Month: July 2008

At Least He Doesn’t Say “I Don’t Recall” A Lot!

by dday

So while the Senate was legalizing warrantless wiretapping and granting Bush and the telecoms immunity yesterday, that nice Mr. Mukasey had a meeting with the Judiciary Committee on the Hill. Thought you’d like to know what he said:

• He wouldn’t admit that Alberto Gonzales politicized the Department of Justice, contradicting his own agency’s recent Inspector General report that has put former DoJ officials in so much trouble that independent organizations are trying to get them disbarred. He also refused to allow for any accountability to those officials, probably because he wouldn’t admit they did anything wrong.

• He argued that those Administration officials who authorized and directed torture at Guantanamo Bay and throughout US detention sites worldwide “cannot and should not be prosecuted,” nor should any CIA agents who participated in the torture.

• He didn’t want to involve himself in the investigation over Karl Rove’s involvement in the prosecution of Don Siegelman, and appeared to deny that the Office of Professional Repsonsibility had any role in such an investigation, even though it was reported just yesterday that the OPR contacted the Siegelman camp for documents in the probe.

• He decided, essentially, that it was okay for Fourthbranch Cheney to have outed Valerie Plame, and that he wouldn’t step into that investigation either. He’s already risking a contempt citation from the House Oversight Committee for refusing to turn over Cheney’s FBI interview transcripts.

But, you know, Sens. Feinstein and Schumer are right, this guy IS an improvement over Alberto Gonzales!

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FYI

by dibgy

Democracy Corps has a new report about the state of the election:

Barack Obama has slowly moved up to a 4-point lead over John McCain in the race for president (49 to 45 percent) in this special 2,000-sample Democracy Corps survey, a margin consistent with the most recent national poll estimates.[1]� In an important step following a difficult primary, he has consolidated about half the Democrats he will need to match earlier presidential runs.� He achieved that by diminishing some of the polarization around his image and providing key reassurances that have more voters saying he “has what it takes to be president.” There is every reason to believe that Obama will continue to elevate his support as he chooses a vice-presidential nominee and as he more boldly defines the choice in the election.

It is important to note that this progress has been accompanied by some diminished enthusiasm and few gains among independent voters. In contrast, McCain has been able to improve his image after a period of slippage and has recently found a way to get heard on the economy, energy and Iraq. Obama’s campaign has only just begun to engage with the big issues before the country and to define the choice boldly in a way that engages voters, fully consolidates Democrats and wins over independents – though he clearly has the opportunity to do all three.

[…]

Obama and McCain have both emerged with comparable, modest net-positive images at the outset of the general election battle, but the shifts in the latest Democracy Corps survey set off some warning signals.

Obama has become less polarizing (intense positives and intense negatives each down 2 points) and he has improved his overall favorability significantly with white non-college Democrats, white Democratic women, white older Democrats and moderate and conservative Democrats. That no doubt contributed to his vote gain among Democrats. Overall, he has made some modest headway on reassurance: 59 percent say he is a strong leader, 54 percent say he has what it takes to be president (up 2 points), and a minority of 47 percent now says, “just too many questions to take a chance on him as president” (down 2 points).

But that has come with a price worth noting. Not surprising is the drop in intense positives among liberals, liberal Democrats and white young voters, as we can see in the graph below. More worrisome is the broader drop in intense responses on key attributes –“on your side” (describes “very well” dropped from 27 to 21 percent), “strong leader” (dropped from 31 to 26 percent), and “will bring the right kind of change” (dropped from 28 to 24 percent). Overall, only 51 percent say Obama is “on your side” (down 4 points) and only 52 percent say he will “will bring the right kind of change” (unchanged). Obama seems to have lost some definition in this transition, and he has only just begun to articulate the change in ways that engage voters.

