Archive for October 9, 2008

Historic Hannity smackdown

October 9, 2008 at 4:15 pm · Filed under media, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Ok, maybe that title is a little sensationalist.  But Sean Hannity does have a reputation for bullying the guests he disagrees with.  He’s brutal.  I’ve never seen anyone win an interview with him (except Sarah Palin).  Makes you wonder if any guest has ever beat Sean Hannity at his own game?  Roberts Gibbs, Obama campaign spokesman, did just that last night.  And it was good (clip to follow).

Hannity was lecturing Gibbs on Obama’s willingness to sit in a room with Bill Ayers, and then all the sudden, Gibbs took over:

Gibbs: “Are you anti-Semitic?”

Hannity: Not at all.

Gibbs: On your show on Sunday, the show that’s named after you, right? The center piece of that show was a guy named Andy Martin.

Hannity: I know you’re reading your talking points. When I interviewed Al Sharpton, when I interviewed all these controversial figures, you see on FOX we actually interview people of all points of view whether we agree or disagree.

Gibbs: Andy Martin called a judge a crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to….Martin when on to write that he understood better why the Holocaust took place given that Jew survivors are acting like a wolf pack…

Hannity:I find those comments despicable…

Gibbs: You put him on your show. It’s the Hannity Show…Why am I not to believe that your’e anti-Semitic, why am I not to believe that everybody that works for the network is anti-Semitic cause Sean Hannity gives somebody a platform that thinks Jews are slimy?

Hannity: I’m a journalist that gives…

Gibbs: You put your whole show around him…

Gibbs:I don’t think your Jewish viewers are going to take it very well that you had somebody like that on your show.

There’s more, but you get the picture.  But do watch the video (below), to see Hannity struggling to regain his usual upper hand.  The clip, aired by Keith Olbermann of course, is followed by Rachel Maddow’s particularly astute analysis on what it takes to beat Sean Hannity at his own game.

According to Maddow:

[Gibbs] did it by showing instead of telling.  The way you would have told that, is by saying, “Well the analogy here is that you had a bad guy on your show, and you having a bad guy on your show is something that could make me accuse you of all sort of exasperating things you don’t believe in, and that’s just like what you’ve done to Barack Obama.”

He didn’t explain it. He just did it.  He showed Hannity how exasperating he could become by making those accusations based on what Hannity’s guests had done.  And the more Hannity responded the more exasperated, and frustrated and unfair he thought it all was, the more he proved Robert Gibbs’ point.  It  was poetry.

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Michelle comes out classy, Cindy and Sarah stoop low

October 9, 2008 at 3:25 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Remember back in June, when Cindy McCain said we would see no negative campaigning at all from their side?

Gosh, seems like eons ago, doesn’t it?  At rallies from Florida to Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign is pulling out all the stops to attack that other side, including this from Cindy McCain:

“The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son while he was serving sent a cold chill through my body, let me tell you,’’ Mrs. McCain said, in an introduction before Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin delivered speeches at Lehigh. “I would suggest that Senator Obama change shoes with me for just one day.’’ Mrs. McCain was referring to a vote against troop financing that Mr. Obama cast in 2007 because the legislation did not include a timetable for withdrawal; Mr. Obama has voted for all other war-spending bills since he entered the Senate in 2005.

It’s worth mentioning as well, that John McCain voted against funding the troops when the bill contained a timetable to bring them home.  Cindy McCain knows full well that no troops would go without their flak jackets because of that vote; it was simply about forcing the president to adopt a timetable (or as the president later acquiesed to in negotiations with Iraq back in June, what you might call a “time horizon“).  Cindy McCain’s comments were a demeaning exploitation of her son’s service.  And Cindy McCain thinks Barack Obama is the one waging the “dirtiest campaign in American history?”

That’s rich.  How quickly she forgot the bruising 2000 Republican primary, in which Bush aides now working for McCain suggested that Bridget McCain, a bangladeshi child Cindy McCain brought back from an orphanage in India, was John McCain’s illegitimate black child.

And then there’s this campaign.  I’m sure Cindy McCain was so very proud of Mike Scott, the uniformed sheriff who warmed the crowd up in Bethlehem, PA yesterday, warning of “Barack Hussein Obama” becoming president.  (He’s now under investigation for politicking on the job)  And let’s not leave out Sarah Palin’s relentless attempt to associate Senator Obama with a 1960’s radical turned Chicago professor, Bill Ayers.  Palin’s baiting has famously riled supporters up this week, one of whom yelled “Kill him!” after she accused Obama of being best buds with a former terrorist.  Angry supporters booed the press corps covering a Florida rally– one taunting an African American among them, “Sit down, boy.”  Yes, I’m quite sure the McCain camapign will go down as the cleanest campaign on the record books.

Obama has not engaged the Bill Ayers stories, instead dispatching aides to shut them down (Robert Gibbs ably knocked Sean Hannity off his high horse yesterday).  Joe Biden’s been the only campaign principal to really hit back on the stump this week, calling McCain, “an angry man, lurching from one position to another.”

