Archives for October 2008

Because you need to smile.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey, released today, shows Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire and Republican opponent Dino Rossi tied 48% to 48% tie in the governors race.  That’s a marked improvement for Gregoire over the last Rasmussen poll, which showed Rossi leading by a 52% to 46% margin.

I suppose I should be cheered by the trend, but this race really shouldn’t be this close, this close to election day.  I guess lying and cheating is a good strategy.

In the presidential race, Rasmussen shows Barack Obama regaining a double-digit lead, 53% to 43% over John McCain, after last month’s survey showed the race narrowing to within an unlikely two point margin.

When the House rejected the first Wall Street bailout bill on Monday, the markets responded by shaving 777 points off the Dow, and posting even larger percentage gains off the broader indices, prompting more than few congressmen (and from what I hear, a lot of scared constituents) to reconsider their vote out of fear of a crash of 1929 proportions.

When the wise men and women in the Senate acted on this renewed sense of urgency, passing a goody-crammed bill by a commanding 74-24 margin, the Dow responded by shedding another 350 points.  And today, after dozens of representatives flipped their vote to assure passage in the House, the Dow immediately dropped another 300 points, eventually ending the day down 157 points at 10,325.

That’s some thank you.

Despite a mid-week recovery, the Dow closed down 818 points for the week, a 7.3% decline that leaves total returns during the Bush era in negative territory, the worst market performance during any administration since that of Herbert Hoover.  What should be obvious by now is that a mere $700 billion of taxpayer money can do little to assuage the hunger of a market that can (and has) shed twice that from its total value in less than a day of trading.

The bailout package may indeed prevent some large financial institutions from failing, or at the very least, from failing fast and hard, and in so doing no doubt might stabilize the financial markets a bit.  But the problem is that the Dow and the other indices we tend to obsess on are perhaps less connected to our real economy than at any time in their history.  These are feel good numbers—or feel bad numbers, depending on the day—that have little direct impact on the majority of Americans, most of whom live paycheck to paycheck.  So the implied promise that somehow this bailout would pump up the markets was not just illusory, it was mostly meaningless to the majority of taxpayers who are being asked to foot the bill.

The truth is, our economy sucks, and there are no quick fixes.  This bailout may save the jobs of executives at a handful of financial giants, but it will not prevent the recession in which most economists believe we are already mired, nor end it more quickly; and by emptying our coffers of yet another $700 billion we don’t have, the bailout has left the next adminstration with fewer tools with which to address our ever worsening economic crisis.  We now have $700 billion less to spend on fiscal stimulus, or to serve the ever growing social needs of our nation’s unemployed, or to address the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure deficit (roads, bridges, water, sewers, schools etc.) that threatens to undermine our future health, welfare and prosperity.

Monday’s 777 point drop in the Dow made for great headlines, and in that vice I was as guilty as anybody else, but this bailout was never about the Dow, or rather, it was always about the Dow, but never should have been.  Sure, this bailout was good for Wall Street, or at least, some people on Wall Street… but if you were expecting the markets to rebound and the economy to recover with a simple wave of President Bush’s pen, well, I think you just got played.

You read it here first, the story HA broke about the Washington State Republican Party’s illegal spending on behalf of Dino Rossi, and while the allegations were pooh-poohed at the time by the usual Rossi apologists, WA State Attorney General was left with no choice but to bring suit against his own party and former top aide, WSRP chair Luke Esser.

The Republicans spent “exempt” funds, for which there are no campaign contribution limits, on “non-exempt” activities, for which there are strict contribution limits, essentially laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal contributions on behalf of Rossi and his wealthy patrons like Rufus Lumry and Skip Rowley.  And as I wrote at the time, the charges were “pretty cut and dry“:

This isn’t rocket science.  It’s Campaign Finance 101.  All the political candidates, consultants, committees and parties know damn well what is or is not allowed.  And yet the WSRP chose to blatantly violate campaign expenditure laws that have been in place for the past 16 years.

The question now is not whether the WSRP will be penalized, but rather, will they be penalized enough to discourage future such violations, and whether the court will be willing to issue an injunction barring similar activities between now and the election.  It appears that Rossi, the WSRP and the BIAW are willing to do whatever it takes to win this election, and have made the crass calculation that a Rossi victory is well worth any potential penalty, as long as it is incurred after the fact.

And as long as our media continues to withhold moral judgment of an obviously unethical and illegal strategy until the final court decision is issued months hence, then Rossi and his surrogates will have calculated correctly that crime does indeed pay.

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation for 5 to 10 minutes today, sometime during the 1PM hour, talking about last night’s Veep debate.  I’ll let you know when I know a more specific time frame.

UPDATE:
I’m told I’ll be on around 1:40PM.

