That's what I call real leadership: parachute in after other people have been in complicated negotiations for days, trailing the entire national press corps behind you, on the grounds that you are urgently needed, in person -- and then undermine the deal behind the scenes without being willing to publicly take any position at all.
"[Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a part of, which, by the way, it's crazy but there's been very little about it in the press in the last few weeks," Alter said. "And McCain thinks he's getting a hard time, he's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country. But his reaction to that, you would have thought, would have been more regulation of the financial services industry. Instead he moved forward on campaign finance reform after being caught in that scandal, but did nothing -- nothing -- to try to prevent another savings and loan crisis from happening down the road. He was missing in action when it came to even learning the basic lessons of a scandal that he said taught him all kinds of things that he would never forget."
[...]
As Josh Marshall concluded, "Let's face it. On major economy-imperiling financial scandals brought about by lax regulation and help from lobbyist-encrusted politicians, McCain really is the candidate of experience."
Don't let anyone say that it's just a game.I'll be playing this loud in the garage tonight.
For I've seen other teams and it's never the same.
When you're born in Chicago, you're blessed and you're healed,
The first time you walk into Wrigley Field.
Our heroes wear pinstripes, heroes in blue,
Give us the chance to feel like heroes too.
But whether we win and if we should lose,
We know someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
We are one with the Cubs, with the Cubs we're in love.
Yeah hold our head high as the underdogs.
We are not fairweather, but foul weather fans.
Like brothers in arms, in the streets and the stands.
There's magic in the ivy and the old scoreboard.
The same one I stared at as a kid keeping score.
In a world full of greed, I could never want more.
Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
And here's to the men and the legends we've known.
Teaching us faith and giving us hope.
United we stand and united we'll fall
Down to our knees the day we win it all.
Yeah Ernie Banks said, "oh, let's play two".
Did he mean two hundred years?
In the same ballpark, our diamond, our jewel.
The home of our joy and our tears.
Keeping traditions, and wishes made new,
A place where our grandfathers' fathers they grew.
A spiritual feeling if I ever knew.
And if you ain't been, I am sorry for you.
And when the day comes for that last winning run,
and I'm crying and covered in beer.
I look to the sky and know I was right to think,
Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
Don't let anyone say that it's just a game.UPDATE: Updated the lyrics. Song available now.
For I've seen other teams and it's never the same.
When you're born in Chicago, you're blessed and you're healed,
The first time you walk into Wrigley Field.
Our heroes wear pinstripes, heroes in blue,
Give us the chance to feel like heroes too.
Forever we'll win and if we should lose,
We know someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
We are one with the Cubs, with the Cubs we're in love.
Yeah hold our head high as the underdogs.
We are not fairweather, but foul weather fans.
Like brothers in arms, in the streets and the stands.
There's magic in the ivy and the old scoreboard.
The same one I stared at as a kid keeping score.
In a world full of greed, I could never want more.
Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
And here's to the men and the legends we've known.
Teaching us faith and giving us hope.
United we stand and united we'll fall
Down to our knees the day we win it all.
Yeah Ernie Banks said, "oh, let's play two".
Did he mean two hundred years?
In the same ballpark, our diamond, our jewel.
The home of our joy and our tears.
Keeping traditions, and wishes made new,
A place where our grandfathers' fathers they grew.
A spiritual feeling if I ever knew.
And if you ain't been, I am sorry for you.
And when the day comes for that last winning run,
and I'm crying and covered in beer.
I look to the sky and know I was right to think,
Someday we'll go all the way.
Yeah, someday we'll go all the way.
There can't be any difference in gender or race bias in treatment of these two cases: they both both involve successful, married white female politicians. There is no essential difference in the falseness of their claims, though there was a greater comic potential in the film footage of Sen. Clinton's "harrowing" arrival. The major remaining difference is that one case involves a Democrat (though the more conservative of the primary-campaign finalists) and one a Republican.
So here are the controlled-experiment questions:
1) At any point will the right-wing press join the effort to hold Palin accountable for her false claim, as all of the press held Clinton responsible?
2) If Palin keeps making the claim, will press critics redouble their debunking, as they did with Clinton, or taper off for fear of seeming biased or boring?
3) At any point will Palin herself -- or, far more significant, McCain -- acknowledge that there are such things as fact and fantasy, and stop making a demonstrably false claim?
