We Shall / Must / Will Overcome

Hat tip and thanks to doubting thom for a thoughtful entry:

Judith Warner’s most recent New York Times column, “What It Felt Like to Be Equal.” The quotes Warner shares from gay people who were directly affected by the passage of Prop. 8, about feeling that gays are now perhaps the only group it is okay to publicly disdain and legally discriminate against, and how the otherwise historic election of Barack Obama can feel painfully hollow, capture exactly how I have been feeling since last Tuesday.

Warm hugs to Keith Olbermann again for his "Special Comment" on Countdown:



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doubting thom is here; Judith Warner is here

Logic That Can Not Be Denied

Simply The Truth:

This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

When it all comes down to it, it just can't get more clear than that. Of course, I still believe the best option was Hillary Rodham Clinton, but given the choices now, it's surely not McCain, raw political talent and an energizing, charismatic new face on the scene notwithstanding.

Source: NYT

September 11 Seven Years Later

In Memoriam



— Buddhist Heart Sutra —
by Imee Ooi

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Peace for All Sentient Creatures

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Related: Alternate Versions

Reality-check Must read: Roger Cohen "In the Seventh Year"

For Bush ruled over the whole nation and so sure was he of his righteousness that he did foster division until it raged like a plague. Each tribe sent pestilence on the other.

And in the seventh year after the fall, the dust and debris of the towers cleared. And it became plain at last what had been wrought — but not how the damage would be undone.

And Now the Press Begins Picking Apart Obama: No longer the shiny new object

Contains updated material:

As the iconic California pol, Willie Brown, wrote a couple of days ago: "The democrats are in trouble. Period."

His column was entitled "Palin floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee."

"Whenever you start having to explain things, you're on defense." He added that dems don't win elections while on the defensive. Since the brilliant pick of Palin, the dems have been on the defensive. Completely and totally. And totally screwing it up.

The media is bored with Obama.

Here's another reason why Obama is failing to connect as an online reader posted on the washington post politics chat with Dan Balz this week with regard to the race for the White House:

"New York: Dan, as someone who intends to vote for Obama, I'm constantly puzzled at how he seems flummoxed when answering questions he should clearly expect to be asked: about NAFTA, when life begins, and most recently the surge. He seems to be thinking out loud, as though he hasn't thought it through ahead of time. Maybe the campaigns folks just don't consider these burning issues? But it seems to me it goes to character and trust, which may matter more than issues. What's going on here?

Dan Balz: That's an interesting point. ...... Does his style of answering questions make him look less decisive than he really is?"

Duh. Yeah. Looks and sounds unsure, defensive, whiny, complaining (or as Cohen wrote today -- detached, disconnected, dispassionate, disinterested and thus reinforces the NOT READY meme.)

Mostly I keep hearing " those mean republicans aren't playing fair!!! boo hoo hoo! wah wah wah."

Every clip I have seen of Obama recently he sounds like a defensive distant clueless ineffectual John Kerry in 04 -- (sighing Gore in 2000, Dudley Dukakis in 88, Carter in 80) -- he's taken to whining and complaining about the unfair mean old republikkkans. Boo Hoo Hoo some more.

Total losing / loser tactics.

Plus Obama looks like he is sleep walking through this. As if all he needed to do was win the primary and the anointment would be complete. give me a break.

Tom Friedman puts it this way:

...[H]ere’s what I’ve been feeling for a while: Whoever slipped that Valium into Barack Obama’s coffee needs to be found and arrested by the Democrats because Obama has gone from cool to cold.  ...

I don’t know how long or high the “Sarah Palin bounce” will go, but I would take her very seriously as a politician. She may not know nuclear deterrence theory, but she can deliver a line. 

Sarah Palin is ... is connecting at a gut level. So does McCain — and, therefore, they don’t need to give their constituents many details.

This race has a long way to go. It is still Obama’s election to lose. But Obama got where he is today by defining himself as the agent of change and by defining change as the issue in this election. McCain, with Palin’s help, has once again not only made Obama’s experience an issue, but has now moved in on Obama’s strength and tried to define the G.O.P. ticket as the party of “change.”

How, you ask, can two people running with the exact same policies as the party that has been in power for eight years, claim to be the agents of “change?” That’s politics. There’s no shame. But what this has done is to make the word “change” as a campaign slogan meaningless. Obama will need to find another way to connect his ideas — clearly, crisply and passionately.

Because, while the pollsters tell us it is still really close, my own totally unscientific, seat of the pants poll tells me this: When you say Obama’s name today and ask people for their first impression — a quick, flash, gut, first impression — no single word or phrase or policy comes to mind. His opponents will fill that vacuum if he doesn’t. They already are.

Surprise. It's Not Over! Obama only won the primary, not the election (barely) and The democraps are not winning the national election anymore —again. If Obama does lose, there are some party heads that should roll: start with Dean, Pelosi, Reid.

Sarah Palin didn't have to prove she was "of the people."
She really is the people.

P.S. It's not Hillary Clinton's responsibility to win independents, other Hillary supporters, and white working class voters for Obama. That's his responsibility. And he's blowing it.

Hillary is doing the smart thing by NOT joining the hysterical hatefest against the talented and energetic Palin. After all, she knows exactly what being on the target end of that hatefest is like.

The media is bored with Obama. They need their "newness" fix. Obama's no longer the shiny new object that captured the A.D.H.D. stenographers' pool 20 months ago (yes, that's sarcasm, not intended for most of the print-only press). The "shiney new object" honor, especially as regards the cable news tweeties and their ilk, now goes to Sarah Palin (once they get past their snobbish boorish behavior; they'll likely never get over their sexism, however).

Here's more keen insight from Willie Brown (and bad news for the dems/Obama):

As for Palin herself, she is going to be very, very effective on the campaign trail, especially if McCain's people can figure out how to gently keep her from getting into confrontations with the press.

If she can answer questions like she handled herself at the convention, Palin will turn out to be the most interesting person in all of politics, and the press will treat her like they treated Obama when he was first discovered.

And remember, the Palin bandwagon needs to roll for only two months.

And as was easily predictable, Obama's adoring media is now turning the corner, turning on him, and will join together to throw him under the bus soon. Then wash their hands with a "Tsk tsk." Totally predictable.

