July 2008 Archives

Yes, it is bad that Barack Obama leads 51-44 in the polls. Very bad.

Huh?

I'm not the first person to point out that it is virtually impossible for John McCain (or Barack Obama) to slip below 40 percent in the polls absent a serious third-party challenge. It does not matter how badly McCain's campaign appears to be -- 40 percent is the floor. This isn't hard to figure out.

It is stories like these that really make this satirical comment on Eric Alterman's blog about McCain's fawning media coverage really appear far too realistic.

Over at The Hill, Brent Budowsky brings a refreshing bluntness to the conversation about John McCain's recent campaign tactics:

John McCain personally told Larry King that Barack Obama wanted to bring reporters, cameras and campaign aides to a meeting with wounded troops in Germany.

When he said this, John McCain was lying. Let me spell this correctly: L-Y-I-N-G.

Obama never intended to bring reporters, period. That is a lie. Obama never intended to bring cameras. That is a lie. Obama never intended to bring "his campaign staffers" (to use McCain's words). That, too, is a lie. The only person Obama intended to bring was retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, who is an unpaid military adviser.

I suppose this is another one of those events about which we are not supposed to worry or notice. From the BBC:

A large chunk of an Arctic ice shelf has broken free of the northern Canadian coast, scientists say.

Nearly 20 sq km (eight sq miles) of ice from the Ward Hunt shelf has split away from Ellesmere Island, according to satellite pictures.

It is thought to be the biggest piece of ice shed in the region since 60 sq km of the nearby Ayles Ice Shelf broke away in 2005.

The New York Times' Jacques Steinberg yesterday profiled Rachel Maddow, the Air America radio host who has been appearing almost daily on MSNBC lately.

When not appearing on David Gregory's Race to the White House, Maddow has been substituting for Keith Olbermann on Countdown. (And the Kansas City Star's Aaron Barnhart reports that Maddow is the new permanent fill-in for KO.) Those who have had the opportunity to watch Maddow in action now know that she deserves a shot at hosting a show.

Her radio show remains a must-listen-to podcast for me (alas, the last one on the Air America). I look forward to seeing more of her on the television machine over the next few months.

In the Huffington Post, author Kevin Phillips again explains why the government's official inflation statistics are not telling us the full story about the economy.

Bill Gross of California-based PIMCO, the world's biggest bond manager, tells investors that interest rates on U.S. Treasury notes are inadequate. Inflation around the globe has averaged nearly 7 percent over the past decade, but the official U.S. inflation rate has averaged 2.6 percent. "Does it make any sense," says Gross, "that we have a 3 percent to 4 percent lower rate of inflation than the rest of the world?" And if Washington understates inflation by one percent, he adds, then gross domestic product has been overstated by that same amount. ("U.S. Inflation understated, Pimco's Gross says," MarketWatch, May 22, 2008)

Nor is Gross alone. In May, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker told the Congressional Joint Economic Committee that "I think there's a lot more inflation than in those [CPI] figures." He said that the sharp run-up in housing before the recent implosion wasn't reflected in CPI data, adding that food and energy prices should not be excluded in gauging long-term trends. And when prices do go up, he said, government calculators are "much more inclined to say that there are improvements in quality" rather than an increase in inflation.

At Charles Schwab & Company, one of the nation's biggest money managers, chief economist Liz Ann Sonders wrote in June that "Over the past 30 years, major changes have been made to the calculation of the CPI due to "re-selection and reclassification of areas, items and outlets, [and] to the development of new systems for data collection and processing," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you eliminate those adjustments and calculate CPI as it would have been calculated in 1980, it would be nearly 12 percent today...No wonder clients constantly tell me they distrust government inflation data." ("Back to the 1970s?" Charles Schwab Investing Insights, June 19, 2008)

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the recent severe decline in the stock markets.

This story should make you angry -- if you think the fight against terrorism should be more important than the comfort of our generals.

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

What's worse, the general reportedly behind this travesty is up for a promotion -- when he should be fired immediately.

Air Force officials say the program dates from a 2006 decision by Air Force Gen. Duncan J. McNabb that existing seats on transport planes, including some that match those on commercial airliners, may be fine for airmen and troops but inadequate for the top brass. McNabb was then the Air Mobility commander; he is now the Air Force's vice chief of staff, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates nominated him in June to become head of the military's Transportation Command.

In a letter of complaint sent yesterday to Gates, POGO asserted that the new capsules will provide no special communications or work capabilities beyond those already available for top officials on Air Force transport aircraft. It is "a gross misuse of millions of taxpayer dollars that could otherwise be used to train and equip soldiers," wrote Danielle Brian, the group's executive director.

General McNabb should be fired. He can fly in comfort as a private consultant. Could we promote people who actually care about terrorism and the comfort of our troops -- rather than the comfort of themselves?

Also, this appears to be a situation where Congressional oversight has actually worked. More like this, please.

Did Hall-of-Fame second baseman Joe Morgan skip out on All-Star Game ceremonies earlier this week because he did not want to be seen with the man who broke his record for home runs by a second baseman, new Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg?

Seems plausible not just to me, but to others who watch these things.

As Ryne Sandberg is my favorite player (Go Cubs Go!), you can imagine what I think of Morgan's continuing petulance.

Josh Marshall sums up the state of our so-called liberal media:

For the McCain campaign to put out a memo to reporters claiming that Obama has adopted McCain's policy only shows that his advisors believe that a sizable percentage of the political press is made up of incorrigible morons. And it's hard to disagree with the judgment.

In the middle of a statewide drought, the City of Sacramento is threatening to fine a couple $746 for letting their front lawn die to conserve water.

Demanding residents waste water is simply an outrageous policy that cannot be tolerated. Instead of fining this couple, the City of Sacramento should be commending them for being good neighbors -- not just on their street, but in this water-starved state.

The Bush Administration has taken this nation, once known as the shining city on the hill, and replaced it with:

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Are you not shocked by this reporting by Scott Shane in the New York Times? That's right: in our name, people used Chinese torture techniques -- things we know from our national experience will generate false confessions.

This does not make us safer. It just destroys our national honor.

Thank you President Bush and Vice President Cheney. In a real world, they both would be impeached.