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Governor Sibelius was just on - what a different, emotionally cooler experience it would be with her on the ticket instead of Biden! Federico Pena now up.
Once upon a time there were three little pigs. Each of them needed a place to live.
The first little piggie worked hard and built a House of Straw. It was a modest house with three rooms in a small yard. He was happy in his little house until the Big Bad Wolf came and blew his house down.
The second little piggie built a House of Wood. He used 2x6 framing and insulated well for the coming winter. But the Big Bad Wolf came and blew harder, knocking the sturdier house down.
The third little piggie tried a different approach.
Can't find any baseless speculation on the Vice Presidential pick? This diary is for you!
Today is the last chance (without extra-special effort) to get the Veep choice into the weekend news cycle: the Friday night pundits, the Sunday morning shows. (Maybe the newsweeklies too? When do TIME and Newsweek go to bed?) And once the weekend is over the story is about the convention itself - the nominee would compete with the keynote and other speakers, and with the event itself.
So I think the text messages go out today, perhaps after 11AM in consideration of the West Coast. The McCain mansions story is well-established and risks getting stale; no problem with stepping on it anymore.
Yesterday Wyoming selected its major party nominees. Many states held primaries earlier. Others, including New Hampshire, are still in the middle of primary campaigns. (I Googled for a comprehensive calendar but couldn't find one.) We won't know until Sept. 9th who Paul Hodes will face in November, or whether Carol Shea Porter will run against Jeb Bradley or John Stephen.
A lot of people who are not political junkies like the idea of a shorter general election. Very few people put "Longer political campaigns" on their Christmas lists. But there are side-effects of our calendar.
But somehow Obama choosing him, and his acceptance, caught the pundits by surprise.
His service to this country has been an inspiration to America," said the Senator from Illinois. "When I asked him to make one more personal sacrifice he did not hesitate...
The Republican Party, nationwide and in New Hampshire, is the Nanny Party. In particular, it believes that government should step between a woman and her doctor on reproductive matters. Every time Republicans take power this is at the top of their agenda.
Most recently, when Craig Benson was Governor and Republicans controlled the New Hampshire House and Senate, they passed a "parental notification" law with no health exceptions. (The law passed in the Senate only because Senate President Tom Eaton refused to vote.) This sort of law had been found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court before, but the Republican Party hoped that they had replaced enough Justices to change the previous rulings...
It's settled: the Republican convention in St. Paul Minnesota will refuse to recognize half of the New Hampshire delegation. This is punishment for New Hampshire's early primary.
The head of the national Republican Party is nominee-in-waiting John McCain. He outranks the party chair. When New Hampshire is punished, John McCain wields the belt. But why is he wielding it? I don't understand his thinking.
Not only did McCain win here in both 2000 and 2008 - this is his kind of track. The argument we make for the early primary is: it will put a premium on face-to-face conversations instead of big media campaigns. When McCain was running against well-funded campaigns from the Bush Family in 2000 and Mitt Romney in 2008, he relied on the retail politics of this state to get into the game. When the national media was eager to anoint some poseur with freshly-applied makeup - a Giuliani or a Fred Thompson - McCain relied on New Hampshire to weed the poseurs out.
New Hampshire is also a state where the Republican Party isn't dominated by the religious fundamentalists that have dogged him in the past. Very few GOP voters in this state follow James Dobson. McCain's tangle with Falwell probably won him votes here.
So it seems strange that John McCain is doing his level best to ensure that the New Hampshire primary is killed off. I really don't understand it.
It's here. Key points and observations on them below.
McCain doesn't want to privatize Social Security. He thinks individuals should be allowed to control how a tiny fraction (about 4 percent) of their Social Security benefits are invested. How is it "privatization" to leave 96 percent of Social Security benefits under the control of the federal government?
That's not true. McCain, Sununu, and others don't want to redirect 4% of FICA payments to the stock market. FICA taxes are about 6.2% of the worker's paycheck and 6.2% of the employer's payroll, for a total 12.4% of pay. They want to redirect 4% of pay, not of FICA payments. That is (4 / 12.4) = 32.2% of FICA payments. Redirecting a third of Social Security payments kills the program.
The people who want to restructure Social Security don't understand arithmetic: isn't that comforting?
The payments you make today are taken out and given to current retirees. That's not an "investment" in your retirement. That's simply a wealth transfer, and it is a tremendous disgrace.
That's the way Social Security has worked for 73 years. (It's also the way that the traditional banking system works: my mortgage loan came from your savings account. Scary, huh?) If anyone is confused about that, they have been reading rags like the UL for too long. The UL and John McCain agree that this is "a disgrace."
It is the reason Social Security will be unable to pay benefits when there are more retirees than younger people paying into the system.
That's a slippery lie. First, Ronald Reagan signed a Social Security reform law that started gathering more money than needed to build up a nest egg for that day. Second, the worst-case scenario show Social Security paying 75% of scheduled benefits - after all the interim benefit hikes over the next 25 years - when the nest egg is fully drawn down.
McCain is trying to address the underlying flaw in Social Security.
He's sending his own delegation to represent American interests in Georgia, which is currently in an on again/off again shooting war with Russia.
(I assume they will represent American interests: if not, what will they do?)
It's a little bit disconcerting that, back during the election campaign, John McCain was relying on someone on the payroll of a foreign government - specifically Georgia! - for foreign policy advice. And it's even more disturbing, personally, that I overslept and missed the election.
