Ari Melber has written an interesting article about how the web has impacted the use of dogwhistle politics by deconstructing and exposing them. That tracks with Drew Westen’s thesis that the the key to dealing with these lizard brain tactics is to lay them out so people can see exactly what they mean and then reject them.
I think there is truth in this, but it’s also true that as much as the internet has made it easier to do expose political tactics, it has also created a monster with these email whisper campaigns that people believe because they tend to come from someone they know and are ubiquitous and untraceable.
A University of Texas poll to be released today shows Republican presidential candidate John McCain and GOP Sen. John Cornyn leading by comfortable margins in Texas, as expected. But the statewide survey of 550 registered voters has one very surprising finding: 23 percent of Texans are convinced that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Obviously, most people are not subject to nonsense like this. But 23%?
I have to wonder what happens when the right wing paranoid strain truly begins to retreat to its already insular alternate universe, reinforcing its bizarroworld “facts” over and over again in a feedback loop. It can’t be good.
There is a human cost when gay couples are denied the fundamental right to marry. The stories of three couples from New Mexico demonstrate what thousands of couples in California stand to lose if their right to marry is taken away on Election Day. It is important that we save marriage in California so couples in other states can have the hope to marry, too. Please forward and share this video with everyone you know in California and ask them to vote NO on Prop 8.
I didn’t write one of those heartfelt prop 8 posts yesterday since dday did such a beautiful job of it. But I will repeat something I wrote once before that I think is important about this vote: young people have the opportunity to do something very special in casting their first vote for the first African American president. But if they come out in the huge numbers we’ve been expecting here in California, they could also cast their first vote to directly ensure equality for their fellow man in the great civil rights battle of the early 21st century. It’s a vote they will remember and be proud of for the rest of their lives.
This good for the country and good for them too. Once they’ve had the heady feeling of making a difference, they’ll know what it is to be part of something real and meaningful and they’ll stay engaged long after this election. That’s what this whole ground-up, people powered politics is all about.
I generally agree with PZ that the most effective part of the infomercial was when Obama was talking about his ideas. I dislike human interest anecdotes when I think hard facts are more persuasive. It’s one of the major reasons TV news is as bad as it is.
However, when the middle-class woman with four kids pointed at the door of her refrigerator and told us that that was her family’s food for the week… that cut to the heart.
Yesterday, dday sounded the klaxon that Bush was gonna have the Justice Department intervene in an Ohio voting rights case. As dday wrote,”This is attempted voter suppression at the highest levels…”
The Department of Justice will not require Ohio to disclose the names of voters whose registration applications did not match other government databases, according to two people familiar with discussions between state and federal lawyers.
The decision comes about a week after an unusual request from President Bush asking the department to investigate the matter and roughly two weeks after the Supreme Court dismissed a case involving the flagged registration applications.
Federal law requires states to verify voter registration applications with a government database like those used for driver’s licenses or Social Security cards. Names that do not match are flagged for further verification. But the law provides little guidance on how these flagged registrations should be handled and discrepancies corrected.
Ohio Republicans had sought the lists to challenge voters, but the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, refused the request, saying that numerical errors or misspellings are the probable reason for most of the discrepancies. Forcing these voters to cast provisional ballots would possibly disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters, she said, since these ballots are easier to disqualify.
Republicans then took their request to court, but were unsuccessful. The Justice Department has been in contact with Ohio election officials since early October and this week its lawyers determined they would not pursue litigation before the election, according to the sources familiar with the discussions.
Most studies by non-partisan groups have found little evidence that voter fraud is a wide-scale problem or that fraudulent or duplicate voter registration applications lead to ineligible voters casting ballots.
Being essentially a craftsman by trade – ie, someone who makes stuff with his hands (and a few computers) – I often find the world of Big Money a deeply strange place. A.I.G., for example:
The American International Group is rapidly running through $123 billion in emergency lending provided by the Federal Reserve, raising questions about how a company claiming to be solvent in September could have developed such a big hole by October. Some analysts say at least part of the shortfall must have been there all along, hidden by irregular accounting.
“You don’t just suddenly lose $120 billion overnight,” said Donn Vickrey of Gradient Analytics, an independent securities research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Well, yes, that’s what I would have thought. But here’s the thing: Why is this being brought up now? Isn’t, “Where the hell did that $120,000,000,000 go?” like, you know, a question you ask before you agree to a loan and write ’em a check?
Then there’s this:
Mr. Vickery and other analysts are examining the company’s disclosures for clues that the cushion was threadbare and that company officials knew they had major losses months before the bailout.
Tantalizing support for this argument comes from what appears to have been a behind-the-scenes clash at the company over how to value some of its derivatives contracts. An accountant brought in by the company because of an earlier scandal was pushed to the sidelines on this issue, and the company’s outside auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, warned of a material weakness months before the government bailout.