This may not matter all that much by November. But I have long thought that the Democratic advantage in this election would be found in enthusiasm, intensity and turn out rather than conversion of the alleged Obabacons or winning hugely among people who still identify themselves as Independents at a time when a large number have already converted to the Democratic party. As dday noted a couple of weeks back when comparing the lackluster emotion the GOP base has for McCain to Obama’s motivated base:

It’s more than whether or not individual GOP voters will come out. Enthusiasm matters. It finds the voters that don’t always cast a ballot. It drives cars so that those with special needs can get to the polling place. It helps knock down the inevitable scandals and furors that come with a national campaign. And all of that enthusiasm is on the Democratic side. I don’t want to sound complacent, but that’s a tremendous advantage.

It’s possible that the intensity will come back before November as the last couple of weeks of repositioning are forgotten in the heat of the battle. But I think it’s a mistake to assume that the key to winning is “reassuring” voters that he isn’t too liberal. If I had to guess the voters are more in need reassurance that he is sure of himself and his own beliefs.

I would just point out that the public’s opinion of the Democratic congress, among the base of the party as well as everyone else, is dismal. And it’s not because it is too liberal. It’s because they don’t seem to believe in anything or be able to hold the line against the most unpopular lame duck president in history. It’s unlikely that Obama could lose his base as dramatically the congress has, but dampening enthusiasm leads to other unpleasant consequences. The younger, first time voters who are his most ardent supporters are also the demographic with the worst track record of follow-through in November elections.

The consultants and the gasbags all insist that politics is about character. So I’m not sure why they all think that Democrats going out of their way, in showy fashion, to distance themselves from the voters who brought them there is a good way to show that. I guess that’s why they get paid the big bucks and I don’t.

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Roy Hobbs In The Bottom Of The Ninth

by dday

On a sad day for civil liberties in this country, there is one shining bright spot – Ted Kennedy is back in the Senate.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, battling a brain tumor, walked through a wall of applause into the Senate on Wednesday and cast a stunningly unexpected vote on long-stalled Medicare legislation.

“Aye,” the 76-year-old Kennedy said in a loud voice, and he made a thumbs-up gesture as he registered his vote.

Spectators in the galleries that overhang the chamber burst into cheers — a violation of decorum that drew no complaints.

The vote in question was on whether to overturn the Bush Administration’s edict to reduce Medicare payments to doctors, which would almost certainly result in doctors and hospitals refusing to treat patients on Medicare. It’s financed by reducing payments to Medicare Advantage, which has become something of a racket for insurance companies. Democrats tried to push this before the July 4 break, and came within one vote of getting cloture. Once Kennedy triumphantly showed up and bellowed, “Aye,” cloture was assured, so a bunch of cowardly Republicans, who earlier voted proudly to kick Medicare patients out into the street, in a manner of speaking, flipped their votes, and cloture passed by 69-30.

Here’s Pete Stark (D-CA), chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on Health, on the vote:

“Today, with a veto-proof majority, the Senate joined with the overwhelmingly bipartisan majority of the House to pass legislation that averts a 10 percent pay cut for physicians, makes modest beneficiary improvements to Medicare, and is financed by reining in the Medicare Advantage program. H.R. 6331 is the minimum that we should do to protect and maintain Medicare. America’s senior citizens and doctors helped reluctant Republican Senators understand that as well.

“Senator Kennedy managed to make it back from treatment for cancer, but Senator McCain couldn’t be bothered. Senator McCain, who wants to be our next President, has skipped this vote three times now. Clearly, he’d rather hide than face up to the insurance industry. You can do that when you’re in the U.S. Senate, maybe voters should leave him there.”

But forget the particulars. Seeing Ted Kennedy return to the Senate and hearing the roar from the gallery is enough to cheer me up today. His care and treatment was not as important as the care of some elderly man or woman of more modest means. He’s a fighter for the common man no matter what. There are still a few of them left.

UPDATE: Think Progress has the video and a statement from Teddy:

I return to the Senate today to keep a promise to our senior citizens and that’s to protect Medicare.

Win, lose or draw, I wanted to be here. I wasn’t going to take the chance that my vote could make the difference.

