Carly Fiorina on The Huffington Post

David Quigg: Dear Conservatives: Break Some Liberal Hearts. Vote Obama.

2008-11-03T14:50:48Z

No group in America would have more trouble adjusting to an Obama presidency than the Bush Liberals.

With the president's approval rating so deep in the tank, you might question whether there really is such a thing as a Bush Liberal. Let me explain.

This isn't about ideology or policy. This is about mindset -- a Bush mindset, a with-us-or-against-us mindset. These are folks whose version of the politics of hope is to hope that Barack Obama didn't really mean what he said in his 2004 Democratic convention speech, didn't really mean what he wrote in his books, and doesn't really mean all that he's preached during this grueling campaign about the need for healing, unity, bipartisanship, cooperation, and mutual respect. These Bush Liberals have fumed through eight long years of Bush-Cheney.

They. Want. Payback.

They want payback and they're simply not going to get it. Not with an Obama presidency.

Go ahead. Break their hearts. Vote for Obama on Tuesday.

If you want a glimpse of whose hearts exactly you'll be breaking, read through some of the comments that people posted online back in January when Obama told the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board that Ronald Reagan "changed the trajectory of America" by rallying voters who'd rejected the "excesses of the 1960s and 1970s" and had decided "government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating."

Here's one of the online comments Obama's remarks triggered:

"I've been trying to tell people that Obama is way too much like Reagan for my comfort level. His supporters do not see this at all. I wouldn't even mind if I felt Obama really had the potential to realign American politics. But unlike Reagan, Obama is just trying to build an electoral coalition based on hope and optimism, without also using every opportunity to educate people about why conservatives and Republicans are the problem. In Obama's world, partisanship is the problem. He is way off base."

Now, that quote only goes so far. I'm not trying to peddle nonsense here. While there are an eye-popping array of people from the Reagan White House who have endorsed Obama, I'm not trying to trick anyone into believing that a vote for Obama is a vote for a third Reagan term. Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, makes plain the areas in which he thinks Reagan's policies left many Americans worse off.

So if you're the type of conservative who thinks the lesson of Reagan is that trickle-down economics is a cure-all for every woe at every moment in American history, you shouldn't vote for Obama. He's not your guy. Never will be.

But you should be giving Obama a good, close look if you're the type of conservative who thinks the lesson of Reagan is that the U.S. government must deliver value to taxpayers and foster, as Obama put it, "that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship" that had gone missing during the Carter administration. Because those observations Obama made about Reagan back in January were not some unintended gaffe during his talk with that editorial board. He'd covered the same basic territory back in 2006 when he published The Audacity of Hope. He wrote there's a "good deal of truth" to Reagan's "central insight ... that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie."

Such words, obviously, are not what you want to read if you're a Bush Liberal, a with-us-or-against-us liberal. Specifically, it's not what you want to read if you're that blog commenter I quoted above who thinks Democratic politics should be about seizing "every opportunity to educate people about why conservatives and Republicans are the problem."

Confession time. There's some Bush Liberal in me. Going way back. Supposedly, I spent part of my Watergate-era toddlerhood stomping around my neighborhood, chanting "Put him behind bars!" about Nixon. During high school and college, I tossed around the word "fascist" with a shameful disregard for its real meaning or history.

Two things changed me.

1) As you'll see if you are ever bored enough to read my HuffPost bio, I went into a life-changing political hibernation when I became a newspaper reporter. It's not a job you can do honorably while clinging to your ideological biases. I cared deeply about doing the job honorably. My political biases just fell away. I came to prize candor above all else. For a reporter who cares about accuracy, sources who spin are basically useless; honest sources are priceless. The source I came to respect most happened to be a Republican. Now that I've quit journalism and had my political awareness shocked back to life by the incompetence and lawlessness of the Bush-Cheney years, I can see just how much my old Republican source and I differ in our political views. But he's running for reelection to statewide office right now and I just voted for him. Again.

2) Barack Obama's message has changed me even more. It's one thing for me to look past ideology and vote for a former source because he demonstrated his integrity to me -- one-on-one, repeatedly, without fail. It's quite another thing to seek out conservative ideas and open myself to the possibility that they might have something useful to teach me. But that's something I do now. Because Obama's words have persuaded me that my kids' futures will be brightest if we can stop glaring at each other across ideological divides. It hasn't hurt, either, that I read Team of Rivals this spring and learned all about the dream-team cabinet Lincoln assembled from the political foes he beat out for the presidency.

There are flashes when I see so clearly how much I've changed. One such flash came Sunday when my phone lit up with an e-mail from a good friend. She'd forwarded something titled "Fair Warning," a satirical letter to America's red states, threatening a blue-state secession if "you manage to steal this election too." There's stuff like this: "We get Harvard. You get Ole Miss. We get 85% of venture capitalists. You get Alabama."

Now, the old-old me would have found "Fair Warning" hilarious. The post-journalism, Bush/Cheney-loathing, pre-Obama me would have taken some grim, vengeful comfort in passages such as "you ... will have to cope with 88% of obese Americans (and their projected healthcare costs)."

Suddenly, though, I'm the jerk who's become so allergic to words like those that I sit in my car in a supermarket parking lot, tapping out an instant response to my poor, unsuspecting friend. As politely as I can manage, I write that "this seems like an unhelpful moment to be quite so condescending." I go on to be all preachy about how we shouldn't look down our noses at Ole Miss. I cite a public-radio piece I heard about how the univeristy has transcended the ugly reputation it earned during the civil rights movement. I write about our "shared American-ness" and add "Obama's campaign grows out of the insight that we're stuck with each other and might as well try to make the most of it."

Who is this person who's taken over my body and commandeered my phone to send that e-mail? And why am I so much happier being him than I was being a Bush Liberal, a with-us-or-against-us liberal?

This is not unique to me. Not by a long shot. Many more people are looking toward the future than the past. That's no easy thing. Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Obama's "rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking." Yes, the Bush car wreck is spectacular. Dazzling in its carnage. Magnetic to our eyes. We're looking. Not staring. Looking. Because we're looking beyond it, too. Far beyond. As Noonan added, "(Obama's) victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief."

This is what this moment offers. Conservatives -- true conservatives, who've watched Bush sully conservatism's name badly -- need to decide whether they want to help make this "fresh start" happen.

Sarah Palin should decide this for you. If you look at Sarah Palin and see a cure for Bush's non-conservative spending binge, non-conservative war of choice in Iraq, non-conservative dreams of sprinkling magic democracy dust all around the world, there's only one choice for you Tuesday. If you look at Sarah Palin and see the best possible future of your party, there's only one choice on Tuesday: Vote for McCain.

But if you see the future in Romney or Fiorina or Jindal or Whitman or Pawlenty or Petraeus or Condi Rice, you've got some serious thinking to do. Because this ticket is not your party's varsity squad. This is your JV. Palin is pure JV. McCain, whatever he once was, proved with his reckless, unvetted pick of Palin that he, too, is JV.

This is not a JV moment in American history. A JV administration will make things worse. Surely, you know deep down -- both in your brain and in your gut -- that this is true. We'll be right back here in four years with an angrier electorate even more desperate for change than it is today.

