veep debate

Sarah Palin did surprisingly well in the vice presidential debate with Joe Biden

I was struck by a few jabs Gov. Palin not only managed to get in, but also to twist about. She correctly pointed out that Sen. Biden had criticized Barack Obama on several points and now was professing agreement with him; as well as another point or two that my mind is blanking on right now.

But by and large, Palin succeeded primarily in the sense that she did not ever become totally incomprehensible, and never had to use a lifeline. For the most part, she stuck to campaign talking points, and I was disappointed to hear her repeat things that Sen. John McCain had argued in his debate with Sen. Obama, and things that Sen. Obama had deflected satisfactorily at the time. (Voting against funding the war, for instance.)

The gap between Sen. Obama and Sen. John McCain is widening, and in Sen. Obama's favor. If this continues, I've little doubt that he's going to win the popular vote. Whether that carries into winning the election as well may be another matter.

Let's hope it is. We don't want a repeat of that again.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Bullwinkle assassinated

interesting point

As the presidential race has been playing, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been touting her experience as a governor as a reason to vote for the Republican ticket.

In contrast, she points out that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has been running on his roots as a community organizer. While he's been a U.S. senator for two years, he has no experience as an executive, and this makes him unqualified.

Someone recently made an intriguing observation, though: Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor.

Which of those two do you have a higher opinion of?

mccain campaign sets controls over media access to sarah palin

I'm getting really disappointed in John McCain. For someone who claims not to be a regular Republican, he sure is acting like one.

It's been an increasingly trope of the Republican Party since the days of Richard Nixon to complain that the media have it in for them. We can argue and debate how much merit there is to accusations of liberal media bias, but it seems there are times conservatives like to trot this out because they don't like being caught unprepared.

For a political party that claims people need to stop blaming outside forces for their failures and find success through hard work, the GOP does like to blame negative perceptions on the news media.

Case in point: The McCain campaign has announced that Alaska Gov. and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will no longer answer questions from reporters "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference." Gov. Palin apparently has made it a practice in the past not to talk to just any media, but only to those who put her in a favorable light.

It's not a liberal bias that makes Gov. Palin look unprepared for the big time. It's the fact that she's unprepard to answer even basic questions, even when someone like Katie Couric throws her a bunch of softballs.

The governor's answers in her interviews have shown a lack of depth and understanding and a ready defensiveness that are enough to make anyone question her fitness for the vice presidency, let alone the presidency, should McCain win and something happen to him.

Limiting press access to Palin to strictly favorable outlets disturbs me. While McCain talks about straight talk and bringing us together, actions such as this contribute to further polarizing the nation by encouraging a divide in how we get our information.

Our nation doesn't need conservative media and liberal media, we need news media, period. We also need politicians who aren't so afraid of the public that they feel a need to control how they appear in the media.

But that control is exactly what McCain is aiming for. So much for straight talk.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'Liberal media bias' and other tired shibboleths

Allow me to say that I have grown weary of hearing about liberal media bias every time Sarah Palin comes across poorly in the press.

This has come up most recently in a political discussion on a religion and humor forum I frequent. An acquaintance of mine known as RBP recently complained that the coverage of former Democratic candidate Jon Edwards' affair in the press was delayed and sorely lacking, Coverage of the teenage pregnancy of Bristol Palin, the daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has been extensive and immediate. It's a double standard obviously. (You may read RBP's comments here, if you like, along with the entire discussion.)

Now I will grant that the coverage of Bristol Palin's teen pregnancy has been overdone. She's not running for vice president; her mother is.

But not newsworthy? Sarah Palin has been running in part on her supposedly superior family values, including an opposition to safe sex education, which does lead to a reduction to teen pregnancy. The contrast is worth noting.

As for Edwards, I don't know how much the news media knew before he finally admitted to the extramarital affair, but let's be fair. Saying that legitimate news media failed to cover something reported in The National Enquirer is rather like taking them to task for failing to cover Bat Boy.

Edwards is a public person, but at the time the Enquirer broke the news, he was not a presidential candidate nor even particularly clearly a favorite for vice president. I'm not sure what public good was neglected in this case. And again, The Enquirer is hardly a font of credible journalism. Perhaps the respectable news media should be all over the impending Bush divorce that the tabloids have been reporting?

Let's look at other high-level affairs and how the news media have covered them.

Not that many years ago the press dug into the story of Clinton's affair with such thoroughness that not only were there stories on how many news outlets were covering Zippergate, there were news stories about many news outlets were covering the coverage of Zippergate. Was that a liberal bias at work, or a conservative bias? Or was it merely pandering to the baser appetites of the public for salacious details about our leaders?

