Saturday Night Open Thread

I am wondering why there is yet another religious forum in this election. If we can have a minister getting a one-hour interview with the two candidates for president of the usa, why not a foreign policy expert, such as a former ambassador? Why not someone in the medical field who can ask knowledgeable questions about their health care policies? Why not a panel of economists, small business owners, and working stiffs?

Why does religion get so much play when the other things I have mentioned are far more important, and specific answers are needed to get a grasp of what these two people are capable of; how they think?

I think the fight between the CC wing of the GOP and the Romney Business wing of the party is going to be heating up after tonights forum. We already know that Huck and MItt cant stand each other and Mitt really wants that VP slot. McCain might want to take a run at Michigan and sure up his domestic and economic credentials with Romney. That would drive Huck and the CC wing crazy as they would have two guys on the ticket who are not in love with the CC wing of the party at the same time as Obama is trying to make inroads to Christians. Could be some high drama.

I almost wrote a post on bigfoot, since that’s a hobby of mine but did not have the time. (I once joined an expedition to look for bigfoot in the wilds of central Pennsylvania; we did not find one.) One of the guys promoting all of this has a very shady reputation, so obviously there’s a need for skepticism.

But what really gets me is this: I know it is late summer and things are somewhat slow, but the amount of media attention this has achieved is staggering — especially when you consider that these guys have NO EVIDENCE. Nothing. Zilch. Zero.

There was a time when editors, seeing a startling claim being made with no evidence to back it up, would have deemed it a non-story and given it no space. They would have said, “Call me when you’re ready to produce the body.”

I miss those days.

The Latest clever wingnuttery from The Weekly Standard tows the McCain Line pretty firmly. Which is to say the Neoconservative position is that Russia is the new Iran which was the new Germany, of course after Iraq stopped being Germany.

But this stuff is easy to slap down. No doubt they are gonna want to scare as many people possible with this new Red Scare.

Thanks, Keori (#7). I was thinking of writing something on that story, but you saved me the trouble.

@ R.T.Thaddeus #9 Wasn’t that was a great column. Mr Lapham never disappoints. I have read a number of his books and he always sees through the bullshit. I read it this morning and immediately fired off a letter to Harpers to compliment him as there are so few journalists who will speak the truth to power. Here is what I posted earlier in the day about it it has the direct link to it.

Well here is a link to very eloquent (abet long) synopsis by Lewis Lapham in Harpers this month, where he comments on the overblown media reaction to Tim Russert’s death. He is the only one I have seen with the guts to point out that Russert was almost elevated to sainthood and described as a hard hitting journalist, when in fact he was just another corporote shill trying to preserve his 5 million a year job. All the talking heads ..they’re not like us. They all breath that rarefied air of multi million dollar corporate jobs and know who their masters are . You need not question why you see Corsi all over the airwaves, it is a plain as the nose on your face.
Here is the link (this may not be available until you sign in)
Titled: Elegy for a Rubber Stamp
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/0082168

This isn’t really political, but it’s funny/sad. A couple of debate professors get into it and wind up embarrassing themselves beyond measure.

On Big Foot: it’s as if we humans have some inner need for exotica. We’ve chased after gods and Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster and space aliens and angels and demons and werewolves and the afterlife and extrasensory perception since the dawn of history, but have yet to prove the existence of anything beyond our natural world. And yet every time a new claim comes to our attention we feel a surge of excitement, and hope, secretly, that maybe this time there will be something to it.

I wonder why we are so skeptical about the supernatural, except when it comes to our religious beliefs, where we will swallow wholesale the most outrageous, baseless claims without blinking an eye. It was Carl Sagan, was it not, who said extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and for the most part we observe this rule, except when it comes to religion. Why is that?

Big Foot et al proponents are generally ridiculed by the public, but when it comes to religion, the doubters are treated like the nutcases. Why is that?

If you listen to internet radio you might want to take a look at this and then send an angry letter to your Congress critter.

I’m so pissed right now I can’t think…

Of anything but random acts of violence.

Greedy fucking bastards.

This isn’t helping my mood either.