Conservatives wouldn't get to handpick the Democratic change agent who finally sweeps the JV team from the White House. Maybe that change agent would be Obama again. More likely, it would be someone who convinces Americans that Obama and all his pretty talk of hope and bipartisanship amounted to a naive recipe for defeat. Me, I'm betting the 2012 change agent would be a Bush Liberal.

So you can have your bipartisan, collaborative, team-of-rivals administration now. Or you can watch a with-us-or-against-us, winner-take-all, it's-payback-time president take the oath of office in 2013.

If it sounds like I'm trying to scare you, I am. But I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't believe it. It scares me, too.

We don't need a Bush Liberal in the White House any more than we need a third Bush term. We don't need payback. We don't need big pendulum swings in our politics. On issue after issue, we need to return to the sane center of American politics. We need durable progress, the progress that comes from building a broad coalition for change. Obama offers the best chance for durable progress in many years -- probably the best chance in my lifetime.

Obama has promised to give Americans the tools for unprecedented civic involvement. Real conservatives need to decide how much faith they have in the power of their own ideas. They need to decide whether unprecedented civic engagement sounds scary or whether it sounds like an unprecedented chance to win lifelong converts and forge a fresh, new conservative majority.

At base, conservatives need to decide how invested they are in America and in conservatism. You need to decide whether -- ideologically speaking -- you're building a business you can pass on to your kids and grandkids or whether you're a huckster out to make a quick, fly-by-night buck.

If you're a fly-by-night huckster, your choice is clear: McCain-Palin.

I can't for the life of me figure out what the McCain-Palin mandate would be. That neither of them has a foreign-sounding name? That neither one of them "pals around with terrorists"? That neither one of them has ever been falsely rumored to be a Muslim? That neither of them (despite their non-conservative pander to buy up hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgages) has been smeared as a "socialist"? That Palin's extremist pastor got less news coverage than Obama's ex-pastor? This is perfect Rove-style, fly-by-night hucksterism: a meaningless temporary coalition held together with fear, bigotry, greed, and ignorance.

So we get malignantly out-of-context claims that Obama wants to bankrupt the coal industry. We get socialist bribes to voters during the same rallies that McCain and Palin smear Obama as a "socialist" who wants to be "redistributionist-in-chief." I think all this "redistribution" talk is, fundamentally, a smokescreen to keep conservatives from seeing how much they have in common with Obama's worldview. Obama spoke the seemingly toxic phrase "redistributive change" in passing back in 2001 while criticizing the 1960s civil rights movement for relying too much on an activist Supreme Court to improve the lives of African Americans. Sounds sort of conservative, doesn't it?

But it's hard to hear Obama's substance over the dim-witted din.

America deserves better. Conservatives deserve better. Conservatives deserve a presidential candidate who won't flee from deregulation when it becomes politically dicey. Conservatives deserve a presidential candidate who will stand up against the headwind of the mortgage crisis and explain that the market is doing what it does best: punishing the foolish and the careless and sending their assets down and down and down until someone prudent and sensible can purchase them and bring renewal. Conservatives deserve a presidential candidate who will argue that a $700 billion bailout is about the only thing that can keep financiers from learning the ruthless lesson the market is teaching. Instead, conservatives have McCain. Which is to say that conservatives have nobody.

The conservative thinker Andrew Sullivan wrote this today in a long, moving piece summarizing his endorsement of Obama:

"His fiscal policies are too liberal for me - I don't believe in raising taxes, I believe in cutting entitlements for the middle classes as the way to fiscal balance. I don't believe in 'progressive taxation', I support a flat tax. I don't want to give unions any more power. I'm sure there will be moments when a Democratic Congress will make me wince. But I also understand that money has to come from somewhere, and it will not come in any meaningful measure from freezing pork or the other transparent gimmicks advertized in advance by McCain. McCain is not serious on spending. But he is deadly serious in not touching taxes. So, on the core question of debt, on bringing America back to fiscal reason, Obama is still better than McCain."

Sullivan has also posted his top 10 reasons why conservatives should vote for Obama. Click here to consider them.

If you want to experience a sharp contrast between huckster conservatism and the sort of conservatism you can bequeath to your grandchildren, read William Kristol's empty-headed, disingenuous column in today's New York Times and then read this Sullivan piece.

Reclaim your movement. Start fresh. Collaborate with an Obama presidency when its proposals are sound. Raise hell when the proposals aren't prudent. Make America think. Trust in your ideas. If Obama succeeds in moving us past longstanding impasses, be there to recruit women whose votes are freed from a one-dimensional defense of abortion rights, gays who are freed from worrying they'll be barred from visiting the love of their life in the hospital, hard-working immigrants freed from being used as a perennial political pinata.

Build an ideological legacy you can leave to your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. But first, reject the huckster conservatism on this year's ballot. Vote for Obama. Then start fresh.

Just don't expect the Bush Liberals to thank you anytime soon. Or ever.

Leo W. Gerard: Paint McCain a Red-Baiter

2008-10-17T09:45:12Z

In a perverse way, the media painted Republicans perfectly when it selected red for their states. Reporters would never have guessed when they did it that the red party's candidate would engage in red-baiting. But there was John McCain repeatedly doing it in the debate Wednesday night, trying to convert Barack Obama into a terrifying "spread-the-wealth-around" commie. And earlier this month, the Republican's brother, Joe "McCarthy" McCain, called two Democratic-leaning Virginia counties "Communist Country."

When it comes to spreading assets around, however, the royal red Republicans, led by King "I-am-a-capitalist-really" George, take the Triple Crown. Their upside down communism works like this: the middle class pays for the tax breaks awarded the nation's rich and for the financial recklessness of Wall Street's ultra-wealthy.

In the Republican world, in the view of John McCain and George W. Bush, it never, ever works the other way. A curse, they would say, on anyone who would dare suggest that the rich should be taxed so that government could "trickle down" a portion of their extraordinary wealth to benefit the majority. They believe in "free markets," that is, allowing financial markets to run unrestrained and unregulated, or as some have put it recently -- amok. They believe government interferes in markets and therefore should be shrunken and impotent. They believe that when an elite few accumulate wealth in that system, some of it naturally will eventually "trickle down" into the empty porridge bowls of the nation's vast unworthy masses.

A dreadful thing happened on the way to the fiscal crash, though. That philosophy failed. The "small government" Bush and Republican Congress increased spending, thus replacing the budget surplus bequeathed them with deficits. And not just any deficits -- the largest known to man -- $455 billion this year, edging out the $413 billion record debt Bush set in 2004.
The rich won't be paying for that. No, Bush gave them a tax break, and McCain swears he'll make that break for the wealthy permanent. The middle class, and their children and grandchildren will be making payments on that debt -- which, by the way, was caused in part by the revenue loss from Bush's tax break for the rich. That's spreading the wealth around -- from the pockets of middle class to trust funds of the rich.

Over the past eight years, middle class Americans have watched with shock and awe as corrupt and incompetent CEOs left their failing corporations with golden parachutes -- like McCain's top financial advisor Carly Fiorina, who exited Hewlett-Packard with $45 million in 2005 when the board dismissed her as CEO following the company's stock dropping 50 percent and her furloughing 20,000 workers.

