Sen. Ted Stevens guilty on all counts

Per Salon.com:

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens

The jury in the corruption trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) came back Monday afternoon with a verdict that could well send Stevens' career down the tubes. Stevens was found guilty on all seven of the charges he faced, felonies relating to false statements he made on Senate financial disclosure forms on which he failed to report some $250,000 in gifts.

Stevens reportedly faces up to five years in prison on each of the counts, but the AP says he "will likely receive much less prison time, if any."

Though he's the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, Stevens may not be part of that body for much longer. He's facing a tough Democratic challenger, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, this year, and recent polling has generally shown Begich holding on to a slim lead. If Stevens is re-elected despite the conviction, it would be up to the Senate to decide whether or not to let him remain in his seat.

Capitalism + Subsidies = Hypocrisy

Watching George Will on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday made me wistful for the 1980s brand of GOP conservatism that, you know, seemed PRINCIPLED. (Note: I'm the last person who would claim that the Democrats hold exclusive claim to principles, but the GOP seems to be trafficking in a particularly virulent strain of politics these days.)

No, I didn't agree with its values, but that brand of conservatism at least seemed to believe in something sincerely and with conviction.

Will made the point that I've heard him make consistently over the last several months, that if you think the US has engaged in capitalism over the last 20 years, you're a moron. (I'm paraphrasing, but not by much.)

The thing is, government subsidies are Socialism. Subsidies "spread the wealth". Subsidies to corporations are a fancy way of saying the Government is taking YOUR money and giving it to companies that cannot succeed on their own. Corporate welfare anyone?

Couldn't we take a fraction of the money that we use to subsidize industry in this country and use it to send every one of their employees to college, training them to work in a field that needs skilled workers?

If we want to have the argument about socialism, fine. But lets have it in honest terms and not engage in rhetoric.

An army deployed against its people

In his blog on Salon.com today, Glenn Greenwald discusses the recent announcement by the US Army that, for the first time ever, US soldiers would be deployed on our own soil to act as needed against civilian unrest.

One of the most concerning portions of the Army statement was the part emphasized here by me:

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

In Greenwald's blog today and in his Salon radio interview, he discusses this new domestic military role with the ACLU, who has lodged a Freedom of Information Act inquiry to find out why this new standing military force is needed on US soil.

My takeaway: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have undeniably stretched our military to its limit, so much so that the National Guard has been deployed to serve overseas to the detriment of our domestic security, as enunciated by many state authorities who rely on the National Guard during times of disaster.

Do we need guard detail available throughout the nation? Yes. But I question why it should be a US military force, a force dedicated to combating foreign threats. Army units are NOT specialized in domestic security, and I, for one, want to know why the Department of Defence thinks they should now be in a position where they may be deployed against their fellow citizens.

(BTW - where are the "strict constitutionalists" on this one??)

Revitalization for the politic-weary

One day more, dear fellows. One day more.

The diminishing relevance of Pat Buchanan

One to watch: McCain/Palin on NBC Nightly News

OK - gotta tune into NBC Nightly News tonight.  

We just got a preview from Brian Williams and Chuck Todd about the interview with McCain and Palin together, which airs tonight.  Apparently the body language and mood of the candidates and the staffers was overwhelmingly negative. Todd just couldn't emphasize enough how bad it was. He was saying they just seemed incredibly uncomfortable together, suggesting that they may be starting to blame each other for the nose-diving campaign.  

Also, apparently Palin reversed herself in the interview, telling Williams she WOULD now release her medical records, which Todd says visibly jarred her staff.  

As a side note, Todd has been saying for some time that McCain and Palin may be nearing their "Bullworth moment". 

Axelrod: a look at the image-maker

If you're wondering how it happeded, look no further.  The New Republic's Jason Zengerle has penned this fantastic behind-the-curtain piece on the Obama campaign's chief strategist, David Axelrod, revealing Axelrod's history of political stagecraft and his evolving relationship with the would-be candidate for President of the United States.

Interesting tidbits abound, like Axelrod's lack of forsight and vision when it came to Obama's potential, Obama's persistence in pursuing Axelrod for a lead position on his political team, and Axelrod's role in persuading Obama to aim for the Presidency in 2008.