The internal auditor resigned and is now in seclusion, according to a former colleague.
WTF? Seclusion? Since when do auditors go into seclusion? I thought only great authors did that. Has anyone bothered to check this guy’s bank account? Seems to me that $120,000,000,000 could buy a feller one heckuva lot of seclusion.
But we go on:
A.I.G. has declined to provide a detailed account of how it has used the Fed’s money.
Oh, really? An internal auditor who resigns, goes into seclusion, and a replacement who won’t provide details, when asked, on how the new loans are being used? Something smell a little strange here? Y’think?
Now, to be fair, “The company said it could not provide more information ahead of its quarterly report, expected next week, the first under new management.” Even so, one would think they would have these figures available on demand for those of us – American taxpayers – who are fronting them the cash. But let’s press on:
The Fed releases a weekly figure, most recently showing that $90 billion of the $123 billion available has been drawn down.
A.I.G. has outlined only broad categories: some is being used to shore up its securities-lending program, some to make good on its guaranteed investment contracts, some to pay for day-to-day operations and — of perhaps greatest interest to watchdogs — tens of billions of dollars to post collateral with other financial institutions, as required by A.I.G.’s many derivatives contracts.
No information has been supplied yet about who these counterparties are, how much collateral they have received or what additional tripwires may require even more collateral if the housing market continues to slide.
Now, to a financial dunderhead like myself, the phrase “what additional tripwires may require” sounds like trashtalk for, “GIMME MORE MONEY NOW, SUCKERS!”
And so it goes. If you read on, you’ll encounter a bewildering array of alarmingly high numbers that, as far as I can tell (admittedly, not far), really don’t add up. And then::
The swap contracts are of great interest because they are at the heart of the insurer’s near collapse and even A.I.G. does not know how much could be needed to support them.
“…even A.I.G. does not know how much could be needed to support them.” This doesn’t surprise me in the least.
But wait! There’s more:
When the expert tried to revise A.I.G.’s method for measuring its swaps, he said that Mr. Cassano told him, “I have deliberately excluded you from the valuation because I was concerned that you would pollute the process.”
Whoa.
I can’t help but think these loans and bailouts are nothing but turbo-charged financial suction pumps that are slurping up as much cash as the rubes – you and me – are prepared to leave lying around for the slurping.
The article ends:
“We may be better off in the long run letting the losses be realized and letting the people who took the risk bear the loss,” said Bill Bergman, senior equity analyst at the market research company Morningstar.
If he keeps saying things like that, Bill Bergman may have to join that “internal auditor” in seclusion. Sounds to me like there are a lot of people making out like bandits here who will not take kindly to that kind of talk.
If you had a chance to see the infomercial and then the Midnight Rally with Obama and Bill Clinton, then you saw what Democrats look like when they’re winning. It’s been a while since anyone but conservatives have been in this position and it’s nice to see. They are firing on all cylinders right now, making the case with style, looking very confident.
I’m always hesitant to allow myself to get too excited, but tonight I felt that glow of anticipation when you start to believe the bad guys might really be vanquished and better days might be ahead. It’s heady stuff.
Oh dear. It looks like he really might need a CPA and a tax break this year:
Move over Sanjaya and tell William Hung the news: Joe the Plumber is being pursued for a major record deal and could come out with a country album as early as Inauguration Day.
“Joe” – aka Samuel Wurzelbacher, a Holland, Ohio, pipe-and-toilet man – just signed with a Nashville public relations and management firm to handle interview requests and media appearances, as well create new career opportunities, including a shift out of the plumbing trade into stage and studio performances.
On Tuesday, Wurzelbacher joined country music artist-producer Aaron Tippin to form a new partnership that includes booking-management firm Bobby Roberts and publicity-management concern The Press Office to field the multiple media offers he’s received over the past few weeks.
Among the requests – a possible record deal with a major label, personal appearances and corporate sponsorships. A longtime country music fan, Wurzelbacher can sing and “knocks around on guitar” but is not an accomplished musician or songwriter, according to The Press Office’s Jim Della Croce.
Is this a great country or what?
How long before he ends up in rehab with a frappucino and a chihuahua in his hand?
Tina Brown’s new site seems to be featuring a lot of disaffected feminists who are leaving the Democratic party. Yesterday we had this former editor of Ms magazine extolling the virtues of Sara W. Palin.Today’s “goodbye to all that” essay is from someone named Wendy Button who was a speechwriter for John Edwards and as recently as a few months ago was writing speeches for Michelle Obama. Apparently, everything changed for her in August:
It got stronger during the Democratic National Convention when I counted the substantive mentions of poverty on one hand and a whole bunch of bad canned partisan lines against Senator John McCain. Some faith was lifted after Senator Hillary Clinton’s grace during a difficult hour. But that faith was dashed when I saw that someone had raided the Caligula set and planted the old columns at Invesco Field.
