The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed

Steve Parker: Notes on Europe - Chrysler's troubles, Nardelli speaks, VW buys-out dealers, death of a neo-fascist

2008-10-13T09:30:19Z

Chrysler's CEO, Robert Nardelli, who has been running the company for just 14 months, fears the collapse of an "extremely fragile" auto industry amid the credit crisis and Wall Street meltdown. Nardelli said federal officials, preoccupied with trying to unfreeze credit, don't appreciate the importance of the auto industry.

Nardelli is nothing if not a "master of the obvious." His statements show why appointing someone with no relevant experience to the highest position of an American industrial giant was a huge mistake. Chrysler owner Cerberus (at least they still owned it as of midnight Monday, Pacific Coast time) now wants "out" of the car business as soon as a buyer or merger partner can be found (or coerced).

One group Nardelli will be hearing a lot from is a new organization representing Chrysler's 700 European dealers. Since the Daimler-Chrysler merger was ended when Cerberus bought Chrysler from Daimler, the company's Euro dealers feel they lost any juice they had with Chrysler executives in the US (Highland Park, MI, to be specific).

European sales of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep models fell by 11.7 percent to 70,407 units in the first eight months of 2008; the company's minivans and larger Jeep models, like Commander and Grand Cherokee, are surprisingly popular in Europe.

(Chrysler CEO "Smilin' Bob" Nardelli has let on that he thinks there might be some problems with the auto industry - But, hush ... mum's the word!).

Volkswagen, meanwhile, has a 1,200-strong franchised dealer network in Germany, and is offering smaller dealers cash to close their doors. According to industry journal Automotive News, VW only wants large dealers selling 1,000 to 1,200 new cars a year. Currently, average annual sales for a VW dealer is between 300 and 400.

But "coming to the rescue" of the slumping European market for new cars and trucks might be China's Brilliance Jinbei Automotive. Founded in 1990, Brilliance has become China's 16th-largest automaker, with 2006 sales of $1.3 billion.

Their new BS4 lower-medium sedan (think Nissan Sentra size) goes on sale at 132 dealers in Germany later this month. The BS4 is longer and less expensive than comparably powered rivals from other brands. The car has a 134-hp 1.8-liter inline-4 cylinder engine, available with a five-speed manual or four-speed automatic transmission and ABS brakes. But here's the thing: Getting on the Autobahn in a BS4 must be pretty exciting, as it takes over 13 seconds to move itself from 0 to 60mph. This is the kind of ar which takes drag racing off race tracks and puts it back on public roads.

(Chinese-made Brilliance BS4 goes on-sale in Europe later this month, and hopefully with a different name; BS 4 ... whom, exactly?).

On another automotive-related story from Europe, Austrian investigators say far-right politician Joerg Haider's car was speeding at more than twice the posted limit when it crashed and killed him.

Police reconstructing the fatal accident in southern Austria say the speedometer in the wreckage of Haider's Volkswagen sedan was stuck at 142 kilometers per hour (88 miles per hour). The speed limit on the stretch of road where he died was just 70 kilometers per hour (43 mph).

(AP Photo of Haider's car; he was killed in a single-car wreck, alone and at high speeds; maybe he "sieg'd" when he should have "heil'd"; real fascist Mussolini was driving a one-of-a-kind Alfa-Romeo when he and his mistress were captured by Italian citizens).
Police said the car veered off the road after Haider overtook another vehicle, then struck a concrete pillar and rolled over. Haider, who was alone in the car, suffered multiple injuries and died while being rushed to a hospital.

Sources say that Haider had been developing his high-speed driving skills for a possible opening on the "Kurt Waldheim Memorial 'Master' Race Team."

Karma can be a bitch (just ask John McCain, and though I am certainly not comparing John McCain to Joerg Haider or even Kurt Waldheim ... blah blah blah ...).

Cenk Uygur: The Ugly Implications of McCain and Palin's Questions

2008-10-13T08:52:02Z

Sarah Palin keeps asking people to ask more questions about Barack Obama. Now McCain has joined in on this refrain. But I don't get it. What more do they need to know? They keep saying he has to answer more questions about Bill Ayers, for example. But he has answered every ridiculous question on this topic a hundred times over. So, what are they really looking for?

It's not the McCain and Palin really think there is some deep and pertinent question that the media just has not gotten to yet about Obama's so-called relationship with Ayers. Otherwise, why don't they ask it themselves? Why doesn't John McCain take the next debate as an opportunity to ask Senator Obama about any profound question he has about Bill Ayers or any other disturbing connection Obama has?

The reason they don't do this is because there are no real questions there. This is a ploy to raise doubts in people's minds about Obama. They have nothing, but it's easy to say, "What else is Obama hiding?" The implication is that Barack Hussein Obama has more terrorist connections he is not telling us about. But since that is patently ridiculous and shameful, they can't say it out in the open. So, they hide behind the implications of questions like, "What else is he not telling us?"

