Self-evident truths?

This nation may have been founded on a false assumption. Namely that certain truths are self-evident.

Recently a friend asserted that no truths are self-evident. My jury is out on that one, but I did counter that Jefferson and the founders begged to differ. Of course they famously proclaimed that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are “inalienable rights” and are clearly “self-evident” truths.

Could Mr. Jefferson and his colleagues have been wrong?

Frankly, it would seem so.

One of the problems with sanctifying historical text is that we stop reading it critically. When the body rests on its knees, the mind turns to mush.

Consider, Mitt Romney, hardly an equal creation. Mr. Romney was created unequal. Consider his “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” It would seem that one's creation is how one get a clear shot two Harvard degrees, how one’s spouse gets not one but two Cadillacs and one’s garage houses so many vehicles they are stacked in tiers by car elevators.

And just how many houses does Mr. Romney own in this time of rampant homelessness and foreclosures? The last Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, had so many houses he literally lost count.

Inequality is how a Mr. Romney and a Senator McCain (and, to be bi-partisan, a John Kerry and a JFK) have  excellent shots at becoming president in post-revolutionary America.

Indeed the “self-evident” truth we live with today is that all of us are NOT created equal and we are NOT endowed by our Creator (or by anyone else) with certain inalienable rights...among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

All you need to do is compare infant mortality in Sweden to infant mortality in Zimbabwe. Or compare the same statistics in Darien, Connecticut, with those in Yazoo City, Mississippi. And how does skin color correlate with imprisonment and the death penalty? How is the equality of genders doing in Saudi Arabia or dozens of other countries? It took nearly 150 years after Jefferson penned his words for women to win their struggle for the right to vote in this country.

Perhaps the founders, many of whom owned slaves, were being aspirational. If so, we have a long, long way to go to fulfill their aspirations. The government they instituted hardly treated slaves and Native-Americans as if they were “created equal.”

If you take a longer view, I suppose you could argue that we have made some progress, but of late our government has been backsliding badly. If you want to be created equally, try not to be created under the flight path of a US drone in Afghanistan, Somalia or Pakistan.

And, closer to home, the Supreme Court isn’t exactly treating us as equals under its Citizens’ United decision. Money, not people, rules our democracy.

So we need to turn to a real self-evident truth proclaimed by Mr. Jefferson and his revolutionary cohorts.

...whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

It’s time, folks.

Sound-bite socialism and other political follies

If American politics ever could get beyond sound bites, smears and gotchas, we might actually learn something.

The good news is that Prof. Barack Obama may, just may, be on the verge of clearing the air and opening the discussion.

John McCain and his campaign are another story.

McCain’s accusing Barack Obama of “spreading the wealth” is a case in point. Of course the "wealth" of the working and middle classes (it's called "labor") have been spread to the rich since the dawn of capitalism.

Look no farther than Cindy McCain, who inherited her millions from her father’s beer distribution company, which, in turn, was made profitable by its hundreds of truck drivers, mechanics, warehouse workers and accountants.

They worked; she profited and spread that profit to John.

John McCain clearly doesn’t have a problem with spreading the wealth. His problem is with spreading it equitably and fairly.

Which brings us to the McCain campaign’s charge that Obama is a socialist.

Here is part of the Wikipedia definition of socialism:

Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and creates an unequal society.

Sound familiar? The definition continues:

All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.

For most Europeans, this, and the guarantee of certain state-provided services such as health care, are givens. Frankly, recalling Christ's admonition to the rich man, I don't see how it is possible to be a true Christian without being a socialist. Which may be why Europe developed "Christian Socialist" parties. Shocking!

I am particularly fond of line from George Orwell that American conservatives strangely ignore even as they worship him. Wrote Orwell, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” (from “Why I write”)

“As I understand it” leaves room for healthy debate. But in America, socialism in any form is considered unworthy of discussion.

Which brings us to George W. Bush, who is nationalizing large chunks of the financial industry. Could it be that our worst president will in the dying days of his administration turn out to be a socialist? He clearly is willing to use socialist tools as part of his effort to save the wreck wrought by American capitalism.

And yet we don’t hear the McCain campaign calling the Bush Administration’s policies socialistic.

Wonder why….

Maybe it’s because McCain voted to support the socialistic bail-out. Or maybe it’s because McCain values the other non-socialistic parts of the Bush program: the tax cuts for the rich, the cronyism on behalf of Enron and Halliburton and Big Oil, the exporting of American jobs, the union busting, the efforts to privatize Social Security, and the resistance to truly reform health care.

