Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke backed the idea of a second economic stimulus package when he testified before the House Budget Committee this morning.
Bernanke didn’t give many specifics, including how large such a stimulus there should be. But his support gives congressional Democrats’s efforts at a second stimulus package a bigger boost at a time when President Bush hasn’t sounded very enthusiastic about one and Senate Republicans torpedoed a second package the House passed at the start of October.
The Republican nominee seeks a needed break from his party’s president.
by Mark Silva
“The last eight years haven’t worked very well, have they?” asks Republican John McCain, in a campaign ad attempting to break a connection that Democrat Barack Obama has been fastening for months.
The connection is McCain and President Bush – “more of the same,” the way the Obama campaign tells the story of an unpopular incumbent president and his party’s nominee.
McCain, who had boasted during the runup to the Republican primaries that he had sided with his party’s president 90 percent of the time, only lately has gotten around to making a serious break.
“Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush,” McCain told his Democratic rival in their third and final televised debate last week. “If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”
The problem is, Obama already has planted the seed of the question that Ronald Reagan once famously asked: Are you better off now than you were four years ago.
And McCain is answering it: No.
“I’ll make the next four better,” he says in his ad, an explicit, campaign-closing acknowledgment by the GOP nominee that the public is unhappy with the incumbent president.
“Washington is making it worse,” says McCain, with an implicit but not stated allusion to Obama’s tax talk and plans – “telling us paying taxes is higher patriotic, and saying, we need to spread the wealth around?”
McCain has been targeting Obama’s tax talk from the beginning. The question, for McCain is, whether he waited too long to acknowledge the fact that he was saddled from the start with his own party’s president and needed to do something about it. This is part of the reason why two weeks is an eternity in a contest that could get a lot closer before it is finished.
Posted October 20, 2008 4:00 PM by Mark Silva
Barack Obama is outpacing John McCain in newspaper editorial endorsements two weeks from Election Day. But one in particular is worth noting, our friends at Top of the Ticket suggest.
The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah’s major newspaper, has come out for Obama – in a state which President Bush carried with close to 72 percent of the vote for his reelection (his best showing anywhere), Don Frederick notes at the Ticket, our sister-blog at the Los Angeles Times (which also has endorsed Obama, in its first presidential recommendation of any kind since Richard Nixon’s endorsement in 1972. And here at the Chicago Tribune, well, the paper’s editorial board went for a Democrat, Obama, for the first time in its 161-year history.) The Sat Lake Tribune’s nod for Obama is particularly stinging in its evaluation of the Republican ticket: It harshly criticizes “the impetuous McCain” for selecting Sarah Palin instead of the Mormon Mitt Romney,” the Ticket notes.
Palin, the editorial continues, “quickly proved grievously underequipped to step into the presidency should McCain, at 72 and with a history of health problems, die in office. More than any single factor, McCain’s bad judgment in choosing the inarticulate, insular and ethically challenged Palin disqualifies him for the presidency.” Editor & Publisher, the journal of the newspaper industry, is keeping track of endorsements in the presidential race. So far, it’s a rout for Obama – 3-1 over McCain.
“Many will profess not to be surprised by this,” Frederick adds. “Still, although many newspapers — especially the larger ones serving urban populations — long have leaned Democratic in their editorial stances, the magazine notes that the tally in 2004 was a horserace: John Kerry barely edged George Bush, 213-205.”
Yesterday on CNN’s late edition, Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Edward Lazear told host Wolf Blitzer, “We are seeing what I think anyone would characterize as a recession in certain parts of the country.” Watch it:
Today, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke echoed Lazear’s sentiments, saying that the nation is facing “a serious slowdown in the economy with serious consequences for the public,” but stopped short of labeling the downturn a recession.
But during a press briefing on Air Force One today, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino dismissed Lazear’s and Bernanke’s concerns. She argued instead that there are always “some regions” of the nation that are “hurting”:
PERINO: I think what [Lazear] was saying is that there are parts of our country that are hurting right now. … Economic cycles always have — someone is on the up and someone is on the down, even when you have a country that experienced, as we did, 52 consecutive months of job growth, you end up with some regions of the country not doing as well as others.
Earlier this month, Perino claimed, “I don’t think anybody could tell you right now if we’re in a recession or not.” But former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker said last week, “[T]he economy, I believe, is in recession” and Steve Forbes said similarly that “we’re in a recession, a very serious recession.” Furthermore, a recent poll by the Wall Street Journal found that a majority of American economists believe the U.S. economy is currently in a recession.
Explaining how to stave off further decline, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote bluntly last week, “[W]e need major stimulus programs.” Bernanke said today that planning for such stimulus is “appropriate,” while Perino said only that the president is “open” to the idea.
During an interview on CNN today, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney touted Sarah Palin’s ability to excite the conservative base and raise money for the Republican ticket. But when asked by host Wolf Blitzer whether she is “ready to be President,” Romney hesitated and offered this stuttering response: Well, that — that’s something which I — I believe the American people will, uh, assess individually and say, uh, yeah, she’s got the kind of executive experience that you’d hope to find from a person who’s been a governor and a mayor.
From Jamison Foser at Media Matters:
Finally, for the first time this year, a prominent media figure asked John McCain about his relationship with G. Gordon Liddy last night.
