I have to say, when the news initially came out how Russia had rolled into Georgia and South Ossetia, I was quite surprised. I was significantly more surprised when John McCain was first on the television claiming that:
I speak for every American when I say to him today, we are all Georgians.
That just pissed me off. I am not a Georgian, I'm American. My wife? She's Russian. And there was a whole lot more to this story that was left out of the American Media.
]]>The BBC reports on this today:
The BBC has discovered evidence that Georgia may have committed war crimes in its attack on its breakaway region of South Ossetia in August.
Eyewitnesses have described how its tanks fired directly into an apartment block, and how civilians were shot at as they tried to escape the fighting.
Research by the international investigative organisation Human Rights Watch also points to indiscriminate use of force by the Georgian military, and the possible deliberate targeting of civilians.
Indiscriminate use of force is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and serious violations are considered to be war crimes.
The allegations are now raising concerns among Georgia's supporters in the West.
And damn well it should. Only on a few of the liberal bogs did you hear how McCain's advisor Randy Scheunemann was working for Georgia long before this incident, but no one covered how loud the Russians were screaming about this incident.
The Georgians were killing ethnic Russians in Ossetia.
This was all over the Russian press, and was a huge deal. Now with an American presidential candidate close to the Georgian government, casting Russia as an out-of-control power, in what looked like a transparent attempt to win a news cycle. This has not helped America's image to Russians:
President Saakashvili gave the order to launch a military strike on South Ossetia with the goal of bringing the breakaway region back under Georgian control.
Russia's leaders have accused the United States of encouraging Georgia to launch the attack by arming it, and have even suggested that the U.S. had the upcoming elections in mind, and wanted to give Republican candidate John McCain a boost.
...
Before the conflict, Russia had been looking for an international solution to avert violence. Hours before the Georgian attack, Russia had been working to secure a United Nations Security Council statement calling for a renunciation of force by both Georgia and South Ossetia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the statement, which could have averted bloodshed, was blocked by Western powers.
The minister said Russia had repeatedly warned of the dangers of arming Georgia, and had had warned U.S. partners that their program of arming and training the Georgian military could lead to a situation where the Georgian leadership would decide to use this new potential in seeking a forceful solution to conflicts on its territory.
But even worse is how US intervention in Iraq has legitimized "Preventative" measures by virtually any other country. We have little moral leg to stand on anymore.
But now it appears that the BBC is confirming what our media would not, that the US armed and trained an unstable government, and at best, failed to discourage them from using this own their own population. Russia, emulating our own justifications, rolled in to stop the attacks on their own ethnic group, was then cast as the aggressor by John McCain, for the benefit of his campaign. Obama gave a more measured response, which was immediately pounced on by the McCain Campaign and their supporters:
Lieberman, one of McCain's most ardent and vocal supporters, responded by criticizing Obama's more cautious first statement on the Georgia situation an example of "moral neutrality" that showed his "inexperience."
In the future, we as a nation may wish to investigate a bit before the rush to take sides, being pushed in one direction by someone with an axe to grind doesn't help. No one is wearing a "white hat" in this situation, and while I am only slightly hesitant to claim that McCain knowingly manipulated the news for his own gain, he has dirtied his reputation with it in any case.
Shame on him.
]]>So is this the final proof of the Great Liberal Media Conspiracy?
It would be quite convenient if it was, as we Liberals could quit worrying about the press being on our side, and Conservatives would have a new windmill to tilt at, but no. A recent article from Politico.com helps explain why.
]]> Politico does a great job a laying the problem out:The Project for Excellence in Journalism's researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative. What's more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain -- and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent). You call that balanced?
And they are right. That isn't balanced, not by a long shot. You don't even need to see those numbers to get that impression from the daily press. Politico continues:
There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site -- when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring -- has made us cringe. As it happens, McCain's campaign is going quite poorly and Obama's is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.
