Tag Archive for 'USA Election 2008'

Obama McCain debate open thread

Here they go again! Televised, streamed, etc. in all the usual places. Comment and link as you will. Recycling of partisan talking points strongly discouraged.

A couple of discussion starters - Nate Silver:

Are John McCain’s negative attacks succeeding in eating into some of Barack Obama’s support? They certainly aren’t yet. In fact, Barack Obama has had perhaps his strongest individual polling day of the year.

And my favourite blogger evah (well, up there anyway!), Michael Bérubé:

Continue reading ‘Obama McCain debate open thread’

“The gloves are off”

The McCain campaign has gone into full on negative smear mode, with Governor Sarah Palin playing the traditional attack role of the Vice-Presidential candidate.

Apparently Obama has been consorting with terrorists, because he once knew a member of the Weathermen (long afterwards and when Bill Ayers had become an educator and a Distinguished Professor at the University of Chicago). All these allegations were aired during the primaries - and no doubt the Rev. Wright stuff is being readied for an encore. Reading this article on the campaign in Florida really does show how much dissemination the loathsome “Muslim sleeper” stuff is getting as well, and Palin’s attack on Obama as some sort of terrorist sympathiser will reinforce that theme among those disposed to believe it, or to have doubts.

Continue reading ‘“The gloves are off”’

Liveblogging the House debate on the TARP bailout bill

Earlier on tonight, the indications were that the US House of Representatives would be voting around 2am AEST on the revised version of the TARP bailout bill (with extra billions of dollars in pork to attract lawmakers’ votes - added in the Senate amendment which John “Against Earmarks and Wasteful Spending” the Maverick McCain duly voted for). It doesn’t look like that’s the case because a lot of Congressthings want to go on record for their constituents by speaking on the House floor (and/or because they have to ask questions now because the bill has never been subjected to legislative hearings, as is normal in the US Congress).

Anyway, I’m off to bed. But you can follow what’s going on via this liveblog from Catherine Rampell at the NYT’s Economix.

NB: Previous discussion and commentary at LP on the bailout, the financial markets crisis and the ramifications can be accessed here.

Update: via danny in comments -

1:25 p.m. | Bill passes: The bill passed 263 to 171. The vast majority of Democrats voted in favor (172 yeas to 63 nays), while a slighter majority of Republicans voted against (91 yeas to 108 nays).

Reaction and commentary over the fold.

Continue reading ‘Liveblogging the House debate on the TARP bailout bill’

The Palin Biden debate haiku thread we had to have

Jennifer Schuessler at the New York Times has been boosting the “turn the Veep debate into a poetry slam” movement. Two poems selected from her Paper Cuts blog post:

Haiku’s not the form
For Senator Joe Biden
Because the last line may come out slightly longer than is absolutely necessary due to the subject’s ability to analogize all topics to a seminal moment in the history of this great nation of ours, America, the UNITED states of America

-Henry Alford

So jobs, they … you know,
Health care’s really …. it’s — Katie,
That bridge? I said no.

-David Orr

[Via Quick Study]

Biden Palin debate! Open thread

As everyone probably knows, the Veep debate will be televised live at 11am AEST on both ABC1 and SBS (which also has live streaming online if you’re not near a tv).

Any links to liveblogging of the debate appreciated.

Context in this earlier post and Amanda’s post on Biden at Hoyden About Town.

Update [by Mark]: Liveblogging at Firedoglake, Feministing and FiveThirtyEight.com.

US economic crisis policy links post; and Obama and the economy

One point of view that’s been expressed about the financial markets crisis can be summed up by something I read at Crooks & Liars today:

Have you noticed that every person suddenly knows everything there is to know about how the economy works? Wow, it’s all so simple.

Maybe there’s a point there, but not the one John Amato thinks he’s making. I’ve consistently been of the view that the economy should be a subject for civic and political discussion, and that we shouldn’t hold back because of the “not an economist!” cries that sometimes echo around the place. If one of the continuing problems with the US financial sector is the lack of transparency which is causing the crisis of solvency - because no one still knows where all the securitised bodies are buried - so too a bit of transparency in demystifying the fiscal arcana whose complexity was part of the reason for this mess should be welcomed.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to share some links (from econobloggers and non-economists both) I’ve found particularly insightful and interesting over the last few days.

