Think positive — but think!

As tempting as it might be to engage in ad hominem attacks against the opposition in this Presidential election, I’m gambling on the notion that folks may be more likely to read what I have to say if I don’t, so I won’t.

There’s no doubt some satisfaction in going after the person rather than the idea, especially if we feel clever in doing so, seeking the cheap thrill of a zinger over the effort of a point finely made that might actually inform.

To this end, with the election just a week away, I’d like to offer information about developments in favor of electing Barack Obama.

Last Sunday, on Meet the Press, Gen. Colin Powell set forth his reasons for supporting Obama, ranging from his concerns about where the Republican Party is headed (he is a Republican) to the way the McCain campaign had been run in the preceding several weeks; from his concern about McCain’s lack of direction as the current economic crisis unfolded, and the selection of Sarah Palin to be his running mate, to his trust in Obama’s “way of doing business” and judgment.

Gen. Powell said it came down to which of the two candidates would best serve the needs of the nation for the next period of time. He said,

I have come to the conclusion that, because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities – and you have to take that into account – as well as his substance, he has both style and substance, he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president.

According to Editor & Publisher, a website that follows such things, editorial boards across the country have so far endorsed Obama by a margin of 3-to-1, contrasted with an almost even count in 2004. And before anyone hollers “liberal media,” let it be noted that, in addition to the usual suspects (the New York Times, LA Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun), the Bryan-College Station Eagle made its first-ever presidential endorsement, for Obama. Furthermore, at least 38 papers that endorsed Bush in 2004 have switched this year to Obama, including our own Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The Chicago Tribune endorsed a Democrat for the first time ever, and while you may be tempted to think, “Well, of course a Chicago paper would endorse Barack Obama,” think about the fact that they probably know Obama better than most of the rest do.

And speaking of hometown perspectives, the Anchorage Daily News, in its endorsement of Obama — “Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand,” the paper had this to say about Sarah Palin:

Despite her formidable gifts, few who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.

Colin Powell may be the most recognized in what has begun to look like a Republican mass defection; other notables to endorse Obama recently include Scott McClellan, Ken Adelman, William Weld, Christopher Buckley, and Susan Eisenhower.

Ever since he was accused of being too famous, the attacks on Obama have been relentless and have ranged from truth through implication to out-and-out lie. No, he’s not a Muslim (and as Colin Powell said, What if he were? This is America!) and no, he’s not a terrorist, and no, he’s not in favor of turning murderers loose (the Republicans’ latest robocalls, recorded by Rudy Giuliani, are Willie Horton redux).

And no, Obama is not a socialist, unless you consider wanting to give a tax cut to folks in the middle class, tax credits to small businesses and tax incentives to companies who don’t send their jobs overseas to be socialism.

If you do, it’s well past time to get out the dictionary.

Throughout all the attacks a calm and imperturbable Barack Obama refused to reciprocate, despite urgings from some of his supporters and a slew of pundits to “get tougher.” According to conservative TV host Joe Scarborough, speaking to Newsweek recently, “He doesn't attack Republicans, he doesn't attack whites and he never seems to draw these dividing lines that Bill Clinton [does].”

Finally, and inexplicably, his opponents complain that Obama is an intellectual, an “elitist.” As if that were a defect.

Let me say this about that: When I fly, I want my pilot to be one of the elite that make up the best; I want my surgeon to be of the medical elite; I want my lawyer to be unbeatable; I want our troops and their generals to be the best of the best, and by golly, I want my President to be.

Short and sweet: Obama’s tax plan

Some days I just don’t understand how, this late in the game, there can be anyone left who is undecided about the Presidential race. I mean, it’s been going on for close to two years!

Other days, I remember to give the benefit of the doubt to folks who are not political junkies like me and so haven’t been paying attention as closely as I have.

But by now there’s a lot of information out there — the TV ads that have begun to show up in the last month or so, the 24/7 cable news, and of course the candidates’ web sites (and the Obama campaign even has its own TV channel, 5890 on Dish Network) — so
they’d better hop to it, for early voting starts NOW.

This space was dedicated a week ago to comparing the two candidates’ health care plans, followed on Friday by a comparison of their proposals for dealing with the economic crisis.

You could say the best was saved for last. Taxes.

Let’s talk about “Joe the plumber” for a minute.

Samuel Joseph Wurtzelbacher, a registered Republican who rocketed to fame in the third Presidential debate, told Obama, in a rope line, that he was poised to purchase his bosses’ plumbing business but that doing so would bring him income “in the $260,000 to $280,000 range” which he figured would increase his taxes under the Obama plan.

Whether or not he was a “plant,” as some suspect, it made a great talking point for the debate, so I’m glad this conversation took place right there in front of everyone, and I don’t agree with the media frenzy about his license or anything else personal.

It turned into a great hook for the candidates, and gave Obama the chance to point out that (a) based on what he is making at this point Joe would benefit from Obama’s proposed tax cut, and (b) that his tax rate would increase only on the amount of income above $250,000.

In other words, the first $250,000 would be tax-increase free! Still, if I ever get lucky enough to earn that kind of money, I don’t think I’ll mind at all paying another 3% or so on the $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000 extra.

This being politics, of course, part of Obama’s answer on the rope line was morphed by the McCain folks into something vaguely sinister.

Obama said to Joe, “If the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you. And right now, everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody. And I think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.”

This naturally became “Redistribution of wealth! Horrors! Welfare! Yuck!”

Obama went on to explain to Joe that he would also eliminate the capital gains tax for a small business like Joe’s, to encourage growth.

What’s amazing to me is that voters who would never in their wildest dreams reach a net income of $250,000 for a family, or $200,000 for a single taxpayer, are convinced that an Obama administration would raise their taxes.

According to a chart published by the Washington Post, citing the Tax Policy Center, Obama’s plan would actually not raise taxes significantly for anyone earning up to $603,402; the tax increase that would kick in at that point would be 8.7% and that would hold up to $2.87 million. Anyone you know going to be worried about that?

Y’know, we’re getting into the stratosphere here, what the Tax Policy Center identifies as the top 1% of Americans. But apparently this is who McCain is really, really worried about when he says that Barack Obama is going to raise your taxes.

Warren Buffett, a man who knows a thing or two about making money, hasn’t got a problem with Obama’s tax plan, so I guess I don’t either.

