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Does McCain think Palin was ‘right’ to call for an ‘exit plan’ from Iraq?

By Ryan Powers on Sep 11, 2008 at 5:30 pm

In an interview last night with an NBC affiliate in Portland, ME, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) argued that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) is qualified to be vice president because she’s been “right on the issues.” Specifically, he said, “She was right on Iraq, Sen. Obama was wrong.” But when asked about her view of the Iraq war in March 2007 — just a couple months after Bush announced the surge — Palin said that the United States should “have an exit plan in place“:

PALIN: I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place.

If McCain believes Palin was “right on Iraq,” does he then believe the surge was wrong?

Update

ABC News reports, “On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Gov. Sarah Palin took a hard-line approach on national security and said that war with Russia may be necessary if that nation invades another country”:

Palin advocated the accession of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, meaning that if attacked again in the future, the United States would be bound to go to war.

“I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

Yglesias

You Can’t Do It

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 11, 2008 at 5:25 pm

I’d heard the audio of this before, but here via Harold Meyerson is the first time I’ve ever seen good video footage of John McCain’s shocking claim that Americans would be incapable of working as lettuce pickers even if the job paid $50 an hour:

$50 an hour times eight hours per day comes to $400 per day. Five days in a week comes to $2,000 a week. Figure a fifty week year and we’re talking about a $100,000 job. Hard work? Sure. Something Americans would be incapable of doing? I doubt it. That kind of money may be chump change to a guy with eight houses who thinks that people earning $4 million a year aren’t rich, but I bet there are plenty of people who’d take the job.

Yglesias

Petraeus: No “Victory”

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 11, 2008 at 5:12 pm

General Petraeus recognizes what all sensible people can see, but John McCain and George W. Bush can’t, that there will be no victory in Iraq no matter what we do.

Combine this with Nouri al-Maliki’s endorsement of progressive proposals for a timeline for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and in a sane universe we’d all be recognizing about know that the conservative emperor has no clothes on Iraq.

Health

Joe Klein Nails It On McCain’s Health Care Tax Increase

By Guest Blogger on Sep 11, 2008 at 4:55 pm

Our guest bloggers are Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, senior fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

At Swampland, Joe Klein posts a great piece on McCain’s plan to raise taxes on many families with health insurance. Joe Biden raised the same issue yesterday, as did a misleading piece in the New York Sun. We wanted to add one more point.

McCain endlessly charges that Obama wants to “raise taxes.” But due to McCain’s health care plan, far more middle-class families will see a tax increase under McCain than under Obama. Consider:

- McCain raise taxes on more people. Obama would raise taxes on about 4 million high-income households, all with incomes above $200,000. McCain would eventually raise taxes on most of the roughly 90 million households with health benefits from their employers. As explained here, the main reason is that McCain’s tax credit is designed to fall further and further behind rising premiums.

- In addition, McCain raises taxes on the middle class. While Obama would only increase taxes on households making more than $200,000 a year, McCain would raise taxes on typical families making $60,000 by $1,100 in 2013.

So remind us again, who wants to raise taxes?

Politics

McCain’s Staffers Flock To K Street, Undermining His 2005 ‘Revolving Door’ Legislation

By Satyam Khanna on Sep 11, 2008 at 4:35 pm

macc53.jpgPolitico reports today that “at least 16” of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) former Senate staffers have gone on to careers in lobbying, according to an analysis of federal lobbying records. In some cases, McCain staffers have gone to K Street and then returned to McCain’s office:

In many cases, they went to work for clients whose issues the staffers dealt with in the Senate. … Still, during McCain’s nearly 25 years in Congress, the revolving door has remained open. As his aides have moved downtown from Capitol Hill, they’ve drawn from their experience on the senator’s personal staff or on his key committees: Armed Services, Commerce and Indian Affairs.

In a previous Politico interview, however, McCain proclaimed, “I would not allow anyone who worked for my administration to go back to lobbying.” Asked about the discrepancy, spokesperson Brian Rogers said McCain was not referring to congressional staff going to K Street. McCain “was making clear where he stands on the revolving door as it relates to the presidency,” he said.

McCain, however, has written legislation attacking the revolving door specifically with reference to former congressional officials. In the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal in 2005, McCain wrote landmark legislation that “would double to two years the length of time that former congressional officials are barred from lobbying,” according to the Washington Post.

Indian Country Today reported on December 28, 2005 that McCain’s legislation limited former staffers from lobbying on behalf of Native American tribes:

Ex-government employees who go to work for a tribe will now have to wait one year before lobbying their former colleagues. The provision will “close a loophole” in federal conflict of interest laws for those who represent Indian tribes, McCain said.

Politico notes, however, that two of McCain’s former Indian Affairs Committee aides — Eric Eberhard and Steven Heeley — “later represented the interests of Native American tribes in Washington,” undermining the intent of McCain’s legislation.

McCain’s tough talk on lobbyists, calling them the “symptom of a disease” and “birds of prey,” has been consistently undercut by his staff’s revolving door with K Street.

Economy

Where Does McCain Stand On Public Service?

By Pat Garofalo on Sep 11, 2008 at 4:00 pm

Tonight, in honor of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) are “taking a breather from their campaign-trail feud,” and making a joint appearance at “a Columbia University forum on public service.”

This forum, somewhat ironically, comes just a week after the Republican National Convention, where McCain’s supporters reserved some of their biggest jokes for community organizers – or those who make a career out of public service. Watch it:

McCain himself, however, has a more ambiguous stance on public service.