Why can’t we delve into such matters? Why is political discourse here so slap dash and innuendo laden? Why is it that a word like “socialism” is used pejoratively and so little understood? Why can’t we explore the ways that wealth has been spread in one direction, from the assembly line to the executive suite with its stock options, seven- and eight-digit salaries and golden parachutes?

Is the problem with the corporate-owned media as I’ve suggested? Is it in our educational system? Is it in political pandering and timidity? Or is it a part of American isolationism, exceptionalism and arrogance?

When can we begin to talk openly and honestly about ideas well worth exploring?

Next Wednesday?

Oregon ballot returns signal bad news for GOP

So far we have poll-driven coverage of this presidential campaign. But the polls could be wrong, which means the coverage could be wrong even though it is having an apparent band-wagon effect.

Could it all be built on fantasy election coverage?

Perhaps.

But here in Oregon some ballot counting has already begun. Not of votes, but of ballots returned by mail thus far. And the ballot-count doesn’t look good for John McCain or Gordon Smith.

This morning, the web site fivethirtyeight.com had an incisive analysis of what’s going on.

While the rate of ballot return is down over four years ago by 19 percent, it is down a lot more in Republican rural Oregon than it is in Democratic urban parts of the state.

That means that many Republicans are sitting this one out. If it is happening here in Oregon, it probably is happening elsewhere.

My guess is that conservative voters aren’t motivated to cast their ballots for McCain or, in Oregon, for Gordon Smith, who’s portraying himself as best buddy to high profile liberal Democrats like Teddy Kennedy.

I mean really!

The Smith strategy is back-firing. The only thing that might jar loose those conservative voters would be a surprise visit by Sarah Palin. Problem with bringing in the moose-hunter is that Smith might pay the price among rational, moderate Republicans.

He’s stuck in a political no-man’s land.

So our ballot count here might be proving those polls to be right after all. Voters aren’t buying what the Republicans are selling.

It's about time.

A Taxing Question: Who's in the Middle Class?

Every time I hear John McCain accuse Barack Obama of raising taxes on the middle class, my reaction is “Huh?”

But today it hit me. In August McCain famously told Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in Southern California that you aren’t rich until you make $5 million a year.

Could me mean that making less than $5 million a year are “middle class”?

If so, Obama, who has said he would raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year, would indeed be raising taxes on the middle class, at least as McCain defines it.

Somebody needs to nail McCain on his definition of “middle class.” A simple show of hands would do the job. Obama might ask all those who make more than $250,000 a year, to raise their hands.

Right.

In front of certain country club Republican audiences (in Arizona?), the response might be different. McCain, like fellow multi-millionaire George W. Bush, lives in a bubble.

(Another question: If you did raise your hand, would it really be unfair for you to pay more in taxes?)

It probably doesn’t matter with only six days left in the campaign and Obama firmly ahead, but a working definition of middle class would straighten out the back and forth about taxes. It would explain which class would and wouldn't won’t be taxed under Obama’s plan.

The clarification would also put the lie to John McCain.

Poor Cindy

Now we know why John McCain believes someone is truly wealthy only after attaining an income of $5 million or more in a single year.

Poor Cindy McCain, suffering with the rest of the middle class and trying to decide which of her seven (or is it eight?) homes to bed down in on any given night, made a motley $4.2 million last year, according to the tax returns that the McCain campaign released today.

Barack Obama has said that you are “rich” if you make more than $250,000. And if you are rich, he recently told Joe, the tax-delinquent, Bush-backing, non-union plumber, you should spread your wealth around. By Obama’s standards poor Cindy has a lot more spreading to do than the Joe’s of the world.

It’s called progressive taxation. I like to call it “greed busting.”

What we have now is REgressive taxation: The more you make, proportionally the less you pay in taxes.

Here it is well to invoke one Jesus Christ, who didn’t stop with spreading it around. (Calling all Christians! Sarah, John, are you listening?) Christ said to the Cindy McCains of his time, GIVE IT ALL AWAY!

There is one small glitch in the story of the humble life of middle-class Cindy, heiress to an Arizona beer-schlepping fortune. In 2006, according to her tax returns, she was actually “rich” by John’s very own standards. The returns show that in that year, her income was “over $6 million,” according to the New York Times.

