The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: Second Half of June 2008 Archive

Come on, it's only June
June 26

OK, late June, but nonetheless quite premature to get either cocky or despondent. These attitudes are being expressed on various blogs and liberal media regarding a new Quinnipiac poll, and which attitude depends on whether the comments are about Obama's lead over McCain or Coleman's lead over Franken. Not to pick on anyone at MNpublius but just as examples, look at the blog entry and comments here. It's not good news that he's down by 10 when he's been closer in other polls, but June results just don't predict that much. Yes, Obama is in better shape in Minnesota than McCain, good news but hardly a surprise. Bush got as close as he did in 2004 only because many voters vote for any incumbent president when the country's at war. He got as close as he did in 2000 because this was one of Nader's best states. Clinton won both his elections, even though my impression was that Perot hurt Clinton much more than his Republican opponents. In other words, this is still a Democratic state at the presidential level, and without a strong third party candidate or an incumbent at war, we'll revert to normal.

Likewise, those of you who thought Coleman would lose easily, a reality check the other way. Almost all states have two competitive parties at the state level, even when one is dominant for the presidency, so it's no surprise a Republican can win. Incumbency isn't as big an advantage this year, but it's still an advantage. Coleman has high negatives in polls, but that just means he's vulnerable, not weak. I've watched Coleman since his first run for mayor, and he's a good politician. He was always going to be tough to knock off. Amy Klobuchar was undeniably a strong candidate, but she ran for an open seat in an anti-Republican year. Franken has a much tougher race, and any Democrat would.

Besides, many candidates have been up or down big in June and defied that prediction. Many voters still aren't paying attention. They're only just starting the general election campaigns. A lot will happen in any race between now and election day. They're still learning strengths and weaknesses, and what issues and themes will work. Despite the incredible length of this campaign, four months is a lot, and the people who will decide are just starting to pay attention.

I'll also say to my fellow Franken supporters, take some heart from the fact the criticism of him is that he's a weak candidate. That can cost the election, but it's a better situation than if our complaint was that he thought invading Iraq was still a good idea or that his campaign was run by lobbyists for bad guys. His scandals are just the controversial statement sort, not accusations of taking bribes or his mistress is talking to the press (if he had a mistress, ever, I'm sure GOP oppo researchers would have told us by now). Also take heart from the fact the whole GOP campaign consists of attacks on Franken's character in an attempt to make Franken the issue. Coleman defends his record, but he has not one policy idea, no issue where he's on the popular side and Franken is against it. If Coleman can't make it about personality, he can't win. Even if he does, if any of the rumors about him being a skirt-chaser pan out, he'll be undercut there too.

Coleman in full
June 26

There's a controversy over a recent video from the Al Franken campaign and a shorter version from the DSCC which includes an audio clip of Norm Coleman saying that given what we know now, invading Iraq still wasn't a mistake. There's not much context, and the Coleman campaign complains that the remark is taken out if context. The Pioneer Press put up the full audio of the press availability, so listen for yourself. The exchange in the videos is about half way through. My own take is that Coleman was less definitive than the videos indicate, but the gist is right. What I noticed was Coleman tried hard to dodge the question, and the reporters followed up his dodges like real reporters. I believe these were local reporters, not Beltway Bubble reporters, which might explain the aggressiveness. The reporter who asked the question in the video, Rachel Stassen-Berger, blogged about it on the Pioneer Press web site here and here. There might be another video in Coleman's claim that the intelligence was wrong, given that the Senate intelligence committee report on the use of intelligence by the Bush administration showed again that they used the parts that supported the case for invasion and withheld everything else, which turned out to be most of it.

My notice was caught by Coleman's use of a talking point regarding the current debate over gas prices and opening more coastline to oil drilling. It was about the last thing Coleman said, something much more definitively wrong than his attempts not to answer the questions about being wrong about Iraq. He said, "We had the worst natural disaster in the history of this country Katrina, and there wasn't a drop of oil spilled." Well, there were a few. That is, if we define "few" as about the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez. Follow the link for details, but I'll just point out that the spills were reported in 2005 and the cited reports are from 2006. Maybe Coleman doesn't know that however, since the information probably wasn't included in the Republican talking points. Someone somewhere in the Republican party, however, knows this to be a lie and is spouting it anyway. It's like the "thumpin'" in 2006 and the impending one this year have taught them nothing.

It also seemed bizarre that he ended the availability with another attack on Franken, this time for not talking to reporters. Which Franken does with some frequency. Coleman seems to have no agenda, just personal attacks. Notice how he doesn't go after Franken on policy, just stupid things like not talking to reporters or saying something offensive, and he must be running out to resort to making things up.

