The Lion and Gun

When I was working in Banking a favorite saying around the office was thus: "It's not how hard you work, it's the value you create". It helped describe why low level people who worked 100 hour weeks were paid a fraction of the amount senior bankers who seemed to play golf and go out to posh dinners all the time. We worked hard, but they created value.

But that's not the whole story. It's not about the value you create - it's about the value you can capture...whether you created it or not. Take a look at this clip from The Wire - it explains it all.

Not many McCain supporters are this crazy. Most of them are probably embarrassed by these people. But how many would step up to stop them? How many would call them out? Judging by this video, not many.

If there are line-ups like this at Obama rallies I'd like to see them. I'm being honest here, not snarky. I honestly don't expect that this same kind of widespread seething hatred exists amongst his supporters, but I'm willing to be proved wrong.

A friend just forwarded an email all 2nd year MBA students at the University of Chicago received from the Associate Dean of Career Services. The outlook for recruiting looks bleak - particularly in finance functions. Bottom line - Banking interviews down 34%, Investment Management down 30%, Marketing down 20%. Consulting is flat. Looks like they're trying to make up for it with a push in Company Finance and General Management jobs - small consolation methinks to all those engineer types looking for raises after plunking down $100,00 for their MBA. Mind you, these figures are only for interviews - I can't wait to see what hiring is going to look like. Here's the full letter:

Dear Second Years,

One of our promises to you is that we will communicate honestly. This past week, on-campus recruiting was hit by market forces: the number of on-campus interviews for full-time positions dropped by more than my September prediction, and interviews available through on-campus activity are now down 9% over last year.

Got an email the other day asking me to post a link to the following survey. I've done some basic due diligence and it seems to be legit, but if you think there's anything sketchy about it please email me (using the link in the menu) to let me know. The project sounds interesting and if you've got fifteen minutes to spare it's worth filling out. After all, we here at the Lion and Gun are nothing if not champions of greater understanding. And the occasional clever obfuscation, of course, but I digress.

Here's what you need to know:

A research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. This stage of the study focuses on the information people use to inform evaluations during the last few weeks before the election. They seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world) to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which will be completely anonymous.

Hey, folks, just wanted to direct your attention to a new addition to our blogroll. The Progressive Economics Forum is co-authored by my good friend Erin Weir, a Canadian economist working with the United Steelworkers union. Erin and I disagree on plenty but he's way the hell smarter than I am so you should all read his stuff.

Yesterday morning John McCain called Joe the Plumber. Later in the day he chastised the Obama campaign at a rally: 'Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.' Never mind that it isn't the Obama campaign behind the (frankly ridiculous) media digging into Joe Whatsisname's personal life. And never mind that none of this smearing would've happened if John McCain hadn't brought the guy up over and over again in a 90-minute debate watched by 56 million people. What's really amusing about all of this is the transparently hypocritical hectoring from folks like Michelle Malkin. As Jonathan Cohn at The Plank points out, something like this happened before: in 2007 Democrats had a young boy named Graeme Frost speak on behalf of expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, on which he was dependent after being involved in a bad car accident. Right wing bloggers, led by Malkin, stalked his family, dove into their records, spoke to their neighbors, all in an attempt to prove the boy was lying. Said Malkin at the time:

A word for all the faux outraged leftists accusing conservative bloggers of waging a “smear campaign:” Asking questions and subjecting political anecdotes to scrutiny are what journalists should be doing.

Charges have been made and cases brought against ACORN for voter registration fraud during at least the past several election cycles. But what about actual voter fraud? Is the problem big enough to justify taking away the votes of up to 200,000 people in Ohio, in most cases because of clerical error at the DMV, to make sure fraudulently-registered voters don't squeeze through the cracks? Is an FBI investigation to uncover a potential 'coordinated national scam' really necessary? How often has Mickey Mouse actually shown up at the polls, anyway? John McCain said in the last debate that fraudulent votes could potentially destroy 'the fabric of democracy'. Sounds like a pretty big problem. So how many fraudulent votes have been cast?

Twenty-six.

In the past three elections.

Fabric of democracy, indeed.

Following from my post below, I just read this article by fellow Canuck Mark Steyn over at The Corner. The context isn't important; it's just this one line that caught my interest:

With a few exceptions (such as Vermont), "blue states" mostly turn out to be red states with a couple of big blue cities (Pennsylvania, for example, or even California).

Take a look at this map of county-level election returns from the 2004 2000 Presidential race:



Whoa. That's a lot of red. But of course Gore won the popular vote. Why? Because most Americans live in those big blue cities -- as of mid-2005 just over 80% of them. Almost half of urban Americans are in the twenty largest metro regions.

The idea that a demographic's importance in a democracy should be commensurate with the land area it occupies is on the face of it absurd, but that's what Mark Steyn implies when he says that a state like California is really a 'red state' with blue cities. No, dude, it's a blue state with a handful of farmers that didn't get the memo.

GM is trying to sell its Hummer Division. Yeah, a luxury gas guzzling symbol of gross excess should fetch a nice price going into a deep recession. The best part of this article is the title:

GM Accelerates Effort to Find Buyer for Hummer

Liberal = anti-American:



Did Ann Coulter dye her hair and get elected?

Sarah Palin, like John Edwards, sees two Americas. One America, she remarked at a fundraiser last night, is 'pro-America':

"[T]he best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom."

In one sense she's right: the division between town and city has been the most salient and persistent in American history. As urban America grows in actual importance, rural America grows in imagined importance, and as many Americans face post-modern uncertainties -- slippery identities, broken families, a sputtering economy -- they tend to retreat to cultural symbols laden with meaning. They define themselves through a process of 'othering', contrasting one's own America (small town, old-fashioned, neighborly, patriotic, authentic, virtuous) against the alien other America (big city, rat race, aloof, secular, fabricated, depraved). There are deep psychological and sociological forces at work here, vastly complex and barely understood but widely recognized and easily manipulated.