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They Did It

by dday

So the FISA bill passed. The three amendments which would have modified the telecom immunity provision of the FISA bill were shot down, with none of them receiving more than 42 votes. That last one was the Bingaman amendment which would have stayed immunity – not eliminated it, just delayed it – until the release of an IG report which would have at least begun to explain just what happened here. And shortly after lunch, the Senate voted to immunize the Administration and their telecom partners from civil suit without even knowing what they’re immunizing. Not to mention the expanded spying powers in Title I of the bill.

This was a failure and there’s no getting around that. Senators Dodd and Feingold put up a great fight but they were simply outnumbered. The movement that built up around this did yeoman work but it simply wasn’t enough to overcome the establishment impulse to bury the past, forget about accountability, and advance the surveillance state. Senator Reid is talking about bringing this back up before the sunset provision in 2012, but I wouldn’t describe that as likely. We can push him, of course. But the damage will have been done. The Title II provision of immunity sets an extremely dangerous precedent that undermines the rule of law and expands executive power. From now on, the stated law of the land will be that corporations, small businessmen or even individuals must comply with illegal orders from the state if they are given a piece of paper telling them they must. That won’t be how the statute is written, but it’s undoubtedly the implication.

Just so it’s kept somewhere, here are the 28 Senators who voted against the final bill.

Akaka, Biden, Bingaman, Boxer, Brown, Byrd, Cantwell, Cardin, Clinton, Dodd, Dorgan, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Kerry, Klobuchar, Lautenburg, Leahy, Levin, Menendez, Murray, Reed, Reid, Sanders, Schumer, Stabenow, Tester, Wyden.

You’ll notice Obama not on that list – he kept his word to work to vote to strip immunity, and he kept his word to vote for the final bill (as many have noted in the comments, he absolutely did not keep his word from the primaries to filibuster any bill that had immunity included in it). He joins Baucus, Casey, and Whitehouse as the four who voted for stripping immunity, but then for the final bill. (Come on, Whitehouse!)

Just so we’re clear here, here’s something from yesterday’s final debate that really exemplifies the damaging precedent being set here. This isn’t verbatim, but filtered through emptywheel’s snark:

Kit Bond: IGs will not determine whether the illegal program was legal or not.

House and Senate Intelligence Committees are all the oversight you need, little boys and girls. Never mind the Courts!

Specter: A member’s constitutional duty cannot be delegated to another member. The full body has to act. The question for the Senator with the red tie is, how can 70 members of the US Senate expect to grant retroactive immunity in light of the clear cut rule that we cannot delegate our Constitutional responsibilities.

[Is this the day Haggis returns to US law?!?!?!?!]

Bond: well, SSCI predates me.

Specter: Uh, yeah, I know. I used to chair it, remember?

Specter: SSCI hasn’t even all been briefed on the stuff they’re supposed to be briefed on. Judge Walker with his 56 page opinion that bears on the telephone case. Have the telecoms had problems with their reputation? Perhaps. They can recover from that.

Specter: Does the Senator from Missora know of any case involving constitutional rights where Congress has stepped in and taken it away from the Courts where there’s no other way of getting a judgment on the constitutionality of it?

Mr. Red Tie: What Specter fails to understand, it’s not a question of carriers being held liable, what they would do is disclose the most secretive methods used by our intelligence community. It would also expose those companies to tremendous scorn and obliquy and possibly injury to them or their personnel.

Specter: Nope, Bond couldn’t come up with one example.

Specter, I’ll remind you, wasn’t on that above list. He knows that the Congress can’t take away the judgment of Constitutionality and yet he voted against stripping the element of the bill which would do so. He’s really awesome.

This is what sadly passes for Senatorial responsibility these days.

We lost, but we’re not going to forget this. See above.