The Times didn’t report how much over. The newspaper of record may have concluded that at some point it doesn’t much matter. A million here, a million there. Any way you look at it, Republican or Democrat, you are rich.

Faust, Pandora, John McCain and us

I watched last night as John McCain publicly confronted the hatred unleashed by his campaign. He seemedly like a solitary, tragic figure trying to hold back a flood.

And it was tragic — not just for him and his beleaguered, conflicted campaign but for us.

Isn’t this the stuff of the Greek legend of Pandora and the tragedy of Faust?

Pandora’s box, once opened, loosed upon the world the furies of evil. Sarah Palin doesn’t fit the role of Pandora in the legend, but certainly her elevation to vice presidential candidate has opened a box of anger, racism, hypocrisy, deceit, ignorance and lust for power at any cost.

In these times, it may help us to know that Pandora managed to close the box at last and save a single human quality — hope.

In the medieval version of the Faust legend made famous by Christopher Marlowe’s play, Faust forms his infamous compact with the devil and in so doing condemns himself. At one point, a good and evil angel battle for Faust’s soul. Each vies to win him over, but he is too far gone to save himself.

Cut to a Faustian McCain, pacing on stage, surrounded by angry, agitated, hateful supporters. Clutching the microphone, a magical wand of power if wisely used, McCain clenches his teeth and brings himself to describe his opponent, not as a terrorist or evil incarnate, but as a good and admirable man.

No longer is Barack Obama an objectified alien, the “that one” of the last debate.

But the furies in the crowd have none of it. They will not return to the box. They boo and hiss McCain’s attempts to contain their gall.

As detached viewers, we witness McCain, a seemingly decent, though deeply flawed, man, and wonder whether he can save his soul and those of his supporters, even if he and they lose this election — and especially if they win.

It makes for remarkable theater, but politics is not the stage the media have made it seem. It is not a performance to witness. It is not “other;” it is us.

It defines and informs who we are. It is our mirror, our window, our door and even our path.

With our own good and evil angels on our shoulders, we are linked to John McCain, and we must ask whether we can save ourselves.

Palin pick sorely missing from debate

As I listened to John McCain sounding more or less presidential in tonight's debate, I wondered how on earth this guy, who proclaims his devotion to this country, could have chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate?

Why didn't someone among the panel of undecided voters call him his choice. Ask him how he squares the value he places on his own depth of experience with his politically driven but dangerous choice of the grossly inexperienced. cartoonish Palin.

And why didn't Obama invoke the name of Joe Biden as a tacit reminder of McCain's recklessness?

In this campaign, the wildly different choices of vice presidential candidates should be made exhibit A in any debate. The contrast says volumes about who has a "firm hand on the tiller, " as McCain put it, and who has the wisdom to do what is best for this country.

The Rock and the Shock Jock

I hate to say it because campaigns should be about issues, but this election is coming down to a choice between a political shock jock and rock-solid leader.

Any doubt which is which?

Just in case you haven't been paying attention ....

First McCain put Sarah Palin, a political T-baller, in the on-deck circle of the World Series; then he called for the firing of Christopher Cox, the SEC chair; then he blamed the economic meltdown on, of all people, Barack Obama (presumably the SEC chair was a co-conspirator); and now he has walked away from a nationally televised presidential debate just when the nation needs it most.

What next?

If you can believe the polls (that’s a big “if”), the electorate is finally getting the message: In unstable times, the last thing we need is an unpredictable, loose-cannon president.

Voters are looking for rock-solid answers and leadership, and Obama, especially compared to McCain, is emerging as an anchor of stability and sanity in these turbulent times.

A gallery of “Nows”

Weary of the financial crisis, the drumbeat of campaign news, the latest depressing poll results from Joplin and Fargo, and the most recent indignant Internet tract purporting to drive a stake into the evil hearts of McCain and Palin, I strode around the Fairmount Boulevard loop on this brilliant Indian summer afternoon.

I walked the tree-canopied, three-plus miles with the city at my feet, a compact camera in hand and an Eckhart Tolle audio book murmuring in my ear, urging me to BE IN THE NOW.

I don’t know whether taking photographs gets me into the “now” or not. The “now” of composing, focusing and snapping seem eroded by the prospect of downloading, viewing, cropping and sharing.

That said, I came back with a few select “nows” for you.

