My newest post at The Art of the Possible is up.

Those of you outside Minnesota probably remember Norm Coleman as the guy who won his senate seat when Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. He hasn’t done much since. But still, Norm’s a political powerhouse in Minnesota, even if he’s taken a weird, meandering course in his career. And he’s leading challenger Al Franken (about whom I could write volumees, and someday will) by a narrow margin.

Still, Norm occasionally says some radically stupid things. For instance, he has an…er…novel take on the trillion dollar giveaway. It’s like the lottery — we could win big, America!

Yeah, it seems insane, but in a town hall meeting in North Mankato, Minnesota, Coleman said that the U.S. government could make up to $14 trillion on the deal.

“The government could make 10 or 20 times what it pays on this, possibly,” said Coleman, according to the Mankato Free Press.

Of course, he did admit that he does “worry a little bit” about giving a trillion dollars away. And I suppose it is worth worrying about a bit, but we’ve got bigger things to worry about, like the fact that Al Franken’s angry, so it doesn’t matter, right?

Seriously, it’s hard to overstate how out to lunch this valuation of possible return on investment is. I mean, first off, if there was $14 trillion in profits outstanding, the foreign banks that still have money would be lining up to throw money into the market — we wouldn’t need taxpayer rescue. But of course, $14 trillion isn’t going to be made; $14 trillion is more than the entire U.S. gross domestic product. It’s not just ludicrous to suggest that the U.S. could earn a whole year’s GDP back on this horrible, horrible bet — it’s completely disconnected from reality. It’s not only not in the ballpark, it’s not only not in the universe, it’s not in the multiverse of possible outcomes from this debacle.

Of course, Norm, like most Republicans, has been a big fan of deregulating everything that moves over the years, and an even bigger record of throwing taxpayer money at corporations (for instance, he still touts his role in bringing hockey back to Minnesota when he was mayor of St. Paul. And how did he bring hockey back? That’s right, he built an arena with taxpayer funding). So basically, if he’s going to run on his record, he’s screwed. So instead, he’ll pretend that putting all our money on double-zero could turn up big, big winnings for America. Oh, and Al Franken’s angry. Victory!

Dear FactCheck,

I disagree with your most recent fact check, on an Obama commercial criticizing McCain’s health care plan.

Just to be upfront, I’m an Obama supporter. That said, I’ve usually agreed with FactCheck’s critiques of Obama’s ads.

You’re correct to say that when Senator McCain compared bank and health care deregulation, he was “referring narrowly to his proposal to allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines.” But in order for Obama’s commercial to have taken this statement “out of context,” as FactCheck claims, the commercial’s arguments would have to be inaccurate once McCain’s “full context” is understood. This is not the case. To the contrary, the Obama commercial correctly criticizes this exact aspect of McCain’s health care plan.

From a critique of McCain’s plan published in the journal Health Affairs (the four authors are professors specializing in health care and in economics):

Currently, the nongroup insurance market is regulated at the state level, and local insurers, often Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, are major players. Senator McCain’s proposal envisions a relatively unregulated national market for nongroup insurance in which families would buy insurance on their own or as members of fluid, voluntary associations, such as churches or clubs. In this market, consumers could select insurers licensed in any state. With more choice and competition, he believes that costs would fall and service quality would increase.

Everything we know about nongroup insurance markets, however, suggests that this vision is wrong. Health care is the ultimate local good: it is provided face to face, between doctor and patient. Today, most health plans negotiate contracts with local providers, directly or through intermediaries. The only truly national plans are traditional indemnity plans that do not negotiate with local provider networks. Such plans were once the backbone of American health care. They lost out to more tailored plans, however, because they could not compete effectively. Without an informed local network, their prices were higher and quality was lower. There is no reason to think that this has changed.

