Author: jen-sorensen

Okay, this Joe the Plumber business is really starting to stink like an overflowing septic tank. Never mind that he isn’t a licensed plumber, owes back taxes, is nowhere close to making $250K a year, and would benefit more from Obama’s tax plan. McCain has been running an ad featuring a series of vaguely downtrodden-looking folks saying "I’m Joe the Plumber" accusatorily, as if Obama is the one with umpteen houses who doesn’t grasp the plight of ordinary folks.

There’s something perverse and not a little poignant about so many working Americans’ willingness to parrot the mantras of the economic elite, support anti-labor politicians, and deny themselves a break from someone who actually wants to help them. Where the hell do they get these ideas? Wait, don’t answer that.

Seriously, don’t you think it’s a bit strange that in the richest country in the world, so many of us are barely able to make ends meet? And working longer and longer hours with little to show for it? I don’t mean since the meltdown, either.

Even as worker productivity and profits soared, the majority of Americans’ real wages have been stagnant. As Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston explains in his 2003 book Perfectly Legal, most Americans simply haven’t shared in the prosperity they’ve created. From 1970 to 2000, the average inflation-adjusted income of the top 10% of taxpayers rose from $119,249 to $224,877. During that same time period, the average income of the bottom 90% fell from $27,060 to $27,035.

Here’s another perspective, from the same time period: if you plot income growth among the bottom 99% of Americans as 1/8" high on a bar graph, the bar for income growth among the top 1/100% is about 62.5 feet long. As Johnston writes:

Money, it seems, was made to flow uphill. The great majority of Americans were, at least through 2000, having their pockets flattened or even drained, the value created by their labor flowing in a Niagara of greenbacks not to the affluent or even the merely rich, but the megarich.

This was, I’ll remind you, before the Bush tax cuts. So because Obama wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire and restore Clinton-era tax rates for income above $250,000, that makes him a socialist. Yeah, right. That’s not wealth redistribution or class warfare; what is are the efforts of those at the very top to influence public policy so that they can keep even more of the booty.

This does not mean I am "anti-business," as binary-thinking sound bite bleaters might say. Being self-employed has given me a great appreciation of entrepreneurship. It’s totally DIY, man!

Here’s a cartoon of mine from earlier this year (excerpted above) that offers another solution.

Holy ballot box, Batman! Election Day is ONE WEEK AWAY!! Get your civic participation hat on and your touch-screen finger ready — or whatever part of your body you will be using to vote on November 4.

I think this new, advanced stage of the final countdown calls for a reprise of our theme song. While nothing quite beats the Manualist’s hand-fart interpretation, this Laibach cover is pretty bitchin’, in a Sprockets kind of way.

Now that we’ve taken care of that, what else is going on? Well, Obama is back in Virginia Tuesday with a rally at JMU in Harrisonburg scheduled for 5:15pm. Curiously, NBC 29 is reporting that Obama will be landing at Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport sometime before, though no official events are planned. Hmm… maybe he just wants to take a ride through the fall foliage?

I continue to be pelted with anti-Obama mailers. Today I received two — yes, two — lurid fliers from the Republican Party of Virginia, both with the tagline: "Barack Obama. Not Who You Think He Is." I have yet to receive a single piece of mail from the Obama campaign. Maybe they have such good data on me that they know they don’t need to bother.

Tonight, after watching the World Series get rained out (go Phils), I caught Michelle Obama on Leno. She put in a charming performance, noting that her outfit was from J. Crew (as opposed to Palin’s fancy duds) and joking about her daughter’s concern that Barack’s 30-minute infomercial on Wednesday would interrupt her favorite TV shows.

In these final days, I’m torn between my usual cynicism and the reality of what the polls are showing. I guess you could say I’m pessimistically optimistic.

Yesterday was a busy day for politics in Virginia, with Obama rallies in Richmond and Leesburg, as well as a visit to U.Va by MSNBC.com political cartoonist and editor of the widely-read Cagle Cartoon Index, Daryl Cagle. (Disclosure: my cartoons appear on the site.) Brought here by Larry Sabato’s Center for Politics, Cagle spoke at the Small Special Collections Library.

Before we get to that, though, I wanted to point out the stark difference between the look and feel of Obama’s rally in Richmond and the Palin rally last week. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has been making slideshows with audio for each event. Here’s the one for the Obama rally; here’s the one for Palin complete with snippet of Hank William Jr.’s ode to the campaign. Neither one contains any shocking details — but they show how vividly the race is playing out in terms of, well, race, in Richmond.

Up in Leesburg, Obama seized on that McCain spokeswoman’s line about the "real Virginia" that I mentioned in the previous post. According to the Chicago Sun Times:

On this chilly fall afternoon, Obama told a cheering crowd in Ida Lee Park, "I know some folks may not think so, but this looks like the real Virginia to me. This looks like authentic Virginia. And y’all look like a bunch of Virginians."