The final straw came the other week when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (a.k.a Joe the Plumber) asked a question about higher taxes for small businesses. Instead of celebrating his aspirations, they were mocked. He wasn’t “a real plumber,” and “They’re fighting for Joe the Hedge-Fund manager,” and the patronizing, “I’ve got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber.”
Having worked in politics, I know that absolutely none of this is on the level. This back and forth is posturing, a charade, and a political game. These lines are what I refer to as “hooker lines”—a sure thing to get applause and the press to scribble as if they’re reporting meaningful news.
I’m sorry, but none of this scans as truth to me. She was an Edwards staffer who then worked for Michelle, was briefly inspired by Clinton at the convention but was turned off by the anti-McCain rhetoric at the convention? And then, after watching Joe the Plumber call Obama a terrorist and a socialist, what really bothers her is that somebody then mocked him in return? C’mon.
She isn’t a PUMA. She comes from the Edwards camp. She’s mad because the Democrats aren’t talking about poverty. So she’s going to vote for the Republicans because she agrees with them on economics:
Joe the Plumber is right. This is the absolutely worst time to raise taxes on anyone: the rich, the middle class, the poor, small businesses and corporations.
Our economy is in the tank for many complicated reasons, especially because people don’t have enough money. So let them keep it. Let businesses keep it so they can create jobs and stay here and weather this storm. And yet, the Democratic ideology remains the same. Our approach to problems—big government solutions paid for by taxing the rich and big and smaller companies—is just as tired and out of date as trickle down economics. How about a novel approach that simply finds a sane way to stop the bleeding?
(How about magic?)
Then we hear a fairly standard rant about how Democrats and the press treated Clinton badly and are doing exactly the same thing to Sarah W. Palin:
Governor Palin and I don’t agree on a lot of things, mostly social issues. But I have grown to appreciate the Governor. I was one of those initial skeptics and would laugh at the pictures. Not anymore. When someone takes on a corrupt political machine and a sitting governor, that is not done by someone with a low I.Q. or a moral core made of tissue paper. When someone fights her way to get scholarships and work her way through college even in a jagged line, that shows determination and humility you can’t learn from reading Reinhold Niebuhr. When a mother brings her son with special needs onto the national stage with love, honesty, and pride, that gives hope to families like mine as my older brother lives with a mental disability
Ok. She’s come to like Palin. Whatever.
But what can we conclude about this bit of incoherence?
But thank God for election 2008. We can talk about the wardrobe and make-up even though most people don’t understand the details about Senator Obama’s plan with Iraq. When he says, “all combat troops,” he’s not talking about all troops—it leaves a residual force of as large as 55,000 indefinitely. That’s not ending the war; that’s half a war.
I was dead wrong about the surge and thought it would be a disaster. Senator John McCain led when many of us were ready to quit. Yet we march on as if nothing has changed, wedded to an old plan, and that too is a long way from the Democratic Party.
Is she for the war or against it? I honestly can’t tell.
It’s not that I don’t get that a lot of people are still torqued about the primary and have a lot of bad feelings on the feminist, working class front. These are not illegitimate gripes, even if I don’t share them. But it’s very weird for a liberal of any stripe, much less a political professional, to make this case on the basis of taxes and the Iraq war, no matter how disgruntled they might be with the Obama campaign. And all this seems to have come to her rather recently, for reasons that aren’t clear.
It’s nearly impossible for me to see what road takes you from being a John Edwards speechwriter talking about the plight of the poor and ending the war to supporting McCain and Palin who are running around calling Democrats Marxists and talking about victory in Iraq. And there is nothing in this somewhat incoherent essay that explains it.
Well, except maybe this:
Before I cast my vote, I will correct my party affiliation and change it to No Party or Independent. Then, in the spirit of election 2008, I’ll get a manicure, pedicure, and my hair done. Might as well look pretty when I am unemployed in a city swimming with “D’s.”
Whatever inspiration I had in Chapel Hill two years ago is gone. When people say how excited they are about this election, I can now say, “Maybe for you. But I lost my home.”
I suspect there’s going to be a very lucrative niche opening up for these Palin Democrats with lots of wingnut welfare to go around.
I haven’t done too much writing about Prop. 8 here, though I have at my other haunts. Over at Calitics we’ve devoted a substantial amount of time and resources to it, and we’ve raised over $50,000 at the Calitics ActBlue Page for Equality for All. I’ve been praiseworthy of the campaign at times, critical at others – I think their ads fail to put a face on who the discrimination would actually harm, and as such come off as vague and allow the theocons to distract and distort the issue (“they’ll teach your kids how to be gay!!!”) and drive the narrative. I’ve been happy that much of the progressive movement has come together to defend this attack on civil rights, and that even establishment figures like Maria Shriver and Dianne Feinstein have gone public for the cause (Barack Obama has allowed the campaign to use him in Web advertising, but there’s an argument to be made that he could do more).
