Archive for September 10, 2008

9 questions Charlie Gibson should ask Sarah Palin

September 10, 2008 at 7:50 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , ,

It is remarkable really that one of the four candidates for the top two offices in the land has yet to take an unscripted question from the press over the last two weeks.  Please believe me when I say I have nothing against this woman, other than that she is clearly unprepared for the job, and, okay, I disagree with her on social issues and fiscal and international policy.  I am not picking on the lipstick (the woman); I’m picking on the pig (the politician).  As E.J. Dionne writes in the New Republic,

Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, gave the game away when he said on “Fox News Sunday” that she would not meet with reporters until they showed a willingness to treat her “with some level of respect and deference.”

Deference? That’s a word used in monarchies or aristocracies. Democracies don’t give “deference” to politicians. When have McCain, Obama, Biden or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton asked for deference?

….It is hugely unfortunate that the first big story about Palin — other than questions raised about whether she fired the head of the Alaska state police for refusing to dismiss her former brother-in-law — concerned her 17-year-old daughter’s pregnancy. It’s not just that Bristol Palin should be left alone, but also that the intense interest in this story gave McCain’s bullies an excuse to push aside legitimate questions about Palin’s record and knowledge.

Well, her big chance to prove more of us naysayers wrong is coming up later this week.  The McCain campaign, which has already said it will only have her do interviews when the media gives proper deference (can you IMAGINE the reaction had Obama said that at any point during this campaign), has agreed to an interview with Charlie Gibson of ABC.  She will spend two days with him, including the September 11th anniversary, when she will speak at her son Track’s Iraq deployment ceremony.

I am surely not the only one hoping this won’t just be a fluff piece, where we all marvel at the bear rug on her couch or the king crab on the table.  I hope he won’t just ask her how hard has this been for her family, and how did she make this decision and is she working really hard to just not get pummeled in the debate with Joe Biden.

Because she obviously excels at “aw shucks” and charm (Hillary fumed over Obama’s eerily similar swoon factor- when he hollers “I love you back!” to someone at a rally, Chris Matthews feels a tingle up his leg;o).  Of course she’ll sound “real”, whatever I mean by that.  But will she sound prepared, particularly, when by her own admission just one year ago, she was too focused on state issues to opine on a national issue like the Iraq war.  How will she respond to questions like:

1) Your campaign and many of its surrogates have complained that the media, and your detractors, have been suggesting that as a mother of five, you shouldn’t have accepted the job of vice president of the United States.  Do you also take umbrage with that suggestion, whoever may be making it?  And, in 2004, you declined to run for the U.S. Senate, telling the Anchorage Daily News that “How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. senator?”  What has changed for you since you declined running for that job?

2) Do you believe Senator Obama inappropriately supported age-appropriate sex education, and specifically education against sexual predators, when he was in the Illinois Senate?  Do you stand by the McCain Palin campaign ad that aired earlier this week?

I could go on, but someone has already done a better list than I.  Read the nine questions that Charlie Gibson should ask Sarah Palin.  Wait.  Here are some even better questions from Maureen Dowd:

What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids between Juneau and Wasilla and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?

Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn’t all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?

What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs — as mayor and as governor?

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Hurricanes set back Raul’s reforms

September 10, 2008 at 3:30 pm · Filed under foreign affairs, Politics ·Tagged , , , , ,

As Hurricane Ike left Cuba earlier this week it became clear that the island had suffered a one-two (three) punch from not just Ike, but Hanna and Gustav in less than 2 weeks time.  Gustav roared through Western and Southern Cuba, flattening the Isle of Youth to the south and laying waste to Pinar del Rio province in the west.  Pinar del Rio is home to some of the best farmland in Cuba, including Cuba’s lucrative tobacco crop.

Image from NYT of Hurricane damage

Image from NYT of Hurricane damage

The hurricanes have hit Cuba just as Raul Castro is trying to get his most significant “reform” off the ground in Cuba.  Cuba has, for too long, been importing as much as 80% of the food its population consumes, right down to sugar and citrus.  Meanwhile, world food prices have skyrocketed, forcing the Cuba to spend almost twice as much as last year just to feed its people.

