These People Could Be In Charge of Supreme Court Appointments

"Of concern to McCain's campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin's interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing.

The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.

There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence."

From Jonathan Martin's Politico.com blog

Combine that with McCain's recent condemnation of a SCOTUS decision giving GITMO detainees habeas corpus rights as "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country" (forget Korematsu, forget Dred Scott, forget Plessy), and I don't see how anyone could feel comfortable giving this pair the power to pick our next Supreme Court Justices.

Economic Disaster?

The last couple of weeks have been somewhat of a crash course in economics for me as I struggle to understand what on earth is going on, what our alternatives are, and what I would even like for our government to do about the situation. Today, the House defeated the bailout, and afterwards I discussed the implications of this whole crisis with a Republican friend of mine who knows far more about the current situation, how we got there, and so on, and I realized both that it's not all the Republicans' fault (although I still think it mostly is), and that I've actually come to understand a fair amount of what's been happening and why.

One thing that my Republican friend said that does not ring true to me is that people are not paying their mortgages because their mortgage principals are higher than their homes' values. I don't know to what extent that is true, because I have not looked into it and I'm not really sure how to. I suspect, simply on a gut level, that most people who are in foreclosure are so because they can't afford to make their mortgage payments, which is how I come to believing that it is mostly the Republicans' fault. Trickle down economics do not work. In addition, Barney Frank told me (and by told me, I mean that I saw it on TV) that the last Dem Congress before this one, in 1994, authorized more regulation of sub-prime mortgages, but Greenspan refused to exercise his authority. Yes, I realize this leaves some of the blame with Clinton. I'm ok with that. I still think it leaves most of it with the Bush administration. Which, I admit, helps me sleep at night. In the end though, I guess it doesn't really matter which party caused this - there's blame enough to go around - what matters is fixing it.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the bailout. It seems like the framework might be sort of generally wrong. We should be worried about the credit crunch, but it seems to me that giving the companies that messed up a bunch of money, and Paulson, who doesn't seem to have done much to avoid this crisis, a bunch of only mildly checked authority, is the wrong starting point. It seems to me that we should be worrying more about helping the people who are not responsible for this mess. Perhaps we should be spending the money on helping normal Americans afford to pay for gas and those mortgages that have become unmanageable, and so forth. Regardless, I think that $350 billion right now with the likelihood of giving another $350 billion is too much. We're about to have a new Congress and a new President, so I think we should be focusing on the short term, giving some smaller amount of money, and perhaps waiting for more decisive action till January. I'm just worried about what will happen. And frankly, I'm scared of what will happen either way. I'll probably be fine, but what's going to happen to the millions of Americans in foreclosure? Somehow, the silver lining that this whole crisis is catapulting Obama up in the polls is not sufficiently comforting.

The GOP and Anti-Intellectualism

Sarah Palin, reports show, attended 6 colleges in 6 years in order to graduate from the University of Idaho, currently a third tier school, with a degree in Journalism (not known to be a particularly difficult degree path at most schools). John McCain finished 894th of 899 students at the Naval Academy. Neither have gone on to pursue any further scholarship that I am aware of. So far, that's not the end of the world. Clearly, degrees from Harvard and Yale do not guarantee intelligence, let alone competence in governing, and I'm sure everyone can point to people with lesser academic credentials who are quite intelligent and successful, and even possibly qualified to run the country. What bothers me more is the way the GOP tries to paint a lack of academic credentials as an actual qualification, in and of itself, for the office of President.

In some ways, it is important for the President to be in touch with the struggles of normal Americans (which, of course, McCain and Palin aren't for other reasons), but that does not entail lacking education. There is, in fact, no way in which having a crappy education is actually a good thing, but the GOP tries to paint people with quality educations and real scholarly achievement as somehow elitist and snooty. I'm a very intelligent person who has had a quality education - no Ivy Leagues, but I went to a great college and I'm now at a top law school, so perhaps in their opinion, I'm not really qualified to talk about this, as I'm one of the snooty, well-educated people they like to complain about. I'm just not sure I understand how anyone can rationally argue that having a President with poor education isn't a bad thing, or that having a President with a good education isn't a good thing. It's a problem, not only for the immediate future, but for the long term future of our country when we start demonizing education. If we sneer at even adults who have demonstrated a love of and an aptitude for learning, how are we to expect children to ever want to succeed in school?

Basically, this GOP tactic reminds me of the bad old days before I went to a magnet high school. It was so uncool to be good at school or do your homework that I stopped! Thank God those grades didn't end up on my application for that magnet school, or I probably would have ended up with a much dimmer future than the one ahead of me now. It's supposed to stop being cool to pick on smart kids eventually, but for the GOP, I guess it never gets old. Personally, I'd rather elect a President who is smarter than I am, rather than equally or less smart. I know that most Americans would agree with that, were they to stop and think about it for a moment. I hope they do, before November 4.

Here's Hoping

That the most recent polling for McCain is just the convention bounce. Today is the first day in a long time that I've actually been somewhat afraid that he might win. Reasons I think that would be disastrous for America:
1) Supreme Court appointees. I've already written a post about that, so I won't repeat myself.
2) Foreign policy. I am terrified of McCain's temper and how that will end up influencing our foreign policy if he wins. He is notorious for blowing up at people all the time, and we all know he basically wants to bomb Iran and stay in Iraq forever. Who knows how far he'll try to stretch our already thinly stretched military?
3) He might die in office, and Sarah Palin would be a nightmare for more reasons than I can list, but especially her crazy culturally conservative views and her apparently somewhat inept experience as mayor of Wasilla (banning books? leaving a town of 5,000 $22 million in debt? Seriously?).
4) The environment seems to me to be the most important challenge facing our country and the world today, and I'm just not convinced that McCain is sufficiently out of the pocket of oil companies and corporate America to make this the priority it needs to be in our domestic policy.
5) Health care. 45 million Americans without health insurance is ridiculous. There is no excuse for that. McCain doesn't seem to think this is a problem.
6) Nation of whiners. I know the guy who said this technically has no ties to the McCain campaign anymore, but it still seems to be the attitude of the McCain camp, and who can blame them? They're a bunch of rich old folks who honestly don't have to worry about the crash of the housing market, the increasing cost of food or the increasing unemployment rate. So they don't really worry about it, and instead just plan to continue Bush's failed policies of trying to stimulate the economy by giving tax cuts to the rich.

Sarah Palin? Thanks, McCain

It is unbelievable how this pick has blown up in McCain's face so quickly. Creationism in schools, abstinence-only sex ed, no legal abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, abuse of power, banning books, no foreign policy experience WHATSOEVER! And, the absolute best part - her ties to the Alaskan Independence Party! Her husband was a registered member until 2002 - she was apparently a member in the 90s, and even addressed their convention this year. So much for country first... This is the best thing I can remember happening in politics in years. I've been laughing for almost two days straight.