Well, all I can say is we better damn well hope this bailout package does what we’ve been promised to do… that it preempts a financial market collapse, prevents our economy from sliding into a prolonged recession, and essentially pays off a dividend as the junk debt we acquire eventually matures at face value.

Otherwise, Republicans will use this vote to beat the Dems into a bloody pulp in 2010, take back control of Congress and impeach Obama for, well, whatever in 2011.  Or at least, I’m betting, that’s their cynical plan.

The revised Wall Street bailout bill passed by a wide margin this morning, 263 to 171.   That’s a pretty big flip, considering a stripped down version of the bill failed last week, 205 to 228.  Who knew the pirate vote was that big?

As for the partisan divide, Democrats voted for the bill 172 to 63, while Republicans slightly opposed it, 91 to 108… you know, the bill that both President Bush and John McCain begged them to pass.

No word yet on how the WA delegation voted, and whether any of our reps flipped.

UPDATE:
Inslee flips, joins rest of the Democratic delegation in voting yes. Our Republicans, Reichert and McMorris-Rodgers voted no.  (Oh yeah, and Hastings.  I always seem to forget Hastings for some reason.)

UPDATE, UPDATE:
I was looking at the wrong roll call vote (the motion to reconsider), and the House Clerk’s office website was slowwww to respond.  Inslee did vote no.  In fact, it was McDermott who flipped, from yes to no.  I’m waiting for a statement.

Gosh, Republicans set an awfully low bar for their candidates…

Shanna Sheridan, 25, a producer for local conservative talk-radio station, KXLY-AM (920), said in the end Palin was good enough.

“All she had to do is get up there and not sound completely stupid,” Sheridan said. “She did that.”

Yeah, well, I guess, after eight years of George W. Bush, not sounding completely stupid would be a step up.

Rep. Dave Reichert was coy the morning of last week’s House bailout vote, apparently indicating that he was waiting to see whether it would win or lose before casting his vote.  The bill failed, and Reichert voted no.

Well, now that it looks like the revised bailout is going to pass the House, will Reichert join a number of his colleagues, and flip to the yes side?  That would of course be classic Reichert, voting both no and yes on the same bill, so that he could take either side of the issue depending on the audience he’s speaking to.  (Or both sides of the issue if he’s talking to the Seattle Times editorial board, who apparently view such flip-floppery as a sign of moderation.)

We’ll soon know.

Rep. Steven C. LaTourette, R-Ohio, angrily denouncing the Drunken Sailor Bailout Act of 2008 (my words, not his) by mentioning, among other things, that the bill provides a rum tax payment to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in the amount of about $192 million over ten years:

At least we have the pirate vote.

So that would not be an “aye” I’m guessing.

Looking back on my year and a half radio career, and comparing myself to a successful host like Bill O’Reilly, I guess my greatest mistake was that I was not a big enough asshole.  If only I had invited guests on my show only to shout them down, I might still have a job.

I’m just sayin’….

My daughter had soccer practice from 6:15 to 7:15, so I couldn’t watch most of tonight’s Veep debate, but I did manage to listen to most of it on the radio.  I’m not sure how much the lack of visuals influenced my impressions, but I thought I’d offer a brief analysis nonetheless.

I’ll start with obvious: Sarah Palin didn’t fall flat on her face.  She stayed composed, she sounded confident (even when her clear lack of knowledge on an issue suggested she shouldn’t be), and she kept her energy up throughout the evening.

That said, she wasn’t very good.  If the kind of performance she gave at the convention was the kind of performance she gave tonight, McCain would have enjoyed zero bounce in the days that followed.  Her answers were erratic, wandering, mostly content free, and often had nothing to do with the questions asked… and to my ear, her performance grew steadily weaker over time.  (I don’t know if that’s because she actually got worse, or because she just plain wore on me.)  I’m sure a lot of folks on my side are probably disappointed that Palin wasn’t as embarrassing as she was in the Katie Couric interviews, but towards the end of the debate, I’m not so sure she wasn’t.  That sort of monumental ineptitude is hard to sustain over a full 90 minutes, but I bet you could find a handful of 30-second clips, particularly near the end, that could stand alone as the Palin we’ve all come to know and mock over the past couple weeks.

We all knew from her convention speech that Palin could act, but the big question tonight was whether she could do improv?  Um… not really.

Biden on the other hand did just fine, and actually grew stronger as the evening wore on.  I wish he hadn’t laughed out loud at her insults—that came off as a little creepy—but I noticed no major gaffes, and he certainly appeared in command of the issues.  He also seemed to focus mostly on McCain, not Palin, which in the end is a winning strategy.