Sarah, pigs, lipstick and overhead wires

Memo to Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt huddled in the McCain Campaign War Room/pig sty looking for targets and churning up muck:

At recent neighborhood meetings I, an ardent Obama supporter, have said that you can do everything you like to spruce up stuck-in-the-Fifties storefronts in Hillsdale, but until you underground the utilities on SW Capitol Highway, you will be just...

putting lipstick on a pig!

I was not, repeat, NOT, commenting on Sarah Palin, tabloid celebrity candidate for the second highest office in the land.

If you want a comment on Sarah (and John), try this:

John McCain’s motto is “Country First.” So what’s the most significant decision of his “Country First” campaign? Choosing as his running mate — and, alas, it seems our next vice president — someone who two years ago was mayor of an Alaskan community with a population the size of our neighborhood's.

You can call that “experience” if you like, Karl, Steve and John, but it sounds a lot like putting our country last and, from the looks of the polls, John’s candidacy first.

In politics, "It's the media and us, stupid"

Note: In order to return life to normal here at The Red Electric, I am no longer adding to "Sarah Palin" the tags "glasses" or "sex" just to see what might happen. If you are interested in Palin's relationship to those topics, you will not find comment about them here.

I know that the hundreds of you who have visited because of those tags in the last few days will find satisfaction elsewhere on the Web.

So Sara Palin made it through last week without excusing herself to deal with her “personal problems.”

It remains to be seen whether the other shoe will drop in the next eight weeks. Drug use? Alcoholism (there seems to have been a touch of that)? Black sheep (remember the former brother-in-law? Phony college transcripts? Christian values hypocrisy (where to begin?)?

Or maybe “The Base” is so enamored with Sarah and her “just-like us” family values that nothing would matter. Whatever is under the carpet, once exposed, would just add to her “just-like-us” credentials. “Let him who is without sin etc.”

So far the tabloid readers and the God, Guts and Guns groups are loving the minutiae of Sarah’s “just a hockey mom” story.

And, of course, the Christian Right, whom we can thank for two Rovian elections of George W. Bush, are back in the hunt. “Energized” as they say.

McCain’s strategists are clever (some prominent of their colleagues have called them “cynical”) to join Palin and McCain at the hip. They are appearing in tandem on the hustings and attracting throngs.

McCain basks in the media stardom of his tundra “Cinderella.” Walled off from probing questions (does she know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites? Does she know where Iran is?), Palin projects personality and a contrived maverick image.

The ticket conflates opposites in ways that only the influential visual media can accentuate. Old/Young, Male/Female, Doughy/Attractive. Mix in the non-visual but very much proclaimed heroic vet/Military mom-to-be. Unspoken but palpable are insider/outsider, wishy-washy religious/red-meat fundamentalist, obscenely rich/just-folks working class.

Never mind what they believe or would do about the environment (whatever happened to global warming?), the economy (meltdown anyone?), Iraq (it’s still about oil).

Never mind that The Old One may not be around for four years.

For now, it is all about story and its telling — the plot, the setting, the arch of the story, pacing, the characters.

McCain, Palin and the True Believers are right: It’s the media, stupid — but not in the ways they would have us believe.

It’s the media AND the voting public’s relationship with it. The media have so dumbed down political discourse in this country and we have so bought into it that we are in mortal danger.

As noted before, politics is all about entertainment. We, the People, have complacently embraced the fun. It consumes our time and our lives. It’s so easy to be entertained. Attractive candidates. Compelling story lines. Stage sets. Neck-and-neck horse races.

Republican media manipulators have chosen a candidate/actor to fit the desired plot line. Palin has been cast not to be vice president, but to fill the role of a running mate who can offset the stiff persona of old what’s-his-name.

Media moguls know that successful casting creates “para-social” relationships between members of the audience and the character. This is the staple of soap operas. Viewers often identify more with the travails of media-concocted characters than they do with members of their own families. When candidates forge the same relationships with voters, the voters end up caring more about the candidates than they do about the state of their nation or the world.

We will never see real change in this country until this media manipulation and a complacent public’s surrender to it end.

Another Palin prediction mit conspiracy theory

This from Lizi Zach in Berlin:

My friend Jim, former campaign strategist turned criminal defense lawyer (not much of a career change, but there you have it), just sent the following. It doesn't sound all that far-fetched:

I have been musing over why in the world McCain would have picked Palin knowing her baggage in advance (and then letting it trickle out).

