Friday, August 22, 2008

22 Aug 2008 11:16 am

The View From Your Window

Big Wolf Lake, New York, 6.30 am.

22 Aug 2008 10:42 am

Hinderaker: Still Great Value

Neoconservatism as camp:

"I can relate, though. For example, if a reporter asked me how many ties I own, there's no way I could answer. Just like McCain, I'd tell him he has to ask my wife. Likewise if someone wants to know how many Wii games my kids have... The truth is that McCain isn't out of touch with "ordinary people" because he's rich, he's out of touch with his own domestic arrangements because he cares little about material things, and for many years has devoted his extraordinary energies not to enjoying his wife's money, but to serving the American people."

Remember this?

"It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile."

22 Aug 2008 10:29 am

The Best Time For That Obama Text

Why not 3 am?

22 Aug 2008 10:26 am

Class War Update

A liberal group puts out a Youtube citing McCain's "Black Centurion" Amex card, the type you get if you spend more than a quarter of a million a year on it. Josh finds an ad for the McCain Phoenix mansion. A seven-car detached garage? This is getting pettier. On the other hand, McCain started the personal attacks, with the celebrity mockery. If he hadn't, I think the media would be tougher on the Dems. And the public less interested.

22 Aug 2008 10:21 am

Gas Prices Around The World

Americans are still spoiled rotten. And this is a very cool inter-active info-graphic. The Turks are paying more than $10 a gallon!

22 Aug 2008 10:13 am

Obama's Veep

Not who I suspected.

22 Aug 2008 09:56 am

The Man With $500 Ferragamo Loafers

I'm not a big fan of targeting politicians for their wealth. I don't begrudge anyone succeeding and admire many fabulously wealthy Americans. But the inheritance - rather than earning - of great riches can rub some the wrong way. George W. Bush is not wealthy because he earned it; his family connections made all the difference. And John McCain, who hails from a very privileged family, married money that most people can barely imagine. If your house just got foreclosed on, or you can't afford the mortgage any more, this is not someone you can easily identify with:

Those real estate holdings include a Sedona ranch with three dwellings, worth $1.1 million; a Phoenix condominium suite that had originally been two units, worth $4.7 million; an $847,800 three-bedroom high-rise condo in Arlington; an oceanfront condo in La Jolla, Calif.; a half-million-dollar loft in Phoenix purchased for their daughter Meghan; another Phoenix condo, worth $830,000; and two beachfront condos in Coronado, Calif, one of which is valued at $2.7 million. The other was purchased just this year, as McCain was lamenting the difficulties that struggling Americans were facing just to make their mortgage payments. Cindy McCain told Vogue magazine the family needed the second condo because the first was getting too crowded as their family grew.

I don't know about you, but this is more distant to me than someone who just earned a bunch of royalties for a book he actually wrote himself.

22 Aug 2008 09:27 am

Cross In The Dirt Update

Some loose ends. Chuck Colson's office say they simply don't know where the original source for the Solzhenitsyn story was, and have reviewed notes and manuscript of the book and come up empty. They're still looking into it. But Factcheck.org have uncovered two Billy Graham broadcasts that put the story out there in 1975 and 1976. Here's Billy Graham on September 3, 1975:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was over here recently, remember? And he toured around the country. And he told a little story that everybody ought to hear, if you didn’t hear it. He said when he was in that prison for so long there came one time, and one time only, when he thought of suicide. He said he was not allowed ever to speak to his cell-mate. For weeks on end, they could not speak to each other. And he said that his cell-mate saw him growing weaker and weaker and more depressed and more discouraged all the time. And he said his cell-mate took a little stick and in the sand, or the dirt, in the cell, he drew a picture of the Cross. And Solzhenitsyn said, “At that moment, the whole purpose of my existence dawned upon me. Because,” he said, “I realized that Jesus Christ shed His blood for me on that Cross.” And he said, “That gave me the courage to live through my imprisonment.

Who knows if Solzhenitsyn told this story to Graham personally, or whether it somehow entered the ether another way, or whether a story simply got embellished or transferred from one prisoner to another? It's nowhere in any of Solzhenitsyn's writings, as far as all the scholars know. It's probably invented, or has some kernel of truth only to be turned into a parable perfect for sermons and inspirational books. For Graham's purposes, it's an evangelizing tool. Some subsequent versions of the story in this vein add details such as this:

"Would you believe, three days later, without any warning, he was released from that prison?"

We're not in the universe of fact-gathering here. It's worth noting, however, that no other story shows up on Google or Nexis with all these elements combined - the prison camp, the prisoner, the cross-in-the-dirt, the moment of redemption - apart from the Graham-Helms-Colson parable and the Mark Salter hagiography. 