The main effect of establishing a national market would be to undo state laws designed to establish minimum levels of coverage and protect consumers. In a national market where state licenses are not required, insurers will charter in places where regulations are scarce–much like credit card companies do today. As a result, people guaranteed basic benefits today would find those benefits eliminated under the McCain plan. People in most states would lose access to procedural protections, such as requirements that disputed decisions by managed care plans be subject to external review. People also would lose access to many benefit protections. For example, forty-seven states now require mental health parity, forty-nine states require coverage of breast cancer reconstructive surgery, and twenty-nine require coverage of cervical cancer screening. All of these requirements–as well as regulations in several states that limit the rates that can be charged to higher-cost consumers and that limit who can be excluded from a health plan–would be eliminated under the McCain plan. Without legal requirements in place, plans would no longer offer these benefits at all in many markets, even if many consumers want them.

It’s important to emphasize that the above quote represents a mainstream scholarly view of the likely effects of allowing insurance to be sold across state lines. It’s not a fringe view, or a view that only an Obama partisan would hold. (See, for example, this post on “The Health Care Blog,” written years before the current presidential campaign.) And it’s a view that is unacknowledged anywhere in your critique.

The Obama commercial said that McCain wants to “reduce oversight of the health insurance industry.” This is true — the effect of allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, without adding national regulations stronger than what currently exists at the state level, would be reduced oversight. (”The nongroup insurance market is regulated at the state level.”)

The Obama commercial says that the result would be “Increasing costs and threatening coverage.” Again, this is true — these are expected effects of allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines (”regulations in several states that limit the rates that can be charged… would be eliminated.” “People in most states would lose access….”).

FactCheck’s critique should have acknowledged that the three substantive claims of Obama’s commercial — that allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines could lead to reduced oversight, increased costs and threatened coverage — are well-supported, and are responsive to McCain’s “proposal to allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines.” By not doing so, your critique inaccurately implies that the commercial’s substantive arguments rely on out of context quoting. Your critique also focuses on relatively trivial issues, such as dating, while not addressing more important policy claims about the likely effects of McCain’s health care proposal. I would encourage you to rectify this problem by updating your critique, perhaps by quoting from the Health Affairs article.

Thank you for the work you do. Although I disagreed with this particular critique, I read FactCheck regularly and find it a useful tool for understanding the presidential campaign.

Respectfully,

Barry Deutsch

This summary post by Ezra is so good, I can’t resist quoting it at length.

THE FIVE WORST PROBLEMS WITH THE BAILOUT BILL.

Commentary on the bailout has been a bit fractured as people work to understand this and that aspect of it, and try to keep abreast of the portions just now coming to light. But here are the main criticisms.

The Imperial Treasury: The bailout plan, as currently designed, gives Hank Paulson almost unlimited power with virtually no oversight. The bill says, “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” You almost wonder if they included that line as a gag, or if it was originally a hyperlink that got you RickRolled. As Yves Smith writes, “This puts the Treasury’s actions beyond the rule of law. This is a financial coup d’etat, with the only limitation the $700 billion balance sheet figure. The measure already gives the Treasury the authority not simply to buy dud mortgage paper but other assets as it deems fit. There is no accountability beyond a report (contents undefined) to Congress three months into the program and semiannually thereafter. The Treasury could via incompetence or venality grossly overpay for assets and advisory services, and fail to exclude consultants with conflicts of interest, and there would be no recourse.” It makes Hank Paulson the country’s economic czar, and fairly few of us were even aware that was an open position.

At What Price?: “Within hours of the Treasury announcement Friday,” wrote Sebastian Mallaby, “economists had proposed preferable alternatives. Their core insight is that it is better to boost the banking system by increasing its capital than by reducing its loans.” Buying the bad assets is an odd strategy: It requires paying much more than the market currently thinks they’re worth, but hoping that the amount you paid is less than they eventually will be worth. But no one knows how to price these assets. Mallaby continues: “Bad loans are weighing down the financial system precisely because private-sector experts can’t determine their worth. The government would have no better handle on the problem. In practice this means the government would make subjective choices about which bad loans to buy, and it would pay more than fair value.”

