Month: September 2008

Obama 7 To 8 Points Ahead, Pre Gustav

by tristero

USA Today Gallup 50/43

CBS 48/40

There is something seriously wrong with this country. Forty percent support for McCain is ludicrously high.

Advice From Dr, James Dobson

by tristero

From Adolescent Rebellion by Dr. James Dobson:

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health surveyed 11,572 teenagers to determine which factors were most helpful in preventing harmful behavior, such as violence, suicide, substance abuse, early sexual behavior and teen pregnancy. Here’s what the researchers found: The presence of parents is beneficial at four key times of the day — early morning, after school, dinnertime and bedtime.

When that regular contact is combined with other shared activities between parents and kids, the most positive outcome is achieved. The researchers also observed that adolescents who felt a sense of connection with their parents (feelings of warmth, love and caring) were least likely to engage in harmful behavior.

You might be asking: “How can I be with my teenagers morning, noon and night? I have too much work to do.” You simply have to decide what is most important to you at this time. It won’t matter as much a few years down the road, but your availability right now could make the difference for your child between surviving or plunging off the cliff.

My father and mother were faced with the same difficult choice when I was 16 years old. Dad was an evangelist who was gone most of the time, while my mother was home with me. During the adolescent years, I began to get testy with my mother. I never went into total rebellion, but I was definitely flirting with the possibility. I’ll never forget the night my mom called my dad on the phone. I was listening as she said, “I need you.” To my surprise, my dad immediately cancelled a four-year slate of meetings, sold our home and moved 700 miles south to take a pastorate so he could be with me until I finished high school.

It was an enormous sacrifice for him to make. He never fully recovered professionally from it. But he and Mom felt my welfare was more important than their immediate responsibilities. Dad was home with me during those two volatile years when I could have gotten into serious trouble. When I speak with reverence about my parents today, as I often do, one of the reasons is because they gave priority to me when I was sliding close to the brink.

You may not be called upon to make such a radical change in your lifestyle. But if you are, the investment in your teen’s life is worth it. We can’t put a price tag on our child’s life…

Parental involvement is the key to getting kids through the storms of adolescence.

Emphasis added.

Yes, Sarah Palin Was Vetted

by dday

It certainly doesn’t seem like it, given the stories that have emerged within the past 48-72 hours. But she most certainly was vetted, only not by the McCain campaign. She was vetted by the only group that matters – the super-secretive Council for National Policy.

The CNP deliberately operates below the radar, going to excessive lengths to obscure its activities. According to official CNP policy, “The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs before or after a meeting.” Thus the CNP’s Minneapolis gathering was free of reporters. I only learned of the get-together through an online commentary by one of its attendees, top Dobson/Focus on the Family flack Tom Minnery.

Minnery described the mood as CNP members watched Palin accept her selection as John McCain’s Vice Presidential pick. “I was standing in the back of a ballroom filled with largely Republicans who were hoping against hope that something would put excitement back into this campaign,” Minnery said. “And I have to tell you, that speech by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin — people were on their seats applauding, cheering, yelling… That room in Minneapolis watching on the television screen was electrified. I have not seen anything like it in a long time.”

Minnery added that his boss, Dobson, has yearned for a conservative female leader like Margaret Thatcher to emerge on the American scene. And while Palin is no Thatcher, “she has not rejected the feminine side of who she is, so for that reason, she will be attractive to conservative voters.”

The members of the Council for National Policy are the hidden hand behind McCain’s Palin pick. With her selection, the Republican nominee is suddenly — and unexpectedly — assured of the support of a movement that once opposed his candidacy with all its might. Case in point: while Dobson once said he could “never” vote for McCain, he issued a statement last week hailing Palin as an “outstanding” choice. If Dobson’s enthusiasm for Palin is any indication, he may soon emerge from his bunker in Colorado Springs to endorse McCain, providing the Republican nominee with the grassroots support of the Christian right’s single most influential figure.

That’s all this was about. Forget the press reports grasping at straws trying to figure out this pick, whether it represents a new reform message or was targeted to exurban voters. This was a wet kiss to the religious right. There was only one group doing the vetting. The theocons were waiting for a signal to start up the phone banks and the ground work and now they have it. They probably would have done so anyway, but this was the tipping point.