So let's get one thing clear: For all this talk about Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber and 'real America', mostly spouted by millionaire politicians and millionaire pundits, nobody really gives a damn. I mean, I guess they do, but only to the extent that Joe Sixpack pulls the lever or changes the channel.

It's all a crock.

That's not to say good policy that really helps Americans is impossible to achieve, and it's not even to say that politicians never worry about the day-to-day problems facing Americans. I'm sure that there are many political types who in good conscience and good faith want to make the country a better place. But do they really think Joe Sixpack is the realest of really real Americans? Do they really understand what it's like, now, today, for people who are struggling? Maybe some do, but pandering to Joe Sixpack is still little more than cynical manipulation by John Sevenhouses.

And that's not to say concern for Joe Sixpack should be the fountainhead of policy. On the contrary, America is fundamentally an urban nation. The constant pandering to small towns makes for bad policy.

What bothers me in all this isn't that it's a sham. It's that everybody knows it's a sham (except maybe Sarah Palin) but nobody will acknowledge it. Cable yakkers speaking to audiences that are overwhelming educated upscale urban Americans will sagely intone about what the Joe Sixpacks of America are thinking -- as if they know. Constant eulogizing of small town America further distorts its reality and importance precisely because neither television pundits nor most of their audiences are actually small town Americans. The result is that when we do get an ostensibly honest-to-goodness doggone gosh darn small town American running for office, she turns out to be a complete caricature. I've said before, Sarah Palin doesn't look like someone from the heartland; she looks like someone someone who's never been to the heartland thinks someone from the heartland looks like.

Reader CS has this to say:

After watching another fairly predictable debate, I found it funny that the McCain/Palin campaign chose yet another "Joe" to latch on to. It seems to be thier way of attempting subtly or subliminally reaching the middle class or "average Joe" if you will. I find it condescending, and I find their actual lack of supporting or caring about the middle class even more offensive.

Damn straight. It is bloody condescending for uber-rich big city Americans to tell middle-class small town Americans how 'they' think. To reduce them to a stereotype personified in this one dude named Joe who's a plumber (but not actually a plumber). It couldn't be done with any other demographic.

Could you conceive of a pundit or Presidential candidate so brazenly speaking for 'the black American' or the 'Jewish American'? These are identifiable demographics with identifiable concerns and they're spoken about in the abstract by talking heads, but could you imagine a politician speaking directly to Moshe Manischewitz the way its done to Joe Sixpack? 'This is what the Jews really want.' His career would be over faster than Lou Bega's.

Okay, it's less politically important to pander to most of these other demographics. I get that. And it's more offensive to say, for example, 'The black voter really cares about x.' I get that too. But should it be? Stereotypes about small town middle-class Americans are generally positive, but does that make objectification and meaningless pandering -- so well understood to be just meaningless pandering -- any less degrading?

Those aren't rhetorical questions, and neither is this one: Do working Americans feel condescended to? Do they feel manipulated? In the past they often haven't. Bill Clinton's stunning ability to feel other people's pain and George W. Bush's time spent on the ranch just clearin' brush were enough to convince plenty of 'real' Americans that these guys were just like them. But with Sarah Palin being so cartoonish a vision of the one America foisted on it by the other, will people finally figure out it's all a sham?

So long as they don't American elections for many years to come will be defined by the lionizing of rural values and phony attempts at authenticity. Here's hoping that hand's finally been over-played.

Incidentally, CS also sent along the following mock campaign banner he created. To my eyes it looks no less authentic than most of what we hear about Joes Sixpack and Plumber. You can also check out CS's website here.

The Flaming Lips:



Covering a guy in cheeseburgers and having fat dudes chase him around: now that's enhanced interrogation.

Greg Sagent at TPM reports:

In two private conference calls this week with leading fundraisers, surrogates, and prominent supporters, senior Obama advisers expressed genuine worry that his lead in the polls is creating a complacency among supporters that the advisers are afraid will create a serious drag on fundraising and turnout, a person who was on both calls says.

So I doubt it'll surprisee anyone to know that my last name's not really 'Locke'. When Ross and I decided to finally get our acts together and launch this blog I knew I'd need a new moniker, and since my co-blogger's last name really is Hobbes I thought that 'Locke' would be a terribly clever counterpoint. Okay, not clever so much as 'obvious' and 'intellectually lazy' and 'completely lacking in creativity'. Oh, and 'pretentious'.

I digress, I digress.

The point I wanted to make here -- sometimes what ought to be obvious isn't. For example, we've been doing this blog thing for a few weeks now, and it was in planning for months before that. Yet it was only today that I realized, in describing the blog to a friend, that my chosen name is phonetically identical to this guy's:



Well, Ross, I think we've got a corner on the Springfield Retirement Home.

This video just feels appropriate for Friday afternoon at a time when Iceland is in the news.

Uber-Hack Lanny Davis was busy positioning himself for work in the Obama Administration this morning. I don't expect better of Davis, but it's nonetheless infuriating. Much to my chagrin, Matt agrees with him below.

I hate writing about Lanny Davis more than you should hate reading about him, so we'll look past his gross self-serving in writing the piece and pretend like it won't invalidate the entire argument. My real beef is that the argument represents ex-post thinking at its worst. Simply put - just because things look good for Obama now does not, by any stretch of the imagination, validate Hillary's refusal to step aside in the Spring.

It's far too easy to look back and take for granted things that happened later in the campaign that mitigated the serious problems with Clinton's dead-ender candidacy. Dems need to look at the context in which her decision to stay in the race was made in order to decide whether to be 'thankful' she stayed in the race. In context, it's clear that Obama has been successful in spite of Hillary's intransigence, rather than because of it.