What I want a reporter to ask Sarah Palin and John McCain is, "What is that you think Senator Obama is hiding? You keep asking the question, so you must think there is an answer. What is it? What is Senator Obama not telling us about Bill Ayers or anyone else?"

They don't have answer to that. Because they're real objective is to smear Obama as "the other." Palin has said several times in her rallies that Barack Obama is not like the Americans she knows. Someone should also ask her what she means by that. Then she brings up Ayers and "palling around with terrorists." It's not hard to see the picture she's drawing. Obama is not one of us. Look at his name; be careful, he is one of them.

They don't have the nerve to say it out aloud, so they hide behind their questions and implications. It is a despicable strategy and it has turned this into the ugliest presidential campaign I have seen in my lifetime.

Young Turks on You Tube

Lincoln Mitchell: Putting What Where? Trying to Understand McCain's Slogan

2008-10-13T06:40:58Z

Political slogans are usually vague and devoid of any real meaning. Neither Obama's nor McCain's slogan are any real exception to this. However, there is something particularly disturbing about the slogan "putting country first". When I first saw it I winced, but attributed that to the slogan being so embarrassingly childish, although in fairness I don't think any of the students in my son's 4th grade class would come up with something quite so meaningless. It also struck me as a bad riff on Bill Clinton's 1992 slogan "putting people first".

As I reflect upon it, it strikes me that there is something else about this slogan that I find troubling. Like any good slogan, it is hard to determine what, precisely, is meant by "putting country first", particularly from a ticket whose vice presidential candidate chose to use a nationally devised debate to suggest that paying taxes is somehow "not patriotic". It also seems like a strange slogan from a party that, at least in its rhetoric, is committed to individual freedoms and rights.

"Putting country first" obviously suggests that Republicans, and McCain specifically, are more patriotic than Democrats generally, and Obama specifically. While this is objectively speaking nonsense, one can't get too angry or surprised by this. Getting angry or surprised by Republicans calling Democrats unpatriotic is like getting angry or surprised at a tiger for having stripes. Similarly, it seems to suggest that Obama is driven by ambition while McCain is driven by pure patriotism, but this also standard Republican rhetoric about which we cannot get too upset.

The more serious question raised by a slogan like "putting country first" is "ahead of what?" In 1992, most people could assume that "putting people first" meant putting people ahead of profits. Regardless of whether or not that was an accurate description of Clinton's economic policies, or even of the economic problems facing the US at that time, the point of the slogan was clear. However, there the McCain-Palin slogan is far less clear on this question.

There are, of course, times when "putting country first" is an honorable thing to do. All of the people in the military who have made great sacrifices particularly those who have been injured and killed while serving their country, regardless of the wisdom of the war itself, have "put country first" and should be recognized for doing that. Clearly McCain's individual heroism while a POW in Vietnam was a similar case of "putting country first".

In civilian life, however, the notion of "putting country first" is somewhat more troubling. To a great extent, the whole point of the USA, and the source of much of its greatness, is that we don't put country first. We put individuals, social and group goods, and even specific national goals first, but these are different than the abstract idea of "putting country first". If we were to, as a society, put country first, who would define what "country" is or what putting it "first" might mean. The answer presumably is John McCain, but this opens the door for a style of governance that would likely be intolerant of dissent and would accuse all dissenters of not "putting country first". We saw where this approach got us during the last eight years. Perhaps all of us, particularly the country McCain seeks to put first, would be better served by putting rational decision making, a better understanding of the world, or the rule of law first.

The notion of "putting country first" also suggests the presence of a greater good, or that we should all be working for the glory of our country above all individual desires and needs. The strength of American style democracy is that it is not about seeking greater goods, but about individuals seeking to pursue their own goals within the context of freedom, equality and rule of law. In many respects, part of the true genius of James Madison and others was to rid our democracy of the goal of achieving a greater good, but to instead focus on avoiding the tyranny often results from seeking this greater good. It is indeed shocking that a Republican candidate for president doesn't understand this.

While patriotism and sacrifice are values that are central to good governance, democracy and to what has made our country great, "putting country first" has historically been the approach not of those who would celebrate the individual's right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as our founding fathers put it, but of those who would take these things away in the name of an abstract idea like "country". The distinctions between patriotism, and placing the good of the state over the good of the individual is indistinct, but of critical import. It is also undermined by slogans like "putting country first". John McCain should understand this, but somehow has decided to use this slogan anyway.

Disgrasian: Skanks Gotta Stick Together

2008-10-13T03:54:01Z

The Pussycat Dolls' Nicole Scherzinger said this week that she'd welcome Sarah Palin into her group if the Republican ticket fails in November.

"She seems like a headstrong woman, a tough chick. And she's hot," Scherzinger said.

