Tuesday’s Mini-Report

July 1, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* A sales crash: “June auto sales plunged, according to reports from the nation’s major automakers, as Americans shunned pickups and SUVs in the face of record gas prices and growing concerns about the weak economy. Despite high gas prices, sales of many fuel efficient car models also fell sharply in the month as automakers were caught without the supply of vehicles that people suddenly wanted to buy.”

* How bad was the stock market in June? It was “the worst June for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials since the Great Depression.” Wow.

* For the second month in a row, more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

* This is the kind of headline you get when you go to the well once too many times: “McCain Camp on Military Jabs: It’s a Conspiracy.”

* For what it’s worth, Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-Va.) office doesn’t know why McCain thinks Webb attacked him: “Senator Webb has never, and would never, demean the service of anyone who has stepped forward to serve our country. To the contrary, he was calling on those on all sides of the debate to refrain from implying that their political views are representative of the military writ large.” Oh, don’t go confusing McCain with facts again.

* On a related note, it looks as if a McCain surrogate has started attacking Wesley Clark’s military service. I’d expect a few days of a massive whine-a-thon, were Democrats not already grown-ups.

* Jonah Goldberg, surprisingly enough, apparently isn’t convinced that the United States is great.

* I dare readers to watch this video and tell me why news consumers would regularly watch the cable news networks voluntarily.

* If foreign policy is McCain’s area of expertise, he should probably know the difference between Sudan and Somalia.

* Keith Olbermann’s latest “special comment“: Obama and the FISA “compromise.”

* Note to Republican campaign staffers: sock-puppetry almost always ends badly.

* Best wishes to Darcy Burner, who suffered a serious house fire overnight. She and her family, thankfully, are apparently fine.

* I almost feel sorry for BWM Direct, Inc. Once the TPM crew has sunk its teeth into a potential corruption story, the target of their inquiries rarely ends up looking good.

* This probably wasn’t the kind of news Norm Coleman’s re-election campaign was hoping for: “Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics asking for an investigation into whether Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) violated the Senate gifts rule by accepting lodging from Republican operative Jeff Larson.”

* McCain appears to be touting free trade at a time when most Americans are in a very different place.

* I think Wal-Mart needs more than a new logo.

* Note to the McCain campaign: I’m pretty sure Bush supported his own “surge” policy.

* And finally, just what will it take for conservative Republicans to stop repeating the lie that China is drilling for oil in Cuban waters?

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

With Obama promising to hike the capital gains tax, no wonder people are selling stocks to avoid them. duh

  • “Note to Republican campaign staffers: suck-puppetry almost always ends badly.”

    **Suck**-puppetry?

  • Javier, how many people do you know that make $250,000 on selling stock? Apparently you run in vastly different circles than I do.

    Idiot.

  • #4 MsJoanne looks like all those faith base initiatives are making you believe in Santa. $250,000 lol

  • * This is the kind of headline you get when you go to the well once too many times: “McCain Camp on Military Jabs: It’s a Conspiracy.”
    *****************************

    Don’t you love how Repigs use an underhanded technique (like attacking and discrediting the opposition’s military service record) to the Nth degree, deny that they are doing it (if they are ever even called on it), and then at the first small hint of anything that smells even remotely like what they have been doing all along, they cry foul. Whine on, swine, whine on.

    IOOIYAR.

  • Javier, What school of logic are you using? The boneheaded non-thinking school? Wait, wait, I have an idea. McSame is NOT calling for a capital gains tax hike. Quick, shout it from the rooftops!! There, now everyone will invest in the stock market quickly and the it will recover in dramatic fashion! That’s how it works, right? To quote B. Bunny, “What a maroon!”

  • * How bad was the stock market in June? It was “the worst June for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials since the Great Depression.” Wow.

    If the government really wanted to save gas and hold down prices why not have a coupon program like the telecommunications program switching over to high definition get a coupon for a converter box.

    Well, why not convert every government car now. Citizens in groups get a coupon for an electric vehicel. Trade your car gas car it in for their new car that charges and uses electricity. Of course they will not do that till Bush and Compamy is gone. But this is a war and we should just go shopping. Of course who is going to by the oil stocks that are dumped on the market. Not many. Portfolo’s are going to go crazy.

