The "Daily Show" Has Gotten To The Bottom Of The McCain-Palin Base

WARNING! Supporters of the Dumbo ticket should go no further because Jon Stewart, "the most trusted man in America," and "The Daily Show's" chief political correspondent, John Oliver, have plumbed the depths of the Dumbo base. If Dumbo True Believers views this video clip, they will turn into pillars of salt. Non-Dumbos will find it LOL funny. If this is (fair & balanced) voter analysis, so be it.

[x Comedy Central]
The Daily Show Analyzes "The Stupid Vote" (10/07/08)
With Jon Stewart and John Oliver

[Jon Stewart has been the host of Comedy Central's comedy and news show "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" since 1999. A former stand-up comedian known for his biting sarcasm, Stewart began hosting television shows in 1989, beginning with "Short Attention Span Theater." Before Stewart's gig on "The Daily Show" he hosted "You Wrote It, You Watch It" (1992) and "The Jon Stewart Show" (1993-95), and appeared several times in HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show" (1992-2001). Stewart is a graduate of the College of William and Mary. John Oliver is a British comedian and correspondent on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." His previous credits include "The Department" with Chris Addison and Andy Zaltzman, "Political Animal," "Fighting Talk, My Hero," and "Mock the Week." He is a graduate of Cambridge University, where he studied English and was vice-president of the Cambridge Footlights.]

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Philadelphia Flyers Fans To The Mighty Q: "Get The Puck Outta Here!"

The moment every blogger waits for: a hockey mom gets booed by a hockey crowd. Even the ploy of dressing the youngest daughter in a hometeam jersey didn't stop the jeers. Let The Mighty Quinnette go back from whence she came, dragging her poor children behind her. Miss Wasilla '84 knows no shame. If this is (fair & balanced) derision, so be it.

[x Salon]
War Room: Palin Booed At Flyers Game
By Alex Koppelman

[X YouTube/TgDanmWkg Channel]

Yes, as predicted, Philadelphia fans in the arena to see Sarah Palin drop the puck at a game between the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers booed her. “She was greeted by resounding (almost deafening) boos,” Lynn Zinser writes at the New York Times’ hockey blog.

From now on, you may refer to me as Carnac.

It really was hard to see this coming — unless you’ve spent, oh, about five minutes in Philadelphia. Anyone who has set foot there should have known exactly what was going to happen. Philly sports fans booed Santa Claus. So why the McCain campaign thought this would go smoothly, I still don’t know.

As you’ll see in the video below, Palin did get a smattering of cheers. She had a plan to protect herself from the worst that Flyers fans could muster, and it looks like it may have worked, at least to an extent. At a fundraiser on Saturday afternoon, she explained, “I’ve been warned that Flyers fans, they get so enthused that they boo everybody at the drop of the puck. But what I thought I’d do is I’d put Piper in a Flyers jersey, bring her out with me. How dare they boo Piper!”

[Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for the online magazine Salon. He runs Salon's political blog, War Room. Formerly the media critic for another online magazine, Dragonfire, Alex is a contributing editor at Smith Magazine and has written for New York Magazine and the Huffington Post, among others. Alex has appeared on MSNBC, CNN Headline News and Fox News, and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.]

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Hitchens Goes For The Hopester & Jumpin' Joe

Christopher Hitchens won this blogger's respect when — in May 2008 — he voluntarily experienced waterboarding, a controversial "enhanced interrogation technique" that has been used on Gitmo prisoners held by the United States. After Hitchens rejected the notion that waterboarding constituted torture, he was asked by his Vanity Fair editors to experience it for himself. After undergoing waterboarding, he fully changed his opinion. He concluded "if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture." Amen, Brother Hitchens. Now, Hitchens takes another courageous position for a Hoover Institution Fellow: he waterboards the Dumbo ticket. Amen again, Brother Hitchens. If this is (fair & balanced) polemicism, so be it.

[x Slate]
Vote For Obama: McCain Lacks Character/Temperament; Palin: A Disgrace
By Christopher Hitchens

I used to nod wisely when people said: "Let's discuss issues rather than personalities." It seemed so obvious that in politics an issue was an issue and a personality was a personality, and that the more one could separate the two, the more serious one was. After all, in a debate on serious issues, any mention of the opponent's personality would be ad hominem at best and at worst would stoop as low as ad feminam.

At my old English boarding school, we had a sporting saying that one should "tackle the ball and not the man." I carried on echoing this sort of unexamined nonsense for quite some time—in fact, until the New Hampshire primary of 1992, when it hit me very forcibly that the "personality" of one of the candidates was itself an "issue." In later years, I had little cause to revise my view that Bill Clinton's abysmal character was such as to be a "game changer" in itself, at least as important as his claim to be a "new Democrat." To summarize what little I learned from all this: A candidate may well change his or her position on, say, universal health care or Bosnia. But he or she cannot change the fact—if it happens to be a fact—that he or she is a pathological liar, or a dimwit, or a proud ignoramus. And even in the short run, this must and will tell.