Prove some harm besides “I don’t like it!” or SHUT. UP.

It is good news that Biden is going to Georgia this weekend, he will be far more effective than Lieberman and Graham, and what is more he was requested by the Pres of Georgia, not by McSame. (Anyway he is on Obama’s side)

McCain was baptized but then changed faiths and has not been rebaptized.

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/363453.aspx

Here’s one from Amanda over at TP that’s worth a peek:
Lawsuit filed against Gonzales, DOJ officials.»
Yesterday, six attorneys “rejected from civil service positions at the Justice Department filed a lawsuit” against “former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other top officials for allegedly violating their rights by taking politics into consideration” in the hiring process for the Honors and Summer Law Intern Programs. The complaint states that the Gonzales’s Justice Department oversaw the “gross deprivation of hundreds of individuals’ constitutional rights” in “an extraordinary, and uniquely successful, conspiracy to achieve political results.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/16/lawsuit-filed-against-gonzales-doj-officials/

With any luck Goodling, Gonzo, et al will need food stamps soon.

I link to two of the best analyses I’ve seen so far about the Russian-Georgian fiasco.

@ 12. On August 16th, 2008 at 6:32 pm, JohnR said: & @ R.T.Thaddeus #9

So i hit the link provided & get this:

Sorry—the full text of this item is only available to Harper’s Magazine subscribers. Subscribe today for as little as $16.97 per year!

Sorry Harpers, get with the program… This is the INTERNET, where it’s free or it sinks.

Thanks for the baptism clarification – I was going to post that too.

That’s what I get for relying on the media for my info – DOH!

How many freakin “anecdotes” is Warren going to let McCain spin?
Obama needs to be ready for this crap in the debates.

@ olo sorry about that.
I think the thing is that it is from the latest mag and like a lot of print mags they don’t make it available until the next issue is released.
It really is a good article. If it were not for putting Steve at risk for copywrite issues I would post the whole thing

I just finished watching the forum with Rev. Rick Warren at Saddleback, and if the rest of the country is anything like the audience there…McCain wins in November.

McCain said he supports drilling here and drilling now…big applause.
He supports more nuclear power plants…big applause.
He supports school vouchers…big applause.
He’s pro-life…big applause.
He (and Obama) said marriage is between a man and a woman…big applause.
He supports “defeating” evil…big applause.
McCain repeatedly referred to his time as a P.O.W….big applause.

I’m depressed.

I will say much more about this later, but I have just watched the full forum, and have a few preliminary comments:

First, all of us, and yes, especially me, were wrong about what we expected. This was not a discussion of ‘religion’ — which would have destroyed McCain — but a discussion of public policy hosted by a pastor.

Second, every MSM moderator who interviewed the candidates should be blushing, because Warren put them all to shame. The questions asked were tough and brilliant, and he should be commended.

Third — and this ain’t gonna make me no friends here — McCain was better than I ever have seen him or expect to see him again, and on one of two questions, he might have even been better than Obama — though overall, Obama was far more intelligent and thoughtful and — if ‘winning’ is meaningful in this context — I’d say he won, but by a much closer margin than i expected. (Yes, too often McCain did make ‘every sentence a noun, verb, and POW,’ but other answers were thoughtful.)

Fourth, the one weakness of the format was that, with pre-organized questions, there was no opportunity for follow-ups.

and fifth, a minor point, but those who condemned the idea of having a minister involved in the political arena should remember two names; Father Robert Drinan, S.J., who, as a Congressman was perhaps the fiercest and most liberal critic of Richard Nixon, and someone who a number of you have suggested as a possible VP choice for Obama, Ted Strickland who, while he only served briefly as an assistant pastor, is a minister and has a master’s degree from Asbury Theological Seminary.

Finally, it wasn’t the knockout punch I expected, but it might have been one of the most intelligent and adult discussions of issues I can remember in any campaign. Again, my hat is off to Rick Warren. And anyone who needed a lesson in civics, or in civility should watch this.

i have to say i thought McCain actually won. People will remember his answers when they wont remember Obama’s. It was a McCain night. He was wrong on many of the things he said and i think he straight up lied on several questions but that wont matter. McCain presented his answers just how most voters like them simple and shallow.