    You know it and I know it the economy is screwed up and the media especially CMSNBC will not admit it. America will be at a stand still while you I watch Ditech and refinaincing along with every other commercial that advertises to help you with your bankruptcy.

    If America had a robust economy none of the Ditech commercial crap would be on you television screen with a hundred little tiny words flashed on the screen for five seconds as disclaimers without the ability to read it. Please that is about as ****ed up as you can get in an economy screw up. And Mainstream Media is grossing big money putting it on screen.

  • I’ve got a question: Has anybody here ever heard any corroboration of McCain’s tale of heroism, that he was offered the opportunity by his N. Vietnamese captors to come home but decided to stay in prison and be tortured to show solidarity to his fellow inmates? That whole tale never did seem to make much sense to me, and I’m not sure it says anything good about his judgement either.

  • just what will it take for conservative Republicans to stop repeating the lie that China is drilling for oil in Cuban waters?

    Judging by their track record of accuracy, one would have to say: what it would take is for China to actually start drilling for oil in Cuban waters.

  • Sarabeth, don’t three lies make a truth? China IS drilling off the coast of Albania! I heard it three times AND I got it in email. It HAS to be true.

    /snark

  • MsJoanne @ #2: Personally, I couldn’t possibly disagree more with ArchPundit’s take. It is absolutely wrong on a great many points, such as the claim that Rove wasn’t attacking Kerry’s strengths back in 2004. That is exactly what Rove was doing. And it worked because Kerry didn’t fight back aggressively enough.

    Furthermore, Obama has been making **the exact same point** as Clark did. Obama has said many times already that, while McCain may be a war hero, he is none the less unqualified to be President. The main difference has been in how Obama has been making this point as opposed to how Clark has chosen to make it.

    The fact of the matter is, Clark is uniquely qualified to make that point in the particular way he made it. If Obama were to attack McCain in the same way Clark did, then, to use ArchPundit’s metaphor, he would have been battering against McCain’s strength. But when it comes from a career military officer and diplomat like Clark, the exact opposite is true. And if Obama were to watch Clark’s back and defend him as Clark is doing for Obama, it would be a real one-two punch that even McCain’s “strength” couldn’t withstand.

    The main thing that so many democrats don’t seem to understand (which is silly, considering how long this has been blindingly obvious) is that the GOP and their media enablers are going to smear us no matter what we say or do. So we might as well give them something to **really** cry about. For example, letting Clark be an attack dog, and then backing him up with suggestions that *McCain* is impugning *Clark’s* military service, really would be undermining McCain’s strength in precisely the way ArchPundit says we need to.

    The problem is, Obama can’t do that so long as he backs away and surrenders to the GOP framing of this “controversy”.

  • Shade Tail said Personally, I couldn’t possibly disagree more with ArchPundit’s take. It is absolutely wrong on a great many points, such as the claim that Rove wasn’t attacking Kerry’s strengths back in 2004. That is exactly what Rove was doing. And it worked because Kerry didn’t fight back aggressively enough.

    I am not saying I agree with everything Arch said. But what Rove did was to show a weakness (where it should have been a strength) in that Kerry didn’t fight back. He didn’t stand up for himself and if he can’t do that when he is fighting for the ultimate in American politics (being president) how could he stand up for the country? I don’t agree with that but one could argue what I just did and I think that argument would hold water.

    I still like what Arch said. 🙂

  • Note to Republican campaign staffers: suck-puppetry almost always ends badly.

    Awesome. The teaser is as funny as the story.

    I hereby nominate Suck Puppetry for entry into the blogospheric lexicon.

  • I have a lot of family who view this from a slightly different angle. Navy family. Family who, to put it mildly, view John McCain’s service record as “about as disrespectful and embarrassing to the United States Navy as anyone can get.”

    THAT was the mildest comment—and it didn’t come from one of the Republicans. The comment about McCain being “a swamp-sucking, sh*t-for-brains excuse of a pilot,” however, DID come from one of the Republicans—as did the “f*cked-in-the-head hotshot”—the “self-inflicted ace” (for killing his own plane 5 times)—and “Ho Chi Minh’s substitute for a SAM.”

    The other Dem said that “McCain got shot down because he was the biggest target in the sky. It’s really hard to miss a low-flying jet with training wheels. It’s just like shooting at the side of a barn—it’s a gimme.”

    Now then—what was that about John McCain’s “service” record again?