I will make a prediction: She will tearfully decline to serve in the next couple of days, probably in her acceptance speech- blaming the terrible liberal media and bloggers who have attacked her family. She can admit she was a novice, could have done a great job and doesn’t want the campaign to get distracted over. She will urge her supporters to actively support McCain—this was all her idea—McCain urged her to stay the course—and to support his choice of VP—he picks his personal favorite, Lieberman with the blessing of the Right’s new darling.

The religious right is appeased, knowing he took a chance—and that it was all the fault of the usual bad people—not McCain.

I’m already seeing signs of this from conservative columnists and what I hear Pravda, er, Fox News is saying.

All scripted in advance- all facts known. The “liberal media” is at fault—and I’m sure somehow, the Obama campaign.

Thank you Karl Rove.

Sure hope I am wrong, but we have seen it before.

Could Palin be gone by week's end?

OK, here's the prediction: Citing "personal problems," Sarah Palin of Alaska will withdraw her name from vice presidential consideration by week's end.

Blame it on Alaska, where long, cold nights are not known for abstinence of any kind.

John McCain will replace Palin with either Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, his preferred choices before the Christian fundamentalists howled their protests and stuck him with Palin.

Both Ridge and Lieberman are pro-choice and anathema to the Religious Right.

With no backing from the evangelical "base," and wounded by the Palin fiasco, McCain will plummet in the polls.

That said, we need to remember that he is still running in the United States of America where vote tallies (as opposed to actual voters) twice handed George W. Bush the highest office in the land.

Don't count McCain out until the votes are counted — until, and if, ALL the votes are counted.

P.S. If you want to put money on whether Palin will survive on the ticket, go to the Intrade prediction market. Investing in Palin's resignation is rising as I write this.

Politics: manufacturing celebrity

The naming of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate has reminded of the late Neil Postman’s warning that in this entertainment age of visual mass media, we are amusing ourselves to death.

His warning was literal and extended to politics, which has become so entertaining it is hard to take seriously.

“Dream tickets,” “compelling stories,” “star power,” "showcase conventions."

Politics today has everything to do with the manufacture of celebrity, and virtually nothing to do with the discernment of leadership.

The last time I checked the president had the power to decide life and death. Even with those stakes in mind, George Bush, an entertaining campaigner, became "the decider."

We have indeed been amusing ourselves to death.

Will we do it again in 2008?

Is America "ready" to fulfill its promise?

Looking at the Democratic presidential primary returns from parts of Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio is a sad, sobering experience.

Hillary Clinton racked up mega-majorities in some rural counties —70 percent, 80 percent, even 90 percent. Stunning numbers.

It should be a sad, sobering experience for her as well. All the numbers mean is that many voters in those lop-sided counties are more racist than they are sexist.

You know — “hard, working-class whites.” Come November, those same voters, if faced with a woman on the ballot, would generate the same numbers for a white man, John McCain.

Even if, in some nightmare scenario, the white man running against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were George W. Bush, undeniably one of he worst presidents in American history, these patriotic American bigots would vote for him too — again.

There has been a lot of talk in the press about whether America is “ready” for an African-American president. Whether the country is “ready” for a woman president.

Ready?

Were we “ready” for George W. Bush? Are we “ready” for John McCain? And through that same clear lens, are we “ready” for Hillary Clinton? Are we “ready” for Barack Obama?

Never mind gender or race. We are voting for a president here — the person with the power to make life-and-death decisions about the future of this country, indeed about the fate of this planet.

Which one are we “ready” for — based on character, ability and political belief? Nothing more, nothing less.

The problem is that many Americans are voting their prejudices. Does it make you feel good to hate candidates because of race or gender? Then get your racist/sexist jollies off by going to the polls to vote against them.

The country be damned.

Here a little voice asks: But aren’t you being unfair? Aren’t you stereotyping white voters in these states? The polls don’t suggest so. Large numbers admit that they would not vote for a black to be president under any circumstances. Combine them with those who are too embarrassed to express their racism, and you have a country whose November presidential election could well be determined by racists.

But how about all those black voters who voted for Obama because he is black? Isn’t that a racist vote? Ask yourself, are those black Obama supporters voting FOR someone or AGAINST someone. Are they voting out of hatred — or pride? Black voters don’t despise whites. They’ve been voting for white candidates for years. But they do fervently support the first major black presidential candidate. Oh, and, on his merits, they also believe he would make the best president.

It’s a choice they’ve never had before, and they are going to take it. Wouldn’t you?

But unlike black voters, say in North Carolina or Virginia, large numbers of white voters in the primary elections I’ve mentioned above weren’t voting FOR Clinton, they were voting AGAINST a black man for no other reason than that he is black.