And so the fact that Todd Palin has a DUI record is just a sign of temptation followed by redemption. The pregnancy of the Palin’s 17 year-old daughter, which should show the failures of abstinence-only education (which the Governor opposes firmly supports), just shows the importance of coming down on the side of life (UPDATE: Interesting that the McCain campaign felt the need to mention that the kid made her own decision to keep the baby, since McCain and Palin want to take that choice away from all women). The fact that she thinks the Founding Fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegiance means that she believes this is a Judeo-Christian nation. The fact that she’s appeared at a secessionist movement meeting in Alaska means simply that she is appalled by the cultural decline of America.

Oh, she was vetted all right. By the religious right. The question is whether or not Palin’s extreme, radical philosophy is distasteful to the wide swath of Americans. In a sane world, the support for creationism and questioning of man-made global warming and rejection of birth control would indeed be disqualifying.

…What this also means is that she was totally forced on John McCain, which must call into question his erratic, shoddy judgment, and his ability to carry out anything but the most extreme agenda.

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Slower And To The Left

by dday

As I hoped, Hurricane Gustav changed course slightly, moving to the West and away from New Orleans, and the storm downgraded to a Category 2 storm upon landfall. The eye of the storm is 40 miles west of the city, toward Houma. Now, the Industrial Canal is being overtopped, and some runaway barges and tugboats are flying around in the area, and there are at least six hours to go here. But the absolute worst option has not materialized… yet. And I’m hopeful that the storm is far away enough that we won’t see catastrophic flooding.

But you never know. The Port of New Orleans is underwater. If this was a Category 4 storm we’d be in a tremendous amount of trouble. The Army Corps of Engineers simply never built anything to stop water from Lake Pontchartrain to stream in through the Industrial Canal. If there’s real breaching, the Lower Ninth is going to fill up. Again. (UPDATE: CNN reports “spurts of water” are coming into the Lower Ninth Ward already. This isn’t that big a storm and the levees are already starting to fail.)

Good thing that evacuation efforts were so successful.

I think the Republicans are jumping the gun here. It sounds like Laura Bush and Cindy McCain are going to offer some kind of nonpartisan messages, but the split-screen potential is not good. Essentially, the RNC cancelled their prime-time schedule today because they had to. Not only did Bush and Cheney cancel, but Arnold Schwarzenegger said he couldn’t make it because of the California budget crisis. That leaves Joe Lieberman. For the full hour. Not even Larry King would book that.

Meanwhile, you won’t get this from the major media, but the GOP delegates are doing plenty of partying. It’s not like they’re TOTALLY refraining from fiddling while Rome may burn. I mean, come on, the booze has already been shipped! And also, there’s one 10,000-member event going on as scheduled today, from the real PUMAs, the Ron Paul libertarians. Since the airtime is all booked, you’d think that the media would head on over and see what the fuss is about, right? Right?

I know the answer to that question.

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Operation Hype The Hurricane: The Main Event

by tristero

As I mentioned two days ago, it is truly sickening to perceive Gustav as a marketing opportunity, but that is the way Republicans act. And that is the kind of public discourse we have. It stands to reason, therefore, that Democrats -if they are serious about winning elections – simply must respond in an effective manner.

I am not suggesting that Obama fly to New Orleans and get photographed on a levee, looking melodramatically concerned (although I wouldn’t care if he did). What I am suggesting is that ceding the discourse for even a moment to the Republicans is a very dangerous way to run a presidential campaign. If you like, feel free to substitute the word “stupid” for “dangerous” in the previous sentence. Surely, Democratic pr people are savvy enough to come up with a dignified presentation of their candidate’s involvement and concern. (If they can’t, they should be fired.)

And yet, cede the discourse is exactly what Democrats have done. One small example: Even by the middle of the day yesterday, Obama’s website was still touting his brilliant acceptance speech and failing to mention Gustav. This morning (eastcoast time), I urge you to compare Mccain’s website with Obama’s. McCain’s opens with a political message from St. John: he urges everyone to put politics aside. Then you click a biiig button that says “Take Action Now.”

How does Obama’s site respond to this? Despite the fact that this is a genuine moment of national crisis, there’s no personal message from the candidate. There’s just a link to the Red Cross.

Here are the respective screens.