Now those same middle class Americans are incredulous that Bush -- who had McCain's support 90 percent of the time over the past eight years -- is taking $700 billion of their tax dollars to nationalize banks. Their tax dollars will be used to bail out the Wall Street financiers who wouldn't cut the middle class a break when they were late on mortgage payments, the speculators whose uninhibited risk-taking caused financial institutions to fail, lending to freeze, stocks to swoon.

Deregulation of the financial industry allowed banks and other sorts of financial institutions to merge and become "too big to fail" and engage in risky purchases without sufficient supporting capital. McCain, who until recently bragged about being "Mr. Deregulation," endorsed this suspension of rules. Its chief champion served as his campaign co-chairman - former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm successfully pressed for repeal of the depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which was designed to prevent financial institutions from becoming too big to fail, and for passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that deregulated those now infamous credit default swaps that took down insurer AIG, costing taxpayers another $85 billion.

Gramm left the senate in 2002 for an executive position with the Swiss investment bank, UBS, the stock for which, by the way, has plummeted right along with that of American banks.
Gramm still advises McCain, though he's no longer campaign co-chair. He had to resign that position after he called the United States a nation of whiners during an interview in which he also denied the seriousness of the financial crisis. Here's what McCain's financial mentor said, "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession." Sure, when the coins of the middle class are flowing up into your pockets, Mr. Gramm, it doesn't feel like a recession at all. Spreading the wealth around - from the middle class to the wealthy Gramms and multi-millionaire McCains.

Really, Joe "McCarthy" McCain was right when he called the Virginia counties of Arlington and Alexandria Communist Country. John McCain owns a condo in Arlington, and that's where he located his campaign's national headquarters. They're communist all right, McCain Republican-communist, under which middle class earnings are spread to the rich.

In the debate Wednesday night, McCain accused Barack Obama of conducting class warfare because the Democrat wants to end Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy and instead cut the taxes of the middle class -- 95 percent of American families. What Obama proposes isn't warfare; it's fairness. Class warfare is what the Republicans have done to the middle class over the past eight years, and what McCain pledges to continue. It's a war the rich now are winning. That's what Obama wants to change.

Carly Fiorina Returns To Flackery After Being 'Disappeared'

2008-10-08T10:32:18Z

What do I spy with my little eye, on the teevee split screen? Why it's disgraced Hewlett-Packard CEO - slash - Golden Parachutist Carly Fiorina, making a return to McCain flackery, a position she enjoyed until it became necessary to "disappear" her, to McCain's overall detriment, as he then had to rely heavily on the P.R. exploits of imperious, long-necked Sith Lady Nancy Pfotenhauer and Plaything Of The Women Of Cable News Tucker Bounds.

But now she's back, providing Fox News with the only segment of non-Bill Ayers content of the evening, by talking up McCain's plan to help homeowners in need by coordinating a complicated bit of policy choreography between the Treasury Department, Fannie Mae, and Freddy Mac.

It's a little surprising to hear Fiorina suggesting that this complex management task is something that McCain should be in charge of, since just a few weeks ago, Fiorina was saying "I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation." I guess the deprogramming worked!

Alan Schram: Credit Crisis: What Should We Do?

2008-10-06T19:19:32Z

The credit crisis that began in 2007 and triggered the current turmoil is unique in its ferocity, especially because so many large companies are experiencing unprecedented credit and liquidity problems. This all started with steep declines in home prices that decimated the value of mortgage collateral held by many banks and financial institutions. The abstruse complexity of those asset-backed securities held as collateral made it impossible to judge the strength of balance sheets. When investors realized balance sheets are unknowable, they started selling and many were forced to sell because they could no longer borrow to hold their positions.

Now everyone is deleveraging at once, and volatility has increased dramatically. We may not see anything like this in a very long time, perhaps in our life time.

Reflecting on the dramatic developments of the last few months, we note the landscape has changed significantly. Consider: during the third quarter alone, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nationalized, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, insurance giant and Dow component AIG (one of the most important financial companies in the world) failed and was essentially taken over by the US government, major banks Washington Mutual and Wachovia collapsed, and Merrill Lynch was forced into the arms of a more solid bank. Investment banks no longer exist in the form they did before, as the two survivors Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley elected to become bank holding companies rather than investment banks, in exchange for deposits (this change has meaningful ramifications, among which are much smaller asset base and reduced future profitability, as well as increased regulatory oversight). And these are only the major companies. Scores of smaller financial institutions were swallowed whole by this storm, and even money market funds now need guarantees from Washington as part of a bailout package the size of the GDP of the Netherlands.

What brought us to this point? Low interest rates and easy money fueled greed and a speculative run up. That was aided and abetted by leverage and complex financial instruments that magnified leverage. Everyone is guilty of greed, not just Wall Street but also the home buyers who wanted more home than they could afford, and over-paid and over-borrowed to get it.

The confluence of those factors led banks to insolvency and everyone else to a loss of confidence. Loss of confidence leads to credit being halted. As British Prime Minister William Gladstone observed, "when panic awakes, credit sleeps". And credit is the life blood of any modern economy.

So what do we do now? Mathematician Carl Jacobi used to recommend thinking problems backwards, saying "invert, always invert". I would therefore like to focus on what we should NOT be doing:

• Do not open the spigot to infuse more liquidity. This is not a liquidity crisis but a solvency crisis precipitated by leverage. Banks are failing because they are insolvent. Large financial institutions collapsed because of irresponsible lending, shoddy risk management practices and an untenable business model that lasted for a long time but was recently exposed as disastrous. Liquidity alone will not solve this fundamental problem.

• Don't ban short selling. Price discovery is an important feature of free markets. Without short sellers the markets will not be as efficient and will not be as credible. The effort to ban short sellers is a desperate attempt to deflect attention from the real culprits. It does not go to the root of the problem but deals with the symptoms. Companies are not weak because of short sellers. Short sellers pick those companies because they are weak.

• Don't change accounting rules. Mark to model is by definition a rosy colored approach. We need to recognize our problems so that we can solve them. The proposal to suspend mark to market accounting reminds me of the 19th Century congressman from Indiana who wanted Congress to pass a law defining the value of Pi as 3.0 so kids in Indiana have an easier time memorizing it. Sweeping the trouble under the carpet will not help. It is never a good idea to ignore the truth, and reality isn't that bad that we have to hide from it.

• Don't inflate the Dollar by printing money. This is a short term fix with massive and painful long term consequences, and it does not serve the interests of the American people to have a weak currency.

The markets will do what they always do, which is find a new equilibrium point. The aggressive action by the Federal government will build confidence back up. Of course we do not know when that will happen. Headlines are likely to remain unpleasant for a while. But one of the great things about this country is that we have coping mechanisms and we deal with our problems. This storm will pass. Remember that markets typically bottom when pessimism is at new highs.

Alan Schram is the Managing Partner of Wellcap Partners, a Los Angeles based investment partnership.

