Behind the scenes with the Obamas:

[Tags: obama politics ]

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Here’s Obama’s response to McCain’s mortgage buy-back proposal:

Senator McCain and I had a chance to talk about this the other night in Nashville. Some of you may have seen it. In that debate, he offered what he said was a new idea to help deal with the financial crisis, and that was to have the government – meaning taxpayers – buy up bad mortgages in America.

Well, the idea wasn’t particularly new. The authority for the Secretary of Treasury to buy and renegotiate bad mortgages is part of the financial rescue plan we just passed. In fact, I proposed it myself because, if it’s properly done and limited in scope, such buybacks can be one tool to help innocent homeowners stay in their homes on terms they can afford.

But I also said at the time that this should not be a vehicle to reward banks and lending institutions that recklessly wrote bad loans. It should not be a bailout for the high-rolling real estate speculators who took those loans to make a quick buck.

We have to act to fix our broken economy and restore the credit markets. But taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to pick up the tab for the very folks who helped create this crisis.

And that’s the problem with Senator McCain’s risky idea. On Tuesday night, his campaign said that he would ask the banks to absorb some of the cost by selling the bad mortgages to the government at a discount. Then, by Wednesday morning, he’d changed his mind and was proposing to bail out banks and lenders with taxpayer money.

Senator McCain actually wants the government to pay the full face value of mortgages on the books, even though they’re not worth that much anymore. It’s a plan that would guarantee that American taxpayers lose by handing over $300 billion to underwrite the kind of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street that got us into this mess.

But it’s not just that the McCain bailout rewards irresponsible lenders, it’s that his bailout would make it more likely that those lenders keep up their bad behavior. Just yesterday, Countrywide, one of the nation’s largest lenders, reached an agreement to help homeowners refinance their mortgages. Under Senator McCain’s plan, lenders like Countrywide wouldn’t have any incentive to come forward and help homeowners – because they could just wait for the government to bail them out.

Now, this is just the latest in a series of shifting positions that Senator McCain has taken on this issue. His first response to this crisis in March was that homeowners shouldn’t get any help at all. Then, a few weeks ago, he put out a plan that basically ignored homeowners. And now, in the course of 12 hours, he’s ended up with a plan that punishes taxpayers, rewards banks, and won’t solve our housing crisis.

Well, I don’t think we can afford that kind of erratic and uncertain leadership in these uncertain times.

The whole thing will be up here in a few days, I assume. [Tags: obama mccain mortgage ]

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Thanks to prompting from the ever-more-amazing Sunlight Foundation, the US Congress’ site will provide legislative documents with permanent URLs. That means you can link to them and have some confidence that the links will work tomorrow, which means discussion can more easily more forward. Unique IDs accrete meaning.

[Tags: democracy congress everything_is_miscellaneous sunlight_foundation ]

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If you love the Internet, you ought to vote for Obama.

Yes, I know I’ve shocked you with that opinion. You can find more shocks of this sort at Tech for Obama.

[Tags: politics obama ]

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It must be puzzling to McCain supporters why Obamites have seized on McCain’s statement, ‘”You know who voted for it? You might never know! That one.” I’m not sure why it strikes me as particularly revelatory. But it does.

It was the epitome of finger-pointing, of course. But it also seemed to express McCain’s peevishness that his accusations aren’t sticking. “I’ve been telling you over and over that this guy is no good, but no one is listening. People keep attacking me, but he’s the one, not me.”

And, of course, we Obamacists heard it in the context of McCain’s unwillingness to look Obama in the eye. Last night, he couldn’t say his name. I can only assume that McCain is genuinely dismayed that someone with so little experience may deprive him of the narrative he’s been yearning to complete: POW to Senator who embodies the lessons he learned (love democracy, recognize who your real enemies are, treat everyone else with respect) to President. But fate has put an unworthy opponent across from him. In my unsupported view, McCain honestly thought that in choosing Palin, he was choosing the equivalent of Obama: Young, fresh, inexperienced, likable, glamorous. And McCain can’t stand it. He can’t look at the charming poser lest he himself fall under his spell, and he can’t even say his name. It’s not simple contempt for Obama. It’s fury that his narrative his been interrupted…and, one must conclude, contempt for the country of fools who prefer the celebrity pretender to the grizzled warrior, maverick, and man of honor.

Of course, I am 100% making this up.