The entire premise of her mathematically doomed campaign post Ohio and Pennsylvania was a vicious circle strategy in which she would give the initial push - Obama would be unelectable because she would make him unelectable - leaving her as the only viable candidate. The disgusting racial politics, guilt by association with Ayers and the impugning of his religious affiliations were intended to burn Obama down to the point where super delegates could be given a pass if they went against the will of elected delegates.

Am I the only one who remembers this?

The fact that a Democrat aired these attacks early didn't dampen their effects, they amplified their power by legitimizing them. The electorate expects Republicans to dig up dirt and slander Obama, but when even Democrats attack the character of their favorite son, then...well...how well do we know this guy? The fact that Obama is not being torn down by these attacks is no proof of the wisdom in airing them - more likely it's testament to how powerful Obama's candidacy is, or potentially how incompetent the McCain campaign has been in general.

Obama might be further ahead at this point had Clinton not attempted to torpedoed him. Davis, and others, claim that Obama built up his ground game and excitement in the campaign because of the Clinton challenge - but this argument is bollocks. Obama spent millions and millions of extra dollars running ads against the dead-ender Clinton challenge, money that could have been wisely invested in ads against McCain, or in additional ground game efforts in general election battleground states. Remember all those resources spent convincing Dems in Texas that Obama was viable? I do - and those dollars would have been better spent mobilized in Florida where the ground game was delayed for three additional months thanks to Senator Clinton.

I can't stand by when revisionist history is being peddled without reflecting back on the context of the Clinton challenge. Outcomes don't always validate the path taken - Clinton knew full well at the time that her attacks were far more likely to hurt Obama than help him - and it is on that basis that her decision to drag out the race should be judged.

This has been floating around the blogosphere for a while now and I've been reluctant to post it because I don't think it adds much to the debates we should be having. But it strikes me that I have some friends (perhaps 'intellectual sparring partners' would be a better way to put it) who refuse to believe that any thing like racism still exists in the mainstream of the Republican party. To them I counter with this mailer sent to voters by a GOP women's group in California:



Get it? Black people like fried chicken and ribs and watermelon. Black people are all on food stamps. Barack Obama's black. Funny, no?

I get that many Republicans, probably most, would be horrified at the thought of this reaching voter mailboxes (even if some of them would privately snicker). And the Grand Old Party doesn't have a monopoly on racism. But there are people out there who don't think racism is tolerated and exploited and in some cases explicitly endorsed by the Republican party. Maybe they have to look it in the face. Anyway, there it is.

For what it's worth, Spencer Ackerman does rage better than I do, and Ta-Neshi Coates is more thoughtful. Those are the best two reactions I've seen to this so far. Let me know what yours is.

The David Brooks column I discussed earlier compared Obama's self-assured temperament to Ronald Reagan's and Franklin Roosevelt's. Brooks asserted that Obama was distinguished from the other two by growing up with an absent father, but John Judis disagrees: Roosevelt's father was old and sickly, Reagan's father a drunk. Judis proposes his own explanation for why the three men shared such confident placidity: they were all mama's boys.

The graph below is pretty scary. It shows the spreads on junk bonds - the difference in interest rates for high risk corporate borrowers and the US government. The gist is that credit markets are anticipating unprecedented levels of debt default and the corresponding business failures associated with defaults. Yikes.



High-Yield Blog has it covered for more info.

That's what Lanny Davis thinks. I can hear Ross in Chicago right now: 'That's what Lanny Davis would think.' But I think Davis is right:

Because she didn't quit until after the primaries were over, his grassroots organization grew stronger across the nation, his fundraising network became more extensive, and his TV and radio advertising from the late fall of 2007 to June 2008 increased favorable recognition of him in many states. These things made him a stronger general election candidate.

Glenn Beck looks at CNN's skyrocketing ratings and the leftward shift in American politics and decides that now's the time to jump ship for FOX.

I look forward to FOX News once again becoming the kind of marginalized joke it was back in the 1990s. (As opposed to the influential joke it's been for the past eight years.)

Yesterday I mentioned in passing the Republican effort to suppress voter turnout in Ohio by forcing the state to check all voter registration against state license and social security databases. Premised on the right's much-ballyhooed charges of massive voter fraud, an Ohio court found in favor of the Ohio Republican Party a few days back. That decision has now been overturned by the United States Supreme Court after an appeal lodged by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

Call it a victory for democracy. Let's see if this takes some wind out of the voter fraud narrative's sails.

Erick Erickson at RedState is whistling in the dark:

Here is the safe rule for this election: ignore the numbers, but watch the trends. The trend had been toward Obama. It is now toward McCain. Joe the Plumber resonates with people. ACORN resonates with people. People are concerned and worried about the future. As a result, at this point in the campaign, these ancillary issues have a real impact.

David Frum wonders what will happen in 2011 when the first baby boomers retire only to find out that their pension funds have lost half their value. It seems increasingly certain that this financial crisis is the first blow (if the housing crisis was a shot over the bow) in what will likely be a long recession.

Frum suggests Paulson take bad investments off the hands of pension funds, but I wonder if, instead, the crisis could this give additional impetus to arguments for raising the retirement age? Obama has said he won't do it, but the AARP might have to take their lumps with this one. Doing so would kill two birds with one stone, giving pension funds time to recover and substantially lifting the burden on social security (and, with it, calls for social security privatization). It will be immensely unpopular, and wouldn't normally be the sort of thing a first-term President facing re-election would do, but economic conditions might force many to work past 65 anyway. Greg Mankiw points out the broad consensus amongst economists on raising the retirement age.

Washington Post endorses Obama.