While Gov. Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska in the late 1990s, the city's policy was to charge rape victims for the cost of the 'rape kits' used to collect forensic evidence to help prosecute the rapists. Eventually the state had to step in and pass a law banning the practice. And according to former Gov. Tony Knowles, the law was passed specifically in response to Wasila's policy. "There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla," says Knowles.She lied. Again.
[...]
But it appears this is another case whether Sarah Palin is lying or in this case deputizing press aides to lie on her behalf. In this case spokeswoman Maria Comella, when asked, told USAToday that "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test. Gov. Palin's position could not be more clear. To suggest otherwise is a deliberate misrepresentation of her commitment to supporting victims and bringing violent criminals to justice."
Well, this just appears to be a confident statement of another lie. She does not and has never believed this, only it was her policy when she ran the city in question which was either the only or the most prominent in the state that held to this practice.
So, to boil it all down, Congress pulled the plug on the Bridge to Nowhere in 2005. Palin was still for it in 2006. And when she finally ended the project because Congress had cut off funding, instead of saying 'No Thanks' she actually said 'Thanks!' because instead of sending the money back to Washington she kept it all in Juneau.Thank you, Josh Marshall, for putting it in a context some of the slower media brethren can understand, and perhaps at some point call McCain and Palin the liars that they are.
Next question?
I'm usually not one to write letters, but I heard you talking about Obama's lipstick comment and it struck a nerve regarding political coverage in this country, especially when the campaign manager of one campaign says that this year's campaign isn't about issues. Why is that? I'd say its because the media in many cases allows it to be that way. The manufactured "lipstick" outrage is a prime example.
I wasn't able to listen to the rest of your show, so you may have covered this but in case you didn't, it might be worthwhile to read an alternative take here before we get all worked up with outrage and head for the fainting couch over a common turn of phrase that Obama has used frequently in the past.
Is this what it's come to? Direct to the internet/print/radio from Republican talking points on a "Truth Squad" conference call. Did anyone actually think Obama was calling Sarah Palin a pig? Was McCain calling Hillary a pig when he used it describe her health care plan? Funny I don't recall any outrage then.
Thankfully some in the media like Jake Tapper and Marc Ambinder are catching on.
Anyone paying attention to the 23 times McCain and Palin have repeated the Bridge to Nowhere lie on the campaign trail? Some of us are counting.
Maybe the McCain campaign should call their conference calls the "Half-Truth" squad.
McCain likes to present his past as past and his time in a prison camp as a transformative experience, but the fact is that his experience as a POW transformed nothing. In fact, it amplified his fundamental belief in his own self-righteousness, something he's used ever since as an unending justification for his worst impulses. He was 31 years old when he was captured by the North Vietnamese and 36 when he was released. When he was 43 he abandoned his injured wife for a younger woman and married into a fortune. When he was 51 he intervened with regulators on behalf of his pal Charles Keating and ended up enmeshed in the Keating Five scandal — a scandal he initially tried to blame on his wife when his role became public. When he was 61 he was amusing a partisan crowd with boorish jokes about Chelsea Clinton. When he was 64 he was pandering to Southern racism by refusing to condemn the confederate flag flying over South Carolina's statehouse.Quick, somebody tell the media, especially Brokaw and Gibson.
[...]
This year he's 72 but things are no different. Instead of running a decent and honorable campaign, he and his surrogates are reigniting a culture war he doesn't even believe in; relentlessly belittling and trivializing instead of addressing serious issues; repeatedly accusing his opponent of not caring about his country; stubbornly refusing to condemn even the vilest character assassinations; and finally choosing a manifestly unprepared and unvetted running mate in order to gain a momentary political advantage with a Christian right base that has never trusted him but that he needs to win the election. He's doing all this because, as his convention speech made clear, he believes he's on a higher mission. His character is what this campaign is about — or rather his own image of his character — and it's this belief in his own self-righteousness that allows him to justify his every action with a clear conscience. He has to win, you see, for the good of the country. He's the only man who can do it.
This is politics at its most insipid, and while I'm confident Republicans are well past the point of shame, now would be a very good time for some. Their arguments have a certain child-like quality -- if you question the credibility and qualifications of a woman candidate, you must be some kind of misogynist. One assumes that if Democrats had taken a similar attitude -- any and all criticism of Barack Obama necessarily constitutes racism -- the reaction would have been apoplectic.
