Today on Good Morning America, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, again, shows just how confused he is on foreign policy--only this time it is about geography. When asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer about whether the "situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent," McCain responded:
"I think it's serious. . . . It's a serious situation, but there's a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border," said McCain, R-Ariz., said on "Good Morning America."
Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border. Afghanistan and Pakistan do.
* McCain has been confused about his vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
And this only covers McCain’s obvious incoherence on his signature issue.
Had Obama even gave one of these McCain flubs during this campaign, he would have been drummed out of the campaign from a combined attack by GOP partisans and the corporate media. Instead it is McCain that is expressing such confusion over the facts, even as McCain claims that he is supposed to be the expert on foreign affairs. And yet this supposed expert of foreign affairs can't even correctly read a map of the Middle East to realize that Iraq does not border Pakistan, or even to understand that Czechoslovakia no longer exists. These are simple geography questions--we haven't even gotten into the more complex political and military questions regarding Iraq that are confusing McCain.
I really didn't want to get into this issue until now, but I do believe that McCain's age is becoming a serious campaign issue. I can understand that the Iraq-Pakistan border is a complete gaffe, and I'm willing to accept a gaffe now and then. But McCain has presented a consistent pattern of gaffes and confused misstatements on foreign policy and Iraq. Is it because McCain cannot mentally and physically keep up with the strenuous campaigning due to his age? If the campaign schedule is making a 71-year-old John McCain a little confused, then perhaps he should not be elected president. I am not saying that a 71-year-old should not be elected president due to his age. What I am saying is that if John McCain does not have the mental capacity to understand the complex problems that a president must grasp in this world, and make the hard decisions based on these complex problems, then John McCain is not qualified to sit in the Oval Office. Because right now, John McCain is showing that consistent pattern of mental confusion regarding the issues of foreign policy and Iraq.
McCain is not mentally qualified to be elected into the White House.
Maybe it is time to post another music video. And since it is the middle of summer, how about Don Henley's tribute to the summers of the '60s, The Boys of Summer. From YouTube:
This could be one of those unexpected events that forever changes the way the world perceives an issue. Iraq's Prime Minister agrees with Obama, and there's no wiggle room or fudge factor. This puts John McCain in an extremely precarious spot: what's left to argue? to argue against Maliki would be to predicate that Iraqi sovereignty at this point means nothing. Obviously, our national interests aren't equivalent to Iraq's, but... Malik isn't listening to the generals on the ground...but the "hasn't been to Iraq" line doesn't work here.
So how will the McCain campaign respond?
(Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, "We're fucked." No response yet from the McCain campaign, although here's what McCain said the last time Maliki mentioned withdrawal: "Since we are succeeding, then I am convinced, as I have said before, we can withdraw and withdraw with honor, not according to a set timetable. And I’m confident that is what Prime Minister Maliki is talking about, since he has told me that for many meetings we’'ve had."
Will Maliki retract his words?
I'd say that the GOP strategist is understating is understating his comment regarding the McCain campaigns' response--McCain is royally fucked here. There is just no response that McCain can give that will not contradict his previous 2004 statement of withdrawing U.S. troops if the Iraqi government requests such a withdrawal. Even the July 8, 2008 McCain statement on McCain sidestepping Maliki's general withdrawal timetable doesn't even take into context the political fallout of Maliki's endorsement of Obama's timetable. There is just no way McCain can respond to this story without causing even further damage to his already disastrous campaign.
John McCain is royally and completely fucked here.
Well, the story of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's backing of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's troop withdrawal timetable has now entered into the Twilight Zone. According to The New York Times Caucus blog:
Update: A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister has issued a statement saying his remarks were “misunderstood and mistranslated,” but did not address a specific error. Full statement below.
The policies and whims of American leaders have played a major role in politics in Iraq and elsewhere. And now, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, dipped his toes in the United States’ race for the White House.
Mr. Maliki essentially endorsed Senator Barack Obama’s plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel.
[....]
Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, issued a statement saying Mr. Maliki’s statement had been “as not conveyed accurately regarding the vision of Senator Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, on the timeframe for U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq,” but it did not address a specific error. It did soften his support for Mr. Obama’s plan and implied a more tentative approach to withdrawing troops. More of the statement, which came from the U.S. military’s Central Command press office:
Al-Dabbagh explained that Mr. al-Maliki confirmed the existence of an Iraqi vision stems from the reality with regard to Iraq security needs, as the positive developments of the security situation and the improvement witnessed in Iraqi cities makes the subject of U.S. forces’ withdrawal within prospects, horizons and timetables agreed upon and in the light of the continuing positive developments on the ground, and security that came within the Strategic Plan for Cooperation which was laid and developed by Mr. Maliki and President George Bush. The Iraqi government appreciates and values the efforts of all the friends who continue to support and supporting Iraqi security forces.
Al-Dabbagh underscored that the statements made by the head of the ministerial council (Prime Minister al-Maliki) or any of the members of the Iraqi government should not be understood as support to any U.S. presidential candidates.
So now even though Maliki first claimed that he supports Obama's 16-month withdrawal timetable, the official Iraqi government's position is that Maliki statement was "not conveyed accurately regarding the vision" of Obama's vision, or a possible withdrawal timetable for U.S. troops in Iraq. Such a possible timetable would be set according to security conditions in Iraq and the Strategic Plan for Cooperation that was developed between Maliki and the Bush administration. Now Maliki no longer supports any U.S. presidential candidate.
And even Maliki has suddenly reversed himself in claiming he does not support any U.S. presidential candidate. According to the Caucus:
“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months,” Mr. Maliki said, according to the magazine’s online English edition. “That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”
Naturally, Mr. Maliki did not want to imply he was backing one candidate over another in a foreign election:
“Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business,” he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems.”
So Maliki first claims that he supports Obama's 16-month troop withdrawal timeline, but then rejects that he is endorsing one candidate over the other. The simple fact here is that Maliki is endorsing Obama's candidacy because Obama will withdrawal U.S. troops from Iraq. It is a "realistic" premise that Maliki supports. Maliki has also rejected Republican presidential candidate John McCain's 100-year-war-in-Iraq policy by saying that "Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems. Maliki has inserted himself into the presidential election, irregardless of whatever the official Iraqi government statement is. Is this going to influence the result of the U.S. presidential elections? I don't think so. Of course American voters may consider Maliki's support for Obama's troop withdrawal plan as another political point of contention between the two political parties on the issue of Iraq, but that will be as far as it will go. I could care less about what any government in the world would say in choosing between the two candidates--this just becomes another public opinion poll between the candidates. I would be more concerned about foreign governments contributing money to either presidential campaigns as a means of influencing elections--that I will not support for either Obama or McCain's campaign. While Obama has banned lobbyists from raising money for his campaign, McCain has allowed lobbyists working for foreign governments to both contribute money to his campaign and have those lobbyists work for his campaign. According to this February 1, 2008 ABC News story:
On his quest for the White House, McCain has five fundraisers who lobby for foreign interests. His campaign co-chair and chief moneyman, Thomas Loeffler, has lobbied for Saudi Arabia for five years. Loeffler personally arranged a meeting between Sen. McCain and Prince Turki al-Faisal, then-Saudi ambassador to the United States, in May of 2006. Loeffler, a former congressman and longtime Republican fundraiser, chairs the firm that helped the Saudi kingdom join the World Trade Organization, fight anti-Saudi legislation and improve its image in the war on terrorism. The Saudi royals paid Loeffler's firm more than $11 million in two years for its efforts on their behalf.