So this pretty well details out the first problem with looking for balance in coverage, most news isn't actually balanced. Especially when you are really looking at only covering two people, and every detail of what they do, there isn't always accurate balance in the positive and negative between them. But can't we just assume that liberal media is working on the side of the Democrats to amplify this? If so we should see that in the numbers, which the Pew study gives us:
In all, 36% of stories about Obama have been positive, vs. 35% that have been neutral. And 29% have been negative. What are we to make of these numbers? One metric is how they compare with past studies, both those earlier in this race and from other years. Obama's are similar to those recorded by the Project four years ago during a two-week period dominated by debates between John Kerry and George Bush. That year, 34% of Kerry stories were positive, while 25% were negative and 41% neutral. In 2000, when George Bush enjoyed more positive coverage than Al Gore, the depiction of him in the press was less flattering (24% positive, 27% neutral and 49% negative).
With these numbers we can see that Al Gore's numbers look a whole lot more like McCain's, and less like Obama's. (Some Liberal press they are, aren't they caching Soros' checks?)
No actually, they are not caching checks from George Soros, they are cashing checks from their respective Media organizations, with the goal of Selling Media (papers, airtime, clicks, etc). And this is the important point. Reporters and Journalists generally don't get paid to do amazing investigative work, they get paid when something is exciting and sells papers. Self-reinforcing memes and backstabbing sources only make this easier. The article in Politico states it this way:
A candidate who is perceived to be doing well tends to get even more positive coverage (about his or her big crowds or the latest favorable polls or whatever). And a candidate who is perceived to be doing poorly tends to have all events viewed through this prism. Not coincidentally, this is a bias shared by most of our sources. This is why the bulk of negative stories about McCain are not about his ideology or policy plans -- they are about intrigue and turmoil. Think back to the past week of coverage on Politico and elsewhere: Coverage has been dominated by Sarah Palin's $150,000 handbags and glad rags, by finger-pointing in the McCain camp, and by apparent tensions between the candidate and his running mate. These stories are driven by the flood of Republicans inside and out of the campaign eager to make themselves look good or others look bad. This always happens when a campaign starts to tank. Indeed, there was a spate of such stories when Obama's campaign hit turmoil after the GOP convention and the Palin surge.
This bias towards exciting (and easy to write) stories rewards candidates with really good message discipline (like Barack Obama and George W. Bush) and punishes those with bad discipline (like Al Gore and John McCain).
McCain is getting hit even harder because he changed his campaign from one that used to be really open to the press, holding BBQ's and long informal talk sessions, to a campaign that is kicking reporters off of the planes and busses. Politico referred to this as "McCain Backlash":
The Republican once was the best evidence of how little ideology matters. Even during his "maverick" days, McCain was a consistent social conservative, with views on abortion and other cultural issues that would have been odds with those of most reporters we know. Yet he won swooning coverage for a decade from reporters who liked his accessibility and iconoclasm and supposed commitment to clean politics. Now he is paying. McCain's decision to limit media access and align himself with the GOP conservative base was an entirely routine, strategic move for a presidential candidate. But much of the coverage has portrayed this as though it were an unconscionable sellout. Since then the media often presumes bad faith on McCain's part.
This, combined with daily little scandals, a changing story, and dropping polls give the reason for McCain's negative coverage, not liberal political bias.
Read:
Why McCain is getting hosed in the press - John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei - Politico.com
Most Voters Say News Media Wants Obama to Win - Pew Research Center
]]>I had originally planned writing something over the weekend about how with the election winding down to it's final days, we needed to do two things:
- Volunteer and work hard to elect Obama (no time to slow down now!)
- Start dialing down the partisan rhetoric to reach across the aisle post-election
Instead of writing that, I finished reading Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean. And with that book finished, I realized that one of my points was utterly useless.
And it wasn't the one about volunteering.
]]>I have been concerned that with such an intense election going on this year, Democrats were going to have a tough time getting Republicans on board to work with us after the election. I have been concerned that we were going to have difficulty with friendships that have suffered with political differences, and that we needed to take the noble step to start reaching out and bring these people over.
But I don't think that makes sense now.
What I took from Conservatives Without Conscience was the stark division between Republicans who are what Dean called Conservative, versus those that he calls Authoritarian. This is one of those differences that has been written about so many times before, but I think we are finally seeing the traditional Republican party discipline failing, and these two groups are coming apart.