Once again: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Updates: several columns on this very topic beginning to pop up:
And another blogger, Leah McElrath Renna, at the Huffington Post is in full-blown panic mode:

Most of us are out here watching, listening to and reading media that shows a campaign continually in responsive mode and not in charge of the message..."

Actually, I'd use the word "reactive" instead of "responsive."

Chris Cillizza's The Fix on WashingtonPost.com: Obama on Losing End of Personality Contest

WP's right-leaning Richard Cohen: Too Cool to Fight? Obama's moral commitment is being tested, and he doesn't seem to care.

Tom Friedman's NYT column is here.

Be sure to read those columns!

•••••••••••••••••••••••

Upon re-reading it, I think the full text of Willie Brown's thoughts are worth posting en toto:

The Democrats are in trouble. Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign.

Period.

Palin's speech to the GOP National Convention on Wednesday has set it up so that the Republicans are now on offense and Democrats are on defense. And we don't do well on defense.

Suddenly, Palin and John McCain are the mavericks and Barack Obama and Joe Biden are the status quo, in a year when you don't want to be seen as defending the status quo.

From taxes to oil drilling, Democrats are now going to have to start explaining their positions.

Whenever you start having to explain things, you're on defense.

I actually went back and watched Palin's speech a second time. I didn't go to sleep until 1:30 a.m. I had to make sure I got the lines right.

Her timing was exquisite. She didn't linger with applause, but instead launched into line after line of attack, slipping the knives in with every smile and joke.

And she delivered it like she was just BS-ing on the street with the meter maid.

She didn't have to prove she was "of the people." She really is the people.

There is one thing she should have done: announced when her 17-year-old daughter and the teenage father of the girl's unborn child are getting married and invited all of us to the wedding. It should be like Sunday at church.

As for Palin herself, she is going to be very, very effective on the campaign trail, especially if McCain's people can figure out how to gently keep her from getting into confrontations with the press.

If she can answer questions like she handled herself at the convention, Palin will turn out to be the most interesting person in all of politics, and the press will treat her like they treated Obama when he was first discovered.

And remember, the Palin bandwagon needs to roll for only two months.

Here's the transcript from the Washington Post Dan Balz chat. Here's the complete Willie Brown column in the San Francisco Chronicle; it includes a few thoughts on John and Cindy McCain, too.

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Florida Continues its Anti-Citizen, Anti-Democracy, Anti-Constitutional Immoralities

Florida Citizens Continue to Acquiesce to Their Republican Rulers

April 28, 2008

Election Day in Florida May Look Familiar

By DAMIEN CAVE MIAMI — The League of Women Voters in Florida and its 27 local groups have helped thousands of residents register to vote over the years.

But just over a week ago, the organization’s leaders said they would have to stop their current drive because the state’s top election official planned to enforce strict deadlines and fines of up to $1,000 for groups that lose voter registration forms or turn them in late.

“We’re an all-volunteer organization,” said Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, president of the League of Women Voters in Florida, which plans to sue. “It’s a matter of being able to protect the leagues from liability.”

Eight years after the debacle of “hanging chads,” Florida once again seems to be courting electoral trouble. A handful of laws have been passed since the 2000 presidential recount, with state officials saying they bring order to a chaotic system.

“Some say we err on the side of caution,” said Joe Pickens, a Republican from Palatka who served on the Florida House’s Ethics and Elections Committee in 2005 and 2006. “I would say that’s the place we should be.”

But Election Day may end up looking oddly familiar. According to independent elections experts at Pew’s Electionline.org and other organizations, it is now harder to vote here than in nearly every other state in the nation. Some critics predict that tens of thousands of potential voters will be kept off the rolls — many of them poor, black or Hispanic.

In many ways, the battle over the laws reflects the larger national debate over how to overhaul the election system after the 2000 recount. Congress tried to institute a uniform guide for voter registration, but the compromise legislation left many details to the states, and partisanship arose in the void. Republicans typically demanded high standards of accuracy to eliminate voter fraud, while Democrats focused on making voting as easy as possible.

Many states decided that disputes would be worked out case by case, without written rules. But more ambitious states, including Florida, responded with new policies or laws. By 2006, for example, at least 11 states had “no match, no vote” provisions, rejecting potential voters whose Social Security numbers or driver’s license numbers did not match state databases.

Civil rights groups challenged much of the new legislation in court, and they often won. But in Florida, many of the cases remain unresolved.

Three laws in particular are at issue, including a “no match, no vote” measure; the provision managing voter registration drives conducted by third parties, like the League of Women Voters; and a law that would keep a voter from correcting mistakes or omissions on a registration form in the final month before an election and would bar that person from having his or her vote counted.

Two recent federal rulings have gone in the state’s favor.

On March 25, a Federal District Court in Miami rejected a challenge to the provision on corrections and omissions.

An oversight can be as simple as failing to check what many Florida residents call the “crazy box.” It asks people to affirm: “I have not been adjudicated mentally incapacitated with respect to voting or, if I have, my competency has been restored.”

So far, about 3 percent of voter registrations collected by the Florida chapter of Acorn, a national organizing group, have lacked the required checkmarks.

In the second decision, on April 3, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, sent a case challenging the “no match, no vote” law back to a Federal District Court, reversing an earlier injunction without ruling whether the law was unconstitutional.

Other states, meanwhile, have been moving in the opposite direction. Now, 33 states allow voters to amend forms after their registration deadlines. In 2006, a judge in Washington State struck down a “no match, no vote” law, and at least six other states have abandoned similar provisions.

Election lawyers say Florida’s Republican-controlled government has introduced more restrictions on the voting process than other states since 2000 and has fought harder to keep them.

Critics say state officials are subtly trying to block new voters, many of whom tend to vote for Democrats, from participating.

“It’s really about politicians trying to game the system,” said Michael Slater, deputy director of Project Vote, a voting rights organization based in Arkansas. “They’ve done that by adding all these bureaucratic obstacles to voting, and then when people can’t jump over them, they blame the voter.”

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, a Republican, sidestepped specific questions about the state’s approach.

“We want to have as many people vote as want to vote that are legally registered to vote,” Mr. Crist said. He also offered to “do some campaigning to encourage people to register to vote.”

Some volunteers actually registering voters are not pleased. The Florida statute governing such groups is somewhat unusual. Besides Florida, only New Mexico assesses fines on them. The law is also a second try.