At a fundraiser last night Sarah Palin was a little more candid than usual:

Palin talked about "those times on the campaign trail when sometimes it’s easy to get a little bit discouraged, when you know, when you happen to turn on the news when your campaign staffers will let you turn on the news. Usually they’re like 'Oh my gosh, don’t watch, you’re going to, you know, you’re going to get depressed.' But yeah, sometimes you do get depressed watching what it is that they’re reporting and the spin and some of the distortion of what our message is and what we stand for, sometimes that, that gets draining."

"And I, I begged our speech writers, 'Don’t make me say Joe the Plumber, please, in any speeches.'"

A selection from today's column:

[I]t is easy to sketch out a scenario in which [Obama] could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. . . .

It could be that Obama will be an observer, not a leader. Rather than throwing himself passionately into his causes, he will stand back. Congressional leaders, put off by his supposed intellectual superiority, will just go their own way. Lost in his own nuance, he will be passive and ineffectual. Lack of passion will produce lack of courage. The Obama greatness will give way to the Obama anti-climax.

Five-alarm financial crisis is old news. Iraq is no news. McCain's campaign suspension was fun while it lasted. Obama on the rise through each debate? Season finale was the night before last. We've got more than two weeks to go, so what's it gonna be?

We'll have a better idea when we see the Sunday morning shows, but Republicans are hoping to sell a narrative-starved punditocracy the tale of John McCain the Comeback Kid. The scent of Drudge's mouth-watering 'GALLUP SHOCK' that Obama is 'up by only two points' (if this is a two-point race Nate Silver says he'll 'eat Drudge's fedora') wafts temptingly through the air and ABC News, driven mad with hunger, is chomping at the bait. (Seriously? Joe the Plumber is McCain's saving throw?) So far CNN and MSNBC are throwing cold water on it, but we'll see how long that lasts. After all, Obama's numbers have been stabilizing over the past few days, and until the results of the debate start cycling through the tracking polls in the next few days (and state polling a few days after that) this is going to be a nice plump low-hanging story waiting for cleverly counter-intuitive hacks to grab it with both hands.

I can't remember how long it's been since I looked forward every week to seeing Saturday Night Live.

Oh, right: never.

Anyway, Sarah Palin is going to make a cameo on this week's show. For real this time. No word on whether Palin will watch it with the sound on. Either way, I'm sure it'll be a hoot, doggone it.

Shows he has a funny side too. I like a dry wit but I think McCain can sell a joke better than Obama, at least in a venue like this. On the other hand, as in the debates, McCain has that creepy grin plastered over his face in the reaction shots. He should work on that.

Part 1:



Part 2 below the fold.

Updated 10:45pm with full video.

McCain is actually really funny and affable when he's being funny and affable. He even made Hillary cackle. I swear, if they gave Mike Huckabee a late-night talk show and made John McCain his Andy Richter I'd never miss an episode.

Part 1:



Part 2 after the jump.

From a Canadian 'Organizational Development Consultant' called People First. It's all about 'alignment'.

So...how absurd is it that Joe the Plumber has officially fielded more questions from the media than Sarah Palin has? He's had press conferences! She hasn't! WTF!

NOTE: I'm bumping this up for many of you who are visiting this site for the first time. Take a look around, leave a few comments, and enjoy!

As we're just launching The Lion and Gun I'm guessing most everyone who reads this hasn't been here before. So: welcome! Make yourself at home. Settle in for an evening or take a look around. Most importantly, join in the conversation. Don't let all those '0 comments' links at the bottom of the posts intimidate you -- the site's been a pretty well-kept secret till now, so as I write this the conversation hasn't even begun.

Ross Hobbes and I will be your hosts, but we'll have some guest bloggers from time to time. Ross is a libertarian with a background in business and economics; I'm a moderate liberal with a degree in history and a passion for politics. Together we've been adding content to the site for two weeks now, so there's plenty of stuff to browse through already. If you want to see all of the posts I've written you can click my name beneath the title of any one of my articles; if you'd like to know a bit about me as well, click 'Locke' in the menu at upper right. Of course you can do the same for Hobbes. You can also see all of the posts in a given category by clicking the category name in the 'contents' list, and our archives are at the bottom of the page.

Some of our personal favorite posts are listed under 'Our Very Best' -- this list will be updated as we add more stuff. We'll also be adding some more features to the site, and making some small adjustments to the design, as time goes on. The Lion and Gun will never really be finished.

If you have any comments on the site or any of our articles, tips or suggestions for future stories, bugs you've encountered, or compliments or complaints, please email us at thelionandgun@gmail.com. You can also click the 'Email Us' link in the menu.

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Lastly, once again, Ross and I both encourage you to participate in the discussions on this site by leaving comments. Agree with us? We'd love to hear it! Disagree? Let us know! Think we're idiots? Join the club! (Seriously. There's a club.) Help us keep the debate going. And enjoy.

I've already been one of many to point out that voter registration fraud is the inevitable, if unfortunate, result of registering a very large number of voters, and that it doesn't actually threaten the integrity of the election. But this isn't the first time ACORN's attracted the attention of the GOP, with its vested interest in suppressing voter turnout and (in this election at least) delegitimizing the November result. Ironically, investigations and court cases like the recent decision in Ohio to check all new registrations against DMV lists have the practical effect of preventing citizens, mostly poor minorities, from exercising their right to vote -- while convincing millions of others that those same poor minorities 'stole' the election. A failure to press these unfounded but politically profitable prosecutions led to the US Attorney firings and ultimately brought down Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

That's the context in which to understand this leak to reporters today. Three weeks before the election, we're told, the FBI is launching an investigation into whether ACORN 'helped foster voter registration fraud' in a 'coordinated national scam'.

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo broke the Attorney firings scandal and led the reporting on it. Once again he's on the case:

DC Republicans have been aggressively lobbying the DOJ to open an investigation into ACORN in advance of the election. And leaking word of such an investigation (possibly starting the investigation at all) most likely violates DOJ guidelines about DOJ/FBI actions which can end up interfering with or manipulating an election.