For that matter, John Kerry didn't even have an affair in 2004, but the media still dug into the private life of one of his campaign staffers and made her life a living hell.

Gary Bauer took the unusual step of holding a news conference during Primary 2000 to announce that he wasn't having an affair with his staffers, and was pretty much given a free pass. I mean, really, there's not much of a better way to draw attention to a potential impropriety than to insist that it's not what people think, especially when no one publicly is thinking it.

From I have been told by other journalists, the word around Washington, D.C., during the presidency of George H.W. Bush is that he also was having an affair. I recall no coverage of this at the time. Further liberal bias at work?

I know that "liberal media bias" is an important shibboleth within conservative culture, but let's be fair. Repeat it enough, start assuming it from the get-go, and dang if you won't find boatloads of evidence of it. The New York Times could say that President Bush walks on water, and the response would be "Those dirty liberals are suggesting Bush thinks he's above the law of gravity!"

There are plenty of other reasonable explanations why the Edwards affair wasn't aired immediately, and the Palin situation was. Let's be reasonable, and stop blaming news we don't like on a liberal media bias.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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This is why I support Barack Obama (and why you should too)

I can't speak for anyone else and why she's so taken with Barack Obama, but here are a few of the things that I like:

1. He has a track record of working for the dispossessed in inner-city Chicago.
2. He has a proven history of working with people from both sides of the aisle. I've noticed that he hasn't engaged in any of the personal attacks that have come from the Republican corner. Character assassination becomes no one, and it is especially not desired in a president.
3. He actually listens to advisers when they tell him things contrary to what he thinks.
4. He realizes that our nation has lost a lot of international standing in the past eight years and that the old days are over. We can no longer get what we want because we're America.
5. It's true he opposed the surge in Iraq, which Sen. McCain supported and which apparently has quelled a lot of the unrest there. On the other hand, he also didn't support invading a sovereign nation without provocation, plunging an entire country into chaos, and destabilizing the entire region.*
6. Obama favors moving the United States to greater energy independence. This is a matter of national security, as well as environmental security, and industrial and economic well-being. Remember, he has called for developing a Green Belt here in America, developing sustainable industry to take the place of the Rust Belt that languished and fell apart under the efforts set up by the Reagan and subsequent administrations of "Let businesses go and they'll do what's best." (Which they did -- for the bottom line, which involved moving outside the U.S. and laying off thousands of workers.)
7. As thrilled as I am that the Republicans finally have nominated a woman for the vice presidency, let me point out that should anything happen to Obama, Biden has a strong political resume and presumably would make a viable replacement. Palin's resume is too thin to say the same should anything happen to McCain.

On those things that may concern others:

1. He is not a Muslim. Even if he were, that is neither cause for alarm, nor even for concern. If this is a concern, please get over it.
2. Yes, he is black. That is an asset. Our past 43 presidents have all come from positions of power, wealth, influence and uncounted privilege, and to some extent that's had to affect foreign policy. Obama has had to deal with the downside of America. He's been subject to racism, he's had to prove his worth time and again, and he's done it. In fact, he just recently paid off his college loans. Do you really think that a man who's had to prove himself so many times is just going to assume that the world will do what we wants, should he become president?
3. Also true, his experience at the national level is limited. The issue here isn't experience as much as it is wisdom and willingness to listen to qualified advisers. Obama has plenty of experience at organizing people, building consensus, and getting things done in an above-board manner.
   
   Are people that different at the world stage? Small-minded people remain small-minded whether they work at the city clerk's office, the foreign consulate, or the Grand Assembly. Obama knows how to connect with people, just like George W, Bush doesn't and Ronald Reagan did. Bush also has had great advisers, like Colin Powell, but he doesn't know how to connect with people, and he's ignored advisers when he disagrees with them. Look how that's turned out.
4. Yes, he's "liberal." I wish I knew what people meant by that these days, though, because it seems to an empty pejorative any more. Bush is billed as a conservative, even though he's gone on runaway spending sprees without a plan on how to pay for them, and he's engaged in nation-building of the worst possible sort.
   
   And my mother, God bless her, criticizes Obama for being liberal and yet she's voiced support in the past for abortion and physician-assisted suicide while laying claim to being a conservative. (On the former, at least, she agrees with Obama's stated position, if not McCain's, and Obama's position anyway is "We all want fewer of them, so let's work together.")