Continue reading ‘US economic crisis policy links post; and Obama and the economy’

Welcome to the Palindrome!

[I’m borrowing the pun from Michael Bérubé]

In the absence of any more “game changing” impulsive madness from Walnuts, all eyes will probably be on the Veeps debate on Friday - although our friends in the House Republicans or more spectacular crashes on Wall Street might diminish the focus a tad. Sarah Palin won’t be able to pull a McCain though, and “suspend” her campaign, after that trick spectacularly failed as Walnuts slunk out of Washington calling for bipartisanship on one hand while slagging off Obama on the other, after fairly poor reviews of whatever contribution he may have made to the crisis from his fellow Republicans. Nor will Palin be dropped from the ticket - I think (presuming there’s any rationality to the McCain strategy). As Nate Silver observes, there are at least three good reasons why it would be dumb (but again, I’m thinking dumb is the name of the McCain game). And the last time a Veep candidate was dumped - Thomas Eagleton in 72 - McGovern dropped 7 points in the polls.

Anyway, that’s that for the moment, but in this increasingly bizarre campaign which in true postmodern style seems to have as fictive a relationship to the real world as all that fictitious capital swirling around Wall Street waiting for the government to buy it, who knows what lies ahead, or even what lies lie ahead. My main purpose in posting was to draw attention to two excellent pieces from two of my favourite Stateside online writers on the bizarre phenomenon that is the Palin pick, something I continue to believe deserves more analysis than just political calculation or the desire to diss implies.

Continue reading ‘Welcome to the Palindrome!’

Playground politics

The Nancy Pelosi speech that made the Republicans cry:

Context in this post about the Congressional rejection of TARP.

Is neoliberalism finished?

The question’s in the air at the moment. In the Australian blogosphere, John Quiggin thinks the financial markets crisis has killed it off, while Nicholas Gruen is (rightly in my view) more skeptical. [In response to commenters, Quiggin goes on in another post to define what he means by neoliberalism.]

From my (sociological) point of view, the shorter answer to the question is - no.

In fact, I think the way the question’s posed reflects a number of category mistakes. Continue reading ‘Is neoliberalism finished?’

Can politicians walk and chew gum at the same time?

The obvious retort to John McCain’s faux suspension of his campaign last week was that Presidents should be able to deal with more than one issue at the same time. That’s obviously true, but it’s also a truism which disguises something - politicians think that the public want their focus predominantly on the crucial issue of the moment (and the media reinforces this with its “narrative” obsession).

It might not have escaped folks’ attention that Kevin Rudd minimised his focus on climate change at the UN in favour of the plan he and Gordon Brown cooked up for saving the world’s finances. Rudd himself mentioned that it would be difficult to concentrate world leaders’ attention on climate change. This rhetoric also provided him with some convenient cover for disguising the switch in focus for the justification of his trip as it came under opposition attack. But it does raise the broader question of which way Kevin Rudd will jump on climate change and emissions trading - perhaps more in terms of the international negotiations (which however can’t be separated from the domestic politics, with the whole question of the significance and timing of Australia’s ETS being crucial to the “argy bargy”).

The Lowy Institute Poll being released today might pose some dangers ahead. Continue reading ‘Can politicians walk and chew gum at the same time?’

McCain flip flops

Joe Conason has a devastating critique on McCain’s “bipartisan” “here to help” “campaign suspended” play at Salon:

His attempts to game this dangerous situation, his waffling between bipartisanship and ideological rigidity, his shiftiness on the real issues and his obvious lack of concentration on the problems that must be resolved — suggest that he is in fact unfit to serve in the office he desires. Once again he has proved that his claim to put country first is hollow. He was more than willing to take America down as he gambled for that prize.

Do feel free to use this thread to reflect on the debate as well.

Continue reading ‘McCain flip flops’

Republicans attempt to scuttle GOP bailout plan

It only gets more surreal.

You can read about the latest at Crooks & Liars and Firedoglake.