But, remember, this is right out of the book of the Bush Justice Department's efforts to assist in GOP voter suppression efforts in the 2004 and 2006 elections (part and parcel of the US Attorney firing story).

Via Reuters.

I don't mean this as a rhetorical question -- I'm really curious to hear your thoughts. Despite mounting evidence that McCain's Ayers attacks are backfiring there are now reports of an RNC robocall tying Obama to Ayers. What's the play here? Are McCain's advisers beholden to the wingnut element of the Republican party, which seems to be convinced despite all evidence to the contrary that the key to independents' hearts is negative campaigning? Or is there something here I'm missing? Let me know what you think in the comments.

He's a plumber.

Look, I'm gonna take a pretty clear stand here: I thought that whole 'Joe the Plumber' thing last night wore out faster than Carrottop giving a lecture on particle physics, and judging from the dial scores on CNN I wasn't alone. So what the hell is the media talking about today? We've got the biggest financial crisis since 1929, two wars, a Presidential election three weeks away, and sad guys on trading floors all around the world -- and talking heads are flapping gums about Joe the Plumber. For an example check out Ben Smith's blog: from the middle of last night's debate until 1:11pm today (the most recent mention of Joe) fully one-third of all postings -- 10 out of 30 -- were about Plumber Joe.

Not here. I don't care what he thinks about taxes or whether he's registered to vote. I mentioned the guy once, now I'm mentioning him twice, and unless he explains dark matter or discovers a way to produce controlled nuclear fusion reactions you won't see him here again.

Joe Klein, who has lately taken the side of the media's better angels, hypothesizes that the pundits have been wrong on the debates because they're using outmoded metrics:

We've been conditioned by thirty years of certain arguments working--and John McCain made most of them last night against Barack Obama: you're going to raise our taxes, you're going to spend more money, you want to negotiate with bad guys, you're associated somehow--the associations have gotten more tenuous over time--with countercultural and unAmerican activities. . . . But those words and phrases seem anachronistic, almost vestigial now. Indeed, they have become every bit as toxic as Democratic social activist proposals--government-regulated and subsidized health care, for example--used to be. We have had 30 years of class warfare, in which the wealthy strip-mined the middle class. . . . Journalism is, naturally, about the past. We are much better at reporting things that have happened than in predicting the future. We never seem so foolish or obnoxious, especially on TV, as when we accede to the constant demand for crystal-balling. But the obvious danger inherent in journalism is that we tend to get trapped in the assumptions of the past.

This is a little bit surprising. Obama dominated the debate in CNN and CBS snap polls, 58 to 31 and 53 to 22 respectively, but normally even the loser of a debate will see some small improvement in his favorability rating as voters come to better understand his positions. Not so this time:

Still catching up on reactions from last night's debate, I happened on Greg Sargent's clear-eyed explanation of McCain's dilemma over at TPM:

Anything he says that doesn't try to explain, in the most direct and substantive of terms, why his plans for the economy are better than Obama's come across as noise at best and stunts at worst. . . . This basic dynamic was fixed nearly two weeks ago. It's a product of the extraordinary depths of public anxiety created by the meltdown and the enormous gaffe McCain's advisers subsequently committed when they admitted that they were looking forward to moving the conversation past the economy and back to character attacks on Obama. This was a self-created bear-trap for McCain, and he's been trying to shake it off his leg ever since. But it's only getting tighter.

He's still undecided. Listening to this, he'll probably vote for McCain, but the fact that a guy who wants low taxes and thinks social security should be eliminated hasn't made up his mind to vote for the Republican three weeks out speaks to the failures of the GOP's message.

Here are my reactions to the debate from beginning to end. I've cleaned up the grammar but otherwise left them intact.

9:01 And we're off! Look at those guys: so old and cranky, so young and virile, so awkward a handshake. I wonder if McCain will ask Obama why he let Bill Ayers ghostwrite his autobiography.

9:02 Bob Schieffer's twisted sense of humor? ‘Let’s tell the people some things they haven’t heard.' Pause. 'It's been another bad day on Wall Street.'

9:07 McCain looked at Obama! He looked right at him!

9:08 Now McCain is looking directly into the camera. I've said before he should do this more often, but now that he's doing it I just wish he’d look away.

9:10 Class warfare!!! Yikes. Very 1968. And four minutes on Joe the plumber -- what the frack?

9:11 ‘We’re talking about Joe the plumber!’ McCain's really gotta stop laughing at his own terrible jokes. Dude -- nobody else thinks you're a laugh riot.

9:12 Mccain is REALLY aggressive tonight. I don’t know how well that works, but Obama seems off his game.

9:15 McCain starts an answer with, ‘During the depression, we had. . .’ This guy is old as balls. His advisers are probably lunging at the TV.

9:17 McCain opposes ethanol subsidies. Word.

9:19 Obama's handling this wrong. He shouldn't let McCain get away with claiming he'd have an across-the-board spending freeze on, like, the day after proposing a $60bn stimulus and $300bn mortgage bailout.

9:19 ‘Do either of you think you can balance the budget?’ Ross might disagree with me here but I think this is a stupid question. It keeps coming up and seems to be based on the faulty premise that it's most important to eliminate government spending during a recession.

9:20 ‘If you wanted to run against Bush you should’ve run four years ago.’ Wow. Good line. I think Rich Lowry just saw little starbursts.

9:22 Obama's answer on the $42k tax hike lie is pretty good -- ‘Even fox news disputes it!’ Ends by re-tying McCain to Bush.

9:23 I'm watching on CNN. Oh, squiggly lines, squiggly lines, your sweet siren's song gets me every time.

9:24 Scheiffer lowers the boom on nasty campaigning –- will McCain man up?

9:25 ‘It’s all Obama’s fault because he wouldn’t do town hall meetings.’ Whiner.