The first effort, in 2006, called for fines of up to $5,000 per form, but it was struck down in federal court after the League of Women Voters filed suit.

The state appealed but in the meantime passed an amended law, cutting the fines but keeping some original elements in place. A “standstill agreement” between the state and the plaintiffs kept the new law from being enforced, until Secretary of State Kurt S. Browning gave notice of his plans in court documents in late March. In a statement, his office said it was obligated to enforce the new law.

His office said it had not started assessing penalties. It has also acknowledged that the law is vague on whether the cap of $1,000 would apply to an entire organization, a chapter or individual volunteers.

Ms. Wheatley-Giliotti of the League of Women Voters said her group’s roughly 3,000 members could not risk paying the fines. The organization stopped helping voters register for the first time in 2006, before a federal judge struck down the original law that August.

Now, she said, the group must stop again because some local leagues have a budget of only $1,000.

Ms. Wheatley-Giliotti said: “I just believe it’s making it much more difficult for many sectors of the population to register. It’s groups like the League of Women Voters that take extra steps so that seniors, the poor, the underrepresented have an opportunity to register to vote conveniently.”

Christine Jordan Sexton contributed reporting from Tallahassee, Fla.

Online NYT article here.

Cult of Personality + American Sexism + Media Bias + Groupthink = ???

Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues.

Hate Springs Eternal

By PAUL KRUGMAN
OP-ED COLUMNIST
February 11, 2008

In 1956 Adlai Stevenson, running against Dwight Eisenhower, tried to make the political style of his opponent’s vice president, a man by the name of Richard Nixon, an issue. The nation, he warned, was in danger of becoming “a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.”

Krugman: Even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland: the land of slander and scare, the politics of hatred.

Most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration.

The quote comes from “Nixonland,” a soon-to-be-published political history of the years from 1964 to 1972 written by Rick Perlstein, the author of “Before the Storm.” As Mr. Perlstein shows, Stevenson warned in vain: during those years America did indeed become the land of slander and scare, of the politics of hatred.

And it still is. In fact, these days even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland.

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.

Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.

Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.

The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the “scandal” became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.

During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.

And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign — as adult children of presidential aspirants often do — asked, “doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.

I call it Clinton rules, but it’s a pattern that goes well beyond the Clintons. For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was held up as proof of his alleged character flaws.

For now, Clinton rules are working in Mr. Obama’s favor. But his supporters should not take comfort in that fact.

For one thing, Mrs. Clinton may yet be the nominee — and if Obama supporters care about anything beyond hero worship, they should want to see her win in November.

For another, if history is any guide, if Mr. Obama wins the nomination, he will quickly find himself being subjected to Clinton rules. Democrats always do.

But most of all, progressives should realize that Nixonland is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.

One of the most hopeful moments of this presidential campaign came last month, when a number of Jewish leaders signed a letter condemning the smear campaign claiming that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim. It’s a good guess that some of those leaders would prefer that Mr. Obama not become president; nonetheless, they understood that there are principles that matter more than short-term political advantage.

I’d like to see more moments like that, perhaps starting with strong assurances from both Democratic candidates that they respect their opponents and would support them in the general election.

Krugman could've also mentioned the phenomenon of GroupThink (Irving Janis), which also infected the Kennedy administration, and certainly every republican one since then. And don't forget the Republicans are still pining for the Cult of Personality and pure fantasy surrounding Ronald Reagan.

Krugman's online column here.

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Bob Herbert Agrees With Me!

It's Definitely (mostly, mainly, primarily) the Economy, Again, Dumkoffs!

Recently I wrote:

We need a new 'put america back to work' public-private initiative

Here's what I think we need with a new president starting on day one:

a new 'put america back to work' WPA type public-private initiative with a focus on including:

• repairing/updating/improving all aspects of the infrastructure; include job training and career-shift education which puts americans to work in good paying jobs (with benefits) created from public-private partnerships;

• a commitment to oil/gas-free energy independence/green technology/energy innovations (mostly avoid biofuels because it does more harm than good in the long run; see recent research/reports);

• a focus on fast-tracking science and technology education for public schools, community colleges, universities (includes job-training/ed for adults); create public private partnerships and feeder schools in urban, suburban, rural hubs -- those things focus on both items above.

Today Mr. Herbert wrote:

The essential question the candidates should be trying to answer — but that is not even being asked very often — is how to create good jobs in the 21st century. Thirty-seven million Americans are poor, and roughly 60 million others are near-poor. (These are people struggling to make it on incomes of $20,000 to $40,000 a year for a family of four.)

The middle class is hardly flourishing. In testimony before a House subcommittee last year, Harley Shaiken, a Berkeley professor who is an expert on labor and employment, remarked: “During a period of robust economic growth, record profits and the fastest sustained productivity increases since the 1950s, only a thin slice at the top of the economic heap is enjoying higher living standards.”

Now the country is faced with a possible recession and the likelihood of moving further backward rather than forward on employment.

“We’re building exit ramps from the middle class,” said Mr. Shaiken during an interview. “But what is the path to the middle class for most Americans now? We need to figure out how to resume building entrance ramps.”

The most direct route to the middle class has always been a good job. An obvious potential source of new jobs would be a broad campaign to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure — its roads, bridges, schools, levees, water treatment facilities and so forth.

Another area with big job creation potential is the absolutely vital quest to develop alternative sources of energy. That effort should carry the same high national priority that was accorded the Manhattan Project during World War II. I’d even call it Manhattan II.

There are moments in history that demand not just talent in a nation’s leadership, but greatness — men or women with the courage to dream bigger and the ability to convince others that those dreams can be realized.

He goes on to claim no presidential candidate has shown the required bold vision and leadership, but I have to disagree. Obama shows leadership qualities and Senator Clinton has shown a keen grasp of the dilemmas of the middle and working class and has consistently promoted her policies to rebuild the economy, stimulate green collar investments and jobs, and rebuild the infrastructure. She's not the beneficiary of the broadcast or print media lovefest. Shame on his colleagues (you know who you are). Shame on any voter who falls for hype over substance, fear-mongering and bullying over intellectual power, relevant experience and a history of political and moral commitment to families and workers.