RE: Saddleback.

I’ve been watching the Olympics.

But Sullivan says Obama was real cool. And McCain was surprisingly good at stroking the Base.

But nevertheless he declared things a draw.

Oh these Christians are great jokers aren’t they? They would have us believe that neither contestant knew the questions beforehand, but it sure looked like one did.

Obama was great: thoughtful, compassionate…REAL.

McCain was well scripted and prepared for the questions…you know…the questions he didn’t know were coming. He did not have to stop and think even once…amazing if you ever watched him try to answer unscripted questions in the past….he just monologued happily along asking if it was time to answer the SCOTUS question before they even got to it.

Following up on my earlier post, from my point of view, Obama did great. On the other hand, from the Saddleback audiences point of view (and those of like-mind), McCain killed. Every other line was an applause line.

Some falsehoods…

*We should use all sources of energy (he missed crucial votes this year designed to expand non-fossil based sources of energy)

*Vouchers are working in D.C. (they’re not)

*With reference to Sudan/Russia/Georgia/Iraq/Iran…we should “defeat evil” (he was against sending air power and NATO troops to stop the genocide in the Balkans and against Clinton when he was ready to send troops to Haiti)

I’m sure there are others that I missed.

Flailing around on privacy vs. security as he repeats that there are so many ways of communicating these days, McCain remembers to throw in blaming Congress for being Republican vs. Democrat. He’s urging that stop and they get something passed, when he remembers something was passed, and suddenly he switches from “they” to “we” – never mind that he didn’t even vote on it.

Thanks for the comments on the Rick Warren event. Did anyone get the feeling that the questions had been provided to McCain beforehand?

Oh, and I totally agree that this pastor put every single person in the mass media to shame.

Every. Single. One.

As I expected, Obama was thoughtful and nuanced while McCain was Mr. Soundbite the entire time. Simple and simplistic.

I noted that Obama mentioned how difficult it was not to slip into stump speech mode while McCain jumped right into it with unseemly glee.

McCain seems to have gaffed in Colorado by trying to reopen a 1922 agreement on water-sharing between seven Western states.

For once, McCain is right, and has taken the politically-risky (impossible) position that recognizes reality, unlike every other political nitwit there.

The truth is, the 1922 Compact was unworkable as written, written as it was at the high-point of water flow in the system for the previous 1,000 years (as hydrologists knew at the time). If the seven states today took the water they are specifically allowed to take, they would take 750% more water than there is. There is a reason why this region was once known as “the great American desert.” Now that it is overpopulated by drooling morons intent on creating an “English garden” for every house, it is likely – as things move faster and faster toward the predicted 200-year drought – to return to that previous condition. It will only happen faster the longer the bipartisan tenthwits continue to copy the Three Monkeys.

I say this as the son of a scientist who worked his whole life for the Department of the Interior on the water projects of the West, and who said when he left that what he had helped create had made the coming catastrophe worse.

McCain may indeed get hammered for this, but any Democrat living in the Compact States who takes pleasure in that is a drooling moron with their head planted firmly up their ass.

Another quick comment — it’s that sort of night. But if McCain was handed the questions in advance — and certainly it was possible to figure out at least the general topics — I doubt if it was by Warren. On the other hand, I can see any number of ways McCain could have ‘cheated’ and had someone in the audience get the questions to him.

And Hannah, given the format, Warren didn’t have any way of ‘following up’ and was really trying to be a moderator and not to play ‘gotcha’ games. Even if he knew that McCain was lying, it wasn’t his business to call him on it. And lie he did, on vouchers, on drilling — of course.

(Btw, on drilling, please try and remember one thing. People who are desperate — and those of us who live in cities don’t realize how vital a car is to someone who doesn’t, particularly someone out west, where distances are great and public transportation generally lousy — really don’t like to admit that a ‘quick fix’ doesn’t work. It’s like cancer quackery, or even diet quackery. Reality does not just have a liberal bias, it is also biased towards the complex, and solutions take time and hard work, but people like quick fixes and — I gotta say from some comments here, not on this — the Internet has made people even more ‘impatient.’ I am actually surprised at the number of people who have stood up and said ‘this won’t work.’)