So, Raul Castro has put emphasis on the resucitation of Cuban agriculture, by de-centralizing government regulation and assistance, inviting more private farmers and cooperatives to take over unproductive lands, and providing government stores for the purchase of farm equipment and supplies (rather than continue with the useless practice of bureaucratic assigment of such supplies, which never arrived on time or in the right quantities anyway).  But instead of slashing its domestic outlays for food, Cuba will in fact have to pay more to replace lost food stores and crops.  Well, Cuba is not exactly flush with cash.  It’s main earners are nickel (the price of which is down 40% from last year), tourism (which has faltered but has eventual promise), health services exports (which Hugo Chavez trades Cuba for cheap oil), and of course, cigars.

Now I am not suggesting a collapse like what we saw after the Soviet Union pulled out of Cuba, but this is going to be a serious setback not just for the “new” government but for all Cubans.  And Fidel Castro, who is apparently alive and kicking, penned an article last week in Granma newspaper describing in great detail the devastation, and another underscoring the real challenges Cuba now faces after Hurricane Ike. Think what you will of Fidel Castro, but he’s never been one to generalize vaguely.

Now, the United States has made a nice offer of $100,000 in aid to Cuba, with the condition that it be distributed by nongovernmental organizations.  I am all for democracy and freedom, but is this really the most efficient way to get help to the people all over Cuba?  Perhaps if the government weren’t well organized to deliver relief–afterall, Ganaivo, Haiti is completly disconnected except by sea, which is where the U.S. navy comes in with aid, and offloads it.  But Cuba is actually known for its ability to safely evacuate hundreds of thousands of Cubans quickly.  No Cubans died in Hurricane Gustav, despite a truly massive wallop, and four perished in Hurricane Ike (600 have died in Haiti).

Think back to the case of Burma and its horrible military junta, which clearly was incapable of helping its people but refused to let anyone in to help recover from the cyclone several months ago.  So, did the United States refuse to deliver aid into the arms of the Burmese dictatorship?  What do you think?

Finally, it is worth noting that families wishing to look in on and help their relatives in the Hurricanes’ aftermath, are still subject to inhumane U.S. restrictions on travel to the island.  Cuban Americans can only go to Cuba to visit immediate nuclear family (to Cubans, and most latino families, your immediate family spans three degrees of separation) one time every three years with no exceptions for humanitarian reasons, emergencies, deaths in the family, etc.  There has been a lot of opposition in Miami to the policy, which was tightened in 2004, but now even the Cuba government’s harshest critics on the island are calling on the Bush administration to suspend these restrictions and let families help families in this time of crisis.  Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban emigre himself, writes in the Miami Herald:

To propose, as the only option, something that the administration knows the Cuban regime is going to reject is playing politics with Cubans’ suffering……

Instead of rushing to help our brethren, some in the Cuban-American community have engaged in the old, tired and increasingly sterile political debate.

Can we for once put the Cuban people first? This is the perfect opportunity to inject ethical considerations into a debate from which they have been absent for a long time. Can we continue to allow the end to justify cruel means? Can we expect to justify one wrong because the Cuban government commits another?

The majority of the Cuban-American community is increasingly fed up with the continuing ineffective and worn out diatribe.

Meanwhile, Cuba has received other offers (presumably without conditions) from Brazil, Russia (which sent ships over with aid), China, Vietnam, Mexico, and of course Venezuela has made some sort of unprecedentedly generous offer — I am guessing he offered to annex Cuba? –that maybe we’ll hear more about later.

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Good touch, Bad touch

September 10, 2008 at 2:29 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , ,

So, the Obama campaign is calling this new McCain ad airing on television “perverse”.  What do you think?  (Note, the video below is a composite, showing clips of McCain calling for a respectful campaign, and then it features the new ad in question, as an example of McCain failing to meet that standard)

The ad states that Obama’s only accomplishment on education is to have championed “comprehensive sex education for kindergartners,” and mocking him for wanting to teach sex to kids before they learn how to read.  Turns out that the actual legislation was about protecting kindergarten-age children from sex offenders.