Though he is now a solid supporter of AmeriCorps, he initially voted against its creation and later joined conservatives “in efforts to zero-out funding.” To his credit, McCain has publicly announced that his opposition to the program was “wrong,” and he has since co-sponsored legislation to expand the corps.

But despite campaign claims that he “has constantly spoken to the need for young Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest,” McCain has not proposed a comprehensive public service plan of his own. As NPR notes, “McCain said military service is the noblest of all causes. But otherwise, he seems to view public service as something that happens more or less outside of government.”

The Politico noticed the same thing, and wrote that McCain “has yet to offer any proposals to expand or transform national service outside of the military.” And even now, on a day during which McCain will spend an evening discussing service, his campaign website provides no national service plan beyond a page of links to other organizations.

Obama, meanwhile, has laid out a clear plan to encourage public service, in the form of an expanded AmeriCorps, five new “corps” – Classroom Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps and Homeland Security Corps – and a $4,000 college credit “for Americans willing to complete 100 hours of public service a year.”

Digg It!

Politics

Hannity explodes on air, calls guest ‘fool’ and ‘idiot,’ tells him to get off set.

By Satyam Khanna on Sep 11, 2008 at 3:47 pm

Yesterday on Fox News, Sean Hannity and The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner had a tense exchange about the election. As Kuttner offered advice for Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Hannity interrupted, saying Obama is “hiding” his associations with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. “Stop it. Stop it. This is — this is garbage you’re spewing,” Hannity said. Kuttner shot back, accusing Hannity of “doing RNC talking points”:

HANNITY: You spew this line, DNC talking points.

KUTTNER: I don’t spew any goddamn line. Stop insulting me or I’m walking off the set.

HANNITY: Go ahead. Go. Good-bye. Walk off. … Please. I don’t care. Go right ahead. Walk off. You said the economy is in dire straits.

KUTTNER: It is in dire straits. You want to deny that, you fool?

HANNITY: You fool, you idiot.

KUTTNER: You’re going to deny that the economy is in dire straits?

HANNITY: For the first time — sir, sir, unemployment in this country…

Watch it:

Hannity said that claiming the U.S. has seen a “dire” economy is “all based on a lie.” “We got out of the recession that Clinton and Gore gave us,” he said. In fact, job growth in the eight years before Bush came to office was significantly better than in the eight years since.

Digg It!

Climate Progress

McCain tells the mother of all lies about the soccer mom

By Joe Romm on Sep 11, 2008 at 3:15 pm

In a campaign notable for its lies by the Arizona Senator (see “In HIS big speech, McCain’s 10 energy lies top Palin’s 4 energy lies“) and for lies by and about his VP choice (see “Slick Sarah, the make-believe maverick“) we have the mother of all lies. McCain is asked by a reporter about Palin’s national security credentials, and he (eventually) answers:

She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.

This time it’s personal. I mean seriously. Palin hardly knows anything at all about energy (see “Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert“). Heck, she knows very little even about oil if it doesn’t come from Alaska (see “Most revealing Palin energy whopper: Iran could cut off a fifth of the world’s energy supplies“).

I’m not sure what to be most scared about — the lie or that McCain tells it with a perfectly straight face, as this video shows (at about 4 minutes in).

H/t to Americablog.

Security

Helping America Find Its Keys

By Matt Duss on Sep 11, 2008 at 3:09 pm

michael-mullen-7-31-2007.jpgThere’s something deeply troubling about the fact that the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks should mark the day on which 2008 became the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. After routing al-Qaeda and its Taliban hosts from their base in Afghanistan in late 2001 and 2002, in a military intervention that was broadly supported both in the United States and around the world, the Bush administration turned its attention — disastrously — to Iraq. The effort to build a stable Afghan state has suffered as a result, as CAP analysts Caroline Wadhams and Lawrence Korb showed in a 2007 report.

Dexter Filkins recently had an excellent story about the resurgent Taliban, and how Pakistan’s “largely ungoverned tribal areas have become an untouchable base for Islamic militants to attack Americans and Afghans across the border.”

There’s some indication that President Bush seems to have recognized — as always, a few years late — the severity of the situation in Afghanistan. Yesterday the New York Times reported that “President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government.” While it’s necessary to eliminate insurgent bases across the border, the fact that the U.S. has to do so in the face of protests by the Pakistan government shows how poorly the Bush administration has managed that relationship over the last seven years. U.S. strikes also risk increased destabilization in Pakistan, which just underlines the fact that, after seven years of incoherent policy, we are left with few good options.

Yesterday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen warned Congress that the United States is “running out of time” to succeed in Afghanistan, but that sending in more troops will not necessarily guarantee victory. CNN reported:

Mullen said he is convinced the Afghanistan war can be won but said the U.S. urgently needs to improve its nation-building initiatives and its cross-border strategy with Pakistan.

“We can’t kill our way to victory, and no armed force anywhere — no matter how good — can deliver these keys alone. It requires teamwork and cooperation,” Mullen said.

Mullen is basically making an argument for a progressive national security agenda here, one which encompasses more than military solutions for what are in fact economic and political problems. There’s no way that the United States can confront challenges like instability in Pakistan and standing up a state in Afghanistan all by itself, and other countries have shown that they will be less inclined to help us if we exhibit the sort of “with us or with the terrorists” nonsense that has characterized the Bush administration’s approach to national security. All this seems startlingly obvious, yet it’s not, because some people think the Bush administration’s approach has been just great.

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