Short and sweet: Health care

What amazes me most about the ongoing health care debate is the finality with which some politicians and their pundit supporters dismiss the idea of universal health care, and especially single payer plans, with the nail-in-the-coffin reminder that “You don’t want the government running your health care, do you?”

And folks who don’t stop to think about it may agree, because they certainly don’t want the government running their health care, nosiree.

So I guess they’ll be turning down Medicare when they retire.

Unless they, like Joe Barton, are members of Congress, in which case they already have government-run health care. Doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

It’s been understood for years that the abysmal state of our health care system is a drain on our national economy, not to mention a drain on the health and pocketbooks of the millions of American citizens who have no health care coverage.

Who do you think pays for those emergency room visits by the uninsured?

America is the only major industrialized nation that does not provide some form of universal health care for its citizens. But this year, happily, we are offered some real ideas for fixing the health care system. And the reader is well advised to listen, learn and then choose.

The New England Journal of Medicine, a respected and non-partisan publication, has published its evaluation of the proposals by Barack Obama and John McCain, and I want to describe the main points here, in the order they are listed by the Journal.

John McCain’s plan:

Proposes to make employer-paid health insurance premiums taxable to the employee;

Provides for $2500 per worker or $5,000 per family refundable tax credit for those purchasing private insurance;

Creates a high-risk pool for persons who are unable to purchase that insurance; promotes less comprehensive insurance policies;

Proposes to deregulate insurance markets;

Proposes to reform Medicare to make bundled payments for episodes of care and pay on the basis of outcomes.

Barack Obama’s plan:

Proposes requiring employers (except very small businesses) to either offer insurance to employees or pay a tax;

For the uninsured and small businesses, would create a new national health plan similar to Medicare, and establishes a new national health insurance exchange that would offer choice of private insurance options;

Mandates that all children must have coverage (expanding the SCHIP program);

Would provide subsidies to lower-income Americans to help them afford coverage;

Would expand coverage, financed through the payroll tax, letting tax cuts for families making over $250,000 expire, and savings from electronic medical records, disease management, and other system reforms;

Would regulate private insurance plans to end risk rating based on health status;

Proposes to insure business against the costs of workers’ expensive medical episodes.

These, again, are the highlights. For each of the candidates there are other proposed measures to control costs and improve quality, but the ones I’ve reported are selected by the Journal as “key elements” of the respective plans.

However you get there, universal health care is not just a do-good, feel-good, help- the-afflicted issue. It’s a bread and butter issue for the country.

The past is prologue?

If some of our more partisan conservative commentators are to be believed, Bill Clinton and his administration are to blame for anything and everything that’s gone wrong in this country since 1992, including bin Laden, Katrina, the subprime mess, and of course the present worldwide economic crisis.

In the latter cases, the line of thought seems to be that the present crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment Act, originally passed in 1977 and furthered during the Clinton administration. Here’s how it’s described on the Federal Reserve’s own web site:

The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations. … The regulation was … most recently amended in August 2005.

The gist always seems to be that lending to minorities is what got us here, and that it is all the fault of the Clinton administration.

Just a couple of observations: First, you’ll note that the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to operate in a way “consistent with safe and sound operations.” And, second (and perhaps most significant), the Act was “most recently amended in August 2005.”

Daniel Gross, writing in the October 7, 2008 issue of Newsweek, summed it up best:

The Community Reinvestment Act applies to depository banks. But many of the institutions that spurred the massive growth of the subprime market weren't regulated banks. They were outfits such as Argent and American Home Mortgage, which were generally not regulated by the Federal Reserve or other entities that monitored compliance with CRA. These institutions worked hand in glove with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, entities to which the CRA likewise didn't apply. … Nor did the CRA force the credit-rating agencies to slap high-grade ratings on subprime debt.

Though I believed from experience that there have been many, many foreclosures that weren’t necessarily related to subprime lending, the Gross article offered some detail, pointing out that, for example, a builder of high-end condominiums in Florida filed for bankruptcy just a couple of months ago:

Very few of the tens of thousands of now-surplus condominiums in Miami were conceived to be marketed to subprime borrowers, or minorities—unless you count rich Venezuelans and Colombians as minorities.

And it’s a myth that lending to poor folks or minorities is in itself risky. Gross cites a recent New York Times report that

... a long-running initiative to build homes and sell them to the working poor in subprime areas of New York's outer boroughs, has a repayment rate that lenders in Greenwich, Conn., would envy. In 27 years, there have been fewer than 10 defaults on the project's 3,900 homes. That's a rate of 0.25 percent.

The villains in the subprime lending debacle were in it for the money. The loan fees for such loans are higher than those for conventional loans, and I’ve seen for myself cases where the buyer who would have qualified for a conventional or FHA loan was pushed into a subprime loan because the loan officer was greedy. And, of course, there were loans made that should never have passed underwriting because the loan officer was simply dishonest.

Even so, if you want to blame it all on Clinton, what do you do about the fact that, when the Act was amended in 2005, the Presidency and both houses of Congress were under the complete control of Mr. Bush and the Republicans?

Hm.

I leave the reader to think about it while I point the finger in another, more sinister, direction.

Back in 1996, in what may have been a prescient letter to the New York Times, I wrote:

I believe now that Newt Gingrich, with the perhaps unwitting support of the famous “freshmen” he so carefully recruited, programmed and brought to Washington, does have it in his mind to dismantle if not destroy our federal government. I think it’s time for someone to openly question whether his intentions are honorable.

His unrelenting “Newtspeak” attacks on existing government programs, his vilification of anyone opposing him, his brazen moves to destabilize Wall Street, his cultivation of discord and fostering of anarchy, and finally his dismissal of public disagreement with comments that amount to ‘progress is painful, but I know what’s good for America,’ suggest that Americans had better pay attention when he calls it ‘revolution.’ Those who call him brilliant would do well to recall Hitler, for one, among those revolutionaries of history who used similar tactics to take control of the existing government. It is increasingly apparent that Gingrich’s agenda includes a revised constitution that he intends to write and a ‘revolutionary’ government that he intends to control.

Judging by the ineffectiveness of our scattered protests, he seems to have convinced the American people that we cannot stop the inevitable.

Every politician in Washington claims to care most about “middle class Americans.” Well, the working people of America — the true middle class — had better stand up for themselves, or suffer the consequences.