None of this is about the economy. It’s about rescuing McCain’s campaign, not Wall Street. But reportedly McCain’s “help” comes down to supporting a proposal by House Republican Leader John Boehner:

That proposal reportedly includes even more deregulation and further tax breaks to the financial sector, plus a prayer that Wall Street can rescue itself if the restraints are removed.

The $700 billion bail out is wildly unpopular in the States, to put it mildly. But not because the American people are taking a stand against regulation.

Update: Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings on how the deal was scuttled. McCain’s lying about his part in it, as is now routine.

Bring back Bill Clinton (the last dog isn’t dead yet)

I’m going to go out on a limb here.

Bill Clinton is the only genuine political talent that creaking heap of donkeys, the beloved Democratic Party, has produced in an age. Damn that Twenty-Second Amendment.

Obama plays it safe yet again, basically following the line of least resistance by endorsing the Paulson bailout plan with some meaningless caveats. There were calls in the States for Obama to actually return to the Senate and get involved in the legislative process over the “plan”, which would be a useful contrast with what firedoglake correctly characterises as McCain’s “empty babbling on the economy”. That might be a smart move particularly given his very thin legislative record.

But, nope.

What we get is propaganda about “post-partisan solutions”. The Democratic candidate who won’t even speak the D Word, let alone the L Word. Continue reading ‘Bring back Bill Clinton (the last dog isn’t dead yet)’

The end of financialisation? II

As a supplement to earlier posts on the sociology of the global financial crisis from Kim and dk.au, I thought I’d note something very interesting written by Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber. Farrell traces the shift in paradigm in the regulatory architecture of finance, one that has supplemented the first shift away from direct involvement of the state in economic ownership:

The second is more specific and recent – the tendency to replace ‘heavy-handed’ forms of regulation with ‘regulation with a light touch’ and self-regulation. This has been most marked in Anglo-American economies, but other countries (in continental Europe and elsewhere) have faced persistent ideological pressures to move in this direction. This is a large chunk of the so-called ‘reform’ agenda that the Economist magazine, the OECD and other such bodies keep pushing. Both of these shifts are largely ideological – that is, they gained much of their impetus from changes in the ideas which constitute policy-makers’ shared collective wisdom about how to deal with the economy.

The second shift (the reform agenda) is now a busted flush. Its proponents are in disarray (if I’m feeling in a vindictive mood, I may well buy a copy of the next Economist to see how its editorialists try to rationalize all of this).

Any reasonable assessment of the actions of the Fed and the US Treasury would suggest that they’re driven by confusion and are very much ad-hoc measures. Neither Bernanke nor Paulson seems to have much of a big picture grip, and politicians reciting “the fundamentals are sound” is clearly not going to cut the mustard now, even, as with John McCain, precipitating something of a backlash.

John Quiggin has speculated on how all this will play out. The confusion has led to some quite bizarre moments, such as pundits on Lateline Business declaiming “capitalism is in crisis” and “the financial markets may not be viable”. What we’re seeing - among other things - is a decomposition of that abstraction “the markets” and a reduction of these so-called impersonal forces to the panicked reactions of individuals. If Robert Skidelsky is right, and a tipping point has been reached, it begs a very big question, which Farrell answers in terms of process (because no one can know the outcome of such a fluid conjuncture). Continue reading ‘The end of financialisation? II’

The End of Politics and the Last McCain

Alexandre Kojève

If Man becomes an animal again, his arts, his loves, his plays must also become purely natural again. Hence it would have to be admitted that after the end of history, men would construct their edifices and works of art as birds build their nests and spiders spin their webs, would perform musical concerts after the fashion of frogs and cicadas, would play like young animals and would indulge in love like adult beasts.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.

John McQuaid

In 2004, George W Bush’s denunciations of John Kerry as a liberal Washington insider who had trouble articulating clear positions also had the ring of truth.

Those campaigns were slick and sophisticated attempts to shape public opinion. By contrast, McCain’s ads and rhetoric sound like they’re generated by a bunch of twentysomething Republican bloggers, strung out on caffeine at 3am, each trying to out-snark all the others. The main thing the campaign has going for it is sheer outrageousness – that is, by hitting every conceivable cultural hot button and repeating untruths over and over, it will both get an anti-Obama message out and also dominate the news cycle.