Charlie Black was right
June 25

The McCain campaign chairman has gotten into trouble for his gaffe about a terrorist attack helping McCain, but like sometimes happens with gaffes, it's right, just not something people want to hear. Black was right for the same reason fearmongering has worked for Republicans since the start of the Cold War, including of course conservatives' use of fear ever since 911. Normal human psychology is to respond to attacks by turning to their own militants. Humans, not just Americans by any means, turn to someone who'll hit back, often without great particularly about who or how, just hit someone. In terms of US politics, that's the Republicans. The exceptions occur in unusual circumstances, like the holdout terrorists in Northern Ireland, who got more violent as peace was made in the 1990's, but the circumstance was a consensus formed between both sides that the violence had to stop and the violence came from outliers, not the mainstream of the opposing side. There are more exceptions, but they're the exceptions. Basically, attacks help those who want to drop bombs, which certainly includes US militants like McCain, neocons, and the bushies. So absolutely, as an Obama supporter, even though an attack on US territory will blow a hole in the argument that the acting president has kept us safe, I would be hoping for no attacks even if I wasn't concerned just as an American who doesn't want his country attacked. I need only recollect how we already knew before we voted in 2004 that Bush had lied about Iraq, bungled 911, stolen an election, and fostered unprecedented corruption, yet even those of us who believe Kerry really won have to admit half of voters voted for Bush. Irrationality absolutely kicks in during a crisis.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who successfully prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg for the crime of aggressive war, thereby establishing the precedent that starting a war is, in and of itself, a war crime.

"A refusal to look back inevitably means moving forward in blindness."
Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, on the resistance of the Obama administration to investigating human rights abuses by the Bush administration.

"Why is it that strong women are so often called bullies and ballbreakers, while strong, opinionated men are often called, simply, Justice Scalia."
Salon editor Joan Walsh, on the bigoted attacks on Sonia Sotomayor already on the day of her announcement.

"In Minnesota, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has made military ballot protection a key priority of his Department. The result is that twice as many military ballots are actually cast, and half as many are rejected, as the national average in 2006."
The National Defense Committee, in an article on their web site praising Minnesota's efforts to encourage absentee voting by military personnel stationed overseas.

"We're seeing massive resistance to the cramdown proposal. That's a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to reschedule a mortgage on a primary residence. They're fighting this thing tooth and nail. Now the fact is, the people fighting it are the last people who should get the ear of anyone. And it goes to show me they haven't really learned any lessons. A lot of these folks--large banks, Wall Street firms--they have the attitude that "Heads I win, tails you lose." No matter what happens, we always get ours."
Rep. Keith Ellison, on how the bailed out banks are fighting against bankruptcy reform.

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,. Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''
The late --- and correct --- Paul Wellstone, expressing opposition to repealing the law that prevented financial corporations from entering other types of financial business, like preventing commercial banks from becoming investment banks. This repeal was a large part of making the (collapsing) conglomerates possible.

"The facts revealed reflect the way the U.S. government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture. He was being told he would never leave Guant�namo Bay unless he promised never to discuss his torture, and never sue either the Americans or the British to force disclosure of his mistreatment."
Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, speaking about a British court's ruling that the Bush administration tried to get Mohamed to plead guilty to something, anything, and keep quiet about his treatment as a condition of release.

"We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. I-VT, on the mostly unreported spending by the Federal Reserve to prop up the big financial corporations.

"The AIG scandal is significant and has resonated so powerfully because it is a microscope that enables the public to see what and who has wreaked the destruction that threatens their security and future and, most important of all, to realize that these practices haven't ended and the perpetrators haven't been punished. The opposite is true: those who caused the crisis continue to exert control over what happens and continue to have huge amounts of public money transferred in order to enrich them."
Glenn Greenwald, explaining why the AIG bonus scandal is both symbolic and important.

"Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, during a principals meeting about torture methods.

"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales." Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center, who surveyed scientific research from 1965-1979 and showed that contrary to what climate change deniers keep asserting, there was no consensus on global cooling. That means the point that climate scientists must be wrong now because they were wrong then is itself based on a false assumption.

"We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts."
statement on the web site of University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, responding to an assertion by global warming denier George Will that they said sea ice area is the same as 1979.

"It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known. But ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is coming up on February 12.

"The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events. That's just what creationists say can't happen."
evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, commenting on an experiment that was able to observe a mutation that changed one species into another.

Quotes Archives