Thanks, General Powell. You still rule. (the evidence)

Thanks, General Powell. You still rule.

Ah... 7 minutes so well spent. This nicely frames my thoughts about the importance of the choice we will make on November 4th.
Powell said: "I think we need a transformational figure. I think we need a president who is a generational change and that's why I'm supporting Barack Obama, not out of any lack of respect or admiration for Sen. John McCain."

Ah..... transformation.

There's this wishful part of me clinging to the notion of the McCain I used to know and love, and that part of me secretly wonders if Good McCain realized that Evil McCain has been tearing this country apart the last couple of weeks (Mickey Mouse's name on voter reg cards threatens the fabric of democracy? Puh-leez), and sent General Powell to fix everything. It's a silly notion, I know, but it has its roots in the nice "family-man, citizen" remarks made by McCain. I think that if the guy I used to know is still in there somewhere, he knows two things:
-He AIN'T gonna win this here thang
-A House divided against itself cannot stand.
Based on that, who knows? Maybe he is trying to fix things, I do believe he loves this country, and if he can kiss Bush's behind after SC in 2000, he'll work with President Obama (ee!). Not to take anything away from General Powell, who in all probability made this decision on his own. I know it's just my brain trying to level the wild waves of cognitive dissonance created by Evil McCain. Something in me still hearts the old guy.

Been a busy weekend, sorry no posts. Not that anyone's reading lol! Sorry, myself, I didn't post anything for you to read. :) Working hard to win NH for Obama, though I personally feel the matter's closed up there. You wouldn't know it from calling around though. It's amazing how people who can't commit to the choice of a President can commit to being uncommitted, like bulldogs commit to raw steak. LOL

Thank you, Senator McCain

Sen. McCain gets booed for defending the citizenship and basic decency of his opponent!

I guess he heard the many calls last night for him to stop these mobs of simpletons from getting too rowdy (and sometimes murderous!)....

The video of this is actually quite powerful, particularly the longer scenes with the remarks and responses from the crowd. I'm looking for it and will post it here when I find it. Gotta say, I'm proud of McCain for putting himself out there this way. Whether it's political or not, it is the decent thing to do when the rabble keeps literally calling for Obama's head! Ew, people freak me out.

UPDATE: Still can't find the video I want. Having considered it further, I think it's probable McCain realizes that it's not gonna go his way, and has decided he wants to go out like a man of honor instead of a desperate old creeper. BTW, as I write they're releasing the report that Palin abused her power in firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, but DID NOT break any laws in doing so. Whatevs. Not terribly surprising at this point, right?

UPDATE:
Here we go! Clip from CNN on YouTube.
Creepus maximus.

Angry-Making

It's driving me nuts that everyone can suddenly see just far enough to blame the sub-prime mortgage crisis for the current financial situation, but not any farther to the factors of greedy inflation and lack of regulation that truly created the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the first place. They point the finger at the lenders and buyers and governmental mandates and "good intentions" involved in purchases of less-than-affordable housing by less-than-affluent buyers, but NOT all the way back to the simple importance of housing, and to the house-flippers and other investors who, let me make this very clear, artificially drove up home prices in the first place.

News flash - housing is just not meant to be an easy short-term investment for people who never intend to occupy. It is meant to be a good long-term investment for people who take shelter there, for people who call the place home. One could even say that the tendency to look at housing as anything more than shelter is the immediate cause of most housing-related problems in America today. I mean, I get it. If you're rich, you deserve access to cooler housing than us po'folk. Right on. But should that mean that if you're poor, you deserve no access to any kind of housing? Or, worse yet, if you are solidly middle class, you should not be able to afford to buy a home for yourself & your family merely because others (most of whom already own their family homes) were "smart" (greedy) enough to buy second, third and fourth "investment homes" when they were affordable for normal folks?

Stay with me here - this kind of activity reduces supply AND drives up demand. It creates, from thin air, a housing bubble. And it drives regular people out of the housing marketplace, which is then filled with vacant houses for sale at inflated prices. Regular people wait this kind of market out if they can; if they can't, because (duh) housing is something that some people actually need, they get themselves into mortgages where they will be upside-down in a heartbeat once the bubble bursts. They do this because, they are told, housing is always a good investment. They believe that the value can only go up. But like so many other investments, this is only incontrovertibly true in the long term. And who in their right mind would want to hang on to a house for 10 or 20 years? Maybe only a family who'd want to live there.

Those folks, the ones who deserve access to reasonably-priced housing and happened into the market at the wrong time, are the ones who are getting thoroughly screwed at this point. They bought into the system way too high and their lives are getting yanked out from under them. I don't feel too sorry for people who had their homes before all this mess and are seeing the value fall; the value should fall. The market is just correcting itself after the hideous, artificially-produced bubble. Very few, if any, of this group should see their home values fall below what they were prior to this wicked boom, unless they live on a foreclosure-riddled block. Too, I may feel bad for them on account of other crappy economic factors, but I think they're gonna be okay when it comes to home values.

So all these conservative pundits today are smugly deriding the "good intentions" of "liberal" lawmakers who wanted affordable housing options for sub-prime buyers. It goes something like this....