During the recent turmoil in Washington while Congress tried to decide what to do, it was reported on good authority (Andrea Mitchell) that ol’ Newt had been working furiously behind the scenes in opposition to the “bailout” legislation – before he came out in support of it. There was also mention of the possibility that he is preparing a run for President in 2012.

Another something to think about.

But no guarantees, of course.

Saturday morning on NPR a focus group of undecided voters, gathered by the network to watch the Presidential debates, now were asked to give their reactions. Most of them said the debate had helped them get closer to deciding which candidate they prefer. But one rather grumpy-sounding fellow disagreed, complaining that he didn’t hear either of the candidates put forth a proposal for resolving the finance-industry crisis now being debated in Washington.

Well, mister, if all the king’s horses and all the king’s men haven’t been able to figure out how to put the economy together again, let alone whether to take any action at all, how can you demand that any one person, even a candidate for President of the United States, know what to do?

Frankly, I’d rather have a President who doesn’t claim to know it all, who is willing to hold off making a decision until all the information is in — and who understands the potential harm that might result from acting recklessly or in haste — than one who doesn’t think he needs more information, nor to listen to more opinions, who trusts his “gut” feeling.

We’ve been there, had that, and it didn’t work out too well, did it?

Late Sunday the Congressional leaders of both parties, after working through the weekend, announced that they had agreed on a plan to “unclog the arteries” of lending and investment institutions so that money for home and business loans would begin to flow again.

And why the rush? Here’s where it gets dicey.

The reader may recall that the subprime crisis wreaked a bit of havoc recently, with one effect being that the most egregious lending practices were ended and lenders started insisting that their borrowers be qualified and capable of paying off the loan.

Over the last few weeks now, as banks and investment companies began to fail and others go all wobbly, stock market values began to bounce up and down, and loans became harder to get.

Then, abruptly, just over a week ago President Bush and his Secretary of the Treasury came out and proclaimed a dire situation, asking Congress to immediately authorize them to take $700 billion of taxpayer-backed money and use it to buy unknown quantities of unmarketable mortgage-backed securities of undefined value held by banks and investment companies; no less was at stake than our homes, jobs and pensions, not to mention our ability to buy a new car.

In this case, it seemed, the smoking gun would be the mushroom cloud kicked up by imminent economic collapse across the country and indeed around the world.

Just like the WMD’s of yore, no one can prove or disprove any of this. Although there is plenty of agreement among respected economists that something must be done quickly to add fresh money to the system and remove moribund securities from their inventories, there are almost as many equally respected economists who disagree; some disagree about the need for speed, others about the whole idea.

No one knows exactly what the problems are, or how to fix them. Most in Congress feel obliged to take the President and Paulson seriously, without evidence to the contrary.
A few in Congress and in the press have dared to ask how the situation got so dire without anyone noticing, given that this came up so suddenly. As economist Paul Krugman suggested, you have to wonder where the grownups have been all this time.

But now the President and Paulson definitely had everyone’s attention; howls of protest arose from Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and from citizens all over the country at the mere idea that taxpayers should bail out the fat cats of Wall Street.

The candidates for President reacted in respectively characteristic ways. Obama stayed in communication with Paulson and Congressional leaders by phone and offered his conditions for support; John McCain did a bungee jump from his campaign into Washington but we still don’t know exactly what he thinks of it.

Yesterday’s announcement laid out the changes to the Paulson plan that would be acceptable to both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate, giving it a fair (though not certain) chance to pass.

The improved plan includes slowing the distribution of the funds by providing them incrementally; establishing a Congressional oversight board as well as a special inspector general to protect against fraud or abuse; protecting what will be considered an investment by taxpayers that must be paid back, and requiring that taxpayers benefit from any future growth in the assets that are purchased through this program; providing for renegotiation of mortgages wherever possible, to keep families in their homes; and banning golden parachutes and unearned bonuses for executives of the participating companies.

Since economists don’t all agree, and since the folks in Congress don’t all agree, and since everything the Administration is about to undertake (if the legislation passes both houses of Congress) is based on assumptions, estimates, best guesses, computer projections, and just plain opinion, I guess I’m equally entitled to offer my opinion. After all, with all the disagreement out there I’m sure someone higher up will share it.

My sense, from a local real estate broker’s experience and point of view, is that this is not so dire a situation as we are told. The real estate market is very slow, to be sure, but houses are still selling to qualified buyers.

Yes, it would be nice to have business pick up and yes, it’s harder to get loans if you are only marginally qualified, but isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?

If I’m wrong and the legislation passes, after which miraculously everything gets (and stays) better, pass the Tabasco and I’ll eat my words.

With all of this, the point that advocates for the plan keep making is that this promise of a bailout is needed to reassure “the market,” to help the economy stabilize.

That begs the questions: What if the market, like some child who is terrified of the unknown, decides not to be reassured? Or what if we did nothing, but let nature take its course?

I’m going to slip into a somewhat partisan outlook, and wonder if the emergency is a product of the Administration’s desire to help out Wall Street. But of course that couldn’t be true, could it?

One thing I do know is that I don’t know the answers, and it looks like we won’t get to find out.


Originally published September 29, 2008

How did we get here and where do we go?

During my real estate career I’ve come across more than a few predatory lenders — lenders who do not, as a rule, serve the buyer’s best interests. Unlike reputable mortgage brokers and banks, they are willing to subordinate the buyer’s interests to their own, and that almost inevitably causes trouble.

A subset of the predatory lender is the inexperienced loan officer who, due to lack of experience, education, or oversight, hasn’t a clue that what he’s doing is not quite right.

I’ve had cases where the loan officer continued to assure everyone involved — the buyer, the agent for the buyer, and the agent for the seller — that “this is definitely going to close,” even up to the morning of closing, only to have it turn out that his underwriting department didn’t share his opinion.

I don’t know if you ever saw “Glengarry Glen Ross,” but its grim lesson is the state of denial that a desperate salesman may get himself into, even without malicious motives. And the one who pays will be the buyer.

And eventually, as we learned over the past couple of weeks, the American taxpayer.

“I can get you into a house with absolutely no money down!” cannot ever be true, yet how many hopeful buyers have succumbed to the lure? The fact is that every buyer will need to have at least $500 – 1,000 cash on hand to cover the costs of earnest money to be deposited, a home inspection, and an appraisal — all of these amounts are generally “pay-as-you-go.”

The risk of purchasing with "no money down" is that you’ll end up owing more on the house at closing than you could sell it for. Particularly if all your closing costs are rolled into the mortgage, it would be virtually impossible to turn around the day after closing and recover your investment; the costs of sale will come back to bite you.