Like it or not, times of crisis are, in the present political climate, marketing ops. And Gustav, which takes place over the Labor Day weekend is a perfect opportunity for both candidates to project leadership during a crisis. There will be a huge number of eyeballs glued to tv screens. And they will be watching McCain act like he’s president while Obama is pushed to the side.

The Democratic pr response is completely unacceptable.

Via the responses to dday’s latest post, an alarming one about the state of the New Orleans levees, I’ve learned that many people think Obama loses nothing by letting McCain prance about unchallenged as a fake president. They see the major story of Gustav as the potential havoc the storm will wreak, and not in cheap pr terms. “We must show McCain doing something so he appears in control.” This makes them better people than I. These decent commentators are truly worried about Gustav’s destructive power, are disgusted at McCain’s antics, and applaud Obama for staying completely out of the way. They even recognize that there could be a political advantage to a dignified ceding of center stage.

With great sadness, I completely disagree, although I wish I was the kind of person who didn’t find the pr angle so central.

I have no doubt, and am deeply relieved, that the response to Gustav will be far better than Katrina. Nowhere near 1836 people will die because of what happens today. I also have no doubt that the media will be on a tight leash and denied access to the most atrocious destruction. What, after all, do you think Blackwater is being deployed in New Orleans to do? No pictures of dead bodies floating in shit-filled floodwaters this time. The pr response to Gustav is being managed by Republicans as tightly as the pr for the invasion of Iraq. Regardless of the truth of Gustav’s destruction, it will appear as if McCain handled a serious crisis, and prevailed. No one, I assure you, will dare mention that in reality McCain could do nothing substantive except get in the way.

I think you get it. My point is simple. Those of us who oppose McCain/Bush should never, ever, permit the far right to define the agenda. They are doing so now, due to the tacit complicity of the Democratic party. As they did so earlier this summer during, for example, the start of the Georgia crisis. That is a profoundly stupid mistake. McCain is neck and neck with Obama not merely because of all the obvious reasons – racism, media bias, Republican dirty tricks – but also because Democrats won’t, simply won’t, recognize that this is a pr battle despite Obama’s very commendable efforts to cast it as otherwise.

Democrats fail to realize what Obama himself surely knows, which is that during a crisis, declaring oneself “neither Republican nor Democrat” is a blatantly partisan political stance. Certainly, McCain and his pr advisers know this and once again they seized an opportunity Democrats missed.

Okay, enough. Until Gustav is gone, no more posts about the politics of it all. No matter how much better the response to Gustav will be, this is a very serious situation. I’ll leave you with two links. The first is to
Krugman’s typically brilliant column assessing the politics of Gustav. The other is to the American Red Cross.

A Man, A Plan, A Levee

by dday

Panamanian strongman John McCain has this idea that, by halting most RNC convention activities and sending Bush and Cheney home, he will be seen as a noble warrior fighting the hurricane all by himself and restoring the Grand Old Party’s good name. And that may be true – certainly McCain was aching for a way to keep Bush at arm’s length, he would have sent him off if there was the chance of hail somewhere in the country – but if the levees fail again three years after billions of dollars was appropriated to fix them, the conservative failure of government will look hauntingly familiar.

On the eve of Hurricane Gustav’s expected arrival, many in New Orleans, from residents of the Ninth Ward to the city’s mayor to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, have their doubts about whether the levees will hold.

“There is a real likelihood of getting some overtopping. Additionally, rain is a big factor here,” said DHS chief Michael Chertoff about water pouring over the tops of the levees.

Three years since Katrina and $3 billion later, the levees still leak and much of the repair work remains incomplete.

“Huge areas of Louisiana are going to be devastated. We’re going in essence to see what Katrina didn’t destroy, what Rita didn’t destroy in 2005 being destroyed now in 2008,” said Ivor Van Heerden, a professor at Louisiana State University who wrote a book about why the levees broke during Katrina.

At best the levees are estimated to be able to withstand water levels rising at the rate of an inch and hour. The coming storm, however, promises much more. In some places storm surge could reach 18 feet.

The Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with repairing the levees, says work was being accelerated.

Despite Congress authorizing $12.8 billion to rebuild the levees, only $3 billion has been spent. The engineers blame red tape, saying the studies, approvals and environmental committees have all slowed down the work.