Suzanne Braun Levine: Having it All

2008-10-01T18:07:15Z

Bella Abzug - the shrewd, hard-hitting, passionate and idealistic legislative genius who led the women's movement and represented New York in Congress - once remarked that we would only have true gender equality when an incompetent woman could go as far as an incompetent man. That milestone appears to have been achieved with the nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President. Which is not to say that Palin couldn't become competent, but Bella, who understood and believed in government so profoundly, would be horrified at how little expertise Palin brings to the table right now. Even behind the reportedly clear glasses she wears to play down her beauty-queen credential and enhance her gravitas and even if she has been able to cram enough facts into her head to not embarrass herself during the debate, she can't disguise her inexperience. This is not an anti-woman statement; it is a pro-national leadership statement. Running the country is not a learn-as-you-go job.

It has been argued by her defenders that Palin - the Hockey Mom - can do it all and that any suggestions that she can't are sexist. Parenting is very demanding - just ask Joe Biden, who was mightily torn by the needs of his newly motherless children and his career. (In fact, Gwen Ifill might get some revealing responses to a version of that question.) We, who know what sexism is because we helped define it before we began working to defeat it, can tell you that Having It All has been one of the crucibles of the struggle for equality. When the term began to circulate in the 1970s many women felt oppressed by the supposed message that in order to be "new women" they had to have high power careers, raise multiple children - and, as Jane O'Reilly once wrote, be "multi-orgasmic til dawn." As the conversation went on, women modified that message and began to reassure each other that "you can have it all - just not all at once." Until we have reliable and universal child care and special needs options and until we offer all teenagers advice besides the "abstinence only" approach Palin subscribes to, a mother in her circumstances would have a hard enough time getting to work every day, let alone being a heartbeat away from leading a family of nations she has never even traveled through.

Speaking of the free world - and that red phone that can ring at three in the morning: If the argument is that should she have to answer, she will have serious advisers to turn to, that seems to me a highly sexist assumption: she won't bother her pretty little head about world crises and will do as she is told. It might be worse, though, if she didn't defer to cooler heads. "The difference between a pit bull and a mom," she has said, "is lipstick." Does being pugnacious and defensive - and an enthusiastic hunter by helicopter - prepare one for the judgment calls and diplomatic subtleties required of the defender of the free world?

McCain knows enough about government to know that it takes more than adrenaline - or testosterone for that matter - to respond to threats of war. He obviously chose Palin primarily because she is a woman. Again, this is not an anti-Palin observation; it is an anti-sexist point. It is cynical to nominate someone just because she is a woman on the assumption that because she is a woman other women will vote for her. Even women who do not share any of her beliefs. That is just an updated version of the argument against women's suffrage that there was no point in granting women the vote because they would just cast their ballot the way their husbands told them to.

How, I wonder, can women executives like Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, who put in the time, who worked through countless professional and personal challenges, who learned how the world works and succeeded because they were considered really good at what they did - how can women who know what building a career in a still-sexist world is like - say she is ready? Only if they have so internalized the sexism they claim has been defeated that they think little of their own accomplishments and even less of the kind of leadership women have to offer.

McCain Repeating Keating Era Mistakes, Regulator Warns

2008-10-01T01:00:42Z

As the stock market recovers from its biggest single-day drop since the crash of 1987, a former federal regulator who had a front-row view of John McCain's role in the Savings and Loan scandal says he is repeating some of the same mistakes.

William Black -- a deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation during the "Keating Five" scandal that nearly ended McCain's political career -- says the Arizona Republican's chief errors at the time were underestimating the importance of regulation and relying too heavily on slanted advice from captains of industry.

"In the S&L crisis, he took his advice from the worst [kind of] criminal. Charles Keating is the person he went to for his policy advice," Black said. "Now, he certainly is getting advice from Phil Gramm, Carly Fiorina, Rick Davis -- the whole group of economic and top political advisers are lobbyist types. He just doesn't seem to get it, ever, that the advice is going to favor their clients. Even if they just stop being lobbyists, you can't just turn that off instantly. It's their mind state that develops. ... The biggest lesson is that, when you deregulate and de-supervise, you create an environment where control fraud emerges. You hyper-inflate bubbles; you get criminalization."

Though McCain's latest TV ads tout the senator's sporadic calls for more government regulation, Black notes with interest that McCain bragged recently that he was "fundamentally a deregulator." Black, who is now an associate professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, also said that the deregulation that McCain was until recently proud to have championed effectively took corporate cops off the beat. "Nobody calls the Houston police department and says 'I think there a problem at Enron,'" he remarked.

Black, who has long been critical of McCain's role in the Keating affair, also viewed McCain's Tuesday announcement of his support for increased FDIC insurance rates as something of a sham, calling it "just one of his many contradictions" on economic matters.

In 1991, McCain railed against raising the FDIC insurance limit from $40,000 to its current $100,000 level. "The perversity of Federal deposit insurance is exemplified by the taxpayer bailout of the savings and loan industry," McCain said, while omitting his own role in the scandal that actually precipitated the S&L crisis.

"I think it is generally acknowledged that the failure of the savings and loan industry, to a large degree, can be directly attributed to the unwarranted expansion of deposit insurance," McCain continued. "Basic coverage was increased from $40,000 to $100,000. No longer was deposit insurance for the small depositor. It became the safety blanket for large, sophisticated depositors and freewheeling bankers."

Now, as McCain echoes Barack Obama's call to raise the FDIC insurance level from $100,000 to $250,000, Black believes the idea that FDIC insurance rates ever caused the S&L crisis can finally be put to rest as being "complete bunk."

Yet, despite being a withering McCain critic, Black isn't completely sold on Obama, either. While he notes with some satisfaction that the Illinois Democrat "did at least try to do some stuff on the regulation of subprime [mortgages] a couple of years ago, he wasn't on key committees." Overall, on financial regulatory matters, Black says Obama is "really somewhat untested. I'm not sure exactly what he would do." But Black notes that the "experienced" candidate is the one most likely to be tagged with responsibility for the current mess. "McCain purports to be on the committee that dealt with everything. [Meanwhile], he did nothing on subprime mortgages for years."

Andy Ostroy: Wall Street Crisis Gives Preview of McCain Under Pressure

2008-09-24T15:24:47Z

Last week was not a good week for Sen. John McCain. It began on Monday, amid a 500+ point stock market drop and news of Lehman Brothers' and Merrill Lynch's bankruptcies, when the curmudgeonly 72-year-old Republican presidential nominee incredibly declared that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." "

Exactly one week later, on NBC's "Today" show, McCain said, "We are in the most serious crisis since World War II."

What happened in-between was the McCain camp's realization that, in a time of great national crisis, their candidate demonstrated a glaring and embarrassing lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation, and an inexcusable disconnect with the financial pain and suffering of Mr. and Mrs. Average American (an interesting side note is the Newsweek report issued Monday that the McCains own a total of 13 cars--two of which are foreign--while "the elitist" Sen. Barack Obama owns just one...a Ford hybrid).