Last night, Michelle Obama, who has kept largely out of the limelight since her reintroduction at the Democratic Convention, reappeared.  But, the campaign is not bringing Michelle out to defend her husband.  They’ve brought her out to make Cindy McCain look ungraceful, and to underscore that the Obamas keep a steady hand.

Not for lacking of trying, Larry King and John Stewart were unable to draw out the wrath of Michelle Obama.  Instead, Michelle had this to say about Sarah Palin:

“You know, I’m a mother with kids and I’ve had a career and I’ve had to juggle,” Mrs. Obama said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

“She’s doing publicly what so many women are doing on their own privately,” she added. “What we’re fighting for is to make sure that all women have the choices that Sarah Palin and I have.”

And, declining to hit the Republican ticket for the barrage of negative attacks against her husband, she had only this for Cindy and John McCain:

“You can’t tear up the game so much so that, you know, you don’t leave people something to come back to,” she said. “You know, we’re going to need John McCain, we’re going to need Cindy McCain, we’re going to need independents and Republicans working hard to fix this crisis.”

You can’t get more gracious or classy than that, which is exactly what the Obama campaign was looking for.

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Kerry’s GOP challenger good for a laugh, if not challenge

October 9, 2008 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Economy, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

You can’t blame the guy for trying.  Well, on second thought, of course you can.

Republican Senatorial candidate from Massachussetts Jeff Beatty is trying  to close what I can only assume is a yawning gap between himself and former presidential candidate and current 4 term senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry.  Politicians always resort to finger-pointing and gotcha tactics when the outlook gets really bleak (just ask John McCain, Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin).

Beatty was correct that, just two weeks after its $84 billion bailout (loan) from the U.S. Treasury (taxpayers), AIG springing for a $440,000 spa retreat for top executives to think and talk and manicure their way out of insolvency just wouldn’t go over well with voters.  And of course, the situation was just made more ridiculous by AIG’s receipt of an additional $38 billion taxpayer-funded loan the day after Congress blew a gasket about the spa retreat.

Beatty is trying to link John Kerry to the insurance giant and has demanded that Kerry immediately dump his stock in it, which is valued at $2 million (probably not any more).

Now, I’m no fan of AIG at the moment, but given that we –  you, me and every other taxpayer out there – just gave AIG a nearly $130 billion loan, I would rather Mr. Kerry keep his stock right where it is.  Has no one informed Mr. Beatty that the stock market has suffered a more than 1,400 point freefall in just the last week – the biggest point drop ever?  You listen here, Mr. Politician, no one’s selling anything, you hear?

Everybody just take a deep breath and back away from the panicky, sell-off inducing rhetoric over a global business so important the U.S. government couldn’t let it fail, shall we?  That goes for the other twenty-six members of Congress who currently hold stock in AIG, and any of their opportunistic challengers who would rather win an election than see us get our billions back.

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Hawking your healthcare, taxing the only job benefits you have left

October 9, 2008 at 3:26 am · Filed under domestic policy, healthcare, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , ,

A few weeks ago, I read and wrote about an excellent commentary by Bob Herbert on John McCain’s healthcare plan.  That post really didn’t generate many hits here.  Maybe everyone who lands on this blog already knows the facts.  But judging from the hits it got (compared with the Tucker Bounds post), people just haven’t been thinking about the truly fundamental and frightening changes that John McCain wants to make to our healthcare system.  I don’t see how any American who has every struggled to get coverage could vote for the McCain ticket after even the most cursory study of the McCain healthcare plan.  I’m going to offer a few simply points – the cliffs’ notes to my previous post – in hopes that you, dear readers, will please pass them on to friends and family who haven’t really given this life-and-death campaign issue the attention it deserves.  

1) John McCain will tax your employer’s contribution toward your health benefits — and that contribution will now count as income.  You could call that an “income tax increase” and the death knell for employer-assisted healthcare coverage.

2) In last night’s townhall debate, Senator McCain promised voters a $5,000 tax credit for their healthcare coverage if they don’t have employer-provided coverage.  Of course, he didn’t mention that the check doesn’t go to you–it goes straight to the insurance provider.  And, of course, you only get $5,000 if you are a family (at least three of you).  If you’re just you, you get $2,500 toward your healthcare premium.  If you are 25 years old and have no pre-existing conditions, you’ll be alright.  If you’re not, and you do, you are going to be paying more money for health insurance than you were before.

3) McCain also thinks you should be free to get health insurance in any state you want.  Competition is good.  Of course, there’s always the possibility that insurance companies will just set up in the states with that have fewer requirements.  Again, it’s not really of concern to a healthy 25-year old to get annual mammogram exams or prostate cancer screenings.  And folks just need to steer clear of contracting or falling victim to pre-existing conditions.  I find that just avoiding treatment keeps the insurance companies in the dark until I really, really need them to step up to the plate.

Does any of that make you feel safer?

Quick additional rhetorical question: Do you believe healthcare coverage is a basic human right?  Yes?  Well one of the candidates for president agreed with you last night that healthcare is a right . . . but it wasn’t this one.  

This one

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