Loeffler did not respond to repeated calls requesting comment, but when asked about his work for Saudi Arabia last April, Loeffler told the National Journal that he would handle "all of the work" of his firm while working on the McCain campaign. He also said, "I do not find a conflict of interest at this time," according to the magazine.
McCain's fundraisers also include lobbyists for Peru, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and Dubai.
One of them, Peter Madigan, works for the government of Colombia to promote a U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement. His firm is also paid to "seek appropriations for the Government of Colombia," according to filings. The firm's lobbyists have distributed papers defending Colombian President Alvaro Uribe against allegations of ties to paramilitary groups, and promoting the controversial anti-drug program "Plan Colombia" as achieving "strengthening of human rights."
Madigan, who also lobbies on behalf of Dubai, serves with Sen. McCain on the board of the International Republican Institute, which seeks to advance freedom worldwide.
So not only is McCain in bed with the lobbyists, but he is also in bed with lobbyists working for foreign governments. Do you really want McCain in the White House?
A number of media outlets likewise professed to being confused by the statement from Maliki's office. The New York Times pointed out that al-Dabbagh's statement "did not address a specific error." CBS likewise expressed disbelief pointing out that Maliki mentions a timeframe for withdrawal three times in the interview and then asks, "how likely is it that SPIEGEL mistranslated three separate comments? Matthew Yglesias, a blogger for the Atlantic Monthly, was astonished by "how little effort was made" to make the Baghdad denial convincing. And the influential blog IraqSlogger also pointed out the lack of specifics in the government statement.
SPIEGEL sticks to its version of the conversation.
Here is MSNBC's political analyst Chuck Todd reporting that the Republican Party is panicked over Maliki's endorsement of Obama's timetable. Todd also states that, while Obama's Iraq trip has been a huge boom for the Obama campaign this weekend, the presidential race will still shift back towards the economy. From YouTube:
Todd is right--there is a serious panic taking place within the GOP. Not only has Maliki pulled the rug out of the GOP's argument for continuing the Iraq war, but the deteriorating economy under George W. Bush's administration certainly doesn't help John McCain's campaign to continue with a third Bush term, especially since McCain's economic policy is a continuation of Bush's economic policy. Right now, the McCain campaign and the Bush administration are pushing this spin that the coming U.S. recession is "psychological," even as Americans are being hurt by job losses, high energy and food prices, and falling home values due to the mortgage mess. It is the perfect storm of disaster after disaster falling on to the GOP, disasters created by their own outright greed and incompetence.
Conservative columnist Robert Novak reports that Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his close economic adviser, former senator Phil Gramm, have "patched up their relationship" after Gramm resigned from the McCain campaign due to Gramm's remarks that Americans are a "bunch of whiners" suffering from a "mental recession." From Real Clear Politics:
After Sen. John McCain publicly repudiated his close friend and adviser Phil Gramm's comments about a "nation of whiners" and a "mental recession," the two old political comrades patched up their relationship.
Gramm apologized to McCain for his remarks that gave Democrats an opening against the Republican presidential candidate and provided several days of ammunition for blogs, cable television and radio talk shows. McCain told Gramm not to worry about the expected pitfalls of a campaign surrogate. Gramm will continue as an adviser and surrogate.
Gramm remained a steadfast supporter last year when it appeared that McCain's campaign had collapsed. McCain was a loyal backer of Gramm's failed 1988 campaign for president and did not leave until the candidate dropped out of the race.
You can bet that Gramm will continue to be McCain's economic adviser, even in an unofficial way.
In related news, MoveOn.org has provided this YouTube video showing McCain saying that Americans have "psychological" views on the recession and high energy prices--it is all in our heads. From YouTube:
So even as McCain has thrown Gramm under the Straight Talk Express bus, McCain is still repeating Gramm's own words on a "mental" recession. Only it is not mental.
The White House this afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined "Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan - magazine."
The story relayed how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that "he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … ‘U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,'" the prime minister said.
The White House employee had intended to send the article to an internal distribution list, ABC News' Martha Raddatz reports, but hit the wrong button.
The misfire comes at an odd time for Bush foreign policy, at a time when Obama's campaign alleges the president is moving closer toward Obama's recommendations about international relations -- sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, discussing a "general time horizon" for U.S. troop withdrawal and launching talks with Iran.
Something tells me that the Bush administration just crapped a huge brick in its pants when they sent this email out. First this was a huge goof on part of the Bush White House, in that they wanted to send this story to their partisan pundits and bloggers so that they would use the story to attack the Obama campaign on the policy of a U.S. troop withdrawal time line. But more importantly, this story reveals something else about the Bush administration's pro-war policy in Iraq. It shows fear within the Bush administration and the Republican Party. Iraqi Prime Minister Malikis' support of Democratic candidate Barack Obama's troop withdrawal timetable provides a powerful opening to the American people on how to exit a war that almost two-thirds of the American people oppose. They may not have previously supported Obama's timetable, but with the Iraqi prime minister endorsing Obama's plan, then this is a powerful incentive for ending this failed Bush war that the American people are opposed to. It completely undercuts the entire pro-war positions of both the Bush administration and GOP presidential candidate John McCain. The Bush administration's plan was to send this story out to their partisan hacks and bloggers in order to both attack Obama and discredit Maliki in supporting a strategy that would cause both the U.S. and Iraq to surrender to the al Qaeda terrorists. Instead, the email was sent to reporters, magnifying this latest screw-up by the Bush White House.
BERLIN, July 19 (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.
In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.
"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."
It is the first time he has backed the withdrawal timetable put forward by Obama, who is visiting Afghanistan and us set to go to Iraq as part of a tour of Europe and the Middle East.
Obama has called for a shift away from a "single-minded" focus on Iraq and wants to pull out troops within 16 months, instead adding U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan.
This is just huge. First, Maliki wants U.S. occupation troops out of Iraq. All the PR-spin that we've been hearing from the Bush administration and the GOP about how Iraq would descend into anarchy and ethnic civil war if the U.S. pulled out, all the talk of how the Bush administration are holding the strings of a puppet government in Iraq, and here is the U.S. handpicked puppet leader of Iraq saying he supports Democrat Barack Obama's approach for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months. This is just incredible.
In 2004 Mr McCain told the Council on Foreign Relations that if asked to leave, America would have to withdraw.
[I]f that scenario evolves then I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.