Continue reading "Cross In The Dirt Update" »

22 Aug 2008 08:56 am

Elitism Watch

John Cole summarizes:

Just so we are clear: visiting your grandmother while vacationing in Hawaii, the state where you were you were born - elitist.

Meeting the millionaire heiress daughter (who you will soon begin an affair with and divorce your first wife and then go on and buy a ton of houses) in Hawaii and then going on and honeymooning in Hawaii – not elitist.

22 Aug 2008 08:27 am

License To Drink

Megan ponders lowering the drinking age to 18 and how to curb drunk driving.

22 Aug 2008 07:52 am

Keeping Churches Out Of Politics

After a decade, the public starts to come around.

22 Aug 2008 07:42 am

Housing Problem

McCain's counter-attack:

22 Aug 2008 12:34 am

Romney?

That's what Halperin is hearing. How many mansions would that be altogether?

Thursday, August 21, 2008

21 Aug 2008 11:40 pm

Taking Back The Campaign Nominee

Fish: meet barrel.

21 Aug 2008 10:53 pm

Pick Her

Nate Silver makes one last pitch:

If Obama picks Clinton, the Republicans are likely to overplay their hand. One thing that Obama has not really been able to do is to generate some organic level of backlash when he is attacked. This is separate and distinct from the notion of "fighting back"; it is voters stepping in and refereeing the match themselves. Voters recognize that McCain has gone negative but they aren't really punishing him for it -- his favorables haven't moved at all. Why not? 

Continue reading "Pick Her" »

21 Aug 2008 09:51 pm

Face Of The Day

A Russian soldier waits for a concert to commemorate South Ossetia's war dead August 21, 2008 in Tskhinvali, the capital of the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia. South Ossetia has been de facto independent from Georgia since the early 1990s, and has been forging closer ties with Russia in the aftermath of the recent Russia-Georgian war. By Chris Hondros/Getty.

21 Aug 2008 08:32 pm

Evil At Saddleback

A revealing bloggingheads exchange between Bob Wright and Ann Althouse. Both realize that McCain's vow to "defeat evil" at Saddleback was both asinine machismo - like we haven't had enough of that after eight years of Cheney - and deeply unChristian. There's no way a president of the United States or any country can "defeat evil." Evil is everywhere and always for Christians - until the Second Coming. Particular manifestations of evil can be defeated, but not evil itself. That endures, and is part of us too.

In this, of course, Obama's theology is far more mainstream than McCain's bravado. And Christians are first reminded that we too are capable of evil - even as we try to do good. And so a genuine effort to spread democracy and human rights can even allow some leaders, divorced from real Christianity, to commit absolute evil in the name of good.

Like, say, torture.

21 Aug 2008 08:29 pm

More Of The Same

Ezra Klein thinks Obama has found his economic message. From today on the stump:

21 Aug 2008 07:40 pm

Timing Is Everything

The Chicago-Sun Times reports that the Rezko sentencing has been bumped from September 3th to October 28th, one week before the election.

21 Aug 2008 07:24 pm

Turning Obama Into A Terrorist

The far right goes there. The source of the smear is a group called the American Issues Project. According to Ben Smith, its spokesman, Christian Pinkston, is a former aide to presidential candidate Jack Kemp, and went on to run the conservative group Empower America. Jack Kemp must be proud, don't you think? And Stanley Kurtz just had an obasm.

21 Aug 2008 06:47 pm

Eight, Not Seven

That's how many houses McCain actually has, although because they're all part of Cindy's massive fortune, it's understandable he can't quite keep track of how immensely wealthy he is and has been for a very long time.

21 Aug 2008 06:43 pm

Pulling A Giuliani

"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," - Brian Rogers, McCain spokesman, responding to Obama mocking McCain for not knowing how many houses he owns. This was McCain's rhetorical gambit when accused of carpet-bagging earlier in his career. Hilzoy is getting tired of McCain playing the POW card without reason. Ben Smith's take:

It does seem like they're flirting with Giuliani/9/11 territory here, in which at subject that seems utterly immune to humor, used as a first resort, suddenly becomes a running joke among your political enemies and your late night comic friends.

He does seem to play the POW card every hour or so. And who is this Brian Rogers? Apart from sounding like an asshole in every single quote of his I see?

21 Aug 2008 06:12 pm

Fish Cap

Rob Inglis has a smarter way to stop overfishing:

Commercial fishing boats that are forced to use smaller nets will generally just stay out longer, burning more fuel and taking up more crew time but coming back with the same amount of fish. A shortened fishing season just motivates fishermen to fish more intensely while they can—buying bigger, more powerful boats so they can get to the fishing grounds more quickly and catch more fish once they get there. This arms race—which often results in further reductions to the fishing season that, in turn, leave the powerful new boats sitting in port—benefits nobody.