And we can't think of a better use of Palin's talents! Especially after the last few weeks, when the VP-wannabe has demonstrated all too well that she can get down and dirty. Plus, Palin is hot, and we think she'd look smoking in a latex dress, despite her aversion to rubbers.
More on Sarah Palin

Andy Ostroy: Thank You John McCain. Your Rovian Campaign Strategy is Working Wonders for Barack Obama

2008-10-13T03:50:43Z

Strap yourselves in kids, for the final weeks of the presidential campaign promises to be the dirtiest, ugliest and most divisive in American history. And that's just fine with me, because the more Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin attack the character of Sen. Barack Obama with shameless, baseless, outrageous accusations, the faster and more decisively Obama is pulling away with the election.

Team-McCain is beyond desperate, and as they see the White House increasingly slipping away, they've been ratcheting up the intensity and outlandishness of the attacks. Judging from the electoral map and every major national and state-by-state poll, it's clearly not working, as voters -- worried about their jobs, their homes and their savings amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression -- are screaming enough. They're sick of McPalin's brand of smear-politics. What they want is a plan to rescue the country from its chilling economic meltdown. What they want is some meaningful assurance that their financial world isn't coming to an end. What they want is leadership. What they don't want is a non-stop barrage of "Sen. Obama pals around with terrorists."

But again, I say "Bravo Sen. McCain, bravo Gov. Palin, keep up the fine work!" For you two have done more in the last three weeks to appreciably aid Obama's campaign than the candidate himself. Give us more, please. Lots more. We want more talk of 1960's radical and terrorist William Ayers, and his supposed "close" relationship with Obama. In fact, we'd actually like you to call Obama a terrorist. That's right, don't pull any punches. Just come right out with it and say he's on bin Laden's payroll.

And what happened to Rev. Jeremiah Wright? It's been so long since you guys harped on that "scandal." Bring him back, in all his "God damn America" glory! Re-connect him to Obama, and say they both hate white people. We also want more flag-pin talk. More Michelle Obama bashing. More "elitist" accusations. And let's not forget Obama's drug use twenty-five years ago. C'mon, Johnny, a president who smoked pot and did "blow?" Are you and the saucy stew gonna let him get away with that unchecked!? Don't forget that's he's also a lightweight. No, not in terms of political inexperience, I'm saying the dude is literally skinny! Way too thin to be president, no? Start calling him anorexic. It's time to get creative here. Who the hell wants a radical terrorist socialist elitist manorexic president? (btw, can you be both socialist and elitist?) Surely this'll resonate with voters...just as soon as they're done calculating that they'll have to work until they're 160 now that their savings are eroding faster than President Bush's approval ratings.

Yes, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin, just keep talking. With unemployment, bankruptcies and home foreclosures soaring and Americans' nest eggs hemorrhaging and the collapse of global markets threatening our security, just please keep talking about everything that's so utterly of no interest to the vast majority of Democratic, Republican and Independent voters. It's music to our ears.

Josie Garthwaite: New Greenhouse Effect: Global Cooling?

2008-10-13T03:24:27Z

As shorthand for the insulating effect of certain gases in the atmosphere, "greenhouse" has become somewhat of a dirty word among environmentalists. But according to a study published in the current Journal of Geophysical Research and noted in this week's New Scientist, greenhouses, or hothouse farms, can mask "warming signals." Apparently part of southeastern Spain has so many greenhouses with sunlight-reflecting white roofs that the average local temperature has dropped by an average of 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1983, despite rising temperatures in the rest of the country.

About how many greenhouses are we talking? More than 26,000 hectares, or about 100 square miles, of them. You don't have to be a horticulturalist, however, to save energy and money -- and potentially help slow climate change -- with a reflective roof. According to the LA Times, roofs account for 25 percent of total surface area in most cities, and pavement accounts for around 35 percent. If 100 major cities covered that space with reflective materials, such as those used on the Spanish greenhouses, it could offset as much as 44 metric gigatons of heat-trapping gases. As Joe Biden would say, let me repeat that: 44 metric gigatons. "That is more than all the countries on Earth emit in a single year," the Times explained in a report on new climate change research last month. "And, with global climate negotiators focused on limiting a rapid increase in emissions, installing cool roofs and pavements would offset more than 10 years of emissions growth, even without slashing industrial pollution."

Even the 1,000 square feet of a typical American home's rooftop can make a difference. To determine what kind of roof will deliver the biggest savings on your energy bill, the Cool Roof Rating Council recommends considering slope, climate, and state rebate programs. Information on those factors and more can be found at coolroofs.org.

Share your tips: What energy-saving home improvements have you made?

Read more about science, climate change, and saving energy:
4 Ways to Green Your Gadgets
Americans' Small Changes Mean More For the Planet
Escalators Saving Power
Aloha, Solar
Carbon and Cents

For more practical tips, visit The Green Life.

R.O. Blechman: Russia's Dancing Prisoner

2008-10-13T03:14:02Z

Mikhael Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, now a prisoner in a Siberian prison camp, has been sent to an isolation ward for having written to a magazine discussing Russian corruption. He was previously sent to an isolation ward for having walked in the exercise yard without having clasped his hands behind his back.