That is racist voting.

Don’t lump me in with the “America” that “isn’t ready for an African-American president or a woman president.”

I am “ready” for an America that is “ready” for a president, black, brown, yellow or white, man or woman, whose words, leadership and actions will end the bigotry, divisiveness and hatred that still haunt this nation.

When America is “ready” for the best, it will, at long last, live up to its promise.

Untenable: Why a top McCain ad strategist quit

The resignation of Mark McKinnon, John McCain’s “chief advertising strategist” (an ominous title), carries the scent of something rotten.

McKinnon’s stated reason for stepping down is that he doesn’t want to work against Barack Obama, even though McKinnon disagrees with the Democratic candidate on several issues, including the Iraq War.

Last summer in a Cox News Service interview, McKinnon had vowed not to work against Obama in the general election. Tuesday, he acted on it.

The putrefaction comes from the “work” McKinnon would have been doing for McCain in the months ahead.

Think “Willie Horton,” “Swift boating,” and most recently “appeasement,” “lapel pinning,” and “albatross hanging” (in the form of Obama’s pastor and acquaintance with a ‘60s radical).

Read between the lines of the New York Times story about the resignation. My interpretation is that McKinnon didn’t want to be party to the character assassination of Obama, a man McKinnon has described as having “deep character and good judgment.”

McKinnon said of Obama in the Cox News interview, “I also think he’s wrong on some fundamental issues. But I believe he is honest and independent.”

If Obama is “wrong on some fundamental issues,” why can’t McKinnon continue working for McCain, with whom McKinnon agrees on those issues?

Silly me. I forgot that politics isn’t about fundamental issues; it’s about red-meat "attack" ads, distortions, innuendos and smears.

I'm guessing that McKinnon has concluded that he wants no part of the Republicans’ strategy against Obama.

Which raises the question of why McKinnon presumably would have stuck with McCain if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee. Is it somehow OK to tear down Hillary? If so, why?

The Times story is laced with hedging and fudging. Take this line: “Mr. McKinnon had told friends, and some journalists, that he did not want to be part of a hard-fought campaign against such an historic candidacy.”

Not part of a “hard-fought campaign”? What did he want, a half-hearted, leisurely campaign conducted from the Bahamas?

No, “hard-fought” is political code for “smear.”

And what does history have to do with it? McKinnon had told Cox that an Obama presidency would “send a great message to the country and the world.”

Did McKinnon not want to be remembered by history for waging a racist campaign against a black man capable of bearing such a great message? Could the “race card” be what McCain’s “strategists” are preparing to deal? Maybe McKinnon thought it was OK to go after Clinton because she and her “strategists” are using the same tactics against Obama.

Sounds to me as if Mr. McKinnon was having gastrointestinal problems during McCain “strategy” sessions. Maalox wasn’t working. It was time to invoke last year's vow.

Obama polls strongly against "McClone" in Oregon

An addendum to yesterday's post. Take a look at this Rasmussen poll. Obama is moving away from "McClone" in Oregon.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate race, Jeff Merkley is trying to use another Rasmussen poll to prove that he, not primary opponent Steve Novick, has the best chance of unseating Gordon Smith. The argument becomes less compelling as you read into the poll.

An then there's the John Frohnmayer "spoiler" potential that isn't even part of the Senate race poll. Frohnmayer, running as an independent, could split Oregon's sizable, and crucial, liberal vote.

Is Obama lying about the Northwest?

The New York Times is reporting that Oregon will be a “battleground state” in the expected presidential match-up this fall between John McClone (that’s not a typo) and Barack Obama.

First of all, forget the “battleground” hype. The battlegrounds of importance in this election are in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here at home, we desperately need to lower the political/journalistic rhetoric about the campaign.

What we have is an election, not a war.

Let’s presume that “battleground” means that both sides believe they have a chance of winning in 14 up-for-grabs states.

If this state is a toss-up, then somebody is blowing smoke. Oregon is big-time Blue. You can take it to the bank. A slam-dunk. Put it in the freezer. Like a rock for the Ds.

Got that? (It’s proof are plenty of non-war metaphors available)

The only way Oregon is going for McClone is if Obama chooses Jeremiah Wright as his running mate — or Hillary Clinton.

Geez, if the campaign strategists can have this one so wrong, what about all those other “battleground” states? Do they think the voters have been sleeping through the Bush years?

