Global Boiling: Rising To The Threat — Or Not
The future of global warming — a world of extreme storms, floods, droughts, rising seas, catastrophic change, species loss — is upon us today. The Wonk Room looks at the startling new scientific evidence that has come out this week, as well as how top environmental organizations — the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation — have responded.
PLANET DYING
Each day brings new, troubling headlines: the drought in Australia has deepened; coral reefs are dissolving as the oceans acidify; global warming threatens giant sequoias with extinction; and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program reported that soot and smog pollutants from Asia could cause extreme heatwaves and drought in the United States by 2050. Further, September represents the height of the Atlantic hurricane season and the end of the Arctic summer — both of which are being catastrophically changed by global warming:
EXTREME STORMS BUILDING
As the Wonk Room reported yesterday, top hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel found that Hurricane Katrina would have been significantly weaker twenty-five years earlier. With storms Hanna, Ike, and Josephine following in Gustav’s wake, Nature published a stark new study that shows hurricanes are getting fiercer:
As this year’s Atlantic hurricane season becomes ever more violent, scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so far that global warming will significantly increase the intensity of the most extreme storms worldwide. . . . Rising ocean temperatures are thought to be the main cause of the observed shift. The team calculates that a 1 ºC increase in sea-surface temperatures would result in a 31% increase in the global frequency of category 4 and 5 storms per year: from 13 of those storms to 17. Since 1970, the tropical oceans have warmed on average by around 0.5 ºC. Computer models suggest they may warm by a further 2 ºC by 2100.
At Climate Progress, Joe Romm responds:
Actually, if we don’t sharply reverse our current emissions path soon, SSTs are likely to rise far more than 2°C by 2100. Indeed, we could easily see a 1°C increase in SSTs by 2050, and that means four more potential city-destroying super-hurricanes per year by mid-century.
McCain’s ‘Specific Ideas’ On The Housing Crisis Failed to Appear At The RNC
Yesterday, the Wonk Room noted how little discussion of the economy occurred during the Republican National Convention. One facet of the poor economy in particular - the housing crisis - was almost completely absent from the RNC.
The Associated Press reported today that the housing crisis is now affecting 4 million Americans, who are “either behind on their payments or in foreclosure.” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has acknowledged the problem, saying that it is having a “devastating impact on our financial markets and the household budgets of millions of hardworking Americans,” and that “we have a responsibility to take action to help those among them who are deserving homeowners.”
Still, housing was mentioned only once during the entire convention, the same number of times as “Elvis,” and “Tyrannosaurus.”
Former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) said during his address Wednesday that “If you’re a young couple losing your house…you want something to change,” and that McCain has “specific ideas to respond to a need for change.” However, Huckabee didn’t offer the specifics, instead going on to note, in the very next sentence, that “there are some things we never want to change - freedom, security, and the opportunity to prosper.” Watch it:
Perhaps Huckabee declined to put forth specifics because John McCain’s plan for solving the housing crisis consists of “policy platitudes instead of solutions.”
McCain, like President George Bush, advocates a laissez faire approach to housing, and has said that he would only “convene a meeting of the nation’s accounting professionals” and “top mortgage lenders,” who he hopes would voluntarily help Americans.
However, as the Wonk Room has pointed out before, “individual and voluntary negotiations between at-risk borrowers and mortgage servicers is clearly not working.” Instead, “effective solutions for foreclosed properties must be centered on state and local governments and their non-profit, private sector, and philanthropic partners.”
But the RNC speakers just ignored the problem, which is affecting millions of Americans today, and spent their time talking about “drilling,” “mavericks,” and “hockey moms.”
McCain’s Proposal To Create Jobs: An Ineffective Cut On Corporate Tax Rate
In his acceptance speech last night before the Republican National Convention, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) set forth a tax proposal that he claimed “will create jobs“:
Keeping taxes low helps small businesses grow and create new jobs. Cutting the second highest business tax rate in the world will help American companies compete and keep jobs from moving overseas
A job-creating economic plan is supremely important now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released new numbers showing that unemployment is at a five-year high of 6.1%. Last week alone, “the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped by 15,000.”
But if McCain wants to create jobs, cutting the corporate tax rate isn’t the place to start. According to the Congressional Budget Office, a corporate tax cut “does not create an incentive for [corporations] to spend more on labor” and “is not a particularly cost-effective method of stimulating business spending.”