Charles Kearney: The Secret Service Should Investigate the McCain-Palin Campaign Incitements to Harm Obama

2008-10-13T02:56:24Z

If the late, mercurial prize-winning novelist/journalist Norman Mailer were alive, he might very well say that Sarah Palin's political perfume has more than a whiff of fascism about it. Or, he might have said that Sarah Palin is the newest generation of hate and fear and that she loves her role as Empress of venality and slander.

He might have made either or both of these remarks, because he was a writer who loved to stroll into and out of the psyches of other people. This, of course, is entirely to be expected by a man of letters, an intellectual, a poet of the darkest of souls, and certainly a literary provocateur.

Unfortunately, the McCain-Palin ticket's only chance for electoral success this presidential campaign year is to start a street fight about Obama and ignore the economy and health care and the war in Iraq. In other words, Mailer would have been right about Palin and her surrogate McCain, but wrong about arguing with them on their turf.

Instead, I suggest the following solution to forestall the McCain-Palin lowest-common-denominator tactics. I propose changing the game and raising the ante by formally requiring the Director of the Secret Service to investigate the McCain-Palin campaign for inciting crowds at rallies to make threats against a presidential candidate.

To point out the obvious, this request for redress does not have to be done by Senator Obama himself. It could literally be done by anyone of good conscience. In fact, this editorial itself would easily serve as justification for contacting Senator McCain and Governor Palin and questioning them and their speechwriters about their incendiary remarks about Senator Obama.

I know. I know. I know. The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech for all American citizens. In addition the case law (see New York Times v. Sullivan) adds even a further layer of protected speech where public figures are involved. Nonetheless, the Secret Service is statutorily mandated to protect major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election.

Let me put this particular law in perspective. Journalists in print and in broadcast have documented astounding incidents of threatening remarks directed at a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama. A very, very brief recounting of such phrases and epithets directed at Senator Obama by McCain-Palin supporters would include: "Kill him"; "Off with his head"; "Treason"; and "Terrorist."

Simply pause for a moment and imagine in your mind's eye either of the following two scenarios. I rise from my desk, pick up a simple black pen, find a piece of blank white typing paper, print the words, "Off with his head," and mail it to the Obama for President campaign headquarters after I have inscribed my return address on the envelope. Or, I attend a presidential rally for Senator Barack Obama or Senator John McCain, and while standing in the crowd, I yell, "Kill him." "Treason." "Off with his head." "Terrorist."

In either event, I assure you -- in fact, I would bet you a nickel -- that I would soon understandably and justifiably find myself being detained by the Secret Service for a lengthy questioning and possible felony arrest.

Governor Palin and Senator McCain individually and collectively speak of Senator Obama as someone engaged in direct or indirect acts of terror against the United States of America. To accomplish these elaborate public accusations, Governor Palin and Senator McCain must first meet with their staffs; draft the specific language of their speeches; review, edit and approve the specific language of their speeches; deliver their stump speeches repeatedly; and then witness and enjoy the effect their speeches create in the crowds.

Again, if I sat down in a room with a group of men and women tacitly sworn to a common goal that involved violently haranguing a presidential candidate, I would for a second time submit that I would be detained by the federal authorities and questioned and possibly arrested.

Every few years or decades, we are taught or re-taught that the United States of America is a nation of laws and not of men or women with power and influence. Presidents have been impeached and resigned office. A vice president pleaded nolo contendere and resigned his office. Congressmen have been fined and jailed. The laws of the United States apply to everyone all the time equally. Presidential candidates are no exception.

Year after year, the security of the President and other high officials becomes more precarious. Yet, Governor Palin and Senator McCain are now engaged in the pattern and practice of inciting hate groups of every sort. They give their political crowds the red meat of hatred and bigotry and racism. When public figures behave in such an atrocious manner, it gives others permission to ape their opinions and permission to act upon their own deepest prejudices.

No one expects the Secret Service to sit Senator McCain and Governor Palin down and read them the Riot Act about inciting acts of violence. However, it would not be out of balance in the real world for the Secret Service to point out the security risks involved in McCain and Palin daily roiling their supporting crowds to the point of their becoming a mob and thereby endangering another presidential candidate.

Lastly, it may possibly be true that technically neither Senator McCain nor Governor Palin could ever be convicted of threatening Senator Obama, a presidential candidate. But this metaphor is true. Senator McCain and Governor Palin have walked right up to the line of what is legal and illegal and have spit across it.

Tim Giago: Forming a Native American Party

2008-10-13T01:54:07Z

As I write this there are only three weeks left until Election Day.

Native Americans by the thousands will, for the most part, go into the voting booth and cast their ballots for the candidates that are Democrats. In Election Day 2008 that is to be expected and the Democratic Party knows it.