But the McCain campaign's most recent statement was more non-committal. "Senator McCain has always said that conditions on the ground—including the security threats posed by extremists and terrorists, and the ability of Iraqi forces to meet those threats—would be key determinants in US force levels," said Randy Scheunemann, Mr McCain's foreign-policy adviser, avoiding the question.
Mr Maliki has sure put Mr McCain in a box. The candidate has prided himself on standing firm on Iraq—he has maintained his hawkish stance and criticised those who even utter the word "timetable". Moreover, his campaign has attacked Mr Obama's "constantly shifting positions" on Iraq. So it would be a difficult political manoeuvre for Mr McCain to respond at all positively to Mr Maliki's idea. Meanwhile, Mr Obama might begin to ask a receptive American electorate, "Who is it that wants America to stay in Iraq?"
In 2004, Senator McCain stated that if a legitimately elected Iraqi government asked for the U.S. to leave Iraq, then the U.S. should honor the Iraqi government's request. Now presidential candidate McCain has reversed himself, saying that the U.S. would withdrawal from Iraq only when the Iraqi forces are able to respond to terrorist threats to U.S. satisfaction, irregardless of the Iraqi government's position. This places John McCain in a very bad position, since McCain has staked a 100-year U.S. war in Iraq. And Maliki wants the U.S. out of Iraq in 16 months. What is worst, is that John McCain has focused his campaign on the Iraq war, saying that McCain himself has the greater foreign policy experience to confront the problems with Iraq, and that Barack Obama will surrender Iraq to the terrorists. McCain has said that the U.S. surge in Iraq has been a success, and that we should not leave Iraq before victory, or whatever "victory" is according to McCain. If the U.S. surge is a success, then it is time for the U.S. to leave Iraq. The McCain campaign has made the U.S. war in Iraq a single-focus issue to run on--every other issue has been a disaster for the McCain campaign. Now Maliki has pulled the Iraq rug out from under John McCain, sending McCain's pro-100-year-war Iraq policy into a shambles.
Update: I should point out that the McCain campaign has so far avoided directly responding to Maliki's endorsement of Obama's troop withdrawal timetable. Instead, McCain has been generally avoiding the question of Maliki's demands for a general timetable, saying that U.S. troops will leave Iraq only after they achieve "victory." So the McCain campaign has found themselves in a very bad situation, where McCain is, again, contradicting himself on Iraq.
Update 2: The McCain campaign has responded to Maliki's comment on supporting Barack Obama's troomp withdrawal. According to The Los Angeles Times:
John McCain's Republican presidential campaign was forced to respond this afternoon to initial press reports that in an interview with a German magazine Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had essentially endorsed theRepublican presidential nominee to be Senator John McCain on one of his numerous visits to Iraq 16-month Iraq pullout timetable of Democrat Barack Obama.
[....]
The political fear for the McCain camp is that in its energetic focus on the Obama political field trip and the 16-month timetable, the media and voters will miss another similarity, Maliki's reference to taking into account actual military conditions on the ground.
That's a crucial difference between Obama, who emphasized the immediate withdrawal part to his party's left during the primary process, and McCain, who's stressed pulling out based on the military situation and commander's counsel.
So this afternoon the McCain campaign called attention to a new video documenting the shifts in Obama's Iraq withdrawal position and issued a statement by foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann that said in full:
"The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama advocates an unconditional withdrawal that ignores the facts on the ground and the advice of our top military commanders. John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground.
"Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today. Timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor, which is of no apparent concern to Barack Obama.
"The fundamental truth remains that Senator McCain was right about the surge and Senator Obama was wrong. We would not be in the position to discuss a responsible withdrawal today if Sen. Obama's (anti-surge) views had prevailed."
Again, McCain sidesteps the issue, saying that Obama's troop withdrawal plan is wrong, and McCain is right about the U.S. troop surge success, while completely avoiding Maliki's endorsement of Obama's withdrawal plan. It is the same old crap, different day response to a failed McCain campaign policy of continuing the 100-year war.
A Zimbabwean man holds on May 16, 2008 a new five hundred million dollar note in Harare, May 2008. Zimbabwe, grappling with a record 2.2 million percent inflation, has introduced a new 100-billion-dollar bank note in a bid to tackle rampant cash shortages. (AFP/File/Desmond Kwande)
I wonder if the U.S. will ever end up in the same situation as Zimbabwe? From Yahoo News:
HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe, grappling with a record 2.2 million percent inflation, has introduced a new 100-billion-dollar bank note in a bid to tackle rampant cash shortages, the central bank said Saturday.
The new note will go into circulation on Monday, the bank said in a statement cited by state media, joining about half a dozen new high denomination notes already issued this year.
In January, a 10-million-dollar note was issued, then a 50-million-dollar note in April. In May, notes for 100 million and 250 million dollars were issued, swiftly followed by those for five billion, 25 billion and 50 billion.
The southern African nation, currently gripped by a post-election crisis, has been ravaged by hyperinflation which shot up from 165,000 percent in February to 2.2 million in June.
Independent economists however believe the official inflation figure is grossly understated, estimating it could be running between 10 million and 15 million percent.
Zimbabwe's chronic economic crisis has left at least 80 percent of the population living below the poverty threshold and mass shortages of basic goods in shops.
After calling Americans a "nation of whiners," and saying that we're all in a "mental recession," it appears that former Senator Phil Gramm is leaving Republican John McCain's presidential campaign. From MSNBC News:
NEW YORK - Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm resigned Friday from his role as Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign co-chairman, hoping to quiet the uproar that followed his comments that Americans had become a "nation of whiners" whose constant complaints about the U.S. economy show they are in a "mental recession."
Gramm, a past presidential candidate, made the remarks more than a week ago. McCain immediately distanced himself from the comments, but they brought a steady stream of criticism just as McCain is trying to show he can help steer the country past its current financial troubles.
Gramm said in a statement late Friday that he is stepping down to "end this distraction."
"It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country," Gramm said. "That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain's ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country's problems, it hurts the country. To end this distraction and get on with the real debate, I hereby step down as co-chair of the McCain campaign and join the growing number of rank-and-file McCain supporters."
Gramm made the comment to The Washington Times and later explained that he was talking about the nation's leaders not the American people. Democrats claimed at the time that the Gramm comments showed that McCain is out of touch with voters' concerns over high gas prices, the struggling housing industry and the shaky economy in general.
I find it rather humorous that Phil Gramm blames the Democrats for his own "mental recession" statement. Excuse me Senator--you screwed up in admitting your delusions that we are in a mental recession and are a bunch of whiners. Now the story is coming out that YOU hurt the country in tearing down the wall between banking and investment houses, causing this entire home mortgage meltdown. And then you lobby for a big financial company to roll back legislation during the mortgage crisis. From Politico.com:
Gramm’s role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation’s investment houses and practices didn’t stop there.
A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.
Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.
During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.
For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more than $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs.
