After yesterday’s vote in the House of Representatives on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, there was a heavy, disgusting game of blame being played.  Republican leaders blamed a floor speech by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Democrats countered by (deservedly) mocking them.  And then there was this:

This is why people hate politics.  This is why people don’t care anymore and don’t pay attention.  And this is why people don’t vote.

Fine if lawmakers don’t like legislation.  Argue against it.  Suggest alternatives.  But don’t look for excuses to cover your asses.  Now if (when?) the economy tanks this week without Congress passing legislation to attempt a prevention, Democrats can blame Republicans for not acting sooner.  Ugh.  More blame.  Blaming each other, not getting anything done, and who’s left holding the short straw?  You and me.

After the failed vote, lawmakers as a whole have only themselves to blame.  Ben Pershing at the Washington Post offers several reasons why the vote failed (and why lawmakers as a hole are to blame):

1) Poor Salesmanship. Did you know that the general consensus is now that this bill will not cost $700 billion? If you didn’t, it’s because the bill’s proponents did a poor marketing job. From the start, the Bush administration did not do enough to emphasize the point that taxpayers would get at least some of the money back, and that gigantic price tag got stuck in the head of the public (and the media).

The administration was also too eager and ambitious with its initial proposal, alienating many lawmakers right from the start by seeming to ask for the moon — give us everything we want, with no oversight. This White House has long played political hardball, but this was not the time for hardball. This was the time for begging. The administration also let the “bailout” label stick to the package right from the start. By the time President Bush started calling it a “rescue” measure, it was too late.

3) No Center of Gravity. Who’s running Washington right now? Bush is the lamest of lame ducks, with a minuscule approval rating and no clout or political protection left to offer. Bush and Vice President Cheney were reportedly making calls to wavering Republicans right to the end; obviously that didn’t do the trick. Barack Obama and John McCain both supposedly support the bill, but neither of them has been exactly wholehearted in their backing, and there haven’t been any reports of either candidate calling members of their own party to lobby.

House leaders, meanwhile, did support the bill and did whip it. But this wasn’t a party-loyalty vote; lawmakers were asked to vote yes, but they weren’t threatened. They (probably) weren’t bribed. Add all that up, and you had a power vacuum. [...]

It’s possible despite weeks of warnings, and a stock market that is cratering as we speak, that a lot of members still aren’t taking any of this seriously enough. And that, ultimately, may be the real reason for today’s vote.

Also, Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com says the many lawmakers in swing districts that voted against the bill doomed it:

ALL VULNERABLES = 8 YEAS, 30 NAYS (21%)
OTHERS = 197 YEAS, 198 NAYS (50%)

Members of Congress: instead of pointing fingers at each other, point them at yourselves.  Accept responsibility and do your job.  That’s what we elected you for, that’s what we pay you for, and that’s what we expect from you.

Tina Fey was back on SNL last night:

Eventually, the Bush Administration will be held accountable for the war crimes they authorized and pursued.

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

While we’re on the subject of movie trailers:

Check out their timeline.

Oliver Stone’s “W.”:

And Bill Maher’s “Religulous”:

If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72-year-old’s heartbeat away from being president of the United States, and if that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, it should.

When you go on TV to talk about or defend the candidate you work for, you probably should be familiar with what your candidate actual said, particularly in a fairly big announcement.

When I first heard that candidates were allowed to address each other, unlike in past debates, I was excited.  I thought we might actually have a full-fledged debate on our hands.  That hope didn’t quite pan out, but there were a few moments of questioning and interjections.  I would have liked to see more, but since one candidate barely acknowledged the other’s presence (see below), that was pretty hard to do.

McCain closed by noting he doesn’t need on the job training. I’m fairly certain that this argument is so far out the window that it went through the neighbors’ windows and hit the squirrel in the yard seven houses down when he selected a certain governor of a state that begins with A and ends in laska.

McCain exhibited a strong contempt for Obama, not ever looking at him when either candidates were talking or McCain was listening or addressing Obama, and not chuckling at points Obama made that McCain disagreed with but instead snickering and wily sneering at them.

Why does McCain belabor pork-barrel spending?  Are there no other problems with fiscal policy in this country?  Or does he have nothing better to talk about?

Was McCain’s over-defending the war in Iraq a good thing for him or a bad one?

Why won’t Obama say the surge was only a part of reducing violence and not the only responsible strategy?