Let's get this election behind us and, beginning November 5, 2008, start to re-evaluate our connections to America's political parties. The time has come for Native Americans to break from the flock and to think outside of the box. I believe this is very important because I was once a member of that flock and in the magical year of 2008 I observed many things within both Republican and Democratic parties that caused me to stand back and re-examine my party affiliation.

I would even take it one step further and instead of joining an Independent Party, why not form our own party and call it the Native American Party. This idea is not so farfetched. After all, there are people in the Libertarian and Green Parties that are not affiliated with either the Democrats or Republicans. Granted these separatist parties run their own candidates each presidential election year, but that does not mean that Native Americans should dilute their votes by doing likewise.

As a matter of fact, if there was a Native American Party, both Republicans and Democrats would be catering to that party in hopes of garnering their support for their candidates. When any party takes its voters for granted it spends little time or money reaching for their votes. Example: How many times have presidential candidates been invited to speak at national Indian events and failed to do so? If the Native American Party held a national convention you can bet your bottom dollar that they'd all be there.

In the past the Republican Party knew that Indians would always vote the straight Democratic ticket. As a result they shied away from soliciting the Indian vote and they also shied away from supporting any legislation favorable to the Indian people.

It was the mass media that created the epiphany that brought about my thought change. As I watched and read the one-sided news reports on both candidates I realized that by filtering out the political prospects of the Republicans simply because I was a Democrat, I was denying myself the options of hearing both sides of an argument. Like that flock of sheep, I was herded into one field even though there might have been more and better grass in another field.

If the only newspapers we read or the only television 24/7 stations we watch are those catering to the left how will we ever know what is happening on the right? If we (Native Americans) formed out own party we would be more apt to want to learn about the political views of both or all parties. It only stands to reason.

Much of the money reaching the Indian reservations comes there in the form of earmarks. It comes in dribs and drabs and usually amounts to just enough to make most programs it is intended to serve fail before they have a chance to get started. From health to education to housing the Indian people are dependent upon the federal government. That doesn't make it right, but it does make it a reality.

Therefore, most Native Americans join the party they believe can bring them the basic services they have earned through treaties, but are too often forced to hold out their hats for the few goodies that come to them in the shape of earmarks. What the Indian people really need are solid programs for housing, education and health based upon annual appropriations that are true and constant not upon whimsical earmarks that are baseless. If Congress decided to eliminate earmarks altogether, what would happen to the many small programs on Indian reservations and urban centers across America that are heavily reliant upon them?

The case to create a Native American Party that all other parties would cater to in order to secure their votes may be the answer the Indian people have been searching for all of these years. Don't you think that the senior senator of any state would appoint Indians to serve as federal judges if the Native American Party demanded it in lieu of their support? How many other of the demands of the Native Americans would be answered in states with large Indian populations if the loss of their support could mean the loss of an election? As I said last week, think about it and after November 4, 2008, start giving it very serious consideration.

© 2008 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc.

Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was born, raised and educated on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association and the founder and publisher of Indian Country Today, the Lakota Times, and the Dakota/Lakota Journal. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in the Class of 1991. He can be reached at najournalist@msn.com.

Caryn James: Return of the War Room: Not-So-Extreme Makeover

2008-10-13T01:40:48Z

Sometimes a political documentary plays like a horror movie, and Return of the War Room scared me more than anything I've seen in a while -- (not Palin-could-be-president fear level, but scary). Fifteen years after Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker 's documentary The War Room took us inside Bill Clinton's campaign and made political celebrities of George Stephanopoulos and James Carville, the filmmakers have come back with this new Sundance Channel documentary. Return of the War Room is not a sequel but a look backwards, with the old players now reminiscing, talking heads. For a while it seems like the big revelation might be: back then, nobody had Blackberries and Carville had some hair.

But this benign blast from the past creates a stomach-churning jolt a half-hour in when we see the '92 campaign rules posted on the war room wall. Look at how easily they might be used by the Obama campaign today:

Change vs. More of the Same
The Economy, Stupid
Don't forget healthcare
The Debate Stupid

Sure, Bill Clinton defeated the man Mary Matalin cozily calls "Poppy Bush" in the new doc, but this single visual from the old film reminds us how drastically the changes and gains of the Clinton years have been eroded by Poppy's son. Suddenly the film's most urgent, subterranean question rises to the surface: How could we have come so far and ended up back where we started? Or even worse? I froze that frame and went down the list point by point: change is more needed than ever; the economy is stupid and stupider, healthcare is broke and broker, and the debates mere sideshows to attack ads.

From that scene on, I watched the film with a escalating sense of déjà vu, with every backward glance signaling some horrible decline during the George W. years. Lisa Caputo, Hillary Clinton's press secretary during the '92 campaign, recalls being in the crowd in Arkansas as Bill claimed victory. The look on people's faces, she says, was "as if they had taken their country back." Isn't that what so many of us long for all over again? We've lived through an era of a real, Iraq war room, and presidential campaigns so vicious that the Swiftboat and Ayers attacks make the anti-Clinton skirmishes chronicled in the original War Room, like draft-dodging and the Gennifer Flowers affair, seem like the good old days.

