You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more. --Mark Twain
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is also a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not modeling species distributions or battling creationists, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
John McCain is dishonest and dishonorable, and he is now crossing into truly dangerous territory.
In response to McCain's own incitement, his audiences are crossing further and further into violent and eliminationist rhetoric. In response to McCain's leading and dishonest question "Who is the real Barack Obama?," an audience member shouted out "a terrorist." At a Palin rally, the audience responded to Obama's name by calling out "treason," and later called out "Kill him!" At another event, a description of Obama's tax policy was greeted with cries of "traitor." At a townhall meeting in Wisconsin, an audience member "blasted the 'socialists taking over our country' and referred to Obama and Nancy Pelosi as 'hooligans.' McCain didn't utter one syllable of objection. In fact, he nodded bemusedly at the 'socialist' mention. And at the end of the man's rant, McCain said that the man was 'right.'"
At a rally for Georgia's incumbent Republican Senator, Saxby Chambliss, a mention of Obama was met with boos and an audience member's demand to "bomb Obama." The Pennsylvania Republican Party sent out a press release with the title "PAGOP: OBAMA – A TERRORIST'S BEST FRIEND."
The Secret Service is investigating the reports of calls to kill Obama, treating them as legitimate threats against their protectee. And the fault for these calls to violence rests squarely on the shoulders of John McCain. Josh Marshall is right to compare this rhetoric to that of Father Coughlin, an antisemitic fascist from John McCain's childhood, who had a popular radio show in the '30s where he praised the work of Hitler and Mussolini. His newspaper republished the classic anti-Semitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and he founded a group called the Christian Front, which the FBI shut down in 1940. J. Edgar Hoover explained the raid, saying that "The Christian Front was planning to murder Jews, communists and a dozen Congressmen. … They advocated a dictatorship, similar to the Hitler dictatorship in Germany." The cartoon above is Dr. Seuss's take of Coughlin's propaganda.
A few members of the press are seeing the danger here. David Gergen worries that this will lead to violence, and wonders why McCain and Palin haven't reined in their followers. Joe Klein writes that "We are on the edge of some real serious craziness here and it would be nice if McCain did the right thing and told his more bloodthirsty supporters to go home and take a cold shower."
But it hasn't happened yet. And the situation is escalating. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports:
Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
The epithet was, apparently, "uppity negro," though I wonder how that last word was pronounced.
This is bad news, and will only get worse, unless McCain and Palin display some sort of leadership. And if they can't do that now, how can they possibly do it in office?
Green fluorescent protein is a standard tool in molecular biology. Researchers insert the gene into an animal's genome, and then watch for a characteristic green glow when a particular region is activated. By finding cells where the gene inserts near another protein of interest, it is possible to use that glow as a marker for the point in development or in a biochemical pathway when a particular gene is active, thus allowing scientists to trace the pattern of gene activation within an organism.
Osamu Shimomura, 80, an emeritus professor at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Boston University Medical School; Martin Chalfie, 61, a professor of biological sciences at Columbia University; and Roger Y. Tsien, 56, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego.
The technique was first demonstrated in 1994, and by 1997-1998 (when I was in college), the technique had spread to student biology labs. Tsien and other scientists have since widened the color palette available from GFP, both by mutating the gene and by extracting glowing proteins from other species.
MCCAIN: Well, look, President Clinton [had] opportunities to get Osama bin Laden. President Bush had opportunities to get Osama bin Laden. I know how to do it and I'll do it. And I understand and I have the knowledge and the background and the experience to make the right judgments.
BLITZER: You're president of the United States; you've vowed that you will capture Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. … What would you do differently [than George Bush]?
MCCAIN: Well, I'm not going to telegraph a lot of the things that I'm going to do because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know the area. I've been there. I know wars. I know how to win wars. And I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden or, put it this way, bring him to justice.
BLITZER: All right. If you capture...
MCCAIN: We will do it. I know how to do it.
So, John McCain clearly knows how to catch Osama bin Laden, and has known so since at least July. Why hasn't he told George Bush? Why isn't George Bush implementing this plan?
Given the McCain/Palin ticket's ties to domestic terrorism, and the campaign's dalliance with anti-semitism, it's hardly unfair to wonder if McCain may not be holding back this crucial information in hopes that Osama bin Laden will escape. Because we know that John McCain is an honorable man, so it's impossible that he would simply be lying about having a plan to capture bin Laden. No, the only possibility is that he is in fact protecting bin Laden.
I know John McCain is a little old and nutty, but it was such an odd moment.
