By handing the Republican Party back to the Christian Right fanatics, John McCain has made a decision to unleash the ugliest forces in American politics.
Socialist Worker, September 10, 2008 | Issue 680
Running mate Sarah Palin joins John McCain onstage at the Republican convention (Brian Kersey | UPI)
JOHN MCCAIN and friends let the dogs loose at the Republican Party convention last week–and it wasn’t just for show.
To the chanting of “USA! USA!” and “Drill, baby, drill!” the Christian Right and social conservatives, thought to be consigned to the margins for this election, made their triumphant return to the spotlight–in the form of John McCain’s running mate, Bible-thumping “hockey mom,” Sarah Palin.
Suddenly, the Republican base–which has always regarded McCain with suspicion for his unforgivably “moderate” views, and which was working itself into a frenzy over a rumor that he might pick a pro-choice running mate–was over the moon.
“A lady who’s a leader,” gushed the Weekly Standard‘s William Kristol. “I would pull that lever,” declared James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
Palin’s convention speech was expected to be a mild-mannered introduction from an almost entirely unknown figure. Instead, she sneered at Barack Obama and snarled about the “liberal” media like an old hand. That set the stage for an address by McCain that ended with bluster about his war wounds and patriotic duty.
If anyone thought the Republicans would be too humiliated by their disastrous eight years in power under George Bush to make much of an effort this time around, think again. McCain was able to erase the Obama’s post-convention “bounce” in opinion polls, and then some, even taking a lead beyond the margin of error in a few.
To be sure, McCain’s own post-convention bounce will fade, and once it does, the Democrats’ significant advantages in this election–above all, the crisis of the Bush administration and the collapse of the right-wing agenda–should become more obvious. But the presidential election is certainly looking like it will be closer than expected.
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IF PALIN survived the convention week with a high level of popularity, it’s because the mainstream media let her get away with being all things to all people–a firm family-values conservative and a down-to-earth working mother; a straight-talking, get-things-done operator and a crusader against corruption and cronyism.
Palin is just what the doctor ordered for the Christian Right, whose top ranks, always overstocked with old white men, are bulging with the discredited, the scandal-plagued and a growing number of outright laughingstocks.
But beneath her just-folks image, Palin is a real fanatic.
The energy industry is in love with this “renegade” governor who can’t wait to open up her home state of Alaska to oil drilling–which is why she sued the Bush administration over plans to add the polar bear to the list of endangered species.
As far as Palin is concerned, she has God’s approval for her policies. Referring to a $30 billion Alaskan oil pipeline, she told the graduating class of commission students at her former church, the evangelical Wasilla Assembly of God, three months ago, “I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.”
The same goes for the war on Iraq. “[O]ur leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she said in the same church speech. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan, and that that plan is God’s plan.”
Palin has appeared as a speaker for the Alaskan Independence Party, which supports secession of Alaska from the U.S. She supports creationism being taught in school. She opposes women’s right to abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. Palin was asked in a 2006 debate what she would do if her daughter–who was 14 years old at the time–was raped and became pregnant. “I would chose life,” Palin answered.
Then there’s Palin’s response–as reported by a server at the restaurant where she was eating with friends–to the news some months back that Obama had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination over Hillary Clinton: “So Sambo beat the bitch.”
Of course, Palin was only one cog in the Republican attack machine. Lacking any program of its own worth cheering for, speakers repeatedly went after Obama and the Democrats–to wild cheers from an arena packed with the Republican faithful. The same message was repeated again and again: The “urban” and “elitist” Democrats are “out of touch” with “small-town America.”
Thus, St. Paul witnessed the spectacle of Mitt Romney–former governor of Massachusetts and CEO of an investment firm–denouncing the “Eastern elite.” Multimillionaire Rudolph Giuliani–the ex-mayor, mind you, of one of the most diverse and multiracial cities in the world–sneered that Obama supposedly thinks Palin’s “hometown isn’t cosmopolitan enough…I’m sorry, Barack, that it’s not flashy enough.” And Palin herself joined in mocking Obama’s history as a “community organizer.”
