Madville Times Poll: Are You Voting Republican, Democrat, or Split Ticket?

Hey, check out my new poll in the right sidebar, right below the "Latest Comments"!

I'm curious how my readers are voting with respect to party come November. Take out your ballot (Secretary Chris Nelson can give you a copy in ten seconds online), look at all the candidates (we'll get to the initiatives later). Look at every office: President, U.S. Senate and House, PUC, state legislature, and whatever fun local offices you may have to vote on. If you were to vote today (and remember, you can by absentee ballot!), would you make your mark next to all Republicans? All Democrats? A mix? Or would you mark as many third-party candidates as you have available? I'm curious—let me know in the poll... and let me know your reasoning here in the comments!

McCain: Mayors, Governors Lack Leadership, National Security Experience

Senator McCain's people had fun last month running a campaign ad showing Senator Joe Biden at an August 2007 debate saying "I think that I stand by the statement" that he made previously during his own Presidential campaign that Obama wasn't ready to be President.

Fine, fine. Biden has changed his mind since August 2007.

Evidently he's not the only one who said things during the primary season that he couldn't possibly believe are true now....

The fact is, I'm running on my record as a reliable conservative of 24 years. And the indicators of that, obviously, is that I've fought wasteful spending, I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism.

I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training.

I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time. For 20-some years, including leading the largest squadron in the United States Navy, I led. I didn't manage for profit, I led for patriotism. [Senator John McCain, Republican debate, Orlando FL, broadcast by Fox News, 2007.10.21]

Historical note: Senator McCain was responding to a question comparing himself and Mitt Romney, who served as governor of Massachusetts, population 6.5 million, for four years. He spoke immediately after Rudy Giuliani, who served as mayor of New York City, population 8.3 million, for eight years.

Far be it from me to hold a guy too hard to things he said to win the primaries. Heck, when McCain made the above statement, I was planning to vote for Dennis Kucinich again. My guy dropped out; so did Biden's. We both looked at who was left and said, "Obama's our best choice." Things change.

McCain needed to beat candidates with more buzz and bucks. He attacked their strengths and tried to make them look like weaknesses. And now, with a running mate whom his campaign admits will be getting four years of on-the-job training in national security...

...Boy—sometimes things really change.

George Will: Obama More Rational Choice Than McCain?

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."

-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated.

I wish I'd come up with that. It certainly fits what I've been saying about the GOP taking us through the looking glass.

But I didn't. I learned about the above statement in that dastardly Huffington Post, but it comes originally from well-known conservative columnist George Will in the Washington Post (which takes forever to load on my computer, so click at your own peril). Calling Senator McCain's call for Cox's head a "childish reflex," Will worries a McCain presidency would operate just like his campaign, more on "vehemence that coherence," on polarizing antagonism, and, most worryingly to Will, on impulse rather than sound judgment:

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed? [George F. Will, "McCain Loses His Head," Washington Post, 2008.09.23, p. A21]

I think I could spend the rest of the campaign reading nothing but conservative press, and I could still produce a coherent argument for why Senator Barack Obama really is the best choice to be our next President.

Madison Electric Step-Up Keeps Opt-In Status

Looks like the Madison Central School Educational Foundation will need to do a little more door-to-door: the Madison City Commission last night failed to pass Resolution 2693, which would have instantly increased participation in the city's electric "Step-Up" program from 15% to 100% by changing the program from opt-in to opt-out.

To review: right now, if you buy electricity from the City of Madison, you can call City Hall (256-7504) and say, "Charge me more for my juice!" They'll happily round your bill up to the nearest dollar and give the extra pennies to the MCSEF, which will use the money to provide scholarships to Madison students who go to DSU.

Supporters of the program wanted to change the program so that the city would automatically round up everyone's electric bill, and you would have to call the city to opt out. Changing the default setting from no to yes could likely result in long-term participation of over 50%; a similar program by Sioux Valley Electric has 70% participation.