Most revealing of all may be the amount of strategy that was put into making a black man acceptible to white voters.  It seems that in this campaign Barack Obama's blackness has often almost been beside the point in this contest, especially when compared to predecessors like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.  But, as Zengerle highlights, that air of post-racial, post-partisan politics was indeed well-crafted.  Of Axelrod's work on the 1989 mayoral race of black state senator Michael White:

Axelrod believed the other crucial vehicle for winning his candidate the votes of Cleveland's white residents was what he's called "third-party authentication"--in other words, endorsements from respected individuals or institutions that whites put a lot of stock in. "David felt there almost had to be a permission structure set up for certain white voters to consider a black candidate," explains Ken Snyder, a Democratic consultant and Axelrod protégé . 

Axelrod, it seems, has developed the winning formula for black candidates to grab freely from the white electoral pool:

The self-described "keeper of the message" for Obama's presidential bid has taken the lessons he learned from his mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns and made them cohere into something that approaches a unified theory of how to elect a black candidate--emphasizing biography, using third-party authentication, attacking with an unconventional sideways approach, letting voters connect to the candidate by speaking to them directly in ads, and telling voters that supporting the black candidate puts them on the right side of history.

There are many, many revealing and fascinating bits in the piece.  If you want to know how we got to this moment, read it.

What we really think of attack ads

Just a thought, but when the media and political operatives say that we, the people of America, hate political attacks, and that the Obama and McCain campaigns are engaging in attacks, does that mean that all attacks are equally bad?  

Bear with me here.

If a candidate attacks his oponent's policies, plans, and records, that's one thing.

But if a candidate attacks the opponent's character and patriotism, isn't that something else entirely?

I'm just thinking that, just because we all hate political attacks, it doesn't mean that all attacks are created equal.

A return to Palin's "pastor problem"

I know we've largely put Sarah Palin's "pastor problem" behind us, with the media consensus seeming to be that Kenyan Bishop Thomas Muthee, who blessed Palin and called for her protection from "witchcraft", should be seen in a cultural context and that he isn't literally hunting witches.  As summed up by the Washington Post :

Can we forget the crazy preachers and try to get the candidates to focus on the serious problems?

Haha.  Silly "phony issues".  Oh, but wait.  What if Kenyans are actually inciting the murder of "witches" by burning?  While witchcraft is illegal in Kenya, apparently the reaction to accusations of witchcraft is getting horrendous.  Per NPR today:

In May, 11 people died in a "witch" burning in southwestern Kenya, but questions linger over whether neighbors in that particular region of Kenya believed the people killed were witches.  ...Local authorities say that in May, a security guard turned over a suspicious notebook he found at a school. The notebook reportedly listed the names of local witches and the minutes of their meetings. But before turning over the book to the authorities, residents of the area apparently copied down the names. Over a two-day period, a mob cut down 11 mostly retired and elderly people and burned their homes to cinders.

While there is no evidence that Muthee's pursuit of witches in his home community has lead directly to bodily harm or death, it did lead to the persecution of a local woman who is also a pastor.  

Furthermore, persecution and murder justified by accusations of witchcraft is a real problem in Muthee's home nation and his active role in scapegoating individuals by identifying them as "witches" bears further scrutiny.  Palin should know that she is closely aligned with someone who contributes to a very real culture of persecution, violence and murder.

Behold, the Undecideds!

This was just so good I had to reprint it:

Behold, the Undecideds. Have you heard of this bizarre, nefarious group? The millions of faceless, slow-blinking, mentally unattached Americans who are, right this minute, with mere days to go before the most historic election in our lifetime and when faced with what seems to be the most glaringly obvious divisions of attitude and perspective you could possibly imagine, still "on the fence" about Obama or McCain, love or hate, country or disco, Paris or Fresno, oil or water, Porsche or Pinto?

Check out Mark Morford's column in its entirety here.

Ha!  It just doesn't stop:

Or maybe not. Maybe I have it exactly backwards. Maybe the Undecideds are the mostevolved among us, more aware and conscious than the rest of us desperate plebes who are far too eager to plant our flags in the treacherous soil of definitive thought. Possible?