Says Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton:

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why.”

Ouch!

It’s going to be a loooong couple months, folks.

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Clearly, it’s still a pig

September 10, 2008 at 12:31 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , ,

Stop the presses!!!

Barack Obama has been saying in his stump speeches that McCain and Palin can try to dress up their records to look like reformers, but they are still regular politicians, in the mold of George W. Bush.  There’s a cute but offensively sexist (really??) saying for this assertion….how does it go….”You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”  And Obama used it on the stump yesterday to illustrate his point.

All kinds of bloggers and even media types are crying foul– calling the joke a slur against women. And it’s not like anyone in the McCain campaign, least of all McCain himself, would ever use those words, especially to talk about a female politician who was running for the highest office in the land.  Because that would be offensive and sexist, right?

Oops.

Enough.  This sort of gratituitous whining is unabashed reverse sexism.  It raises the barriers for women rather than lift them, and as a woman I couldn’t be more offended.  It seems to me that Team McCain want Sarah Palin to be the subject of every discussion, preferably of insults they can decry, because otherwise their candidacy goes back to being, well, boring.   So they trot out surrogates claiming that people are demeaning Sarah Palin as a woman! (I just heard an Oklahoma Congresswoman said that).  Nonsense.

Obama and company are clearly just demeaning Palin as an underqualified politician, period.  Sort of like how Karl Rove ripped on Tim Kaine when everyone thought he would be Obama’s veep pick.  If you haven’t seen the clip from the Daily Show, it is a must watch.  Bill O’Reilly kicks Jamie Lynn Spear’s MOTHER for bad parenting, then a couple months later, defends the honor of another mother of a pregnant teen.  Hmmmm…..

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From Russia with love

September 10, 2008 at 2:24 am · Filed under foreign affairs ·Tagged , , , ,

Have you heard the news?  Russia and Venezuela are dating.

Shall we dance?

Shall we dance?

And, they are auditioning to replace Iraq and North Korea on the Axis of Evil.  This Business Investors Daily article contemplates what would happen to our foreign oil imports if Russia and Venezuela ever decided to –I’m really not sure here–blockade the sea lanes through which the shipments have to travel.  Is such a scenario truly possible?  Perhaps if nuclear warheads were onboard…  Though, for now, they are just conducting joint military exercises in the Caribbean, so there’s nothing to be worried about.

I jest, but only a little.  We would do well to engage Russia now, because which each complacent provocation we initiate (NATO enlargement, Missile Defense Shield in every country that was ever allied with Russia), Vladimir Putin is prepared to see ours and raise it two belligerent “oh yeah?!”‘s in response.

Case in point, did anyone notice that Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister traveled to Cuba last month, along with their National Security chief, and that upon receiving his glowing report on the visit, and personal greetings from Raul, Putin declared “We should restore our position in Cuba and other countries.”

Of course, Investors Business Daily thinks the smart money is on our oil, which is not surprising to hear from an investors magazine.  But what will the candidates say in their debate, because surely a resurgent Russia will a hot topic.  Good thing Palin’s got a leg up on that one.

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Our president in Pakistan, again

September 10, 2008 at 1:51 am · Filed under foreign affairs ·Tagged , ,

On foreign affairs, there is so much to cover.  I’d like to start with Pakistan, because as a good (Pakistani) friend of mine tells me, all is not so good now that Musharraf is gone.  Meet his successor:

President Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, formerly known as Mr Ten Per Cent because of kickbacks received during his wife’s time in office, has become one of the most powerful and potentially dangerous men in the subcontinent. Mad and bad. And now omnipotent. He is head of state, supreme commander of the armed forces, has the power to dismiss parliament, appoint the heads of the army and election commission – and, as chairman of the National Command Authority, has the final say in the deployment of nuclear weapons…..

