Incertus

Not all Republicans are racist. Some would no doubt be horrified by this sort of thing. But this is a significant part of your party, and that's a major reason why the Republican party can't make inroads into the African-American community, and until that changes, until the Republican party as a whole repudiates this sort of rhetoric, that's not going to change.

Via SistersTalk.

Don't be ashamed, dude. You went to a Sarah Palin rally and thought it would be cute to put an Obama bumper sticker on a monkey. And then you saw the camera and tried to be slick.

Watch CBS Videos Online

But you're not slick. I'll give you this much--you saw the camera and knew, even though in your heart you might have a racist feeling or two, that to be openly exposed as a racist is not good in today's society, and that means you're improving. Some of your fellow Republicans could learn a lesson or two from that.

Via Iceman 2008 at Daily Kos

Florida banks are ready and willing to make home loans despite the credit crunch. Now I just need enough of a raise so that I can actually afford to live down here and buy a house. There are great bargains on the real estate market if you compare prices to where they were at the peak of the boom, but at that point, the market was about three times higher than most people could afford. Now it's only twice as high. See the problem?

The market down here is still overpriced compared to what people can afford to pay. The median income for a single person in south Florida is right around $40K a year and for a family, about $48K--if the median price for a house is still north of $200K, it's too expensive. So either prices have to fall further or wages have to increase. I'm all for the latter, because I have student loans consolidated during the good times (around 3.25%), so the more I make, the less my loans cost me as a percentage of income. The same would hold true for a house.

What it all comes down to is this: it's not enough that banks are willing and able to lend money. People have to be able to afford to pay back what they borrow, plus handle other living expenses, and to do that, either prices have to continue to drop, or we have to make more. I'm good with either solution.

That's all. Three and a half weeks until the election, and I swear, it can't pass quickly enough, because, especially lately, I have lost every ounce of patience I once had for the Republican party and the people that are showing up for John McCain's and Sarah Palin's rallies.

On the official campaign front, I'm tired of McCain trying to tie William Ayers not only to Barack Obama, but now to Michelle Obama. And I'm tired of McCain talking smack at his campaign stops, but not having the guts to say anything about Ayers to Obama's face at the debates. I'm tired of the way they constantly accuse Obama of doing exactly what they're doing, like saying that Obama's complaints about McCain supporters calling him a terrorist are an attack on Americans.

Speaking of which, I'm tired of so-called loyal Americans screaming out crap like "Obama is a domestic terrorist" and "He's a communist and a Marxist" and campaign rallies. And I'm even more tired of both McCain and Palin not calling them out for it, because that gives tacit support for the actions.

I've always known, deep down, that this was likely to happen if Obama kept a lead. The really scary racist crap would come out and we would have to deal with it. And I suspect it will get worse over the next three and a half weeks while we get closer to election day. The polls so far suggest the Ayers attacks aren't hurting Obama, and a part of me hopes that those few independent voters left will be turned off by them, especially when we're facing such dire economic times. But I can't wait for it to be over, because this is freaking ridiculous.

Governor You-betcha Palin lunged for Obama again today, claiming that Obama tried to interfere with Bush's negotiations on an agreement with Iraqi officials, and cut a “secret deal” with the Iraqi government to stall any changes in troop numbers until the next president takes office. Now, putting aside the fact that the best thing that could happen to this country would be someone following Bush around with a pooper-scooper to clean up his messes, let us notice that even Palin isn’t sure if her own attack is true:


Apparently? If this is true? The McCain-Palin ticket isn't even attempting to verify facts before launching attacks, which, of course, is nothing new for them. Their entire effort at painting Obama as a threat relies on eighth grade “If . . . then” statements.

At this point, McCain-Palin’s concern about whether or not Obama is dangerous is about as useful as Chihuahuas during a sitcom – they’re barking even if the doorbell’s just on T.V.

It's inevitable that the US will recognize the rights of LGBT couples to marry eventually--the demographics are on our side, and individual states keep moving in that direction. Connecticut is the latest. At the heart of these rulings is the acknowledgment that it's fundamentally unfair to deny LGBT couples the right to marry just because the thought makes some people feel icky. Good for Connecticut, and I hope someday we Floridians get there. In the meantime, we've got an Amendment to defeat.