Gramm did not respond to an e-mail and was unavailable for comment, according to a UBS spokesman. The bank has no official position on the subprime crisis, the spokesman said, but is a member of the Financial Services Roundtable and other industry groups that are actively lobbying Congress on the issue.
Now, some housing experts and economists see Gramm’s thinking in the recent housing proposal from McCain, the Republican Party’s presumed presidential nominee. Gramm is often a surrogate for the Arizona senator, particularly in meetings focused on the economy. And McCain has hinted he’d consider the former Texas senator for Treasury secretary in a McCain administration.
Countdown with Keith Olbermann explains further Gramm's connection between his role as a lobbyist for UBS, and how Gramm killed reform legislation for the benefit of UBS and the financial industry. Countdown Part One:
And John McCain wants to make Phil Gramm his Treasury Secretary in a McCain administration? We do not need either Phil Gramm or John McCain to continue sending this country down the toilet.
For today's Saturday Morning Cartoons, let us go back to some real fun with Tweety and Sylvester in Ain't She Tweet! This 1952 cartoon, directed by Friz Freleng, has Sylvester drooling over Tweety as a tasty snack through the Pet Shop window. Only before Sylvester can even plan to snatch Tweety from the Pet Shop, Tweety sold and delivered to Granny, who has a yard filled with pet bulldogs. So the plot is that Sylvester has to get through a million barking bulldogs just to even get at Tweety. Priceless.
Here is Tweety, Sylvester, and a million bulldogs in Ain't She Tweet! From YouTube:
You better stock up on your Coke for this summer. Because after Labor Day, the price is going up. From MSNBC News:
ATLANTA - Coca-Cola can expect to pay more starting this fall after the company's biggest bottler said Thursday that it would raise prices.
The issues at the bottler also hurt Coca-Cola Co.'s bottom line, since it owns about 35 percent of that business. The world's biggest beverage company said its profit fell 23 percent in the second quarter as it took a charge because of the bottler's woes.
Coca-Cola Enterprises, which has about 80 percent of the U.S. market for Coke, said it would raise prices in September because of higher commodity costs and declining U.S. soda sales. Bottlers set prices for retailers like grocery stores.
At Coca-Cola Co., the results were again led by the international operations.
The company is facing declining soda sales in the U.S., and managed to keep U.S. sales volume steady in the second quarter thanks to a boost from Glaceau's Vitaminwater, which it bought for $4.1 billion last June. International sales rose 5 percent even as they were hurt by natural disasters in Asia and labor strikes in Europe.
The Atlanta-based drinks company earned $1.42 billion, or 61 cents per share, down from $1.85 billion, or 80 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. The results included a charge of 40 cents per share related to Coca-Cola Enterprises. Excluding one-time items, the per share figure came to $1.01. Revenue rose 17 percent to $9.05 billion from $7.73 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had expected a profit of 96 cents per share on revenue of $8.93 billion, on average. But the company's shares fell about 4 percent.
I would say that Coke is facing the same problems that a lot of other food manufacturers are also facing--higher commodity prices, such as corn syrup, and higher energy prices, such as gas. In fact, I'd say that Coke is getting hit with a double-whammy regarding energy prices. Coke uses corn syrup as a sweetener for its concentrate. However corn prices have jumped due to increased ethanol production, and higher gas and oil prices. Coke has been absorbing those higher costs due to the higher corn prices, but has refused to raise the price on their signature soda. The second energy whammy would be higher gas prices, also due to the spike in oil prices, as Coke transports its products from their manufacturing centers to retail outlets, such as grocery stores. Again Coke has absorbed these higher costs without passing them down to consumers. As for declining U.S. soda sales, I'm wondering if the same high food and energy prices are causing American consumers to cut back on sodas. According to this Bloomberg.com story:
Chief Executive Officer Muhtar Kent, who took over Atlanta- based Coca-Cola this month, said consumers had less money to spend on Diet Coke, Minute Maid juices and Dasani bottled water because of rising food and energy prices. The amount of Coca-Cola drinks sold worldwide rose 3 percent, less than the 4 percent increase some analysts estimated, an indication that slowing sales in North America may expand elsewhere.
``When the fuel price is sky high at the pump, you really don't want to go into the store and spend another couple of bucks on snacks and pop or soda,'' Mariann Montagne, an analyst with Thrivent Asset Management in Minneapolis, said in a interview on Bloomberg Television. Montagne's firm manages $70 billion in assets, including Coca-Cola shares.
What we may be looking at here is inflation's effect of rising commodity and energy prices squeezing profit margins on Coke, forcing Coke to pass on those same inflationary pressures on consumers. This is just one food manufacturer--consider the thought that all the food manufacturers may be raising prices on their food products to cover their own increased energy costs. Remember that producer prices have jumped 1.8 percent in June, mainly due to the rising energy costs. We're in a situation where, if energy costs are not stabilized, we could see inflation spiral out of control here for this year. And inflation will hit us all--especially as consumers.
I've been watching a strange new spin coming out of the Republican Party on how to address the economic problems the U.S. is currently facing under this Bush administration. Now I know that the Republican Party's political spin regarding the economy has been to say everything is hunky-dory, however the American people are not buying this GOP argument. According to PollingReport.com, Americans have consistently trusted Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain on the issues of the economy since February 2008. An overwhelming majority of Americans have also expressed their views that the country is on the wrong track since 2005. And finally, this latest poll by Quinnipiac University is reporting that 53 percent of Americans ranked the U.S. economy as their top concern coming into this presidential election, while only 16 percent of Americans rank the U.S. war in Iraq as their top concern. So the U.S. economy is on every Americans mind. And how are the Republicans responding to this big worry?
By claiming that Americans are going psychological.
In a press conference last Monday, July 14th, President Bush stated that if Congress passes legislation lifting the ban against offshore oil drilling, it will "change the psychology that demand will constantly outstrip supply." Bush continued referencing this "psychology" of the oil markets to reinforce his argument for continued drilling off the coasts of the U.S. You can view both of thesevideos through YouTube:
They can pass energy legislation. I readily concede that, you know, it's not going to produce a barrel of oil tomorrow, but it is going to change the psychology that demand will constantly outstrip supply. As I said in my remarks, it's going to take a while to get these reserves on line. But it won't take a while to send a signal to the world that we're willing to use new technologies to find oil reserves here at home.
First of all, there is a psychology in the oil market that basically says, supplies are going to stay stagnant while demand rises. And that's reflected somewhat in the price of crude oil. Gasoline prices are reflected -- the amount of a gasoline price at the pump is reflected in the price of crude oil. And therefore, it seems like it makes sense to me to say to the world that we're going to use new technologies to explore for oil and gas in the United States -- offshore oil, ANWR, oil shale projects -- to help change the psychology, to send a clear message that the supplies of oil will increase.
