First Looks category archive
Fact Checking the Debate 0
(Yeah, I know it’s a tad too big. I tried scaling it down proportionally, and it became three tads too small. I’m not expert in Flash, just in copying and pasting, so I gave up.)
And from the website:
Spin and hype were apparent, once again, at the third and final debate between McCain and Obama:
- McCain claimed the liberal group ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history … maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” In fact, a Republican prosecutor said of the first and biggest ACORN fraud case: “[T]his scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting.” He said $8-an-hour workers turned in made-up voter registration forms rather than doing what ACORN paid them to do.
- McCain said “Joe the plumber” faced “much higher taxes” under Obama’s tax plan and would pay a fine under Obama’s health care plan if he failed to provide coverage for his workers. But Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher would pay higher taxes only if the business he says he wants to buy puts his income over $200,000 a year, and his small business would be exempt from Obama’s requirement to provide coverage for workers.
- Obama repeated a dubious claim that his health care plan will cut the average family’s premiums by $2,500 a year. Experts have found that figure to be overly optimistic.
- McCain claimed that Obama’s real “object” is a government-run, single-payer health insurance system like those in Canada or England. The McCain campaign points to a quote from five years ago, when Obama told a labor gathering that he was “a proponent of a single-payer health care program.” But Obama has since qualified his enthusiasm for Canadian-style health care, and his current proposal is nothing like that.
- Obama incorrectly claimed all of McCain’s ads had been “negative.” That was true for one recent week, but not over the entire campaign. And at times Obama has run a higher percentage of attack ads than McCain.
- McCain described Colombia as the “largest agricultural importer of our products.” Actually, Canada imports the most U.S. farm products, and Colombia is far down the list.
- Obama strained to portray himself as willing to break ranks with fellow Democrats. His prime example was his vote for a bill that was supported by 18 Democrats and opposed by 26. Congressional Quarterly rates him as voting with his party 97 percent of the time since becoming a U.S. senator.
For details on these and other misleading claims, please read on to the Analysis section.
Bushonomics 0
Robert Reich:
The “living beyond our means” argument, with its thinly-veiled suggestion of moral turpitude, is technically correct. Over the last fifteen years, average household debt has soared to record levels, and the typical American family has taken on more of debt than it can safely manage. That became crystal clear when the housing bubble burst and home prices fell, eliminating easy home equity loans and refinancings.
But this story leaves out one very important fact. Since the year 2000, median family income has been dropping, adjusted for inflation. One of the main reasons the typical family has taken on more debt has been to maintain its living standards in the face of these declining real incomes.
It’s not been persons indulging extravagance. It’s been persons desperately treading water.
And sinking deeper with every successive year of Reago-Bushonomics.
First, the water lapped at their our chins, then our mouths, and now we tilt back our heads and strain to get our noses above water to take a breath between passing waves.
The Republican assault on the American middle class has, in fact, been an assault on the basis of the success of the American economy.
But in their greed, the Republican Party and its corporate masters saw and cared not for such things, all the while distracting the polity with their bleating about “family values” and “voodoo economics” and sending young persons to die in a war for a lie.
All along, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer.
But, through the magic of Ameriquest, no one really noticed.
Until now.
Until now, when the rich awaken to realize that the impoverishment of the middle class threatens their private jets, their helicopters, their six, seven, eight houses, their private cell phone towers.
And come crying to the taxpayer, to you and me, to throw money at them.
It’s a Republican thing.
Pah!
Then, again, there is a bright side. Stupid stores are disappearing.
The McCain Campaing Buckleyed Where It Should Have Swashed 0
With apologies to Samuel Goldwyn.
I was always a fan of William F. Buckley, Jr. Even when I reached 10th grade and realized that his politics were, basically, a crock, I admired his striving for intellectual rigor (he never found it, because, sadly, it is incompatible with Republican conservatism), his drive to find some kind of justification for conservatism (he never really succeeded, but he made a valiant effort), and his love and enjoyment of the English language used well. Somewhere I still have a copy of God and Man at Yale.
Christopher Buckley, his son, endorses Senator Obama:
(snip)
Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best.
(snip)
A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?
I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.
By the way, follow this link and you will see another example of what I described here: A “conservative” who, faced with the failure of conservativism, tries to claim that the author of the failed polices is “not a true conservative.”
And the sad thing is, they will never wake up and smell the coffee.
Via Balloon Juice.
Liberally Events 0
Drinking Liberally, Tuesday, Tangier, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphis, Pa., 6 p. m.
Praying Liberally Wilmington, Thursday, Bellefonte Cafe, 804 Brandywing Blvd., Bellefonte, Del., 7 p.
Sysadmin Note 2
I’m going to turn on my spellchecking plug in. Please use the email link at the top of the page to notify me of any bloggy wierdness weirdness.
Praying Liberally Wilmington Updated 0
Praying Liberally blog updated.
Conservative Values 0
Over at the Booman’s place.
Banks Shot 0
Two more bite the dust:
The closures are the 14th and 15th bank failures so far this year.
’nuff said.
Stray Thought: “Change You Can Believe In” Dept. 0
Give the Republican Party a 20, it will give you back five fours.
When You Got Nuttin’ 1
You dodge, weave, lie, and attack.
It’s a Republican thing. They got nuttin’.
And they are leaving the rest of us with the same:
The Dow’s close leaves it 5,585.34 points, or 39.4%, under its year-ago high.
Bushonomics: Time Runs Out Dept. 0
The Republican Party, the party of fiscal responsibility.
Yeah.
Right.
Incompetent lying hypocritical bastards.
If my wording is too circumspect, please use the email link at the top of the page and I’ll tell you what I really think.
Praying Liberally Wilmington Update 0
Right over there—->
On Top of Everything Else 3
The Family Windows box died.
“Hard Drive not found.”
Made sure everything was plugged in tight inside the box.
It was.
I ran out to Second Source and got another one. After a week-and-half playing IT Tech to my webserver, I really didn’t feel like playing bench tech to what is almost certainly a failed hard drive.
When I get a little energy, I’ll remove the harddrive, jumper it to slave, slap it into another computer, and see if I can salvage anything. All my important data is backed up in two or three different places, but I can’t say that about all the computer users in the house. . . .