vornado is building an office tower on 125th Street that some residents fear will accelerate gentrification. Kimco moved to push out longtime local store owners to demolish a building and put a new retail complex in its place. And Apollo is leading a contentious effort to turn the historically rent-stabilized Delano Village apartment complex — which has been renamed Savoy Park — into a more profitable property.

They have something else in common: Executives and people tied to the companies, along with other real estate concerns, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Representative Charles B. Rangel’s fund-raising operation since the 2004 election cycle.