The meltdown on Wall Street last week was not the only one. We got a glimpse of "President McCain" under fire, and man, it wasn't pretty. What came into question was McCain's temperament, judgement and resolve, and what effect he could or would have on the American people in times of crisis. In his first real test, he failed miserably. In various press conferences and campaign speeches, he came off testy, agitated and confused. He was quick to point fingers and assign blame, first calling for the baseless firing of SEC Chairman Chris Cox, and then in another angry, befuddled moment saying the head of the "FEC" (Federal Election Commission) should be canned. Hey Gramps, why stop there? Let's also dump the head of the EEC (European Economic Community), the CEC (Council for Exceptional Children) and the OEC (Oregon Environmental Council). I hate to say it, but are we starting to see what it means to be a 72-year-old politician in the line of fire? Is this a scary foreshadowing of things to come should McCain win in November and become the oldest president in U.S. history? I'm sorry, but I want my president lucid.

The last thing a U.S. president should do when tragedy or crisis strikes is to play the blame game. It does nothing to solve the problem, it heightens the tension and fans the flames, fails to reassure and calm a worried public, and is anything but presidential. And that's exactly what we got from "President McCain."

Additionally, there was the endless barrage of lies and deception coming from the GOP hopeful. His repeated attempts to attribute Wall Street's mess to Obama was counter-productive and disingenuous. Mind you, this is the same Obama who's been accused by McCain of being unfit for office because he's got little Washington experience, yet who's apparently been around D.C. long enough to be responsible for single-handedly causing the financial crisis.

Poor McCain. When he's not putting his own foot in his mouth he's forced to ingest the smelly appendages of others...like his former disgraced economic surrogates Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. Gramm came under fire months ago for accusing Americans of "whining" about the "mental recession" they've been imagining in their overreacting heads. Then last week Fiorina, the former embattled Hewlett-Packard CEO, informed the media that her boss wasn't qualified to run a major U.S. corporation like HP. His choice of teammates certainly doesn't demonstrate the kind of sound judgment we'd expect from someone who could be assembling a presidential cabinet in just a few short months.

McCain's words and actions last week were those of a panicked, desperate warrior who's recklessly spraying his last rounds of ammo in every direction hoping he'll take out a bunch of enemy fighters and somehow find himself the victor. It was, and continues to be, painful to watch. His body tenses stiffly, his neck drops into his shoulders like a turtle, he snarls and completely loses his humor. He becomes the temperamental John McCain that, to many, is legendary in Washington, even among his Republican peers.

John McCain is an angry man, and we got to see that last week. It was also evident the prior week during what was his toughest interview to-date, which came from the fiery ladies of ABC's The View. The tag-team of Barbara Walters and Joy Behar had the crusty candidate on the ropes several times, and he appeared literally seconds away from snapping.

Now in this same week, Obama appeared very presidential. He was a calming, assuring presence in a sea of economic madness. He was poised, confident and never lost his cool. And while McCain's been getting his advice from controversial buffoons like Gramm and Fiorina, Obama's surrounded himself with highly-respected financial gurus like former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. He's a brilliant strategist who thinks the issues through and has an appreciation for the details and nuances of each.

To be sure, America needs a president who provides leadership, inspiration and a steady hand under pressure. America does not need another cocky, arrogant, petulant, impulsive, derisive, insecure, shoot-first-ask-questions-later president with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove.

The Real News: McCain's Straight Mess Express

2008-09-23T12:17:22Z

September 22 - From his lobbyists, to the economy and foreign policy, McCain's Straight Talk Express is off the rails. The Real News Network's Pepe Escobar examines the contradictions and inconsistencies within the McCain campaign.

McCain recently announced that "the crisis on Wall Street started in the washing culture of lobbying and influence peddling," which is an interesting statement for a candidate whose list of advisers hosts a range of paid lobbyists. The names on the line-up include Wayne Berman, a lobbyist for Chevron and Haas Oil, Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard (who has admitted that she doesn't believe McCain could run a company), and Randy Scheunemann, a paid lobbyist for the country of Georgia.

The shaky foundations of the McCain platform continue to quiver as McCain appears to be flip-flopping from one position to the next on a variety of issues. Be it his response to last week's catastrophic economic meltdown, or his stance on meeting with other world leaders such as the President of Spain. In addition, his basic knowledge of current issues may be called into question when he makes such rudimentary mistakes as calling for the resignation of the President of the FEC, when he was actually attempting to state that the President of the SEC should resign.

In early April, McCain voiced that he "would like (Zapatero) to visit the US". However, his foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, has emphasized in the past that McCain would not be engaging in any meetings with the Spanish leader. The debatable competency of his international knowledge was revealed in a recent interview with a Miami radio station. When McCain was asked if he would agree to meet with Spain's President, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, he responded with a discombobulated answer about his stance on working with Latin American leaders.

The Real News journalist, Pepe Escobar, coins the phrase the "McCain mess express" in his commentary on the Republican Candidate, to illustrate the contentious position of the campaign. He examines how McCain's plaguing hindrances, such as contradictory statements and lacking knowledge, may be taking this campaign on the wild ride of a runaway freight train.

Watch more stories from The Real News Network.

Tina Fey Mocks Charge That Palin Skit Was Sexist

2008-09-22T21:40:39Z

I would never be so presumptuous as to put words in the mouth of Tina Fey - after all, the words that come out win clutches of Emmys! But if this isn't specifically a response to McCain flack Carly Fiorina, and her glitteringly inane contention that Fey's imitation of Sarah Palin was "sexist"...well, let's just say that I prefer to think that it is. And that's enough.

[WATCH.]

BILLY BUSH: The McCain campaign...I guess they thought it sexist? They responded...kind of the whole thing was...

TINA FEY: I saw one lady trying to form a thought that it was sexist on the news, but she didn't really get it together. Probably because she was a lady and she was dumb. [pause] Wait. Is that sexist?

McCain Defends Fiorina's Golden Parachute

2008-09-22T11:30:58Z

This weekend, John McCain defended unhelpful surrogate Carly Fiorina's generous severance package from Hewlett Packard:

"I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects," McCain told "The Today Show's" Meredith Vieira when she pressed him on the matter in light of McCain's recent accusations of greed on Wall Street.

"I know that she was a very successful businesswoman. Started out as a part-time secretary and made her way to the top of the corporate ladder as one of the biggest CEOs in the United States of America," McCain said after noting that he was unaware of the specifics of her compensation package.

Fiorina received $21 million in severance pay when she was fired as CEO of Hewlett Packard in 2005. She received an additional $21 million when Hewlett Packard's board bought out her company stock options and pension benefits. Her compensation package sparked a lawsuit from shareholders.

McCain admitted, however, that he was not familiar with the details of Fiorina's payout:

McCAIN: I don't think so. ... Because I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects. I don't know the details of her compensation package. But she's one of many advisers that I have.

Q: But she did get a $45 million dollar golden parachute after being fired while 20,000 of her employees were laid off.

McCAIN: I have many of the people, but I do not know the details of what happened.

McCain has vowed to end "multimillion dollar payouts to CEO's who have broken the public trust."

Watch:

Fiorina Abruptly Cancels GOP Rally Appearance

2008-09-21T11:49:33Z

Earlier this week, after McCain economic adviser Carly Fiorina bluntly declared that neither Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) nor Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin were capable of running a major corporation, McCain campaign officials told CNN that Fiorina would "disappear" because McCain was "furious" at her comments. Though the official said "disappear" meant that she "would be off TV for a while," Fiorina's appearance at a Republican rally in Florida was abruptly canceled on Friday.