As the Wonk Room has previously shown, cutting the corporate rate (which is only the world’s second highest on paper) would just lower America’s already below average corporate tax revenue. The Center for Economic & Policy Research co-director Dean Baker has said that “it doesn’t make any sense” to say that corporate tax rates are strangling the economy.
McCain, though, has thrown his chips in with the Bush economic philosophy, which has left the working and middle class behind. In fact, as McCain accepted his nomination, news headlines screamed of what Wonkette called an “economic collapse“: payrolls and stocks down, foreclosures and credit-market writedowns up.
Job growth in the eight years before Bush came to office was significantly better than in the eight years since. But to McCain, the Bush-Norquist agenda of tax cuts for corporations takes precedence over anything aimed at the anyone else.
Which Eight Years Did McCain Prefer?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its monthly employment data, and the picture is bleak: the American economy lost 84,000 jobs in August, and the employment rate jumped to 6.1%, the highest in five years.
While productivity is up 4.3% since last year (people are working harder with better, more efficient technology), real wages have sagged, dropping .4%.
These numbers are a continuation of trends resulting from the policies of George W. Bush: when times are good, they’re only good for corporations and the wealthy, and when times are bad, they’re mostly bad for the middle class.
Take a look at the comparison in job growth from Bush’s presidency to the eight years before George W. Bush:
Unfortunately, John McCain plans to continue George W. Bush’s failed economic policies. Today, in response to the new job numbers, McCain’s campaign said “Americans are hurting and we must act to create jobs.”
They’re right, but that’s not what John McCain’s Bush-style economic plan would do.
McCain’s Health Care Fear-Mongering
During last night’s acceptance speech, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), insinuated that comprehensive health care reform would undermine the current system:
My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.
So-called government-run health care has done marvels for the senator. As Ezra Klein points out, McCain “has never been off government health care a day in his life, and is healthy enough to run for president at 72.”
But personal history aside, McCain’s fear-mongering about comprehensive universal reform, is both deceitful and dishonest.
Consider Massachusetts’s landmark health reform law. The legislation built “upon the existing health care system, with expansions to Medicaid, subsidized coverage for people with low incomes, and reform of private insurance markets.” Far from forcing bureaucrats into consult rooms, the legislation increased access to meaningful care:
- The overall uninsurance rate for adults in Massachusetts decreased from 13% to 7%.
- For low-income adults, dental visits increased 9% and preventive care visits increased 6%.
- Low-income adults…who said they had not received care due to cost decreased from 27% in 2006 to 17% in 2007
McCain’s concerns about families being forced into “government care” — i.e. his insurance — also never materialized. In Massachusetts, “employer coverage increased by five percentage points” and there has been no evidence that “employers are less likely to offer coverage to their workers under health reform than before.”
Seventy-one percent of Massachusetts residents support these reforms. But if McCain is so scared of government programs, perhaps he should opt out of his own insurance coverage.
Bush On Iraq Troop Numbers: ‘I’m Not In These Meetings, Because I Got Other Things To Do’
Excerpts from Bob Woodward’s new book in this morning’s Washington Post add more detail to a portrait of a President who fidgeted while Iraq burned:
Publicly, Bush maintained that U.S. forces were “winning”; privately, he came to believe that the military’s long-term strategy of training Iraq security forces and handing over responsibility to the new Iraqi government was failing. […]
In October 2006, the book says, Bush asked Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, to lead a closely guarded review of the Iraq war. That first assessment did not include military participants and proceeded secretly because of White House fears that news coverage of a review might damage Republican chances in the midterm congressional elections.
This is pretty consistent with past reports of a White House in which politics and policy were one and the same, in which matters of national security were considered in terms of how best to achieve political advantage for the President and his party.
Woodward also writes that Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the president’s commanding general in Iraq from 2004 to 2007, “came to believe that Bush did not understand the nature of the Iraq war”:
“Casey had long concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself,” Woodward writes. “He later told a colleague in private that he had the impression that Bush reflected the ‘radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, “Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you’ll succeed.” ‘ “
As we’ve written here before, quite a few members radical “kill the bastards” wing of the Republican Party are now part of John McCain’s campaign, and will likely be helping him plan those “other wars” McCain has promised American must fight.
