Moving Closer to Democracy

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee voted to give full voting rights to the Washington D.C. House seat today. For some time now their license plates have read "No taxation without representation." Referring to their lack of representation in Congress. It's interesting to see McCain voting against this Democratic seat as if party politics were the primary consideration.

Victory for the American People

It hasn't been often in the last 7 plus years of the Bush Administration when one could truly say that the power of people defeated the people of power. When special interests took a back seat to those who really run the country, Mr. and Ms. Average. Since the bailout was originally announced, there have been numerous campaigns to stop it, academic disputes, and even the rarest of the rare, a public battle among the normally tightly disciplined Republican party. But, in the end, those who have to face up to the voters on November 4th realized that voting yes was potentially one of the biggest threats to their political careers, regardless of party. If you look at the list of how people voted in this historic vote, those on the 'yes' side will probably have a rough time of it, if not lose their seats to those who chose not to approve the still horrible re-negotiated version of the bailout proposal. In particular, I'm sure Dennis Kucinich (OH-10th) is feeling a little smug, knowing that he predicted the outcome of the vote.

On a slightly different note, I'm not sure why everyone in the world of pundits is characterizing this rejection of the bailout proposal a failure of governance. In common parlance, bills are said to have failed, but that is almost a bureaucratic term. In real terms, this bailout was an ideological battle between those who are in favor of and those who are against nationalization and similar bailouts in the United States. Moreover, this is not a vacuum of leadership in which the U.S. government is flying down a country road like a  '62 Corsair without a driver., as that has been happening for the last 7 years. 

Of course, in a vacuum, comes the punditry. Perhaps the most offensive piece I've read thus far about the political process that brought about this conclusion comes from Rupert Cornwell from the U.K.'s Independent. My favorite metaphor in the article compares the mechanisms of American democracy to Alice Through the Looking Glass. Putting that aside, though, the author clearly doesn't understand the huge popular backlash against the bailout. Sure, in the U.K. and other parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister isn't approved by the people at large, but in the U.S. the leaders need to be especially accountable. And to say that the bill died in partisan sniveling is obviously disregarding what was essentially a bipartisan effort to keep the American people from having to shovel out $700 Billion or more on a plan that was only designed to correct the dangerous excesses of the richest segments of society. Perhaps, too, the American people have become wary of those who warn about apocalyptic disaster and offer a solution that meets a certain biased politican agenda. 

Kevin Connolly from the BBC, in looking at the reasons behind the bailouts defeat in the House of Representatives, expresses a strange sentiment, that after this bill's defeat and the sense of crisis that it engenders will offer a way out for the bailout proposal, that Main Street hasn't suffered yet. Unfortunately, the people of the United States have been suffering, which is the underlying cause for this economic crisis. With the inflationary impact of cheap money, combined with tepid job growth, primarily in the services sector since the recession of 2001, people were forced to choose between living and surviving, which meant that the mortgage had to go unpaid. Thus, in a trickle up fashion, the banks and other financial institutions, who were holders of arcane financial securities into which these poorly written mortgages were conglomerated, began to suffer the counsequences of their poor lending practices. I think Mr. Connolly underestimates the intelligence of Mr. and Ms. Average and their understanding of this situation, as Mr. or Ms. Average are probably already unemployed, underemployed, or facing the prospect of losing their job in the failing economy. 

From the campaign trail in Iowa, Sen. John McCain who, infamously, suspended his campaign to not show up in Washington for negotiations, has called upon Congress to return to the drawing board and to get back to work right away. Sen. Barack Obama, from a rally outside of Denver, called for calm, saying that things in Congress are never smooth, and instead of imploring or demanding that his colleagues work on the proposal to shore up the wealth of the financial sector, he used a baseball metaphor.  

So panic thus gripped the financial markets, and the Dow Jones suffered its worst lost ever in terms of points. But, have no fear for liquidity, because Helicopter Ben Bernanke has come to the rescue, increasing the amount of dollars in the global financial system by a whopping $630 Billion dollars. To show you a frightening graph that indicates inflation, perhaps even hyperinflation, is just around the corner, here is the Adjusted Monetary Base, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The highlight of a series of moves in the banking industry, Citigroup has purchased Wachovia, after the stock lost more than 80% in trading on Monday. 