Then there are lenders who make it possible for you to afford the monthly payments on the dream house you didn’t think you could afford by offering you an adjustable rate mortgage. They don’t make a big deal out of the fact that “adjustable” almost always means “upwards,” of course, but if you do ask about that they are likely to reassure you that “the way houses are appreciating, you’ll be able to refinance before your interest rate goes up.”

And here lately we’ve learned what happened to THAT option.

There have even been loan officers who falsified income information (without the buyer’s knowledge) in order to get the loan approved by higher-ups. But it gets worse:

In one case, the lender manipulated the transaction to the point where the poor buyer ended up with a mortgage on the property that well exceeded its value. The usual checks and balances didn’t exist because the buyer’s agent, the lender and the appraiser all worked for the same company; in addition, that company styled itself a “charitable” organization that collected a “non-taxable donation” of several thousand dollars from the seller and transferred a portion of it as a “gift” from seller to buyer. And added it to the mortgage, of course, while giving the seller a charitable donation receipt for funds he never paid.

As it turned out, just over a year later that buyer lost the home to foreclosure.

But before that happened there’s no doubt that, quick as a wink, that lender sold the note. A mortgage note has value, after all, as an income producer. And whoever bought it — a bank or investment company — almost certainly sold it to someone else. By the time the buyer defaulted, who knows where it had landed? But one thing for sure, it could no longer be sold. And that made one less pool of money available for the investor to use to buy more mortgages.

As more and more “subprime” mortgages went into foreclosure, the inventories of more and more investors became unmarketable, and the investors had less and less money to invest. The amount of money available for loans of any kind dwindled and the economy slowed to a crawl.

At the same time, more and more foreclosures began to force down the market values of homes around them as well as increasing the time it took to sell any home.

So now we end up with Wall Street investment companies being sold, going bankrupt or having to be bailed out, and with our nation in a precarious situation not unlike that which brought on the Great Depression. Last week, the Bush Administration proposed to buy up those bad mortgage notes in order that the investors can get a fresh start and maybe perk up the economy as a result.

The Administration, fearing considerable worsening of the situation, has urged Congress to take immediate action and vote this week to provide the $700 billion that it believes will be needed just to begin the bailout. It is proposed that Henry Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, be given absolute discretion in using the funds — what to buy, how much to pay, and so forth. And doesn’t want legislation held up by too much debate.

Gives me a queasy, been-there, feeling.

I believe that there are just a few tweaks needed in the proposed legislation.
As it stands, the investors would get rid of their losers, while the American taxpayer would acquire them. I say there should be something there for the taxpayers, who being asked to take on the risk.

Some decent additions to the legislation that have been proposed include forbidding the beneficiaries of bailout to give multimillion-dollar “golden parachutes” to the CEO’s that are responsible, a restriction that was imposed in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

There is legislation that was proposed back in the spring, that would empower bankruptcy judges to rewrite the terms of a mortgage with the goal of keeping the homeowner in the home. This should be included because it makes sense and because foreclosures have a negative effect on the community. And to the extent that the lender took advantage of a buyer, or should have known better than to lend to someone who was obviously not qualified, it’s justice.

I wrote to Elizabeth Warren, a nationally recognized authority in bankruptcy at Harvard Law, because I wanted to be sure I have this right. Here’s what she replied:

Congress should amend the ill-advised bankruptcy statute enacted just a few years ago to permit neutral bankruptcy judges to adjust mortgages, principal and interest to keep people in their homes and to keep payments flowing on mortgages.

If a homeowner can afford a long-term, fixed rate mortgage that will pay off 100% of the current market value of the home, then everyone is better off … and the family stays in the home. If the family can't afford that, then it is time to give up the house and move on.

Either way, we can reach a bottom on the housing market, force the investors to take their losses, and move forward.

This plan won't cost the taxpayers a single dollar. And it will force the lenders to come to the table to negotiate over the value of these mortgages instead of waiting for another government bailout.

It has also been proposed that a new stimulus tax credit be given the vast majority of Americans, the poor and the middle-class, to help them get over the hump that has resulted from all this.

And finally, for now, it is imperative that regulations be put in place over the lending industry to make sure this never happens again.

Put all this together, which can be done immediately, and it just makes sense.


Originally published September 22, 2008

Giuliani: Divorced again!

In his appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Truth he wanted out and took Honor along with him. Oh, and while he was at it, he completely abandoned Reality.

Why do I give a fig about this? I’ll tell you why.

Just as a person who has been attacked by a dog may thereafter fear all dogs, a person who has experienced McCarthyism may forever be vigilant lest we allow it into our society again.

I was in high school during the ascendancy of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and his counterparts in the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and because my father worked at the U.N. I got a pretty good inside look at the tyranny of those people.

Dad, with the rest of the American employees of the U.N. Secretariat, had to complete a 13-page loyalty/security questionnaire; the final page was blank, with the instructions, approximately, to “use the space below to provide information that will prove your loyalty to the United States.”

Any historian will confirm that Joe McCarthy never unearthed a single enemy of the people, and he eventually got into some hot water for trying to play the U.S. Army for fools. But the inquisitorial process was numbing (“Were you aware that your friend Mr. Soandso was a member of the Communist party 20 years before you met him?” “Have you ever entertained the Soandso family in your home?”) — and the collateral damage was fierce.

Mr. Soandso — whose politics were pretty ordinary, it turned out — lost his job, and — the times being what they were — his children were harangued in school as “commies.” His wife went to work to support the family. He never recovered his job, his good name, or his dignity.

Meanwhile, back at the State Department, where Dad had worked before the U.N., a dear friend of our family was subpoenaed to appear in person, no attorney allowed; she was questioned over a period of hours about her loyalty and friendships. It was rough and it was traumatic, and she resigned because she just couldn’t take any more.

No charges were ever filed against either of the people I’ve described.

But I was impressed, and I was terrified. Even half a dozen years later, waiting at a bus stop I spied a newsstand that displayed the Daily Worker; I was afraid to cast a further glance at it lest I be seen by someone who might do that to me.

I finally got over it as the country seemed to get saner (and Joe McCarthy, who was laughed out of power by Judge Joseph G. Welch during the Army hearings, finally succumbed to the ravages of alcohol and hatred), but I’ll admit to being a wee bit paranoid still.