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[Tags: politics election register ]

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I’m in Berlin, so I’d have to get up at 3AM to watch the debate tonight, which I’m unlikely to do since tomorrow is a work day. But, I expect Palin will do better than expected, although not better than we’re expecting to expect her to do. And the media will seize on some stumbles by Biden so they can avoid the appearance of piling on Palin. In fact, we’re already seeing some gaffe inflation.

A gaffe used to be not just a mistake but one that really hurts a candidate’s standing. Biden’s thinking that FDR presided over the 1929 crash and that folks had TVs back then is a little bit of dumbness about history, but not a true gaffe because it doesn’t reveal a reason to give up your vote for him. McCain talking about the Iraq-Pakistan border is more of one, but since no one believes McCain is that ill-informed, we instead chalk it up to a mere momentary slip of the brain. No, a true gaffe is genuinely not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is or being able to name only a single Supreme Court case you disagree with.

Watch CBS Videos Online

But, because the media are afraid that they look like they’re going after Palin — AKA Doing Their Job — I expect any small error or misstep made by Biden tonight to be elevated to full gaffe level.

Too bad. It used to be a useful term. I hate to lose it just because the media want to appear balanced in an unbalanced contest.

[Tags: politics biden palin gaffes ]

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Sounds at the end like the room may be laughing at the reporter…

[Tags: politics media obama mccain fox_news ]

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I’m a little confused by Sarah Palin’s joshing that she’s been listening to Biden’s speeches in the Senate since she was in second grade, especially with John “26 Years in the Senate” McCain standing right next to her.

What’s next, comb-over jokes?

[Tags: politics sarah_palin mccain biden ]

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From Greg Mankiw’s blog:

From a freshman physics quiz given at Princeton a few days ago:

Problem 1. A famous thought experiment in economics involves dealing with a financial crisis by dropping money from a helicopter.

Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman and former Princeton Economics Professor, decides to try this out over his old hometown. With his helicopter flying 1.0×10^1 m above the center of Fine Tower and in the direction of Nassau Hall, Ben gently releases a briefcase containing $1 million. Using the information that (i) Fine Tower is 6.0 × 10^1 m high, (ii) Nassau Hall is 1.5 × 10^1 m high and (iii) the centers of the two buildings are 3.0 × 10^2 m apart, and ignoring air resistance as you normally would:

a. [2 pts] How fast should Ben’s helicopter fly so that the briefcase lands in the center of the roof of Nassau Hall?

b. [1 pt] How long is the briefcase in the air?

c. [1 pt] How fast is the briefcase moving when it hits the roof of Nassau Hall?

d. [1 pt] How much faster would the financial relief have reached Nassau Hall if the briefcase had contained $2 million instead?

Thanks to Princeton Professor Shivaji Sondhi for sending this along.

Greg is an economics professor at Harvard.

[Tags: bailout physics economics humor ]

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Here’s a contest idea from my brother Andy. Submit your entries as comments. Prize: Nothing at all.

Top Ten Reasons Sarah Palin Cancels the VP Debate

Suspicious Russian tourists spotted across the Bering strait in Dezhnevo

Wrasslin’ a bear

Learns Tina Fey will be watching

When taken on tour of White House by McCain handlers, is “inadvertently” locked in Cheney’s man-sized safe

Schedule for memorizing state capitals thrown off by need for new schedule to memorize states

Speechless after finally looking up what “MILF” stands for

On deadline to finish her book, “Namin’ Your Baby the Alaskan Way”

Not yet confident how to work in those hilarious hair-plug zingers

No matter how hard she scrubs, she can’t get Kissinger’s moral stank off of her

Stuck in traffic on the Bridge to Nowhere

[Tags: politics sarah_palin debates humor ]

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The Washington Post has a nice set of interactive features for “decoding” the debates.

You know what would be even better? The open access Larry Lessig and a left-right coalition is calling for.

[Tags: debates e-democracy politics everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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I hope every independent voter watches the ad the McCain campaign released even before the last radio waves of the debate escaped earth orbit:

So, McCain believes in crossing partisan lines, but when his opponent agrees with him, he takes it as a sign of weakness. Wow.

Obama could not be more clear or explicit about what he thinks leadership is and the way forward for this country: Find common ground, discuss the differences.

McCain couldn’t even look at Obama, much less acknowledge the values they share as Americans.