Secondly, obviously good conservation measures matter. I've been reading a lot about how the automobile companies are beginning to adjust -- people -- consumers are beginning to say, wait a minute, I don't want a gas guzzler anymore, I want a smaller car. So the two need to go hand in hand. There is no immediate fix. This took us a while to get in this problem; there is no short-term solution. I think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand -- but the President doesn't have a magic wand. You just can't say, low gas. It took us a while to get here and we need to have a good strategy to get out of it.
So there is a "psychology" in the oil markets where "demand will constantly outstrip supply," creating these high gas prices that Americans are facing at the pump. So in order to stop this "psychology," President Bush advocates even more oil drilling off the U.S. coasts, which will reduce gas prices, and allow Americans to continue buying up their gas-guzzling SUVs. Is Tinkerbell one of the advisers in the Bush White House?
This is just one part of the "psychology" spin that I'm seeing coming from the Republican Party. Now let us go to Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain's economic adviser, Senator Phil Gramm and how he talks about Americans' "mental recession." From YouTube:
And finally, let us go to Republican presidential candidate John McCain--yes, he's talking about "psychological" in regards to economics. At first, McCain started pushing his happy talk, back in January 23, 2008, that he believed the "fundamental underpinnings of our economy are strong." One day later, McCain then claims that the recession fears are "psychological," saying that the U.S. economic fundamentals are "still strong." From YouTube:
McCain continues his psychological happy talk in July, when he tells a townhall event in Fresno California that offshore oil drilling will not provide any "immediate relief," but rather there will be some "psychological" benefits. From YouTube:
So what is with the Republicans' "psychological" talk? I think that the "psychological" spin is a spin of desperation for the GOP, as U.S. economic conditions continue to sour during this election year. Remember what the big issue on voters minds were back in January, 2007? It wasn't the economy, although the economy did take second place. The big issue was the U.S. war in Iraq, and specifically about President Bush's 20,000 troop surge into Iraq. So right as the presidential candidates were considering and posturing for their big run to the White House, the top issue on voters' minds was the Iraq war. And even though a clear majority of Americans opposed the war in 2007, the Republicans probably felt that they could pull the terrorism fear pages from the 2006 and 2004 play books, and use the same strategies for the 2008 election--Democrats are weak and will surrender to the terrorists, Democrats support the terrorists, and the terrorists will attack the U.S. if Democrats are elected.
But a huge monkey wrench has slowly ground down the GOP's terrorism play book for this election--and that monkey wrench has been the deteriorating U.S. economy under this Bush administration. At first, the Republicans continued to deny that there were any problems with the U.S. economy. But as energy and gas prices have increased, food prices have increased, worries about job losses, worries about the increasing lack of health care among Americans, inflation spiking, consumer confidence dropping, and U.S. economic output slowing, the home mortgage crisis, the financial crisis--all of these economic problems have rolled into a snowball effect of slamming directly into the GOP's happy talk, completely discrediting President Bush, John McCain, and the Republican Party. This economy was created by King George, The Deciderer, and now it is crashing down on his administration. John McCain is running for a third Bush term, especially on the economic issues. With Americans looking now at their pocketbooks as the main political issue for this election, John McCain is not in a good position as he has been touting those same Bush economic policies that have gotten us into this economic mess in the first place. So we're seeing this desperate spin coming out of the Republican camp, saying that all the economic problems and woes that Americans are facing are not real--they are just psychological. It is like the Republicans have reverted back to a spoiled child-like state, placing their hands over their ears screaming, "No! No! No! No! No!" in denial, as they are being told that they can no longer have their magic pony.
I don't know how long this psychological state of denial can continue within the Republican Party, even as more bad economic news may be released over the course of this election year. The more that President Bush and John McCain continue spinning these psychological messages, the more they discredit themselves among the American people who are hurting in this economy--there is nothing "psychological" about losing your house, or your job, or your health care. And when the GOP finally realizes that the "psychological" message has never worked, then what are they going to say?
NEW YORK -- Wall Street ended a whipsaw day mostly lower, as fears of escalating instability in the financial sector kept investors on edge despite a steep retreat in oil. The Dow Jones industrials today had their first close below 11,000 since July 2006.
[....]
The Dow fell 92.65, or 0.84 percent, to 10,962.54. It was the blue chips' lowest close since July 21, 2006; the high price of oil is one of the major reasons the Dow has been trading at nearly two-year lows.
Broader stock indicators ended mixed. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 13.39, or 1.09 percent, to 1,214.91, while the Nasdaq composite index rose 2.84, or 0.13 percent, to 2,215.71.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - U.S. retail sales rose a disappointing 0.1% in June despite nearly $50 billion in stimulus checks for consumers, Commerce Department data released Tuesday revealed. Sales were boosted by higher prices for gasoline, food and other consumer goods. The figures are seasonally adjusted but are not adjusted for inflation. It was the weakest sales since February's 0.2% decline. Sales in June were held back by the biggest drop in auto sales in more than two years. By contrast, sales at the malls and shopping centers were relatively healthy, stimulated by the tax rebate checks, Excluding the 3.3% drop in auto sales, sales rose 0.8%, the slowest in three months.
WASHINGTON - Soaring costs for gasoline and food pushed inflation at the wholesale level up by a larger-than-expected amount in June, leaving inflation rising over the past year at the fastest pace in more than a quarter-century.
The Labor Department reported that wholesale prices jumped by 1.8 percent last month, the biggest one-month rise since last November. Over the past 12 months, wholesale prices are up 9.2 percent, the largest year-over-year surge since June 1981, another period when soaring energy costs were giving the country inflation pains.
Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, was better behaved in June, rising by just 0.2 percent, slightly lower than expectations.
[....]
For June, energy prices at the wholesale level shot up by 6 percent, as the price of gasoline surged by 9 percent following an even bigger 9.3 percent increase in May.
So what happened here? It would appear to me that inflation was pushing up the retail sales, as consumers are cutting back on their spending. American consumers are already being hurt by $4.00 a gallon gas prices, and those same high energy prices are being reflected in the high food prices due to increased transportation costs, or the greater share of corn being planted and used to produce ethanol. With the continuing housing problems, and potential high credit card debt, Americans are using their stimulus checks to pay down their debt, and not go out shopping like the Bush administration was hoping for. So consumer spending is remaining flat and whatever increases that are taking place are possibly the result of inflation due to high energy and food costs.
DETROIT - General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it will lay off salaried workers, cut truck production, suspend its dividend and borrow $2 billion to $3 billion to weather a severe downturn in the U.S. market.
GM said the moves will raise $15 billion to help cover losses and turn around its North American operations, including $10 billion from internal cost-cutting and $5 billion from selling some assets and borrowing against others.
“In short, our plan is not a plan to survive. It is a plan to win,” GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said in a broadcast to employees.
Bull crap!