Obama has stumped in Virginia eight times since June. "I haven’t seen a real Virginia and a fake Virginia, I’ve just seen Virginia."

Good for him.

In the afternoon I attended Cagle’s presentation, which was less about the election than political cartooning in general. Afterwards, people lined up with his new compendium of campaign cartoons to have Daryl draw in them; perhaps somewhat tellingly, he found himself fielding requests for Obama after Obama.

At a late-night dinner at Bizou with staff members from the Center for Politics and Politics professor Paul Freedman, Daryl was still drawing away. I asked Prof. Freedman about his thoughts on Obama’s chances in Virginia, and he seemed to think they were good, noting how the battle is mostly being waged on red territory — states that went for Bush in ’04. Today, another hopeful sign: Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball has officially moved Virginia from "toss-up" to "Leaning Obama."

Still, all the McCain-Palin signs in my neck of the woods in Albemarle County leave me a little nervous. How does your neighborhood look?

On Saturday, McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer said McCain would do well in the "real Virginia" which, by her definition, means anyplace south of NoVa. Which would seem to include the Obama-leaning Charlottesville, no?

Keep it real, Nancy? Yes we can.

Actually, I have a feeling Ms. Pfotenhauer was referring to Virginians like this Tidewater woman, interviewed recently on PBS’s NOW. (The entire segment, about whether Virginia will turn blue, is worth watching.)

I’ll let the woman’s reasoning (or lack thereof) speak for itself. What I want to say here is, can we please stop this stupid, hateful, juvenile nonsense about "real" Virginians and "pro-America" parts of the country, to use Palin’s term? Okay, I’ll admit NoVa is something of a cultural wasteland — but so is the god-awful stretch of road northwest of Richmond that Mr. Slowpoke and I drove down in search of gas last week. On one side of the highway: Wal-Mart and McDonald’s. On the other: the most hellacious fake-town architecture I have ever seen in my life. I think they were new condos. I believe my comment to Mr. Slowpoke was "This is the end of the world." Wasilla, Alaska is apparently a giant strip mall now too, thanks in part to Palin. But I digress.

The Republicans are good at tapping into American mythologies of the "authentic" and milking them for all they’re worth. They rely on a rural/urban binary that stereotypes everything from the country as real and true, and everything from the city as fake. This is why we get so many politicians ass-kissing "the heartland." Interestingly, the new pop-sociology demographic of "Wal-Mart Moms" is seen as the pinnacle of small-town, working class authenticity, when in fact Wal-Mart is destroying small towns and the working class. Oh the irony!

You know, as a teenager I worked as a waitress in a family restaurant, serving hog maw to a blue-collar clientele in small-town Pennsylvania. Maybe I should run for office.

***

Obama will make two appearances in the Commonwealth with Mark Warner on Wednesday. The pair will be in Richmond in the morning and Leesburg in the afternoon. Unfortunately I’m unable to make it to Richmond this time, but will be paying attention to coverage of the day’s events.

I am sorry to report that I have not yet received my McCain robocall informing me of Obama’s terrorist-lovin’ ways. In the leadup to the Virginia primary several months ago, Mr. McCain contacted me twice, robotically, to tell me that he is a proud Republican in the mold of Ronald Reagan (heavy emphasis on the mold).

I did, however, receive my very own copy of that mailer accusing Obama of partying with Barbra Streisand and Leonardo DiCaprio while the economy crumbled. The RNC actually misspelled Barbra as "Barbara" — come on, surely there are enough closeted gay Republicans around who could proofread these things! The fact that I am getting this crap suggests to me that many, many Virginians are receiving it as well.

In other news, I assume y’all caught Palin’s appearance on SNL and noticed that her role was pretty limited. The biggest thrill of the night was Amy Poehler’s skillful rhyme busting during the Weekend Update. I was sort of hoping Palin’s bun would pop loose as she bobbed her head to the beat, but no such luck. That bun is tight, boyee.

You also may have heard about Obama’s endorsement by that large-haired Sixties radical Colin Powell. In political cartoonist circles and elsewhere, many people are talking about this cartoon which mocks Powell’s endorsement with a depiction of Benedict Arnold in blackface:

(click here to view)

Gordon Campbell Freelance Oct 19, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

The caption reads "Benedict Powell… Race Patriot."

Of course Powell’s support couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the reasons he actually cited, such as McCain’s "unsure" response to the economic crisis, his judgment in picking Palin, or his dirty campaign tactics. And it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that Powell understands the value of diplomacy, unlike the coterie of zany neocons that advise McCain.

The artist behind the cartoon above may be somewhat obscure, but his viewpoint unfortunately isn’t. As ThinkProgress notes, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, and George Will have all expressed opinions along similar lines.

[UPDATE: I almost forgot! A kind reader sent me an email about the right-wing freakout over the Ohio flag appearing behind Obama. They thought the "O" for Ohio was an example of Obama perverting Old Glory. Really.]