Herbert barely mentions McCain or the republicans as part of this discussion: they will continue to decimate workers and the national infrastructure while enriching themselves and their oil/energy/overseas cronies and buddies.

Herbert may have missed the vision thing in the details of Clinton's policies -- not to mention the bloviating, Hillary haters, attackers, loudmouths and self-indulgent whiners getting so much air time, press and print space, including those at his own paper.

I'm just happy he's finally getting informed about the economic realities of working men, women, families in this nation and that he agrees with me about putting America back to work fixing and rebuilding our infrastructure. Roosevelt would have been proud!

Herbert's column is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/opinion/09herbert.html

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Krugman: Next President Must Have Two Key Attributes for Economic Success

It's the Economy ... and the Incompetency ... and jobs, and healthcare, and interest rates, and housing, and the war ...

From Krugman:

.....some highly respected economists are issuing dire warnings. There has been a lot of buzz about a new paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that compares the United States in recent years to other advanced countries that have experienced financial crises. They find that the U.S. profile resembles that of the “big five crises,” a list that includes, for example, Sweden’s 1991 crisis, which caused the unemployment rate to soar from 2 percent to 9 percent over a two-year period.

...by January the White House will have a new occupant. If the slump is still going on, which is likely, this will offer a chance to consider other, more effective measures.

We need a new 'put america back to work' public-private initiative

In particular, now would be a good time to think about the possibility of going beyond tax cuts and rebate checks, and stimulating the economy with some much-needed public investment — say, in repairing the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

The usual rap against public spending as a form of economic stimulus is that it takes too long to get going — that by the time the money starts flowing, the recession is already over. But if this turns out to be a prolonged slump, which seems likely, that won’t be a problem.

But we won’t get any innovative action to help the economy unless the next president has a couple of key attributes.

First, he or she has to be free of the ideological blinders that make the current administration and its allies fiercely oppose the idea that the government can do anything positive aside from cutting taxes.

Second, he or she has to be knowledgeable about and interested in economic policy. Presidents don’t have to be their own chief economists, but they do need to know enough to take the right advice.

Will we have that kind of president? Stay tuned.

Here's what I think we need with a new president starting on day one:

a new 'put america back to work' WPA type public-private initiative with a focus on including:

• repairing/updating/improving all aspects of the infrastructure; include job training and career-shift education which puts americans to work in good paying jobs (with benefits) created from public-private partnerships;

• a commitment to oil/gas-free energy independence/green technology/energy innovations (mostly avoid biofuels because it does more harm than good in the long run; see recent research/reports);

• a focus on fast-tracking science and technology education for public schools, community colleges, universities (includes job-training/ed for adults); create public private partnerships and feeder schools in urban, suburban, rural hubs -- those things focus on both items above.

Those are just the off-the-top-of-my-head ideas about what the current admin has failed to do in all its glorious incompetence and abysmal domestic failures and what the next president must be held accountable to do, in addition to healthcare coverages, repairing the damage of the Iraq War, fixing the failing Afghanistan War failures, etc.

and I think it's compatible w/ what Krugman is discussing in today's column.

Krugman's entire column: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/opinion/08krugman.html


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It's not because she's a woman ...

"Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am."

Two insightful must-reads: Judith Warner's blog entry "Like a Fish Needs a Donut" in the NYT and (referenced in Warner's blog entry) Robin Morgan's recent "Goodbye to All That (#2)" essay at the Women's Media Center. As Morgan concludes:

"Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am."

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Krugman: Only Clinton Achieves Universal Healthcare, Obama Won't

Universal Health Care: Only One Candidate's Plan Achieves It

(and it sure ain't one of the Republicans)

The New York Times's Economist and Columnist, Paul Krugman's analysis and bottom line: If Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, there is some chance that we’ll get universal health care in the next administration. If Obama gets the nomination, it just won’t happen.

...the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.

Obama's plan costs more than 80 percent as much as Clinton's and covers only about half of those 47 million currently uninsured

...the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700.

That doesn’t look like a trivial difference ... One plan achieves more or less universal coverage; the other, although [Obama's plan] costs more than 80 percent as much, covers only about half of those currently uninsured.

Krugman's complete explanation of his analysis is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/opinion/04krugman.html

NYTimes 08 Primary Endorsements: Clinton, McCain

Times Endorses Clinton, McCain in Primaries

Clinton is overall favorite

The editorial board touts Senator Clinton's "powerful intellect" and her genuine, needed ability to 'hit the ground running on day one' to solve the complex problems cause by the ineptness of George Bush (and the republicans).

Unlike the in-depth analysis of Clinton's strengths, what's interesting about the paper's endorsement of McCain is that more space is spent dismantling the other Republican candidates than on McCain, who wins their endorsement in the Republican primary mainly because he "promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe. With a record of working across the aisle to develop sound bipartisan legislation, he would offer a choice to a broader range of Americans than the rest of the Republican field."

We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president. The leading candidates have no plan for getting American troops out of Iraq. They are too wedded to discredited economic theories and unwilling even now to break with the legacy of President Bush. We disagree with them strongly on what makes a good Supreme Court justice.

As to why they're not endorsing the city's 'favorite son' (Giuliani):

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

Here is the entire Clinton endorsement and the reasoning behind it:

January 25, 2008
NYT EDITORIAL

Primary Choices: Hillary Clinton

This generally is the stage of a campaign when Democrats have to work hard to get excited about whichever candidate seems most likely to outlast an uninspiring pack. That is not remotely the case this year.

The early primaries produced two powerful main contenders: Hillary Clinton, the brilliant if at times harsh-sounding senator from New York; and Barack Obama, the incandescent if still undefined senator from Illinois. The remaining long shot, John Edwards, has enlivened the race with his own brand of raw populism.

As Democrats look ahead to the primaries in the biggest states on Feb. 5, The Times’s editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election.

We have enjoyed hearing Mr. Edwards’s fiery oratory, but we cannot support his candidacy. The former senator from North Carolina has repudiated so many of his earlier positions, so many of his Senate votes, that we’re not sure where he stands. We certainly don’t buy the notion that he can hold back the tide of globalization.

By choosing Mrs. Clinton, we are not denying Mr. Obama’s appeal or his gifts. The idea of the first African-American nominee of a major party also is exhilarating, and so is the prospect of the first woman nominee. “Firstness” is not a reason to choose. The times that false choice has been raised, more often by Mrs. Clinton, have tarnished the campaign.