More from Glenn Greenwald, Lawrence Lessig, and
Jon Eisenberg, a lawyer in the Al-Haramain case which a federal judge just ruled on:

On July 3, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in California made a ruling particularly worthy of the nation’s attention. In Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush, a key case in the epic battle over warrantless spying inside the United States, Judge Walker ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon.

Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA — which means Bush’s warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal. Whether Bush will ultimately be held accountable for violating federal law with the program remains unclear.

…not unclear anymore.

I’m going to go lie down.

UPDATE: The Dodd, in a statement:

“While I am deeply disappointed by the outcome of today’s vote in the
Senate, I am confident that the Constitutionality of this decision will be challenged in the courts. In the meantime, I will continue to stand up for the rule of law and American civil liberties at every opportunity. Now more than ever, we must all remain vigilant protectors of the Constitution.”

The lawyers here can take a stab at this, but I’m trying to think what kind of case would deliver the standing to offer a ruling on Constitutionality. Then again, I thought the same thing on the Military Commissions Act, and a portion of that has already been thrown out. But hanging civil liberties from the tiny thread that is a possible swing vote in the Supreme Court is dastardly.

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Over The Barrow

by digby

John McCain’s been throwing librarians out of his rallies for holding signs that say “McCain=Bush,” and it seems that Blue Dog John Barrow doesn’t like being compared to him either. Blue America took out some ads in Georgia papers today pointing out that he’s been Bush rubber stamp on every important vote and Barrow’s complaining to the papers about it:

The attack drew a sharp rebuttal from Barrow.

“This ad is ridiculous,” he said. “They should take a look at the commercials that were run against me during the last election. They (the Republicans) spent $2 million telling voters that I don’t support … Bush’s policies.

“I’ll take on anybody to do what’s right for Georgia, on either side of the aisle, and I’m confident that’s what the voters want me to do.”

It seems that those Republican ads were quite helpful to Barrow. The people of his district don’t know that Congressional Quarterly has reported that Barrow has voted with Bush more often than any other Democrat in congress. Somebody needed to tell them about it.

Here’s the ad. You can read more about the campaign over at Down With Tyranny.

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McCain Thinks Social Security – As A Concept – Is A Disgrace

by dday

If John McCain wanted to throw the election, he certainly handed his opponent a rhetorical gift.

MCCAIN: Thank you very much. I’d like to start out by giving you a little straight talk. Under the present set-up, because we’ve mortgaged our children’s futures, you will not have Social Security benefits that present-day retirees have unless we fix it. And Americans have got to understand that.

Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace, and it’s got to be fixed.

When I was a lot younger, in my Alex P. Keaton days, I thought something similar to this. I thought I was responsible enough to handle my savings and didn’t need the government to hold it for me.

Then I got educated and recognized that this is how the Social Security system works. Younger workers pay into the system and that money gets directed to older workers. It started in the 1930s from scratch so that was the only way it could get kicked off. There’s no holding cell for payroll taxes marked for every working American that gets kicked back afterwards.

The thing is that, using such a system, Social Security is one of the most amazingly effective government programs ever devised. It’s also not in any kind of crisis that can’t be fixed with a few tweaks. You want an entitlement problem, let me take you to Medicare Island. Social Security is about 193rd on the list of fiscal items that require help.

So when McCain calls the functional way that Social Security has worked for 75 years a disgrace, what you can conclude is that he wants to destroy the system. He’s on the record as favoring private accounts, even in this bear market. We know all the reasons why that is so, not the least of which is that it would be a trilion-dollar present for the financial services industry.

Pay attention to what he’s saying here. In essence, as Nick Bauman says:

“McCain is saying, again, that the problem with Social Security is that Social Security is Social Security, instead of something else.”

I suppose that McCain is relying on the ignorance of the American citizen on this one (continuing Republicans’ normal assumptions), but as I said, this is a gift. Surely the DNC or the Obama campaign is tracking all of these town hall meetings. They now have, on tape, John McCain calling for the destruction of Social Security.

You could DO SOMETHING with that.