Overall, a draw; I think both candidates did a good job.  Neither made a game-changing mistake or had a game-changing positive moment.  With McCain’s slipping poll numbers, I think he had more to prove and needed to say something to gain ground or force Obama to say something to lose ground.  That neither happened is a minus for McCain, but we’ll see how the debate plays out in the next few days.

This totally unprepared, unvetted, untested, doesn’t-know-the-issues, serial-lying, hiding-from-the-press, hiding-from-the-American-people, joke-of-a-candidate can be the president of the United States in January.  When will Americans wake up to realize the ploy being foisted upon them?

It wasn’t enough to say she has foreign policy experience because she lives next to Russia, but now she has experience because Vladimir Putin flies over Alaska to get to the United States:

Sarah Palin as a vice presidential nominee is disgusting.  I don’t doubt she’s a capable leader for a small town or even a small state, but as vice president—or more importantly as a potential president—she is totally out of her league.  And that’s John McCain’s fault—and lack of judgment—for asking her to embarrass herself—and him in the process.

I guess this answers one of my questions about Senator McCain suspending his campaign (emphasis added):

McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there’s no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.

In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.

So in addition to no press conferences for Governor Palin, the McCain campaign is now trying to get her out of debating, too?  This campaign is a joke, and the joke’s on us.  The McCain campaign is hiding Governor Palin from the press and now apparently from the American people, too.

Just a thought on the $700 billion (+) bailout: the last few times the Bush Administration told us we were in a dire crisis and needed to act fast, Congress cowed to the administration and gave us:

• The Department of Homeland (In)Security
• The Patriot Act
• The Iraq war

How did all those turn out?  Yeah, so let’s take the time to think about this one.

Maureen Dowd over that the NYT asked Aaron Sorkin, creator and writer of The West Wing, to imagine a meeting of Senator Obama and West Wing President Jed Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen).  As a hard-core fan of the show, I was as giddy as Ralphie clutching his Red Ryder on Christmas morning when I read about this.

Classic Bartlet (er, Sorkin):

GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps—where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie—the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

Ok, “what’s next”?

(Fellow Wing-nuts will catch the post title’s reference)

On Tuesday, Governor Sarah Palin met with world leaders in New York who were there for the UN General Assembly.  Yet another McCain campaign farce.  So her meeting with world leaders will make her better qualified to be one herself?  I’ve met Halle Berry.  Does that make me qualified to be a Hollywood actor?

Steve Biegun, a former staff member of President George W. Bush’s National Security Council said of her meetings,

Her primary purpose was to develop a relationship and to listen. I think she’s already fully prepared to be vice president.

Fully prepared to be vice president.  Since the job of the vice president is solely to be around if the 25th amendment need be invoked and to cast tie-breaking votes in the U.S. Senate, I find it hard to imagine how someone is NOT prepared to be vice president.  But on the former, can she effectively step in should she need to?  Is she fully prepared to be president?  Isn’t that a question we should be asking instead?

Or how about why, almost a full month after she was announced as McCain’s veep candidate, has she not only not held a press conference, she has taken but a few questions from reporters?  Do we not have the right to know how a potential president would think and act in the job?  Why does she need to be shielded from the press?  Or, for that matter, the American people?

From the Washington Post:

Mr. McCain’s selection of an inexperienced and relatively unknown figure was unsettling, and the campaign’s decision to keep her sequestered from serious interchanges with reporters and voters serves only to deepen the unease. Mr. McCain is entitled to choose the person he thinks would be best for the job. He is not entitled to keep the public from being able to make an informed assessment of that judgment. Ms. Palin’s speech-making skills are impressive, but the more she repeats the same stump speech lines, the queasier we get. Nor have her answers to the gentle questioning she has encountered provided any confidence that Ms. Palin has a grasp of the issues.

Umm, what the hell?  John McCain suspended his presidential campaign today?  I’d say it was more like he suspended any rational judgment, but he ceded that one when he announced his veep pick.

I guess I have a few questions at this WTF moment.

• How long does he plan on keeping the campaign suspended?  Does he plan on participating 4 November?
• What does it look like when the debate is held on Friday and John McCain is there?  Does that mean he “blinked”?
• Can John McCain not handle more than one thing at the same time?  Can he not really handle a crisis?  I mean, shouldn’t the president be able to put out a fire while mowing the lawn and reading the newspaper?
• Is this a ploy to postpone the vice presidential debate next week?  If the debate on Friday isn’t held, you can’t have the first debate be the veep debate, right?
• Speaking of her, is she available to take over for McCain since he cut and run?  What’s she doing Friday night?

