Friendly Fire (IV)

Wick Allison:
The Bush tax cuts — a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war — led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger [...]

Friendly Fire (III)

Peter Suderman:
Podhoretz notes, as I did yesterday, that the candidates are “falling back on their points of comfort. McCain is talking about greed and lack of accountability — all of which are long-standing talking points of his, though they are usually applied to Washington and not to Wall Street.” He argues that this isn’t enough, that [...]

Relative Burdens

Tax policy in a nutshell:

Juxtaposition

What I find interesting about the split-screen cut that occurs here during this Biden clip is that it occurred on Fox News:

Tough Guys

This quote, a dissenting view from Jeffrey Goldberg’s lengthy piece on McCain’s views on preemption, stood out because it called to mind a friend’s observation that the Vietnamese are the only battlefield enemy we’ve faced that didn’t crumble under the weight of B-52 strikes:
“We lost in Vietnam because we got beat,” Andrew J. Bacevich, an international-relations [...]

Feeling Apocalyptic

Kevin Drum and Tom Friedman both see trouble ahead. Drum:
McCain, in his overwhelming desire for office, is unloosing [culture-war] forces that are likely to make the country only barely governable no matter who wins. This would be very bad juju at any time, but George Bush has so seriously weakened the country over the course [...]

Econ 102

McCain pounds away on the tax issue, lying along the way:
“These are tough times. Tough times in Wisconsin. Tough times in Ohio. Tough times all over America,” McCain told thousands packed into the picturesque downtown of Cedarburg, Wis. “My opponent will raise your taxes. My tax cuts will create jobs. His tax increases — increases, [...]

Faulty Memory

Bill Whittle admits being a little hazy on McCain family history:
I knew McCain’s father and grandfather were admirals. I did not know his grandfather was on the USS Missouri, came home, and died the next day after giving everything he had for his country. That’s powerful.
Uh huh. I bet he also didn’t know that the senator’s grandfather helped [...]

Sharpening Divides

David Frum offers up a letter from an anti-abortion independent:
Obama’s campaign has been premised on an appeal to voters exactly like me -– voters who want a politics that does not so obviously delight in wallowing in the mud.  If there are a lot of Independents like me, Palin is a disaster.  She’s just performed [...]

McCain Reaction

James Poulos:
This convention has relied on one drab, perfunctory speech after another to repeat a mantra that wears precious thin after the first listen: because McCain was a prisoner of war back then, he is a hero today, and because he is a hero today, he should be President tomorrow. …
The humility that makes John [...]