General Motors posted a $3.3 billion dollar loss back in April 2008, which included a $1.45 billion write down in GM's interest in the value of its finance arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp. The write-down of GMAC was a result of the housing market downturn. The company also lost $812 million in sales of its pickup trucks and SUVs due to the high gas prices. GM is planning to sell the Hummer line of SUVs, and had to denyspeculations that the company was heading into bankruptcy. The situation at General Motors is bad. This is a survival plan. According to the MSNBC story, GM plans on cutting health care benefits to salaried retirees over 65 by providing a pension increase as compensation. There will be further job cuts through attrition, and plant closures as GM reduces its truck production capacity by 300,000 units. The company has already suspended its $1 per share dividend. What GM needs to do is shift its production from the high-profit trucks and SUVs to the production of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars that customers are demanding--including the development and production of hybrid cars and trucks. That will be a problem for GM, considering the intense competition of hybrid cars being sold by the Japanese car makers, such as Toyota's best-selling Prius. And let us not forget that GM is embarking on this "plan to win" during a U.S. economic recession, where Americans are cutting back on their spending, inflation and gas prices are increasing, and there are still big worries about job losses. Will GM be able to succeed and win under this new plan, as GM's chairman Rick Wagoner has boasted?
I found two rather conflicting news stories that really show just how screwed up our politicians in Washington are, regarding the U.S. economy. Let us start with this first New York Times story, titled Economy Will Stay Sluggish, Bernanke Tells Congress:
WASHINGTON — Warning of the risks of a further slowdown and higher inflation, Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, offered a gloomy assessment of the economy on Tuesday as President Bush, speaking a few blocks away, urged Americans to have faith in the country’s financial foundation.
In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Bernanke avoided the word “recession” in characterizing the current economy, noting instead that consumer spending and exports were keeping growth “at a sluggish pace” while the housing sector “continues to weaken.”
He added that spending for personal goods had “advanced at a modest pace so far this year, generally holding up somewhat better than might have been expected given the array of forces weighing on household finances and attitudes.”
While the risks to the overall economy were still “skewed to the downside,” he said, inflation “seems likely to move temporarily higher in the near term.”
So Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is telling Congress, and the American public, that the U.S. economy will grow "at a sluggish pace" due to the housing problems, inflation will increase, and consumer spending will "advance at a modest pace." In other words, the U.S. economy will enter into a recession, even though Bernanke avoids using the word "recession." So the crap is hitting the fan.
Now let us head over to the Bush White House, and hear what King George, The Deciderer had to say about the U.S. economy. From MSNBC News:
WASHINGTON - President Bush urged lawmakers on Tuesday to move quickly to help prop up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while declaring the nation's financial system to be "basically sound."
"We must ensure that they can continue providing access to mortgage credit during this time of financial stress," Bush said of the two mortgage giants.
[....] Bush said the two troubled mortgage companies play a central role in the nation's housing-finance system and that government action to help them were not bailouts, since the two would remain shareholder-owned companies.
"I don't think the government ought to be involved in bailing out companies," Bush said.
Amid soaring gas prices, the toughest real estate market in decades, falling home prices and financing that's harder to come by, Bush said: "It's been a difficult time for many American families."
But he also said that the nation's economy continues to grow, if slowly.
[....]
"I understand there's a lot of nervousness," Bush said. "The economy is growing. Productivity is high. Trade's up. People are working — it's not as good as we'd like. And to the extent that we'll find weakness, we'll move."
I seriously have to wonder just what kind of idiots do we have working in Washington these days? Bernanke is talking about how the U.S. economy is heading into a recession, without actually admitting that the U.S. economy is heading into a recession--even though everyone knows that the U.S. economy is slowing down and heading into a recession. It is like Bernanke is claiming that the sky is falling without saying that the sky is falling. Talk about doublespeak here.
But I'm not surprised about Bernanke's comment--the Fed Chairman has a way of talking around both corners of his mouth as a way of hedging his own bets on where the U.S. economy may be heading to. And Bernanke is talking this way to reassure investors to continue investing their money into a weakening U.S. economy. The real irony that I find is how Bernanke is telling Congress one thing, and President Bush is telling the American people the other. So even though the housing mess has caused the U.S. Treasury to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, speculators have caused oil prices to rise, Americans are hit with $4 a gallon gas prices, inflation is rising, jobs are being lost, President Bush still admits that the U.S. economy is still growing strong. There is still nothing to worry about.
At a meeting Tuesday in Denver, about 100 conservative Christian leaders from around the country agreed to unite behind the candidacy of John McCain, a politician they have long distrusted, marking the latest in a string of movements that bode well for McCain's general election prospects among the Republican base.
"Collectively we feel that he will support and advance those moral values that we hold much greater than Obama, who in our view will decimate moral values," said Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group, who previously supported Mike Huckabee's candidacy.
"There are people who came through the primary with very mixed emotions of the candidate," Staver continued, noting that many in the group had been in Denver to attend a separate meeting for pastors. "This event was to put those aside."
The group included leaders like Phyllis Schlafly, the long-time leader of Eagle Forum; Steve Strang, the publisher of Charisma magazine; Phil Burress, a prominent Ohio marriage and anti-pornography activist; David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders and Donald Hodel, a former secretary of the Interior, who previously served on the board of Focus on the Family. Jim Dobson, the head of Focus and an outspoken critic of McCain, did not attend. The McCain campaign was also not directly represented at the meeting.
A second person who attended the event, but asked not to be named, said that the group was motivated principally by a desire to defeat Barack Obama. "None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," the participant said. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion."
WASHINGTON — Politically speaking, Susan Speakman is a different kind of evangelical.
Mrs. Speakman, 59, a pastor and educator at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Bridgeville, Pa., an activist evangelical church southwest of Pittsburgh, backs Senator Barack Obama in the presidential race. Along with her 23-year-old son, Stephen, she supports Mr. Obama because of his stands on the Iraq war and matters of social justice. The two of them plan to spread the word in their community and beyond.
“What caught my attention early on was his comment that we don’t want red states and blue states, but we want to find reconciliation and rapprochement with folks,” said Mrs. Speakman, who changed her party affiliation to Democratic from Republican this year to vote for Mr. Obama in the Pennsylvania primary. “I really object to the other approach — divide and conquer, isolate and demonize the opposition. I try to engage the other side and try to find ways we can bring the values of the kingdom of God into the experience of humanity.”
Mrs. Speakman is one of thousands of evangelical Christians and so-called faith voters whom the Obama campaign is recruiting in a major effort to connect with a part of the electorate that accounts for an estimated quarter of the voting population and helped elect George W. Bush president twice.
Mr. Obama and his advisers are seeking support not only among relatively moderate evangelicals like Mrs. Speakman, who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 but backed Senator John Kerry, a Democrat, in 2004 because of her opposition to the war. They are also trying to take advantage of signs that some conservative Christians are rethinking their politics, urged along by a new generation of leadership and intensified concern about issues including climate change, genocide, AIDS and poverty.
Between now and November, the Obama forces are planning as many as 1,000 house parties and dozens of Christian rock concerts, gatherings of religious leaders, campus visits and telephone conference calls to bring together voters of all ages motivated by their faith to engage in politics. It is the most intensive effort yet by a Democratic candidate to reach out to self-identified evangelical or born-again Christians and to try to pry them away from their historical attachment to the Republican Party.