Those liberal bastards! They wanted people to have shelter, and to gain some equity on that shelter! Those bleeding-heart rats! Didn't they know that all the good real-estate was snatched up early by those smart house-flipping investors? Maybe we did go ahead and sell some of our $100k houses to those po'folk for $200k, and the $200k houses to the regular folk for $350k. But we made a tidy profit! That's our right in the free market! And we stand by as those homeowners continue to get thrown out on the street, en masse, across the country, blowing their brains out, weeping, and praying, telling their children it'll be OK. When the market collapses as a result, we adapt quickly, learn to ignore our cherished free-market principles, and cry foul. Not on behalf of those regular folks, or those formerly and newly poor folks, who have lost everything; on behalf of our wallets, bruised as a result of their vital losses. After all, who could have predicted that the bubble would burst? Who could have predicted that mortgage-backed securities would someday reflect so little value? There's no way we would have undertaken that kind of risk. Never mind that the market is all about risk, that we love risk when it profits us; we despise it when it bankrupts us. That's when the government should step in, to save us from economic crisis once it's already too late, not to regulate the nature of the profits and prevent the crisis in the first place!

I have never seen such an infestation of red-tie, free-market suits crawling to the teat of socialist government controls. John McCain wants to nationalize mortgages and subsidize the ridiculously inflated principal amounts that caused this mess???? Are you fucking kidding me? That is the most socialist thing I've ever heard, you pinko commie. How about if you had simply allowed the regulations that would have prevented outrageous home value inflation and thereby steered us clear of this bullshit in the first place? You hypocrite. You want to swipe up that suggestion of the "most liberal" Senators you constantly deride, who would have been perfectly happy to regulate the housing market when it was needed, and claim it as your own "new idea" because you think it will sound good to the voters, even though it stands in grave opposition to every goddamn thing you stand for? You swine. How very "bi-partisan" it is of you to lay claim to the ideas of your opposition, you bloated, arrogant, bloviating shell of the man you once were.

So. I'm mad. I'm just a dumb kid, really, and I saw this coming. Just like the fucking war... No one in their right mind believed that Saddam had crafted WMD from thin air in the decade following the first Gulf War. How is it our ennobled leaders can't see this crap coming when regular folks who simply pay attention can? And when, oh when, will we stop this madness of letting the profiteers get away with murder when the markets are bouncing and then breaking the fall once their safely-banked profits have vampirically drained the value from everything? Will the enormity of this situation finally teach Americans the lesson that there is so much more value in regulating long-term stability than in permitting the short-term opportunity for the rich to get richer? Can we use this golden opportunity to make it clear, at last, that the chance for some to own the whole damned pie is not more important than the need for everyone to get, and hang onto, their own little crumbs of the crust?

Oh, God.
I think I know the answer.

Debate Deflate

I sorta feel unqualified to comment on the debates these days. Mind you, not because I'm not engaged, but almost because I'm too engaged. I spend so much time researching the candidates and campaigns, and listening to their blurbs on TV and the internet, and the debates are on message to the point of being repetitive. I mean, I could probably create a word-for-word replication of this debate using only old video clips from before tonight. That is, of course, excluding the pissy moments displayed in the debate on the parts of both candidates.

I also tend to see the debates, between McCain and Obama at least, as draws, because I don't perceive either of them as the most skilled of debaters. However, there's a lot more to public perception than a scorecard, and on that count, I feel pretty certain that public sentiment has been swung our way, if only a minute amount, after all three debates. Kudos to Obama for working the room like he did when it was all over, even the undecideds (and probably plenty of the Republicans) can't resist that charisma of his. Funnily, the truth is that Joe Biden beat them all down with his performance, especially on the front of connecting with the electorate in a way that seemed unaffected and apolitical. If either of the principals could do that in the third debate, it could change the game for sure. It's sorta weird to me how Biden's presence has emerged over the last couple of months, despite the fact that he was never a serious contender for the presidency. He was *such* a smart pick on Obama's part, not a flashy one, but such a very smart one. That is to be contrasted with McCain's choice of Governor Palin, which I feel borders on irresponsible, and it seems that an increasing number of the electorate agrees.

I'd be super interested to hear what others think, especially if they are still undecided. I laugh as I wonder if there's anyone left who might ever read this blog who is still undecided. Seems like most everyone I know comes down pretty strongly on one side or the other, and, admittedly just like me, after a formula that is pretty predictable. I'll tell you, I wish that this was a contest between McCain from days of yore and Obama. Not because it would make it more likely for my guy to win (no doubt it wouldn't), but because I would feel certain that, either way, our nation would be on the verge of electing a President who possesses a powerful mix of principle and pragmatism. Over the last eight years, Senator McCain has disappointed me repeatedly on both counts, and I know I'm not alone. And the truth is, it's personally disappointing for me as well, because Senator McCain was once a bonafide hero of mine, not to mention a man who was a friend of my family and for whom my family campaigned. Even as my politics continued to diverge from his, he was someone for whom I long maintained a healthy dose of admiration. I can still admire McCain the man, for his service and determination, but my last shred of reverence for McCain the politician was obliterated a while ago.