Another odd moment happened in the discussion of Pakistan. Obama takes the reasonable view that we will pursue al Qaeda into Pakistan, with Pakistani assistance if possible and without it if necessary. John McCain considers that willingness to track down the perpetrators of 9/11 "remarkable," because, he explains, "You know, if you are a country and you're trying to gain the support of another country, then you want to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion. When you announce that you're going to launch an attack into another country, it's pretty obvious that you have the effect that it had in Pakistan: It turns public opinion against us."
Later, when asked why he sang "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of a Beach Boys song, McCain insisted that he "was joking with an old veteran friend, who joked with me, about [bombing] Iran." That seems at odds with his earlier claims about the risks of telegraphing such a destabilizing move. And indeed, if the goal of our diplomacy is to "do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion," I fail to see how it makes sense to refuse to negotiate with Iran. Indeed, McCain's plan of "imposing significant, tough sanctions to modify their behavior" without negotiating to give them a chance to meet our demands first seems to be in direct conflict with his insistence that the goal is to strengthen our position by influencing public opinion in other countries. Sanctions hurt the public, usually more than they hurt the leadership.
Finally, what kind of sociopath jokes about bombing a country with whom we are not at war, especially one that is central to a deeply unstable region?
So John McCain has jumped the shark. Consider these words from the typically right-wing-friendly Joe Klein:
I'm of two minds about how to deal with the McCain campaign's further descent into ugliness. Their strategy is simple: you throw crap against a wall and then giggle as the media try to analyze the putresence in a way that conveys a sense of balance: "Well, it is bull-pucky, but the splatter pattern is interesting..." which, of course, only serves to get your perverse message out. I really don't want to be a part of that. But...every so often, we journalists have a duty to remind readers just how dingy the McCain campaign, and its right-wing acolytes in the media (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity) have become--especially in their efforts to divert public attention from the economic crisis we're facing. And so inept at it: other campaigns have decided that their only shot is going negative, but usually they don't announce it, as several McCain aides have in recent days--there's no way we can win on the economy, so we're going to go sludge-diving. …
It is appropriate that the prime vessel for this assault is Sarah Palin, whose very presence on a national ticket is an insult to your intelligence. She now has "credibility," we are told, because she managed to read talking points off notecards in the debate last week with unwitting enthusiasm. Over the weekend, she picked up on an article in The New York Times, which essentially says that Barack Obama and the former terrorist Bill Ayers have crossed paths in Chicago, served on a couple of charitable boards together, but aren't particularly close. To Palin--or her scriptwriters--this means that Obama has been "palling around" with terrorists. … In any case, this is rather rich coming from Palin, who is married to a man who belonged to a political party--the Alaskan Independence Party--that wanted to secede from the union.
It's time to dissolve the Republican party and replace it with a more serious opposition party.
McCain's terrorism problem dates back to the early 1990s, when he sided with right-wing domestic terrorists and voted against tough new legislation cracking down on a wave of anti-choice domestic terrorism targeting women who visited abortion clinics, their doctors, and clinic staff.
In both 1993 and 1994, McCain voted against the anti-terrorism measure. On each occasion, McCain was one of thirty radical anti-choice Senators to oppose the bill Fortunately, despite McCain's opposition, it passed the Senate by a 69-30 margin.
At the time, right-wing anti-choice extremists were terrorizing women, doctors, and clinic staff across the United States with thousands of acts of physical violence and threats of violence each year.
Those groups had links to the militia movement, with both groups' violent tactics rising from a meeting of right-wing ideologues in Estes Park, CO. Larry Pratt, an attendee at the meeting, advocated for the palingenesis of America as a "Christian nation" through the work of small paramilitary cells. He built his ideas from a study of such groups in the killing fields of Guatemala and the Philippines, where labor activists and opponents of the authoritarian right-wing groups were slaughtered in massive campaigns of terror. Other attendees at the conference included seccessionists, white separatists and leaders in the anti-abortion movement, like the head of Operation Rescue. Pratt later bankrolled Operation Rescue's activities while the group declared bankruptcy to avoid paying legal settlements to its victims.
Does John McCain support widespread campaigns of domestic bombing? Does he, indeed, support the creation of revolutionary militias which would replace the Constitution with the Bible?
I didn't get to see Bill Maher's Religulous, but apparently a lot of people did. It was on 502 theaters, and earned $3,500,000. For those keeping track, Ben Stein's Expelled earned $2,970,848 on its opening weekend, and was showing on 1,052 theaters. In other words, it earned less money despite showing on more screens.
Its reviews are kinda mixed, but it should be worth seeing.
As I sort of expected, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden both did kinda OK tonight. Biden had some good moments but was a bit too stodgy and senatorial. Palin was overly scripted, managed to avoid making too much of a word salad, and seemed to be trying too hard to be folksy. I don't feel like too many people really say "doggone it" in a setting like this, even in Alaska. I looked over some of a gubernatorial debate from the CSPAN archives, and don't recall her trying so hard to be folksy there.