These insults weren’t chosen at random. As even mainstream commentators recognized, “community organizer” and “urban elite” have become new racist code words–just as surely as the Republicans’ talk about “law and order” and “welfare cheats” served to stir up bigotry in the past.
The Republican creep show in St. Paul served notice that McCain and his party have no qualms whatsoever about playing the race card–as long as it’s done in such a way that any allegations about what’s really being said can be denied with self-righteous anger.
Plus, all that snide abuse served to deflect attention from an obvious question: Since when do the Republicans–the party of big business interests and war profiteers–represent ordinary, working-class Americans against the “elite”?
As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asked, “Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself–until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans–really portray herself as running against the ‘Washington elite’? Yes, they can.”
Peace and Justice Post 
Nobel Honours Man Who Told Bush to “Please Go Away”
October 14, 2008By Wolfgang Kerler |Inter-Press Service
Paul Krugman
Credit:Princeton University
NEW YORK, Oct 13 – Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University who is best known for his New York Times columns — frequently involving scathing assaults on the policies of the George W. Bush administration — was awarded the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on international trade and economic geography.
“To be absolutely, totally honest I thought this day might come someday, but I was absolutely convinced it wasn’t going to be this day,” Krugman, a 55-year-old U.S. national, said in an interview with The Times Monday.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which administers the award, said it was bestowed on Krugman “for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity”.
“This was definitely a ‘real world’ pick and a nod in the direction of economists who are engaged in policy analysis and writing for the broader public,” Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, commented on his weblog “Marginal Revolution”.
Krugman found new ways to explain what goods are produced where, and how capital and labour are distributed over countries and regions.
Most of the discussion going on on the Internet after the announcement of the prize commitee, however, was not about Krugman’s scientific achievement, but about the strong positions he took as a columnist, author and blogger.
Krugman served as an advisor to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, and for a short time was a consultant to former president Ronald Reagan.
Back in 2000, a year after he joined The New York Times, Krugman spent a great deal of effort “trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security”, as he wrote in a column this year.
A stauch critic of the Iraq war, he has repeatedly cautioned against a potential victory for John McCain, the Republican contender in the Nov. 4 U.S. elections.
Just recently, Krugman stressed that “the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.” Many observers are now wondering if the decision of the Swedish prize commitee is sending a political message as well.
With recent publications, Krugman has influenced the arrangement of the federal plan to spend 700 billion dollars to cushion U.S. credit markets — a topic he is long familiar with as his dissertation was on international finance.
Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. He went on to teach at Yale, MIT and Stanford, and is now a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he gives a course on international monetary policy and theory.
Starting with a short article published in the Journal of International Economics in 1979, Krugman has lifted the theory of international trade to a new level. His theory explained the increasing trade between countries that produce the same kind of goods — a phenomenom that has grown since World War II.
While traditional theories were based on differences among countries that make them specialise and trade with other countries, Krugman found an explanation why, for example, a car-producing country is not only exporting cars but also importing them.
First, it is about economies of scale: Because mass production diminishes the per unit price of production, it is lucrative for companies to produce many units of a specific good — and therefore develop their own brand.
Second, it is about consumers’ lust for diversity, especially in highly industrialised rich countries: They simply want to chose between a large number of brands.
So while one country may produce luxury cars, another one may build smaller vehicles. And due to lower prices and greater product diversity, wealth and prosperity are increasing for people in both countries.
With his “new economic geography”, Krugman later showed that the distribution of work and capital across regions depends on the trade-off between utilising economies of scale and saving on transport costs. Today’s process of urbanisation can be explained with Krugman’s theory.
The domination of already successful, large countries can also be explained through his findings as economics of scale, lower prices and diversity of products are easier to achieve there.
Krugman is the ninth U.S. laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in a row — a prize that does not date back to Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896, but was created by the Swedish central bank in 1968.
He is also among a number of Nobel laureates who received the John Bates Clark medal, a renowned prize for young economists under age 40, which he won in 1991.
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Tags:analysis of trade patterns, critic of Bush policies, critic of Iraq war, Nobel prize in economics, Paul Krugman
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