The hard-core conservative evangelicals will certainly never vote for Obama in November. But a segment of moderate evangelicals that opposes President Bush's war in Iraq, and perhaps disapproves of Bush's job performance are certainly a segment for the Obama campaign to court votes on. According to the NY Times story, the Obama campaign is trying to court just enough evangelical votes in the key battleground states who are disillusioned over the Bush war in Iraq, global warming, or the economy. These are the evangelicals who supported President Bush in these battleground states by substantial margins in the 2000 and 2004 elections. What is even more interesting is that the Obama campaign may be targeting these evangelicals over the pocketbook and foreign policy issues of poverty, unemployment, inequality, the environment, and the Iraq war, rather than the standard social issues of gay rights, abortion, marriage, flag burning, school prayer, or intelligent design that have been the standard hot-button issues the Republican Party trots out for soliciting the evangelical vote. And some moderate evangelicals are listening to the Obama campaign pitch.
While over on the McCain campaign, evangelicals have been somewhat cool over Republican candidate John McCain's pitch to the movement. Focus on the Family's James Dobson has refused to support, or vote for, McCain.Evangelicals have remained wary of John McCain, even as the McCain campaign continually courts their votes. There have also been problems with the McCain endorsements of both prominent evangelical leaders, Reverends John Hagee and Rod Parsley, once controversial statements from both pastors came to light, forcing McCain to reject both endorsements. So there is a love/hate relationship between John McCain and the evangelicals. The evangelicals do not see McCain as one of their own, and John McCain's only interest in the evangelicals is pandering for their votes. And yet both McCain and the evangelicals need each other in this shotgun wedding for 2008. Hence, this sudden rally-around-the-McCain-campaign-boys meeting by these top evangelical leaders, even as both McCain and the evangelicals may not like each other. But now suddenly, they must tolerate each other.
Finally, there is this one interesting quote from the NY Times article by the one unnamed individual attending the event:
"None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," the participant said. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion."
You want to talk about crazy, this quote just shows how insane some of these evangelical leaders can be. So if these evangelical leaders fail to do everything they can in stopping Barack Obama from becoming president, then God will send them to Hell? So now the insane evangelical leaders are embarking on this religious crusade for opposing Obama by rallying around McCain--can't allow this latest Antichrist Democrat to be elected president.
WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign has gone through its second shake-up in a year. Responding to Republican concerns that his candidacy was faltering, Mr. McCain put a veteran of President Bush’s 2004 campaign in charge of day-to-day operations, and stepped away from a plan to have the campaign run by 11 regional managers, Mr. McCain’s aides said Wednesday.
The elevation of Steve Schmidt — who worked closely with Karl Rove — at Mr. McCain’s headquarters represented a sharp diminishment of the responsibilities of Rick Davis, who has been Mr. McCain’s campaign manager since the last shake-up nearly a year ago.
The shift was approved by Mr. McCain after several of his aides, including Mr. Schmidt, went to him about 10 days ago and warned him that he was in danger of losing the presidential election unless he revamped his campaign operation, two officials close to the campaign said.
The move of Mr. Schmidt is the latest sign of increasing influence of veterans of Mr. Rove’s shop in the McCain operation. Nicolle Wallace, communications director for Mr. Bush in the 2004 campaign (and in his White House), has joined the campaign as a senior adviser, and will travel with Mr. McCain every other week.
Greg Jenkins, another veteran of Mr. Rove’s operation who is a former Fox News producer and director of presidential advance in the Bush White House, was hired by Mr. Schmidt last week after a series of what Mr. McCain’s advisers acknowledged were poorly executed campaign events.
Mr. Rove, who was Mr. Bush’s senior political adviser until he left the White House last year, was said by Mr. McCain’s advisers to have offered advice in recent days to Mr. Schmidt and others on how to get Mr. McCain’s campaign on track, but has stayed mostly on the periphery. Mr. Rove is aware, his associates said, that his own legacy could be helped should Mr. McCain win the presidency.
Mr. McCain’s advisers said that Mr. Davis would continue to hold the position of campaign manager, but that Mr. Schmidt had taken over every major operation where Mr. McCain has shown signs of struggling: communications, scheduling and basic political strategy. Mr. McCain’s aides said that Mr. Davis would now focus more on longer-term campaign efforts, including helping with the selection of a running mate and planning for the Republican National Convention, which is now just two months away.
Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Davis declined a request for comment. The McCain campaign played down the significance of this latest personnel shift.
“Voters don’t care about the organizational chart of our campaign,” said Jill Hazelbaker, the campaign spokesman, adding: “Today’s move is simply an expression of our understanding of the need to scale up for a general election campaign against Barack Obama.”
This is a huge story. First you have Senator John McCain trying to reassure voters that he is not running for a Bush third term, even as Americans reject McCain argument. They see a McCain presidency as a third Bush term. And with the McCain campaign stumbling and fumbling over the past six months, McCain is now reaching into the Bush White House to bring in Karl Rove and his acolytes directly into his campaign. Remember, Karl Rove is already an informal adviser to the McCain campaign. Now McCain is bringing in even more Rove advisers to his campaign, making the McCain campaign even more similar to the Bush administration as McCain continues this charade that he is not running for a Bush third term. The hypocrisy is just amazing here.
And there is more. Let us go back to this important piece of information from the NY Times story:
The shift was approved by Mr. McCain after several of his aides, including Mr. Schmidt, went to him about 10 days ago and warned him that he was in danger of losing the presidential election unless he revamped his campaign operation, two officials close to the campaign said.
Schmidt went directly to McCain and warned McCain that he was in danger of losing the election. What this tells me is that there are some high level GOP people that are frightened of a McCain loss in 2008, and are sending the Rove team in to take over the McCain campaign. Karl Rove may still be an informal McCain campaign adviser, but you can bet that he is now calling the shots in the campaign with his key people taking over. The GOP is frightened at the prospect of the Democrats taking over both the White House and a potential 2/3rds control of Congress, thus elimination Republican obstruction in Congress through the filibuster. Even more frightening for the GOP is what a Democratic-controlled government would do in rolling back some of the failed Bush policies that have caused great damage to this country, but have especially benefited big corporations, war profiteers, and the uber-rich.
Finally, I should note that by bringing in Karl Rove and his team to the McCain campaign, you can expect this campaign will become even more dirty and negative in attacking the Democratic candidate Barack Obama then it has been. Karl Rove is a master of the negative campaign, and he was probably responsible for destroying John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary with the push-poll spreading rumors that McCain fathered an illegitimate black child, or that McCain was the "Manchurian candidate." And now John McCain is bringing Rove into his campaign to continue these negative attacks against Obama.
This 2008 race is going to get especially ugly through November.