She seemed to have trouble engaging with the actual questions being raised, and it was obvious that she had been given her talking points, and wasn't going to go beyond them. That's all well and good, but a far cry from the more discursive style we saw from Biden tonight, and from both Obama and McCain the other day. It's sad to say, but Palin is simply not ready for prime time, and doesn't measure up to the other three candidates.
Joe Biden deftly got around the big concern a lot of people expressed before the debate: would he be seen as attacking poor young innocent Palin. The approach was simple; he went after McCain. When Palin said something foolish or dishonest, he didn't attack Palin, he called out McCain. Since joining the ticket, all Palin's done is repeat the lines McCain and his lobbyist staff wrote for her, and Biden was too smart to waste time arguing with the puppet. Americans are voting for the one behind the curtain, and that's who Biden went after. And if McCain can't take that, he just needs to come out from behind Mama Palin's skirts.
The most revealing exchange was the discussion of the nature of the Vice Presidency. Palin seems to think that there's a lot of Constitutional flex in what the VP does. Which is true, in the sense that nothing is really forbidden from the VP, but almost no actual power is given. And I'm sorry, but Palin is simply deranged if she thinks the VP is not constitutionally part of the executive branch. But Biden was a bit off in claiming that Article I defines the executive branch. That'd be Article II; Article I discusses the legislative branch, and briefly mentions that the VP breaks ties in the Senate ("The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided," exactly as Biden said).
Biden's retort Palin's maundering on this topic was important. The Constitution matters, and this administration's contortions of the laws and the Constitution are among the most important reasons to get them and their ilk out of government. Good for Biden for laying down a marker on that key point.
Also, Palin totally lied about what the generals in Afghanistan say. She insisted that they hadn't explicitly ruled out the surge strategy. TPM Election Central quotes her saying:
Well, first, McClellan did not say definitively the surge principles would not work in Afghanistan. Certainly, accounting for different conditions in that different country and conditions are certainly different. We have NATO allies helping us for one and even the geographic differences are huge but the counterinsurgency principles could work in Afghanistan. McClellan didn't say anything opposite of that. The counterinsurgency strategy going into Afghanistan, clearing, holding, rebuilding, the civil society and the infrastructure can work in Afghanistan. And those leaders who are over there, who have also been advising George Bush on this have not said anything different but that.
John McCain is in trouble. Public polling has shifted toward Obama, and Obama's larger donor base allowing him to outspend McCain in traditional Republican strongholds like Indiana. With Colorado and New Mexico in play out west, and a good chance that Obama will take Nevada, too, traditional battlegrounds like Ohio and Florida are less critical than in 2000 and 2004.
Indeed, there are several plausible scenarios in which Obama wins the Electoral College without Ohio or Florida. With Iowa, Virginia, and the western states in play, the struggle is much broader than it has been in several elections. Obama's strong organization and fundraising have let him exploit that broader field, forcing McCain to play defense.
Obama is playing defense in only one Kerry state: New Hampshire. And its four electoral votes are more than matched by Nevada's 5, or the 5 from New Mexico, or the 9 available from Colorado. Or the 13 in Virginia. Iowa Obama can safely assume he's got 248 electoral votes, out of 270 needed to win.
Tack on the 7 from Iowa (which is solidly in Obama's camp), and need only pick up 15 electoral votes. There are 9 in Colorado, 13 in Virginia, 5 in Nevada and in New Mexico, and 4 in New Hampshire, leaving lots of combinations which yield a win (or a tie, which would be resolved by a vote of the Democratic Congress). Ohio has 20 electoral votes, and Florida has 27, so a win in either state would mean a clear victory.
On the other hand, McCain cannot win without taking Florida and Ohio. Even granting him Virginia, the western states, Iowa, and New Hampshire, he doesn't clear 270 without both of those swing states. To have any other path to victory, he would need to put new states into play, and the withdrawal from Michigan leaves him no plausible chances in a Kerry state. There will be a big fight in Pennsylvania, but Joe Biden is a native son there, and if enough folks travel in from New Jersey and New York to knock on doors, I don't see how Obama/Biden can lose there.
It isn't over yet, and tonight's debate and the second presidential debate could still shake up perceptions, and could events in the financial world. But so far, McCain's floundering on the economy and Palin's general floundering make those shorts of shift very unlikely.
McCain is playing defense at this point, and while a the best defense is a good offense, that doesn't mean being offensive. Someone should tell McCain.
If I like what I see, I'll receive 5 more issues (6 in all) for just $14.95. That's 50% off the cover price! If I'm not completely satisfied, I'll simply write "cancel" on the invoice and owe nothing. The free issue is mine to keep.
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
Shorter John McCain: 