I wish Return of the War Room had really explored how campaigns have changed, but that's asking for a different film. This one does what effective political documentaries should: resonate with their times, raising questions that might not even be on the screen. It adds a chilling perspective that might easily be lost in the heat of the current campaign. It didn't make me think we're worse off than we were eight years ago; I knew that. It reminded me we may be worse off than we were 16 years ago! Or, as then-Clinton consultant Mandy Grunwald says in the film, quoting Carville on Bill Clinton's presidency, "What didn't you like, the peace or the prosperity?"

Steven Petrow: Joe Biden's Tears Remembered

2008-10-13T01:27:35Z

As I watched Senator Joe Biden tear up at the tale end of the much ballyhooed vice presidential debate, I had a visceral moment of déjà vu. In case you missed what jump started it, the senior senator from Delaware became momentarily misty-eyed as he refuted the notion that "just because I am a man" he couldn't understand what it's like to wonder whether or not a child would "make it" after a life-threatening accident. Watching him that evening, it was hard not to think about Biden's honorable character and love of family -- especially as we now know his mother-in-law was to die the morning after.

Still, as the campaign comes down to the wire, John McCain and Sarah Palin are doing their very best at character assassination. We've all heard the clips: Palin claiming that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists" and McCain's newest ad, "Ambition," which out and out calls "that one" a liar. And at a Republican rally earlier in the week, a rally that hinted at a mob lynching, a conservative radio talk show host said to McCain: "It's absolutely vital that you take it to Obama, that you hit him where it hurts. We have all of these shady characters that have surrounded him."

Of course, the "character" closest to Obama -- other than his wife Michelle -- is Joe Biden.

That evening of the VP debate, Biden didn't have to proclaim his "character" -- he simply showed us. He didn't tell us explicitly about the tragic deaths of his first wife Neilia and his 1 year-old daughter Naomi (both his sons were also severely injured in the car accident) just after he had been first elected to the Senate in 1972 and only days before Christmas. But I knew what he was remembering. I knew because, as a 15 year-old in the fall of '72 -- before any of my grandparents died, even before our beloved spring spaniel passed away -- my teenage heart broke to learn of the Biden family tragedy, the first time I began to understand the invisible and random hand of the fates.

Earlier that fall I had campaigned for Senator George McGovern as much as I could after my ninth grade classes ended, going door-to-door in my Queens, N.Y. neighborhood, pasting a ginormous blue and white McGovern sticker across my loose-leaf notebook, and finding myself ridiculed by many for supporting such a "dove" (this was at the height of the Vietnam War).

But in my periphery lay Joe Biden, then the 29 year-old father of three, who fought a tough campaign focused on ending the war in Southeast Asia, the environment, civil rights and, yes, change. On Election Day, Nixon carried Delaware by a landslide, but the young lawyer, along with his wife and trusted partner, won his Senate seat in a huge upset by a mere 3,000 votes.

Only weeks later, wife and daughter would perish and I would write Sen. Biden a note of condolence. Who knows what I wrote because that letter is long gone, but not his response back to me, which arrived later that winter. I've kept it all these 36 years. His letter came in a heavy, cream-colored envelope with the return address, United States Senate Washington, D.C., engraved in dark blue in the left corner. He addressed it to "Mr. Petrow," probably the first time anyone had called me that:

"I offer a belated thank-you for your kind words of condolence. I deeply appreciate your sentiments. I owed so very much to Neilia. She had a talent for making not only her own life worthwhile, but also the lives of those around her. She was both a loving mother and a loving wife. In addition, she was my political confidant, in whose judgment I had implicit and utmost trust. Neilia looked forward to our coming to Washington. Now our life has been completely torn apart by an event I shall never completely understand. Neilia deserved better. Best wishes, Joe Biden"

Included in the letter were the Mass cards for both Neilia and Naomi. On the back of his wife's card was a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet: "Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field." And on his infant daughter's: "Dear God, What greater thing can be said of Amy than Ezekiel's words: 'As is the mother, so is her daughter.'" -- Ezekiel 16:44

After his tears, and after the debate, I went into my voluminous files to see if my recollection of Biden's dark days of 1972 matched the honorable and loving family man I had just witnessed on the stage in St. Louis. If my memory had any weakness, it was in not recalling the full promise and shattered life of the freshman senator from Delaware who, in the winter of his own despair, took the time to write a 15-year-old, while taking on his new duties in Washington D.C. and at home in Wilmington as a single father of two. So while McCain and Palin do their best to undermine the Democrats trustworthiness and character, let us praise the family man from Delaware who could and should be our next vice president.

A different version of this article was originally published in the Independent Weekly.

Daniel Cubias: Start Cramming Now - Let's Test Everybody for Citizenship

2008-10-13T01:15:26Z

One of the odder moments in this incessant campaign season was when John McCain's status as a real American became a question. I don't mean that anyone doubted his patriotism or citizenship or anything like that. I'm referring to the skepticism expressed over whether his birthplace (a military base in the Panama Canal zone) fulfills the U.S. Constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen."

