danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Perhaps you read this webpage but dislike politics.  If that is the case you may want to take a break and come back in late November.  Meanwhile…

John McCain has been one of relatively few politicians whom I have respected as an individual.  I haven’t generally been on his side of the issues, but sometimes I have, and even when I wasn’t I could respect his simple, unaffected manner and, for lack of better expression, “straight talk”.  I regretted that he got shafted in 2000 in South Carolina.  I couldn’t understand why he would have supported George W. Bush in 2004 without assuming one or the other of the following was true:

1. John McCain really did believe that George W. Bush was good for America (in which case his advertisements now saying that we are “worse off than we were four years ago” suggest he has terrible judgment), or,
2. He knew that if he didn’t actively campaign for Bush he’d never get the chance to gain the Republican nomination in any future election.

Neither of those reflects very well on John McCain’s integrity, in my opinion.  But Senator McCain didn’t really lose my respect until recently.  It wasn’t picking Governor Palin as his running mate. No, I don’t believe her qualified to be vice president, and yes, I do think his choosing her was much more about securing a particular segment of the electorate that he needs in order to win.  But, that’s politics, for better or for worse (worse), and if he wanted to have any chance of winning he needed to make sure he got the cultural conservatives on his side, since he was never their first choice.

No, what lost my respect was when Senator McCain chose to surround himself with disciples of Karl Rove, who have no scruples, and for whom the ends justify the means, no matter how despicable those means are.  These are people who have no qualms about lying and cheating to get what they want.  Now there are those who claim that politicians have always lied and cheated.  This isn’t about taking a kickback on a deal to bring some pork barrel project to a district.  (I don’t begrudge Governor Palin trying to bring home money to her state; I just object to her telling bald-faced lies now, claiming she never did.)  No, what I find offensive is the way John McCain’s campaign is putting out advertisements and press releases that contain demonstrably false information.  They know it isn’t true, but they also know that the media is lazy, and that big claims get headlines, and the inevitable retractions will be buried.  The sheer number and intensity of the lies–and it’s important to call them what they are; they are not mere exaggerations or “distortions”, they are lies, pure and simple–has exceeded what a man of John McCain’s character should be comfortable with.  But there was McCain on a stage a week or so ago saying explicitly that Governor Palin sold her state jet on eBay and made a profit.  That is demonstrably false, but they used it to try and further their claim that they are reformers.  They knew that by the time the press looked into and saw that a) the plane sold through a broker, and b) it sold at a loss for the state, the correction wouldn’t make the national news, and their next lie would be the headline of the day.

The paper today highlighted how some of the more recent lies have played out:

First the McCain campaign twisted Mr. Obama’s words to suggest that he had compared Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, to a pig after Mr. Obama said, in questioning Mr. McCain’s claim to be the change agent in the race, “You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig.” (Mr. McCain once used the same expression to describe Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health plan.)

Then he falsely claimed that Mr. Obama supported “comprehensive sex education” for kindergartners (he supported teaching them to be alert for inappropriate advances from adults).

Those attacks followed weeks in which Mr. McCain repeatedly, and incorrectly, asserted that Mr. Obama would raise taxes on the middle class, even though analysts say he would cut taxes on the middle class more than Mr. McCain would, and misrepresented Mr. Obama’s positions on energy and health care.

A McCain advertisement called “Fact Check” was itself found to be “less than honest” by FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan group. The group complained that the McCain campaign had cited its work debunking various Internet rumors about Ms. Palin and implied in the advertisement that the rumors had originated with Mr. Obama.

So those are some pretty outrageous lies.  And what, to me, makes Senator McCain look like scum is that he has a spokesman who says the following (from the same article): “We stand fully by everything that’s in our ads,” [Brian] Rogers said, “and everything that we’ve been saying we provide detailed backup for — everything. And if you and the Obama campaign want to disagree, that’s your call.”

Then he provided no proof, no evidence, even, that any of their claims were true. And he’ll get away with it.  Later I’ll explain how.