The better strategy is to limit each fisherman to a certain amount of fish per year and not worry about how or when he goes about catching it.

21 Aug 2008 05:53 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"This is disappointing, not just because it's apparently untrue that Cindy McCain spoke to Mother Theresa, but because it makes you scratch your head. The McCains adopted a little girl from overseas. That's an amazing, incredibly compassionate thing to do. Why embellish a story like that?

Granted, "fish stories" aren't necessarily unusual. People will add a little detail here or there to make a story better, but it doesn't look good when a politician does it -- and since John McCain has repeated the story, it looks like Mr. "Straight Talk" is going to end up having to explain on the campaign trail why he and his wife fudged a story about something as intimate as the circumstances under which they came to adopt their own daughter. They should know better than that." - John Hawkins, Right Wing News.

21 Aug 2008 05:32 pm

Taking Back The Campaign Nominee

Good one:

21 Aug 2008 05:02 pm

Rape, Incest, Risk To A Mother's Life

McCain decides to leave the absolute ban on all abortion for any reason in the Republican platform. McCain supported changing the language in 2000 and reiterated this as late as 2007.

21 Aug 2008 04:56 pm

Election Tea Leaves

Andrew Gelman explains why the state of the economy matters.

21 Aug 2008 04:40 pm

White Lies

Matt Welch, McCain biographer, wades into the debate over McCain's embellishments. Matt puts most of it down to the usual effect of telling stories and anecdotes over and over again - we all fudge and embellish and misremember our pasts, even to ourselves. But not all of us are running for president, with that level of scrutiny:

McCain's history has never really been scrutinized before. This may sound hard to believe for 26-year veteran of Capitol Hill, but no less true. Like [Richard] Riordan, McCain got used to being able to make a too-salty joke, or too-perfect anecdote, because the press was mostly amused and/or actively wanted to protect the guy from himself. This leads to bad habits, especially in the age of YouTube, and is one of many reasons why the Straight Talk Express is no longer a rolling press conference. But more than just malaprops, there are chunks of the McCain biography, including and especially the Vietnam chapter, that are just flat inconsistent and have never been fully examined journalistically.

Continue reading "White Lies" »

21 Aug 2008 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

Slow-motion skateboarding:

skate - shot on red - 120 fps from opus magnum prod. on Vimeo.

21 Aug 2008 04:03 pm

Ode To Melancholy

Don't you just hate happiness?:

I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?

21 Aug 2008 03:35 pm

Another Kerry?

Joe Klein is worried:

One of the great strengths of the Obama candidacy has been the sense that this is a guy whose blood doesn't boil, who carefully considers the options before he reacts—and that his reaction is always measured and rational. But that's also a weakness: sometimes the most rational response is to rip your opponent's lungs out.

21 Aug 2008 03:11 pm

A Rising Tide

Yglesias sees a slight improvement in Bush's polling.

21 Aug 2008 03:00 pm

Clinton As Veep

Nate Silver makes the case. Bill Schneider is on board.

21 Aug 2008 02:40 pm

Taking The Shot

Professional photographer Vincent Laforet is photo-blogging the Olympics.

21 Aug 2008 02:35 pm

Bounce-ology

Gary Langer pores through all the data.

21 Aug 2008 02:26 pm

Right The First Time

The evolution of the McCains' adoption story to involve the direct intervention of Mother Teresa can actually be traced to between 2004 and 2008. On the still-functioning McCain 2000 website in 2004, the text read:

During one of those missions, on a visit to Mother Teresa's Orphanage Cindy agreed to bring two babies in need of medical attention back to the United States.

By 2008, it had been changed as follows:

On one of those missions, Mother Teresa convinced Cindy to take two babies in need of medical attention to the United States.

21 Aug 2008 02:14 pm

The Kindle

What if it succeeds?

21 Aug 2008 01:46 pm

Yes, Pushkin!

A reader writes:

Your reader couldn't be more wrong. When Russian dissidents and democracy advocates gathered bravely in the late sixties and early seventies, frequently led by Elena Bonner and Andrei Sakharov, they had a favorite place--before the statue of Pushkin on Pushkin Square in central Moscow.  They would stand quiet vigil before the great poet, and read some lines of his poetry gathering strength and resolve from it, and remembering that the Russia that crushed freedom in Prague and trampled demonstrators in Vilnius, Baku and Tbilisi was not the only Russia.  There was a richer tradition and vision to be safeguarded.

Continue reading "Yes, Pushkin!" »

21 Aug 2008 01:37 pm

A Google Earth Tour Of McCain's McMansions

Ah, Youtube. If you want a guide to the seven homes of John McCain, it's here.

21 Aug 2008 01:33 pm

Obama And Rubin, Ctd.