Tow thing.

One, in response to Prup @58

I am one of those people out in the west for whom a car is required to live. Gas prices really suck and punch a big whole in your pocket. But i am also young. I have a long time left on the planet and we need to do something that will work for my lifetime and drilling aint it. It is not even a good red herring imo. You cant get oil to market for years and when you do its a global market so we dont get to keep it. People who cling to drilling are not helping anything. Its scary to try and move beyond oil but it has to be done.

two, i wanted to plug The McCain Doctrine

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/us/politics/17mccain.html?pagewanted=1&ref=us

It really nails McCain’s foriegn policy style. Lays out his whole history on using American force abroad. Def worth a read. My other thoughts on it here.

Tom Cleaver – What the heck are you talking about? You are absolutely right that the compact divided up a river based on flukey estimates of water available, but by about 20% (750%?!? Where did that number come from?) If the compact were reopened, any agreement would have to take that built-in shortage into account and California, Nevada and Arizona — the downstream Evil Empire — would likely have to share in the shortage. Compacts have to be ratified by Congress and with interstate water battles in the mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Great Lakes region already at a fever pitch, no one will want to go on record as saying the biggest bully states should win these battles all the time.

The downstream states get a generous, guaranteed delivery from an unpredictable water supply but still want more water from a river they contribute hardly any water to. McCain’s saber rattling is basically saying Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico have to give up more of their share (their share being a percentage of the water left over from cutting an overestimated supply in half and making an annual firm delivery out of a supply everyone now knows is a good bit less that was originally stated.)

McCain is trying to pander to California (a perennial water hog), Arizona (a perennial legal loser when it comes to the Colorado River) and Nevada (no one EVER anticipated Las Vegas in 1922) by alluding to the fact that they will get more water at the expense of upper half of the river that is already getting screwed in the deal (and everyone knows that.)

New Mexico and Utah, by many estimates, are at their theoretical limit of water from all the river agreements. Wyoming is unsure what amount of extra water it may still have to develop and Colorado, with the specter of water consuming oil shale development may not have enough water to develop this “Saudi Arabia of oil shale” that Republicans keep bragging about, but that issue’s for another comment.

The fact is the whole Colorado River Compact, and all the other agreements that form the “Law of the River,” are already a house of cards that are going to topple hard one day when everyone realizes the river is already vastly over committed. McCain’s proposal will only make matters worse. This is vintage McCain, Tom, make a hopeful promise about an intractable conflict he knows nothing about and promise a fairy tale happy ending that just simply cannot possibly happen.

If the compact were reopened and renegotiated, McCain’s home state of Arizona would lose yet again. They are at their full compact entitlement simply because they are taking the excess water they aren’t using, despite unbelievably wasteful water use in Arizona, and dumping it out onto the sandy desert floor near Phoenix to recharge the aquifer below while claiming that as a consumptive use. California, and now Nevada, have lawyers that will jump all over that sh*t and McCain’s own state will lose yet another heartbreaking water setback.

This is another situation where McCain proves his reckless, senile and ignorant thinking on policy foreign and domestic. He has to go down in this election or we will look back on the W years of trashing this nation as the “good times.”

RE:; Knowing the questions beforehand. It occurred to me that the trend on the Repub side of the campaign has been desperate. I am no conspiracy theorist, but do you think for one minute with the amount of big corporate money at stake the Rove Machiavellis would let him not have an advantage here? I mean how hard would it have been for McCain to have a small earpiece feeding him the audio in the quiet room . The Republicans have proved time and time again they will do anything, anything to hold onto power (I need not provide examples to this group) Until someone can prove different, that he was supervised in that room, I will assume the worst.

Watching the Saddleback thing. Obama considered his answers before he spoke, McCain seemed to be answering some of the questions before they were asked, this is suspicious from someone who cannot answer a simple question when asked by a reporter. Did McCain have the questions in advance? It certainly seems so!