David Brooks's column today isn't half bad, and it's not often you'll see me write those words. Publius wrote a nice post on it that deals with the deal that the Republican party made with the anti-intellectual part of the country and how it has come back to bite them in a very uncomfortable place, but I want to focus on what migh tbe considered a throwaway line from Brooks's column. It's interesting that Brooks uses the term "class warfare" to describe the battle between the intellectual and anti-intellectual classes, because I've always heard that term used in reference to economic class. In fact, when Republicans are decrying means testing for social programs (like Medicare and Social Security) or tax hikes on the rich, their rallying cry is "Class Warfare!" as though the rich haven't been successfully been waging war on the poor for, well, the last ten thousand years or more.

Which makes Palin's invocation of the class card that much more egregious. She conflates the working and middle classes with the anti-intellectual classes in her speeches. It's the way that she's selling out her own--economically, as opposed to intellectually--that grates on me the most, I think. Conservative economic populism, at least the way it has been pushed for the last thirty years, is an oxymoron. Every conservative economic policy since Reagan introduced "trickle-down economics" to a wider audience has had the effect of openly shafting working class people while telling them they'll get rewarded if they're patient. (No wonder it works so well on evangelicals--plays into the "your reward is in heaven" line of thinking.) Palin is simply that idea wedded to an actual ignorance of how the world works. She's Reagan without the sneering contempt for the poor and working classes, which is frightening.

I'd heard the idea before Sarah Palin used it in her interview with Charlie Gibson, the notion that to blink when faced with an important decision was a bad thing, that it was a sign of indecisiveness, and that only the weak-willed hesitate when faced with a crisis. I imagine it's tied to the cliché "he who hesitates is lost."

It shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows the meaning of the word I chose for this blog nearly five years ago that I'd be a fan of blinking. It's Latin for "uncertain," and while I'm as good as spouting opinions as any other blogger, I also like to think that I'm as open to interrogation as I can be, and am willing to admit when I'm in over my head. I blink at times. It's a way of acknowledging my limitations.

George Bush doesn't blink when it comes to his policies, as this story on his Cuba policy points out. How has anyone benefited from Bush's refusal to blink, whether in Cuba policy or Iraq policy or economic policy? Sometimes you can't simply face down problems with a steel jaw and a resolute will. Often you need to take a minute, gather yourself, and seek some advice before plunging in and potentially making matters worse.

After all, the purpose of blinking is to clear your eyes of debris and keep them lubricated so as to enhance vision. Isn't a clear view of the problem, metaphorically speaking, what we want our leaders to have in a crisis? We've had eight years of reflexive, unthinking, unblinking responses to stimuli passing for leadership in this country. Give me a blinker for once.

Here's the Random Ten. Put your iTunes on Party Shuffle and post the next ten songs to pop up. No skipping embarrassing songs. Let the nerdcore rise up and embrace it. You'll feel better for it. Here we go. Leave your lists in comments. I won't be around much today--lots of personal business to attend to this afternoon, so maybe the other posters can pick up the slack a bit.

SayNo2 has a new tv ad out. It's an ad meant to appeal to people who might not be willing to stick their necks out for the LGBT community, but might for seniors. But building this kind of coalition now can help us work together in the future. Pass the video along to other Florida voters.

So American Airlines introduced internet service on some of its 767s that fly cross-country. If I found myself on such a flight, I would certainly be tempted to take advantage of the service (though it would probably be a bit more expensive than I could handle). But I certainly wouldn't use it to do this. Set aside the seeming contradiction in those two paragraphs for a bit--what kind of person would think it's a good idea to boob-scan on a flight? That takes the idea of the mile-high club in a completely different direction. Watch out for the guy taking his laptop to the lavatory--he may be a while.

Dear Jim Naugle,

Go to hell.

Incertus

P. S. I guess that really isn't enough of a letter, since I can't count on people to click on the link. I've written tons here about Amendment 2, otherwise known as the "we can't hate gays enough" amendment. Well, Jim Naugle, our douchenozzle Mayor until he gets term-limited out early next year, has jumped in front of a local group of douchenozzle Democrats to push for this Amendment, and frankly, I've had enough of his crap.