So Mr. Giuliani got my attention when he said, essentially, that Barack Obama’s community organizing was run by "a Saul Alinsky [Red flag!] group," in league with the Chicago machine politicians, and that the real purpose of that group was to use taxes for the redistribution of wealth rather than for the benefit of the country.

“Redistribution of wealth” — you know, like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez; it’s quite a stretch to claim that trying to put people back to work after they've lost their jobs when the steel plants closed is trying to redistribute wealth.

Rudy said this was “socialist,” called Obama the most left-wing candidate ever, and the most liberal member of the Senate. He repeated the “redistribution of wealth” bit three times, pretty hefty for a few-minute comment.

Naturally, I can’t help but wonder how he would characterize Adlai Stevenson, famously called a “pinko” by Nixon back in the McCarthy era; for that matter how might Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern feel about giving up the “most left-wing” title? And as for the Senate liberals, did he just diss Ted Kennedy? And what about Bernie Sanders, for heaven’s sake, who calls himself a “socialist”?

And Saul Alinsky? Alinsky was in fact the father of “community organizing,” and he was very good at it. He fought AGAINST the Chicago machine because he saw that it wasn’t working for the working poor. Let alone the just plain poor. And he succeeded.
Here’s what the Washington Post said about him:

Alinsky was a bluff iconoclast who concluded that electoral politics offered few solutions to the have-nots marooned in working-class slums. … Power flowed up, he said, and neighborhood leaders who could generate outside pressure on the system were more likely to produce effective change than the lofty lever-pullers operating on the inside.

Alinsky took action with an organizing campaign in 1939 in Back of the Yards, the desperate Chicago meatpacking district depicted in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Fashioning an unlikely alliance of unions, the Catholic church and others to win concessions from industry and government, he said organizers must listen to people's desires, then find leaders to carry the fight.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

So it’s not surprising that when Obama, trained (and by the way, Rudy, having been very successful) in community organizing, talks about the fixing the economy he calls for building from the bottom up, putting people put back to work, rewarding employers for keeping jobs from going overseas, and paying women the same as men for the same work, for example. That’s part of the beginning.

But Giuliani wants you to think, “Commie pinko!”

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy: We’ve been through all this before, haven’t we? And there are a bunch of us who don’t want to go there again. Better take care, lest you be laughed off the stage like Joe McCarthy!

Originally published September 14, 2008

John’s choice

With the choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain did one thing for sure: he injected new life and perhaps a wee bit of hope into a Republican convention that was struggling to attract America’s attention.

To the wider audience not distracted by funny hats and backdrop films of cornfields and LA middle schools, the snarky comments about Barack Obama had become repetitious and there was even growing suspicion among some that McCain’s only real qualification to be President of the United States seemed to be his five-plus years of experience as a prisoner-of-war subjected to torture.

The “maverick” image of 2000 had pretty well faded as, one by one, McCain took on the attitudes of his former nemesis: tax cuts for billionaires, about which he said in 2003, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief," in 2006 became his new favorite proposal.

Speaking of torture, John McCain famously (and deservedly) supported legislation that would have banned waterboarding and some other forms of torture. But last February, when the bill came to a vote (with Mr. Bush promising to veto it), he voted against it.

The man who, more than many, symbolizes the wounded veteran, has consistently opposed increasing veterans’ benefits, including health care for wounded warriors and educational rewards for serving the country.

McCain’s proposals to address the health care crisis (yes, Virginia, there is one) include offering a $5,000 tax credit to help Americans buy insurance, which makes one wonder about folks who don’t make enough to pay enough taxes to cover that, and (incredibly) taxing as income the value of employer-provided insurance.

The man famous for opposing earmarks in legislation chose a running mate who, as mayor of her town, managed to obtain more earmark money for her constituents than any other town in the country. And the multimillion-dollar allocation earmarked for a “bridge to nowhere,” that Palin wants us to believe she rejected, were actually paid to Alaska — just not for that bridge.

Republicans at the convention seem to have bought into the assertion that a great many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters will abandon all their principles (sort of the way McCain did) and vote for him just to have Sarah Palin “a heartbeat from the presidency.”

The people who voted for Hillary Clinton because of what she said and stood for will choose to vote for Mrs. Palin just because she’s a woman?

It’s called cognitive dissonance, folks.

Does anyone actually stop to think what “one heartbeat away” means? And if and when they do, do they pause at least a moment to imagine the possibility that — like any of us — John McCain, being mortal, could expire on election day, for example, and then what?

We have an economy on the rocks, health care costs about to explode, schools failing, college costs headed for the stratosphere, jobs being lost (the latest unemployment number was 6.1%, the highest in five years); we have global warming (which Palin doesn’t believe in); we have war winding down in Iraq, another heating up in Afghanistan, a developing crisis in Pakistan, the threat of trouble with Iran, unknown challenges in the former Soviet bloc, and the ever-present Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

And John McCain offers us eye-candy with attitude?

We learned over the weekend that the McCain campaign has told the media that Palin will not be available for interviews (read: questions) anytime soon. In fact, according to campaign manager Rick Davis, Palin won't give any interviews “until we think it’s time and she feels comfortable doing it." And, according to a report on Talking Points Memo, he later added that she wouldn't give any interviews "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

In the meantime, all you folks who are still deciding who to vote for this November can just accept the McCain campaign’s word for it: She is, like, TOTALLY ready to order our sons and daughters into battle.


Originally published September 7, 2008

Witnessing history

Gaithersburg, with a population of 1,020, wasn’t much more than a crossroads in Maryland when we moved there in 1942. About 20 miles outside of D.C., it was a decent commute for someone working in Washington, like my dad.

A perfect family town. Looking back now, it was pretty rural; the “old folks’ home” at the end of our street had a field with cows and the occasional calf us kids loved to pet. Even into the third grade, some kids came to school barefoot. Our telephone number was 9W, though it had grown to 68R by the time we moved away five years later.
We all ran around loose, you might say; there weren’t privacy fences, and the street was for bike riding, softball, and hanging out after dark.

When the trash collectors came by they had to drive their truck all the way down our very long driveway to where the household garbage cans were kept. My little sister and I were just fascinated by that huge truck (though I can see now that it was quite ordinary). We pestered the trashmen for a ride and finally one day, with our mom’s consent, we got to ride in it, all the way back up the driveway!

In the somnolent days of small town life you can understand how little kids might consider this the high point of a week.