9:25 Blasting John Lewis. Dude, I don't think this is going to go over well. Squiggly lines tell me it isn't. ‘Whenever there have been out of bounds remarks by Republicans I have repudiated them.’ Have you John? 'Palling around with terrorists' -- didn't your running-mate say that?

9:27 '100% of your ads are negative' -- true -- then Obama spins away, back to issues. Good. His response, I think, just about pitch-perfect: firm, not defensive, brings it back to what matters.

9:29 Man, McCain looks PISSED.

9:31 Obama's going there about the rallies, and he's defending John Lewis -- I don’t know if that's a good idea, but McCain’s interruptions makes him look like a jerk.

9:32 Obama just looks so much more Presidential. McCain looks petty and ANGRY. Keeps interrupting. Temper tantrum!

9:32 ‘I’m proud of the people that come to my rallies!’ Whoa. Considering news coverage of his rallies that was a bad answer. He’s so ANGRY –- almost unhinged. The base must be loving this.

9:34 Giant McCain tongue jut. Interrupting now to bring up Ayers and ACORN. Whoa -- they're destroying the fabric of democracy?! Makes Sean Hannity look demure.

9:37 Obama explains ACORN pretty well. Then: 'Let’s talk about who I REALLY associate with' -- probably the campaign's prepared answer to Ayers. ‘Says more about your campaign than it says about me.’

9:38 Ayers and-- what, economy and jobs and Obama raising taxes? Holy non-sequitor, Batman!

9:39 Bob Scheiffer brings up running mates. Unlike Brokaw he's not just recycling the same questions from the last two debates. I could kiss him on the lips right now. Oh, I think I just threw up in my mouth.

9:42 ‘Americans have gotten to know Sarah Palin.' THAT’s the problem, John. Look at those squiggly lines; men are loving Sarah Palin, women -- not so much.

9:46 Planning to eliminate dependence on Middle East and Venezuelan oil in FOUR YEARS?! Are they drinking crazy juice at the McCain campaign?

9:48 Obama wants to eliminate oil dependence in ten years. That's less crazy, but it's still crazy.

9:52 Did McCain roll his eyes when Obama talked about labor leaders being assassinated? Oy vey.

9:55 McCain's talking about Hoover again. I really think he should stop making references to stuff that happened before 1990.

9:56 Obama gives a clear explication of his health care plan straight to the camera, emphasizing how it’s going to help you. He's become better at this bread-and-butter stuff over the past few months.

9:56 It’s kind of sad to see the squiggly lines dive for cover every time McCain speaks. My friend AH, watching the debate with me, remarks: 'Compared to McCain's lines the Dow is starting to look pretty good right. 1929 was a walk in the park.'

9:59 Joe the plumber comes back. Dude, women are hating this.

10:00 Whenever McCain speaks directly to the camera I want to hide behind the couch. He's in the uncanny valley. Haven't felt this way since I stopped watching Romper Room.

10:01 Obama: 'The fine is ZERO.' McCain: 'Zero?' Obama: 'Zero.' Aaawkwaaaaaaaaard. Man, McCain's looking like Michael Douglas in that scene in Falling Down where they wouldn't give him the breakfast menu.

10:03 ‘Joe, you’re rich.’ STOP TALKING ABOUT FRACKING JOE. McCain = lame. The squiggly lines agree.

10:05 I think McCain just called Obama ‘Senator Government’. That was actually kinda funny. Oh, wait, Joe returns! Drat.

10:06 Roe v Wade. McCain: No litmus test, Gang of Fourteen. Good answer but I wonder if it's inside baseball.

10:07 Obama: A 'moral issue', 'good people on both sides can disagree.' As strong and clear argument for choice as I've heard from a Presidential candidate. Aren't Dems supposed to pee themselves and run when they hear this question? Oh, yeah, the majority of voters are pro-choice. And the squigglies are lovin’ it.

10:14 Pleading for common ground, equal pay for equal work -- Obama's answer is a contrast to McCain's attempt to restart the culture wars right after making a more reasonable pro-life answer and now attacking Obama again. McCain is all over the map.

10:24 McCain answers a question about vouchers and still manages to sound like an angry crank.

10:27 Obama: 'McCain’s education reform program is only for 2000 school vouchers in DC.' McCain: 'Because it’s only 2000 we shouldn’t do it?' Then whips out his creepy old man laugh. Wow, that was awful.

10:27 McCain’s closing statement. Pretty good. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think he knows he’s lost. Like a Greek tragedy, really: hubris brought him down.

10:31 Funny that it's Obama who's talking about sacrifice and service and responsibility.

And we're done! McCain shakes Obama's hand very vigorously: ‘Good job! Good job! Good job!’ Yeah, he knows it's over. Reminds me of the end of that debate in The West Wing.

Watching CNN pundits. They seem to be mixed on who won it; think that because Obama was weak in the first half hour it might have been a draw. CNN pundits are on CRACK.

That's it. I'm going home.

Update: Line of the night goes to Marc Ambinder:

Tonight, we saw a McXplosion. Every single attack that Sen. McCain has ever wanted to make, he took the opportunity tonight to make. Around 30 minutes in, McCain seemed to surrender the debate to his frustrations, making it seem as if he just wanted the free television.

Keep reading...

Retract post

Sorry I didn't get this up last night -- bad mood + late night + connectivity problems = debate reactions twelve hours later.

I'm going to start with my overall reaction and then I'll post my minute-by-minute notes later (all prettied up for you folks). I've pretty scrupulously avoided all pundit reaction and polling, which wasn't easy for me, but I wanted you all to see my unsullied thoughts.

In case you missed it, the debate started on the east coast at twenty-four minutes after nine. Oh, there was talking back and forth before that. McCain even seemed to be winning: more vigorous (Obama looked off his game), aggressive without being mean, and making eye contact with camera and opponent. But what was I talking about? I forget, and it doesn't matter, because the debate started at twenty-four minutes after nine.