Why Not Equity?: Rather than recapitalizing Wall Street by buying the bad assets (as Krugman terms it: “Cash for Trash“), you could recapitalize Wall Street by lending money directly, and getting an equity stake in return. That would give Wall Street sufficient cash-on-hand to survive the current crisis, but ensure a more stable repayment process where taxpayers would recoup their investment. Instead, as Luigi Zingales writes, “The Paulson RTC will buy toxic assets at inflated prices thereby creating a charitable institution that provides welfare to the rich—at the taxpayers’ expense. If this subsidy is large enough, it will succeed in stopping the crisis. But, again, at what price? The answer: Billions of dollars in taxpayer money and, even worse, the violation of the fundamental capitalist principle that she who reaps the gains also bears the losses.” The bailout has been designed to do more than protect against collapse. It has been built to limit losses, which it will do by shifting them to taxpayers.

And the Foreclosure Crisis? The financial crisis is one symptom of the foreclosure crisis. The bad assets are largely bad mortgages, and when they go bad, it means Wall Street loses some money, yes, but it also means a family loses their home. And though ensuring Wall Street’s survival is a definite priority, it’s extremely hard to argue that elite investors who made bad bets in order to reap big profits deserve public help while ordinary homeowners who entered into bad mortgages on the strength of bad advice merit nothing. The terms of this bailout, however, actually make it easier to imagine a policy that could aid these folks. As Dean Baker says, “The government will inevitably come into the possession of a vast amount of mortgages in various stages of delinquency. The priority in these cases should be to allow people to remain in their homes, not maximizing the return on the mortgages. This should mean first a good faith effort to negotiate a write-down that makes it possible for homeowners to remain in their house as owners. If this proves impossible, then the next recourse should be to give homeowners the option to remain as renters paying the market rent for the house. Only if the homeowner can neither arrange a new mortgage nor pay the market should the government move ahead with foreclosure procedures.” For the government to protect Wall Street by buying these mortgages but abandon Main Street once it owns them would be obscene.

Emergency Powers? Lastly, the timing has everyone skittish. There’s little doubt that a bailout must be constructed quickly, but watching the Bush administration demand instant passage of an emergency bill that arrogates enormous power to the executive branch and shifts tremendous quantities of cash to the moneyed elite is bringing up bad memories, and rather a lot of them. $700 billion is a huge amount of money. We’re talking “foreign war” money. And the Bush administration want all that money under its direct control, with no oversight, under the terms of a Treasury plan developed in secret over a matter of days. Congress, happily is beginning to buck at this. Today, Barney Frank went on CNN and said that doing “one of the most important things ever done in America in two days really doesn’t work.”

I’ve been reading about the crisis compulsively without having much to say about it on the blog, largely because I feel I lack expertise. That’s a mistake. I’m not an economist, but non-economists have every right to discuss these issues. And you don’t have to have a PhD to know that giving a $700 billion dollar blank check to the same folks who brought us the Iraq war — not to mention the current economic crisis — isn’t wise.

Actually, I take that back; there are plenty of good bastards out there. Limbaugh’s just pure evil:

On the September 22 broadcast of his syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh baselessly claimed that Sen. Barack Obama is “not black,” and went on to ask: “Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?” Limbaugh continued: “He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa. … [H]e’s not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American.”

There’s so much wrong with this.

1. There’s very little of Africa that can be termed “Arab.” Egypt is really the only part that can be said about, and even that’s debatable — I’ll only give it to Limbaugh based on its abortive attempt at forming the United Arab Republic. Maybe Libya. Any further west and you’re into the Maghreb, which is no more “Arab” than Iran. Which, doubtless, Rush thinks is Arab.
2. If one is charitable, one assumes Limbaugh is conflating “Muslim” with “Arab.” And it’s true, most of North Africa is ethnically and historically distinct from Sub-Saharan Africa. The Muslim part of Africa covers a wide territory, from Morocco and Mauritania in the west to the northern parts of Sudan.
3. That said, Barack Obama’s dad was from Kenya. Kenya is not in North Africa.