The Army Corps is already trying to blame it on the environmentalists, but considering that the press recently found engineers filling the levees with newspaper, their protestations aren’t really credible. In fact, they failed to use the money and are scrambling to finish in 48 hours what they haven’t done in 3 years.

And levee money isn’t the only money unspent in New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS — It was the largest housing aid program in American history, billed as the essential government tool that would make New Orleans whole after Hurricane Katrina.

Yet even though about $3.3 billion of federal taxpayer money has been spent here on the cash grant program known as the Road Home, New Orleans on the third anniversary of the hurricane remains almost as much of a patchwork as it did last year, before most of the money was spent.

The program has had no effect on most of the houses in New Orleans, and has played only a limited role in bringing back the neighborhoods most flooded in the storm. And as Hurricane Gustav bears down on the city, many residents are worried that the work already accomplished could be set back.

I sincerely hope that the storm makes a hard left and New Orleans is spared, but if it heads in its current direction, the levees are going to fail and the city will again fill with water. And no amount of efforts to care from St. Paul will be able to counteract that shot of a flooded city as a cause of levee failure, again. The evacuation appears to have gone well, and Bush and his team have at least looked attentive, but they don’t necessarily get credit for doing their job the second time around, and they certainly get no credit for building substandard levees. Republicans will be forced to own their own failure, both in their inability to build workable infrastructure and their resistance to combat climate change and the stronger, more frequent storms that are a side effect.

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1836 Americans Started To Die While These Assholes Partied

by tristero

Here is what John McCain and George Bush were doing on August 29, 2005, when 1836 Americans started to drown in their own sewage:

It is an obscenity that these incompetent cynical shitheads are playing at being at charge. It is an outrage that the media is playing along. And it is utterly disgraceful that the Democrats were completely unprepared for Operation Hype the Hurricane.

I just hope that everyone down in Gustav’s path gets out of town before either Gustav hits or Bush’s trigger-happy goons – Blackwater – move in.

UPDATE: And just how clueless are top Democrats about how to win an election? This is how clueless. Unbelievable. Truly unbelievable.

Huh?

by digby

First poll with both tickets complete:

August 29-31: Obama 49%, McCain 48% August 23-24: Obama 47%, McCain 47% July 27-29: Obama 51%, Mccain 44% Is Sarah Palin qualified to serve as president? Yes: 45% No: 50% No opinion: 5% Do you think John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin reflects favorably or unfavorably on McCain’s ability to make important presidential decisions? Favorably: 57% Unfavorably: 40% No opinion: 2% “John McCain chose Sarah Palin because he thought having a woman on the ticket would help him get elected?” Agree: 75% Disagree: 25%

One can only conclude that a lot of people think that naming an unqualified person for VP speaks well of McCain’s decision making. Should we call this the “Cheney effect” — a desire to put the Vice President back in a ceremonial role after eight years of having a puppeteer behind the scenes pulling the president’s strings? Or are they just Republican fools?

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Tase R Nation

by digby

If you’re not following the story of these raids in Minneapolis, you should be. Of course, you can be forgiven since the news media feel it’s necessary to give Bobby Jindal hours of airtime and don’t have any to spare once they are through analyzing the impact of the hurricane on John McCain’s heroic POW experience in North Vietnam, but still …

Here’s a list of links gathered by John Emerson at Seeing the Forest. This really is unamerican. but then, it’s nothing new for the authorities to be unamerican, is it? In fact, considering our history and ongoing willingness to put up with this stuff, one has to conclude that it’s actually quite American after all:

Glen Greenwald and Firedoglake have been following this closely. DNC – RNC – Troops Out Now (an activist group). Legal Team. Legal team’s twitter update. Minnesota Indymedia. Minnesota Blue (a liberal Democratic site). Minneapolis Star Tribune Convention page. Google Blogsearch: “Republican + convention + arrests”. Googlenews search: “Republican + convention + arrests”. Cut and paste these: www.theuptake.org The Uptake www.submedia.tv The Stimulator www.tcdailyplanet.net Twin Cities Daily Planet www.minnesotaindependent.com The Minnesota Independent

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. How would a heroic POW handle a hurricane? Why, heroically, of course. He will chase that hurricane into the gates of hell.

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