Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
Published: October 7, 2008
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
Neither McCain nor Palin is a “Maverick”
Who You Callin’ a Maverick?
There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”
BRAND Samuel Augustus Maverick
But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.
“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.
In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.
Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.
This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.
Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.
Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”
“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”
“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”
Guilt by Association
In response to Sarah palin’s recent comment’s on Obama’s tenuous association with Bill Ayers, the Washington Post reminds us of McCain’s association with Phil Gramm, who had a leading role in today’s economic crisis.
[I]f the McCain people want to rummage through presidential candidates’ associations, real or imagined, to turn up figures who threaten to pull down this proud republic, they should begin in-house. Chief among those to whom responsibility attaches for the financial crisis that is plunging the nation into recession is former Texas senator Phil Gramm, McCain’s own economic guru.
Gramm was always Wall Street’s man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm’s piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.
The CFMA also prohibited government regulation of the energy-trading market, which enabled Enron to nearly bankrupt the state of California before bankrupting itself.
The problem with this exercise, of course, is that Gramm’s relationship to McCain is not comparable to the relationships that Ayers or Wright have with Obama. The idea that either Ayers or Wright would have any impact on the workings of an Obama administration is nonsensical. But Gramm and McCain do have an enduring political and economic alliance. McCain chaired Gramm’s short-lived presidential campaign in 1996; Gramm is co-chair of McCain’s current effort. McCain has not repudiated reports that Gramm is on the shortlist to become Treasury secretary if McCain is elected, even after Gramm labeled America “a nation of whiners.”
If we are to believe his managers, McCain will charge into tomorrow night’s debate seeking to “change the subject” from the economy to Obama’s dangerous liaisons. It’s not, however, likely to be a winning tactic. Obama will argue that in a time of deepening economic crisis, the public deserves a debate in which the candidates focus on their ideas for recovery rather than tendentious attacks on their rival’s presumed associates. If pressed, though, he can mention that it is McCain’s senior economic adviser who has diminished American solvency and power beyond the wildest dreams of anti-American terrorists.
Catching up
Sorry I have been remiss–it’s not for lack of subject matter, but I do think the media is doing a better job at exposing the McCain/Palin machine for what it is: deceptive.
In lighter news, check out these video clips:
Palin, A Journalism Major, Can’t Name A News Source She Reads
Asked what newspapers and magazines she reads, Palin – a journalism major in college – could not name one publication.
“I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media,” she said at first. Couric responded, “What, specifically?”
“Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.”
“Can you name a few?”
“I have a vast variety of source where we get our news,” Palin said. “Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where it’s kind of suggested, ‘wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?’ Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.”
Latest Palin Gaffe: Can’t Name Supreme Court Case Other Than Roe V. Wade
in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.
After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.
There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.
Personal Observations About Last Night’s Debate
1. McCain never looked at Obama. So much for being someone who can work across the aisle. Or maybe he’s just deaf in his left ear and wasn’t really sure of the format of the debate?
2. Each one of McCain’s answer’s was tied to Obama. So much for being a break-away maverick.
3. One of McCain’s snarky comments was something along the lines of “wait ’til you hear what (Obama’s) definition of ‘rich’ is.”
Yes, let’s look at this one. This is one of my biggest beefs with McCain and Republicans in general.
The Obamas earned somewhere around $250,000 last year, mostly due to the sale of Obama’s books (as in, he earned it).
The McCains? Their combined net worth is somewhere around $100 million. If you’re like me, $200,000 sounds like a lot… until you think about $100 MILLION.
So when McCain was asked HIS definition of “rich”, he said $5 million.
Obama’s tax plan includes cutting taxes for almost all Americans, but raising taxes on people making over $250,000 a year.
McCain’s tax plan will cut everyone’s taxes BUT, for average Americans like me, he’ll cut my taxes by muh less than Obama would because he reserves his most significant tax breaks for the wealthy.
All this being said, how many people are “rich”?
American wages
Percentages of U.S. households below certain income levels:
* Under $10,000: 7.5%
* Under $20,000: 19.3%
* Under $30,000: 31.0%
* Under $40,000: 41.9%
* Under $50,000: 51.4%
* Under $60,000: 59.6%
* Under $70,000: 66.4%
* Under $80,000: 72.3%
* Under $90,000: 77.0%
* Under $100,000: 80.9%
* Under $150,000: 92.4%
* Under $200,000: 96.5%
* Under $250,000: 98.1%
So, ALMOST ALL AMERICANS EARN LESS THAN $250,000/year. This doesn’t surprise me. Does it surprise you?
So, it seems that Obama’s definition of rich isn’t that far off. But I bet you dollars to donuts most of McCain’s friends and cronies are in that bracket and that’s why, during the debate, he was trying to goad Obama into admitting this definition of rich. McCain is far enough out of touch with the American people that he thinks Obama’s definition of rich includes many more Americans than it actually does.