Paul Jenkins: The Women in McCain's Life

2008-09-20T12:09:01Z

In 10 days Sarah Palin's standing has crashed an awesome 24 points, with a clear majority now having a negative opinion of the Alaska Governor. This kind of free fall is more reminiscent of, say, Tom Cruise's cratering popularity after jumping up and down on Oprah Winfrey's couch and yelling at Brooke Shields; or perhaps Michael Jackson's after his child molestation trial. It certainly is not what you would look for in a vice-presidential running mate, someone steady, reliable and whom voters are, at worst, completely indifferent to (perhaps Joe Biden.)

This is what happens when you pick a "fresh face" who becomes instantly best known for being an even bigger liar than the head of the ticket. It may be that her inexperience, inarticulateness and defensiveness are not deal-breakers for a people who voted for George W. Bush twice. But the out-and-out lying and the whiff of corruption that accompanies it, that is probably too much.

Palin was supposed to save the Republican ticket in two principal ways: rallying the Christian right, and drawing disgruntled Democratic and unaffiliated women towards the GOP. It may be that she succeeded in the former goal, although it is a measure of John McCain's desperation that just a few weeks before the general election he is still trying to rally the right-wing core of his party in places like Indiana and North Carolina.

As far as making the ticket more attractive to women, the Palin pick has had the reverse effect, boldly underlining McCain's patronizing attitudes. By now, 75% of voters view the pick as "political," seeing right through the GOP's sad ploy to try to ride Hillary Clinton's coattails; only 17% say she was chosen because she is "qualified." This matters enormously because the corollary to such a political move is that a more qualified choice could have been made. Now, assuming it had to be a woman, clearly the pickings are slim in a party whose congressional delegation is made up of over 90% of middle-aged and older white men. There are only eight women who are GOP senators or governors, but seven of them are better qualified than Palin, the governor of Alaska. Unfortunately for McCain, all of these women are pro-choice with the exception of Palin and Elizabeth Dole, who is even older than McCain. And by McCain's calculation, it was better to pick an utterly unqualified anti-choice running mate than a qualified pro-choice one. Country first, right?

In general, the women in McCain's political life are few and far between, and after this week even fewer. Carly Fiorina, who nearly ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground, has been banished from her job as chief economic advisor to McCain after confirming what we all know: neither he nor Palin are remotely qualified to run the US government. Meg Whitman, a successful entrepreneur, has all but disappeared from the McCain campaign, perhaps stunned that her first choice for president, Mitt Romney, wasn't picked as the GOP running mate.

There are so few Republican women, even fewer willing to come to McCain's rescue, and yet fewer with any kind of credibility that the campaign recently had to resort to Jane Swift, a former unelected governor of Massachusetts, to spearhead the "attacking Palin is sexist" strategy that has backfired so badly. Besides being the first Governor to give birth in office, Swift is best known for being forced out of the GOP gubernatorial primary by Romney and because "when the demands of [child-rearing and governing...] both increase substantially, something has to give." So much for the successful juggle.

McCain's newest supporter among women is Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, whose claim to fame outside of Bergdorf-Goodman is that she is a former Clintonista who now supports the Republican candidate because, she says, he is for "the rednecks" and Obama is not. McCain sure knows how to pick 'em. We probably won't be hearing much from Lady de Rothschild anymore.

This leaves us with Cindy and Meghan McCain, a thin-skinned, entitled, rich mother-daughter team that hardly pays homage to working women anywhere. It is a measure of McCain's wife's sheltered existence that she believes her recent appearance on The View (!) was like getting "her bones picked clean." You would think this would pale in comparison to being publicly called a "c***" and a "trollop" by her husband, but maybe she is more used to the latter. As for her daughter, she is keeping busy pulling strings for Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt (you won't know who they are unless you read Star magazine) to visit Iraq; she knows this is critically important because, in her own words, "no one knows what war is like other than my family. Period."

What exactly McCain and Palin think they can do for American women remains a mystery. Clearly not all women are pro-choice, and not all pro-choice women vote singularly on the issue (one recent survey listed ten other issues that women found more important than abortion.) Nonetheless, a ticket that is the most anti-choice in recent memory is not a good start, even symbolically, considering over half of women voters believe abortion should be legal. How extreme is the ticket on this issue? Palin would have a young girl who has been raped pay for the rape kit and force her by law to keep the child. On issues on which there is the biggest gender gap (those which are disproportionately more important to women than to men), the McCain/Palin positions are dismal. The GOP's environment platform is best summarized by the frighteningly stupid (even for Republicans) "drill baby drill" mantra that now rises every time energy is mentioned, especially by Palin, who has not met an oil patch she doesn't love. Next is health care, to which McCain wants to apply the same principles that have guided his approach to banking and financial markets: now that is something to really look forward to considering how successful that's been. On the fuzzy concept of "moral issues," the McCain/Palin campaign of the past couple of weeks has clearly shown this is not a sure winner for them either, since the blunt lying can hardly be ranked up there as a moral value. Of course, the main issue for most voters currently is the economy. In this case, a majority of men and women are now in agreement that McCain can do nothing for them, since he believes that the economy is fundamentally strong, which is exactly what it is not.

It has taken a couple of weeks for it to sink in, but the Palin launch has failed miserably: she has gone from being unknown to being known for her incompetence, her lack of experience, and her dishonesty. The opportunity to define her as the corruption-fighting warrior-mom that she is not has evaporated forever, or at least for the few weeks that remain until the election. From being McCain's savior, she has become his downfall, crushing any remaining crumbs of reputation McCain may have had for good, objective, non-partisan judgment.

Campaigns Go After Each Other's Economic Advisers

2008-09-19T09:27:14Z

The tussle between the campaigns over economic matters has turned into a back-and-forth over friends and advisers.

On Friday morning, the McCain campaign released a new ad criticizing Barack Obama for employing the former Fannie Mae CEO, Jim Johnson, as the head of his vice presidential steering committee. Johnson, one might recall, was pushed out of the position after it became clear that he got a favorable deal on his own house loan. But he's still apparently fair game for McCain.

ANNCR: What Obama says...

BARACK OBAMA: It would be unacceptable for executives of these institutions to earn a windfall.

ANNCR: ...Is not what he does. Meet Jim Johnson, former Fannie Mae CEO. Fannie cooked the books and Johnson made millions.Then Obama asked him to pick his VP. And raise thousands for his campaign. Barack Obama. More empty words.

Meanwhile, Obama has a spot up about advisers to McCain. Released the night before McCain's spot, it starts by pointing out that the Senator, himself, "admits he doesn't understand the economy."

"So who advises him?" the ad asks, before pointing to Carly Fiorina (and her $42 million golden parachute she received from Hewlett Packard), Phil Gramm (and his "nation of whiners" comment), and the president (who Obama never shies away from tying to McCain).

It's hard to know how strong these guilt by association spots will be, but McCain (perhaps hoping to rip a nugget of good news from a dreary political week) is going hard after Obama on the front. Friday morning, the first 15 minutes or so of McCain's speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin were all about Johnson and former Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines. Raines is accused of steering the housing giant towards collapse while receiving millions in compensation -- but his ties to Obama are tenuous.