Importantly, Woodward also confirms again that — despite the constant crowing of war supporters eager to exhume their reputations — the 2007 troop escalation “was not the primary factor behind the steep drop in violence there during the past 16 months.” Rather, factors like the Sadr militia “freeze,” the completion of large-scale sectarian cleansing, and the Anbar revolt, combined with a new counterinsurgency strategy which enabled greater cooperation between U.S. forces and the Iraqi population to reduce violence.
Further, as some predicted, the tactic of empowering independent Sunni tribal militias has yet to show results in terms of Iraqi political reconciliation. With Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki failing to make good on promises to find jobs for these some 100,000 Sunni militamen, and with Shia-dominated Iraqi government forces now arresting the movement’s leaders, there are few signs that that cutting deals with independent militias will result in a stable Iraqi state.
Top Hurricane Scientist: ‘Katrina Would Not Have Been As Intense In 1980′
In an exclusive interview with the Wonk Room, Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Kerry Emanuel says that he would be “surprised” if global warming “were not a big factor” in intensifying Hurricane Katrina’s destructive power. Katrina, the costliest and third deadliest hurricane in United States history, intensified to Category Five strength, with peak sustained winds over 170 mph, over extremely warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico before its record storm surge devastated the Gulf Coast.
Emanuel compared the meteorological conditions in which Hurricane Katrina developed in 2005 to the existing conditions twenty-five years earlier in 1980. Using his model of tropical storm potential intensity, which uses at determining factors such as sea and air temperature and wind shear, he found that Katrina would have been significantly weaker twenty-five years earlier. When asked how to characterize his findings, Emanuel replied:
I think it is correct to say that Katrina would not have been as intense in 1980. What part of that to attribute to global warming is tricky, but I would be surprised if it were not a big factor.
 |
| NCEP/NCAR Re-analysis potential intensity for 1980 and 2005 (Emanuel, 2008) |
Dr. Emanuel, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Influential People of 2006, is the author of dozens of influential papers on tropical meteorology and climatology, including the 2005 Nature paper, “Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years.” Dr. Emanuel has authored the popular science books Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes and What We Know About Climate Change, and is profiled in ScienceProgress editor Chris Mooney’s book, Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.
Is McCain Snoozing Past Science?
Our guest blogger is Jonathan Moreno, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Try this thought experiment: Imagine America lost its lead in science. What would be the effects for economic growth, health care, energy, communications, information technology and national security? Or try to think of a sector of our society that would not be affected.
The American founders got this even before the word science was used the way we use it today. They foresaw that the new nation’s power and prosperity would be founded partly on technological innovation. They admired and sought to nurture and reward the creative spirit. Jefferson’s patent statute is perhaps the most obvious example, but each member of the founding pantheon had a specific interest in “natural philosophy.”
In that spirit, a group of science organizations have asked both presidential candidates to respond to 14 key questions about the future of American science. So far, only Sen. Obama has responded.
Sen. McCain has claimed to recognize the importance of science and the urgency of innovation. His website states:
John McCain Would Place A Priority On Science And Technology Experience. As President, John McCain will be committed to bringing talented men and women of science into the federal government. He will strive to ensure that Administration appointees across the government have adequate experience and understanding of science, technology and innovation in order to better serve the American people.
He also points out, “Less than 20 percent of our undergraduate students obtained degrees in math or science, and the number of computer science majors has fallen by half over the last eight years.”
These numbers are clearly abysmal. So why hasn’t McCain responded to the questions of these science organizations?
Has Sen. McCain been napping in science class? That’s one final exam that America can’t afford to fail.
Gingrich ‘Drill Here Drill Now’ Book Blames ‘Left-Leaning Politicians’ For Energy Crisis
As the Wonk Room reported yesterday, Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” campaign will soon include the launch of a book, inventively titled Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less: A Handbook for Slashing Gas Prices and Solving Our Energy Crisis. Drill Here, Drill Now was ghostwritten by American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) official Vince Haley, formerly Newt’s research director at the American Enterprise Institute, the premier Exxon-Bush think tank. It’s being published by Regnery Publishing, the right-wing organ that distributed Jerome Corsi’s Unfit For Command.
Newt’s book oozes with false sympathy for working Americans:
The suffering of Americans due to high energy prices is bad enough. But there’s more: powerful people believe that Americans — everyday folks just trying to earn a living, feed their families, and help others — are actually the root cause of the energy crisis. These influential people — many of them the very same individuals who helped create the energy crisis in the first place — have little compassion for the suffering of their fellow countrymen.