* Stolen shamelessly from Shakesville.

You're a member of a small group of people who have been jailed for seven years. You were sold for a bounty, and the government that paid for you has acknowledged that you aren't guilty of any crime. If you're turned over to the government of your home country, you'll likely be immediately imprisoned and quickly executed, and the government that's holding you has laws against doing that. But even though a judge has ordered you released, and even though there are citizens of the country that bought you who are wiling to get you started in a new life, with clothes and housing and jobs and a community that will help you to integrate and assimilate, the government refuses to release you.

What would you call that?

In the past, I would have called it unAmerican, but since we're the ones doing it, I guess that word is out. I'm looking for a new one. Any suggestions?

I certainly can't say it better than they do.

It didn't take long, once the investment banks started failing, for the bigshots on Wall Street to start looking for a scapegoat, and as is usual for people in that position, they peered down as far as they could to find someone to blame. I'm talking about the argument put forward by pretty much everyone on the WSJ Op-Ed page, Charles Krauthammer, Jim Cramer, Neil Cavuto, and that well known bastion of conservative thought useless even as birdcage liner magazine, the National Review, that Democrats--in particular, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton--and minorities (of course) are the real culprits in the mortgage crisis.

The highly offensive argument goes like this. Congress, back in 1977, passed the Community Reinvestment Act, which was meant to encourage banks to make home loans to minorities, because in the past, banks had been pretty crappy in that regard for racial and ethnic reasons. Congress, they say, forced banks to make crappy loans to brown people that those brown people couldn't pay back, and so we have the housing crunch.

Now, being the economic novice I am, I know in my gut that that theory is not only offensive, but it's also wrong. If I were a right-winger, I could just leave it at that--of course, if I were a right-winger, I'd be making the argument, which makes it unlikely I'd see what was wrong with it, but I'm about to go cross-eyed trying to keep that straight so I'll just leave it alone.

I can do that because Newsweek's Daniel Gross has explained exactly how the above theory is both offensive and wrong. I could quote the whole thing, really; it's that good. And I highly recommend you go read it, but this is the nutmeat, as Stephen Colbert would say. Poor people didn't cause this problem--rich people did. It's a perfect example of the adage that if you owe the bank $10K and can't pay, you have a problem, but if you owe the bank $10 million and can't pay, the bank has a problem.

We can really relate to Gross's second point down here in south Florida. There's a tremendous glut of high end condos on the market both in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and I don't see them moving any time soon. I don't know how big and how wealthy a population has to be to sustain thousands upon thousands of condos with prices in the $500K range at the low end and into seven figures at the high end, but I can tell you this--we don't have it in south Florida right now, and we're not likely to have it in the near future. And yet, despite all these units sitting empty, every day new construction continues. And is any of it affordable housing for working to middle class people? Not that I've seen.

So there it is for you--a solid explanation as to why poor people aren't to blame for the housing crisis. Someone go punch Jim Cramer in the face now.

It's clear that the recent attacks that the McCain/Palin campaign have made on the press are having an effect on their base. There's the last story I blogged about as an example, and there's this follow-up from Dana Milbank about how ugly the campaign trail is getting on the Republican side: To which I say, go right ahead. Keep it up. Because conservative anger might get the base vote out, but it doesn't endear you to independents. It turns them off.

Think back to other great moments in conservative anger. Remember Terri Schiavo? The wingnuts were in full bloom during that mess, and it wasn't long afterward that you started seeing the independents edge away from the Republican party.

So come on, wingnuts. Sing it loud and proud. Bay at the moon. Drop an n-bomb or two on a pool reporter. Make our job that much easier. Help us give Obama the kind of mandate that King George the Lesser could only dream of. If you keep this up, the Democrats might hit 60%.

But it sure looks like it's coming up fast to meet us. I'm sure lots of places will highlight this quote today because of the last part--expect a lot more racially charged language in the next four weeks, and in the four years after that, because there's a certain class of people who are scared by the prospect of an African-American president, so much so that the racism they generally keep in check in polite company comes bursting forth at inopportune moments.