Here’s a handy map to help:

See? Anything not in the orange there is not “the Arab parts of Africa,” not in any way, shape, or form. That doesn’t mean there are no Muslims outside of North Africa — there are Muslims all over the world. But historical and geneological ties to Subsaharan Africa are what we think of when we think of “Black” in American society. Barack Obama, Sr., was undoubtedly from Subsaharan Africa, as Kenya is no more in the Arab part of Africa than Spain.

Of course, Rush is just showing his amazing post-racialism here, days after accusing Obama of using “segregationist” tactics in his bid to be America’s first African-American president. That Obama is undoubtedly the literal embodiment of that phrase, with a father born in Africa and a mother born in America, is evidently no reason for Limbaugh not to try to find another way to insinuate that Obama is really a secret undercover Muslim.

In August, I blogged about Diane Schroer, a highly qualified special forces veteran who was offered a position at the Library of Congress as a terrorism research analyst. The Library withdrew the job offer when Schroer informed them that she was in the process of changing sex.

Today, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in Schroer’s favor. (Curtsy to Questioning Transphobia and The Debate Link.)

Congratulations to Diane Schroer and to the ACLU for winning this case. I’m especially excited because the judge endorses a legal theory that mirrors my own belief that transphobia is just another form of sexism. Judge Robertson ruled that the existing Title VII law covers cases of anti-trans discrimination. Because discrimination against trans people is a form of sex discrimination.

From Judge Robertson’s ruling (pdf link):

Imagine that an employee is fired because she converts from Christianity to Judaism. Imagine too that her employer testifies that he harbors no bias toward either Christians or Jews but only “converts.” That would be a clear case of discrimination “because of religion.” No court would take seriously the notion that “converts” are not covered by the statute. Discrimination “because of religion” easily encompasses discrimination because of a change of religion. But in cases where the plaintiff has changed her sex, and faces discrimination because of the decision to stop presenting as a man and to start appearing as a woman, courts have traditionally carved such persons out of the statute by concluding that “transsexuality” is unprotected by Title VII. In other words, courts have allowed their focus on the label “transsexual” to blind them to the statutory language itself.

The decisions holding that Title VII only prohibits discrimination against men because they are men, and discrimination against women because they are women, represent an elevation of “judge-supposed legislative intent over clear statutory text.” [...] As Justice Scalia wrote for a unanimous court:

Male-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace was assuredly not the principal evil Congress was concerned with when it enacted Title VII. But statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.

For Diane Schroer to prevail on the facts of her case, however, it is not necessary to draw sweeping conclusions about the reach of Title VII. Even if the decisions that define the word “sex” in Title VII as referring only to anatomical or chromosomal sex are still good law [...] the Library’s refusal to hire Schroer after being advised that she planned to change her anatomical sex by undergoing sex reassignment surgery was literally discrimination “because of . . . sex.” [...]

In refusing to hire Diane Schroer because her appearance and background did not comport with the decisionmaker’s sex stereotypes about how men and women should act and appear . . . the Library of Congress violated Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination.

This is the sort of thing that makes me pump my arm in the air and yell “YES!” I’m hoping very hard this ruling stands up on appeal.

In unrelated, but also good, legal news, the Judge in the Angie Zampata murder case declined to lessen the charges from first to second degree murder based on a “trans panic” defense. Curtsy: Gaytheist Agenda.

Well, do I ever stand corrected. They’re paying a terrible price. Terrible:

“A lot of those people will have to sell their homes, they’re going to cut back on the private jets and the vacations. They may even have to take their kids out of private school,” said Frank. “It’s a total reworking of their lifestyle.”