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Open Letter To Scientists

by tristero

Dear Scientists,

If you haven’t read The Origin of Species, go thou, take it and read, and do so this summer. If I can read it and enjoy it, and I’m not a scientist, so can you. And don’t let Judson’s minor criticisms of its style at times deter you. In fact, Darwin is a charming, witty, writer, often when you least expect it. Even the “tortuous” sections maintain their sense of wonder, amusement, and amazement with life.

(In my opinion, Darwin’s main flaw, as a writer, is an overuse, of the comma. You just learn, to ignore, it.)

The Origin is a great book on so many levels I wouldn’t know where to begin if Olivia Judson hadn’t beaten me to it and mentioned some of the most important. She is right: it is an introduction to a great mind and it is chock full of ideas: great ideas, revolutionary ideas, glorious ideas.

But there is one aspect that Judson didn’t mention that is a crucial reason to read The Origin, and why even non-scientists should do so. It is a literary masterpiece whose influence on English literature has been incalculable. In The Origin, Darwin struggled mightily to find the language for processes of life and nature that, in his time, had never been conceived of in quite the way he did.* He ended up developing both a precise language to describe phenomena – Judson quotes a marvelous passage about cats, flowers, and bees – and a large collection of metaphors, tropes, similes, and the like with which to describe the process of evolution. This language, which Darwin fashioned from his own influences both scientific and literary, deeply influenced English writing in the second half of the 19th Century (The Origin was published in 1859).

There is a wonderful book that discusses Darwin’s use of language and its influence on literature in detail. It is called Darwin’s Plots by Gillian Beer and it is itself considered a masterpiece of literary criticism.

So get reading, dear scientists. Read Your Darwin! You will enter a world where science and the humanities are not falsely separated but are as connected as all life. Which is as it should be.

Love,

tristero

P.S. I guess you can tell I love The Origin of Species. I put it on my short list with Gravity's Rainbow, Lolita, Moby-Dick, and Harmonielehre, as one of the best books I’ve ever read.

*Without going into the details, none of the basic ideas of evolution by natural selection were exactly new with Darwin, but Darwin perceived how to put the pieces together and that transformed their meaning.

He’s Losing Sleep

by digby

… and sweating bullets over this:

Democrats say a group supporting Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) bought television ad time in Virginia that had been released by his campaign the same day, suggesting a possible connection between two groups that legally must remain separate.

The upcoming ads — “Finish the Job,” featuring eight Iraq war veterans speaking in black-and-white footage about the success of the surge — mark the most substantial outside assistance McCain has received in the presidential air wars.

The group, Vets for Freedom, calls the purchase a coincidence, and there is no indication otherwise.

But the discovery is the leading edge of a new line of attack Democrats plan against McCain.

Because Obama has so much more ready cash than McCain, the Arizonan is in the ironic position of being dependent on — or, perhaps, at the mercy of — the sort of third-party, outside groups he has long criticized.

Democrats contend that McCain gained substantial political capital from opposing such groups when he was crusading for a campaign-finance overhaul, but he now stands to benefit from their largesse.

Snap! So, it looks as though the Democrats are going to take the high ground and then accuse McCain of hypocrisy. That’ll do it.

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Political Straightjacket

by digby

Bob Somerby disagrees with my interpretation of the Clark flap and argues that nobody had ever suggested that McCain’s POW experience was a qualification for the presidency so Clark’s statement was ill advised.

I don’t know if anyone had ever said it explicitly, but it’s in the subtext of everything the media believes about John McCain. I’ll just reprise this one perfect example:

Brian Williams: You know what I thought was unsaid —they took their position Chris, we’re seeing the replay — they end up in this spot and the sun is coming is just from the side and there in the shadow is John McCain’s buckled, concave shoulder. It’s a part of his body the suit doesn’t fill out because of his war injuries. Again you wouldn’t spot it unless you knew to look for it. He doesn’t give the same full chested profile as the president standing next to him. Talk about a warrior…

Chris Matthews: You know, when he was a prisoner all those years, as you know, in isolation from his fellows, I do believe, uhm, and machiavelli had this right — it’s not sentimental, it’s factual — the more you give to something, the more you become committed to it. That’s true of marriage and children and everything we’ve committed to in our lives. He committed to his country over there. He made an investment in America, alone in that cell, when he was being tortured and afraid of being put to death at any moment — and turning down a chance to come home.