Anyway, I'm so over boring-ish debates. I'm pretty much a wonk and these debates bore me, so I'm guessing that most people, for whom this ain't exactly their bread and butter, aren't moved by hearing the same crap over and over. That's especially true when all anyone wants today are solid answers on the economy, and it is becomng more and more evident that our economy has grown into a juggernaut so complex that it even eludes the grasp of our leaders. Someday I will figure out how to get Americans interested in politics and civics; I will figure out how to make the direct connection in the American psyche between our daily lives and our choice of leaders. We're headed that way, I think, but there's some trick that remains undiscovered. Some smart political analyst, maybe with a background in psychology, will do it eventually, and why shouldn't it be me? And when I do I will rule the world! Muahahaha. Just kidding, I'll never make a good candidate myself. Too many, uh, background issues. But I can Rove it up through others! LOLOL!

Ugh, I'm tired.

Want to blog... can't type....

Just got back from the gym and my arms are all John McCainy, by which I mean I can't lift them above a 90-degree angle.





Now, I'm not trying to be mean here. But really, every time McCain does this thumbs up thing, you can tell he kinda struggles. You can see it in the strained smile. I would never bag on someone's disability, but I would draw the simile to express my own. Having said that...









I also feel kinda shaky.






And a little nauseous.



But I'm excited for the debate! You may break me down, Greg the trainer, but you can't steal my love of politics!
No doubt I will recover some of my typing ability after the debate and be back. It seriously took me like 1/2 an hour to do this!

Hee

Credit to kdoug on DKos

Hee

Setting it straight: John McCain on marriage equality

Senator John McCain has never been a staunch defender of marriage equality. However, he has managed to maintain the illusion that he is moderate on this issue and that he believes above all that it should be left to the states. I believe that he has achieved this primarily by opposing the Bush attempt to amend the US Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

However.... for anyone who is interested, he has taken the stance in individual state battles that their constitutions should be amended to define marriage thus. He has also opposed creation of domestic partner status on the record.

With regard to CA Proposition 8 on the ballot this year, McCain released the following statement:

"I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions."

This statement is a tad misleading, since the statute currently enshrined in AZ law is NOT an amendment to its constitution, but merely a part of its civil code, and it has since been the case in AZ law that equal marriage was not a legal possibility. In contrast, CA Prop 8 aims to do two things most distasteful to civil libertarians: it aims to amend the state constitution in order to discriminate against persons of a particular group, AND it aims to remove a civil right that has already been upheld by the CA courts.

Incidentally, and somewhat ironically, there is a similar measure (AZ Prop 102) on the ballot in McCain's home state of AZ this year, and he is not on record as having said anything whatsoever about it. However, in 2006 he actively campaigned in favor of AZ Prop 107, which would have not only amended the AZ constitution, but denied any kind of domestic-partner rights to gay AND straight unmarried couples!

Text of AZ Prop 107 from 2006, emphasis added by me:
To preserve and protect marriage in this state, only a union between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage by this state or its political subdivisions and no legal status for unmarried persons shall be created or recognized by this state or its political subdivisions that is similar to that of marriage.

The following was his statement on this extremely harsh measure:

"I believe that the institution of marriage should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman, said Sen. McCain. The Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment would allow the people of Arizona to decide on the definition of marriage in our state. I wholeheartedly support the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment and I hope that the voters in Arizona choose to support it as well."



---McCain in 2005, smiling placidly while holding a number of the actual petitions that ensured this measure made it onto the ballot. The woman beside him is the late Lynn Stanley, who was at that time the chair of Protect Marriage Arizona.



The broad language included in AZ Prop 107 is the sneaky kind that often slips past the electorate at large. The voters of Arizona are to be commended for taking notice of its nefarious intent and consequently being the first (and thus far only) American electoral population to turn away the gilded offer of a constitutional same-sex marriage ban. Unfortunately, the current AZ Prop 102 contains no such surreptitious language and I believe it will probably pass, despite the general distaste of many Arizonans for amending their state constitution on such frivolous grounds. Regardless, it surprised me at the time, and continues to surprise me, that McCain signed on to such a punitive measure. It leads me to a very narrow set of conclusions:

-Mayhap he did not read the very short measure that he was endorsing?
-Perhaps he did read it but the elusive language slipped his ostensibly well-trained legislative grasp?
-Or, worst of all, might it be that our esteemed Senator uses the cloak of federalism, of leaving marriage issues to the states, to disguise contempt for the notion of equal marriage as well as for the possibility of any other kind of approximated civil equality for same-sex couples?

Disturbing.

Even a righty like Palin pretended to be all about some forms of civil equality in the debate. She chose her words carefully enough, but that was certainly the position she aimed to convey. She's made it perfectly clear on the record herself that she's not really all that into domestic partnership and conferring the civil rights of marriage, but that's a whole other topic and should surprise no one at this point.

I promise that this won't be a one-note blog, as I have lots of other stuff to muse and rant about. It's just on my mind and I've heard so many people say that they think McCain is moderate, or hasn't weighed in, on this issue. He's officially in!