He added that it’s going to be no easy task.

“It’s going to be very hard psychologically for these people,” Frank said. “I talked to one guy who had to give up his private jet recently. And he said of all the trials in his life, giving that up was the hardest thing he’s ever done.”

Oh! Who will weep for the man who now must fly first class, like some…some commoner!

But it gets worse for the plutocrats:

And the city’s leading real estate broker, Kathy Sloane, says the worst is yet to come for New York real estate. Some say it’s too soon to know but she estimates the value of a $5 million apartment has already dropped almost a million dollars in value, with no end in sight.

“Because a month from now, that same $5 million apartment may be lucky to achieve $3.5 million,” Sloane said.

The humanity! The humanity!

(Via.)

…a factory worker in Cleveland, who works the third shift so she can take her son to school and then to practices for the four sports he plays. Pausing recently at a Walmart, she said, “Honestly, I don’t know what to do. I really don’t want to vote for McCain. You can tell he only cares about rich people. Sarah Palin wears glasses that cost $300. McCain’s wife wears Gucci clothes. Which means they don’t know anything about people like me.” Into that stew of assumptions, she adds, “I hear that Obama’s a Muslim. If he is a Muslim, that would be a problem because the terrorists already attacked us.”

From “Maxed-Out Moms” by Karen Tumulty in Time Magazine, Sept 29 2008

“Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui même!”

–Vincent de Gournay

We starry-eyed liberals are told, again and again, that laissez-faire capitalism is really the ideal for all the people of the world. Republicans and libertarians alike are quick to complain that any regulation, restriction, or tax on business will inevitably throw sand in the gears of the great capitalist machine, that runs best when it is allowed to run on forever, with nobody stopping to make sure the parts aren’t grinding together, and especially no checking that the machine is grinding some of its parts to bits.

True laissez-faire capitalism, of course, has never really been tried. Not because the evil workers rebel (though in extreme cases, that has been known to happen), but because at some point, the machine, like all machines, does inevitably break down. And the moment it does, those people who have been getting the most benefit from that machine immediately spring to their feet, and scream for someone, anyone, to fix it, damn the cost. And so the government — for who else is large enough to do it? — rises from its torpor long enough to lubricate the upper portions of the machine with vast sums of money, which, we are assured, will slowly make its way to the smoldering wreckage at the bottom of the machine…eventually.

The sheer chutzpah of the request should drive those of us deeper in the bowels of the machine to fury. The government could not be roused to lubricate the bottom of the machine, of course — not even as parts of it broke down from lack of maintenance. But the upper tier squeals, and suddenly three-quarters of a trillion dollars is loosed, with no accountability, no requital, not even an apology to the rest of us.

If that ever was a doubt that the rich just don’t believe themselves answerable to the same rules as the rest of us, let this put it forever to rest:

Frank, who has been in phone discussions with Paulson, said the secretary appeared receptive to adding some foreclosure-relief language. The second Democratic proposal — to impose compensation limits on Wall Street executives — is meeting more resistance.

“Hank says it’s a poison pill,” Frank said. “I say I don’t think it’s very patriotic for someone to not give up his golden parachute when we’re trying to save the markets.”

Yes, that’s right: asking that those who got our nation into this $700,000,000,000.00 (and counting) hole can’t be bothered to give up some of their millions — millions that, in case you didn’t notice, ultimately were swindled from you and me, the average taxpayer.

If a con artist swindles you out of $2,300, you well may go to the police. Certainly, you’d be angry at them and demand repayment. And rightly so. These people swindled $2,300 out of every woman, man, and child in America. And they think it’s a “poison pill” to ask them to agree to some limits on what they can swindle in the future?

When a family goes on unemployment or welfate, the right excoriates them, calls them bums, tells them to “get a job,” to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, complains bitterly about the poor “stealing our money.” But in the end, the poor just want some help keeping a roof over their heads until they can get a better job, or get through school. A few thousand dollars and they’re set; heck, if they get some training and child care, they might just end up making money for the government in the long run.

