HorsesAss.Org

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.

Join me tonight for a special Thursday night edition of Drinking Liberally. We’ll all be keepin’ a sharp eye out for run-on sentences from Sen. Joe Biden and, um…any evidence at all of cognative function from Gov. Sarah Palin.

The debate begins at 6PM. Folks will start gathering around 5:30PM at our usual haunts, the Montlake Ale House,  2307 24th Ave E., in Seattle’s Montlake neighborhood.

Hope you can stop by.

I guess I should just let them break the news in their own words:

The Spokesman-Review will cut about one-fourth of its editorial staff this month, laying off as many as 27 employees in a move its publisher says is a reaction to economic conditions of the newspaper industry.

Steven A. Smith, who has been the newspaper’s editor for more than six years, is resigning as part of the reductions, which he called devastating to the news operation. The newsroom cuts will affect writers, editors, photographers and support staff.

Companywide, about 60 workers will be cut.

I’ve only been to Spokane a few times, but I have a special fondness for the Spokesman-Review.  It was with the S-R’s Olympia correspondent Rich Roesler with whom I had my first political interview, and… well… you always remember your first time.  It was Rich who first broke the story of my “Horse’s Ass” initiative, setting me on my accidental path toward political activism, and he’s always remained accessible ever since.

I was relieved to read on Rich’s blog that his name was not on that list of 27 newsroom staffers to get the axe, and that at least for now, his job appears safe.  You know, for a reporter.  I’d say he’s one of the best political reporters in the state, but given the circumstances I’m afraid that might come off as faint praise, considering he’s fast becoming one of the only political reporters in the state.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing rumors from Thurston County that the Olympian is considering some sort of merger with the Tacoma News Tribune, or perhaps ceasing operations entirely… though multiple contacts at the paper deny the rumor is anything more than that.  Still, with what we’ve been seeing elsewhere in the industry, anything is possible.

Tuesday morning came and the world had survived the bail-out bust. So Goldy and friends turn to who really won the debate. Was it the cool and presidential guy or was it the snarling Pekingese guy averting his eyes? Next the panel turns to Dino Rossi, the BIAW and the new Buildergate scandal. The former Washington state Secretary of Transportation comments on Rossi’s Fantasy Transportation Plan™, the gubernatorial race, and the new Traffic Congestion Initiative (a.k.a. Lyin’ Eyman’s Initiative 985). All this and more….

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, former Washington State Secretary of Transportation and anti-I-985 activist, Douglas McDonald, initiative specialist Laura McClintock of McClintock Consulting, and HorsesAss and EFFin’ Unsound’s Carl Ballard .

The show is 55:34, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_sep_30_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

This commentary at McClatchy by Prof. Michael D. MacDonald of Williams College sums up rather neatly how Neoliberalism went essentially unchallenged for nearly three decades and proclaims it to be now dead.

The bipartisan Neoliberal Era in America, from 1981 until last week, was devoted to economic growth, finance capital and the creative use of debt. The gray, dreary, and boring politics of economics was enlivened by a circus of sex scandals and culture wars.

I’m not so sure Neoliberalism is fully dead, as the Wall Street and D.C. vampires popping up on CNBC are starting to exhibit remarkably zombie-like behavior, but it’s certainly on life support. The U.S. House will take a vote on it tomorrow, to what ultimate effect we know not.

How quickly we forget that much of our history has involved mighty struggles between ordinary people and those with too much power. If we are indeed entering a new epoch, it is one fraught with the perils of authoritarianism, racial and other types of hatred, and outright quackery. The Great Depression analogies have been flowing fast and furious lately, so it’s worth a moment to contemplate that people like Father Charles Coughlin had huge followings in the 1930’s.

It’s a good thing our AM airwaves today aren’t filled with the demagogic ramblings of charlatans, racists and buffoons or I’d be really worried for the Republic.