Filed under: Current Events, Politics, Rantings on September 13th, 2008 | No Comments »

I have not seen the full Charles Gibson interview with Governor Palin, but this morning I did hear the portion everyone is talking about, namely when Gibson asked Palin what her position is on the Bush Doctrine.  It is clear from her response that the expression, or at least the meaning of the expression, was unfamiliar to her. To me this isn’t surprising.  Being governor might give you “executive experience”, but governors are not engaged with national and international affairs in the same way as are presidents, vice presidents and members of the house and senate.  Governor Palin obviously has been out of the loop until two weeks ago, concentrating her energies on issues that matter exclusively to Alaska.  She has been undergoing extensive tutoring–much the same way George W. Bush did following the election in 2000–but a person theretofore unaware can only learn so much in a fortnight.

Today on the radio I heard Neil Boortz complaining about Charlie Gibson playing “gotcha” with the question, equating it to asking her the name of the prime minister of Turkmenistan.  That is a pathetic comparison.  The names of office holders of distant nations with little diplomatic importance to the United States is hardly comparable to a question related to one of the central tenets of American foreign and military policy under President Bush.  Especially considering that that policy was used as a justification for the war in which we are presently engaged.

I know what the Bush Doctrine is.  Neil Boortz knows what the Bush Doctrine is.  I am a private citizen and so is Boortz.  If an individual running for the vice presidency of the United States knows less about a critical issue–again, this isn’t about the prime minister of Turkmenistan, as Boortz said–than a classical music DJ and a libertarian talk show host, that’s a big problem.  And it is an extreme example of intellectual dishonesty on Boortz’s part to pretend that it was a “gotcha” question.  If I could have answered it, Palin should have been able to answer it.  Even if her answer would be completely different from mine she should know the expression by name, and its ramifications through and through.  The term “Bush Doctrine” has been used on television and printed in newspapers regularly–probably close to daily–for the last five years at least.

So, when Boortz, or anyone else for that matter, feigns outrage that a vice presidential candidate is presented with an extraordinarily relevant question that he or she cannot answer, and tries to pin blame on the media for trying to trick said candidate, I find it despicable and pathetic.   John McCain could have answered the question, I bet.  So could Barack Obama or Joseph Biden.  And if either of them couldn’t, people like Boortz would have jumped all over it, and would have spent days blasting them for being unqualified to be commander-in-chief.

I cannot express in strong enough terms how mentally weak I find people who would choose to blame Charles Gibson for Governor Palin’s lack of understanding, or how loathsome I find people who express phony outrage at Barack Obama, falsely claiming he referred to Governor Palin as a “pig”, or supported teaching kindergartners sex-ed.  I respect a difference of opinion on policy, and if you simply have a different attitude about the purpose of government and want to articulate your beliefs, I respect that, too.  I might disagree with you, but I respect an honest presentation of two sides to an argument.  But people who put forward lies and innuendo as a substitute for genuine discourse are unworthy of the title American.

Filed under: Current Events, Politics on September 12th, 2008 | No Comments »

I only just noticed that the Mathew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs cover of “Different Drum” includes a brilliant but subtle touch.  In the bridge, when she sings “But don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I knock it / It’s just that I am not in the market for a boy who wants to love only me”, the background vocal sings “Don’t get me wrong / It’s just that I love only me”.  Linda Ronstadt’s performance is practically ideal, but this bit in Susanna Hoffs’ version adds another dimension to Mike Nesmith’s masterpiece.  Hear what I mean:

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Filed under: Popular Music on September 11th, 2008 | No Comments »

Boston.com has some stunning photos of hurricanes taken from space.

Filed under: Meteorology, Photography on September 9th, 2008 | No Comments »

Nostalgia–a subject on which I consider myself something of an authority by way of experience–is a curious thing.  The general sufferer of nostalgia loses countless hours in (often sad) reflection of his own life, and imagines his former days to have been idyllic, glossing over the mundane or unpleasant aspects thereof.  The advanced nostalgist does this, but also extends his scope of reverie to encompass ages in which he never lived, and places he has never visited.  He practically invents the details of this world of which he laments the loss.  He never lived in Paris in between the wars, or a small American town in the 1950s, or London in the nineteenth century, but he involuntarily goes to great mental lengths to imagine it.

For the latter sort of nostalgist, articles like the one in today’s New York Times–about the vanishing barns of Iowa, and the changing character of farm life there–simply offer fuel for the fire.

Filed under: Musings, Nostalgia on September 7th, 2008 | No Comments »