Obama and McCain to meet today – what’s the game plan?

So when McCain and Obama meet, what’s on the agenda? Why are they meeting? Will Obama offer McCain a position in his cabinet? Or is this just a “Hey, no hard feelings” call?

It seems that Obama’s gathering in his former rivals into his staff, much the way that Lincoln did after his election. Is this a “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”, or that whole “post partisan” ideals at work?

Palin’s request to address McCain supporters was vetoed

While Ms. Palin may think of herself as the face of the future of the Republican party, it seems for now, McCain and his advisers don’t want her taking the stage yet:

[Steve] Schmidt went so far last night as to “veto” Palin’s request to offer a few words to the crowd after McCain conceded the election. Politco’s Mike Allen reports on a forthcoming Newsweek article, “Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.”

Personally, I want to see her run in 2012. I’ll be very curious to see how she handles against Romney/Huckabee – and watch the sparks fly.

How would Palin and McCain do against each other?

What if Governor Palin had been in the primaries, and had to debate John McCain for the nomination? Would history have changed any?

We’ll never know – but it might have looked something like this mock McCain versus Palin debate:

McCain’s top gator flips

This is harsh – the former Gators for McCain chairman because “former” on Saturday night, and announced on Saturday night when he announced he’ll be voting for Obama.

Um – awk-ward….

The Obama and McCain Tech Policy Videos

You might not care about the economy, the war in Iraq, torture, or other issues – but damn it, people had better not be messing with your high speed Internet line!

So to that, here are the two candidates talking about their technical policies. First Senator Obama’s technical plans, and Senator McCains.

Meet the Republican Socialists

OpenLeft has an article that introduces the Republican socialists of America who used the power of “redistribution” to alter the balance of wealth in the country, like Theodore Roosevelt:

Because of things I have done on behalf of justice to the workingman, I have often been called a Socialist. Usually I have not taken the trouble even to notice the epithet. I am not afraid of names, and I am not one of those who fear to do what is right because some one else will confound me with partisans with whose principles I am not in accord. Moreover, I know that many American Socialists are high-minded and honorable citizens, who in reality are merely radical social reformers. They are oppressed by the brutalities and industrial injustices which we see everywhere about us. When I recall how often I have seen Socialists and ardent non-Socialists working side by side for some specific measure of social or industrial reform, and how I have found opposed to them on the side of privilege many shrill reactionaries who insist on calling all reformers Socialists, I refuse to be panic-stricken by having this title mistakenly applied to me.

Oh, those wacky Socialist Republicans who – you know, weren’t.

Harsh – McCain’s Ohio efforts show results. Bad ones

From Andrew Sullivan’s report on the Ohio race.

Long story short: the longer McCain campaigns in Ohio, the worse the race gets for him.

Sailing the Idiot Winds

So far, trying to say “Obama hearts terrorists” isn’t working to well. First it was “You know, he hangs around with William Ayers”, now it’s “Obama loves him som Rashid Khalidi.”

Who? Who’s Mr. Khalidi? Well, according to the McCain campaign, he’s a former PLO spokesperson, but the facts are a little different:

For the record, Mr. Khalidi is an American born in New York who graduated from Yale a couple of years after George W. Bush. For much of his long academic career, he taught at the University of Chicago, where he and his wife became friends with Barack and Michelle Obama. In the early 1990s, he worked as an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at peace talks in Madrid and Washington sponsored by the first Bush administration. We don’t agree with a lot of what Mr. Khalidi has had to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the years, and Mr. Obama has made clear that he doesn’t, either. But to compare the professor to neo-Nazis — or even to Mr. Ayers — is a vile smear.

Perhaps unsurprising for a member of academia, Mr. Khalidi holds complex views. In an article published this year in the Nation magazine, he scathingly denounced Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and U.S. Middle East policy but also condemned Palestinians for failing to embrace a nonviolent strategy. He said that the two-state solution favored by the Bush administration (and Mr. Obama) was “deeply flawed” but conceded there were also “flaws in the alternatives.” Listening to Mr. Khalidi can be challenging — as Mr. Obama put it in the dinner toast recorded on the 2003 tape and reported by the Times in a detailed account of the event last April, he “offers constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.”

Maybe that would be bad enough – but when it turns out that McCain ran an organization that gave Mr. Khalidi $450,000 in grant money, it kind of makes you wonder:

1. If Khalidi is, as McCain now claims, an anti-semite PLO loving terrorist,
2. And if McCain gave Khalidi grant money,
3. Does this make McCain someone who “pals around” with anti-semite PLO loving terrorists?

Mr. Khalidi has called these new attacks “an idiot wind.” I can only assume what orifice this wind was expelled from the McCain campaign…

Rain falls – McCain cancels speech, Obama delivers it

I can’t help but think there’s a lesson here. In Philadelphia, a rainstorm hit. And while Senator McCain canceled his planned rally, Senator Obama went ahead and delivered his speech out in the rain.