Again: John McCain and wife Sally (just kidding. Considering I have yet to hear her speak, it doesn’t really matter to me what her name is) are MILLIONAIRES. They own SEVEN HOUSES and THIRTEEN CARS. He thinks it’s a joke that anyone earning over $250,000 a year is considered RICH. So tell me: who really believes that John McCain is thinking about THEM??
Go, Harry!
Reid: “We have Sen. Bennett who is a high-ranking Republican Senator standing before all of you saying, ‘We’ve got a deal in principle. All we have to do is put it down in writing and this is almost over with.’ And then Guess Who came to town, and that completely fell apart.
…people who constructively engaged in the process were castigated in the Republican Caucus by people who aren’t here a lot, at least a person who isn’t here a lot of time…”
Embedded video from CNN Video
Palin: The U.S. Should Never Second-Guess Israel
Embedded video from CNN Video
Washington says “Thanks, but No Thanks” to McCain
Is it just me or did McCain’s idea to suspend his campaign and head to Washington end up making him look like a loser?
First of all, HOW LONG has it been since you’ve been in Senate, Mr. McCain? I applaud your idea to help, but having been out of the recent work and discussions among your fellow senators, isn’t it a TAD presumptuous to imply they need you?
Some fellow lawmakers said McCain hasn’t contributed much to the financial debate, and senior campaign advisers told CNN they believed it was politically crucial that McCain show up at the debate in Oxford, Mississippi.
A senior adviser to McCain agreed that McCain seemed to be hindering the negotiating process rather than helping it: “We understand that what we need to do is get McCain out of here, get him out of town, because the minute that McCain is somebody seen as brokering this, that’s going to kill it.”
Also, it seemed to me that McCain hadn’t even gotten off the plane before senators announced they had reached an agreement. HA!
Alarming new conservative talking point: blame it on black people
This post was written by my husband. It’s GENIUS in its proposed responses.
There is a new conservative meme out there trying to explain the financial meltdown on, get this… black folks.
Yes, you read that correctly. The poorest segment of the American population has apparently outwitted America’s great financial institutions, and took them for all their worth.
This is the new talking point initiated by Neil Cavuto at Faux News. A few days ago, he suggested that giving home mortgages to minorities was the underlying problem. Since the same argument was parroted by both Laura Ingram and John Stossel this evening, discussed at length by the ultra-conservative Investor’s Business Daily, and traceable to a Cato Institute rag from January 2008, I thought I ought to look into the matter a bit.
The argument suggests that the Community Reinvestment Act (first passed in 1977, and strengthened in 1995) is responsible for much of the crisis because it supposed “empowered banking regulators to punish banks which do not lend to the poor and minorities at the level that Obama’s fellow community organizers would like.” Banks were thus given “numerical quotas,” which made our powerful financial corporations quake in their boots. Oh no, Big Gummit is comin’ to town. And so, the argument goes, “loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else”
(Pause for laughter and ridicule.)
What was the result? According to conservatives, them minorities just jumped into the market and diluted all our good mortgages with their own bad juju. Since those ingrates refuse to pay back their loans, good white folk are left high and dry.
Here are a few useful and brief responses:
1) “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa! What a joke. Oh my god, you CAN’T be serious!”
2) “Black folks owned 9% of the homes in 1994. Eleven years later, they owned the exact same percentage. So there really wasn’t any huge racial disparity. And if there wasn’t a huge racial disparity, you can’t really blame blacks can you? Sorry, no.”
3) “Of the subprime loans, only 20% were connected with the Community Revitalization Agency. In other words, 80% of these ‘bad’ loans had little to no connection to the agency you said caused this thing. Now don’t you feel silly?”
4) “If risky loans were a problem, why did Bush change FHA rules in 2005 to allow the government to provide federally-backed, zero-money-down loans for the first time ever? Man, that would have been exceedingly dumb.”
5) “The loans themselves aen’t the problem; the problem is what happened after the loans were made. Thanks to new rules, loans were swapped and resold dozens of times over, and that’s how $1 trillion in subprime loans become a $40 trillion house of cards.”
6) “The financial industry earned $3.5 trillion in profits from 1995 to 2007, yet now cry about $2 billion in potentially-bad loans. Since all those profits went in their pockets, shouldn’t the bailout come from the same place?”
Oh, those crazy Republicans. They sure know how to divert attention, play on racial stereotypes, and stick their snouts into the public trough, don’t they? They’ll tell you that the market is king and government should stay out of it, but when those salad days end, they’re first in line for a handout. Instead of “trickle down” economics, we just get to “trickle up” our tax dollars.And then magically, the government should just stay out of the market again.
I say no! No to the Wall Street bailout, and yes to helping borrowers and ordinary folks as needed. We really don’t need to pay the fat cats first, or listen to claptrap about deregulation. Greed can be both helpful and doleful, which is why regulations are essential for a well-ordered market that serves society.
Palin’s foreign policy experience adds up to the same as every other Alaskan citizen
I’m not here to argue the fact of Alaska’s geography: “Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land boundary that we have with Canada”. But I am pretty sure if Pootin (her pronounciation, not mine) flew over Alaska, the Governor would tell someone to call Washington.