Who are the “influential people” who “helped create the energy crisis in the first place” Gingrich and Haley blame? Is it Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Enron, Exxon Mobil, Peabody Coal, Tom DeLay, John McCain, hedge-fund speculators, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich himself, or others in the conservative elite who have profited from skyrocketing energy prices and prevented change while American families suffered?
Nope! The villians in Newtland are “anti-energy, left-leaning politicians.”
McCain’s No Maverick Next To Unpredictable Palin
Our guest blogger is James Kvaal, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Gov. Sarah Palin is a strong conservative, but she has an unpredictable streak, sometimes raising taxes or taking on business interests. Calling her a “mother, moose hunter, maverick,” the McCain campaign is trying to use Palin’s record to paint John McCain as a maverick too. But by drawing attention to McCain’s party-line platform, the comparison could backfire.
As mayor, Palin cut property taxes but also raised sales taxes to finance a new recreation center. John McCain once entertained higher tobacco and Social Security taxes, but now promises not to support any tax increases, no matter what.
When she became governor, Palin championed a new windfall profits tax on oil companies, collecting $6 billion last year. She also gave each Alaskan $1200 to help pay for higher energy costs. McCain opposes a bipartisan energy package because it repeals tax subsidies for oil companies and he also opposes a windfall profit tax to fund relief for families.
Palin took on the big oil companies that dominate Alaska’s economy. She rejected her predecessor’s plan for a natural gas pipeline, saying it was too generous to the big oil companies. McCain missed a vote to renegotiate sweetheart oil leases.
Palin has also vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars in spending, including controversial cuts for programs helping teenage mothers. McCain not only claims to be able to eliminate $100 billion in wasteful earmarks, a figure many times higher than the actual amount of earmarks, but on the campaign trail has said he supports particular uses of earmarked money.
John McCain once stood up to industry lobbyists on issues like the patient’s bill of rights, treatment of airline passengers and the sale of the broadcast spectrum. But nowadays he campaigns on corporate tax cuts, the oil industry’s agenda, and the deregulation of health insurance. Whether or not Palin is a maverick, McCain is promising to run his administration like he’s run his campaign: as an orthodox Republican.
Media Can’t ‘Find Much At All’ About The State Of The Economy In RNC Speeches
Today, the wire service AFP noted that discussion of the economy has been conspicuously absent from the Republican National Convention. “The economy may be the number one issue in the White House race, but the Republican National Convention has yet to dwell on the troubles of Americans trying to make ends meet,” wrote AFP.
CNBC noticed too, and asked Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL) to explain the convention speakers’ apparent reluctance to discuss the state of the economy in their addresses:
One thing that strikes us here at CNBC, we’re looking for soundbites from the last few nights speeches, including from Governor Palin last night, something where the speakers addressed the state of the economy and we are darned to find much at all.
Putnam claimed that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) explained Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) “economic message” in her address. However, when asked “in your words, what is that economic message,” Putnam not only couldn’t put forward any specifics, but didn’t mention McCain or Palin once. Watch it:
It should really come as no surprise, though, that conservatives are avoiding any references to the economy. The result of eight years of Bushonomics, a philosophy which McCain has wholeheartedly embraced, is rising prices, stagnant wages, and high unemployment.
At the same time, “corporate profits have skyrocketed” to record setting levels. Still, McCain has proposed $300 billion in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, while leaving 100 million middle-class families with no tax cut at all.
With numbers like these, it actually makes sense that the McCain-Palin economic agenda is being left out of the convention.
McCain’s Slick Talk Express
Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The McCain campaign just released an ad claiming that Gov. Palin (R-AK) “took on Big Oil.”
Watch it:
In fact, Palin is a champion for Big Oil. And in Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech tonight, he will repeat the lines used by Big Oil in their own public relations campaigns:
– “Energy independence” by drilling everywhere, even in protected places.
– Support for more alternative energy without effective commitments.
– Eventual reduction in global warming pollution.
He repeatedly made these points over the past two plus months.
This speech will attempt to obscure the facts that tell the real story of a McCain-Palin Administration:
– Denial of science. When asked about global warming, his running mate, Gov. Palin, said, “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”
– Opposition to clean energy. McCain missed all eight critical clean energy votes over the past year and voted against a renewable electricity standard four times since 2002.
– False promises. Drilling everywhere will not reduce oil or gasoline prices. The Department of Energy determined that drilling in the outer continental shelf “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices.”
– Big Oil subsidies. McCain would provide $39 billion in new and existing subsidies and handouts to big oil over the next five years.
– Choosing Big Oil before clean energy. McCain announced that he would have cast the deciding vote against the extension of tax incentives for wind, solar, and efficiency in December 2007 and February 2008. That bill would have eliminated $13 billion in existing tax breaks for big oil.
– Fueled by Big Oil. McCain’s campaign is run by oil industry lobbyists, and has taken over $1.5 million from the oil industry.
So McCain’s clean energy flourishes tonight are all pomp but no circumstance. His record shows that he supports the Big Oil agenda along with the Bush Administration and Governor Palin. His “energy independence” proposals would only yield more profits for Big Oil, and his mention of clean alternative energy is nothing more than a talking point.
The McCain-Palin Agenda: By the Numbers
Our guest blogger is Adam Jentleson, the Communications and Outreach Director for the Hyde Park Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
To cut through the rhetoric coming out of St. Paul, here is a by-the-numbers examination of how Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin are proposing a third term of failed conservative policies.
The McCain-Palin Agenda for Our Economy:
* Zero tax relief for 100 million middle-class Americans, but trillions in tax cuts for big corporations and the very wealthy.
* $175 billion per year in tax cuts for corporations.
* $45 billion per year in tax cuts for the top 200 corporations alone.
* The top 1 percent will receive nearly 50 percent of the benefits of McCain’s tax plan.
* People making $5 million a year (McCain’s definition of “middle class”) will get a nearly $1 million tax cut.
* Women will continue to make 78 cents to every dollar a man earns because McCain opposes legislation to close the pay gap.
The McCain-Palin Agenda for Health Care:
* 158 million Americans will be at risk of losing their employer-sponsored health care coverage.
* 56 million Americans with chronic illnesses will be at risk of losing their coverage.
* More than 59 million women who receive their health insurance through their job or their spouse’s job will be at risk of losing that insurance.
* More than 30 million women who suffer from a chronic condition could lose their coverage, find it harder to obtain coverage, or have to purchase supplemental insurance to cover their chronic condition.
* Millions of middle class Americans will see their taxes go up, because McCain’s health care tax credit is not indexed to keep up with costs. (For instance, a family making $60,000 a year will see their taxes go up by $1,100 by 2013.)
* McCain’s one-size-fits-all health care tax credit will fall far short of covering many Americans’ health care costs. For instance, it will cover less than one-third of the average health care costs for older, sicker Americans.
The McCain-Palin Agenda for Energy:
* $4 billion in tax cuts for the top 5 oil companies in the U.S. ($1.2 trillion a year for ExxonMobil alone).
* $39 billion in taxpayer subsidies for big oil and gas companies over the next five years.
* More than 30 years before gas prices go down, because it will take at least that long for McCain’s drilling proposal to affect prices.
* $0 in gas price relief from drilling, instead of up to $500 in relief from a proposed gas rebate that McCain opposes.
The McCain-Palin Agenda for Four More Years of the Same Failed Conservative Agenda:
* 159 lobbyists working for the McCain-Palin campaign.
* 0 new ideas to get our economy working again and restore our leadership around the world.
* 4 more years of President Bush’s policy agenda.
During RNC Speech, Palin Touts Oil Profits Tax That McCain Opposes
During her address to the Republican National Convention last night, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), received loud applause and cheers for mentioning the windfall profits tax that she implemented on oil companies in Alaska, which “filled up the state treasury,” when “oil and gas prices went up dramatically.” Watch it:
The tax helped to double Alaska’s oil revenue to $10 billion after Palin enacted it in 2007, generating “stunning new wealth for [Alaska] as oil prices soared.” Palin said that the tax helped give Alaska citizens “an equitable share for our resources.” In fact, “this year, she used some of the proceeds to provide a $1,200 rebate to residents as energy prices rose.”
McCain, however, is against raising a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
When Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) suggested a tax on oil companies’ windfall profits and proposed using the money “to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills,” McCain derided the plan, saying it would only “increase our dependence on foreign oil, and hinder exactly the kind of domestic exploration and production we need”:
If the plan sounds familiar, it’s because that was President Jimmy Carter’s big idea too — and a lot of good it did us. Now as then, all a windfall profits tax will accomplish is to increase our dependence on foreign oil, and hinder exactly the kind of domestic exploration and production we need. I’m all for recycling — but it’s better applied to paper and plastic than to the failed policies of the 1970’s.
Does McCain think his running mate was just recycling a failed policy of the 1970’s?
Palin Claims Lobbyists ‘Have Fought The Prospect Of A McCain Presidency’
Our guest blogger is Daniella Leger, the Vice President for Communications at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
During her speech last night to the Republican National Convention, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) made a point of highlighting how Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has stood up to lobbyists:
Sen. McCain’s record of actual achievement and reform helps explain why so many special interests, lobbyists and comfortable committee chairmen in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency — from the primary election of 2000 to this very day.
Perhaps Palin should have vetted the McCain campaign before she spoke. If she had, she would have realized that the McCain campaign has more than 159 lobbyists working and raising money for it, and their influence is seen in his foreign and economic policy.
A prime example is Senior Campaign Advisor Charlie Black, whose clients include big oil, drug companies and banks. Given Black’s influence in the campaign, it is no wonder that McCain has no real solution to the housing crisis and his policies favor oil and drug companies.
So, before Palin comes to clean up Washington, D.C., maybe she should swing by her campaign office and get the McCain/Palin house in order.
McCain Foreign Policy Again Contradicted By Events
The Washington Post reports that “helicopters carried U.S. and Afghan commandos many miles into Pakistan on Wednesday to stage the first U.S. ground attack against a Taliban target inside the country”:
Pakistan filed a formal protest with the U.S. government, which had no comment on what appeared to be a new escalation of U.S. pressure on Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan’s mountainous border regions.
Back in August 2007, Barack Obama stated that his policy toward terrorists in Pakistan thusly: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets, and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
John McCain attacked the statement as “naive,” claiming that Obama had “suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan.” National Review’s Rich Lowry dutifully picked up this line of attack, saying that Obama had “detailed his willingness to bomb suspected terrorist cells in Pakistan.” NRO’s David Freddoso claimed Obama was irresponsibly advocating “an act of war,” which is curious, considering National Review’s long-standing editorial policy of advocating irresponsible wars.
Quite inconveniently for McCain and his conservative water-carriers, the very same week McCain made his charge, the Washington Post ran a story detailing a recent secret CIA strike on an Al Qaeda leader, describing the operation as “the first successful strike against al-Qaeda’s core leadership in two years.” in other words, the U.S. had scored a victory against Al Qaeda by following precisely the policy that McCain derided.
Undeterred by the fact that actual events had contradicted his boss’s foreign policy — or perhaps just hoping people had forgotten about it — a few weeks ago McCainblogger Mike Goldfarb undertook to mock Barack Obama again for his “ill-advised comments” on Pakistan, and attacked Obama for — Goldfarb claimed — having “threatened to send troops across the Afghan border.”
John McCain has consistently misapprehended the threat of international terrorism. He supported diverting troops and resources away from where Al Qaeda was — Afghanistan — in order to invade and occupy a country where they were not — Iraq. (In four days of the Republican National Convention, Afghanistan has not been mentioned once.) With today’s report on the cross-border strike against Taliban insurgents in Pakistan — a policy that McCain and his surrogates have derided — real-world events have again conspired to put John McCain on the wrong side of this issue.
GOP Ignores America’s ‘Health Care Crisis’ During Convention
During a town hall event last month, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) declared that the American health care system was “in crisis” and lamented that “if it were not for the energy crisis, we’d be talking a lot more about health care issues”:
There is a health care crisis in America. We would be, if it were not for the energy crisis, we’d be talking a lot more about health care issues. And we have to reform health care in America. And we have to make insurance available and affordable for all Americans. [New Mexico Town Hall, August 20, 2008]
Watch it:
And despite skyrocketing health care costs and millions of uninsured and under-insured Americans, almost all of the prominent speakers at the Republican National Convention ignored the “health care crisis.”
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY), and Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) never addressed health care. Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) only discussed “health insurance” in passing.
On Tuesday, Huckabee, a long-time advocate of wellness and fitness, “said his health care remarks were cut for time restrictions.”
Hometown Paper Blasts Palin For Stalling Health Care Reform
Five months ago, Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) home town newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, strongly criticized the governor for stalling comprehensive health care reform. The editorial argued that while Palin promised to “tackle tough health care problems head-on” during her election bid, she failed to “get behind the most significant piece of health legislation offered — a proposal to ensure that all residents have health insurance, without disrupting the coverage that many Alaskans already have”:
Rather than stand on the sidelines, if the governor doesn’t agree with the approaches offered by others to get more Alaskans covered by health insurance, she could come up with her own. But she can’t rely on platitudes such as fixing the system by having individuals take more responsibility for their own health care. Or solutions that don’t work for lower-income folks. [Anchorage Daily News, 4/17/2008]
Indeed, a review of Palin’s health care record suggests that Palin has done little to increase access to affordable coverage. During the national debate about expanding the State Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), for instance, Palin offered little leadership in comparison to her colleagues and failed to advocate for expanded child’s coverage. Her participation was limited to signing a National Governors Association letter calling for the Federal government to make up an expected one-year funding shortfall in SCHIP.
Palin also signed legislation updating Alaska’s SCHIP program, Denali KidCare. SB-27 maintained the eligibility level–which had dropped to an effective rate of almost 150 percent of the poverty line due to inflation. However, by limiting eligibility to families living below 175 percent of the poverty line, Alaska’s eligibility criteria are still among the lowest in the nation. Unfortunately, Palin did not support legislation to expand eligibility to higher levels.
The Anchorage editorial points out that Palin did establish “a high-profile Health Care Strategies Planning Council.” While promising, it ended up going nowhere:
It all sounded good. It sounded like the beginning of a health care policy by a leader far more enlightened than the last governor. Yet we saw little to no progress toward any of those goals.
Gingrich Repeats Big Oil Lie, Reveals Propaganda Plan On Tavis Smiley
On the Tavis Smiley Show Monday, Newt Gingrich revealed the propaganda strategy of American Solutions For Winning The Future (ASWF), the 527 corporation funded by right-wing billionaires to sell a Big Oil agenda to the American public. First, he repeated the central falsehood of his campaign:
Well, we launched at American Solutions a petition drive called “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” to make the obvious point that if you used America’s energy resources and you didn’t have to buy oil from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia it’d be a lot less expensive.
Gingrich’s “obvious point” is an obvious lie. The United States has only two percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves but uses 24 percent of production. Under Bush, domestic drilling has surged — but so have oil prices. The only sufficient American energy resources to get off foreign oil are efficiency, wind, solar, and other unlimited, renewable energy.
He then outlined the next roll-out of his propaganda campaign, building on the current petition drive and YouTube contest with a book release on September 22 and a movie release coinciding with “Solution Day” on September 27.
Watch it:
The book, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, blames “anti-energy, left-leaning politicians” for the energy crisis, absolving Gingrich, Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Enron, Exxon Mobil, Peabody Coal, Tom DeLay, John McCain, hedge-fund speculators, and others in the conservative elite who have profited from skyrocketing energy prices and blocked reform while the rest of us suffer.
The movie, We Have The Power, extols the virtues of nuclear power in a visit to Three Mile Island and stars Newt’s wife Callista as she talks with industry lobbyists.
Gingrich’s false “Solution Day” coincides with the Green Jobs Now Day of Action. Go to the website — GreenJobsNow.com — to fight for real solutions, not more pollution.
Sarah Palin: Earmark Queen Of The Earmark State
In 2000, Sarah Palin, as mayor of the Alaskan town of Wasilla, hired a Washington lobbyist to secure federal earmarks for her community.
This is not totally atypical in her state. Alaska’s government receives more money per capita in federal earmark money than any other state, despite being the only state in the union with no income tax and no sales tax. They fund their government primarily with petroleum money, and recently distributed oil profits to its citizens in the form of rebate checks.
But even in her heavily earmarked state, Sarah Palin was the earmark queen.
From 2000 to 2003, she secured over $27 million in earmarks, averaging $6.7 million in federal money every year for her town of about 6,700 people.
An analysis of the databases of Taxpayers for Common Sense by Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Fellow Scott Lilly puts these numbers in perspective.
He notes the following amounts:
–$50: The amount the average state received in earmarked funds, per capita in 2008
–$506: The amount received by Alaska’s citizen per capita in 2008, represented by the Senate’s earmarker in chief, Ted Stevens, ten times the national average
–Over $1000: The annual amount received per capita in Wasilla between 2000 and 2003, twice the 2008 Alaska state average
Some of these earmarks drew the scorn of Senator John McCain. The LA Time reports that, “three times in recent years, McCain’s catalogs of ‘objectionable’ spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time — Sarah Palin.”
As Scott Lilly writes, “Palin has advertised herself as a reformer and a skeptic of earmarking while maneuvering to become the earmark queen of the earmark state.”