So who won?  On points, clearly Biden, a take that appears to be supported by the instant polls.  But in the end, I don’t think it matters anymore.  The Palin surge has long since faded, and I’m not sure there was anything Palin could have done tonight to put the bloom back on the rose.  McCain appears to be losing the battle for the swing voters, and while Palin may not have done him much harm tonight, I don’t think she did him much good either.

One final comment.  There was much debate both within and without the netroots over the proper response to Palin’s nomination, and there were many who strongly warned against attacking her personally, for fear of creating a backlash.  But for those of us who persisted in relentlessly savaging both her qualifications and her character, well, I think tonight we enjoyed the fruits of our labor.  For Palin, tonight’s debate was all about personal redemption, an effort to reclaim some of those post-convention highs, and reassure voters that she is prepared to stand a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the Oval Office.  She did okay in that regard, but I’m not sure she succeeded.

Meanwhile, while Palin was essentially defending herself, Biden was busy attacking McCain, which is, after all, the role of the Veep nominee in a presidential campaign.  Perhaps Palin helped herself a little tonight, but she failed to take even a sliver out of Barack Obama’s hide, and in that sense failed utterly in her primary role.

At least, that was my take from listening to the debate on the radio.  I suppose the tracking polls over the next few days will prove whether my impression was right or wrong.

He lost Ohio in 1864.

6:11 PM: The Montlake Alehouse is packed with debate gawkers. I cannot connect to the wireless right now so I’m using my cell phone as a modem. Slow, slow, slow.

6:13 PM: Sarah Palin unleashes her first lie about Obama raising taxes!

6:16 PM: Has anybody figured out yet whether Sarah’s lip coloring is a tattoo? Hey…I’m not knocking it. Decorative scarification is cool…in some parts of the world.

6:23 PM: When Sarah Palin says she had to “take on those oil companies in Alaska”…does she mean that in the Biblical sense?

6:26 PM: Joe Biden agrees with Sarah’s windfall profit tax (and he points out that McCain would never go for such nonsense). Now, I suppose, the “hard left” will be slamming Biden for saying he “agrees with Sarah” too often.

6:31 PM: I think she just said, “How are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts.” But maybe she was just speaking in tongues or something.

6:33 PM: I’m watching this on CNN and they have some sort of attitudimeter on uncommitted Ohio voters, broken down by sex. (Although I though Ohioans were mostly broken down by drinking….) Anyway, women go positive when Joe starts talking, and then after a brief lag, men tag along with the women. When Sarah starts talking, women go negative and men go positive. Then the moderator interrupts. I think there is going to be an epidemic of blue-balls in Ohio tonight.

6:49 PM: I think Sarah just gave a treatise on “Diplomacy” citing her one-hour Evelyn Wood course by Henry Kissinger.

6:51 PM: Biden just mentioned McCain’s gaffe on Spanish radio, where he suggested he would not sit down with the leadership of Spain. And Sarah didn’t utter “Horseshit! Horseshit!” Man…Sarah is disappointing me here.

7:16 PM: On VP authority: Sarah says she agrees with VP Cheney. Biden says Cheney has been the most dangerous VP ever. Certainly this is true with respect to his hunting buddies!

7:28 PM: Sarah will change the tone in Washington “as [she] did in Alaska” by “appointing people regardless of party.” But, how many high-school friends does she have????

7:somethingortheother: Sarah parrots McCain in jabbing at the media (at least as I experienced it through the filter of CNN). While that kind of thing may work well for rousing the base, it seems like a really, really stupid strategy in every other way.

Post Debate: I was hoping Sarah would get asked to name the media she consumes. I’m thinking she reads both the Alaska Free Press and the Free Alaska Press.

7:45: The television screen says that CNN is going to report on the focus group reactions and result of a national debate poll soon. But they have turned down the volume and the Montlake Alehouse has erupted into a sea of boisterous conversations. So, I’ll just have to wing it and give my opinion without help from a focus group and a poll.

Basically, Biden did exactly what he needed to do. He attacked McCain without attacking Palin. He looked at her, he showed her respect, he displayed confidence and sincerity. He committed no blunders that I noticed. He was composed.

Palin? She did pretty well given her “relative youth and inexperience.” There were a few awkward moments (as one would expect for a novice). As I watched the debate, two “issues” with Palin kept gnawing at me. First, she smiled way too much and at inappropriate times. That shit doesn’t even cut it on the high school debate team (yep…I was there). It made me feel like she didn’t really understand the gravity of the moment and the position for which she has been selected.

Secondly, her answers frequently seemed canned. She had carefully prepared talking points ready to go, and she had them down pat—even when they didn’t quite fit the questions being asked. Sure…Biden was guilty of the same thing at times. But on a scale of genuineness from 1 to 10, Biden scored an 8 and Palen, a 4. But I’m a dirty fucking hippie, so what do I know.