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton would both help restore America’s global image, to which President Bush has done so much grievous harm. They are committed to changing America’s role in the world, not just its image. On the major issues, there is no real gulf separating the two. They promise an end to the war in Iraq, more equitable taxation, more effective government spending, more concern for social issues, a restoration of civil liberties and an end to the politics of division of George W. Bush and Karl Rove.

Mr. Obama has built an exciting campaign around the notion of change, but holds no monopoly on ideas that would repair the governing of America. Mrs. Clinton sometimes overstates the importance of résumé. Hearing her talk about the presidency, her policies and answers for America’s big problems, we are hugely impressed by the depth of her knowledge, by the force of her intellect and by the breadth of, yes, her experience.

It is unfair, especially after seven years of Mr. Bush’s inept leadership, but any Democrat will face tougher questioning about his or her fitness to be commander in chief. Mrs. Clinton has more than cleared that bar, using her years in the Senate well to immerse herself in national security issues, and has won the respect of world leaders and many in the American military. She would be a strong commander in chief.

Domestically, Mrs. Clinton has tackled complex policy issues, sometimes failing. She has shown a willingness to learn and change. Her current proposals on health insurance reflect a clear shift from her first, famously disastrous foray into the issue. She has learned that powerful interests cannot simply be left out of the meetings. She understands that all Americans must be covered — but must be allowed to choose their coverage, including keeping their current plans. Mr. Obama may also be capable of tackling such issues, but we have not yet seen it. Voters have to judge candidates not just on the promise they hold, but also on the here and now.

The sense of possibility, of a generational shift, rouses Mr. Obama’s audiences and not just through rhetorical flourishes. He shows voters that he understands how much they hunger for a break with the Bush years, for leadership and vision and true bipartisanship. We hunger for that, too. But we need more specifics to go with his amorphous promise of a new governing majority, a clearer sense of how he would govern.

The potential upside of a great Obama presidency is enticing, but this country faces huge problems, and will no doubt be facing more that we can’t foresee. The next president needs to start immediately on challenges that will require concrete solutions, resolve, and the ability to make government work. Mrs. Clinton is more qualified, right now, to be president.

We opposed President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and we disagree with Mrs. Clinton’s vote for the resolution on the use of force. That’s not the issue now; it is how the war will be ended. Mrs. Clinton seems not only more aware than Mr. Obama of the consequences of withdrawal, but is already thinking through the diplomatic and military steps that will be required to contain Iraq’s chaos after American troops leave.

On domestic policy, both candidates would turn the government onto roughly the same course — shifting resources to help low-income and middle-class Americans, and broadening health coverage dramatically. Mrs. Clinton also has good ideas about fixing the dysfunction in Mr. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education program.

Mr. Obama talks more about the damage Mr. Bush has done to civil liberties, the rule of law and the balance of powers. Mrs. Clinton is equally dedicated to those issues, and more prepared for the Herculean task of figuring out exactly where, how and how often the government’s powers have been misused — and what must now be done to set things right.

As strongly as we back her candidacy, we urge Mrs. Clinton to take the lead in changing the tone of the campaign. It is not good for the country, the Democratic Party or for Mrs. Clinton, who is often tagged as divisive, in part because of bitter feeling about her husband’s administration and the so-called permanent campaign. (Indeed, Bill Clinton’s overheated comments are feeding those resentments, and could do long-term damage to her candidacy if he continues this way.)

We know that she is capable of both uniting and leading. We saw her going town by town through New York in 2000, including places where Clinton-bashing was a popular sport. She won over skeptical voters and then delivered on her promises and handily won re-election in 2006.

Mrs. Clinton must now do the same job with a broad range of America’s voters. She will have to let Americans see her power to listen and lead, but she won’t be able to do it town by town.

When we endorsed Mrs. Clinton in 2006, we were certain she would continue to be a great senator, but since her higher ambitions were evident, we wondered if she could present herself as a leader to the nation.

Her ideas, her comeback in New Hampshire and strong showing in Nevada, her new openness to explaining herself and not just her programs, and her abiding, powerful intellect show she is fully capable of doing just that. She is the best choice for the Democratic Party as it tries to regain the White House.

Clinton endorsement here; McCain here.

Sunday's NYTimes Editorial Columns by Rich & Dowd: Bush & Reagan Bucket List Republicans Living In the Past & In Denial

Frank Rich's Sunday Column is entitled: Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead.

Never mind that the G.O.P. is running on empty, with no ideas beyond the incessant repetition of Reagan’s name. ....the Clintons are hardly bigots, and the Democratic candidates all have a history of fighting strenuously for inclusiveness. By contrast, the Romney victory in Michigan is another reminder of how Republicans aren’t even playing in the same multiracial [or economic] American sandbox.

George W. Bush has led his party to the brink of disaster and cost it a generation of young Americans

[Romney's] retro persona exemplifies much of the present Republican dilemma. It’s not just that the old Reagan coalition of social, economic and foreign-policy conservatives has fractured. A more indelible problem for the Republicans in 2008 is that their candidates are utterly segregated from reality as it is lived by the overwhelming majority of their fellow Americans. The G.O.P. presidential field’s lack of demographic diversity by age, gender, ethnicity or even wardrobe, let alone race, is simply the leading indicator of how out of touch its brand has become.

Among [the republicans], Mike Huckabee alone made affinity for economically struggling Americans his calling card. Unfortunately, Huckanomics is more snake oil. All federal taxes would be replaced by a national sales tax that despite its Orwellian name (the Fair Tax) would shift more of the burden to middle- and low-income Americans.

Exit polls find that among voters in Republican primaries, as many as half have turned against the president. David Frum, the onetime Bush speechwriter, laments in his provocative new book “Comeback” that by 2008 his former boss “had led his party to the brink of disaster” and cost it “a generation of young Americans.”

MoDo Goes After Shrub and His Feeble Supplications to the Dictators of the Middle East in her column: Red, White and Blue Tag Sale

Hillary Clinton was right when she said it was “pathetic” that President Bush had to beg the Saudis to drop the price of oil.

In Abu Dhabi, he marveled at the royal family’s plans to build a city based entirely upon renewable energy. “Amazing, isn’t it?” W. said.