* Edited to add: Actually, he voted against funding for the troop when there was no timeline set for their withdrawal. McCain also voted against funding, when there was a timeline attached. Therefore it is just as accurate to say that McCain voted against the surge. And in any event, the real successes there seem to have flowed from the Sunni tribal leaders who have broken with the insurgency and with al Qaeda in Iraq, and not from any increase in U.S. troops.

A few predictions about where gas is taking us

With gas at nearly $4 a gallon in most parts of the country and topping $5 in some states, I'd like to make a few predictions about the next few years.

1. Big Oil is going to be as popular as President Bush. There's going to be some serious pushback against oil companies for making record profits while the rest of are forking over $60 or more to fill up our gas tanks. Right now it's just congressional hearings. I'll be surprised if we don't see some sort of regulatory controls put in place, and soon, to rein in the energy speculators who are driving oil costs up so high, so quickly.

That's soon as is in "under the next presidential administration." Bush is solidly in the Republican camp that holds that government regulation of corporations and business is fundamentally bad for America. Whoever our next president is, we're likely to see a different policy take root, one that allows greater regulation of commodities such as oil, such as we had before the Reagan administration began dismantling regulation.

2. People are going to drive a lot less. Forget canceled or scaled-down vacations, basic day-to-day travel is going to take a hit. We're seeing some of that already, as commuter trains are becoming more popular in areas where they exist, as more businesses encourage carpooling, and so on.

Speaking for myself, I've made a tremendous effort to combine trips, even if it means delaying getting something for a few days. I've gone without milk for three days rather than make a trip to the supermarket before I take Rachel to gymnastics on Thursday, right next to the supermarket. We also walk a lot more. I walk Evangeline to school every day now, and back from school when I can, and I expect on Sunday that we will walk to church as well.

We're likely to see changes in the way people attend church or other houses of worship, for that matter. People who have been driving 20 minutes or more to attend worship services somewhere else probably are going to stop. Many of them will just stop going, and others who don't stop going will at least look for a place closer to home.

That will hold true for other things as well. I imagine that we're going to see a rise in the number of people who live near where they work. They'll either get new jobs, or they'll move. A 40- or 60-minute commute by car just isn't going to be feasible anymore.

3. Cars are going to change as well. Remember how upset Detroit was at the thought of tough new mileage standards that were still weaker than anything else in the world?

We're going to see how fast Detroit can design more efficient cars. Cars made in America are going to be smaller and lighter, and they're going to get a heck of a lot better than 24 mpg. Two-seaters like the Fortwo will become more standard for singles, married couples without children, and commuters; and even family cars will change. We're going to see a lot fewer sport utility vehicles and no Hummers, and a lot more hybrids.

New York and Los Angeles already are running some experiments with fuel-cell cars. If any politicians out there are smart and have an eye to the future, they're going to make it a priority to buy those cars for city and state-owned fleets.

That will drive down the price of the cars, for starters, but it also will lay the foundation for a distribution infrastructure for hydrogen fuel, making widespread use more feasible.

4. People are going to continue to buy less. Who can afford to spend $40 taking a family of four out to eat at a restaurant when you can feed that same family for less than $8 with a homemade meal?

And with food and fuel costing so much more, and with fuel driving up the cost of everything it's used to transport, who's got the money for frivolous purchases? Expect less expensive Christmases and birthdays, more hand-me-down clothing, and more of an effort to salvage things we once would have thrown away without a second thought.

5. People with yards are going to realize that there are better things to grow on their land than grass. If you pay $2 for a pound of tomatoes, but can buy an entire tomato plant for that same $2 at a nursery, where are you going to spend your money?

You may buy tomatoes until yours are ripe enough to eat, but we're going to see a lot more people having a go at gardening. I've already saved a bundle on the lettuce we grow in our garden, and I hope to save more on beans, tomatoes, yellow squash and zucchini. Maybe even some spices and some cucumbers. We'll have to see.

Just about everyone can grow some sort of vegetable. Even apartment-dwellers typically have a porch where they could put a tomato plant in a ten-gallon pot, or a windowbox where they can grow lettuce cheaply. A smart politician, or at least one with a sense of leadership, is going to make "liberty gardens" into a matter of patriotism, as FDR did with victory gardens during World War II.

It wouldn't take much effort to turn vacant lots into community gardens, to keep people from going hungry, nor would it take much sacrifice for corporations with huge and useless lawns to convert some of that space over to community agriculture, saving themselves the cost of maintaining their lawns and banking themselves some serious goodwill in the public eye.

when your parents just don't seem to get it

It's a difficult thing when your parents forget some of the moral lessons they worked so hard to instill in you.