Initially I thought asking McCain about campaign negativity first gave him the advantage, but I was wrong. His offensive on John Lewis should have been a riposte to Obama's attacks, not an opening gambit. The wide majority of Americans feel that McCain is the one running a negative campaign; Obama, and probably also Lewis, have more credibility. What could have been a mea culpa bringing the old McCain back instead made him the small and angry man Americans have decided he is.

As for Obama? Nothing gets to the guy, and you can tell that really grates McCain's cheese. The old fellow looked emotional, genuinely upset, and the rest of the debate was a blow-out. Substance didn't matter anymore. Obama got deeply, very deeply, under McCain's skin. The latter seemed barely able to contain himself; he interrupted, scolded, rolled his eyes. He was hectoring and angry on mundane subjects like school vouchers. For all of his bluster about 'country first', the night seemed to be about McCain's hurt feelings. While Obama talked about service in his closing statement, McCain talked about the long line of McCains who have achieved high rank. This is the natural next step. It's what he deserves.

That sense of entitlement sank Hillary Clinton. Now it's sunk John McCain.

At this point voters are asking themselves: who could I see as President? If McCain had run a smart campaign that's what the decision would have come down to: do you want change, or do you want a President? Because as much as this is a year for Democrats, the President question should break for the old white guy, not the inexperienced black dude. Yet everything the campaigns have done since the end of August, and the candidates' respective performances in all the debates, have shown that Obama's the one who's steady and confident and cool-headed and wise. At a time of crisis in America John McCain has made himself the riskier choice, and this debate made that worse. So Obama deservedly won the debate -- and will win the election -- but so too did John McCain lose it. I sensed in his final answer that he knew this. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of his campaign next.

It'll also be interesting to see the polling. I've long felt that this election would produce either a pretty narrow win for Obama or a very wide one, hinging mainly on these debates. This one had to be a tipping point* one way or the other: the natural momentum of the race should swing back in McCain's direction enough to tighten the race (though not enough to win), but a strong debate performance could do for Obama what it did for Reagan in 1980. I think it has. I don't see how this debate could look like anything but a blow-out; as my old high school debating coach would say, there was blood on the floor. Barring some massive revelation or earth-shattering event this election is over.

On the bright side for McCain, he'll be able to go to bed early on November 4th. Then he'll have six months of nap time before he tries to save his Senate seat from Janet Napolitano. Enjoy it.

*I just want to point out that I really really hate the phrase 'tipping point' and I'm sorry for using it. It used to be okay until that stupid book came out and convinced C-minus art students they were all sociologists.

Matt's Country - Canada, eh - held an election and nobody was told about it. Good thing Daily Show is there to give us the summary.

My thoughts right now are that I'm cold and tired and wet and hungry and it's raining in Toronto and the subway was shut down and I'm going to bed and I'll post my thoughts on the debate tomorrow morning. (To give you a hint -- I didn't think it was a good night for McCain.)

I don't have a television and my internet connection sucks. I'll be blogging the debate at a friend's place at an hour's delay -- sorry, folks.
Hobbes: I was so close to mocking Matt for 'tivoblogging'...so close...

Both sides seem to have ratcheted up expectations of an Ayers showdown tonight, but to me it feels like that storyline jumped the shark on Friday when McCain grabbed the mic from that woman's hand to remind her that Obama is, after all, not an Arab. (Really it jumped the shark long before that, but that's when McCain seemed to figure it out.) And this debate is taking place around a table, which will make McCain look like even more aggressive if he brings it up -- not the move he wants to make after the past two debates. So my sense is that he'll take his lumps and avoid the topic unless it's brought up by Obama or Scheiffer. Then again, McCain's taken plenty of big gambles in the past, his campaign's in desperate straits, and they seem to frequently do the opposite of what good sense would dictate.

Anyway, we'll find out soon.

Staying on my rollercoaster theme - here's a prescient Video from a year or two ago. We still have room to fall - Chicago economics profs are forecasting fresh declines in housing values. That's not good.

I'm currently having a hard time rationalizing what's going on in the financial markets with my long-held view of general market efficiency. On one hand, asset prices appear to be insane - I am flabbergasted by the share prices of energy companies in particular. On the other hand, I don't exactly want to step in and buy. If enough people feel the same way, voila, market innefficiency.



There's an old adage - get greedy when others are fearful, and get fearful when others are greedy. If that's true, now is the time to be greedy. But that doesn't exactly play well into the efficient markets hypothesis either...which would tend to stipulate that when others are fearful then they probably have information that would make you soil your pants. I simply don't know where the market is going to go - and neither does anyone else. I just hope it doesn't keep going down. I have the audacity to hope.

I think it's stupid! See here.

Poor bastards. Literally. Well, literally poor anyway...

If only McCain had turned to his 2000 campaign manager Mike Murphy, one of television's more honorable talking heads, instead of Steve Schmidt. Some of Murphy's pre-debate thoughts:

My advice, as usual, is probably the opposite of what his people are advising him. I say ignore Obama. The whole idea that McCain can score some zinger driven moment where Obama curls up in a sobbing ball and admits he isn't ready to be President is ridiculous. Presidential debates don't work like the last act in a courtroom movie. McCain doesn't need an insult zinger, he needs a clear rationale for his candidacy. . . . He shouldn't sneer and mock Obama; praise him instead as good hearted and ready to mightily assist in this great mission but not yet prepared to lead it. Sell bi-partisan balance versus a one party Washington without checks and restraint. Gently imply that Obama's problem is his weakness, his need to please rather than lead. Leave the nasty snarls locked up in the green room. Forget earmarks and small policy. Talk big and lead big.