However, as some of my commenters and I pointed out, that increase would come by taking advantage of inattention and guilt, not the best bases for a nice community development effort. The commission waited a week to gauge public sentiment and their own moral sense, and last night they decided the cons outweighed the pros and left the program on opt-in status.

About that public sentiment: when the city closed its online poll yesterday before the commission meeting, 986 votes had been cast: 56% in favor of the change, 44% against (as quickly and accurately reported by a faithful correspondent; good work, Anon!). That's pretty good participation for a local online poll. But on this round-up vote, the city apparently chose to round up the No votes.

I'm not ready to howl about disenfranchisement of the majority here: we all know that an online poll is far from a scientific sample of the popular will. (Then again, how scientific are our official elections?) Some folks have much easier access to the Internet than others. Some folks also have the advantage of working in places where a few of their friends are also clustered around computers and can be encouraged in a moment to cast their votes, too. The city made no promise that the poll would in any way bind its decision, so the commission was within its rights to view the online poll as just one of several instruments by which to measure public sentiment.

Still, the online poll was a bang-up idea. I imagine it got a number of citizens to visit the city website for the first time, and now that many more folks know where to find city info. Plus the city gave good follow up. Instead of letting the final results disappear into the memory hole (the way KJAM does—fix that, fellas!), the city posted the final results on the main page. The city also posted the results of the vote at the commission meeting, something we can usually find out right the next morning from the media but which the city itself doesn't officially post until it posts the minutes in next week's agenda packet.

The city should do more of this: run more polls, and include comments, so we can read not only how people are voting but why. Put up the unapproved meeting minutes right away, so we can see how every measure on the agenda fared and how the commissioners voted. Heck, maybe even get the commissioners to blog so we can hear straight from them why they make the decisions they make. Now that would be enlightening!

What Economic Crisis? We've Got Tomatoes!

How can there be an economic crisis when our garden is still giving us this much food?

I'll start sweating the economic downturn when we run out of tomato sauce... which could be a while.

It's ugly, but it's ours! Yummmm....

The $700 Billion Realignment?

I still have to say it very slowly, to convince myself it's real:

Seven. Hundred. Billion. Dollars.

Will $700 billion be enough for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to save the global economy from America's mortgage mess? Beats me. But this stunning price tag may be enough to wreak some seismic political realignment (and we're about due, aren't we?). Consider these through-the-looking-glass phenomena:

• Anti-abortion activists who think I'm mostly nuts can find common ground with me on fiscal matters.
• The Democratic presidential nominee talks about cutting federal programs.
• My wife and I nod in agreement to every line Newt Gingrich says in an interview on NPR All Things Considered this afternoon about why the $700B bailout is a bad idea (except for the part where he tries blaming Chris Dodd for the current mess—regular commenter PennyPincher won't go for that, either).
• Jon Schaff rouses himself from self-imposed blog-exile to call for "reflection and deliberate choice, not panic," and again, all I think is, "Preach it, brother."

Isn't there still a Presidential election on? Shouldn't we all be arguing about moose-hunting?

Nothing like a request for a (again, say it slowly) seven hundred billion dollar blank check to clear everyone's senses fast.

I can't help thinking that if we could just call a national town meeting, get all three hundred million of us in a room, and ask, "Seven hundred billion dollars for Secretary Paulson, no strings attached—all in favor?" we'd get a smattering of ayes, mostly from nervous looking characters in pinstripe suits. Ask for those opposed, and we'd get a nay of Biblical proportions.

Am I imagining this sentiment? Am I too optimistic that Americans as a whole might still share some economic common sense? And my goodness—if I'm not imagining things, what might become of our politics if we could (as Jeff put it) just agree to agree?

By the way, call Herseth Sandlin, Johnson, and Thune, and tell them to say no way to the (say it slowly to them, too) seven hundred billion dollar blank check

Blame Bush: Fiscal Conservatism Is Dead

As we dash ever farther through the political looking glass, it has occurred to me that the trillion-plus the Bush Administration wants to pour into bailing out failing corporations is a green light for us liberals to argue that money is no longer an issue when it comes to funding social programs. If something is important enough—expanded unemployment benefits, more veterans benefits, heck, why not universal health care?—we can tackle it by sinking ourselves into all the debt we want. The Bush Administration, in abandoning its last best principles for socialism, has undermined its most practical argument against the good we liberals think we should be doing for our country.