It would indeed be a soul-crusher for Republicans if the guy pulls an upset in November, only to be ruled ineligible come Inauguration Day. Either scenario, by the way, is highly unlikely.

In any case, conservatives want to change the Constitution (that non-living document) by adding the "Schwarzenegger amendment," so that any naturalized citizen can become president. But while they're at it, they also want to amend the Constitution so that being born in America is not sufficient for citizenship.

The thinking here is that too many pregnant Hispanic women are dragging their huge bellies across the border, just so they can spit out a little nino or nina on U.S. soil. Doing so, of course, ensures American citizenship for their offspring.

I happen to agree with these proposed changes, especially amending the Constitution so that people born in America are not automatically made U.S. citizens. In fact, my compliant with this proposal is not that it is unfair or radical, but that it doesn't go far enough.

So if we're going to do this, let's do it correctly:

Amend the Constitution so that no one can become a citizen until he/she passes a basic test. I mean nobody gets citizenship by virtue of where they're born or their parents' status. Everybody has to earn it.

This is where most conservatives pull back. They just want Diego and Maria denied rights because their parents don't speak English. They certainly aren't talking about limiting the status of their own ninth-generation offspring.

It's not just selfishness. We have this mindset that people whose roots go back farther are better Americans. But individuals whose ancestors fought at Valley Forge are not inherently more patriotic than immigrants. In fact, I would argue that people who spend time, money, and effort to study our culture -- then prove they know what they're talking about - are more committed to, and knowledgeable about our nation than the millions of Americans who slept though high school history.

To be fair, I have a bias. Several members of my family have had to pass the test. I was born here, so I didn't have to put myself on the line. But my mother, aunt, and several cousins have had to step up and say, "Hell yeah, I had to work for this." And don't we always appreciate things that we have earned more than gifts that are just handed to us?

And what's so intimidating about a basic test, anyway? I'm not talking about forcing people to answer questions like "Explain U.S. monetary policy on a macroeconomic level." The citizenship test, as I understand it, asks people things like "Why do some states have more representatives in Congress?" I find it difficult to believe that this is a harmful thing for citizens to know.

If we had informed citizens -- people who really strived to be active members of this country -- maybe America wouldn't elect leaders based on how cute they are or, Lord help us, whether the majority wanted to have an imaginary beer with them.

An objection to this idea is the status of children. Are we to educate every child with the knowledge that come adulthood, many of them will be, at best, legal residents and never become citizens? Well, that's hardly scary, because we do that now. Furthermore, I would argue for the intrinsic benefit of putting all kids on an even playing field -- one where every child is a future potential president -rather than subdividing children into "natural-born citizens" and interlopers.

So what are the objections to this idea? Are they based on the principles of fairness and history, on the norms of our culture? Or perhaps we react negatively because of fear, the itchy suspicion that many of us have no idea what all those stars and stripes on the flag actually symbolize.

Jared Bernstein: Risk Manager-In-Chief

2008-10-13T01:07:34Z

One way to view the current economic crisis is as a pervasive failure to manage risk. In fact, bad risk management actually explains a lot of what's gone wrong in recent years. And that realization is one we'd be well advised to bring with us into the voting booth in a few weeks.

One of the main reasons the financial system is seizing up is that too many institutions borrowed beyond their capacity and used the money to make risky bets. Some of those bets took the form of subprime mortgages--loans to people who were credit risks, but would be able to service the debt as long as their new home continued to appreciate at double digit rates. Other bets were in the form of derivatives--many of which also ultimately depended on home prices endlessly defying gravity.

The bubble burst, home prices began to slide, mortgage defaults accelerated, and the extent of overleveraging--borrowing beyond your means--in the financial sector was exposed. The Treasury and the Fed are throwing everything they've got, including a bunch of stuff no one ever knew they had, at the problem, but little is really sticking yet.

What does any of this have to do with risk management? A lot.

When lenders make a loan, they face a risk of not getting paid back. If that risk is kind of high, they're likely to insist on a hefty down payment and set the interest rate on the loan higher than they would otherwise. Remember, that rate is the cost to the borrower of the loan, and if the market is working right, risky borrowers should face higher rates, both to discourage them from getting in over their heads, and to pay the lender a risk premium--a little protection money--for taking a chance.

If the risk is really high, a reasonably savvy lender won't make the loan at all.

But what if both lender and borrower fail to recognize the risks they're taking on? What if the banks think a debt, whether it's a mortgage or a complex derivative, is perfectly likely to be repaid with interest, right on time, when the reality is that it probably won't be. What if borrowers believe they'll be able to finance a loan when in reality, they won't even come close?

And what if a president and defense secretary think they'll be greeted as liberators in a country they've decided to occupy?