Not for long, as it turned out, because the guys who so cheerfully gave us little kids a few minutes of their time and a lot of fun were black.

The neighbors two houses over had 13 kids, and by the end of our ride it seems every doggone one of those kids was lined up along their wire fence to chant, “N----lover! N----lover!” Thus was I introduced to Jim Crow.

It didn’t help that our family were known to be damyankees, of course. We still played together, kids being kids and the town being small, but we were always considered outsiders.

I guess you could consider it an awakening, and as time went by I began to be aware of the signs in front of houses FOR SALE to WHITE ONLY. And at the Saturday movies, where we paid a quarter to sit in a smelly old theater I was told that the black kids sitting on the fire escape had paid their money (but only a dime) to watch the movie through the windows up there. Didn’t seem fair, but that was the way it was in Gaithersburg.

In 1947 we moved to damyankeeland, where discrimination seemed to be based on whether you liked the Yankees or the Dodgers, and life moved along fairly smoothly.

Television came along, though not so early to our house, but those without gathered in the homes of those with, so I got to see Milton Berle in black and white. Back then there was a show called “The $64 Question,” by the way.

In college in Ohio I found kindred souls in the jazz club, whose membership, not surprisingly, was biracial and about half the white members were Jewish, and it became the group I ran with. I learned about jazz, and I learned about race. And, as it turned out, I got another lesson.

I’d taken a job off campus, waiting tables in a local restaurant. The owner, a formidable woman anyway, one day called me to task for having been seen talking to a --- (black man) out in front of her restaurant. To be fair, she was an equal opportunity bigot: when I responded to her tirade by shrugging “What do you want me to do?” she finished with “Aha! A Jewish gesture!” And fired me on the spot.

After a year in Ohio I took a break from college and found a job as a “girl Friday,” eventually becoming quite accomplished on the manual Remington typewriter. (And later came the IBM electric, which evolved into the IBM executive with proportional spacing. Amazing! The Selectric was a wonder, but nowhere as miraculous as the self-correcting Selectric – you had to see it to believe it. Remember those round little erasers with brushy tails? Gone.)

Meantime, the computer came onto the scene. From punch cards to Macintosh: What an evolution! And, free at last, no more carbon paper!

In the late 1950’s I went back to college, supporting my education habit with a job serving cocktails at the Starlight Lounge (it was quite respectable, folks). A majority of the customers were young men from the nearby Air Force base, and by now the military was integrated. But it was still a while before there came an evening when a couple of black servicemen showed up and sat at a table, and my boss instructed me not to serve them.

Quitting a job with tray in hand can feel good; it gives you something to slam down on your way out the door.

But this was in California, and it was 1959, and we were supposed to have come further than this, weren’t we?

During the turbulent 1960’s we all watched and praised and were amazed by the Freedom Riders, young people who risked their very lives, as it turned out, because they believed that black folks were entitled to sit down at a lunch counter, to be treated as equals, and especially to vote. And they went down South to try to help make it happen.

James Cheney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman – all in their early twenties -- went to Mississippi to register black citizens to vote. Not long after their arrival they were arrested, jailed, released, followed and rearrested by the police and turned over to the Klan. They were shot to death. We learned all this only after a six-week search, when they were found buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, MS.

I was devastated, as were so many Americans. The front-page photograph of their bodies being returned to their grieving parents is seared in my memory and tugs at me still.

There have been so many trials for the country, so many injustices, and also some sweet but hard-won triumphs – but you know these things. I’m just offering some personal recollections that inform my own attitudes and state of mind on race in America.

So when I watched and listened to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech the other night, before that audience of 84,000, I was personally affected, and thrilled to be witnessing what may be the end of the beginning of America’s quest for a perfect union.

And I said to myself, “James, Andrew and Michael, this one’s for you!”

Originally published September 1, 2008

And furthermore …

Even before finishing my last post I realized that there are quite a few more items that need to be said about the current campaign for the presidency. The idea that even one voter might make a choice based on bad information is anathema to everything our Founders intended for America.

Take (please!) this new ad from the McCain campaign:

"Life in the spotlight (the video shows crowds cheering Obama) must be grand, but for the rest of us times are tough."

Us? This from the guy who campaigns wearing $520 leather Ferragamo loafers, enjoys the use of his billion-heiress wife’s private plane to travel to campaign events, and owns at least half a dozen homes in pleasant locations?

The ad goes on: “Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000,” while the text-over says Obama: RAISE TAXES ON MIDDLE CLASS.

The narrator claims that Obama “promises to raise taxes on small business, seniors, your life savings, your family.” Talk about hot buttons! Then, next to a photo of a smiling Barack Obama, “Painful taxes! Hard choices for your budget!”

What a heartless cad!

The ad concludes, of course, with “I’m John McCain and I approve this message.”

Some in the TV commentariat speculated aloud last week that they don’t believe McCain is really this kind of guy, that he must not really know what his minions are putting out there because he surely would not be comfortable running such ads.

Next to the ad described above, I could almost forgive the simple slander of using a remark out of context, as I described last week. Here we have an out-and-out lie. No other way to characterize it.

Obama has said for months that his tax proposals include REDUCING taxes for every family with less than $250,000 income, and eliminating them altogether for low-income families and seniors under $50,000.

I used to fantasize that whenever an election was won with a proven lie the person who won that way should have to give up the office. Fat chance.

From lies to too-clever-by-half: In an exchange about McCain’s fixation with off-shore drilling, Obama observed that, hey, if every driver got the car tuned up and its tires inflated to specification the fuel savings would be immediate, contrasted with the years before new wells could influence gasoline prices — if indeed they did more than a penny or three a gallon.

McCain promptly began a campaign to mock this as “Obama’s energy plan,” and handed out cute little pressure gauges to reporters. (Ordinary folks could get one for only $25.00 on McCain’s web site.)

But here’s what BusinessWeek.com wrote on August 1, 2008:

According to www.fueleconomy.gov, the gas savings of having a properly tuned car is 16 cents a gallon, compared with a car that’s not properly tuned. The savings from properly inflated tires versus improperly inflated tires is up to 40-cents a gallon.

Statistics vary, but more than half of the vehicles on the road today are believed, from periodic spot checking, to be under-inflated.

AAA and NASCAR agree, by the way.