I never had any black friends growing up in suburban western Pennsylvania. My neighbors and everyone at school were as white as my family. We saw non-Caucasians from time to time, but for all I knew, most of the rest of the world was as white, culturally and racially, as I was. To my parents' substantial credit, they raised all four of us with a clear moral understanding that it was wrong to denigrate anyone based on the color of their skin. As much as it was possible in such a situation, we were raised to be color-blind.

So I've been a little disappointed by some of the e-mail I've been getting from my mother the last few years. A few years ago, she shared an outraged e-mail about how the U.S. Postal Service was honoring Islam with a set of Ramadan-themed stamps, even though Muslim had killed thousands of Americans on 9-11. When I would get these things, I would chalk it up to her infamiliarity with the Internet, debunk the claims of the e-mail, and remind her to check those things out on Snopes.com before forwarding them, and move on.

Then on Wednesday, I got an e-mail from her about Barack Obama and what a disaster he would be for the United States if he were elected president.

Now I'm an Obama supporter, it's true, but if someone wants to question his qualifications, that's fine. You can complain that he's too liberal, or that he lacks the requisite experience for the job, and while I might disagree, I won't begrudge you the right to say your piece. I probably won't even begrudge you the right to send such a critique to my e-mailbox, especially if you're a good friend or a close relative.

I draw the line at racist crap, though, and my mom (I'm sad to say) crossed that line. The e-mail was a collection of quotes allegedly culled from "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams of My Father." As near as I can tell, the quotes are all accurate ... as long as your notion of acccuracy isn't affected by little details like changing the meaning of a quote by removing it from its defining context.

The basic thrust of the e-mail is this: Barack Obama hates white people, is sympathetic to al Qaeda and its goals. You'd have to be insane to vote for him.

Racism is an ugly little snake. It feeds on ignorance and fear, and uses them both to stoke the fires of its own hatred a little bit higher and a little bit hotter. My mom's no dummy, but for some reason she's willing to shut off her filters when someone she trusts forwards this crap to her, and then she allows the hateful little people who spawn this e-mail to use her to spread their hate further.

She knows better than this. Why does she do this?

The really sad thing is, I called her up on Saturday to talk with her about it. I had just spoken to my oldest brother. He was so repulsed by what she had shared that he actually had set up his e-mail account to reject anything from her address. I realized that I was letting something simmer and stew that I needed to address head-on.

So I explained to her why I found the e-mail objectionable: not because it attacked Barack Obama, but because it was racist and because it pandered to fear and hatred. I tried to explain what a reasoned criticism of a candidate would look like, and why this one completely failed to pass the muster.

I explained that it ran contrary to the values that she and dad had tried to pass on to us, and that we were passing on to our children, and I might as well have been talking to a wall.

She could not see what the problem was. To her, it was just a different, and important, perspective on the man who likely will be our next president. She could not understand why I thought it was racist, or why Brian found it so objectionable. As far as she could see, she was the wronged party in this whole affair, because we weren't listening to what she had to say.

It was sad to see, and more than a little painful. My mom raised us to be tolerant and respectful, and now, for whatever reason, it looks like she's forgetting in her age the lessons she taught us so well in youth.

So why is it 'Hillary,' and not 'Senator Clinton?'

I noticed years ago that our culture is more inclined to formality where men are concerned, and presumptively informal with women.

In this election very few people speak of "George"; even his detractors prefer to denigrate him as "Dubya" or "Shrub." No one has referred to Republican candidates as John, Mitt, Mike, Ron or anything else, nor have we referred to John or Barack. I don't see a particular reason to refer to the senator as Hillary either.

Why? Because it's more respectful, more formal, and more befitting the relationship we have with her. The Clintons are not close and personal friends of ours. They are not likely to come over to our houses for a cup of tea. When you get down to it, the chances the average American has o meeting them hover somewhere slightly above zero.

Sen. Clinton may be using her first name for a variety of reasons: to differentiate herself from her husband, to create the feeling of intimacy and familiarity with voters, or because it conjures more pleasant associations for her than the name of a small township in New Jersey off Route 78.

It's not as though referring to the senator from New York as Hillary clears up ambiguity. Given the context of a presidential primary, I don't believe anyone is uncertain who was being referred to when we use the name "Clinton." Should confusion arise, there there are plenty of ways to make the distinction: Sen. Clinton and President Clinton, Mr. Clinton and Mrs. Clinton, former President Clinton and President-elect Clinton, and so on.

I think it's better to show Clinton the same formal respect that we show to her opponents and her other peers. Don't call her Hillary without her direction to do so.