Because we DID elect McCain, right? We must have. Otherwise he wouldn't be negotiating with foreign governments.
The "trial" of Salim Hamdan, who is described as Osama bin Laden's driver, is over. He was cleared of conspiracy charges but found guilty of "providing material support for terrorism."
Hamdan was captured in 2001. Congress created the law he was convicted of violating in 2006.
This is known as an ex post facto, or "after the fact," law. The prohibition against governments using this goes back to the Magna Carta. Examples of "arrest now, think up charges later" are typically used to highlight just how repressive and corrupt a regime is - think Louis in Nazi-occupied Casablanca.
The Bush regime may get away with this because Hamdan is a foreign national. Where many civil liberties are recognized because they help maintain a healthy state - e.g., free speech being essential to citizens participating in government - the ex post facto prohibition is "simpler." There is really no good reason for ever using this totalitarian tool against anyone.
The U.S. is now in the business of conducting Soviet-style show trials.
There's a new hatchet job book out on Obama today. Why do I say "hatchet job"? Because it's from Regnery Press, which exists specifically to spew this stuff out. Last election they published the Swift Boat liars' book. Regnery isn't about journalism or history or literature. It's about making sure that Republican smear campaigns have a willing printing press and distribution chain.
Where can you find out about the latest smear campaign? Ben Smith proudly tells you:
Freddoso's book, released today by the conservative publishing house Regnery and provided exclusively to Politico by the publisher...
When Regnery went looking for a political organization that is to "news" what Regnery is to "book publishing," they found Politico Republico.
Today's NYT provides an introduction to the race. It pulls together the conventional wisdom: New Hampshire is moving strongly Democratic; Sununu is an engineer and one of the smartest people in the Senate; he has more cash and will use it for a big ad blitz after Labor Day.
The article seems to paint Sununu as a generic Republican, ignoring the right-wing extremism on issues such as Social Security and stem cells that is so far out of traditional Yankee Republicanism. Says Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report: "He does constituent service. He shows up to work. He votes. He brings home the bacon. There are not a lot of inherent things wrong with John Sununu except that he is a Republican."
As we've pointed out here repeatedly neither Sununu nor Gregg "brings home the bacon." New Hampshire gets back only 67 cents of every dollar we send to DC, putting us in 48th place. And the NYT articles doesn't mention the phone jamming crimes that stunk up the 2002 race.
The Times wraps up its summary with a knowledgeable local observer, providing context for the polls:
...even without the straight ticket, Mike Caulfield, a co-founder of www.bluehampshire.com, a political Web site, said he expected Mrs. Shaheen to win."People kind of treasure their indecision," he said of New Hampshire residents. "They kind of hold on to it much longer than people in other places might. But if 2006 is any guide, the independents will break very hard for the Democrats."
In our earlier discussion of the national GOP stripping New Hampshire of 12 of its voting delegate seats (which would never happen if John McCain were still alive) we ignored an important factor: The Republican Party needs seat warmers!
We already knew that John E. can't decide whether to attend the nominating convention. (Amazing, isn't it? Sununu unsure of his position?)
Now comes word that the Chairman of the NRCC is urging GOP candidates to not come to Minneapolis.
What if they gave a convention and nobody came?
So NH delegates, show some resolve! Put those tickets on your credit cards and fly out to Minneapolis. (Take a taxi when you get there - the driver will know which bridges to avoid.)
If they don't have a quorum without you, they may even let you vote!
We've noted before that New Hampshire is a "donor state:" we send in much more money in federal taxes than we get back in federal spending in the state. In fact, the latest count shows that we only get back 67 cents (pdf) for every tax dollar we send.
We can't all be average, but when New Hampshire is the only state in the continental US that can't support its veterans with a VA hospital, ranking 48th grates on the nerves.
So where do the other 33 cents of every dollar go?
Look at the table again. We're #48 in return on our taxes. The Silver Medal goes to Alaska. They send in $1.00 and get back $1.87. Our extra taxes go to help fund the extra spending there.
Why would our Congressional delegation let that happen?
Well, as shown by their guaranteed 87% return on federal taxes, Alaskans know how to invest wisely. Here are some of the relevant investments by indicted Senator Ted Stevens' Leadership PAC:
1998: $5,000 to Judd Gregg
2002: $10,000 to John E. Sununu
2004: $10,000 to Judd Gregg
2006: $2,500 to John E. Sununu
2008: $7,500 to John E. Sununu
I've seen your TV commercials promoting your particular plan for investment in alternative energy.
I believe we need to do that.
But I don't trust you. I don't want Congress to even look at your proposals. If it ever looks at them, I want it to look for evidence of fraud and trickery.
Mr. Pickens, when you spent millions to fund the lying smear merchants called "Swift Boat Veterans," you established your credentials. In my estimation you are a completely unethical,unscrupulous man who throws his money around to buy influence.
I suppose it's supposed to be a joke. There's a summer party going on and while the hosts and guests are on the front porch laughing over a drink before dinner, the lobsters are escaping out a back window.
Now, you and I are from the East Coast elite. We know that lobsters can't actually tie together a rope out of napkins to make a getaway.
But what of all those people in flyover country? They've probably never seen a lobster. This cover could confuse them and reinforce their stereotypes: if lobsters are that intelligent, even carnivores might find the lobster dinner abhorrent.
Would it have been too much for the New Yorker to include a prominent footnote on the cover, noting that lobsters can't really do that??
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