My hat is off to Jim Lehrer. Well done!

[Tags: politics mccain obama debate ]

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So, as far as I can tell, the story so far is:

McCain sees an opportunity to look presidential and experienced. He announces he’s suspending his campaign so he can rush to DC, although he in fact takes 22 hours to get there and manages to squeeze in some interviews, a speech at Pres. Clinton’s event, and a nice dinner. Plus, his surrogates stay out on the trail bashing Obama, and McCain continues his ad campaign. Other than that, the campaign is completely suspended.

Then, to show that he is not a marginalized Senator on the fringes of economic discussion, he encourages conservative Republicans to back out of the deal the two parties had brokered in a genuine spirit of bi-partisanship so that McCain can spearhead some alternate proposal. Why? Well, since McCain’s original comments — in which he tacitly accepted Obama’s statement of principles — seemed to go along with the deal the two sides had worked out, I can only conclude that McCain would have disrupted any agreement so that he can be perceived as coming up with the new one.

The Democrats are pretty much boxed in. If they make any concessions at all to McCain’s new proposal, McCain will trumpet that he’s the one who saved the economy by wringing changes from the Dems (while ignoring that the original deal before McCain stepped in to “save” us had been bi-partisan).

So, clever move by McCain. Too bad it’s a clever move motivated by McCain’s ambitions rather than by what’s best for the country. For example, today’s economic slide is directly due to McCain’s self-centered disruption of the process.

Nice, John. See you at the debate.

Or not.

[Tags: mccain obama politics economy ]

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On Friday at 9pm EDT (-5 GMT), if you want to talk, cheer, and snark together about the debate, feel free to join irc.freenode.net/#debatejoho. We had lively and enjoyable chat sessions during the Democratic convention, so maybe we will again.

Note that this is an old fashioned IRC chat, requiring some type of chat client. (I use chatzilla, a Firefox add-in.)

[Tags: politics obama mccain debate ]

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Voices without Votes continues to give interesting international perspective on our American vote-fest. Sometimes the similarity of perspective is as interesting as the differences.

[Tags: politics globalvoices ]

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Whatever happens with the budget agreement, I can’t imagine that McCain’s going to agree to debate on Friday after taking himself out of three days of debate prep.

Well, we’ll see.

And if McCain is a no-show, don’t we hope and assume that Obama will take questions from the audience (at home and in the venue) for the full span of the debate?[Tags: politics mccain obama debate ]

That Friday: I was wrong. I didn’t think McCain would so blatantly change his conditions. Foolish me.

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McCain’s suspending of his campaign is so very odd that I find myself looking for psychological, and not just political, explanations. So, try on this armchair psychoanalysis, keeping in mind that I’m just making this stuff up:

First, assume that McCain is desperate. When Fox puts you at 39%, desperation becomes reality-based thinking. Second — and this is the unpleasant part — imagine that McCain has had the thought that many of us had had: A terrorist attack in October would shake up the entire electoral chessboard, and might well favor the Republicans. (Yeah, yeah, I don’t think it should it, either.)

Now, no one wants a terrorist attack (except, um, the terrorists), including John McCain, of course. But we’re talking psychology here. So, could it be that McCain is reacting to the financial meltdown as if it were a large-scale terrorist attack because deep within him, he’s waiting for the crisis that saves him, the crisis that lets the aging warrior put on his flight suit one more time?

After all, the subtext of his “putting country first” trope isn’t patriotism but heroism. Heroes need crises. McCain’s brand of heroism consists of sacrifice: He gave up 5 years of his life in North Vietnam, and now he’s willing to give up campaigning.

McCain’s political problem is that in this case, his self-sacrifice seems unnecessary and can be taken as panic or cowardice. It seems like sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake. He thus runs the risk of voters turning away from the hero-without-a-cause to the leader who has one.

[Tags: mccain politics obama ]

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Here’s an idea I’m taking from a mailing list. I’ll check with the guy who posted it [Later: It was John Laprise] to see if I can credit him, but I’m sure he’s ok with the idea itself being circulated:

Obama ought to counter-propose that instead of postponing the debate, it ought to be changed to a debate on the economy, and opened up to public questions, as a way for the candidates to address the concerns of citizens.

Nice idea.

[Tags: obama debates mccain politics ]

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Here’s a sweet photo of Obama.