If you look at the collapsing support for McCain/Palin, amongst Republicans, you see this. With Colin Powell, Ken Adelman, Charles Fried, and countless other conservatives coming out supporting (even tepidly) Obama's campaign, this means something. The conservatives who are willing to actually come out and analyze the politics and the situation of this election are all coming to the conclusion that McCain does not represent their best interests. And while Obama is not a perfect fit for them, he's their best choice. That leaves only the true authoritarian followers remaining in the Republican fold. This is even pointed out in such liberal sites as the American Conservative:
Part of what has been wrong with the GOP is that its rank-and-file members take their political advice and insights from radio entertainers who seem to understand little about political reality and even less about policy, and who substitute bluster for understanding. When they are confronted with an administration that does much the same, they have seemed only too willing to buy into the bluster. They remain steadfastly loyal to a failed President and his indefensible decisions, and they break with him only when he supports measures that are absolutely intolerable and even then they do this only when the President is profoundly unpopular and no longer very influential. This audience may have the right views about many things, but in practice that translates into reliable loyalty to a party that virtually never serves their interests, which enables the politicians who support all of the intolerable policies that they themselves reject.
The Republican party has put a great deal of effort into cultivating this type of support. But to keep the party ideologically pure, they have been purging all dissenting voices. For a time, this has worked to keep the remaining voices in line. But now we see the fracture in the party driving straight through the middle, shattering it at was once its base.
That crack has been driven wide open by Sarah Palin. Her secrecy, abuse of power in Alaska, lack of interviews, and pride in ignorance of virtually any issue have made her pick the destruction of the Republican party. The Conservatives cannot take her pick seriously, she is abhorrent to their view of a party built by Goldwater and Reagan, who we as Liberals may not have matching worldviews, at least were interested in goals other than pure power for power's sake. But the Authoritarians view Palin as the culmination of exactly what they seek in their party. Pure Loyalty, Pure Ideology. But wholly incompetent.
John Dean quotes Josh Marshall (quoting Al Gore) on this very point, that not only is it not surprising to see this type of culmination from the Authoritarian wing or Republicans, but it is the logical result:
The point Gore makes in his speech that I think is most key is the connection between authoritarianism, official secrecy and incompetence. The president's critics are always accusing him of law-breaking or unconstitutional acts and then also berating the incompetence of his governance. And it's often treated as, well...he's power-hungry and incompetent to boot! Imagine that! The point though is that they are directly connected. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power
And here is where we see Palin and her relationship to McCain manifest. Palin, the incompetent demagogue, has taken the campaign away from McCain, and is trying to seal her own political future. She is throwing McCain under the Straight Talk Express, and this action is proving to the Conservatives that McCain's judgement is suspect. All the better for us.
We don't need to go to the effort of convincing those in the Republican party to come out and meet us halfway for future debate, those people who would be willing to do that are being thrown out of the party en masse. And I think we have been doing a good job of welcoming them along. While I doubt these people will join the Democrats for the long run, it does feel good to know that there are still some out there who may disagree with our viewpoint, but still agree on what is the right direction for America. Hopefully these types of people will take control of the Republican party back from the Authoritarian wing, who have nothing of value to add. Perhaps they will be part of an emergent Libertarian party, I really don't know.
So long as we are reaching out to those we have disagreed with in the past, but who are finding common ground today, I think we are doing the right thing. Because we won't find any common ground with the Authoritarians, if the Conservatives can't find it, we certainly can't.
We know who we need to be working with in the future, even if we won't always see eye-to-eye on how to do it.
Now back to Volunteering...
]]>Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.
Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.
Well now, that's interesting isn't it?
]]> With all the anger coming from the right about "Voter Registration Fraud" it really comes as little shock to see that they have something similar under their own covers.In California, signature-gatherers are prohibited by law from misleading voters about what they are signing.
"You can't lie to someone to procure their signature," said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in election law.
Civil rights activists recently filed a lawsuit in Arizona accusing YPM of deceiving residents to get signatures for a ballot measure that would have prohibited affirmative action by that state. The lawsuit was dropped after supporters of the measure pulled it from the ballot.
In Massachusetts, former YPM worker Angela McElroy testified at a legislative hearing in 2004that she had tricked voters into signing a ballot measure to ban gay marriage. She said she told voters they were signing in favor of a measure to allow alcoholic drinks to be sold in supermarkets.
YPM's Jacoby said McElroy was on loan to another signature-gathering company at the time the alleged deception took place.
Jose Aguilera, a 48-year-old math teacher from Ventura whose registration was recently changed from Democrat to Republican, said he signed the child-molester petition outside an Albertsons supermarket.