Jeff Danziger: Carly Fiorina and Phil Gramm Dine Alone (Oh, Did You Want To Join Them?)

2008-09-18T13:40:28Z

Andy Ostroy: The Fiorina Follies: With Surrogates Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

2008-09-17T12:13:48Z

Say goodbye to Carly Fiorina on the campaign trail. The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and John McCain mouthpiece will likely be exiled to political Siberia after suffering one of the campaign's worst cases of foot-in-mouth disease Tuesday. Asked by NBC's Andrea Mitchell to explain a comment she made last week in a St. Louis radio station interview that Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain's vice-presidential running mate, is not capable of running a major U.S. corporation like HP, she committed surrogate Hara-kari:

"Well, I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation, I don't think Barack Obama could run a major corporation, I don't think Joe Biden could run a major corporation. It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. So, of course, to run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that's not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe Biden or Barack Obama are doing."

So, the woman who herself in 2006 was booted out of HP -- a company about to cut 26,000 jobs (7.5% of its workforce) -- says neither a presidential or vice presidential candidate could run it either. Apparently, HP must be one helluva difficult company to run.

Sen. Obama was quick to pounce on Fiorina's gigantic gaffe: "If John McCain's top economic adviser doesn't think he can run a corporation, how on Earth can he run the largest economy in the world in the midst of a financial crisis? Apparently, even the people who run his campaign agree that the economy is an issue John McCain doesn't understand as well as he should."

Has Fiorina lost her mind? Her implication that it's harder to run a major corporation like HP than it is the United States government is absurd, delusional, and, quite frankly, a tad narcissistic. She arrogantly claims that to run HP you need "a lifetime of experience," but cavalierly suggests that to be president all you really need is one and half years as Governor of Alaska and a few more in local Wasilla politics. Kooky-Carly believes it's harder to run a company with 150,000 employees than it is a freakin' country with 2.8-million on the payroll. And forget those pesky little decisions involving international diplomacy, the military, the national economy, health care, education and immigration. Who needs experience with that nonsense? Yes Carly, this, unlike the HP CEO role, is an office for which on-the-job-training is OK.

McCain, the self-proclaimed "I'm fucking clueless when it comes to the economy" guy, sure knows how to pick his economic advisors, huh? Just a few months after the immensely entertaining Phil "Mental Recession/Nation of Whiners" Gramm show, along comes Kooky-Carly and the Fiorina Follies to remind us just how clueless McCain really is. Is this really the sort of judgment that would make for a good president?

This week started off with Black Monday, where the stock market dropped over 500 points and investors lost $500-billion in equity. And this just wasn't one isolated day here. The market's been tanking for a while now, and economist after economist says we're either in recession or about to enter one...and a major one at that. But that didn't stop McCain from repeating his duplicitous and/or delusional mantra that "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." It's a phrase Grandpa John apparently loves, as he's said it about 22 times this year including:

11/27/07: "I think the fundamentals are strong"

1/10: "I think the fundamentals of this economy are strong"

1/17: "Our economic fundamentals are strong"

3/11: "The fundamentals of our economy are strong"

5/5: "The fundamentals of our economy are strong"

6/5: "The fundamentals of our economy are very strong"

McCain's insistence that the economy is strong should be the nail in his political coffin for anyone still doubting just how out-of-touch he is with the financial anxieties of average Americans, let alone his grasp of the dire straits the nation is in.

Since George Bush took office in 2000, the "fundamentals of the economy" are horrendous:

-Unemployment 6.1% vs 4.2%

-Budget deficit of $357-billion vs $281-billion budget surplus

-National debt at $9.7-trillion vs $5.8-trillion

-Gas $4/gallon vs $1.27

-Inflation at 5.37% from 2.74%

-Real Wages down 2%

-Consumer Confidence Index .57 vs historical high of 145

Add to this grim picture the crisis over 400,000 U.S. home foreclosures, a mortgage meltdown, and multiple Wall Street bankruptcies. Seriously, I'd like a bowl of some of that crack McCain's been smoking if he truly thinks the "fundamentals are strong."

It didn't take long for McCrusty to realize what a colossal mistake he made and, in a back-peddle that would make a circus clown proud, he did his disingenuous best to spin a great tale, like this one to an incredulous Matt Lauer of NBC, who challenged him on his overly optimistic mantra:

"Well it's obviously true that the workers of America are the fundamentals of our economy, and our strength and our future, and I believe in the American worker and someone who disagrees with that is fine. We are in crisis...we all know that."

No, we don't all know that. McCain clearly doesn't, or he wouldn't be incessantly regurgitating his "strong fundamentals" nonsense.

By late afternoon all the snake-oil McCain surrogates were shamelessly spinning this new "American worker" defense. On MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Mitt Romney, the once "CEO presidential candidate," who clearly knows better, tried his best -- albeit with his patented smirk -- to clarify McCain's econogibberish:

"What he's referring to of course is the underlying productivity of the American workforce...the innovative spirit of America..those things, of course, things that are they envy of the world...but right now our economy is in real trouble and a lot people are really suffering...the economy is really suffering, and that's what John McCain indicated." Nice try, Mittsy, but no one's buyin' it.

In fact, with the economic shitstorm we're facing right now, and McCain's crystal-clear lack of understanding of the severity of this crisis and how to deal with it effectively (sorry Grandpa, simply throwing more tax breaks at the wealthy ain't gonna do it this time), anyone who votes for him must be smokin' some of that McCrack.

Paul Jenkins: The Dead Core of McCain's Republican Party

2008-09-17T11:38:20Z

The current economic meltdown, along with the energy, health care and transportation nightmares in the US, are not so much an indictment of a capitalist society, as they are of Republicans' duplicity in advocating for free markets when their main purpose is precisely the opposite: to ensure that economic power remains in the hands of a few, preferably their friends. This in turn should guarantee Republicans' own political power thanks to bountiful donations, and their personal financial future with the promise of highly profitable "jobs" and "consulting" careers.

Now that it has thoroughly discredited the market economy it was ostensibly pushing, the Republican Party is left with no clear, logical economic agenda. Once the party of smaller government, greater choice and enterprise, John McCain's GOP has been reduced to the party that wants more government intervention (see constitutional amendments forbidding gay marriage) and less choice for women (see outlawing abortion in all cases), and stifles scientific research (see stem cells).

The greatest failing of Republican management has been to pretend that the government does not exist (except to send the country to war), until it is too late and the heretofore non-existent government has to come to the rescue of assorted investment banks, mortgage companies, insurance giants, etc, providing massively inefficient subsidies to those least in need of them, simply to prevent further disaster.

Eight years of Texas/Wyoming rule in the White House has given us an energy policy that has pushed the country deeper into the oil well thanks to direct and indirect financial and military support of the oil industry in the US and abroad. This corruption is, of course, disguised as giving in to Americans' deep love of driving and flying (ha!), notwithstanding the fact that the federal government actually ensures that consumers have no choice whatsoever when it comes to transportation.