[Tags: obama fanboy ]

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On Friday at 9pm EDT (-5 GMT), if you want to talk, cheer, and snark together about the debate, feel free to join irc.freenode.net/#debatejoho. We had lively and enjoyable chat sessions during the Democratic convention, so maybe we will again.

Note that this is an old fashioned IRC chat, requiring some type of chat client. (I use chatzilla, a Firefox add-in.)

[Tags: politics debate snark ]

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Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times has blogged transcripts of press conferences given by the two candidates yesterday:

Barack Obama

John McCain

[Tags: obama mccain economy politics ]

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The Brian Lehrer Show, on the nation’s largest public radio station, WNYC, is asking listeners to use a set of wiki pages to help produce six segments about the candidates’ positions on some of the less-hyped issues in the presidential election. The first issue to air will be the Internet and Broadcast Regulation. It will be on this Friday, 10-12 (EDT).

[Tags: net_neutrality everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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PublicMarkUp lets you — yes, you — comment on the Paulson and Dodd proposals…

[Tags: politics everything_is_miscellaneous e-democracy ]

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The Obama campaign changed its tech policy statement, raising concerns that it was backtracking on its commitments. Now the campaign has explained that the changes were an attempt to de-geek the language and the original policy statement is still up on their site. The campaign says:

We’ve been updating the entire website to ensure consistency across the pages. The full tech plan is still available on the page, so there is absolutely no substantive change to our policy — folks who want more information can click to get our full plan.

To my reading, the explanation is consistent with the edits.

[Tags: obama tech_policy campaign ]

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I don’t understand economics or the current crisis. I thus don’t trust my own judgments about who to believe. But Paul Krugman’s concerns and analysis strike a chord. So do Eric Hovde’s in the Washington Post.

Since I lack the education and background to understand the crisis and its context, I find myself thrown into rudderless thinking, where I find myself swayed by people who I already tend to agree with (= Krugman), who are able to pain a coherent picture, and whose broad premises seem in line with mine. In short, I feel pretty helpless not just about the crisis about even how to understand the crisis.

[Tags: paul_krugman eric_hovde economics crisis ]

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You don’t get this very often: A single sentence that disqualifies a candidate not because of a scandal or a slip, but because it is an clear and forthright expression of the candidate’s beliefs. This is from a statement McCain wrote for Contingencies, published by the American Academy of Actuaries (via Paul Krugman):

“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”

[Tags: mccain politics obama ]

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I want to propose an hypothesis.

Suppose our new president gets serious about using the Internet as a tool of governance. So, he takes his email list and uses it to kickstart a new e-gov social network. In fact, his opponent provides his email list, too. So, let’s say we have 5M on this network. Let’s say it prominently features blogs and forums. Let’s say after two years there are 30M registered users, and some good percentage of those are at least occasionally active. Of course, I’m making all of this up.

Now, the problem the Internet has faced almost from the beginning is how to scale conversations. We’ve solved it time after time, whether it’s threading and forking Usenet discussions or Amazon’s reviews of reviews. So, let’s imagine that this new social network solves the problem through a combination of forking (or recursive conversations … see orgware [Disclosure: I'm an adviser]) and reputation, more or less along the DailyKos lines.

So, 30M people are engaged in vital conversations. Some people gain prominence in discussions on particular issues. The administration notices this. The relevant government policy makers want to engage in these conversations, because otherwise the 30M citizens feel like they’re being ignored. The emergent discussion leaders become the online points of contact between the administration and the conversations, because that’s how those conversations scale.

For example, PolarKing111 gains an enormous reputation because he writes about polar warming so knowledgeably and passionately, because he engages with all sides in the discussion with respect, and because he’s so good at representing all the various opinions. Administration officials engage with him on the site, often in a spirited back-and-forth. He ably represents the concerns emerging from the many discussions on the site. It’s a public dialogue with just enough structure, one unlike any our democracy has seen.

Inevitably, one day in early 2011, the media will discover that PolarKing111 is a 15 year old girl, but that’s not my point. My point is that the emergent online discussion leaders play a role unprecedented in our democracy. They are not elected yet they represent us. They are not members of the government yet they directly affect government. They have some power but the power comes from an emergent process. We don’t even have a word for this role.