The lack of media attention to the Liddy-McCain relationship is one of the clearest double standards in recent political history. McCain and the news media have devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to Barack Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers, yet until last night, McCain hadn’t been asked a single question* about his ties to Liddy, a convicted felon who has instructed his listeners on how best to shoot law-enforcement agents. Liddy has held a fundraiser for McCain at his home and describes the Arizona senator as an “old friend”; McCain has said he is “proud” of Liddy.
Imagine for a moment that Barack Obama had said he was “proud” of an “old friend” who urged people to shoot law-enforcement agents in the head. Do you think maybe he would have been asked a question or three about it? Do you think maybe there would have been more than the occasional passing mention in the news of the relationship? Of course there would have been. Read the rest of this entry »
Barack just concluded his speech underneath the Gatway Arch in St. Louis, in front of a record crowd of over 100,000 people. “All I can say is, wow,” Barack said as he took the stage.
We need new priorities in Washington. I think it’s time to give a tax cut to the teachers and janitors who work in our schools; to the cops and firefighters who keep us safe; to the waitresses working double shifts, the nurses in the ER, and the plumbers fighting for their American Dream. These workers are the backbone of our country. They are the ones that Washington has forgotten. They’re the ones I’ll fight for. And while Senator McCain ignores the payroll taxes you pay to score a few political points, I’ll put a tax cut into the pockets of working people so you can pay the bills, put away some savings, and pass on a brighter future to your children. So Senator McCain can keep trying to attack me and distract you – but it’s not going to work. Not this time – not now. Because while my opponent thinks this campaign is all about me – the truth is, this campaign is about you. Your jobs. Your health care. Your retirement. Your children’s future. That’s what this election is about. That’s what I’m fighting for. Because I can take two more weeks of these attacks from John McCain, but the American people can’t take four more years of the same failed policies and the same divisive politics. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States.
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) held a telephone town hall meeting, in which “thousands” of Nevadans — according to the McCain campaign — called to listen in. Among some of the hostile, pointed, and critical questions came one from a veteran, who challenged McCain on his voting record regarding funding for the Veterans Administration and veterans’ priorities:
Q: I know you voted for lesser increases, and sometimes they were so much less, and our VA desperately needs the money. Can you tell me why you would vote for less money for the VA when there’s a war going on?
M: Well of course I have not and I’m afraid I’ve been endorsed by the VFW in every election that I’ve been in. I have been — received the honors, the highest honor and awards from all our veterans organizations for my consistent support of them. I don’t know what you’re looking at, but the DAV, the VFW, the American Legion, all of them have given me their highest awards for my consistent support of them.
As ThinkProgress has repeatedlydocumented, McCain is either willfully lying or he is delusional about his record — and the meaning of “highest awards.” In fact, McCain has recently stood on the opposite side of all three of the groups he mentioned:
– Disabled American Veterans (DAV): In a list of 36 “key votes,” shows McCain “Voted Against Us” 16 times. (Obama “Voted With Us” 17 times, and against only once.)
From intimidating minority voters to whipping up racism and hatred at political rallies, the GOP has pulled out all the stops.
coastline, tallahassee.
As Arianna Huffington warns Democrats, an increasingly desperate John McCain and the GOP are throwing the kitchen sink at Barack Obama. No wonder they called Joe the Plumber. So this week brought racist mailers, a tidal wave of robo-calls, more Bill Ayers, Sarah Palin’s love of the “pro-American areas of this great nation” and McCain’s outlandish claim that ACORN is “destroying the fabric of democracy.”
Reed Hundt from Talking Points Memo writes, “The McCain plan will be to give up on the national popular vote and re-run the Bush campaign of 2000. By voter intimidation and robo-calls and litigation and outrageous allegations, it will aim for victory in the states that can provide an Electoral College victory. In this case, that means McCain will focus his diminished but vigorous efforts on Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Virginia. In each state we need hardly ask what images, stereotypes and fears the McCain campaign will hope to evoke.”
The attacks by McCain and his surrogates are already at fever pitch — and there is clearly a tidal wave on its way:
1. Rush Limbaugh’s Racist Tactics: Bringing this toxic collection together in one despicable no-goodie bag was Rush Limbaugh, who charged that Obama — aided and abetted by Ayers and ACORN — is “smack dab in the middle” of a 30-year plot to teach black children to “hate, hate, hate” America. Read the rest of this entry »
McCain’s campaign is throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, but Obama is still in a fabulously good position to get elected.
Obama is doing fabulously well on many levels. But the Democrats still need to be wary, as the desperate McCain campaign seems ready to do “whatever it takes” to try to bring Obama down in the last two weeks before the election.
By virtually every measure, Barack Obama is in a highly favorable position to get elected President on November 4th. Based upon organization, money, endorsements, performance in the debates, advertising dominance, the overwhelming influence of the economic meltdown, and the fact that Obama has run an incredibly effective and mostly errorless campaign, Democrats should be feeling good. But many appear to still have some serious insecurities, and rightly so.
The fact that some polls tightened a bit after the third debate, and because the desperate McCain campaign is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Obama, some people are on the verge of panicking. Of course, the corporate media has every incentive to make the race seem closer than it is, tempted as they are by the come-from-behind narrative. And the coverage of McCain’s sleazy campaign tactics has the effect of repeating their messages over and over again and keeping those ideas in the news and in people’s discussions. That is a hard one to overcome, when part of the big news is the extent of the negative campaigning. Read the rest of this entry »
The Swamp10/20/08 12:45 PM Congress