A lot of people, myself included, were taken aback by McCain’s mockery of concern for the "health of the mother" as an "extreme pro-abortion position" in the debate the other night. But if McCain’s actual record on reproductive rights were more widely discussed in this election, his comment might not have come as such a big surprise.

Time and again, I’ve read opinion pieces — often written by progressive-leaning guys — expressing incredulity and disappointment at the right-wing nut McCain has demonstrated himself to be during this campaign. As John B. Judis wrote on The New Republic website, "He was, I thought, basically a moderate Republican (I never took his or Chuck Hagel’s positions on social issues seriously)."

It is long past time that we did. Over the years, McCain has muddied the waters a bit with conflicting statements that make him seem like less of an anti-choice firebrand than many Republicans. His voting history and interviews with close acquaintances, however, tell a story of a staunch foe of family planning and reproductive justice. I urge you to read this well-researched article by Sarah Blustain, also in The New Republic, about McCain’s anti-choice zealotry. I normally try to avoid quoting so copiously, but can’t resist including the following two excerpts:

In 1994, the year after abortion provider David Gunn was killed outside a Florida clinic, McCain voted with 29 members of the Senate against establishing penalties for violent or threatening interference outside abortion clinics. Many solidly pro-life Republicans–Mitch McConnell, Kit Bond, John Danforth–voted in favor of the bill, called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). "We tried to get as many co-sponsors as we could, and we postured the thing as anti-vigilante violence," recalls Judy Appelbaum, a Washington lawyer who was counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy at the time and the lead Hill staffer on the bill… "There were a number of very anti-choice senators who voted for FACE," she says, "and [McCain] wasn’t one of them." Instead, McCain joined senators like Orrin Hatch and Jesse Helms in opposition.

And from a close colleague of McCain’s:

Like many voters today, Woods said he "wondered about the depth of [McCain’s] commitment to that position initially because I had the impression that it wasn’t something that he’d given a lot of thought to. " But, over the years, he continued, "I was completely convinced that this was a very sincere position that he had thought through and arrived at." Woods recalled a number of conversations with McCain, including one "up in the mountains late at night," in which the lawyer suggested that reasonable minds could differ. "When we really explored it, it really came down [for] him to a sanctity-of-life question. … He did get very emotional one time we talked about it. He truly believed."

There’s a lot more good stuff in the article, so again, pop a cold one, sit down, and read the whole thing.

I’ve found it ironic and not a little strange that anti-choice activists have only rallied behind McCain since his selection of Sarah Palin for VP. I have little doubt that he would appoint another Roberts or Alito to the Supreme Court (or possibly several), which would be the death knell not only for Roe, but for all sorts of civil liberties we often take for granted.

[BONUS HUMOR LINK: Palin as President]

Tonight we got to see the cantankerous bastard side of McCain that he tried so hard to suppress during the last debate. His performance would have been perfect, if he were running for president of the United States of Apeshit. Advantage goes to Obama, who remained level-headed as ever, an amazing feat given the avalanche of bile that was dumped on him.

My notes:

McCain’s tight collar is making his jowls bunch up unflatteringly.

Joe the Plumber. Joe Six-Pack. The Dem ticket actually has a Joe on it, if you want to play the Joe game.

As a small-business owner who just spent the past 24 hours immersed in tax returns (today was filing day for procrastinators), I’m one of those 98 percent making under $250,000 Obama referred to.

McCain: very testy when he said "I am not President Bush."

So much talk about hatchets and scalpels. Personally, I would balance my budget with an X-Acto.

Bob Schieffer is comparing the Obama campaign calling McCain "erratic" to Palin saying Obama is "palling around with terrorists." This is false journalistic balance of the very worst order.

After a slowish start, Obama is starting to encompass McCain’s wrath and turn it against him.

This ACORN nonsense from the Republicans is obviously a scheme to undermine the legitimacy of an Obama presidency. The greatest voter fraud in history? Destroying the fabric of democracy? It’s not like any of the made-up names are going to show up at the polls. McCain is truly dishonorable.

After unloading all those invectives, McCain says: "My campaign is about… a brighter future for America."

Please let this be over soon.

McCain has fought against cronyism and the old-boy network? See lobbyistsformccain.com

Oooh, nice scalpel-vs.-hatchet move on Obama’s part re: funding autism research.

Obama has perfected the art of looking vaguely bemused while all this garbage comes out of McCain’s mouth.

Now even Obama has gone from bemused to laughing openly.

McCain on abortion: Concern for health of the mother is an "extreme pro-abortion position." What an a-hole. The Dems should hammer him on that statement for the next three weeks.

Maybe one reason the US trails other countries in education is the anti-intellectual rhetoric that comes out of people like Sarah Palin. How can we inspire kids to learn when educated Americans are routinely tarred as "elitists"?

***

I suspect the only people who could admire McCain’s wanton nastiness tonight are his supporters. I’m not sure whether his behavior was an act of desperation or a play for the Republican base. Either way, it seemed unpresidental.