The man who now has his finger on the nuclear button was only last year declared unfit to stand trial in a UK court on account of multiple mental problems. According to court documents filed by his psychiatrists, he suffers from dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress after spending 11 of the past 20 years in jail in Pakistan. According to their testimony last year, he found it hard even to recall the names of his wife and children.

He has long had memory problems. In the past he has been unable to recall whether he was the owner of a multimillion-pound Surrey estate (he thought not, but later took possession of it) or if $60m (£34m) in a frozen Swiss bank account was actually his. He also thought that he had graduated from the London School of Economics, or was it the London School of Business Studies? There are no records of his doing either.

Wait- a history of mental illness and memory loss?  And he’s so unpopular that we are already speculating about a potential military coup??

Worry not.  Because he’s all OVER the war on terrorism.  He’s certainly getting off to a presidential start, joining President Karzai at a press conference about how they will work together to crack down on militant extremists in the shared border hinterlands.  Is any of this beginning to sound familiar?  Being a good president in Pakistan for the United States does not a long-sitting president make…

Well, at least he has wasted no time rolling back Musharraf’s power-grabs for the office of the presidency that finally pushed Musharraf out of office, right?

During the news conference, Zardari said he would allow parliament to decide whether to strip certain presidential powers added by Musharraf. Pakistan is supposed to be run through a parliamentary system with a strong prime minister; because of changes by Musharraf, the president has the power to disband parliament and appoint most important positions.

“The president is subservient to the parliament,” Zardari said. “Whatever the parliament demands and whatever rights the parliament and the people of Pakistan want and can come to a consensus on, the president will have no choice but to bow before the people of Pakistan.”

Okay, but my friend doesn’t think we should hold our breath on that one.

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I’ll take “windfall profits for $1200” please, Alex

September 10, 2008 at 12:05 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , ,

This snarky but otherwise informative commentary in Time magazine taught me a lot about Alaska’s economy under Governor Palin’s watch, and even more about our national debate over oil drilling and windfall profits taxes.

A few of the highlights:

  • Of the 50 states, Alaska ranks No. 1 in taxes per resident and No. 1 in spending per resident. Its tax burden per resident is 2 1/2 times the national average; its spending, more than double. The trick is that Alaska’s government spends money on its own citizens and taxes the rest of us to pay for it.
  • Alaska is, in essence, an adjunct member of OPEC. It has four different taxes on oil, which produce more than 89% of the state’s unrestricted revenue. On average, three-quarters of the value of a barrel of oil is taken by the state government before that oil is permitted to leave the state. Alaska residents each get a yearly check for about $2,000 from oil revenues, plus an additional $1,200 pushed through by Palin last year to take advantage of rising oil prices.
  • Alaska also ranks No. 1, year after year, in money it sucks in from Washington. In 2005 (the most recent figures), according to the Tax Foundation, Alaska ranked 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434) but first in federal spending received per resident ($13,950). Its ratio of federal spending received to federal taxes paid ranks third among the 50 states, and in the absolute amount it receives from Washington over and above the amount it sends to Washington, Alaska ranks No. 1.
  • Under the state constitution, the governor of Alaska has unusually strong powers to shape the state budget. At the Republican National Convention, Palin bragged that she had vetoed “nearly $500 million” in state spending during her two years as governor. This amounts to less than 2% of the proposed budget

Ok, so what do all of these numbers tell us about Palin’s record, and about our energy policies in general?  Palin is no doubt popular in Alaska for bringing back to Alaska a cut of the profits that oil companies make off of $100+ a barrel oil prices.  But the thing is, those profits that Alaskans enjoyed come at the expense of the rest of us taxpayers: we’re footing the bill for all of those federal projects Alaska gets, even though the state is awash in windfall profits that–wait for it–Palin herself taxed the oil companies on.  So, even though McCain opposes Obama’s proposed windfall profit tax proposal, Palin has put it into practice up in oil-rich Alaska.  No wonder they want to open up ANWR.

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