But I expect that. It's the first part I'm more bemused by. Sarah Palin has become the torchbearer for every person who was ever caught out as unprepared for a test who blamed the test giver for failing. Palin isn't ready for this gig, and the interviews she gave with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric prove it. Her dismal performances explain why reporters can't get close to her on the campaign trail now--she can't be trusted without a script.

So she's trying to set Obama up as a proxy for anyone who ever made you feel dumb, and dammit, she's willing to get down there and feel dumb right alongside ya, you betcha. Because it's more important just to trust and go with your gut and not blink when you're called upon.

She's the perfect candidate for this party. Accuracy doesn't matter to her; logic and reason are for people who blink. No wonder it's playing with that crowd. Bigots don't blink either--they're running on unthinking instinct. You'd think that after eight years of gutlyness that's provided us with 2 wars, record deficits and a global economic meltdown, that the average American would be looking for a little more in a candidate than the ability to keep his or her eyes open for long periods of time. For the moment, it looks like they are--we have a month to see if that holds true.

I can call you David, right? Mr. Brooks, columnist for the NY Times seems so formal, and this is the kind of news that's best delivered with a personal touch. There's a little problem with the way you ended today's column. I mean, you didn't do a terrible job with your description of the economic problems and how we got here, and I even enjoyed your use of Plato's cave as a metaphor for the way hotshot finance people see the economy and money in general. But like I said, there's a problem with your ending. Here's the problem. Ayers isn't relevant, but Keating is.

Yes, Keating is old news. I was just out of high school at the time, newly married, baby on the way when the Keating Five became big news. That baby is now a college freshperson--that's how long ago it was.

But it's still relevant, because it shows just how little John McCain cares for regulation of the financial system. I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but bear with me.

See, John McCain doesn't like regulation. He doesn't like it because his buddy Phil Gramm doesn't like it. McCain wouldn't personally know why regulation is good or bad if you rolled up the information into a bat and hit him in the head with it repeatedly--he just goes along with his buddy Phil, who's one of the worst humans alive on the planet right now, and since Phil hates regulation, then doggone it, McCain hates it too. Makes things simpler that way.

Only that lack of regulation has led to the very mess that you were talking about in that column of yours.

Do you know how William Ayers feels about economic regulation? I doubt it. I don't either, and you know why? Because it doesn't matter. Ayers is a relic of Nixonland, at least the way the McCain campaign is talking about him. He's a symbol of a different time and place in our national politics, one which has little relevance to our current time and set of problems. Hell, even the modern anti-war movement has denounced the tactics of Ayers and the group he was once a member of.

Look, I know that you feel a duty to defend your guy, to be the guy who lays down the sacrifice bunt to move McCain over to second in hopes that Palin can get him home with a single. But here's the problem (and yes, I plan to beat this baseball metaphor to death): McCain is down by seven, you've never been good with the bat, and Obama is throwing smoke right now. And he's got Biden in the bullpen, who's already shown he can strike out Palin if he needs to. Besides--her sport is hockey, not baseball.

In today's episode of "what immensely stupid thing can I get paid handsomely to write", William Kristol quotes Governor Sarah Palin's suggestion for where the McCain campaign ought to go next. I think that of all people, Sarah Palin would be wary about bringing in pastors. In all those clips of Rev. Wright that the right wing likes to point to, there's never a situation where Barack Obama is down on the pulpit with him, taking part in the service. (I'm not going to get into whether or not Wright actually had a good point at the moment.)

But Governor Palin? This clip has been around for a few weeks now, but it's still worth a look.

I said it way back when the Wright story first popped up during the primaries. If the Republicans want to start stacking up crazy pastors on either side and see whose pile gets higher, we can do that. But they're not likely to enjoy the outcome.

Stanley Fish takes on the argument over whether religious leaders ought to be able to endorse candidates from the pulpit or altar or whatever is in the front of their house of worship, and as is his habit, he doesn't come up with a solid position. But in order to come to that non-decision, he has to ignore one major part of the equation. He never really addresses what's at stake for these churches, namely, their tax exemption. Take this section, for instance: That's a straw man argument. No one, except perhaps the most extreme atheist (not me, I assure you) is arguing that religious doctrine has no implications for what one does in the public sphere. The rules as they exist now are not onerous--you can say practically anything you want from the pulpit except for a candidate's name, and given the kinds of issues we're generally talking about here, it's not difficult to figure out where a pastor falls in most elections.