You know you’re in trouble when your Middle East oil pump is greener than you are.

One cascading rationale he offered for invading Iraq was the benign domino theory, that bringing democracy to Iraq would sway the autocrats in the region to be less repressive.

But when W. visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt last week, he did not have the whip hand. He could not demand anything of the autocrats in the way of more rights for women and dissidents, much less get the Saudis to help on oil production. He needs their help in corralling Iran, which has been puffed up by the occupation of Iraq.

Dowd also mentioned a sign I'd love to see "Hanging on the skyline of New York is a sign reading: “U.S.A. Now a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Foreign Investors.”

Anyone who thinks a businessman with a 50s sensibility can solve the complex problems of our time is still living in Reagan-world. And we know that his policies are what set in motion the rich getting richer while widening the economic gap at a pace that Shrub Bush and Dick head-guy Cheney have only accelerated.

Bob Herbert's column reminds us of the hard economic facts via a recent Economomic Policy Institute report which states:

“The distribution of wages, income and wealth in the United States has become vastly more unequal over the last 30 years. In fact, this country has a more unequal distribution of income than any other advanced country.”

David Cay Johnston, took a look at income patterns in the U.S. over the past few decades in his new book, “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).”

From 1980 to 2005 the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.) But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during that period. The standard of living for the average family has improved not because incomes have grown, but because women have gone into the workplace in droves.

90 percent of the population missed out on the income gains during the sacredly touted 'economic expansion' of the Reagan-Bush Republican Eras

The peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973 — when the average income per taxpayer (adjusted for inflation) was $33,001. That is nearly $4,000 higher than the average in 2005.

It’s incredible but true: 90 percent of the population missed out on the income gains during that long period.

Mr. Johnston does not mince words: “The pattern here is clear. The rich are getting fabulously richer, the vast majority are somewhat worse off, and the bottom half — for all practical purposes, the poor — are being savaged by our current economic policies.”

.....

For ordinary Americans, jobs are the be-all and end-all. And an America awash in new jobs will require a political environment that respects and rewards work and aggressively pursues creative policies designed to radically expand employment.

Kevin Phillips, a former supporter of Reagan and his policies, also radically changed his mind as he has documented the rich getting far richer much faster while working families have drastically lost ground under the republicans since 1980.

As Rich and others note, the Republican candidates are looking longingly into the past -- almost 30 years past! But the economic reality of these past 30 years will likely continue to show that invoking Reagan to democrats and working Americans is rocky territory fraught with danger and filled with fairy-tales and lies.

Even our British allies are giddy with anticipation of an election change: Just one more year! Good riddance to George W Bush.

Rich's column is already available here; Dowd's is here.

Technorati Tags:
Dubai, economic justice, economic stress, economy, Jobs

Boycott Dubai: Justice for Alex (and other children)

This must be the model for the legal system and executive powers that Darth Cheney aspires to. No wonder they moved Halliburton's corporate headquarters there. But if you're foreign born -- you better not expect justice. Wow. Strikingly similar to the Police States of America.

Overview:

Alex says he was rushing to meet his father for dinner when he bumped into an acquaintance, a 17-year-old native-born student at the American school, who said he and his cousin could drop Alex off at home.

There were, in fact, three Emirati men in the car, including a pair of former convicts ages 35 and 18, according to Alex. He says they drove him past his house and into a dark patch of desert, between a row of new villas and a power plant, took away his cellphone, threatened him with a knife and a club, and told him they would kill his family if he ever reported them.

Then they stripped off his pants and one by one sodomized him in the back seat of the car. They dumped Alex across from one of Dubai’s luxury hotel towers.

Alex and his family were about to learn that despite Dubai’s status as the Arab world’s paragon of modernity and wealth, and its well-earned reputation for protecting foreign investors, its criminal legal system remains a perilous gantlet when it comes to homosexuality and protection of foreigners.

The authorities not only discouraged Alex from pressing charges, he, his family and French diplomats say; they raised the possibility of charging him with criminal homosexual activity, and neglected for weeks to inform him or his parents that one of his attackers had tested H.I.V. positive while in prison four years earlier.

“They tried to smother this story,” Alex said by phone from Switzerland, where he fled a month into his 10th-grade school year, fearing a jail term in Dubai if charged with homosexual activity. “Dubai, they say we build the highest towers, they have the best hotels. But all the news, they hide it. They don’t want the world to know that Dubai still lives in the Middle Ages.”

Alex and his parents say they chose to go public with his case in the hope that it would press the authorities to prosecute the men.

United Arab Emirates law does not recognize rape of males, only a crime called “forced homosexuality.” The two adult men charged with sexually assaulting Alex have pleaded not guilty, although sperm from all three were found in Alex. The two adults appeared in court on Wednesday and were appointed a lawyer. They face trial before a three-judge panel on Nov. 7. The third, a minor, will be tried in juvenile court. Legal experts here say that men convicted of sexually assaulting other men usually serve sentences ranging from a few months to two years.

BoycottDubai.com

Full story at NYT

Technorati Tags: Dubai, Boycott Dubai, BoycottDubai.com, Justice for Alex, child rape, male rape

Frank Rich: As the Iraqis Stand Down, We’ll Stand Up

As the Iraqis Stand Down, We’ll Stand Up

The New Iraq Narrative

by Frank Rich

OPED Columnist

NYTimes, Sunday, September 9, 2007

It will be all 9/11 all the time this week, as the White House yet again synchronizes its drumbeating for the Iraq war with the anniversary of an attack that had nothing to do with Iraq. Ignore that fog and focus instead on another date whose anniversary passed yesterday without notice: Sept. 8, 2002. What happened on that Sunday five years ago is the Rosetta Stone for the administration's latest scam.

That was the morning when the Bush White House officially rolled out its fraudulent case for the war. The four horsemen of the apocalypse — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice — were dispatched en masse to the Washington talk shows, where they eagerly pointed to a front-page New York Times article amplifying subsequently debunked administration claims that Saddam had sought to buy aluminum tubes meant for nuclear weapons. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condoleezza Rice on CNN, introducing a sales pitch concocted by a White House speechwriter.

What followed was an epic propaganda onslaught of distorted intelligence, fake news, credulous and erroneous reporting by bona fide journalists, presidential playacting and Congressional fecklessness. Much of it had been plotted that summer of 2002 by the then-secret White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a small task force of administration brass charged with the Iraq con job.