He said he was asked to sign a second document but not told that it would change his registration.
"Somehow the guy pulled out something else and I signed it," he said
In this case instead of signing people up, and getting defrauded by their employees, like acorn, these folks appear to have been directed to lie about their petitions, and then to trick people into re-registering as Republicans.
Now the lying itself is bad, and even according to the article the re-registering as Republicans is not actually illegal, since voters can still vote for anyone they want. But what I think the article misses is that by taking updated registrations for Democrats, and submitting them, the GOP is creating a situation where there may be two conflicting registrations for these voters. We already know that the biggest issue in voter roll purges is simple clerical errors, handwriting and misspellings.
The GOP has been using these type of errors all over the country to try to clear Democrats off the rolls. With varying degrees of success. But here you see a possible method of creating these errors, to be exploited in a later purge.
That is what is see missed by the LA Times in this story. Another possible way to help with voter purges in the future, aside from the other dirty tricks. If they are doing similar drives in other democratic areas of the country, it could explain the targeting of purges, once they know there are sufficient additional errors.
I hope I'm wrong.
]]>The CDS market, this market for credit default swaps that was created in 2000 by Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act, this is now a $62 trillion market, up from $900 billion in 2000. That's like five times the size of the holdings in the NYSE. And it's all speculation by Wall Street traders. It's a classic bubble/Ponzi scheme.
Read that again: a $62 trillion market
]]> CDS are basically unregulated gambling on the market, and with the market moving down, they need top be paid out. AIG didn't fail because it held bad mortgages, AIG failed because it had to pay theinsurance on those mortgages. Matt takes Byron to task again:Do you even know how a CDS works? Can you explain your conception of how these derivatives work? Because I get the feeling you don't understand. Or do you actually think that it was a few tiny homeowner defaults that sank gigantic companies like AIG and Lehman and Bear Stearns? Explain to me how these default swaps work, I'm interested to hear.
Because what we're talking about here is the difference between one homeowner defaulting and forty, four hundred, four thousand traders betting back and forth on the viability of his loan. Which do you think has a bigger effect on the economy?
And the creation of this entire market does, in fact, fall on the shoulders of Phil Gramm (my emphasis below):
B.Y.: When you refer to "Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act," are you referring to S.3283, co-sponsored by Gramm, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Tim Johnson?
M.T.: In point of fact I'm talking about the 262-page amendment Gramm tacked on to that bill that deregulated the trade of credit default swaps.
Now, the home mortage crisis is bad, but in any normal market a few companies would fail, smarter companies would buy out their assets, and the market would go on. But the CDS market basically tied the entire banking/insurance industry together, like a team of climbers on a cliff face. But in this case, none of the climbers had a safety rope attached to a rock, so once one started to slip, down they all went.
This happened not because Banks used CDS's to insure their own loans, which is what they are good for, But because of speculation. As noted in Wikipedia (my Emphasis):
[C]redit default swaps are commonly used contracts to insure against the default of financial instruments such as bonds and corporate debt. But they also are bought and sold as bets against bond defaults -- a buyer doesn't necessarily have to own a bond to buy the credit default swap that insures it.
This last bit is why the CDS market grew to this insane level, and it is also why once these assets started to fail, massive payouts had to occur, to parties with no actual interest in the mortgage in the first place. And with the market in decline, companies like AIG had reduced capital to pay these back. From there it was just a rolling, growing snowball. Paul Roberts points out what made this lack of liquidity even worse:
The greatest mistake was made in 2004, the year that Reagan died. That year the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson Jr, was head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. In the spring of 2004, the investment banks, led by Paulson, met with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this meeting with the New Deal regulatory agency tasked with regulating the US financial system, Paulson convinced the SEC Commissioners to exempt the investment banks from maintaining reserves to cover losses on investments. The exemption granted by the SEC allowed the investment banks to leverage financial instruments beyond any bounds of prudence. In place of time-proven standards of prudence, computer models engineered by hot shots determined acceptable risk. As one result Bear Stearns, for example, pushed its leverage ratio to 33 to 1. For every one dollar in equity, the investment bank had $33 of debt!
It is important to understand this, because it didn't need to be a housing value failure to trigger this. Anything could have done it, we have been experiencing all kinds of asset bubbles in our economy, but this one was just big enough to start all the dominoes falling.
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