  • #4 It doesn’t take a master in economics to see that people with higher incomes have more money invested in stock that people with lower incomes. And there you have the sell off. Obama said it, for him the elusive concept of fairness is more important than the economic well being of his country.

  • #17, how do you think we are going to get out of massive deficits? Oh, right…tax breaks. You’re definitely not a master of econ.

  • MsJoanne @ #14: It’s important to get the perspective out there, I’ll agree. It keeps things fresh that we can have disagreement. But seriously, that’s about the only positive I can think of. The entire article seems to implicitly surrender to the GOP framing of this controversy and ignores that we won’t be able to do anything to please them regardless.

    As you point out, Kerry’s real weakness was not fighting back. And now Obama is at least raising questions on whether or not he’ll do the same. Rather than back away, he should have charged ahead. “Are you suggesting that a life-long officer and diplomat doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to military service? Are you really going to impugn the career of a retired four-star general that way? Unlike George Bush and John McCain, I really will listen to the generals on the ground.” I’m sure Obama could have found a more artful and political way of phrasing that.

    The way I see it, it is only “fighting dirty” if you have to lie to do it. Democrats in general, and Obama specifically, have the truth on our side. If we stand firm and throw it in the GOP’s faces, it isn’t going to hurt us no matter how many bloggers and pundits have convinced themselves that John McCain is “strong” on this issue.

    Can you tell I feel strongly about this? 🙂

  • How bad was the stock market in June? It was “the worst June for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials since the Great Depression.” Wow.

    This is what the ninth ‘not since the Great Depression’ headline in the last 6 months or so. It’s getting scary out here in the real world.

  • How bad was the stock market in June? It was “the worst June for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials since the Great Depression.”John McCain’s childhood

    Fixed!

  • Obama said it, for him the elusive concept of fairness is more important than the economic well being of his country.

    As opposed to McSame, who thinks pouring out infinite, open-ended, off-the-books billions for the Iraq war constitutes caring about the economic well being of the country? If the right wing had the courage of their convictions they’d be willing to ask the American people to pay for the war. After all, why wouldn’t we? It’s a noble cause that’s essential to our national survival, right?

    But they’ve done everything possible to keep all the costs–human as well as financial–“elusive,” out of the minds and off the screens of the people in whose name they’re racking up the debt for it. If they actually believed what they’ve said about this “vital struggle,” which is supposedly saving us from national destruction and making democracy flower in the desert, they’d have done things out in the open. The fact that they don’t trust the American people enough to go on the books about the cost gives the lie to all their claims. They know the country wouldn’t tolerate a “war tax” to pay for this boondoggle for a minute. They know it wouldn’t pass the laugh test. So they just keep it off the books and pretend it’s all free and our real problem is not enough tax cuts.

  • **Suck**-puppetry?

    Believe it or not, that really was a typo. It’s fixed.

  • Darcy Burner suffered a serious house fire? — talk about name recognition.

  • The rightwing freakout about Wesley Clark’s statement about John McCain is obviously scripted from on high. “I want you to DESTROY Wesley Clark.”

    Too bad there wasn’t someone interviewed who smashed them in the teeth with what the right wing Swiftboaters did to John Kerry.

    The harassment and loud talking over those defending Gen. Clark is a verbal power play, maybe good for entertainment value but not much else.

  • * If foreign policy is McCain’s area of expertise, he should probably know the difference between Sudan and Somalia. — CB

    Details, details, picky, picky. Both start with an “S”, no? Both are in Africa and full of those brown, dastardly, nasties. The only real difference is that Obama was photographed in Somalian garb but not in Sudanese one. That, and of course the fact that McCain’s long term memory is better than short term; happens to all of us elderly folk.

  • Interesting how much the new WalMart logo looks like Vonnegut’s drawings of his own asshole in Breakfast of Champions. If I was his executor I’d sue.

  • Watched half of that video and was ready to break the monitor. lying, complete idots were unwilling to hear an explanation and totally unwilling to debate what was actually being said… I never watch TV news and this is exactly why. pure propaganda that insults and enrages my intelligence. If there was ever any doubt that this is republican controlled media it is totally gone. Not an ounce of truth in any of it. What total crap and the media personalities are as stupid as stupid can get. I would have put them and their comments down in minutes but they would never allow it on the air.

  • Holy Cow Jonah Goldberg now thinks RONALD REAGAN hates America?