Those are non-political facts which I think do work for him. When it gets close this November, which I do believe, and you likely agree, will be a very close contest between him and whoever wins the Democratic fight. And I think people will look at that fact, that here’s a man who has invested deeply, and physically and personally in his country.

Williams: Absolutely, Couldn’t agree more. Of course the son of a Navy Admiral, a product of Annapolis who couldn’t wait to become a Navy aviator…

No, nobody explicitly said that “getting shot down” qualifies McCain for the presidency but I think it’s pretty clear they think it does. If a four star general has no standing to challenge that assumption then nobody ever will. That kind of nonsense will protect McCain from criticism all the way through to November.

The media rushed to defend McCain, not just as a war hero, but as a man of vast integrity, with the result that anyone who challenges his national security credibility has to dance on the head of a pin, issuing disclaimers every time he issues a criticism. Crooks and Liars caught this one:

Sen. KERRY: …what almost every person in the Pentagon has admitted. I mean, Bob, you’re smart, you’ve talked to these people in Washington. There are very few people who walk around and say, `Going into Iraq was the right thing to do and we should’ve done it. I’d do it again if I had the chance.’ John McCain does. John McCain believes this was the right decision.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let…

Sen. KERRY: He said, you know, you can’t–I have to tell you, Bob, I just came back from the Middle East. I just met with the king of Saudi Arabia. I met with President Mubarak of Egypt. I met with others. You know what they said to me? They said, `You, America, have served up to Iran, Iraq on a platter.’ They are outraged by this sort of, you know, ineptitude of what has been done by those who decided it was smart to go into Iraq.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you one question here.

Sen. KERRY: And they have turned away–yeah.

SCHIEFFER: Before we–before–because we are going to talk about–are you now challenging Senator McCain’s integrity?

Sen. KERRY: No, I’m challenging Senator McCain’s judgment, his judgment that says there’s no violence history between Sunni and Shia. That’s wrong. His judgment that says this is going to increase the stability of the Middle East. It hasn’t. It’s made it less stable. The judgment that says this will, quote “This will be the best thing for America and the world in a long time.”

SCHIEFFER: All right….all right.

Thank goodness Schieffer stopped him before he went down that road. It’s one thing to question a candidate’s judgment, but it is completely inappropriate to question his integrity. Right?

BUSH: Well, I’m just saying, you can disagree on issues, we’ll debate issues, but whatever you do, don’t equate my integrity and trustworthiness to Bill Clinton.

But that’s Bush. Everyone now agrees that he’s an ass. McCain, the man of character, never questioned anybody’s integrity because he doesn’t do things like that:

If Republicans nominate the weaker candidate, Al Gore will be able to continue the big money, special-interest politics of truth twisting that has shamed his party and America for seven long years.

I served in the House with Al Gore. I faced him down in debates. I know him and I know his lack of principles and will eagerly put him on the defensive for his embrace in 1996 of Bill Clinton’s financial corruption.

Well, maybe it’s ok to question some people’s integrity. When they’re really, really bad. But questioning McCain’s integrity is a no no.

And that’s quite interesting considering that he was right in the middle of one of the biggest, most expensive corruption scandals in American history. It seems to me that when you have a record like that — and lobbyists doing business out of your campaign bus as we speak — that it should be expected that your integrity and honor would be in question when you run for president of the United States. But not St John. Because he behaved heroically over forty years ago, and the media love his mavericky, flyboy straight talk, his character is beyond reproach.