Do Not Take the Red Pill!

What do Wisconsin and Ohio have in common? Emerald Ash Borer? The homes of the primary writers of the illustrious Fringe Element blog?

All of the above, but most recently, they are both the sites of dirty tricks by the McCain campaign.

In Wisconsin , the McCain campaign conduct a massive mailing to encourage absentee voting, presumably so that voters who would otherwise be unable to do so, such as the elderly and veterans, would vote for their candidate. However, all of the applications that were mailed also included the wrong addresses for the appropriate county clerk's office or addresses for the wrong county clerk's office. Both of which would render the application completely invalid as the applicant would be filing in the wrong district, and would possibly lose their right to vote in the election on November 4th.

In Ohio , the campaign similarly distributed potentially fraudulent ballots. In this case, the campaign distributed ballots that were invalid as they contained one too many boxes. This "Are you a qualified voter?" box, if left unchecked would invalidate the application, and again, disqualify the voter for the November 4th election.

The statement that the campaign made a mistake because of faulty lists is an egregious insult to voters everywhere. With direct mailing costs so high, and campaign funds so limited, these types of mistake would have been too costly to allow. So, let's evaluate the two choices of fraud and mistake. If this were a deliberate campaign of fraud, and two instances of similar fraud begin to remove the necessary layer of reasonable doubt, the question becomes whether individual state investigations are called for, or if the federal government should become involved. With the Justice Department having become a tool for Republican electoral tricks through partisan hiring practices, especially in the Civil Rights Division, and miscellaneous shenanigans, this seems very unlikely to happen, even if it were called for, and with states' budgets, particularly Wisconsin's and Ohio's in a state of distress from the ongoing economic crisis, any relief from that quarter seems equally unlikely. However, if this had been a case of a mistake made in the processing of the direct mailing, then the McCain campaign is incompetent on multiple levels. Any random sampling would have revealed the problems of the mailing list, and brought into question whether the effort was needed at all. In the case of Ohio, this is a much more sinister form of incompetence. Someone in their staff took the extra time to design another box that probably doesn't appear on other absentee ballot applications, and their supervisor, who is assumedly similarly inexperienced in Ohio elections, approved it. If these campaign managers are allowed to stay in their office after wasting money on such a large scale, the plot will thick and further peel away the thin, fatty layer of reasonable doubt. Stay tuned.

The Old Media

OK so the previous post was a bit of an act of contrition toward the old media that gets so much of a beating in the blogosphere because for some reason I have been feeling a bit guilty about the hard time they are given. Except the beating the old media gets is usually justified. If there was more first person reporting of actual news and less fluff and opinion then there wouldn't be any reason to bitch.

This post is a specific bitch about the way the old media has been treating Obama's world tour this week. Not only has there been more coverage of Obama's speeches and doings than McCain's, news outlets have dedicated their fluff space to speculation about what he will do next and commentary on whether his speech in Germany was historic or epic. The LA Times tries at some apologetics for the unfairness here. The unfairness is one thing but the outright bias is another. This kind of tour has happened several times before. An international policy tour by a presidential candidate that was not a sitting president has happened a few times in the past and McCain himself has done so. But this is OBAMA! So even when a program recognizes that fact, they still go out of their way to book a guest that insists this is a one of a kind event.

Obama needs to be on his guard with the media. Howard Dean was a media darling for his campaign till he started criticising them. Then the two faced serpent turned around and destroyed his political career.

In the mean time the freedom haters in the old media are trying to make an issue out of concealed carry in national parks. Concealed carry will be the battleground of the future in gun control since an outright ban is out of the question now.

Yager-bombing the Middle East

Aparently Hillary Clinton was able to drink McCain under the table in Estonia. This raises serious questions for the McCain presidential campaign. How can we expect a presidential candidate to be hard on the terrorists when they go easy on their own liver? While they both only consumed four(4) shots of vodka at least we can assume Hillary could out drink both Osama Bin Laden and Muqtada al-Sadr because muslims are not permitted to drink alcohol and we can assume they would not be prepaired for it. We have yet to hear of any exploits of Obama's capacitiy to imbibe intoxicants and this story raises the question. How much can Obama drink? For that matter how much can Ron Paul drink? Obama looks pretty lanky, and Ron Paul is no spring chicken but experience is what counts. Also, the story lacks information on how large a shot is in Estonia. I would assume that being married to President Bill Clinton would give one plenty of experience with keeping ones composure after consuming mass quantities of alcohol. So I was quite shocked to find that the contest had ended after four shots. Perhaps that is just when McCain threw in the towel. Which brings us back to the question. If McCain gave in to Hillary after just four shots of vodka, how can we believe his talk that he will stand strong against the terrorists and win the war in Iraq?