Today the spirit of WHIG lives. In the stay-the-surge propaganda offensive that crests with this week's Congressional testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, history is repeating itself in almost every particular. Even the specter of imminent "nuclear holocaust" has been rebooted in President Bush's arsenal of rhetorical scare tactics.

The new WHIG is a 24/7 Pentagon information "war room" conceived in the last throes of the Rumsfeld regime and run by a former ABC News producer. White House "facts" about the surge's triumph are turning up unsubstantiated in newspapers and on TV. Instead of being bombarded with dire cherry-picked intelligence about W.M.D., this time we're being serenaded with feel-good cherry-picked statistics offering hope. Once again the fix is in. Mr. Bush's pretense that he has been waiting for the Petraeus-Crocker report before setting his policy is as bogus as his U.N. charade before the war. And once again a narrowly Democratic Senate lacks the votes to stop him.

As always with this White House, telegenic artificial realities are paramount. Exhibit A, of course, was last weekend's precisely timed "surprise" presidential junket: Mr. Bush took the measure of success "on the ground here in Anbar" (as he put it) without ever leaving a heavily fortified American base.

A more elaborate example of administration Disneyland can be found in those bubbly Baghdad markets visited by John McCain and other dignitaries whenever the cameras roll. Last week The Washington Post discovered that at least one of them, the Dora market, is a Potemkin village, open only a few hours a day and produced by $2,500 grants (a k a bribes) bestowed on the shopkeepers. "This is General Petraeus's baby," Staff Sgt. Josh Campbell told The Post. "Personally, I think it's a false impression." Another U.S. officer said that even shops that "sell dust" or merely "intend to sell goods" are included in the Pentagon's count of the market's reopened businesses.

One Baghdad visitor left unimpressed was Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Chicago, who dined with her delegation in Mr. Crocker's Green Zone residence last month while General Petraeus delivered his spiel. "He's spending an awful lot of time wining and dining members of Congress," she told me last week. Though the menu included that native specialty lobster tortellini, the real bill of fare, Ms. Schakowsky said, was a rigid set of talking points: "Anbar," "bottom up," "decrease in violence" and "success."

In this new White House narrative, victory has been downsized to a successful antiterrorist alliance between Sunni tribal leaders and the American military in Anbar, a single province containing less than 5 percent of Iraq's population. In truth, the surge had little to do with this development, which was already being trumpeted by Mr. Bush in his January prime-time speech announcing the surge.

Even if you believe that it's a good idea to bond with former Saddamists who may have American blood on their hands, the chances of this "bottom up" model replicating itself are slim. Anbar's population is almost exclusively Sunni. Much of the rest of Iraq is consumed by the Sunni-Shiite and Shiite-Shiite civil wars that are M.I.A. in White House talking points.

The "decrease in violence" fable is even more insidious. Though both General Petraeus and a White House fact sheet have recently boasted of a 75 percent decline in sectarian attacks, this number turns out to be as cooked as those tallies of Saddam's weapons sites once peddled by WHIG. As The Washington Post reported on Thursday, it excludes Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence. The Government Accountability Office, which rejected that fuzzy math, found overall violence unchanged using the methodology practiced by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

No doubt General Petraeus, like Dick Cheney before him, will say that his own data is "pretty well confirmed" by classified intelligence that can't be divulged without endangering national security. Meanwhile, the White House will ruthlessly undermine any reality-based information that contradicts its propaganda, much as it dismissed the accurate W.M.D. findings of the United Nations weapon experts Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei before the war. General Petraeus intervened to soften last month's harsh National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (.pdf). Last week the administration and its ideological surrogates were tireless in trashing the nonpartisan G.A.O. report card that found the Iraqi government flunking most of its benchmarks.

Those benchmarks, the war's dead- enders now say, are obsolete anyway. But what about the president's own benchmarks? Remember "as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down"? General Petraeus was once in charge of the Iraqi Army's training and proclaimed it "on track and increasing in capacity" three years ago. On Thursday, an independent commission convened by the Republican John Warner and populated by retired military officers and police chiefs reported that Iraqi forces can take charge no sooner than 12 to 18 months from now, and that the corrupt Iraqi police force has to be rebuilt from scratch. Let us not forget, either, Mr. Bush's former top-down benchmarks for measuring success: "an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself." On that scorecard, he's batting 0 for 3.

What's surprising is not that this White House makes stuff up, but that even after all the journalistic embarrassments in the run-up to the war its fictions can still infiltrate the real news. After Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, two Brookings Institution scholars, wrote a New York Times Op-Ed article in July spreading glad tidings of falling civilian fatality rates, they were widely damned for trying to pass themselves off as tough war critics (both had supported the war and the surge) and for not mentioning that their fact-finding visit to Iraq was largely dictated by a Department of Defense itinerary.

But this has not impeded them from posing as quasi-journalistic independent observers elsewhere ever since, whether on CNN, CBS, Fox or in these pages, identifying themselves as experts rather than Pentagon junketeers. Unlike Armstrong Williams, the talking head and columnist who clandestinely received big government bucks to "regularly comment" on No Child Left Behind, they received no cash. But why pay for what you can get free? Two weeks ago Mr. O'Hanlon popped up on The Washington Post op-ed page, again pushing rosy Iraq scenarios, including an upbeat prognosis for economic reconstruction, even though the G.A.O. found that little of the $10 billion earmarked for reconstruction is likely to be spent.

Anchoring the "CBS Evening News" from Iraq last week, Katie Couric seemed to be drinking the same Kool-Aid (or eating the same lobster tortellini) as Mr. O'Hanlon. As "a snapshot of what's going right," she cited Falluja, a bombed-out city with 80 percent unemployment, and she repeatedly spoke of American victories against "Al Qaeda." Channeling the president's bait-and-switch, she never differentiated between that local group he calls "Al Qaeda in Iraq" and the Qaeda that attacked America on 9/11. Al Qaeda in Iraq, which didn't even exist on 9/11, may represent as little as 2 to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency, according to a new investigation in The Washington Monthly by Andrew Tilghman, a former Iraq correspondent for Stars and Stripes.