Health care remains the most egregious disgrace in contemporary America, an uneconomical and unfair system that would be the laughing stock of the world were it not a matter of life and death. Here too, Republicans have been glaringly dishonest in advocating for free markets while ensuring that extraordinary profits are made by insurance and drug companies. The US spends more than any other on medical care, a huge proportion of its huge income, with so little to show for it that it has one of the lowest life expectancies among wealthy countries, sliding from 11th to 42nd in the past 20 years. In a place where such a premium is supposedly placed on social mobility, 15% of the population is without insurance: how the hell are you supposed to focus on moving up if your entire livelihood and your family's is dependent on you not getting the flu, let alone cancer? And in a country in which labor mobility is extolled as the greatest virtue, most workers are tethered to jobs for the sole purpose of "benefits" (ie access to health care), under constant threat of losing their threadbare medical safety net: how anti-capitalist is that? Even with insurance, mind you, over 1 million Americans file for bankruptcy every year after slicing through their life savings because they cannot work or because they have to meet "co-pays" and a Kafkaesque labyrinth of hidden costs they have to bear when they are catastrophically ill. McCain's response to this absurdly inefficient (let alone socially shameful) situation is a tax proposal that is so flawed that it will increase the number of uninsured. Barack Obama goes much further, but he and many Democrats remain painfully timid about revisiting the disastrous launch of health care reform in the 1990s.

Under the guise of free trade, the untouchable holy grail of the global economy, successive governments have let goods into the US produced under conditions that would be illegal in the US, making a mockery of federal labor laws, including those that apply to children and those that govern safety. Again, it is not so much the theory of free trade that is necessarily defective, it is its blind application and the rush to implement it, spurred by the need to please Republicans' (and, yes, occasionally Democrats') corporate sponsors. Republicans, though, do deny their masters one wish: borders that are legally open to immigrants, including highly skilled ones and students. McCain saw the writing on the wall during the GOP primary and did a 180-degree turn on this, more fearful for his political career than for his financial well-being (a luxury he can afford thanks to his wealthy wife.) And so the party of free trade and unfettered capitalism erects walls that are both physical and legislative to prevent the free flow of labor, not really stopping less-educated and less-skilled workers from entering the country, but making sure that technology and other sectors in need of skilled employees open campuses anywhere but in the US. Another unintended but ominous result: US schools of higher education, possibly the country's greatest asset, are under assault from foreign competitors who have seized the opportunity as students everywhere are turned off by a US education because of the non-academic burdens placed on them.

McCain's response to these challenges is so blatantly ignorant that it is clear that, in fact, he does not know they exist. Carly Fiorina, his chief economic advisor, has now confirmed what McCain himself told us last year: he is unqualified to manage the US economy. His previous chief economic advisor, former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, had previously opened our eyes to the McCain team's economic ineptitude when he accused "whining" US workers of being in a "mental recession." And of course, in an era in which technology is critical to the economic growth of any country, most of all one in which traditional industrial jobs are melting away, McCain has fewer computer skills, including email, than many 7 year-olds.

And thus, McCain is left to focus on what he likes best: foreign and culture wars. On the former, he is eager to throw yet more tax money to Halliburton and assorted corporate beneficiaries of US military largesse. Iraq and possibly Iran if McCain comes to power, provide yet more evidence of the warped oligarchical goals of the current US government and most of the Republican party: beneficiaries of the venture are among the staunchest friends of the GOP, from oil companies to weapons manufacturers to security firms, all of which have made billions from a war that has impoverished the country in countless ways, caused the deficit to balloon and ruined the lives of tens of thousands of US families. Under the guise of a "war on terror", Republicans have bloated the Federal government to a record size, concentrating its extraordinary power on the enrichment of a very few, while criminally neglecting its duty to the majority, all along claiming to want "smaller government, less taxes and more choice." The result feels more like kleptocratic Uzbekistan than it does a healthy capitalist society.

With the right-wing of his party having decreed that Sarah Palin would be his running mate, McCain now gives us the 80s and 90s culture wars, slightly revisited. This has long been the strategy of last resort for the Republican party. And, more often than not, it has worked. It may seem insane to many of us, but there really is a whole slice of the electorate for whom sexuality and race are the defining negative issues of the 21st century. You know the old GOP strategy may work one more time when working-class Democrats in Scranton, one of America's fastest-dying cities according to Forbes, plan to vote for McCain because of "the life issue," because Palin is "anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage [...], the perfect woman," and because if Obama wins "they" are going to make it "the Black House." As Forbes makes clear, Scranton hardly represents the future of America but it still matters a little, at least electorally, and the Republican Party is clearly betting its own life that such a city would rather die than to shed its prejudices.

Paul Slansky: How Well Do You Know Sarah Palin? (Part 1)

2008-09-17T07:58:08Z

McCain Camp Throws Fiorina Under The Bus: "Carly Will Now Disappear"

2008-09-17T01:23:34Z

"Top McCain-Palin official Carly Fiorina is facing criticism from some within the campaign for a day of what they call 'very Biden-like' comments," CNN reports, "after the former Hewlett-Packard CEO told two separate interviewers that neither member of the Republican ticket would be capable of running a company."

Indeed, the daggers seemed out for Fiorina among the McCain aides that spoke to CNN.

A top McCain official contacted by CNN said, on condition on anonymity, "No big deal, but not how you get on the surrogate all-star team. Very Biden-like."

"This campaign source said Fiorina would be discouraged from additional media interviews.

Another top campaign adviser was far less diplomatic.

"Carly will now disappear," this source said. "Senator McCain was furious." Asked to define "disappear," this source said, adding that she would be off TV for a while - but remain at the Republican National Committee and keep her role as head of the party's joint fundraising committee with the McCain campaign.

Fiorina was booked for several TV interviews over the next few days, including one on CNN. Those interviews have been canceled.

Read the full CNN story here.

Sexist McCain Camp Silences Female Surrogate!

2008-09-16T23:24:18Z

Woman Carly Fiorina, a female surrogate for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, has been unofficially removed from her position as campaign surrogate because the McCain campaign is sexist, and also because she said today that neither McCain nor vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin were experienced enough to run a major corporation. But mostly because the McCain campaign is sexist.

Here are the facts, not like they matter, anyway:

Asked by a St. Louis radio station whether she thought Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin could run a company like Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina responded: "No, I don't.

"But that's not what she's running for. Running a corporation is a different set of things."

Asked about that remark on MSNBC, she made the same unprompted assessment of the GOP presidential nominee. "I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation."

CNN's John King later reported that, based on anonymous high-level sources within the McCain campaign, Fiorina's public role in the campaign would be reduced: "Fiorina was booked for several TV interviews over the next few days, including one on CNN. Those interviews have been canceled." Said a "top campaign adviser " to the campaign: "Carly will now disappear."

Aha! Silence the woman! Isn't that just typical of the patriarchy that John McCain once tried so desperately to vanquish. Now he, too, has joined the ranks of people who would dare question the fitness of a woman to hold a position of responsibility — and who would, in so doing, have the gall to consider her record. FOR SHAME.

Like McCain would ever do that to a man! Oh, er, what's that you say? Siberia? Hmmm....fair enough. Okay, new headline: John McCain maybe isn't the best at picking economic advisers.