Feminism and the 2008 Democratic Primary

Michelle Goldberg of The Guardian brilliantly skewers the argument that equates feminism with a vote for Hillary Clinton, and the false feminists who make this claim. She also makes this point, which I recently made to an associate who would not acknowledge its accuracy:

If the roles were reversed, if Obama were behind by every metric, Clinton would have been coroneted by now, and the cry for her opponent to get out and quit being a spoiler would be deafening.

See the post for some really ridiculous rhetoric by radical feminists attack female supporters of Obama (who, it should be noted, have been in the minority in nearly every state outside of Illinois).

Tales of Rhetorical Hypocrisy, Part 1: Bush and Diplomacy

From the International Herald Tribune, Adam Nagourney writes:

Without using Obama's name, President George W. Bush, at a White House news conference on Thursday, assailed his willingness to meet Cuba's new leader, Raúl Castro, without preconditions, saying that to do so would grant "great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity."

What, you mean people like Pervez Musharraf, Vladimir Putin, the Saudi Royalty, and the Communist Party leaders of the People's Republic of China? Yeah, Presidents should never meet with those dudes without preconditions. Who would even think of doing such things?

Hypocrite Conservatives Can't Adhere to Their Self-Proclaimed Principles

The Democratic House passed a new bill yesterday providing incentives to encourage the production of green energy technologies. Everyone in Washington seems to support the idea of encouraging the development of technologies. So why has President Bush threatened to veto the legislation? Well, to offset the increase in spending of approximately $17 billion, the bill cuts subsidies to oil and natural gas companies. Republicans in the house have been calling this "a tax on oil production." This is a shameless tactic that the Republicans have been using in spades: equating anything that increases the tax burden on any entity with a tax increase. It is false by definition. You see, all American-owned corporations are required to pay taxes. But if your industry just happens to be one that formerly employed the current president, turns out he's willing to give you a huge tax break, simply because you are already making such ridiculously large piles of money at the expense of the American consumer. Isn't that swell? It's not a tax increase - it merely requires that the fossil fuel empires who are currently trying to destroy our planet pay the same taxes as every other corporation or business. So where's the hypochrisy? In the NYT article, Republicans are quoted as saying that the bill would definitely pass (I guess they means it wouldn't be vetoed, since it has already passed) if only those restrictive "taxes" on oil companies were there. Why can't the Dems just pass legislation with the incentives for green energy, no strings attached? Apparently, the Democrats are adhering to a policy known as fiscal conservatism (that's right, conservatism), which requires the government to only spend as much money as it earns. Republicans have suddenly begun denouncing reckless spending, a phenomenon that manifested itself suddenly on a Tuesday night in November of 2006. I guess they felt that after six years of running up massive deficits, it was time for them to tighten their belt - if only the Dems would listen to them! The takeaway here is: House Republicans are full of sh*t.

Economists Thaler and Woodward Deride Clinton's Mortgage Fix Plan

Senator Hillary Clinton presents herself as a policy expert and declares her readiness to govern from "day one." But her recent prescriptions for the housing market should cause doubts for thoughtful observers.

University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Susan Woodward, a former chief economist at both the SEC and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, took a shot at Hillary Clinton's plan to freeze adjustable home mortgage rates yesterday. Highlights:

What would happen if scheduled rate increases were halted? Although it might make some borrowers happy, such a freeze could potentially poison the mortgage market and quickly exacerbate the slump in housing prices. If lenders and investors do not receive the interest payments they expected, they will be wary going forward. Should they avoid providing funds for adjustable rate mortgages, since the government would have just proven that the terms can be changed if difficulty arises? Should they avoid all mortgages, since the government now seems to prioritize short-term concerns for borrowers? Maybe they should avoid lending in the United States altogether? Such a policy would clearly send a dangerous message far beyond our borders. Two trillion dollars of U.S. national debt is held by foreign governments. Interest rates on this debt are low in part because foreigners trust the U.S. to pay back its loans as promised. The rates would surely be higher if its holders thought the U.S. could renege on its promises to pay. But this is precisely the expectation America would encourage by unilaterally changing the terms on $2 trillion in mortgages held by investors around the world... Senator Clinton's policy amounts to a command-and-control approach to economic policy in which the government announces prices and tells suppliers what to produce. Undertaking such an intervention can only raise interest rates on mortgages (and maybe other interest rates as well) as markets attempt to incorporate risk premiums to cope with possible future interventions. Promising the American people that you can fix things by just lowering their interest rates is dishonest, a fairy tale that won't come true.

Fairytale. Heh. Now where have I heard that line before...?