    Why doesn’t he just move to France? I hear the Freedom Fries are real good.

  • We endured a primary campaign that devolved into a hysterical, psychotic Hillary Clinton, and bow we;re in a general election campaign with a hysterical psychotic John McCain. I have a feeling we won’t be hearing much issue oriented content coming from Camp McCain. There will be alot of very unattractive playing the victim. He’s a real maverick,.

  • Gee, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) doesn’t seem to be helping McCain much

    But Cochran said he observed McCain engage in a physical confrontation with a Sandinista while participating in a diplomatic mission led by Sen. Bob Dole and others in the fall of 1987. Cochran, McCain – who had won election to the Senate the year before after serving in the House – and other members of a bipartisan committee of lawmakers called the Central American Negotiations Observer Group – met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, head of the left wing political party known as “Sandinistas,” about tensions in the region.

    The atmosphere was tense, as the U.S. was pressing the countries involved “pretty hard.” Cochran noticed a disturbance at the meeting table in a room lined with armed personnel.

    “McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerilla group here at this end of the table and I don’t know what attracted my attention,” Cochran said. “But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don’t know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don’t know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him.

    There were no punches thrown and the two sat back down. The man, who appeared to be ruffled after the confrontation with McCain, was an associate of Ortega’s, possibly a lieutenant, but Cochran said he was unsure of his identity.

    Flash forward 21 years. Tuesday, McCain was traveling in Central America and he made a stop in Colombia. In 2006, Ortega won his office back after losing a 1990 election.

  • Can you imagine all the media barf if this war hero war running for President?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson%2C_Jr.

    Thompson: What’s going on here, Lieutenant?
    Calley: This is my business.
    Thompson: What is this? Who are these people?
    Calley: Just following orders.
    Thompson: Orders? Whose orders?
    Calley: Just following…
    Thompson: But, these are human beings, unarmed civilians, sir.
    Calley: Look Thompson, this is my show. I’m in charge here. It ain’t your concern.

    One of these days…
    I might be able to say I am proud of the media of my country.
    For now..
    BARF!

  • Whenever the economy tanks, I start wondering whether this will be the big one. I’ve often wondered why our economy is by far the largest in the world, over $13 trillion out of about $50 trillion GDP globally, since we don’t produce anything anymore. I start wondering to what extent our economy is propped up by China and other creditors, because if anyone knew our economy was just a bag of hot air, there would be a catastrophic collapse around the world. So everyone continues lending us all this dough so Americans can continue to spend like drunken sailors on funny money, propping up the economies of the producing nations. And as long as we continue the charade, everyone is happy. I mean, I get concerned that our economy is just another bubble, and that it has to burst someday.

    So what’s wrong with this picture? Any economists out there?

  • Can you sense the outright INDIGNATION that the talking heads are emitting? How DARE Wes Clark challenge the official newspeak?
    Heretic!
    Disbeliever!
    Shun him! Shun him!!!

    I used to be sort of sad about the downward spiral of the Corp Media, not anymore. I want the complete & utter disemboweling of these pigs.

  • So what’s wrong with this picture? Any economists out there?
    I’m no economist. I was just a machinist, a person who made things, for nearly thirty years. The work, even the defense work, gradually went overseas. The wages for skilled men were literally cut in half. Now we run the economy by selling each other insurance and lattes. What could go wrong?

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  • I used to be sort of sad about the downward spiral of the Corp Media, not anymore. I want the complete & utter disemboweling of these pigs.

    Agreed. I’m starting to think of it as euthanasia. The cable networks need to be put to sleep before they embarrass themselves further.

  • Meanwhile – after the McCain camp’s vigorous pushback on Clark’s comments – there are the first rumblings that, well, Clark actually might be right.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25479327/

    Note as well that Americans have a long history of honoring military service from their political leaders…and then voting for the other guy.

    Draft dodger George W. Bush beat Vietnam vet John Kerry.

    Draft dodger Bill Clinton beat WW2 vets Bob Dole and George H. W. Bush.

    Army reservist (who never faced so much as a single bullet) Ronald Reagan beat Navy Midshipman Jimmy Carter.

    It’s still the economy, stupid. And the more time McCain spends improving his bona fides on the economy and less time taking about an issue which has never swayed the electorate, the better for him it will be.

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