OK.  Good laugh.  I feel better.

McCain the Socialist/Communist

So who said the following: Barack Obama or John McCain?  

I believe that when you really look at the tax code today, the very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don't pay nearly as much as you think they do when you just look at the percentages. And I think middle-income Americans, working Americans, when the account and payroll taxes, sales taxes, mortgage pay -- all of the taxes that working Americans pay, I think they -- you would think that they also deserve significant relief, in my view...

If you said John McCain you would be CORRECT.  That's the John McCain of 2000 - remember him? - answering a citizen's question on Hardball.

I know.  I know.  Isn't that that pesky "spreading the wealth" that McCain and Palin are up in arms over?  Well, sure!  But this is an election year, and apparently that means McCain's job is to demonize others for things he actually believes in.  

Think that's taken out of context?  To hear McCain say specifically that this is NOT socialism, read the full transcript here.

Find us now on Salon.com

I'm pleased to announce that you can read From the Exurbs blog postings by Chattering Lass on Open Salon at Salon.com.

A sign of economic movement in home sales

According to this report from NPR this morning, home sales in southern California were up dramatically in September.  Southern California has had one of the highest forclosure rates in the nation, so what we're seeing here is bargain shoppers getting into the market at what could now be the nadir of the mortgage meltdown.

What does this mean?  These figures are from a period before the credit freeze that spurred Congressional action and a rollercoaster DOW, so we'll have to see how buyers fared in October when there was apparently no credit to be had.  Still, with 2 weeks left in the month, credit markets are thawing and it will be interesting to see if lenders think these So. Cal. purchases are a safe enough bet.

If we're lucky, the credit freeze will have been a blip, and people who have had some money but didn't jump 2 years ago will finally be able to take the home-ownership plunge.  That will begin working the bad mortgages through the system and get home values back on an upswing.  

There is still the question of what all this means to those who were forclosed upon, some who lied in order to get financing on homes they couldn't afford in the first place, but others who were handed or encouraged to take more than they could afford.

But for the grace of God...  The other day my husband and I were recalling our first tentative peerings into the world of home ownership, contacting a mortgage broker to find out if there was anything out there we could afford.  See, this is the thing: blame the buyer all you want for getting into a bad mortgage, but most of us do not understand the ins and outs of mortgage rates, terms, and conditions.  We rely on advice from the people who are experts: bankers and mortgage brokers.  Our broker told us we could afford up to 1/2 our monthly income on a mortgage - and would be approved for it.  With no down payment.

Fortunately husband and I are skittish creatures, prone to suspicion and fear.  We said thanks but no thanks to that huge offer and took something a little more modest.  (We're liberals to the core - always thinking "conserve".)  However, many people trusted their lenders and took the plunge.  Whose fault is it that they're now drowning?

GOP: crumbling from the center

To recap, let us note all of the Republicans who are now defecting from the John McCain/Rick Davis/Sarah Palin GOP:

Colin Powell - retired US Army General and fmr. Secretary of State

Ken Adelman - conservative Republican and original neo-con

Mickey Edwards - Fmr. Oklahoma Congressman and founding member of the Heritage Foundation

Christopher Buckley - National Review contributer, author, son of the late Wm. F. Buckley

Peggy Noonan - Fmr. Reagan speechwriter, author, and conservative columnist

George Will - conservative columnist

David Brooks - conservative columnist

Michael Smerconish - conservative talk-show host and author

I have to say, one thing I love about Peggy Noonan is that she speaks EXACTLY as she writes.  Its just archaic and wonderful.

Granted, McCain and Davis would write all of this off as the treachery of the irrelevant Georgetown cocktail circuit, but that may be even more evidence of how these people are narrowing the party.

Thoughts on the Powell endorsement

No doubt - NO doubt - you've heard plenty by now about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama, but let me point out one thing about that endorsement that you may not have heard about if you didn't see it live.

Mr. Powell made a very lovely point that I think its important for all of us to consider.  It was about the whisper campaign that Barack Obama is "really a Muslim" or a "secret Muslim" or just outright "Muslim" as an email I received stated.  Powell said this:

I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian.  He's always been a Christian.  But the really right answer is, what if he is?  Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America.  Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?  [my emphasis]

Just give that some thought and remember what is good about America.  You can watch Powell's endorsement in its entirety here.