Further, according to BusinessWeek.com,

The U.S. government’s own Energy Information Administration says that removing restrictions on offshore drilling wouldn’t lead to any additional domestic oil production until 2017, and that even at its peak the extra production would have an ‘insignificant’ impact on oil prices.

So it was reassuring to hear McCain endorse the idea a week or so later.

And none of these sources mentioned the fact that the savings realized by reducing driving speed to 55 mph is said to add about five miles per gallon, not an amount to be sneezed at with current prices where they are.

One thing for sure: McCain’s argument that if we only “Drill here! Drill now!” it will bring down the price of gasoline is, to say the least, misleading.

Ok, but let’s say it’s a reasonable argument that, assuming more oil will eventually be needed, whether or not it drives down prices, we should probably be starting now. Here’s a problem:

People who seem to know what they are talking about point out (a) that we are already operating our refineries at capacity, so to accommodate more oil we will need to build more refineries; and (b) that there are millions of acres of existing oil leases that have not been drilled upon.

According to the U.S. Minerals Management Service,

Currently 79 percent of America’s technically recoverable offshore oil reserves are open for leasing, while just 21 percent are closed to drilling. [Minerals Management Service, 2006]

Currently 82 percent of America’s technically recoverable offshore natural gas reserves are open for leasing, while just 18 percent are closed to drilling. [Minerals Management Service, 2006]”

It does seem to me that it would make sense to start drilling on lands that are already available, start building more refineries, all while continuing the quest for alternative solutions (after all, we’ll have at least a decade on our hands).

I remember how the Bush tax cuts for the very, very wealthy got through a distraught Congress while we were still reeling from the attacks of 9/11 — the President took advantage of the willingness of the nation to follow him just about anywhere, and the tax cuts were passed within days.

Could it be that the oil companies (who love the idea of more leases in juicy offshore locations, who gave McCain over $1 million to show that love) are hoping our present panic will help get them those leases?

All I can offer is a cautionary to Americans to pay close attention, check out the facts. Else, once again, it’s “fool me twice” time.

Originally published August 10, 2008

Politics 2008

If it weren’t so infuriating I’d just shrug it off and call it silliness. But believe you me, this is deadly serious stuff and can make or break the success of Barack Obama’s quest for the Presidency. It all depends, frankly, on how much attention American voters are willing to commit to the selection process, and their capacity for critical thinking.

Come to think of it, this kind of stuff probably goes back to, oh, 1789 or so (yes, there were candidates other than George Washington for the signal honor of being Father of our Country), but my own experience is necessarily limited to the last 50-plus years.

You could liken it to the snake oil salesmen of the old West, or the fellow who offers a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge or perhaps some oceanfront property in Arizona, to Professor Harold Hill and his promise to build a boys’ band in River City, or the recent scammers right here in Waxahachie: What all these have in common is the ability to slick-talk folks into believing in something that is a lie.

Every one of their victims chose to buy into something they would never have believed if they had just been a little more skeptical, asked a few more questions, done a little fact-checking for themselves.

I like to think that you can attribute the willingness of some voters to believe the unbelievable to what I think is an American tendency to see the good in people, to give the benefit of the doubt, sort of the way we pride ourselves on the concept of “innocent until proven guilty.” But some outcomes suggest that at least a touch of cynicism is in order, at least when it comes to our money and our country.

Back in 1952, Richard Nixon lobbed non-fact grenades against his opponents, as in accusing Adlai Stevenson of being a “Commie-sympathizer” for suggesting that we talk to Red China. That would be the same Richard Nixon who famously opened the gate to Red China after he got elected some years later.

Leaping forward to our current situation, George W. Bush promised us that he was a “compassionate conservative,” and turned out to be neither.

A very clever fellow named Frank Luntz thought of a way to help the Republicans get rid of nettlesome taxes like the estate tax, which taxes the transfer of great wealth — defined nowadays as exceeding $2 million and excluding family farms — to other than a surviving spouse or a charity. I don’t know if anyone you know will have that much to leave to the kids, but now that it’s called the “death tax,” you’d be dumfounded to learn how many ordinary folks are dead-set opposed to it. Even though experts calculate that doing away with the estate tax would deprive the country of “tens of millions” of dollars every year.

You see, Luntz wanted plain folks to believe that just dying would bring a tax upon you. As Molly used to tell Fibber, “Tain’t so, McGee!” Check it out.

Speaking of taxes, John McCain is quite emphatic when he claims that “Barack Obama wants to raise your taxes!” What he fails to mention is that “your” in this case refers to people with incomes greater than $250,000, twice that for a married couple.
And of course it wouldn’t be helpful to him to add that Obama also wants to lower taxes for everyone earning less than that, and eliminate them altogether for folks earning under $50,000.

Nope. “Barack Obama wants to raise your taxes” is out there, low-hanging fruit dangling from the tree for people too hungry to question it.

And then there’s the not-exactly-a-lie: Speaking to the Congressional Democratic Caucus last week, Obama said, according to people who were there, as reported in The Atlantic:

“It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”

So what does John McCain’s latest ad tell us about that? That Obama said, in a fit of vanity, that, “I have become a symbol of America returning to our best traditions.” Tain’t so, McCain.

Finally, the straight-out lie of the McCain campaign to bring down Barack Obama is manifested in his recent pop-culture ad costarring celebrity airheads Spears and Hilton, which claims that Obama is all speech and no substance, and in support of that claim McCain’s minions love to say that “we don’t know what he stands for.”

Well. Now, you can go to the library or to Google and find position speeches dating back through the entire campaign and read until your head spins, or you can go to his website and find them there, all neatly categorized.

When you think of it, it’s odd that McCain can attack Obama for what he stands for if we don’t know what that is, isn’t it?

My idealistic, optimistic hope is that THIS time, with what has been called the worst economy since the Great Depression, with America’s reputation in tatters around the world, with our troops committed to an occupation in Iraq while getting blown up in Afghanistan and Iran is making us nervous (but we don’t have any troops to spare right now), our infrastructure showing signs of distress, health care costs and the mortgage crisis driving more seniors into bankruptcy than ever before, that THIS time every single voter will pay attention like never before.

Else, it’s “fool me twice” for America.

Originally published August 3, 2008

On the Middle East

At the Israel-Lebanon border last week, two Israeli soldiers were brought home for burial in exchange for Israel’s release of five Hezbollah prisoners, including the unspeakable terrorist Samir Kuntar who, in 1979, crushed the skull of a 4-year-old girl before whom he had just murdered her father.