The Significance of Senatorial Endorsements

Brian Beutler makes some keen observations about the meaning behind the endorsements by senators of Clinton and Obama. I particularly like this observation about Ted Kennedy's endorsement:

Kennedy chairs the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions atop both Clinton and Obama. He is, at the same time, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, which is the very committee that has supposedly served as Clinton's home school for acquiring her widely praised military expertise. He is, in other words, not just the nation's most trusted and revered Democrat, but also, coincidentally, the one who's had the greatest opportunity to see the young candidates at work. And he came away supporting Obama.

Clintons Vs. Obama: The Reagan Comments

Bill and Hillary Clinton's distortions of the comments of Senator Obama regarding 1) the legacy of Ronald Reagan, and 2) the Republican party being "the party of ideas" over the last 10-15 years were the subject of the most bitter and vituperative confrontation between Barack and Hillary during Monday night's CNN debate (if you haven't seen any coverage of this slugfest, you've been living under a rock). Jake Tapper does an excellent job of presenting what each side actually said and evaluating whether the Clintons were accurately representing Obama's comments (they were not). If you would like to decide for yourself, a video of the full interview that sparked the controversy can be found here.

Robert L. Johnson's Enlightening Clarification

I have said that I would put all the competitive rancor vis a viz Obama v. Clinton behind me, and after their conciliatory statements of the past few days regarding the race flare up, I am even more strongly committed to playing nice, as Obama would like me to do. However, I still feel that it is incumbent upon us to point out the complete BS spewing forth from the mouth of one Robert L. Johnson. Let's put aside the fact that it seems a bit unusual for the feminist-oriented "Let's Make History" Hillary crowd to be embracing the founder of BET, an network that has probably done more than any of its competitors to denigrate and objectify women. What is dead wrong with this situation is that in Johnson's "apology", he claims that when he said "when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book," (see the video here) what he was referring to was Obama's time spent community organizing. In the brilliant words of Noam Scheiber on TNR's The Plank, "Riiiiight." I've been trying to get my head around what, exactly, Johnson was trying to say, granting that he is telling the complete truth about what he meant. I had intended to merely insert his explanation into the quotation above, but when I looked at and re-transcribed Johnson's comments, it immediately became apparent that the whole rambling monologue was completely incoherent. Therefore, I have made a slight editorial change (enclosed in brackets) to his statement, so as to generate a grammatically correct sentence. My edited transcription of his remarks appear below as the first quote. The second quote is my attempt to insert his explanation of what he meant into his statement (said insertion is also enclosed in brackets). However, I invite one and all to come up with their own insertions, mad-libs style, in these key points. So: According to Robert Johnson, when he said:

As an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues, [are racist,] [or: are denigragting Dr. King's role in the civil rights movement,] [or: your mad-lib here,] - when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book.

What he meant to say was:

As an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues, [are racist,] - when Barack Obama was [community organizing] in the neighborhood.

Doesn't it all make sense now? But the real problem is not that Bob Johnson is a liar (or dissembler, or what have you). The real problem is not that such an incredibly inarticulate and sleazy individual became the world's first black billionaire. No, the real problem is Hillary Clinton's reaction to Johnson's comments. Michael Crowley points out the contradictions inherent in the statements about Johnson's comments that Hillary made during last night's debate. Key takeaway:

[A]fter a Hillary gave an answer downplaying the relevance of surrogate comments ("what somebody [people] never heard of said"), Russert followed up on Johnson: "Were his comments out of bounds"? This time, Hillary offered an entirely different spin: "Yes they were. And he has said that." So, to recap, Hillary's positions were: 1) Bob Johnson denies that he did anything wrong and I accept that. 2) Bob Johnson admits that he did something wrong and I agree.

By the way, I have read most of Obama's Dreams from my Father (I'm in the midst of reading it now, but I'm way past the youthful indiscretions section), and I suspect that Johnson has not. If he had, he would know that the "neighborhood" was a prestigious prep school in Hawaii and then Occidental College, which is located north of L.A., near Pasadena (and about as far as one can get from South Central and Compton while still living near L.A.). Obama went to "Oxy" for two years before transferring to Columbia University in New York City. He did indeed live in or near the "neighborhood" of Harlem while at Columbia, but by that point he had completely sworn off drugs and alcohol, and basically went through something like a period of purification, accompanied by a withdrawal from society. When Obama was a community organizer in Chicago, his efforts were centered almost entirely on improving the lot of the most impoverished African-Americans on Chicago's notorious south side. His focus was always on getting real results on small issues that mattered to the people he was trying to help. For example, he led an effort to successfully lobby the Chicago Housing Authority to secure loose asbestos in an isolated housing project. Another effort resulted in the establishment of a new employment center on the far south side. In the process, he brought together a diverse cadre of community activists to work together for change, and he touched the lives of dozens of individuals with whom he had close personal relationships. If this is the experience that Johnson meant to refer to when he was trying to denigrate Obama, I can't even fathom what his point would have been. Then again, perhaps expecting a coherent and rational argument from this guy is more than just a little bit naive...