About 62,000 jobs disappeared in June, the government reported Friday, the sixth consecutive month that payrolls have declined, as businesses rushed to lay off workers amid the worst economic climate in a generation.
And as job losses mount, even those still on payrolls have felt the pain: employers are cutting hours for their full-time employees and shrinking salaries, just as workers face record-high prices for gasoline and food.
The unemployment rate stayed steady in June at 5.5 percent, the highest level in four years. The elevated figure dispelled speculation among some economists that last month’s half-percentage point jump, the biggest monthly spike in 22 years, was a statistical anomaly.
Indeed, employers have been steadily shedding jobs for the last three months. Businesses cut 52,000 more workers in May and April than the government first thought, the Labor Department said, casting aside initial estimates that suggested some deceleration.
In the last 12 months, the economy had seen a net gain of only 15,000 jobs, the lowest net increase since November 2003.
In the last 50 years, the economy has entered a recession every time jobs have dropped for six consecutive months.
I don't have much to comment here, except that the economic situation is getting worse. The U.S. economy has entered a recession in the last 50 years as payrolls dropped for six consecutive months--just as they have this years. Then you have 62,000 jobs disappearing in June, with another 52,000 workers cut in April and May. These are some major job cuts taking place here. And it is not just the job cuts, but also wages dropping as well. Continuing with the NY Times story:
And most Americans who are still employed earned less money in June than they did a year ago. Wages, which have been steadily shrinking in recent months, took a sharp hit last month, growing at the slowest pace since September 2005.
Among rank-and-file workers, who make up the majority of the nation’s work force, weekly paychecks have grown 2.8 percent in the last 12 months. That was down from 3.2 percent in May and well below the rate of inflation.
Average hourly earnings grew 3.4 percent, the slowest pace since the start of 2006.
Wages have not only been shrinking, but whatever gains are being made are below the rate of inflation. Americans are making less money than they were a year ago, and whatever raises they have been given by employers are being eaten up by the inflation rate--we're talking here the higher prices of gas and food that is cutting into their wages. And let us not forget that American consumers are facing high levels of debt. Why is this important? Because the U.S. economy now depends on consumer spending. According to this January 25, 2008 Time Magazine article, titled Can the World Stop the Slide:
Consumer spending used to make up about 67% of all the economic activity in the U.S., but over the past few years, it's ratcheted up to around 72%. "If we take the 5 percentage points out this year, it will be the mother of all U.S. recessions," Roach says. But putting the adjustment off indefinitely isn't a great idea either. "It's just pushing the fundamental problem down the road," says Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. "The problem with the U.S. is excessive consumption."
The U.S. consumer binge has been fueled not by rising incomes but by rising debt, especially mortgage debt. "People can't spend 200% of their income on mortgages," says Stiglitz. The only way for this to continue was for house prices to keep rising. Then, shock of shocks, they stopped going up, and mortgages started going bad by the millions.
During the housing bubble, American consumers were using their homes as ATM machines by taking money out of their home equity and spending it. And that was fine as long as home values continued to rise. Well, the bubble burst, home values dropped, and those same Americans that were using their home ATM machines were now feeling the crushing pain of debt. In other words, Americans are going bankrupt. And as Americans are facing even more job losses, stagnating wages, and high mortgage and credit card debt, they will be cutting back on their spending. If consumer spending has been making up around 72 percent of the U.S. economy, any cutback on that spending is going to cause the "mother of all U.S. recessions." The day of reckoning is coming.
As automakers dropped their latest batch of awful sales numbers on the market on Tuesday, reinforcing the gloom spreading across the economy, the troubles confronting American workers seemed to intensify.
Plummeting home prices have in recent months eliminated jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, from bankers and real estate agents to construction workers and furniture manufacturers. Tighter lending standards imposed by banks in the wake of huge mortgage losses have made it hard for many Americans to secure credit — the lifeblood of expansion in recent years — crimping the appetite of consumers, whose spending amounts to 70 percent of the economy.
Joblessness has accelerated, and employers have slashed working hours even for those on their payrolls, shrinking the size of paychecks just as workers need them the most.
Now, add to that unsavory mix the word from automakers that sales plunged in June — by 28 percent for Ford, 21 percent for Toyota and 18 percent for General Motors — a sharp sign that consumers are pulling back, making manufacturers more likely to cut production and impose more layoffs. Until recently, the weak labor market has been marked more by the reluctance of employers to create new jobs than by mass layoffs.
Among economists, the sense is broadening that the troubles dogging the economy will be stubborn, leaving in place an uncomfortable combination of tight credit and scant job opportunities perhaps well into next year.
Graphic showing sector changes in the U.S. unemployment rate. From The New York Times.
Job losses will continue well into 2009. I'm starting to wonder if the job losses and this U.S. recession will continue into 2010, considering all the problems we have in this country with mortgage crisis, the housing bust, the high levels of debt, companies cutting jobs, possible stagflation, and the American consumer being tapped out. It is almost like a snowball effect, as more bad economic news comes in, the snowball gets bigger and starts rolling down the hill faster until the whole monstrosity smashes right into your face.
Then there is this important piece of information from the NY Times:
The national unemployment rate climbed a full percentage point over the last year to 5.5 percent in May, according to the Labor Department. That does not include people who are jobless and have given up looking for work, or people who have been bumped to part-time jobs from full-time. Add in those people and the so-called underemployment rate rises to 9.7 percent, up from 8.3 percent in May 2007, according to the Labor Department.
Goldman Sachs forecasts that the unemployment rate will peak at 6.4 percent late in 2009 before the picture improves, meaning that the painful process of shedding jobs may be only half-way complete.
I have always had a problem with the way the current U.S. unemployment rate has been calculated with this low 5.5 percent. I know that the unemployment rate is calculated according to the number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits, and those Americans whose benefits have been exhausted are dropped from the unemployment rolls. The unemployment rate also never took into account those Americans who have stopped looking for work, Americans working part-time, or are taking jobs below their skill levels. It always seemed very suspicious to me that, with all the problems of the housing mess, the high debt, the rising inflation, and the slowing consumer spending (especially with the drop in retail sales), that the unemployment rate always remained at around 5 percent and economists were touting this low unemployment rate as a continuing strength for the U.S. economy. Factor in the workers who have stopped looking for jobs, who have been dropped from the unemployment benefits, and those who are forced to work part-time, and you have a U.S. underemployment rate that is approaching 10 percent--not good for a U.S. economy that is heading into a bad recession. If Goldman Sachs is predicting that the unemployment rate will peak at 6.4 percent, then adding in the American workers who have been dropped from unemployment or are working part time could send the unemployment rate up to around 11.29 percent (Ratio is 5.5 percent current unemployment / 9.7 percent current underemployment = 6.4 percent projected 2009 unemployment / 11.29 percent projected 2009 underemployment). You can not have a 2009 growing U.S. economy with an underemployment rate of over 11 percent. And we're only halfway into 2008. If the job losses continue on into 2009, we are going to see even more worsening economic conditions continue within the U.S.