The failure to accurately assess risk has been truly epidemic in this country, and the costs have ranged from expensive (and I'm talking trillions here) to fatal.

The key questions are why did these failures occur and which presidential ticket would be best chosen in that regard (okay, question two is a terribly transparent set up, but please read on anyway).

The failure to assess risk in financial markets stems less from greed--that's always been there--than from a combination of "innovative" transactions and lax oversight. The Greenspan Fed not only watched the real estate bubble inflate, they blew into the balloon, touting the wonders of adjustable rate mortgages. Though the Fed is supposed to monitor the subprime market, they ignored internal warnings that large imbalances were forming. As Peter Goodman points out in this must-read article, Greenspan and other top officials blocked initiatives to regulate derivatives, despite the fact that the growing magnitude and interconnectedness of this market meant that their failure threatened the system.

Economists and bankers failed to manage the credit risk that occurs when cheap money and large external (i.e., from other countries) flows of capital finance a spending spree that's not supported by real income growth. In fact, the ability to package and sell that NINJA (no income, no job, no assets) loan you just made to some other dealer, meant that loan originators didn't need to worry about those pesky, old-school underwriting standards.

How did it come to this? The answer has a lot to do with economic ideology. Mainstream economists convinced policy makers that markets were self-disciplining. Oversight, borrowing constraints, the enforcement of lending standards...these would only cuff the invisible hand. Instead, the market would punish those who underpriced risk. Even when key markets were showing clear signs of flying off the hinges, the nation's top economists were reassuring us that these "temporary disequilibriums" were of little concern.

You see how well that has worked out. We very desperately need a new economics that sees market failures--and accurately prices risk--much sooner than the current brand.

But while bad risk management in financial markets is capturing our attention right now, the problem goes much deeper. Faulty intelligence overestimated the risk from WMD's in Iraq, and underestimated the challenges our military would face from the insurgents. In fact, when it comes to risk assessment, economic or otherwise, it is now quite impossible to trust the judgments of our leaders.

Which brings us to leadership. As noted, the economic failures to manage risk were caused by ideological blinders. The foreign policy failures were caused by the inability of our imperiousness leaders to entertain evidence that didn't fit their views. You can't assess risk if your mind is closed. Ideologues, who are by definition impervious to evidence, need not apply.

Now how does this all map onto Obama/Biden versus McCain/Palin?

Obama will be good at this. He has a balanced, evidenced-based approach to risk assessment. To the consternation of many in the base, he is not particularly ideological. He's also naturally cautious, deliberative, if not plodding. In fact, these very qualities were often (rightly) criticized during the campaign, as he failed to catch fire and communicate a simple, compelling narrative.

But at this point, many voters are looking for precisely the kind of leadership I believe he offers in this regard. It's not indecisive. It's gather the evidence, assess the risk factors, and make the call with the greatest objective, not subjective, chance of achieving the goal. It doesn't mean you check your gut at the door. It just means you let your brain into the room too.

With McCain, I fear that when it comes to making the big decisions, we'd get the subjective, shoot from the hip we've seen far too much of in recent weeks. That's certainly the message from the erratic turn the campaign has taken, as they lurch from one surprise to another. The old McCain was not particularly ideological, an advantage in judging risk; the new one is worse than Bush on this score.

McCain's economic policy is a good example. At this point, it's simply impossible to objectively look at the Bush economic record, and conclude it worked, yet McCain doubles down on it. He's also moved to right of Bush on the war, opposing timetables that Bush and even the Iraqi's themselves are brigning to the table.

But the worst sign regarding McCain as risk manager was the choice of Palin for his VP. That move, made for purely short-term political gain, with no regard for the risks it posed to the country, has turned even a number of staunch Republicans off their ticket. It's not just that she's inexperienced. It's that she doesn't seem to know what she doesn't know, and it's easy to imagine her, if she got the chance, making choices from inside the same sort of insulated Bush/Cheney bubbles that got us where we are today.

Finally, and I recognize I wade into choppy waters here, there's a relationship between a candidate's religious views and his or her ability to effectively assess risk. Of course, presidents have and will always be profoundly informed by the ethical tenets of their religion, and I see nothing wrong, and much right, with that (though how Bush's condoning of torture fits in here, I'm not sure).

But then there's these types of comments from Palin, who called the Iraqi war "a task from God," asserting that "there is a plan and that plan is God's plan" (sorry, but I think God's plan would have been infinitely better than the one in play). She made a similar point re God's will in getting their gas pipeline built up there.

With respect, that's mixing religion and policy analysis in a way that I fear leads to inadequate risk assessment. Bush never made such revealing statements, but it may be the case that evangelicals don't always make the best risk assessors.

I suggest we tout this role of risk manager-in-chief over the next few weeks. Given the challenges facing our country, it's a critically important distinction between the two tickets. And given the direction in which the polls are finally trending, it would appear that the majority of voters are ready to place a reality-based risk assessor in the oval office. To not do so would just be too...what's the word? Risky.