But that's just me talking, and I know my well-educated readers won't fall for any groundless liberal propaganda. I thus turn to arch-conservative Michelle Malkin, who says the same thing:

this is a Republican White House presiding over the Mother of All Bailouts. Every step along the way since stimuluspalooza began last summer, we’ve heard that every bailout step was just a one-off. Each step was supposed to calm the markets. Each new government intervention and allocation of taxpayer dollars was supposed to achieve “stability.” Each new package of goodies rewarding irresponsible behavior and bad financial decisions was supposed to prevent new ones.

None did. And now, here we are.

This is your Bush legacy — not Pelosi’s, not Reid’s, not Obama’s: A ginormous bailout of every last, failing, panicked financial institution’s illiquid assets that may reach into the trillions — TRILLIONS – when all is said and done.

Reader John in Venice, CA e-mails: “Going forward there is no debate a conservative can win when pitted against a liberal wanting to spend money on social programs. What would the argument be against spending money on terrible social programs? Government money does not work? Conservatives who are supporting this welfare bailout are no different than Maxine Waters or Barbara Boxer. We have lost. Conservatism has absolutely no more moral high ground to speak from.”

Fiscal conservatism has been on life support for quite some time. Bush/Paulson pulled the plug permanently today [Michelle Malkin, "The Mother of All Bailouts = The Death of Fiscal Conservatism," MichelleMalkin.com, 2008.09.19].

Michelle Malkin and I agree. Welcome to the new world, comrade.

Expect bills to nationalize health care and the oil industry on the President's desk next March.

Olson Surges on KJAM Poll! Parsley Partisans, to the Rescue!

Now that the kids at Credit Soup are done bringing Russ Olson's website into conformity with the corporate style sheet, they've apparently had time to get back to KJAM's online poll on the District 8 Senate race between Russ and my man Scott Parsley. Either that, or it took, three days for the PP bump to kick in. Whatever the cause, as of 09:16, Russ is back on top, 52% to 48%.

Come on, Pat: is that the best you and your District 7 interlopers can do for your pal Russ? ;-)

Rally the troops, fellow Parsley supporters! If you want real change, if you want real action on renewable energy, if you want real bipartisan spirit instead of a one-party system... or heck, if you just want to have fun with KJAM's poll numbers, get over to KJAM and vote for Scott!

Bush Wants $700B Blank Check for Treasury

...Dems say "Not so fast!"

Blank check—that's not just a campaign sound bite; it's a pretty accurate description of the $700 billion mortgage bailout plan President Bush is asking Congress for. Read the draft proposal, and you'll see shockingly brief, sketchy legislation that would give unchecked power to Treasury Secretary Paulson:

Sec. 7. Funding: ...Any funds expended for actions authorized by this Act, including the payment of administrative expenses, shall be deemed appropriated at the time of such expenditure.

Sec. 8. Review. Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

The only "oversight" included in the bill is in Section 4, which requires the Treasury Secretary to report to Congress within three months of his first action under the authority granted by this bill and every six months thereafter. "Report"—not answer to, not request permission from, not follow the directives of, simply "report."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it unsupervised, unregulated lending that got us into this crisis in the first place?

Senator Obama is right on when he refers to the proposal as a "blank check." He won't even grace it with the name "plan": "[T]hus far, the administration has only offered a concept with a staggering price tag, not a plan" [Mike Allen, "Obama Calls Bailout a 'Blank Check,'" Politico.com, 2008.09.21].

Now I read somewhere that the Dems would probably not stand in the way of the $700B bailout but would try to tack on all sorts of extras. Obama is pushing for inclusion of another dose of economic stimulus for working families. But more importantly, he's asking for some accountability. Speaker Pelosi and Representative Barney Frank (bless his pugnacious heart) are on board with that. Rep. Frank wants to see the companies we bail out capping their executives' pay. (That's relatively generous: I still want those CEOs over here mowing my lawn and filling potholes.)

