Back to Work

Congress goes back to work tomorrow after two weeks of camera time and pretty words uttered prettily enough for us to pretend they meant something. This isn't going to be a time during which bills get passed in order to protect United States citizens. This is going to be the time during which Republicans and Democrats do as much to fuck up the opposing party's candidate as possible.

"With the unemployment rate at a five-year high, it is clear that we must take immediate action to strengthen our economy. The New Direction Congress will soon act on a second economic stimulus package and a comprehensive energy plan that will create new American jobs, invest in renewables, increase domestic production, make America more energy independent, and break free of the failed Bush economic policies that John McCain and Republicans in Congress have rubber-stamped for far too long." -House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Here's what I get from the Washington Post article. If Obama goes for this bill, the Republicans are going to call him out for partisanship. If he doesn't, the Democrats are going to accuse him of pandering to get votes. (Since I want him to win in November, I say, "Pander on.") McCain's not in such a better position. Democrats are going to bring up measures that would increases funding for home heating in New Hampshire and Minnesota and a bill, previously turned down by Republicans, which would require equal pay for women in the workforce. If he doesn't go for these bills, those swing states might swoop back to Obama and any cred he got from women with Sarah Palin goes out the window. If he does go for those bills, he's going to get burned for voting to tax more.

The inadvertence of Congress pushes me one step closer to bitterness. I hope they remember they work for us when they go back to the office tomorrow.

[Washington Post]

Don't Believe Advertising.

Ever. A group in Michigan, unaffiliated with Sen. John McCain's campaign, is going to run a commercial linking Sen. Barack Obama with recently-forced-to-resign-for-acting-like-a-teenager Detroit Mayer Kwame Kilpatrick. It's funded by one of the main backers of the Swift Boat Veterans ads that ran a few years back. You should definitely not believe what this new piece of advertising tries to imply because (among many reasons) it uses as its main content a piece of advertising you should also disbelieve.

I need to break this down to make sense of it. Let's start with Kilpatrick, who was not a good mayor. Thanks, Wikipedia. And Youtube (This is from March 2008.):



(Check out some of the comments, by the way. If you're black and you make a mistake, apparently you make that mistake for the entire race. Yikes.)

Here's what Obama said about him in May 2007:




OK. I need bulletpoints.

• Obama introduces Kilpatrick for a speech at the Detroit Economic Club, which describes itself as a "non-partisan, non-profit organization committed to the discussion and debate of important business, government and social issues." Let's note that it is "proud to have hosted every sitting U.S. President since Richard Nixon."
  
• So, Obama, seizing an opportunity to support another black leader at a forum that doesn't deal with sides or money, says some vaguely nice things about a guy he probably doesn't know so well.
  
• This was a photo-op. This was advertising. I'm voting for Obama, but you shouldn't believe him when he refers to Kilpatrick as a "friend," unless we're bastardizing the word to me "someone I will exploit to further my career." Again, I'm voting for Obama. But he is a politician and this is how politicians work.

If you don't buy into the above, then you won't buy into the below:




I appreciate the Freedom's Defense Fund's telling me I should know who Obama's friends are, as if all our great leaders weren't in bed with each other. Harold Simmons, who financed the ad (the only guy who financed this ad) knows this. He doesn't believe Obama and Kilpatrick are doing dirty work together; he just wants to plant that seed of fear into the minds of Macomb County, MI voters. Don't be scared, Macomb County. Be insulted. And tell them so. Contact Todd Zirkle of Freedom's Defense Fund at 866-422-3230 and tell him Simmons wasted a few of his billions of dollars because he thought you were stupid enough to fall for the shit he pulled in 2004.

[Chicago Tribune]