This is pretty harsh:

Palin as President

Obama adviser David Axelrod tells the Chicago Tribune's John McCormick that they're prepared to discuss Ayers at tonight's debate and they're 'not worried' about the Republicans' attempts to tie Obama to the former member of the Weather Underground. He also denies that they've been goading McCain to bring it up at the debate; that much rings hollow. This one is all upside for Obama: McCain brings up Ayers and looks like a jerk, or ignores Ayers and looks like a coward. Least worst scenario for McCain is either that it's not brought up but some other helpful triumph or gaffe marks the debate, or else that it's brought up by moderator Bob Schieffer.

No sympathy here. McCain's campaign baited this trap and stepped right into it.

Photo printed under a Creative Commons license from News Hour

By points the Dow follows its best day in history with its second-worst. So whose fault is it? What about the bailout bill/ACORN/Gallup poll/etc. caused it this time?

Okay, yeah, I'm being snarky. But seriously, Ross, you're the econ guy here -- is there any rationality to the markets? And if there isn't, then, well, isn't that a little frightening?

Sorry, but they make it too easy, and this one's hard to resist. After all, I've made the case before that right-wing hacks make for bad strategists. Here's some more spectacularly bad advice:

McCain should go back to his roots and unleash his inner smart-aleck. If Obama accuses him of being erratic in a crisis, he should say: "So I'm erotic in a crisis? Who knew?" This approach . . . enables McCain to show the more appealing side of his personality.

Looking back over my posts in the past couple of days I realize that I'm giving the guys at NRO a lot of flack. Thinking it over, though, I feel pretty okay with that.

So another NRO hack, Byron York, had an online chat with Matt Taibbi about the financial crisis for New York Magazine. I've always thought Taibbi is entertaining but glib, and his reduction of trading in Credit Default Swaps to a Ponzi scheme does nothing to dispel that, but it's still hard to read this without concluding York got pwned. First of all, Taibbi's right that thinking 'a company like AIG tank[ed] because a bunch of minorities couldn't pay off their mortgages' is pretty absurd. Second, it's obvious York doesn't know what he's talking about. Perfect ending:

M.T.: Thanks. Note, folks, that the esteemed representative of the New Republic has no idea what the hell a credit default swap is. But he sure knows what a minority homeowner looks like.

B.Y.: It's National Review.

'My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband’s adoption by His step father. . . . [E]ven if my husband was able to prove that he is not a Muslim, he will not be believed by those who have come out strongly to destroy his chances of being the next President. Do real people expect someone to deny a religion when 80 percent of his relatives are Muslims?'

Here's a thousand words on the moral debasement of the Republican party, which until recently adorned the official website of the California GOP:



(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

Ben Smith reproduces a stunned email from a Republican operative who recently ran a focus group testing a harshly negative third-party anti-Obama ad:

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

[Rev. Jesse] Jackson reportedly said that under an Obama administration, the "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" will come to an end and as would America's policy of "of putting Israel's interests first."

On Thursday night John McCain and David Letterman are scheduled to make up on national television -- but Obama might steal the spotlight with a surprise appearance on Leno.

If you missed the McCain/Letterman spat, see how it started after the jump:

Not the sort of thing you want to accidentally send to the media. Anyway, the tactics are pretty predictable; the first point reads:

- This is John McCain’s last chance to turn this race around and somehow convince the American people that his erratic response to this economic crisis doesn’t disqualify him from being President.

I've got my popcorn, my corndogs, my big styrofoam finger. To help set the mood here's a bit about another famous Presidential debate. I will draw no parallels between that election and ours, but I will strongly imply them.

Via Marc Ambinder: Veni vedi vici. Remember when Michigan was McCain's route to 270? Now that his campaign's jumped ship (and shark) it's freed up Obama's resources to go elsewhere. I've long argued that Obama's best strategy in this election would be death by a thousand cuts: use his fundraising advantage to force McCain to play defense in red states and spread his resources too thin. And that might have made the difference in a close election, but this is no longer a close election. The upshot is that the Dems are running the table and suddenly it looks like they might actually turn red blue. Normally at this point in an election it would be madness for a Dem to consolidate forces in Indiana; and even now if there's somewhere that's going to put Obama over the top it'll be Florida or Ohio or Colorado or maybe Virginia, not the Hoosier state: that's just gravy. But Obama can afford the gravy -- and with all of these crackpot voter fraud conspiracies floating around the margin of victory will matter to his legitimacy.

Anyway, warranted or not, I think this election will be seen in plenty in Dem circles as a rousing victory for Howard Dean's much-criticized fifty-state strategy. At any rate, he's proven a more effective DNC Chair than Terry 'Captain Good Times' McAuliffe. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!

Following on my previous post, I can't help but pine for the day when conservative thinkers were just that -- thinkers -- and willing to engage the other side with respect The exchange below, featuring the late Buckley père, is worlds away from Rich Lowry's little starbursts and McCarthy/Cashill's Ayers-as-Wizard-of-Oz conspiracies.



More video after the jump.

Christopher Buckley, son of National Review founder William F. Buckley, has been run out of the magazine's offices for showing the temerity to endorse a Democrat for President. Of course, he's hardly the first prominent conservative to do so; nor, he tells us, is this the betrayal of his father some of his former colleagues have accused him of:

My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman. One of his closest friends on earth was John Kenneth Galbraith. . . . My point, simply, is that William F. Buckley held to rigorous standards, and if those were met by members of the other side rather than by his own camp, he said as much.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for.

ACORN, which as we all know leads a massive conspiracy with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers to rig elections and destroy the economy while indoctrinating young people with radical anti-American race hate, has been getting quite a lot of play over at Fox. In fact, Media Matters tells us, it's come up 342 times since Friday. (For more on the ridonculous charges against ACORN, see my earlier post here.)



Actually, I kinda want to know what happened to the pizza guy.