The bailout bill as drafted by the Bush Administration is a naked power grab, a fitting capstone to the Bush Administration's legacy of expanding executive power. Congress has an obligation to itself, to checks and balances, and to us taxpayers to rewrite this bill to create a safe, accountable response to the mortgage crisis.

Economic Armageddon? Not on Wall Street, Not Yet

While I still try to pick my jaw up off the floor over $700 billion dollars to bail out irresponsible borrowers and lenders, here are some smaller stock market numbers, for what they're worth:

• Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closing value, Friday, 9/19: 11,388.44
• DJIA opening value, Monday, 9/15: 11,318.59
• DJIA net gain for the week: +0.6%
• DJIA net change since peak (14,093) last October: -19%
  
• DJIA net gain over the last five years: 22%
• DJIA net change from 9/3/1929 to 11/11/1929: -40%
• DJIA net change from 10/14/1987 to 10/19/1987: -31%
• DJIA net gain over 1987: +0.6%
  

Maybe President Bush and Secretary Paulson should take the investment advice I hear all the time: take the long view, ride it out.

But if we can't ride it out, if we have to write that check (and leave it to our kids and grandkids to pay for our profligacy), it will prove one thing: the free market is dead.

And Sibby thought Obama and I would bring Marxism to America. Hmph: President Bush beat us to it.

Forget Chavez and Castro: McCain Won't Even Talk to Allies

Over lunch yesterday, my lovely wife asked if I'd heard what McCain said about Zapatero.

"What, the Mexican rebels?" I asked.

"No, that's the Zapatistas," she reminded me. "Zapatero, prime minister of Spain."

My wife proceeded to describe the Wednesday interview with Miami's Spanish-language Caracol 1260 AM in which Senator McCain appeared to confuse the Spanish prime minister with the Mexican indigenous separatists.

Ah, easy mistake, I thought. Heck, at first mention, I made it. And if the interviewer had a Spanish accent, all the more possible McCain might have mis-heard the question. What's the big deal?

Then my wife played me the CNN coverage of McCain's comments. Later I listened to the full interview. Here are both of them:

Full Interview:

CNN Coverage:

Even in context, I couldn't believe what McCain was saying. At the start of the final cycle of questions, the reporter says, "Let's talk about Spain." (Note that the reporter gets it wrong and refers to Zapatero as President, not Prime Minister.) McCain talks about Mexico. To the reporter's first gentle redirect about meeting the "Zapatero government," McCain talks about standing up "to those who want to do harm to the United States." He mentions working with leaders "in the hemisphere... in Latin America and the entire region."

Now this reporter doesn't sound like a liberal hack trying to play gotcha with McCain. But after a minute and a half and two gentler redirects, she finally she has to ask, "What about Europe? I'm talking about the President of Spain."

O.K., stop here. At this point, if I'm McCain, I say, "Oh! Spain! I thought you were asking about the Zapatistas in Mexico. My apologies. As for Prime Minister Zapatero, I said back in April that I'm interested in improving relations with our ally Spain." Minimal harm: the reporter does indeed have an accent, and her preceding questions were about Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba. Perfectly understandable that McCain's brain was in Latin America mode. He corrects, reacquires the target, fires off a few details, no harm no foul.

Instead, McCain says he'll "meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philsophy that we are, for human rights, democracy, and freedom, and I will stand up to those that do not."

So, interview's done. If I'm McCain, I still have a choice: apologize, blame the accent, the headphones, being tired, whatever. It's o.k. to make a mistake, and it's o.k. to apologize and set the record straight. Take a small hit for inattention. The liberal bloggers bloviate about a mostly non-issue and the story disappears in a few days.

Instead, the McCain campaign, with time to consider the response, blows a raspberry at an entire country:

The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain's willingness to meet Zapatero, and ID'd him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred.

Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President [making the same mistake as the reporter] Zapatero in this interview. In this week's interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally.