This is a fair deal for both sides. Churches don't endorse candidates and they get to stay tax-exempt. This bargain has been working pretty well for the last 50 years, and it's only because some hard-right churches want to have their evangelism and politics in the same speech that we're seeing this challenged today. But let's not pretend this is about some higher issue or calling. This is about money, and to ignore that is to ignore the driving force behind this challenge.

One of the most freeing things about not being religious anymore is that I don't have to have to balance this kind of stuff. Even though I didn't start voting until I left the church, my early political opinions on a lot of issues were still formed by my time as a Jehovah's Witness, and yet, unlike the evangelicals mentioned in this story, I never felt pulled by my stance on social issues to vote for one party over another. I never had to deal with that tug. I don't know if it's my natural temperament or if it was because Jehovah's Witnesses adhere to a strict neutrality in governmental matters--they don't vote or serve in the military--but my attitude, once I inserted myself into the political world, was very much one of "let God handle the sin and government handle the day-to-day."

Here's a little of what I mean. Conservative evangelicals tend to support candidates who oppose same-sex marriage and abortion, among other things, and in those two cases, their opposition to those issues is predicated on the idea that those actions are sinful. They argue that to not oppose them with everything they have is abetting the sin, and makes them culpable.

As for me, I was always more of a "vengeance is mine, saith the Lord" kind of Christian, a firm believer that when the end came, God would punish all the unrepentant sinners--which included women who had gotten abortions and GLBT people--and so it made little sense for me, or for the political system in general, to get involved. Give them enough rope to hang themselves, in other words, (yeah, I was a real winner at the time) and God will act as a better hangman than anyone else ever could.

Which is frankly what I think happens in the minds of the voters described in this article when economic times get really tough. When the choice is supporting the person or party who will lead the two minutes hate on abortion or gays or the one who will make it easier for you to put food on the table in tough times, suddenly there's an increased reliance on God to take care of the sinners, while the government takes care of more immediate needs.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that the evangelical right reached the height of its powers during relatively good economic times. They showed some power under Reagan, and the 80s, while not as good as Republicans like to claim, were better in many ways than the 70s, and they really drove the Republican machine through the 90s culminating in the close-enough-to-steal election of 2000, which was at the end of the biggest economic expansion in history. I think inertia pushed them through the 2004 election, but the tough economy has had people rethinking their priorities for the last couple of years. The evangelical right had very little pull during the Republican primaries, and while the pick of Sarah Palin as running mate is certainly a nod to their power inside the Republican party, it's also a signal that they're currently on the wane, as Palin was certainly not the most adept or experienced social conservative to put on the ticket--her gender and relative youth had as much to do with the pick as her social stances.

And here's the most important thing. Even with the socially conservative base motivated, the Republicans are still getting their butts kicked. In tough times, when it comes to choosing between hating abortion and gays or getting some government aid, hating hits the road, at least temporarily.

Oh, those crafty politicians with their tax-hiking tax cuts. I have to say that, as an opponent of the tax cut Amendment that passed so overwhelmingly last year, I applaud this bit of petard-hoisting by the Miami-Dade commissioners. The reality of our modern society is that taxes are the dues we pay for a stable society. Now in this state, the citizens decided a while back that they didn't want an income tax, which means that property owners get to carry a larger part of the burden. If anyone wants to vote on trading a lower property tax rate for a modest income tax, I'm on your side. I'll advocate for it happily, even though it would affect me adversely as a non-property-owner, because it's usually the least regressive form of taxation. (I'll fight you tooth and nail on pushing it into sales tax, though, because that's the most regressive.)

So the Miami-Dade commissioners came up with a compromise--raise the rate, but also raise the homestead exemeption, which means most working- and middle-class people who own homes will see a reduction in the amount they pay--at least for the present--and the wealthier will pay a little more. I can live with that.