A reader writes:

A few tidbits on Mr. Rubin:

1. Citgroup was one of the lead lobbying entities in the late-90's for the repeal of Glass-Steagel.

2. That legislation passed in Oct-1999 and reversed 60+ plus years of U.S. policy, led to a huge roll-up in the financial services industry where commercial banking, investment banking, brokerages and insurance services (the Citi-Travelers merger was about the largest) were brought under one roof (precisely what Glass-Steagel was designed to preclude) and was and is a significant underlying factor in the mess going on today.

Continue reading "Obama And Rubin, Ctd." »

21 Aug 2008 12:57 pm

$4 Million Is Now Rich?

Heh. Let the class war begin!

21 Aug 2008 12:53 pm

Ka-Pow

No, Obama is not John Kerry:

Here's the McCain response:

"Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people 'cling' to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans?"

Obama wins this one for now.

21 Aug 2008 12:47 pm

If Obama Picks Biden

At least two candidates on the national tickets will have sons serving in Iraq.

21 Aug 2008 12:35 pm

The View From Your Window

Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, 2 pm.

21 Aug 2008 12:15 pm

Mr Hollywood

Everyone knows that John McCain loves Hollywood and the movies and celebrities. So this should come as no surprise, right:

When John McCain appears on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on Monday, he'll also make a sweep through L.A.'s fund-raising circles before public financing kicks in. Angie Harmon, David Zucker, Jon Cryer, Lionel Chetwynd, Craig T. Nelson, Jon Voight, Craig Haffner and Robert Duvall are among the names expected to attend the Beverly Hilton event, coinciding with the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Tickets start at $500. McCain's Hollywood supporters are looking to mount a more high profile presence, with a contingent of stars going to the Republican National Convention expected to be announced soon.

21 Aug 2008 12:08 pm

Obama's "Born Alive" Thicket

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune has compiled what seems to be an exhaustive chronology.

21 Aug 2008 12:07 pm

Obama Gets Tougher

His new ad has some teeth:

To which the McCain campaign responds:

Continue reading "Obama Gets Tougher" »

21 Aug 2008 11:01 am

A Liberal Of Doubt?

Obama in Time:

I was always suspicious of dogma, and the excesses of the left and the right. One of my greatest criticisms of the Republican Party over the last 20 years is that it's not particularly conservative. I can read conservatives from an earlier era—a George Will or a Peggy Noonan—and recognize wisdom, because it has much more to do with respect for tradition and the past and I think skepticism about being able to just take apart a society and put it back together. Because I do think that communities and nations and families aren't subject to that kind of mechanical approach to change. But when I look at Tom DeLay or some of the commentators on Fox these days, there's nothing particularly conservative about them.

21 Aug 2008 09:59 am

Another McCain Religious Story

This is interesting. Part of the McCain Celebrity, as packaged for the evangelical base, is the rescue of two Bangladeshi girls at the behest of Mother Theresa, one of whom, Bridget, they subsequently adopted. During my live-blogging of Saddleback, I described the McCain adoption story as "peerless." And it is indeed an admirable, selfless thing - and a completely legitimate aspect of a candidate's life to be part of his campaign message. The story of how Mother Teresa talked them into it makes it all the more poignant.

The only trouble is: it's not true:

The story about Mother Teresa “convincing” Mrs. McCain to bring home two children from an orphanage in Bangladesh has been retold many times. Initially, the “About Cindy McCain” page on the McCain campaign website read: “Mother Teresa convinced Cindy to take two babies in need of medical attention to the United States. One of those babies is now their adopted daughter, 16-year-old Bridget McCain.”

The media picked up the theme. A story earlier this year on ABC’s “Good Morning America” stated, “With Mother Teresa’s encouragement she brought her fourth child, Bridget, home.” An April 2008 Wall Street Journal profile states that Mother Teresa “implored” Cindy to bring the girls to the United States. Other articles say Cindy did it “at the behest” of Mother Teresa.

But a source who was with McCain on that 1991 trip, and who asked that his name not be used because of prior legal dealings with the McCain family, says that Mother Teresa was not at the orphanage when Cindy decided to bring the two girls home.

Continue reading "Another McCain Religious Story" »

21 Aug 2008 09:51 am

McCain, The Untouchable?

Weigel nails the current campaign dynamic:

Not only are McCain's attacks all about character and weakness; Obama's responses basically validate them. That guy says I've got ladyparts and I hate America and want to raise taxes: In fact, I want to cut some taxes and raise others! Obama, accused of being a wimp, waves his calculator.

What could Obama do, though? There's a character case to make against McCain, whose shifting issue positions and bloated sense of self-importance are almost Obama-like. But every attack on McCain's character comes up against the iron wall of his POW days.

Continue reading "McCain, The Untouchable?" »