The mourning of the hundreds of Israelis who were there to accept the coffins stood in sharp contrast to the celebration and dancing in the streets of Lebanon, where Kuntar and his fellow unspeakables were greeted with a red carpet and kisses and honored as heroes.

In a tiny country where almost every citizen is required to serve in the Defense Force, every soldier is a member of the family and every death is taken personally, and despite the indisputable strategic downside of handing terrorists back to their countries in exchange for the release of kidnapped Israelis — too many of whom are dead by the time the deal is struck — it’s never been possible to say no.

Still in captivity, though, is Gilad Shalit, the young soldier kidnapped by Hamas. Though he is believed to still be alive, there really doesn’t seem to be any release in the works for him, even though the Egyptians have been trying as mediators to bring it about; but when you are dealing with Hamas you might as well be dealing with quicksilver.

And of course there’s the larger problem of Hamas itself and the way it chooses to interact with Israel. Which is to say, not at all, really.

There are some signs of progress toward a peaceful resolution with the Palestinian Authority, headed by Abbas, but that cannot include all of the lands under the Palestinian Authority unless and until control of Gaza is no longer with Hamas.
And the problem with agreeing to talk to Hamas, right off the bat, is deciding which Hamas to talk to. The head honcho lives in Syria, but the street activists are in Gaza.

So, when you sit down for a cup of chai with some Hamas folks, for whom will they be authorized to speak? Who is in charge?

And would Abbas and the West Bank folks even want a separate negotiation with Hamas? After all, they were basically thrown from power in a Hamas coup in Gaza.

Anyway, let’s say you offer to explore ways of arriving at a peaceful solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Let’s say you will talk about all kinds of things if they will accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. You will not get an unequivocal answer, so right there you have an insurmountable problem.

But perhaps they can be persuaded to quit lobbing missiles into Israel in exchange for economic aid. Perhaps if we could stop the violence and begin a kind of Marshall Plan for the whole of Gaza and the West Bank, if we could help establish a thriving economy there, bring quality to life there, even Hamas might be persuaded to give peace a chance.

A seldom-mentioned part of the problem, too, is that you have to get past the reality that the Palestinian predicament is a useful foil for all kinds of other actors in the region, like Hezbollah, or Fatah in Pakistan, who will sabotage, or at least impede, any such effort.

Right now, the bad guys are in the driver’s seat. The Israelis would accept a peaceful resolution in a heartbeat, but it will take more than promises for them to open a road here, take down a barrier there, close a settlement over there, for their experience is that every time they let down their guard they get slaughtered in their own streets.

Can you imagine how Americans would behave if they experienced something like 9/11 several times a year?

Lucy got Charlie Brown to try for the kick every time, but the Israelis are done with the game.

Maybe the solution will ultimately come from the outside. Imagine, for example, that (now that we seem to be talking to them) our diplomacy gets us into a working relationship with Iran. Imagine that Iran is persuaded to call off the Syria/Hamas/Hezbollah dogs in exchange for, say, energy technology.

Ah, yes, a dream. Maybe just a dream, but maybe even possible.

An Israeli leader said, approximately, “When the Palestinians come to love life more than they hate us we will finally have a chance for peace.”

Originally published June 20, 2008

McCain II

I thought I’d shared what I have to say on the subject of John McCain as potential President, but events this past week made it clear there’s more that needs to be said.

For a while it seemed that McCain’s occasional “misspeaks” and less than perfect recall might be written off as “senior moments,” as one of his aides said — and wished he hadn’t — a few weeks ago. Indeed, a case could be made, though it would take some creativity, that a President need not have a perfect memory; after all, he can surround himself with people who’ll fill in the blanks for him if necessary.

Some folks may brush off the fact that McCain has confused Sunni and Shii’a on multiple occasions, a not insignificant mix-up when you consider that the two factions basically hate each other, that the Sunni are the ones who have been involved in al-Qaeda while the Shii’a have not, and that the Shii’a are the predominant sect in Iran (and head the Iraqi government, for that matter).

If ordinary citizens like you and I can understand these differences, surely someone who wants to be President should be able to.

A couple of months ago at a press event while they were visiting Iraq, McCain had Joe Lieberman there to help him out.

McCain told the assembled reporters that “al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and … coming back into Iraq from Iran.” Ol’ Joe whispered into his ear, whereupon McCain immediately corrected himself to say, “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

McCain’s style of campaigning is often nonchalant to the point of being blasé. When questioned about the fact that cigarettes are still a major U.S. export to Iran, he answered, “Maybe that’s a way of killing them. Heh-heh.” He quickly added that he was joking.

Y’know what, Senator? The job of President is no joke. Every utterance, every misspeak, every joke will, to paraphrase Mark Twain, be halfway ‘round the world before your correction can even get its boots on.

We have enough trouble getting our message into the Muslim world without giving Al-Jazeera & Co. extra stuff to spin against us.

Phil Gramm, a name you may remember, has been serving as co-chair of McCain’s campaign almost from the get-go, and has been, at least up to last week, McCain’s chief economic adviser.

Last week Gramm told the Washington Times, among others, that America is only in a “mental recession,” not a real one, and that we are “a nation of whiners.”

McCain was Johnny-on-the spot with his own brand of damage control. (Remember: this is his Chief Economic Adviser, rumored to be in line for Treasury Secretary.) Said McCain, when asked whether Gramm might become a member of his administration: "I think that Senator Gramm would be in serious consideration for Ambassador to Belarus, although I'm not sure the citizens of Minsk would welcome that."

Heh-heh. Takes care of that, doesn’t it?

He did go on to say that Senator Gramm “does not speak for me. I speak for me.”
These guys have been best buds for some 25 years; does anyone honestly believe that John McCain had no clue?

Perhaps the greatest “misspeak” of last week — unless, of course, it wasn’t — was when McCain referred to our Social Security program as “a disgrace.”

"Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace and it's got to be fixed."

Um, Senator, that’s the way Social Security is supposed to work. That’s the way it was designed. Back in 1935. Have you forgotten that? Or did you just not know it?

McCain has voted against himself on legislation regarding torture, veterans’ benefits, stem cell research, the environment, and even campaign finance reform. He has yet to offer coherent statements on the mortgage crisis, the economy, energy, or health care — or in fact anything other than his military exploits — because those things have never really mattered to him, and still don't, and he’s now too late to the game.