Of course, I’m making all of this up. It’s just an hypothesis. Yet, it’s easy to imagine something like this happening, while it simultaneously being impossible to predict exactly what will happen. Nevertheless, there’s a strong possibility that some form of e-gov social network will emerge, either from the government or from the people. This social network could create new roles or processes of democracy that could well turn out to be quite important. But, just as Facebook can alter the nature of privacy by deciding whether or not to set a checkbox on or off by default, the roles and processes of this new layer of democracy will depend to a large degree on small decisions about how the software happens to work.

Democracy is susceptible to software.

Personally, I think that’s likely to be a good thing. But, who knows?

No one, that’s who.

[Tags: democracy e-democracy e-government e-gov ]

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Talking Points Memo has a bunch of posts (latest) about the odd interview McCain gave to Radio Caracol Miami.

You can hear the unedited, original interview here. Or this embedded player (well, iframe) might work in some browsers, albeit not in mine: The first half is one economics. About halfway through, the interviewer asks about Venezuela and Bolivia. In response to a question about taking Latin America more seriously, McCain says: “I know the issues. I know the leaders.” Indeed, he gets them right.

About 3/4 of the way through, the interviewer asks him if he’d invite Zapatero to the White House. She says his full name — José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — which might have thrown him, since he gives his generic answer about meeting with those who support democracy, and then starts talking about Mexico. It seems pretty clear to me that he didn’t catch the name and didn’t want to alienate the Florida audience by seeming to be thrown by the interviewer’s properly accented pronunciation. He then, unfortunately, gives a response about being willing to meet with friends of democracy, as if that were in doubt about Spain. The interviewer then explicitly says she’s talking about the president of Spain, and McCain repeats his answer. Since that’s a pretty dumb response when talking about an ally, I’m assuming that McCain felt he had dug himself into a hole and didn’t want to crawl out by admitting his error. The price, however, is a needless flap with an ally. [Tags: mccain obama politics spain ]

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This ad presses all my buttons — the right buttons! He’s calm, clear, offers a plan, offers hope beyond a plan, embodies the change he’s promising, and makes McCain look confused and self-serving in silent contrast.

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Yesterday, Sen. McCain was on the TV and said to Harry Smith

The point is, I was chairman of the commerce committee. Every part of America’s economy, I oversighted. I have a long record, certainly far more extensive of being involved in our economy than Senator Obama does.

Wow. This seems both to be an in-context quote and remarkably dunderheaded. McCain just shot the entire “experience” argument in the face.

Yesterday was a long day of gaffes and inadvertent truths for the McCain campaign. May the unraveling begin! [Tags: mccain obama politics economy dunderheads ]

Here’s a 4 minute NPR piece on Obama on the economy. The piece is not very substantial, however. More horse racey.

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Obama’s new ad goes meta-meta:

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are hilarious at the beginning of an otherwise ominously unfunny Saturday Night Live season-opener:

And, much as I think Palin is a disastrous, cynical choice, ABC’s editing of Gibson’s interview with her seems un-even-handed. If only there were a medium where ABC could post an unedited version for all those who want to see it … [Tags: politics obama mccain sarah_palin snl comedy ]

The Army Times wants to know if McCain has flipflopped or is lying about his recent support for the Army’s Future Combat Systems. Interesting.

John McCain hit the campaign trail on Monday sans La Palin, and managed to draw 3,000 people into a 16,000 person stadium. Photos here. It almost makes me sad.

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If you’re set on voting for McCain because you agree with him on the issues that matter to you, or because you’re convinced that Obama is unsuited because of his character, then there’s nothing I can say to change your mind. Nor would I want to.

But as I’ve been asking people why they’re not voting for Obama, there seems to be a handful of basic sticking points beyond policy and character. Here’s why they’re not sticking points for me … and in one case, why it’s an argument in favor of Obama.

“He’s not experienced enough.” He clearly does not have as much experience as John McCain, if only because he’s younger. Experience counts, but only when it results in knowledge and judgment. Obama has not been found to be weak or superficial in his knowledge of the world. Indeed, there are some areas — such as Constitutional law — where his own experience leaves him more knowledgeable than McCain. And, in terms of judgment, if you think the Iraq war was a mistake, then Obama ought to get marks for the clarity of his judgment. Likewise, I thought Obama exhibited excellent judgment in a choice of a running mate who has all three: experience, knowledge, and judgment.

“He’s been unclear on his positions.” On Obama’s Web site, you can find detailed plans and proposals. T