Maybe the Obama people just don’t want us to get all cocky here in the upper left-hand corner. Amazingly, the campaigns also include Washington on the “battleground” list.

What kind of rubes do they take us to be?

Come to think of it, if the Obama folks are so out of touch with us, maybe McClone and the Bushites behind him have a chance here after all. Why else would they think they had a chance?

How’s this for a headline and lead?

McCain claims Obama is lying
about Pacific Northwest
being a toss-up

John McCain told a Portland audience today that Northwesterners are being duped by an Obama campaign that purports McCain has a change of winning in the region.

“I’m here to give you some straight talk," McCain told a unenthusiastic crowd of five in Pioneer Courthouse Square. "My opponent is lying to you, and we know you are still going to vote for him! We don’t have a prayer here.”

The speech was seen as a new tactic in the beleaguered Republican's presidential campaign. McCain campaign aides said the strategy is to bolster McCain’s underdog status and to win the sympathy vote.

An Obama spokesman responded that the Illinois senator really does believe that the two states are up for grabs. “There are a lot of really stupid people here who cling to the Bush recession, the war and $4/gallon gas prices. Don’t ask us why, but that’s what the polls show. It could be mindless nostalgia, a batch of bad IPA, tainted salmon or Hanford radiation seeping into the groundwater."

"Whatever. . . ,” he added.

Politics dictates quick solar action here

In the current issue of The Hillsdale News, I reported that Portland school district officials and local leaders don't feel a rush to install a large photo-voltaic array of solar panels in order to supply electricity to Rieke Elementary School.

The site that the school district officials and solar consultants have in mind is on the highly visible slope just above Bertha Court (see above rendering). But some folks wonder whether that’s the best site for the industrial-looking 200 foot-by-50 foot array.

They are saying, let’s slow down and consider other sites and possibly more attractive panels.

Earlier I had reported that the installation had to be completed before the end of the year because lucrative federal tax incentives expire then. But those conferring around the table at the school district office last Wednesday were certain the feds and Congress would extend the tax incentive program for wind and solar power. There would be time for careful siting deliberation.

The incentives have started a boom in alternative energy projects, which have zero carbon emissions in a world of warming hurt.

What politician in his or her right mind wouldn’t continue the tax incentive program?

Quite a few, starting with Congress and Bush administration energy officials, according to Thomas Friedman’s column in today’s New York Times. The government is stuck in the same short-term, quick-fix mind set demonstrated by presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, writes Friedman.

Both candidates are advocating a federal gas tax vacation this summer, which will only contribute to the carbon spewing.

Enough with the Band-Aids already. As Friedman reminds us, we have a global problem on our hands.

In Hillsdale, intransigence in Washington, D.C. means forging ahead here. Like it or not, we need to move on the solar project under tight, politically dictated time constraints.

The result may not be pretty aesthetically, but by promising to provide 60 percent of Rieke’s energy without polluting the environment, this project has other, more important, attractions.

Disgraceful!

For some time now I’ve been searching for a word on this side of outright obscenity to describe the Bush administration.

No single word captures it: not aloof, arrogant, deceitful, self-serving, hypocritical, self-righteous, corrupt, secretive, insensitive or inhumane.

What word to capture Abu Ghraib, torture, waterboarding, wire-tappings, renditions, lies, ineptitude, tax cuts for the wealthy, war profiteering, cronyism, posturing, stonewalling and fear mongering?

Then yesterday I think I found the word. Or to be exact, it was handed to me by a most unlikely source.

Here it is in context in a New York Times story:

NEW ORLEANS — Senator John McCain took direct aim at the Bush administration on Thursday as he stood in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and declared that “never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled.”

The Bush presidency in its entirety, not just in its callous mishandling of Katrina, has been, in a single word, a “disgrace.”

Gerald Ford proclaimed on the day Richard Nixon left office that “our long national nightmare” had ended.

To assure us that the disgrace of Bush-Cheney will end next January, McCain, Clinton and Obama should agree that this administration has been a disgrace — to the nation, to its people, to humanity, and, yes, to the planet.

I know it is likely too much to hope for, but to help the healing, those who voted for George W. Bush, starting with McCain, could begin with an apology.

In apologizing, McCain might see the wisdom in abandoning his own major positions, which so far mimic those of the Bush administration.

McCain, who so aptly spoke of disgrace in New Orleans, should see that his own stances are no less disgraceful.