On "the issues" in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their "debates" have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.

I suppose it could be said, as Michael Gerson has alleged, that the Obama campaign's choice of the word erratic to describe McCain is also an insinuation. But really, it's only a euphemism. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear had to feel sorry for the old lion on his last outing and wish that he could be taken somewhere soothing and restful before the night was out. The train-wreck sentences, the whistlings in the pipes, the alarming and bewildered handhold phrases—"My friends"—to get him through the next 10 seconds. I haven't felt such pity for anyone since the late Adm. James Stockdale humiliated himself as Ross Perot's running mate. And I am sorry to have to say it, but Stockdale had also distinguished himself in America's most disastrous and shameful war, and it didn't qualify him then and it doesn't qualify McCain now.

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Governor Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

[Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. Hitchens was educated at The Leys School, Cambridge (His mother arguing that "If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it."), and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and graduated with a "gentleman's 3rd." Hitchens came to the States in 1981 to write for The Nation.]

Copyright © 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company

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Kristol-Unclear's Advice To The Geezer: Get A Pair Of Ball Bearings!

Herman Wouk created a sympathetic villain in Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, USN in Wouk's fine WWII-novel: The Caine Mutiny (1951). Queeg, the mentally unstable captain of the USS Caine, was a graduate of the Naval Academy (5th from the bottom of the Class of 1936?) who rolled a pair of steel ball bearings in his hand when under pressure. William Kristol-Unlcear, the token Righty among the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed columnists, advises The Geezer to start rolling the ball bearings and dump his campaign. In the novel (and film), Queeg gave an impetuous order during a training exercise to throw yellow dye overboard when the warning action was unnecessary. Queeg was known thereafter — to the Caine's officers — as "Old Yellowstain." The Geezer will be known as "Cut'n Run" if he follows Kristol-Unclear's advice. The Geezer should stay the course and may his miserable campaign run aground. If this is a (fair & balanced) benediction, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Fire The Campaign
By William Kristol

It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign.

He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.

He may be anyway. Bush is unpopular. The media is hostile. The financial meltdown has made things tougher. Maybe the situation is hopeless — and if it is, then nothing McCain or his campaign does matters.

But I’m not convinced by such claims of inevitability. McCain isn’t Bush. The media isn’t all-powerful. And the economic crisis still presents an opportunity to show leadership.

The 2008 campaign is now about something very big — both our future prosperity and our national security. Yet the McCain campaign has become smaller.

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

Provide total media accessibility on their campaign planes and buses. Kick most of the aides off and send them out to swing states to work for the state coordinators on getting voters to the polls. Keep just a minimal staff to help organize the press conferences McCain and Palin should have at every stop and the TV interviews they should do at every location. Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio — and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.

The hope for McCain and Palin is that they still have pretty good favorable ratings from the voters. The American people have by no means turned decisively against them.

The bad news, of course, is that right now Obama’s approval/disapproval rating is better than McCain’s. Indeed, Obama’s is a bit higher than it was a month ago. That suggests the failure of the McCain campaign’s attacks on Obama.

So drop them.

Not because they’re illegitimate. I think many of them are reasonable. Obama’s relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is, I believe, a legitimate issue. But McCain ruled it out of bounds, and he’s sticking to that. And for whatever reason — the public mood, campaign ineptness, McCain’s alternation between hesitancy and harshness, which reflects the fact that he’s uncomfortable in the attack role — the other attacks on Obama just aren’t working. There’s no reason to think they’re suddenly going to.

There are still enough doubts about Obama to allow McCain to win. But McCain needs to make his case, and do so as a serious but cheerful candidate for times that need a serious but upbeat leader.

McCain should stop unveiling gimmicky proposals every couple of days that pretend to deal with the financial crisis. He should tell the truth — we’re in uncharted waters, no one is certain what to do, and no one knows what the situation will be on Jan. 20, 2009. But what we do know is that we could use someone as president who’s shown in his career the kind of sound judgment and strong leadership we’ll need to make it through the crisis.

McCain can make the substantive case for his broadly centrist conservatism. He can explain that our enemies won’t take a vacation because the markets are down, and that it’s not unimportant that he’s ready to be commander in chief. He can remind voters that even in a recession, the president appoints federal judges — and that his judges won’t legislate from the bench.

And he can point out that there’s going to be a Democratic Congress. He can suggest that surely we’d prefer a president who would check that Congress where necessary and work with it where possible, instead of having an inexperienced Democratic president joined at the hip with an all-too-experienced Democratic Congress, leading us, unfettered and unchecked, back to 1970s-style liberalism.

At Wednesday night’s debate at Hofstra, McCain might want to volunteer a mild mea culpa about the extent to which the presidential race has degenerated into a shouting match. And then he can pledge to the voters that the last three weeks will feature a contest worthy of this moment in our history.