GOP voter registration fraud. Yes, GOP voter registration fraud

Well, if you thought ACORN had cornered the market on voter registration fraud, get some bi-partisan religion.  

In a great story followed by the LA Times, Mark Jacoby, owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired this year to register thousand of voters, was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.  Turns out Mr. Jacoby falsely registered himself at a California address that is not his own in order to meet California's legal requirement to register others to vote.

THIS AFTER dozens of California voters came forward to report that his firm, YPM, had duped them into registering Republican by asking them to sign a petition for "tougher penalties against child molesters".  According to the Times, "YPM has been accused of using bait-and-switch tactics across the country.  Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusettes.  In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit."

In California, if these voters didn't discover the change, they would be disqualified from voting in their party's next primary.

So, I know they're both bad, but indulge me: which is worse?  Filling out a bunch of obviously false registration cards (Tony Romo, Mickey Mouse, Jimmy John, etc.) or duping an actual person into changing their party affiliation?

PS - Unlike ACORN, YPM does pay by the card, not by the hour.

(Tip of the hat to Rob for this one.)

Resurrecting McCarthy

Well, this one stopped me in my tracks.

There I was putting away laundry in the bedroom and before I know it I've been drawn to the television because this crazy woman just said WHAT???

Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann went above and beyond in her demonization of the liberal left/leftist/anti-American element of the US Congress and of liberal/Democrat Americans.  The words were really interchangeable for Rep. Bachmann.  Check it out for yourself, below.  

As Salon's Alex Koppelman put it, this probably just an example of what happens when enflamatory talking points are put into the hands of blithering idiots.  (OK, I might be embellishing on Koppelman's wording a bit.) He may be right, but McCain campaign is playing with fire, and McCain KNOWS it.  You know he does.  

And that's why there's a bit of a cognitive dissonance when you see all the hilarity of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner.  Everyone yucking it up as though what is being spewed out into American society right now is just harmless tomfoolery.  It is not.  It is virulent and dangerous and irresponsible.  When I look at John McCain these days, all I feel is rising concern.

UPDATE: Since this post was originally published, Bachmann's Democratic opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg, has raised some $700,000 in campaign contributions.  How ya like them apples, Bachmann!

Powell to appear on Meet the Press

Fmr. Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheudled to appear on Meet the Press this Sunday morning, and its rumored he may finally choose to endorse for President... Barack Obama.

If the rumors are true, it would be an enormous coup for Obama, who has been criticized by the McCain campaign as naive in his foreign policy cred.  It would also be a persuasive arguement to independents and moderate Republicans who were gung ho for a Powell candidacy 9 years ago and who have taken a second or third look at Obama.

It might also give a little tail wind to a campaign that appears to be worrying about keeping their momentum up with 2.5 weeks to go and a strong lead in the current polls.

P.S. - Look for Bill Kristol to demand an apology if this happens, as he predicted it a couple of months ago and was strongly repudiated by Powell's people.

California is anti-America?

Well, at least the GOP is finally being direct about it.  In their mind, anyone who isn't pro-McCain/Palin is apparently anti-America.  From WashPo:

Palin also made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the "pro-America" areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one. No word on which states she views as unpatriotic.

An obvious candidate might be California -- a state Palin has campaigned in -- because, as she told the audience, she and McCain have encountered problems enlisting famous performers in their cause.

Can McCain and Obama be funny?

If you saw last night's Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, you know the answer is an emphatic "Yes". 

If my post below of Purple and Brown was a mental palette-cleanser late in the election season, this was a good political reset button, reminding us that John McCain and Barack Obama are still human.  McCain actually had the best lines, like his explanation of the nicknames he and his friend Barack have for each other, and Obama came right back with his October surprise: that his middle name is actually Steve.  This bit from Obama is great in text - the delivery wasn't as good:

But, look, I don't want to be coy about this. We're a couple weeks from an important election. Americans have a big choice to make, and if anybody feels like they don't know me by now, let me try to give you some answers. Who is Barack Obama? Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jorel to save the planet Earth ...

If you want to check it out the speeches at length, here you go: