Daily Archives: October 14, 2008

Tanking

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The New York Post, which is “in the tank” for McCain, yesterday published an op ed by Charles Gasparino titled “AN OBAMA PANIC? MARKETS FEAR HIS POLICIES.”

Naturally, on the same day, the the Dow Jones industrial average rose by 936 points. News this morning is that Asian and European markets are rising again today.

The rally has less to do with either Obama’s or McCain’s campaign promises than with the Bush Administration’s decision to follow Europe’s lead and invest up to $250 billion in U.S. banks. But my point is that we seem to have entered a period in which the wingnuts cannot catch a break.

Oh, and did I mention Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics? Sweet.

Anyway — this morning the McCain campaign released Senator McCain’s plan for creating new JOBS. We know this because the title of the proposal (PDF) is JOBS FOR AMERICA: The McCain Economic Plan. So how does McCain plan to create new JOBS? I skimmed through the report looking for any statement related to jobs, and here is the plan:

  • He’s going to balance the budget by 2013. Sure he is.
  • He will lower the rate of corporate taxes from 35 percent to 25 percent. And balance the budget.
  • He will invest in technology.
  • He wants to build 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030, which will create 700,000 jobs.
  • He will boost exports with lots of new free trade agreements.
  • Investing in clean coal technology will revitalize coal mining — another 30,000 jobs, at least.
  • “As Americans retro-fit to improve energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint, jobs will flow to the U.S. providers of insulation, windows, appliances, and other sources of energy efficiency.”
  • He wants to overhaul unemployment insurance to make it a program for retraining and relocating people who have lost jobs. Uh, John? What if they don’t want to be relocated?

And that’s it. It took him 15 pages to explain that.

I want to point out that he makes no provision for corporations doing anything to get the 25 percent rate. In other words, they can cheerfully export jobs — excuse me, JOBS — overseas, and still get the 25 percent rate. Why cutting their tax rates would change that is beyond me. And of course free trade agreements have worked so well for us in the past.

If you want to see something truly pathetic, check out McCain’s “JOBS for America” video. It says nothing, but it says nothing with great decisiveness. Hysterical.

Nuts and ACORN

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The other big, bleeping deal on the Right today are allegations that ACORN is perpetrating massive voter fraud all over the country to steal the election for Obama. They’ve been on to this for a while, actually, and it’s easy to see they are setting up ACORN and voter fraud as the excuses for a McCain loss, should he lose. They so love feeling victimized.

Brad Friedman writes,

In just the last week, we’ve had a phony stunt raid in swing state Nevada (where Acorn had been cooperating with officials for months, concerning problem canvassers they’d long ago fired); a Republican election official in swing state Missouri tell Fox News that she’s being besieged with fraudulent registration forms from Acorn (in a county where they’ve not done any registration work since August); a Republican sheriff in swing state Ohio, who, the very next day, suddenly requested the names and addresses of hundreds of early voters (with evidence of exactly zero wrong doing, but lots of Democratic-leaning college student in the particular county, and John McCain’s state campaign chair as a partner in the investigation); and a screaming front page headline in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post about a guy who claims he was somehow tricked by Acorn into registering 72 times (but read the article closely to note he says he registered at the same address each time, which, even if true, would allow him – you guessed it – precisely one legal vote.)

It’s an old Republican scam, but it’s never been carried out with more zeal than this year.

If Obama wins the election, they’ll be screaming their heads off that he’s not the “legitimate” president (which they also said about Bill Clinton, you might recall). As I said, they are getting their excuses ready.

Update: See Matt Yglesias.

Dirty Little Minds. Very Little.

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Today the wingnuts are all over a National Enquirer story headlined “Obama Sex Perv Scandal.” Senator Obama is not the sex perv; the perv is a man named Frank Marshall Davis, a poet and activist who was a friend of Obama’s maternal grandfather and who was a “mentor” to Barack Obama before he went to college. Obama was 10 years old when he met Davis.

It turns out Davis is the probable author of a pornographic autobiography published in 1968. (And, of course, anything anyone writes in a pornographic book published under a pseudonym must be absolutely true.) According to the Enquirer article, the autobiography describes the seduction of a 13-year-old girl. From this tidbit, wingnut Erick Erickson concluded at RedState that

The National Enquirer now suggests Barack Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile. Yup. That Frank Marshall Davis guy Barry says was his good friend? Turns out he was a perv of the first order and liked young boys.

An “underage, gay affair” usually is called molesting, but never mind. I read the Enquirer article (so you don’t have to), and it doesn’t say David admitted to sex with underage boys at all, never mind Obama. Perhaps there are details about boys in the print issue, but I suspect that if Marshall had written about boys, the Enquirer would have explicitly said so online.

Erickson continues,

This post is not intended to spread that rumor.

Of course not.

Frankly, if Obama wins, we’ll have our hands full around here making sure folks don’t develop Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Good luck with that.

Teh Nutroots at I Don’t Like You Either reprises The Best of Wingnut Hysteria on this issue. My personal favorite is from Riehl World View:

No wonder he says “Pakit-stan” in that funny way of his! heh!

You mean, like Pakistan is supposed to be pronounced? Wow, Obama must be, you know, a little queer. Real men mispronounce foreign words. Heh.

See also Thers at Whiskey Fire, the Poor Man, John Cole at Balloon Juice, Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings, and The Peking Duck.