Goddam it. Was there some sort of Australian daylight savings thang happening while I wasn’t watching? Thought I had an hour in hand and here we are at deadline…
I spent the evening having dinner with English communists in DC (they live in an upcoming area) when I gave the Russian cab driver an address he looked at me and said “why you want to go there?”.
Short of cash, I made him pull up at a gas station, where two guys on meth were … I dunno what they were doing, they were out of it.
In the servo, I’m using the ATM and I look outside. BAM BAM BAM. One guy is banging on the windshield, the cabbie is cringing. I slide back in.
“I didn’t know the result of the Redskins game so he got angry,” he whimpers.
We got there eventually and what a relief it was, two hours of being able to talk about what idiots American liberals were, without it being assumed that you were in the McCain tank.
Case in point: today’s cr-p that Sarah Palin has launched about Obama being a friend of terrorists because he had some fleeting connections with Bill Ayers, a former Weathermen urban guerrilla.
The Obama campaign responded quickly which is better than Kerry, but it was still defensive. Obama and Ayers never hung out, they like different bands etc etc.
What about … one of Ayers’s associates in the 60s was David Horowitz, former editor of leftist mag Ramparts, now editor of Frontpage, ultra-con … ultra-con, Jesus, fascist … website, home of Ann Coulter … conservative …
What about … Thomas Mutthila, one time pastor at Palin’s church, who said on tape that Jesus was “persecuted by the Israelites, then and now” … who could he possibly mean? That’s aside from all the angels and demons shit …
What about … Todd Palin’s eight year membership of the Alaska Independence Party, whose leader was found murdered AND DISPOSED OF IN A BARREL by other members of the party at the time Todd was a member … ?
Etc.
The Ayers stuff had a go-around months ago, and the reach for it was a measure of desperation in the McCain campaign … there’ll be a lot more of it.
Stay tuned I would imagine for Bill Clinton’s pardons of old weathermen to come up etc etc — anything but the wrecked economy.
And the debate Tuesday, from the heart of honky-tonk Nashville…
Meanwhile I have been given a reading list — Kautsky, Hilferding, Engels, Sweezy, Bettelheim etc — which you would all be advised to pay heed.
The Obama video about McCain and the Keating S&L scandal is a nuclear warhead of political destruction. Absolutely devastating and leaves a political corpse in its wake.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=IDofbll86dY&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_922988
The Ayres business could only appeal to the ignorant and easily fooled. At the time Ayres became an acquaintance (and he was never more than that) he was an education professor and an established figure on the local political scene. In other words he was an entirely respectable figure and only fools could believe it taints him and those kinds of fools were bound to vote Republican anyway. The association with Rezko is more genuinely damaging but overall the quantity of doubtful associations is small compared to McCain.
It is true that Democratic politicians were part of the Keating 5 but they largely suffered the political fates they deserved – McCain didn’t. Although he was equally guilty it was considered that his war hero status entitled him to get off with only an admonishment. Obama can condemn the Democratic politicians involved without diminishing the force of his attack on McCain. Obviously, the nexus between the old scandal and the current financial crisis only amplifies the potential damage to McCain.
It seems that the Obama campaign was anticipating the smears and has its own ‘pushback’ offensive ready and primed to go. It focuses on the late ’80s Savings an Loans scandal and McCain’s protection of a leading donor and corporate criminal, Charles Keating.. Rather oddly to Australian ears it is called Keating Economics and it already has its own website:
http://www.keatingeconomics.com/
It appears to me that there is another reason, other than retaliation, for the Keating 5 attack. McCain is well known for flying into a rage when his integrity is questioned (despite the fact that his integrity is so questionable, but that’s another story).
If they can succeed in provoking that rage then that will play straight into the “erratic” theme that the Obama campaign is developing. It is a fairly transparent strategy and no doubt McCain will be on guard against it. But that does not mean it won’t work.
This Newsweek blog has as an excellent analysis of the McCain strategy:
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/