doublespeak

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee to the presidential election, has single handedly made America less safe. It may seem like a stretch to say, but how else would one characterize the way he single-handedly prevented the Air Force from awarding its refueling tanker to Boeing? Instead, Airbus will assemble parts at an assembly plant in Mobile, AL, ala the disaster that Boeing itself encountered in trying to build the 787 Dreamliner on schedule. In truth, this is just the end result of colossal corruption scandals and bureaucratic bungling, and the American taxpayers are getting trampled underfoot as various parties move into position to reap as much profit as possible.

In more conceptual terms, this move could represent the Military Industrial Complex beginning to cannibalize its own pieces as it begins to come to terms with its own unsustainable nature. And so, another 100 year cycle comes to an end. My favorite quote is from Gen. Lichte, who apparently regards the economic concerns as trivial, or of tertiary importance.

At a news conference, Air Force officials said that the creation of domestic jobs was not a factor in the decision. In response to questions about possible negative reaction to the deal in Congress, Gen. Arthur J. Lichte, head of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, said, “This will be an American tanker, flown by American airmen with an American flag on its tail and, every day, it will be saving American lives.”

Turkey

Its more than just delicious with cranberries. Aparently Turkey is also a country in both Europe and the Middle East. Turkey invaded Iraq last Thursday to fight the ethnic Kurdish sepratists. The President has called on Turkey to limit the incursion while Turkish politicians use the Bush administrations selfsame rhetoric to support their own "war on terror." I find Turkey's reaction to Kosovo's declaration of independence interesting in comparison to that of Russia. Russia objected to Kosovo's independence because they are afraid international recognition of such states will only encourage other seperatist regions to break away from their mother countries. Which is supposed to be a reference to Chechnya. Turkey, on the other hand supported Kosovo's independence and recognized them as a country. I wonder what they think of Russia's stated reason of not wanting to encourage break away republics.

The Kurdish north has been the most stable part of Iraq since Bush declared "mission accomplished." Which is why neither the US or Iraq wanted to risk destabalizing the regioin by going in and trying to uproot the PKK. It was also the major reason not to pull US out of Iraq. Or at least I thought it was. The scinario painted by people like Sen. Mccain goes something like this. We leave, and with noone holding them back the Sunni and Shiite extremests begin a full scale civil war. The Kurdish north then takes all their trucks and goes home, declaring independence and the existence of a country called Kurdistan. Then the Kurds in Turkey try to take their land and join with the Kurds of the former Iraq and Turkey begins a massive military invasion of the region. This combined with the unfettered influence of Iran, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in Iraq throws the whole region into utter chaos.

At least, thats the nightmare situation as I understand it. Now that Turkey has invaded Iraq I find it less compelling to support John McCain as a presidential candidate, since my whole reason to back him has veen prevention of Turkey from crossing that line. Admitedly, that has never been one of the planks in his platform but it was my reason. Without the threat of total middle-eastern bedlam, McCain's pandering to the religious zealots and "conservatives" in his party is thown into stark relief. I still have boatloads of respect for the man who is a war hero, and a senator who has managed to keep his integrity while being pragmatic enough to work in politics for so long. He just is no longer appealing to me as a president. Unfortunately that only leaves Clinton who voted for the war, and Obama who I have heard nothing substantial about, or long shot also-rans who I like but are being ignored by the old media.

Oh, aparently the U.S.S. Cole is still floating

Video Flashback

To touch upon the John McCain issue, I would like to present a few video examples. Over the course of four years, Sen. McCain flipfloped in the worst way, and became a sound machine for the very political machine that tried to destroy his reputation in South Carolina and defame his character for a singular act of kindness. Maybe if John McCain can win in the state that still flies the stars and bars of the confederacy, then there really is hope for humanity after all. My guess is that McCain's neoconservative credentials appealed to the deeply conservative southern states. The real test for the Republicans is Florida, but more on that later. Enjoy some video goodness!