One person who preaches “hope” goes out even in a cold day, ignoring the elements, to address his supporters. The other one gives up. Who’s putting Country First?

Asinine attacks: Redistribute My Ass

All right – with 8 days before the election, things have gotten to such a level stupid it’s amazing.

First, start with this 2001 interview by Obama, where pre-Senator Obama talks about the civil rights movement and their drive to improve the lives of the poor:

caller (karen): 46:07 the gentlemen made the point that the warren court wasn’t terribly radical with economic changes my question is is it to late for that kind of reparative work and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place

Q you mean the court

caller: the court or would it be legislation at this point

OBAMA

46:27 you know maybe i am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor but you know i am not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts
46:43 you know the institution just isn’t structured that way just look at very rare examples where during he desegregation era the court was willing to for example
46:55 order you know changes that cost money
46:59 to local school district and the court was very uncomfortable with it it was hard to manage
47:04 it was hard to figure out you start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues
47:09 you know in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that is essentially is administrative and take a lot of time the court is not very good at it and politically it is hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard
47:27 so i think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally you know i think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts
47:45 i think that as a practical matte that our institutions are just poorly equipped to do it

Now, I know it’s hard to read all of those numbers, but here are some of the big points from Senator Obama back in 2001:

you know maybe i am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor but you know i am not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts

IE: I think that change should be made through changing the laws, not by using “activist judges”.

46:43 you know the institution just isn’t structured that way just look at very rare examples where during he desegregation era the court was willing to for example
46:55 order you know changes that cost money
46:59 to local school district and the court was very uncomfortable with it it was hard to manage
47:04 it was hard to figure out you start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues
47:09 you know in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that is essentially is administrative and take a lot of time the court is not very good at it and politically it is hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard

Legal translation: The courts, during the civil rights movement, did make some decisions about things like “separate but equal” – that you couldn’t spend more money on whites than on blacks. But, the courts aren’t built to handle allocating money – that’s the job of the legislative branch. And the executive branch is in charge of handing the day to day administration of that money.

Now, here’s the part that people like Drudge and the McCain campaign are freaking out about:

OBAMA

39:45 and it essentially has never happened i mean if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movemtn
39:48 and its litigation strategy and the court i think wehere it succeeded was to vest formal rigths in previously dispossessed peoples so that i would not have the right to vote would now be able to sit at lunch counter and as lpong as i coudl pay for it would be ok
40:10 but the supreme court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of basic issues of political and economic justice in this society and to that extent as radical as people try to characterize the warren court it wasnt that radical
40;30 it didnt break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constituion at least as it has been interpreted and the warren court interpreted it generally in the same way that the constitution is a document of negative liberties
40:43 says what the states cant do to you says what the federal govt cant do to you but it doesnt say what the federal govt or state govt mst do on your behalf and that hasnt shifted and i think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that
41:01 the civil rights movement becaem so court focused i think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities
41:12 on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change
41:20 and in some ways we still suffer from that

So, here’s what he said:

1. but the supreme court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of basic issues of political and economic justice in this society – this is accurate. The Supreme Court never did this. Obama didn’t say that he wanted to redistribute wealth – he’s saying pretty clearly that the Supreme court didn’t, and thereby, you can’t call the Warren court (which is the topic of the conversation) was as radical as people say it is.
2. one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that … the civil rights movement becaem so court focused i think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities … on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change … and in some ways we still suffer from that – Here, Obama is laying out very clearly that the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, and even today, relies too much on the courts to make changes (which, as he laid out above, is not something the courts like to do). Therefore, the more important changes to change things is on the grassroots level, on the community organizing level.

The term that some people are getting their panties in a knot about is the word “redistrubutive change”. Oh, no – Obama said the word “redistributive”! Helen, fetch the smelling salts! Someone wave me with a white hanky – I think I’m going to be faint! Redistribute – it’s so – so – socialist!

(sigh)

First, it’s pretty clear that then Constitutional Lawyer Obama was talking about the civil rights movement. Which was trying to enact changes – changes in how white people had power, and minorities didn’t. Changes in how white people could vote, and black people couldn’t. Changes in how white people got the good schools, and black people got crap.

They wanted to redistribute the power, redistribute the voting rights, redistribute yes, even the wealth by ensuring that minority schools weren’t squalor while white schools were brand new.

Evidently, using the word “redistribute” is a naughty thing to do, because “OMG SOCIALISM!” Of course, anyone with a mind who reads this interview, knows their history, and can actually use reading comprehension, they would know that Obama isn’t trying to “redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the poor”. Sure, he’d admit that he wants to take the tax income and have the middle class pay less and the rich more. But since both groups are already being taxed, he just wants to shift the balance of who gets more out of it to the 80-95% of the country that needs it, instead of the 5-15% that doesn’t.

But socialism? This is the best you’ve got, Drudge and Senator McCain? You find a time that Senator Obama has used the word “redistributive” and then ignore the entire rest of the conversation to try and score political points?