Next to such "real" news from CBS, the "fake" news at the network's corporate sibling Comedy Central was, not for the first time, more trustworthy. Rob Riggle, a "Daily Show" correspondent who also serves in the Marine Reserve, invited American troops in Iraq to speak candidly about the Iraqi Parliament's vacation.

When the line separating spin from reality is so effectively blurred, the White House's propaganda mission has once more been accomplished. No wonder President Bush is cocky again. Stopping in Sydney for the economic summit after last weekend's photo op in Iraq, he reportedly told Australia's deputy prime minister that "we're kicking ass." This war has now gone on so long that perhaps he has forgotten the price our troops paid the last time he taunted our adversaries to bring it on, some four years and 3,500 American military fatalities ago.

Technorati Tags:
talk shows, Couric, Rice, propaganda, Daily Show

George Will Thinks You and Your Children Are Too Stupid to Deserve Prosperity and Success

Anyone pay attention to Mr. Ivory Tower Pedantic George Will on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos today? Not that Will ever writes or says anything of much consequence, but today he nakedly revealed one of the true fundamental beliefs of the conservative, elite, republican right: If you're not rich, it's because you're too stupid and therefore you don't deserve to be economically secure or prosperous. At least half of all Americans and their children are 'below average intelligence' according to Will and therefore ... you get what you deserve. Tsk tsk you stupid people. Hands washed. As Georgie porgie revealed, the repubs and privileged elite rich folks like George are just so over your tired selves.

The video isn't up yet, but here are the responses so far to his comments during the Roundtable portion, which included progressive Economist and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich (new book is $ Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life) and Matt Bai of the NY Times.

Where does George live? This economy stinks! In Illinois, rural Illinois for that matter, the economy is so bad. I wr for a social services agency that works with developmentallydisabled. I love my work but let's see if George or any one in the Congress either state or federal level would work for $26000 a year. Oh by the wa I have a bachelor's degree and working on a Masters. I would love to see them try and make a rent, car payment, utilities, and groceries, let alone try to go back to school on tha kind of a wage. That is the norm out here. Where does George think the economy is stable ? The work we do is sooo under paid and so badly needed. I don't have health insurance either. So I think it was a slap in the face for Tony Snow to say what he makes, I feel badly for him andfamily but at least they have healh insurance. Many out here in Rural Illinois don't. I think that is what is one of the things wrong with out country. There is no middle class, there s either the wealthy like Mr. Snow, the Bushes, Congressmen, etc., then there are the working poor who are workig hard to make their bills and not able to save or barely pay the bills. I wonder if they would like to have to work 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet? CJ Illinois
Posted by:
cmsj91

I did [have] respect for George Will until today! The economy is in good shape for those (according to Snow) that make more than $168K a year! I work as a substitute school teacher because my retirement income isn't enought to support me. "No child left behind" only means to pass kids to the next grade no matter what they know. When I see child after child in the 8th grade, ready to make the next step into high school and can't read or solve simple math equations we are in deep, deep trouble as a nation. Not only do parents need to get involved with their kids, politicians and businesses as well. We ALL have to take a stake in helping these kids see how important education really is to them personally and to our nation.
Posted by:
Retired77

All I know is that when the Republicans came in to power I had reached "lower middle class" status. That was a welcome change from struggling to make my bills week-to-week with no more than $300 in the bank. Since they have been "in charge", I find myself sinking backward. My sister (developmentally disabled with muscular dystrophy and receives Medicare/Medicaid) receives $13,440 a year in disability and I (with health insurance where I have to pay half) earn $24,000, before taxes, a year. Between high property taxes, property insurance, health insurance, and auto insurance in Florida, I just don't see where Tony Snow is having that hard of a time. By the way, isn't this awesome economy how Hugo Chavez was able to rise to power in Venezuela? This country is sowing the seeds for another "Venezuela" to happen. Sound good?
Posted by:
mtaylor84

I hope you have George Will on video from today talking about how most americans and their children are below average intelligence and thus only the gifted and entitled rich should become even richer. He epitomizes the conservative elite view: "we got ours, to hell with anyone else. If you're not rich, it's because you and your children are too stupid (based on our irrelevant elite IQ tests by the way").Dems should use that video clip to show the reality of what the republican 'conservative' party and their elite toadies like Will (Cheney, Bush, Thompson, McCain and all their ilk) really believe: They don't give a flying flip about working people or poor people or average Americans (except as how they can manipulate their base hysteria and emotions and get their uninformed votes).What a guy George. A true believer in only the elite should rule because everyone else is too supid to understand reality. Not that George would know the reality of working people if it bit him in the backside.
Posted by:
rayagogo

I respect George about as much as I do Hair-al-Doh at this point. He lost all of my respect for him when he took a jab at RON PAUL at the end of their interview, by saying "you're not going to win" to Ron with a smug look on his face. He is about as snob based as George Bush in my eyes now. No brag. Just fact.
Posted by:
Rude Awakening Again

I found the comments by Tony Snow about the difficulty of supporting his family on just 168,000 a year very upsetting. Talk about two americas maybe it's time to listen to John Edwards.
Posted by:
cindoo96

George Will is obviously and consistently concerned with profit and lower taxes and productivity and unconcerned with the suffering of the American people. He is a conservative to promote the interests of the wealthy as all conservatives are.
Posted by:
Joan15136

how big is the risk of subprime defaults and falling real estate prices. factor in the millions of jobs lost through immagration enforcment and tens of thousands of bussiness going under. is the banking industry safe? what if we had a run on bank of america, could it survive?
Posted by:
juriscurious

Tony Snow had to quit his job of which he makes $168K and get full health insurance and your guest can understand why he had to resign - Help, we average Americans don't have a chance if your guests can understand that.
Posted by:
wifl07

Georgie 'Let Them Eat Cake' Boy spouted the Bush/Repugneocon line: the numbers we tell you are great, therefore the economy is great, therefore end of story. No worries for the rich. So why should he (or the republicans) care one peep about anyone else. He predicts the economy is not an issue in the 2008 election.

As Matt Bai pointed out, the admin (once again) showed their tone-deafness and tin-ear (and disdain) for working and middle class Americans when Tony Snow complained that even on the best health care plan in America making $168,000 year, he was losing money.

Robert Reich predicts the economy is an issue and that we are headed into a recession. Stay tuned.

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Technorati Tags:
George Will, conservative values