More Substantive Commintary

Sen. John McCain won the Republican primary in South Carolina on Saturday, and Ron Paul placed second in Nevada and I couldn't be happier. I sincerely wish McCain had won the presidency in 2000, because I believe the world would be a better place now. McCain would have had the appropriate responce to 9/11 and he may even have had the wits to stop it but we can never know now. We just have to live with the effects of Rove's wicked campaigning where he was able to paint real American war heros like McCain and Kerry as cowards in compairison to a drunk driving, draft dodger. (better than G.I.Joe)

McCain and Paul are the kind of Republicans I could vote for. There are people who are disappointed with their conservative credentials on the right but these are the kind of maniacs that voted for Huckabee. They put enforcing their religious beliefs on other people over, freedom, fiscal responsability, integrity, security, and sound defence policy. In my book those are the things that make someone a Republican, not the desperate need to carve out special religious privileges for yourself and opress everyone who disagrees with you.

Politicians like John McCain gave me hope that there can be such a thing as integrity in public office. Which is why I fealt personally offended when he gave the graduation address at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. It was overt pandering like I had never seen and I couldn't have expected from McCain. I suppose Rove and his evil strategy of courting the southern poor with appeals to devicive religion could mess with anyone's mind.

One last thing about Huckabee. I am gonna say something that sounds like an Old Media attempt at manipulation. Huckabee cannot win a national election, he is not "electable." I saw this kind of thing play out in the last senate election in Wisconsin. In the primary the Republicans of the state nominated someone that appealed to them so they got a religiously extreme, inexperienced, but nice-looking candidate. When it came to the state wide election he could only garner the votes from those that had voted for him in the primary that went for style over substance. Huckabee is the same kind of candidate. He represents a religious special inetrest group, and only people in that special intrest group are voting for him. If Huckabee wins the Republican nomination, I predict he will get no more than 33% of the popular vote(persuant to our previously cited 1/3 are always wrong). Unless, he is pitted against Sen. Clinton, who is hated by a considerable section of the population. In which case, I would give him a twenty point spread even though those two catagories are going to have some overlap.

It's Not Contradictory

We have now said two things that may appear to be contradictory. We have said both that the Old Media consistently fails to predict accurate results of voter behavior and that they control voter's behavior. If you read TheRedKap's previous posts you should be able to discern the elements of what is being said that make these two arguments consistent. For those who may miss it, the Old Media is doing both. There is a groupthink among political pundits because they all ride around in the campain busses with the candidates and they all go back to D.C. or New York together so their perspectives are altered by the social dynamics of their little click. They are also lazy, selfish, and stupid just like any other human so they only want to wright about a limited feild of candidates. I don't know to what extent personal preference enters into it but after the run-up to the war in Iraq, I refuse to assume there is such a thing as journalistic integrity. This is the control aspect of what the media does. They limit the field of candidates based not on quality or support but on unrelated social factors from within their profession, and their own lazyness. After this decision has been made for the people by the media it affects peoples perceptions and those who like a "third party" candidate or a "fringe" candidate vote for someone the media tells them is a mainstream candidate so they don't "throw their vote away." This alteration is not about substance, its simple social manipulation that any social primate, down to the colobus monkey, could see through. Thats right I called you a monkey.

This time around you had three candidates getting free publicity by this time last year so it was almost unthinkable for anyone else who might run for president to wait till the traditional start of the presidential race. After all the early announcements the states decided to get in on the action and push the primary race earlier than ever before. I think an anomaly in diversity of candidates this year has caused a permanint change in the election system, the full effects of which are yet to be seen. But, I digress.

It is no suprise that given the criteria used by the Old Media to determine the content of election coverage are not in line with the thoughts of the average voter. Thankfully we have the intertubes as a communication tool where candidates can bypass the media filter of lazyness and ignorant preferance and speak to us directly. Or even better, citizens of a democracy can speak to each other about their options for presidential candidate. It gives me hope for our country when I see a maniac like Huckabee win a primary when the media had written him off.

To draw the distinction more clearly: the Old Media does manipulate their reporting and consequently the election but thanks to the internet, involved citizens can educate themselves and override the marching orders handed down to them by the groupthink overlords.