But instead of an analytical post (the short answer is that every single volunteer is vital because this will be an extremely close vote), I’d like to get a little personal. Today is Write To Marry Day, where hundreds of bloggers are posting about Prop. 8 and their thoughts about gay marriage and civil rights. I’d like to add my own by talking about the wedding I attended a few months ago.
It was unusual only for the fact that it was extremely casual. There was morning coffee and some pastries and other food and drinks set up on picnic benches at a park in the hills behind Berkeley, and a large field where the wedding was held. When the announcement was given for the ceremony to begin, everybody kind of meandered over to the field and stood around in a circle. The “aisle” for the couple to walk down had to be created impromptu. Eventually that got sorted out. Other than that, the event had what you might expect – two people who loved one another making a commitment to spend their lives together. It was entirely unremarkable and indistinguishable from any other wedding where I’ve been invited. Except for one thing.
The ceremony was conducted by Assemblymember (soon to be State Senator) Mark Leno. He is notable for having authored the marriage equality law that passed through the California legislature – twice – only to be vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. (Just remember that the next time someone tells you he’s “practically a liberal.” He’s opposing Prop. 8, supposedly, but has gone completely silent on the issue.)
In brief remarks, Leno talked about how the issue was not made clear to him until the Massachusetts Supreme Court rendered their decision on the law. He quoted the text of the decision at length, particularly this portion:
The SJC ruling held that the Massachusetts constitution “forbids the creation of second-class citizens.” The state Attorney General’s office, which argued to the court that state law doesn’t allow gay couples to marry, “has failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marraige to same-sex couples,” Marshall wrote.
The creation of second-class citizens is really the nub of this, said Leno. By defining marriage in such a way, those who would seek to ban gay marriage tell those who wish to love one another how they can do it. But this is part of the common experience of the human condition – the desire to love another man or woman and profess a commitment to them. What is perverse – indeed, irrational and against human nature – is to defy that love and that commitment. The right to marry is a right to share in the common experience of man. It has served the nation and the world with tangible societal benefits and promotion of the family. It is a profoundly conservative virtue.
And this was a very (small-c) conservative, simple wedding, just two people – two men – and their friends and family, coming together to express their love and joy. This is what those who would pass Prop. 8 would snuff out. Indeed they are the radicals – the kind of people who would express that equality is not an American value. They have to rewrite the Declaration of Independence to fit their worldview:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…
It’s really as simple as that. I was thinking while attending this wedding that I would maybe write something about the feelings it engendered, the wonderful picture of basic civil rights being expressed. But it was totally unremarkable, which is why I waited so long. It was banal, even. It was just two people that love one another among the hundreds of millions and even billions on this planet. There was nothing that special about it.
Which is why it should not be singled out and rejected.
If you can, volunteer for No on 8 or donate to their cause. It’s the best investment in normalcy that you’ll ever make.
At this point, I’m just documenting the atrocities. Get a load of this creepy thing:
If you’re in California, and were planning to take the week-end off and just enjoy the fact that Obama is ahead by a gazillion points here, rethink it:
The religious right is calling Proposition 8 its “decisive last stand” — an “Armageddon”-like battle to pass a ballot measure that would “eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry.”
We couldn’t agree more. This fight for our fundamental rights will shape the future of the progressive movement for decades to come, both in California and across the country.This Saturday, several ultra-right-wing religious groups will be gathering 70,000 evangelicals together in San Diego at Qualcomm Stadium for “The Call” — a mega-church event that will mobilize thousands of out-of-state volunteers to get out the vote in Califonia. These religious extremists also want to pass Proposition 4 — the “parental notification” ballot measure that medical professionals and progressive organizations agree would endanger teen safety.Please watch this shocking promo video for “The Call” right now. This is what we’re up against. And we need to respond with a “call” of our own — a call to volunteer for the “No on 8” campaign and the “No on 4” campaign across California this weekend and on Election Day.We need to match them volunteer-for-volunteer. Will you answer our call by forwarding this web page link to your friends — and asking them to volunteer with you — before it’s too late?
At the “NO ON 8” page, please don’t forget to say the Courage Campaign sent you (by clicking on “Courage Campaign” in the Netroots Challenge drop-down menu).
There are shifts available several times a day this weekend and on election day. Volunteers will be asked to pass out literature, call voters and/or to wave signs at important locations. There is a way for everyone to help win this together.