He’d enjoy it. And he might even win it.

[William Kristol is founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, the influential journal of politics and ideas located in Washington, D.C. He is also a regular panelist on "Faux News Sunday" and an analyst for the Faux News Channel. Kristol received both his A.B. (1973) and Ph.D. (1979) from Harvard University. If there is any justice, Kristol and his fellow neo-con war criminals (who gave us the Iraq War) should go to the dock in the World Court at The Hague. Let Kristol-Unclear, Paul Wolfie, and Perle of Foolishness stand alongside The Dubster, The Dickster, and The Rumster before they all climb the scaffold stairs and dance at the end of a rope like Saddam Hussein. War criminals of a feather should hang together.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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Kudos, Krugerrandman!

The Krugerrandman has been a sharp critic of all of the financial shenanigans that have brought us to the edge of ruin. Today, The Krugerrandman offered admiration of the Brits in his NY Fishwrap column and received news from Stockholm that he was the 2008 recipient of "The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel." The prize consists of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.41M), a gold medal and a diploma. Again, kudos to The Krugerrandman and brickbats to Hammerin' Hank Paulson for disregarding advice (from Fed Chair Ben Bernanke) to use the approach taken by the Brits (and praised by The Krugerrandman). Of course, look at Hammerin' Hank's boss. If this is (fair & balanced) dismal science, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Gordon Does Good
By Paul Krugman

Has Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, saved the world financial system?

O.K., the question is premature — we still don’t know the exact shape of the planned financial rescues in Europe or for that matter the United States, let alone whether they’ll really work. What we do know, however, is that Mr. Brown and Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent to our Treasury secretary), have defined the character of the worldwide rescue effort, with other wealthy nations playing catch-up.

This is an unexpected turn of events. The British government is, after all, very much a junior partner when it comes to world economic affairs. It’s true that London is one of the world’s great financial centers, but the British economy is far smaller than the U.S. economy, and the Bank of England doesn’t have anything like the influence either of the Federal Reserve or of the European Central Bank. So you don’t expect to see Britain playing a leadership role.

But the Brown government has shown itself willing to think clearly about the financial crisis, and act quickly on its conclusions. And this combination of clarity and decisiveness hasn’t been matched by any other Western government, least of all our own.

What is the nature of the crisis? The details can be insanely complex, but the basics are fairly simple. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to large losses for anyone who bought assets backed by mortgage payments; these losses have left many financial institutions with too much debt and too little capital to provide the credit the economy needs; troubled financial institutions have tried to meet their debts and increase their capital by selling assets, but this has driven asset prices down, reducing their capital even further.

What can be done to stem the crisis? Aid to homeowners, though desirable, can’t prevent large losses on bad loans, and in any case will take effect too slowly to help in the current panic. The natural thing to do, then — and the solution adopted in many previous financial crises — is to deal with the problem of inadequate financial capital by having governments provide financial institutions with more capital in return for a share of ownership.

This sort of temporary part-nationalization, which is often referred to as an “equity injection,” is the crisis solution advocated by many economists — and sources told The Times that it was also the solution privately favored by Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman.

But when Henry Paulson, the U.S. Treasury secretary, announced his plan for a $700 billion financial bailout, he rejected this obvious path, saying, “That’s what you do when you have failure.” Instead, he called for government purchases of toxic mortgage-backed securities, based on the theory that ... actually, it never was clear what his theory was.

Meanwhile, the British government went straight to the heart of the problem — and moved to address it with stunning speed. On Wednesday, Mr. Brown’s officials announced a plan for major equity injections into British banks, backed up by guarantees on bank debt that should get lending among banks, a crucial part of the financial mechanism, running again. And the first major commitment of funds will come on Monday — five days after the plan’s announcement.

At a special European summit meeting on Sunday, the major economies of continental Europe in effect declared themselves ready to follow Britain’s lead, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into banks while guaranteeing their debts. And whaddya know, Mr. Paulson — after arguably wasting several precious weeks — has also reversed course, and now plans to buy equity stakes rather than bad mortgage securities (although he still seems to be moving with painful slowness).

As I said, we still don’t know whether these moves will work. But policy is, finally, being driven by a clear view of what needs to be done. Which raises the question, why did that clear view have to come from London rather than Washington?

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Paulson’s initial response was distorted by ideology. Remember, he works for an administration whose philosophy of government can be summed up as “private good, public bad,” which must have made it hard to face up to the need for partial government ownership of the financial sector.

I also wonder how much the Femafication of government under President Bush contributed to Mr. Paulson’s fumble. All across the executive branch, knowledgeable professionals have been driven out; there may not have been anyone left at Treasury with the stature and background to tell Mr. Paulson that he wasn’t making sense.

Luckily for the world economy, however, Gordon Brown and his officials are making sense. And they may have shown us the way through this crisis.

[Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. In 1991, the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge." On October 12, 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Economics Prize.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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