If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance [a bit more than what the reporter was asking, and odd, given McCain said he would invite leaders like Calderon to the White House].

He is also not going to make reckless promises to meet America's adversaries. It's called keeping your options open, unlike Sen. Obama who has publically committed to meeting some of the world's worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office.[Randy Scheunemann, McCain adviser].

Never mind that the last sentence completely distorts Obama's position. We can argue that later. The big point here: why on earth would a candidate for the Presidency of the United States even mention "reckless promises to meet America's adversaries" in a conversation about Spain? Rattle that diplomatic saber at Chavez and Castro, that's fine. But at Zapatero? At Spain? A democracy? A NATO ally with troops in Afghanistan? What good does that do?

Imagine if British Prime Minister Brown or French President Sarkozy had given a similar answer to a question about meeting the American President: "I won't rule in or rule out a meeting, but I am also not going to make reckless promises to meet with our nation's adversaries." We'd be throwing tea in the harbor and ordering Freedom Fries.

Words matter. Diplomacy matters. There's a fair debate over the benefits of talking to dictators like Chavez and Kim Jong Il. But do we really want a President who resists talking to our allies? In an era when the major problems we face require global collaboration, and when we lack the spare military capacity to respond to any new major threat, alienating our allies is truly reckless.

Bush Proposes $700 Billion Mortgage Bailout

...so how about some national service?

People call me crazy for advocating single-payer not-for-profit health coverage. People need to be responsible for their own medical bills, my conservative commenters tell me. Socialized medicine would bankrupt the country, fiscally and morally.

So wrap your head around this: President Bush is asking Congress to raise the national debt limit so we (yes, we, the taxpayers) can buy up "toxic" mortgages. Price tag: $700 billion.

$700,000,000,000.

Seven. Hundred. Billion. Dollars.

I'm still checking to see if I misread that. Nope: NYTimes, AFP,... $700 billion.

The cost of seven million houses like mine.

Hundreds of thousands of people bought more house than they needed, more house than they could afford. Hundreds of banks, smart folks with MBAs, ignored sensible lending procedures and extended credit to bad risks. And a Republican President calls on us to erase accountability and, in contravention of everything fiscal conservatives and Mom taught us, to eat something (in this case, debt) clearly labeled "toxic."

To make things worse, I think the Democrats in Congress will go along with it, tacking on some goodies rather than standing against bad fiscal policies.

$700 billion. That's over two years, so it's not as bad as it sounds [smirk]. But for perspective, here's how much President Bush asked to spend this fiscal year on various projects:

• "Security" (Defense, Homeland, etc.): $553.9 billion
• "Global War on Terror" supplement: $145.2 billion
• Health & Human Services: $69.3 billion
• Education: $56.0 billion
• Veterans: $39.4 billion
• NASA: $17.3 billion

We're about to spend more buying out bad mortgages than Bush was willing to spend chasing Osama this year. We're about to spend more bailing out foolish borrowers and lenders than we have spent on fifty years of space exploration. We're about to spend nine times more in one year to save the scurvy hides of sloppy bankers than we will on health care and other services for men and women who have faced bullets and bombs for their country.

Maybe we can't afford to sit on our hands (and our wallets). Maybe a general financial collapse and Depression would be worse practically than buying out the mortgage meatheads.

But for all the money we're spending to erase other people's mistakes, it's time we get something more in return than staving off a theoretical economic downturn. Let's get creative and combine these bail-outs with a national service program. I want some bankers over here mowing my lawn. Let's see AIG investors out shoveling snow for little old ladies. Let's see Bear Stearns brokers hauling garbage. Let's see the bankers and homeowners we rescue working off their debt by filling potholes and putting in 10 hours a week with Habitat for Humanity to build affordable houses.

When even Jimmy Kimmel can muster the brainpower to joke that the Bush Administration is turning to socialism, something is seriously out of whack. Talk about fiscal and moral bankruptcy: by my count, we're headed for a trillion dollars to buy out big business. At this rate, forget universal health care; we won't even be able to afford combat boots.