I agree with Obama: this is exactly the time we need to have the candidates debate about the issues.  Is there anything the McCain campaign does anymore that isn’t a ploy?

The best quote I’ve seen thus far is from Rep. Barney Frank:

It’s the longest Hail Mary pass in the
history of either football or Marys.

The Obama campaign should be running high-road advertisements, whether they be pushing Senator Obama’s plans or critiquing Senator McCain’s.  Like the McCain campaign, however, the Obama campaign has released ads that stretch the truth and distort quotes and past votes in Congress.

Ad one attempts to tie Senator McCain with Rush Limbaugh and out-of-context quotes Limbaugh in a manner that seemingly attempts to pit Hispanics against Senator McCain.  From Jake Tapper at ABC:

First of all, tying Sen. McCain – especially on the issue of immigration reform – to Limbaugh is unfair.

Limbaugh opposed McCain on that issue. Vociferously. And in a larger sense, it’s unfair to link McCain to Limbaugh on a host of issues since Limbaugh, as any even occasional listener of his knows, doesn’t particularly care for McCain.

Second, the quotes of Limbaugh’s are out of context. [...]

The greater implication the ad makes, however, is that McCain is no friend to Latinos at all, beyond issues of funding the DREAM act or how NCLB money is distributed. By linking McCain to Limbaugh’s quotes, twisting Limbaugh’s quotes, and tying McCain to more extremist anti-immigration voices, the Obama campaign has crossed a line into misleading the viewers of its new TV ad. In Spanish, the word is erróneo.

In ad two,

Obama says that McCain voted three times to privatize Social Security, and that he is willing to risk the nation’s retirement program on the risky stock market. Now, it is true that McCain did support President Bush’s effort to privatize a portion of Social Security. But it is not true that McCain is running for president on a platform of turning Social Security over to Wall Street.

Ad three (from the same article)

says McCain “voted against tax incentives for alternative energy—against ethanol, against fuel cells, against hybrids, against electric cars, against wind and solar, against geothermal.” Then the ad says McCain wants to give $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies. This is all a nifty bit of misdirection. The oil company tax breaks the ad refers to are a corporate tax cut McCain favors, which would apply to almost all profitable companies, not just oil companies—including those companies that work on wind, solar and biofuels.

I understand the necessity of the Obama campaign to make low-road hits after the onslaught of similar ads from the McCain campaign.  But surely there are enough critiques to be made of the McCain plan for America that don’t involve stooping to his level of dishonor.

I really don’t understand why someone in the Obama campaign thought this was a good idea.  What a disappointment, Barack.  You’re better than this.  Please remind us.

Kinda reminds you of this, eh?

Silliness aside, there are still so many known unknowns about Governor Palin, and the McCain campaign’s seemingly outright refusal to allow reporters to question her, discover what she really believes, and how she would run the country should the 25th amendment be invoked is astoundingly scary.  But don’t worry, Senator McCain is putting country first.

It’s hard to prepare because I don’t know what she thinks.

—Sen. Joe Biden on how he’s getting ready to debate Governor Palin next month.

[The American Psychological Association] has voted to ban its members from taking part in interrogations at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other military detention sites where it believes international law is being violated.

Slowly but surely, the Bush Administration’s walls are crumbling.  Too bad, though, the walls were allowed to be built in the first place.

(Nod: The Daily Dish)

I think this would be funny if it weren’t true:

Both Barack Obama and John McCain released new ads on the economy.  Compare the message, the tone, and the framing and composition of the candidate in both ads.  Then tell me which candidate is serious and which one is just an empty suit.

Why can’t the media-types grill both sides like this all the time?

From The Guardian:

Due to a quirk of Brazilian law, candidates are allowed to run under the name of their choice. As a result, at least six Brazilian politicians have officially renamed themselves “Barack Obama” in a bid to get an edge over their rivals in October’s municipal elections.

No one wanted to be George W. Bush?

After seeing the cool word clouds of speeches from the Democratic and Republican conventions, I played around with the free online tool used to create the clouds: Wordle.  Uber-fun!

The United States Constitution (larger image):

The Declaration of Independence (larger image):

The Gettysburg Address (larger image):

My thesis paper (larger image):

The script from some 80s movie (larger image):

The Washington Post’s Tom Toles:

And this one:

In case you missed Tina Fey last night on SNL: