A Day to Remember

Before I be a slave
I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free.

Greyhound bus with 14 members of an interracial group that was part of the Freedom Ride, firebombed on May 14, 1961, outside Anniston, Ala.

It’s appropriate on Election Day to remember and thank those who made the ultimate sacrifice in our military service to secure and protect the rights that we exercise today. 

Those who died in military service are not the only heroes we should remember and thank on this special and historic Election Day.

Today let us also remember and thank those whose sacrifice in the civil rights movement made this amazing day possible for all of us:

Louis Allen — A farmer shot on Jan. 31, 1964, in Liberty, Miss., after witnessing the murder of Herbert Lee, a civil rights worker.

Willie Brewster — A factory worker who died on July 16, 1965, in Anniston, Ala., from a nightrider’s bullet.

Benjamin Brown — A truck driver and civil rights worker killed on May 12, 1967, when police fired on demonstrators in Jackson, Miss.

Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman

James Chaney — A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range on June 21, 1964, by Klan members in Philadelphia, Miss.

Addie Mae Collins — A schoolgirl killed on Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Vernon Dahmer

Vernon Dahmer — A community leader who died on Jan. 10, 1966, from a firebomb in Hattiesburg, Miss., after volunteering to pay black voters’ poll taxes.

Jonathan Daniels — A seminary student shot on Aug. 14, 1965, by a deputy sheriff in Hayneville, Ala.

Henry H. Dee — A civil rights volunteer abducted, beaten and thrown into the Mississippi River by the Klan in Natchez, Miss., on May 2, 1964.

Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr. — A military policeman shot to death on April 9, 1962, in Taylorsville, Miss., after refusing a police order to sit in the back of the bus.

Willie Edwards Jr. — A deliveryman killed on Jan. 23, 1957, near Montgomery, Ala., when the Klan forced him to jump from a bridge into the Alabama River.

Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers — Civil rights leader shot on June 12, 1963, in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Miss.

Andrew Goodman — A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range by the Klan on June 21, 1964, in Philadelphia, Miss.

Paul Guihard — A French news reporter shot in the back on Sept. 30, 1962, during racist riots at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.

Samuel Hammond Jr. — A South Carolina college student fatally shot on Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired on demonstrators in Orangeburg, S.C.

Jimmie Lee Jackson — A farmer who died on Feb. 18, 1965, after being beaten and shot in the stomach by state troopers following a march in Selma, Ala.

Wharlest Jackson — NAACP treasurer in Natches, Miss., killed on Feb. 18, 1965, by a bomb after his promotion to a job once reserved for whites.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — Famed civil rights leader assassinated on April 4, 1968, during an organized campaign by garbage workers in Memphis, Tenn.

Bruce Klunder

Rev. Bruce Klunder — A minister from Cleveland, Ohio, run over by a bulldozer April 7, 1964, while protesting a segregated school.

Rev. George Lee — A minister in Belzoni, Miss.,who died on May 7, 1955, of gunshot wounds after organizing a voter-registration drive.

Herbert Lee — A cotton farmer and voter registration organizer who was shot in the head on Sept. 25, 1961, by a white state legislator in Liberty, Miss.

Viola Gregg Liuzzo — A civil rights worker from Detroit fatally shot in the head on March 25, 1965, by Klan members near Selma, Ala.

Viola Liuzzo

Denise McNair — A schoolgirl killed on Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Delano H. Middleton — A high school student fatally shot on Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired on demonstrators in Orangeburg, S.C.

Charles E. Moore — A civil rights volunteer abducted, beaten and thrown into the Mississippi River by the Klan near Natchez, Miss., on May 2, 1964, .

Oneal Moore — A deputy sheriff fatally shot after his nightly patrol on June 2, 1965, during an ambush by nightriders near Varnado, La.

William Moore — A mail carrier from Baltimore shot on April 23, 1963, in Attala, Ala., during his one-man march against segregation.

Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn — A U.S. Army reservist fatally shot on July 11, 1964, by the Klan while driving near Colbert, Ga.

James Reeb

Rev. James Reeb — A minister from Boston beaten to death on Mar. 11, 1965, on the streets of Selma, Ala., during a civil rights march.

John Earl Reese — A teenager slain Oct. 22, 1955, by nightriders who opposed improvements on a black school in Mayflower, Texas.

Carole Robertson — A schoolgirl killed on Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Michael Schwener — A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range by the Klan on June 21, 1964, in Philadelphia, Miss.

Henry E. Smith — A South Carolina college student fatally shot on Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired shotguns at demonstrators in Orangeburg, S.C.

Lamar Smith — A farmer fatally shot on Aug. 13, 1955, in broad daylight in Brookhaven, Miss., after organizing black voters.

Clarence Triggs — A bricklayer shot in the head on July 30, 1966, by nightriders in Bogalusa, La.

Cynthia Wesley — A schoolgirl killed on Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Ben Chester White — A caretaker shot on June 10, 1966, by Klan members in Natchez, Miss.

Samuel Younge

Samuel Younge Jr. — A college student shot on Jan. 3, 1966, by a Tuskegee, Ala., gas station attendant following a dispute over a ‘whites-only’ restroom.

Oh-o freedom
Oh-o freedom
Oh freedom over me, over me
And before I be a slave
I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free.

Palin As President (interactive) — with Post-Election Update!

Looking for some election eve tension release?

Check out the brilliant interactive website palinaspresident.us.

Although there is no creative attribution on the website, I discovered that it is the work of photographer and art director Sean Ohlenkamp of the M&C Saatchi advertising agency.

Be sure to click on things more than once – they change.

UPDATE:

The website is now reconfigured as BarackasPresident.com– with a bucket of champagne and a “Yes We Can” flyer on the desk.  Click on it with the sound turned up.

You can still see the old Palin as President website here at palinaspresident/never.

I expect the site to keep changing, so we ought to keep visiting.

Stand Up for Your (Gay Friend’s) Rights

My friend Winter Miller wrote this piece for the Boston Globe. 

I’m reposting it here with her permission.

IT SURE was nice to see Barack Obama stand up for Roe v. Wade in the presidential debates. It would also have been nice if he’d stood up for gay marriage. But no one mentioned gay marriage in any of the presidential debates and, what’s more, Obama doesn’t support gay marriage.

As this election unfolds, I’m trying to figure out whom I’m most angered by, Obama or all the straight people I know who haven’t stood up for gay rights. If the majority doesn’t clamor for change, then politicians have no reason to go out on a limb.

As a gay woman, it is unlikely I would need access to abortion. Still, I believe all women regardless of age, income, or circumstance should have a right to choose abortion.

The only mention of gay marriage this debate season was between Senator Joseph Biden and Governor Sarah Palin. I listened as Biden called for same sex unions with the same rights as marriage, a proposition that unfailingly rings of separate but equal. Like most liberals, you probably thought, gosh, gays are accepted now, this is progress.

Let me get this straight: My biracial candidate wants to drink from different water fountains? I looked down at my Obama T-shirt and wondered if I had the heart to go campaign for him.

Those of you who have gay friends, we appreciate your friendship; in fact, nothing says friendship like standing up for us in the face of bigoted adversity. Where is the outrage? Should I be mollified that Ellen DeGeneres’s wedding made the cover of People magazine, as did Clay Aiken’s declaration of gayness? Should I cheer when my email home page pops up a sighting of Lindsay Lohan with her girlfriend? I cheer all right; I think about all the isolated teenagers who are less likely to commit suicide or be ostracized when they see examples of cultural acceptance.

We have seen that public opinion shifts with greater nuance; that the gay lifestyle isn’t so much a hedonistic orgiastic cult as “Leave it to Beaver” where June and June swap wearing the apron and Ward and Ward take turns dropping Wally and Beaver at football and soccer.

Last month, a poll in the Washington Post showed 55 percent of California voters opposed an initiative banning a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, while only 38 percent favored the ban. In a recent Time magazine poll, 72 percent said if a presidential candidate held a position on gay marriage different from their own they’d still consider voting for him, compared with 22 percent who said they wouldn’t vote for him. The same poll showed a tie over opinions about gay and lesbians marrying and receiving the same legal rights as heterosexuals. The tide is turning. Gay marriage is a civil distinction. Whether a particular house of worship chooses to support it is a faith-by-faith decision.

Clearly, the battle is to be fought not at the federal level, but state by state. Three states have legalized gay marriage; Massachusetts was the pioneer in 2004, followed by California in 2008, and Connecticut last week. In Vermont, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, civil unions are recognized. There are domestic partner laws permitting partial benefits found in civil unions in Oregon, Hawaii, Maine, and Washington.

The must-do list is long: gay rights, hate-crime deterrents, universal healthcare, equal access to equally good schools, and more – in short, all the things each of us would want for our families, especially when we find ourselves holding the short end of the stick.

The next time you see your gay friend/relative/neighbor, think about the rights you were born into and the rights of others for which you’ve fought. Ask yourself if you can go beyond your comfort zone to advocate for the right for all of us, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, ability, or religion, to pursue and achieve liberty and happiness.

I don’t know if I will choose to marry, just as I never knew if I would choose an abortion, but our convictions mean the most when they include those beyond ourselves.

Winter Miller is author of the plays In Darfur and The Penetration Play.

How You Could (Literally) Cost McCain the Election

I few weeks ago I read somewhere that the McCain campaign was spending far more on pay-per-click online advertising (where you pay only when someone clicks on your ad) than on banner ads (where you pay a set amount for a certain number of impressions).

I thought at the time that if Obama supporters clicked on every McCain ad they saw online, it would cost the McCain campaign a lot of money.

But I didn’t post anything about this idea because:

• It seemed to me to be too nefarious, and
• I thought it might be illegal.

Recently, I noticed that someone at the Daily Kos posted the following:

“I was going to make McCain pay for every Google Ad he made me look at.  I simply clicked on the ad and waited for the page to load reviewed it to gain information. Once I reviewed the page that loaded I closed the page. I’m up to 8 clicks today alone just from looking at CNN and YouTube.”

“Now from what I’ve been able to research it cost McCain about $2.00 for my 8 clicks today.  And while that doesn’t seem like much if you multiply that by say 20,000 and by say 24 days until November 4th the costs could be substantial.  I mean 2 x 20,000 = $40,000 p/day, $40,000 x 24 = $960,000.  This is money that can’t be spent in other areas like TV, Radio or malers.”

“Now this is all theoretical and McCain could simply take down these ads.  Even if he does though we win. These ads are on popular pages all over the web that all of us go to.  They attack Obama’s character by placement in prime real estate on webpages with no fact checks.  I say if McCain wants to put up these ads we make him pay.  No free rides for low road politics.”

“So everyone tell your friends as crazy as it sounds to click on McCain/Palin sponsored Google Ads.  Each click takes $.25 cents away from McCain campaign fund that can’t be used on other things.”

I think the Daily Kos has seriously underestimated the amount of money that each click costs the McCain campaign. My guess is that each click costs the McCain campaign a few dollars, not a few cents.

I also think that the Daily Kos poster underestimated the impact that Obama supporters could have on the McCain campaign by failing to note that every pay-per-click Google ad campaign has a daily budget.  Once that limit is reached, the ads stop showing.  In other words, Obama supporters clicking on McCain ads could not only cost the McCain campaign money, it could also stop the McCain ads from running.

But I still think it’s nefarious, and I sill think it might be illegal (if anyone knows, please comment).

That’s why I am NOT recommending that if you’re an Obama supporter, you should click on every online McCain ad you see.

It might (literally) cost McCain the election.

No Laughing Matter: The Palin Doctrine of Presidential Power

Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s recent statement that she looks forward to being elected vice president so she can be ”in charge of the senate” has mostly generated laughter rather than outrage.

 Palin was asked by Colorado third-grader Brandon Garcia “What does the vice president do?”

She responded: “A vice president has a really great job because not only are they there to support the president’s agenda, they’re there like the team member, the teammate to the president. But also, they’re in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom. And it’s a great job and I look forward to having that job.”

I first saw a clip of Palin’s answer on Keith Olbermann’s show on MSNBC, where his take on Palin’s view of the vice presidential power was to assume that she is ignorant of the far more limited legislative role of the vice president, as defined in Article I of the U.S. Constitution: “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.” 

Olbermann said “So the vice president is not in charge of jack, Governor, let alone in charge of the senate, and you are not as smart as a third-grader.”

I don’t think that ignorance explains Palin’s answer.

Instead, I think that there is quite a bit of method to Palin’s madness.

This is the second time that Palin has referenced the Dick Cheney-John Yoo conception of expansive executive power.

As I noted in a blog post on Palin’s stunning articulation of expansive executive power in the vice presidential debate with Joe Biden – where she said that the Constitution provides “flexibility” in vice president’s role, including the power “not only to preside over the Senate” but also to exercise “more authority . . . if [the] vice president so chose to exert it” — Palin’s interpretation of the powers of the vice president is not the laughable  product of ignorance of the Constitution. 

Rather, Palin demonstrated that she has consciously and very specifically adopted the Dick Cheney-John Yoo theory of an Imperial Executive with absolute power outside the Constitutional system of checks and balances. 

As I said in my earlier post, Gwen Ifill’s question regarding the power of the vice president was “one of the very few questions that Palin has answered where one could come to the conclusion that she has thought about this before.”

Much as we love to laugh at Sarah Palin, this is no laughing matter.

Clearly, Palin is not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to the intellectual rationales behind public policy and political theory.

How is it, then, that the often painfully ignorant Sarah Palin is so conversant with a very particular, and relatively obscure, interpretation of the Constitution’s framework regarding the nature of executive power?

I do not know the answer to that question, but I am coming to believe that it might well explain why John McCain ended up picking Palin to be his running mate.

Is it possible that, far from being a completely off-the-wall choice, Palin was picked precisely because she is an adherent to the Cheney-Yoo view of expansive and unchecked executive power, and is willing to implement this view when in office?

Given McCain’s age and health, one could spin a conspiracy theory that it is Sarah Palin, rather than John McCain, who the McCain campaign believes will actually be the president if their ticket wins, and that their plan is to exercise unlimited and illimitable executive power.

Not funny.

Not funny at all.

“Most Republican County in USA” Going for Obama

Good vibrations:

Local Republicans have proudly called Orange County, California, where I live, “The Most Republican County in the USA” on the basis of delivering George W. Bush the nation’s largest margin of victory in raw votes in 2004.

What else would you expect from the home of Mickey Mouse, the Beach Boys, the Richard Nixon Library and Museum and John Wayne Airport?

But change is coming, and coming fast, to our sunshine and subprime paradise.

Republican voter registration is falling dramatically throughout California, including Orange County.

According to the Orange County Register, “Republicans have dramatically lost ground among new California voters, particularly the young, in the past five years. . .  Republicans eventually could fall to third place in party preference, behind Democrats and the growing number of voters who choose no party at all. Even in Orange County, the state’s Republican heartland, more people registered as Democrats than as Republicans last year and this year.”

“Among current California voters, 37.7 percent of those who registered before 2000 became Republicans. That dropped to 26.6 percent among voters who registered in the past five years – and just 21.9 percent this year. In Orange County, among current voters, 52.3 percent of those who registered before 2000 were Republicans. That dropped to 39.2 percent in the past five years – and 31.4 percent this year.”

And there is even worse news for John McCain in a currently on-going Orange County Register poll.

The poll asks online readers to choose between (1) Republican voting for McCain, (2) Democrat voting for Obama, (3) Democrat voting for McCain, and (4) Republican voting for Obama.

The current results (as of 5:13 p.m. Pacific Time) are:

• Republican voting McCain – 37%
• Democrat voting Obama – 37%
• Democrat voting McCain – 5%
• Republican voting Obama – 22%

That’s 59% Republican, but also 59% for Obama.

59% for Obama in “The Most Republican County in the USA” is not good news for John McCain.

“Good, good, good, good vibrations…”

How Conservatives Created the Party of the Mob

In today’s New York Times, David Brooks writes an elegy for the modern conservative movement that was founded by William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk and George F. Will. 

Brooks observes that modern conservatives like Buckley, Kirk and Will shared a disdain for the violent, ignorant masses as articulated in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and the Federalist Papers, coupled with “a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect.”

They detested the Mob.

They were anti-populist and anti-egalitarian, in culture as much as in politics. 

In short, they were elitists in the literal sense, and proud of it.

These Edmund Burke-inspired conservative elitists became the intellectual leaders of the mid-20th century Republican Party, critiquing not only the Democratic Party’s foreign and domestic policies, but also its post-Chicago Convention embrace of the youth culture of the 1960s. 

Edmund Burke

Unlike their counter-parts on the Left, they wore their hair neat and short, they wore ties and jackets not tee-shirts and jeans, they preferred classical music to rock and roll, whiskey to marijuana, and John Milton to Allen Ginsberg.  In George F. Wills’ words, they valued “the sober side of the Enlightenment.”

Now, Brooks notes, the Republican Party has rejected these urbane and elitist values, as well as the class of urban and sophisticated people with whom these values are associated. 

As Brooks acknowledges, “the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts” and has become the party of the uneducated, the rural, the crude and unsophisticated.

In other words, the Party of the Mob.

“Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all — men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking,” Brooks writes. “Now those attributes bow down before the common touch” and “a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.”

David Brooks is not the only conservative of the Buckley, Kirk, and Will mold who is in mourning because of the current state of the Republican Party, as indicated by the selection of self-described hockey mom and friend of Joe Sixpack, Sarah Palin. 

George F. Will has called Palin“obviously not qualified to be President.”  Similar, or more severe, criticisms of Palin have come from conservatives David Frum, Charles Krauthammer, and Kathleen Parker.  On television, you can see the same despair that Brooks articulates in his Times column on the face of David Gergan and in the stupefied expression of Tucker Carlson.

Brooks attempts to fix the blame for the ugly transformation of the Republican Party and the death of his urbane, sober, and elitist version of conservatism to the Party’s tactical decision to engage in “class warfare” against the wealthy and sophisticated. “This expulsion has had many causes,” he writes, “But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare.”

I think Brooks has let the Republican Party  — as well as his fellow conservatives and himself – off far too easily.

In my view, the end of modern conservatism and the triumph of the mob rule in the Republican Party began with the “Southern Strategy” – which capitalized on white rejection of, and hostility toward, the Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights movement.

After a Democratic Congress and Democratic President forced the Southern states to integrate in the early 1960s and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the Republican Party warmly welcomed into its ranks every racist in country, from Strom Thurmond to Jesse Helms to Trent Lott, along with their white resentment and anti-elite populist rhetoric.

Politically, the result was a Republican stranglehold across the South and a series of Republican electoral victories in national elections.

But the Republican Party paid a steep cultural price to become the political home of the nation’s white racists -– because the culture of white racism and resentment eventually took over the Party and became not only its “base” but its defining core.

And so when George W. Bush’s ratings tanked, the Republican Party had to “energize” this core to overcome its falling popularity with other groups.

Yet as this base was “energized” -– for example, by the selection of Palin as vice president and by Palin’s inflammatory rhetoric –- other groups were driven away.  As Brooks points out, “Republicans have alienated the highly educated regions — Silicon Valley, Northern Virginia, the suburbs outside of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Raleigh-Durham. The West Coast and the Northeast are mostly gone. The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1.”

And as the Republican Party ever more desperately relied on the “energy” of its base, it lost control over the racism and resentment that made them become Republicans in the first place.

David Brooks’ mourning for conservatism and the Republican Party is based on his fear of the mob that the Republican Party has become. 

He knows that the controlling emotions at McCain-Palin rallies are now fear and rage.  He knows that people have yelled “Terrorist!” and “Kill Him!”  when Obama’s name is mentioned.

He also knows that McCain cannot control the mobthat the Republican Party has become, and that the demagogue Sarah Palin would like to inflame its rage and resentment even further.

As David Gergan said on CNNon Thursday, “This — I think one of the most striking things we’ve seen now in the last few day. We’ve seen it in a Palin rally. We saw it at the McCain rally today. And we saw it to a considerable degree during the rescue package legislation. There is this free floating sort of whipping around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think we’re not far from that. … ‘

In the end, what is so profoundly disturbing for Brooks — as well as for George F. Will, David Frum, Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker and David Gergan – is that they are now all members of the Party of the Mob — that they helped to create.

The Real Sarah Palin (is scarier than we thought)

The evidence is mounting that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is part of America’s extreme, racist, anti-Semitic and anti-government political movement.

As reported in Salon.com, Palin’s political career has been mentored and financially supported by a  collection of secessionists, militia leaders, One World paranoids, Christian theocrats and anti-Semites, including, but not limited to, Mark  Chryson and “Old Joe” Vogler of the Alaskan Independence Party.

She may not be able to name the newspapers she reads, but there is photographic evidence that she reads the magazine of the John Birch Society.

And, as we noted last week, Palin appears to be surprizingly quite familiar with former Bush lawyer John Yoo’s constitutional law rationale for an imperial presidency whose power is unlimited by the courts or Congress.

Our first view of Palin was that, in regard to substance, she was far less than she appeared.

Now we think that she may be far more.

Meet John McCain, New Deal Democrat

Meet John McCain, New Deal Democrat.

At last night’s presidential debate, McCain shocked many of fellow Republicans by proposing the largest and most expensive government intervention in the housing market in U.S. history.

Specifically, McCain announced that he would spend tell his treasury secretary to spend $300 billion to buy the mortgages of homeowners in financial trouble and replace them with more affordable loans.  The program, which McCain calls the American Homeownership Resurgence Plan -– there’s that word “surge” again — would be available to mortgagors for whom the property is their primary residence, who can prove they were creditworthy when the original loan was made, and who made a down payment.

According to the McCain campaign:

“John McCain will direct his Treasury Secretary to implement an American Homeownership Resurgence Plan (McCain Resurgence Plan) to keep families in their homes, avoid foreclosures, save failing neighborhoods, stabilize the housing market and attack the roots of our financial crisis.”

“America’s families are bearing a heavy burden from falling housing prices, mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures, and a weak economy. It is important that those families who have worked hard enough to finance homeownership not have that dream crushed under the weight of the wrong mortgage. The existing debts are too large compared to the value of housing. For those that cannot make payments, mortgages must be re-structured to put losses on the books and put homeowners in manageable mortgages. Lenders in these cases must recognize the loss that they’ve already suffered.”

“The McCain Resurgence Plan would purchase mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage servicers, and replace them with manageable, fixed-rate mortgages that will keep families in their homes. By purchasing the existing, failing mortgages the McCain resurgence plan will eliminate uncertainty over defaults, support the value of mortgage-backed derivatives and alleviate risks that are freezing financial markets.”

“The McCain resurgence plan would be available to mortgage holders that:

• Live in the home (primary residence only)
• Can prove their creditworthiness at the time of the original loan (no falsifications and provided a down payment).”

“The new mortgage would be an FHA-guaranteed fixed-rate mortgage at terms manageable for the homeowner. The direct cost of this plan would be roughly $300 billion because the purchase of mortgages would relieve homeowners of ‘negative equity’ in some homes. Funds provided by Congress in recent financial market stabilization bill can be used for this purpose; indeed by stabilizing mortgages it will likely be possible to avoid some purposes previously assumed needed in that bill.”

“The plan could be implemented quickly as a result of the authorities provided in the stabilization bill, the recent housing bill, and the U.S. government’s conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It may be necessary for Congress to raise the overall borrowing limit.”

This certainly doesn’t sound like a Republican plan to me.

In fact, it isn’t. 

As the New York Times has pointed out, “The mortgage renewal idea actually originated with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. And Mrs. Clinton, who proposed the idea in a recent newspaper column, borrowed it from a Depression-era New Deal agency, the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation.”

How seriously should we take McCain’s plan?

First, we should appreciate what a stunning turn-around this proposal is for John McCain, who has previously railed against the “moral hazard” of bailing out homeowners who took out larger mortgages than they could afford.

Only last March, McCain declared — in response to the Hillary Clinton plan that McCain has now closely appropriated — that “it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.” 

As the New York Times then observed, “Mr. McCain’s remarks on Tuesday represented a stark tonal shift from the increasing calls for helping homeowners, as he faulted not only borrowers who engaged in risky lending, but suggested that some homeowners engaged in dangerous financial practices. ‘Some Americans bought homes they couldn’t afford, betting that rising prices would make it easier to refinance later at more affordable rates,’ he said. Mr. McCain argued that even during the ongoing crisis, the vast majority of mortgage holders continued to make their payments. ‘Of those 80 million homeowners, only 55 million have a mortgage at all, and 51 million homeowners are doing what is necessary — working a second job, skipping a vacation and managing their budgets to make their payments on time,’ he said. ‘That leaves us with a puzzling situation: how could 4 million mortgages cause this much trouble for us all?’”

Second, we should note that McCain’s point man for the plan is his senior economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin.  Holtz-Eakin was the Chief Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush and Senior Staff Economist for President George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.  He was, therefore, as responsible for the deregulation that lead to the mortgage mess as any single economist could be.  (He was also the person who claimed that McCain was responsible for the invention of the Blackberry phone.)   If we are to take McCain’s proposal seriously, then we must assume that Holt-Eakin has also had a Saint Paul-like sudden conversion and is now not a Bushite but a New Deal Democrat.

Third, we should look at the conservative reaction to McCain’s plan.  If they thought that McCain was serious about his plan, they’d be exploding with condemnation and accusations of betrayal.  But, so far, the National Review has nothing to say about it.  Conservative blogs mostly call it “pandering”  — and while they’re not happy about it, they understand it as an election ploy.  The Wall Street Journal doesn’t seem very upset either, taking an uncharacteristically wait-and-see attitude toward a proposal that would violate the foundational principles of modern Republican economics: “The idea must have puzzled many viewers and we’ll reserve judgment until we see the fine print,” the Journal said.” At a glance, it doesn’t sound like something Democrats would oppose — and elections are decided on differences.”

My conclusion?

The McCain proposal isn’t serious, and few conservatives believe that either (1) McCain will win (and therefore be in a position to implement the plan) or (2) that McCain would implement the plan if elected.

I suggest that McCain’s new homeowner bailout program should really be called the “McCain Campaign Resurgence Plan.” 

Falling precipitously behind in the polls, especially in so-called “swing states” like Ohio, Florida and Michigan that have been hit hard by foreclosures and falling home prices, McCain has suddenly — and unconvincingly – decided that his favorite president is not Ronald Reagan but Franklin Roosevelt.

I’m not buying it.

Nevertheless, it is a watershed moment in American political history when the Republican candidate for President — and self-described foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution — attempts to outdo the Democratic candidate as a New Deal Liberal.

Now that a few days have passed and the McCain campaign has repeated its call for a $300 billion bailout of mortgage holders at taxpayer’s expense, conservatives have taken the proposal seriously enough to lambast it.

CNN.com offers a good roundup of conservative commentary: 

“ In a sharply worded editorial on its Web site Thursday, the editors of The National Review — an influential bastion of conservative thought — derided the plan as “creating a level of moral hazard that is unacceptable” and called it a “gift to lenders who abandoned any sense of prudence during the boom years.”

“Prominent conservative blogger Michelle Malkin went one step further, calling the plan “rotten” and declaring on her blog, ‘We’re Screwed ’08′.”

“Matt Lewis, a contributing writer for the conservative Web site Townhall.com, told CNN the plan only further riles conservatives upset with McCain’s backing of the massive government bailout plan passed last week.”

“‘Fundamentally, the problem is John McCain accepts a lot of liberal notions, unfortunately. There is somewhat of a populist streak,’ he said. ‘Most conservatives really did not like the bailout to begin with, and this was really kind of picking at the scab’.”

News from the VP Debate: The McCain-Palin Coup

News was made at the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin last night, but few noticed it, and no one has yet analyzed its far reaching and frightening implications.

The news came when the discussion turned unexpectedly to the powers of the vice presidency.

Moderator Gwen Ifill noted that Biden had said earlier in the year that he would not want to be vice president and that Palin had asked what a vice president does every day.  Ifill then asked the candidates “What it is you think the vice presidency is worth now?”

In her answer, Plain first claimed that her question about the daily activities of the vice president was not a reflection of genuine ignorance but only a “lame joke.”

Then she veered suddenly in a very strange direction:

“Of course, we know what a vice president does. And that’s not only to preside over the Senate and will take that position very seriously also. I’m thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are. John McCain and I have had good conversations about where I would lead with his agenda.”

After Biden spoke about why he had accepted Barack Obama’s offer to be his running mate, Ifill turned back to Palin, asking her one of the very few “follow-up” questions of the evening:

“Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?”

Palin’s answer was uncharacteristically clear and unequivocal and — even more unexpectedly – firmly rooted in a specific interpretation of the Constitution and constitutional history:

“Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation.”

The media have become so accustomed to hearing nonsense and gibberish from Palin that her clarity and specificity on this arcane point of Constitutional law and the Separation of Powers went almost unnoticed, although on MSNBC both Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow attempted to draw attention to it.  Even so, the question they asked – “What did she mean?” – went unanswered.

So let us ask again: What did Palin mean when she said that “the Constitution would allow a bit more authority givento the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it” and “our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative withthe president’s agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation.”

On February 23. 2006, Salon published an article by Sidney Blumenthal entitled Cheney’s Coup. Blumenthal wrote that “On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed Executive Order 13292, a hitherto little known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president. By controlling classification, the vice president can in effect control intelligence and, through that, foreign policy. Bush operates on the radical notion of the ‘unitary executive’, that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.”

What Blumenthal referred to as “the radical notion of the ‘unitary executive’” was explained in an earlier article by Elizabeth de la Vega, also published in Salon, entitled Big Brother is Watching You. “[O]nly recently,” de la Vega wrote, “has the world received notice that President Bush’s ‘I can do anything I want’ approach to governance has a name: the Unitary Executive Theory of the Presidency.”  As de la Vega pointed out,  the Unitary Executive Theory was offered by Bush administration officials as a rationale for “President Bush’s recent confession to a crime: repeatedly authorizing the National Security Agency to intercept domestic electronic communications for foreign intelligence purposes without a court order in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA contains no exception for the president, but Bush claims his action is legal because: 1) Congress endorsed it in its Sept. 18, 2001, Authorization to Use Military Force in response to Al Qaida’s September 11th attacks, and 2) he has inherent power as chief executive to act as he deems necessary in wartime.”

Under this theory, the powers of the president and vice president are not limited to those powers that are specifically enumerated in the Constitution, but include the broad and unlimited power to take any action whatsoever that the Executive Branch deems necessary to protect the United States (for example, torture of prisoners and warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens), regardless of the contrary views of the Congress or even the courts.

As Cheney told the Wall Street Journal, “[G]iven the world that we live in…the president needs to have unimpaired executive authority.”

The primary advocate for the claim that the Executive Branch has unlimited and unreviewable power has been the former head of the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel, John Yoo.

As Yoo asserted in his infamous “Torture Memo” (officially titled “The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorists and the Nations Supporting Them”):

“The President’s constitutional power to defend the United States and the lives of its people must be understood in light of the Founders’ express intention to create a federal government ‘cloathed withall the powers requisite to [the] complete execution of its trust’ … [I]t is clear that the Constitution secures all federal executive power in the President to ensure a unity in purpose and energy in action … the constitutional structure requires that any ambiguities in the allocation of a power that is executive in nature – such as the power to conduct military hostilities – must be resolved in favor of the executive branch .. [While] Congress’s legislative powers are limited to the list enumerated in Article I, section 8, while the President’s powers include inherent executive powers that are unenumerated in the Constitution . . .[No] statute, however, can place any limits on the President’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make.”

What is striking is the extent to which Sarah Palin’s comments in the vice presidential debate tracked the Bush administation’s assertion of, and rationale for, the Cheney-Yoo theory of unlimited and absolute Executive power.

Given that Palin has never before shown any in-depth knowledge of American history or Constitutional theory, it is also apparent that this particular issue has been of special interest to her and her handlers.

Indeed, this was one of the very few questions that Palin has answered where one could come to the conclusion that she has thought about this before.

Any doubt that Palin was specifically invoking the Cheney-Yoo theory of an Imperial Executive with absolute power outside the system of checks and balances is removed by noting Palin’s repeated use of the key phrase “flexibility.”

As David Cole observed in The New York Review of Books, “all of Yoo’s departures from the text of the Constitution point in one direction—toward eliminating legal checks on presidential power over foreign affairs. He is candid about this, and defends his theory on the ground that it preserves ‘lexibility’ for the executive in foreign affairs. But the specific “lexibility’ he seeks to preserve is the flexibility to involve the nation in war without congressional approval, and to ignore and violate international commitments with impunity. As Carlos Vazquez, a professor of law at Georgetown, has argued in response to Yoo, ‘flexibility has its benefits, but so does precommitment.’ The Constitution committed the nation to a legal regime that would make it difficult to go to war and that would provide reliable enforcement of international obligations. Yoo would dispense with both in the name of letting the president have his way.”

What this means is that the Cheney-Yoo rationale for absolute Executive power has been part of the background planning for the McCain-Palin administration, and that those who are fashioning a future McCain-Palin regime have already anticipated taking actions that would require justification by a Constitutional theory of absolute and unlimited Executive power.

In this context, even more chilling is Palin’s promise that she and McCain will “do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation.”

With Palin’s endorsement of the notion of unlimited Executive power, that promise was a threat.

Here, then, is the news that was made in the vice presidential debate: The McCain-Palin administration already has a plan to use military force against its perceived enemies, both foreign and domestic, and this plan requires a theory of unlimited Executive power to ““do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation” regardless of whatever the Congress, the courts, or anyone else might think.

That’s called totalitarianism.

And the McCain-Palin administration already has a plan to implement it.