Clark’s statement was only impolitic in the context of a media love affair with McCain that can’t be broken without going directly to the fact that McCain gets a pass because he did something heroic forty years ago. In keeping with their ongoing successful political strategy of “don’t make trouble” the Democratic establishment decided that they would not challenge that assumptions and so it will stand.

“John McCain doesn’t always tell us what we hope to hear. Beautiful words cannot make our lives better,” the announcer says. “But a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can. Don’t hope for a better life. Vote for one.”

McCain’s new ad makes an explicit case that his experience as a POW better qualifies him to be president. And nobody is allowed to say otherwise.

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McCain Accountability Sighting!

by dday

The New York Times went ahead and, in contravention of all journalistic conventions, particularly with respect to Republicans, actually tried to analyze John McCain’s budget proposal – and ended up taking a side!

The package of spending and tax cuts proposed by Senator John McCain is unlikely to achieve his goal of balancing the federal budget by 2013, economists and fiscal experts said Monday.

“It would be very difficult to achieve in the best of circumstances, and even more difficult under the policies that Senator McCain has proposed,” said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group […]

Mr. McCain proposed a one-year freeze in most domestic spending subject to annual appropriations, “to allow for a comprehensive review.” This proposal would affect education, scientific research, law enforcement and scores of other programs.

Mr. Bush’s battles with Congress suggest it would be extremely difficult for Mr. McCain to win approval for such a freeze.

Mr. McCain said he was counting on “rapid economic growth” to help reduce the deficit. While a growing economy generates additional revenue, several of Mr. McCain’s tax proposals would be costly, experts said […]

He would “phase out and eliminate” a provision of the tax code known as the alternative minimum tax, which has ensnared a growing number of middle-class Americans in recent years.

By his own account, repealing this tax “will save middle-class families nearly $60 billion in a single year.” That is $60 billion that would presumably not be available to the Treasury.

Mr. McCain also wants to extend many of the Bush tax cuts, scheduled to expire by Jan. 1, 2011. That could reduce tax collections below the levels assumed under current law, and it could widen the deficit, many economists said.

In January, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending the Bush tax cuts would cost more than $700 billion in the next five years.

Now that’s some straight talk right there. So much, in fact, that McCain’s economic advisers had to back off the promise to balance the budget by the end of the first term – now pushing it back to the end of the second term. It’s yet another in the string of eleventy billion flip-flops he’s produced over the course of this campaign. Here’s some of them on economic policy alone:

Economic Policy

31. McCain was against Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy before he was for them.

32. John McCain initially argued that economics is not an area of expertise for him, saying, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated,” and “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He now falsely denies ever having made these remarks and insists that he has a “very strong” understanding of economics.

33. McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal. And soon after that, McCain abandoned his second position and went back to his first.

34. McCain said in 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this, and falsely argued that he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.

35. McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.

36. McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a “‘read my lips’ candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, “I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise taxes.”

37. McCain has changed his entire economic worldview on multiple occasions.

38. McCain believes Americans are both better and worse off economically than they were before Bush took office.

(By the way, Steve Benen’s McCain flip-flop history is something of a seminal document that will help researchers and journalists far into the future if they’d take a look)

Today McCain said that he imagined the US was in a recession while proposing the same set of failed conservative policies that got us there in the first place. He also chided Congress for taking a Fourth of July holiday without moving on a housing bill despite the fact that he hasn’t voted since April. The man is not only incoherent on the economy, but pretty much his entire campaign.

And it’s good that one corner of the media managed to notice. Now, there is a political law of conservation of mass and energy, and for every critical McCain article on the economy there must be something similar about Obama as well – or probably times ten, as every Democrat is always grilled on how he or she will pay for their policies. Of course, as Kevin Drum notes, Obama’s plan actually does approach adding up fully, certainly more than any other over-promising politician, but in the media’s mind Obama being of by a dollar will equal McCain being off by ten trillion, and the pundits will excoriate both – while always reminding everyone that McCain is a hero who served his country honorably and a fiscal conservative besides.

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