A multimillionaire hedge fund manager of middling talent? He or she took those millions straight out of the government coffers. And now, when the Democrats suggest we shouldn’t let that happen again, we’re told that somehow, we’re at fault. Somehow, we’re expecting too much. The poor aren’t entitled to your money — the rich most certainly are.

Enough is enough. My father is fond of saying that he’d rather give to the poor than the rich, because the poor are only going to ask for so much — the rich will just keep on taking long after they need it. I’m with him. It seems to me that if the plutocrats want their banking system saved, they’re going to have to give up something near and dear to their hearts to get it. If they don’t want to part with their money, I don’t see why I should part with mine. And if it brings the financial system down in a smoldering hunk, then maybe we’ll get to see the brilliant innovation of the market that I’m always being told government stifles. We really shouldn’t interfere with the market, should we?

For the first time since 1907-1908, the Cubs are in the postseason two years in a row, and it looks like they could end up as the best team in the National League. Can they get to their first series in 63 years? Can they get to their first title in a century? Who cares? If you’re a Cubs fan, you know that winning seasons come along rarely enough. Just enjoy the ride as long as it lasts. Hoist the W flag and sing along!

I think Paul Krugman has this dead to rights:

I hate to say this, but looking at the plan as leaked, I have to say no deal. Not unless Treasury explains, very clearly, why this is supposed to work, other than through having taxpayers pay premium prices for lousy assets.

As I posted earlier today, it seems all too likely that a “fair price” for mortgage-related assets will still leave much of the financial sector in trouble. And there’s nothing at all in the draft that says what happens next; although I do notice that there’s nothing in the plan requiring Treasury to pay a fair market price. So is the plan to pay premium prices to the most troubled institutions? Or is the hope that restoring liquidity will magically make the problem go away?

Magic. It’s been the Bush administration’s plan on most things, why would this be any different?

But the real reason to oppose this deal is in Krugman’s penultimate paragraph:

And there’s no quid pro quo here — nothing that gives taxpayers a stake in the upside, nothing that ensures that the money is used to stabilize the system rather than reward the undeserving.

Exactly. The plan as it stands basicall involves the government giving more than half a trillion dollars to banks, no questions asked, nothing in return for your average Joe and Jane except for the possible prevention of the collapse of banks — and that’s not guaranteed.

This looks like a plan guaranteed to help out a lot of rich folks…but not much else. We can do better than that. I don’t know if the Bush administration can do better than that, though.

John McCain wants to give you a little straight talk, my friends. You see, those Democrats keep wanting to socialize medicine, which is bad, because “socialize” sounds like “socialism” which is sorta like “communisim” which is almost as bad as Islamofascism. And so we can’t do that, my friends. No, what we need to do is rely on the free market, which works super-well. And if we do that, we can have the kind of success that we’ve had in the banking industry.

No, really:

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.

Yeah, just like banking — the only industry in America that’s arguably in worse shape than health care. Awesome-tastic, Maverick!

Needless to say, I support McCain here. Because if we run health care like banking, then in a decade or so, the industry will completely melt down, forcing the federal government to nationalize it, leading to national health care at last. It’s so crazy it just might work! And in the meantime, it would be awesome, because we’d be free of bureaucrats and high fees in the health care industry — just like we are right now.

(Via.)

Okay, I’ll bite: why did Wasilla Councilwoman Sarah Palin have a copy of the John Birch Society’s newsletter back in 1995?

And why was she cheerfully marking it up in her official photo?

And don’t tell me it’s just a random confluence of events. If the GOP had a picture of Barack Obama within 500 feet of a copy of The Final Call, Larry Johnson would be screaming from the rooftops. So why is Palin so happy to not only not hide the crazy right-wing claptrap, but actually highlight it in her picture?

The JBS is, let us not forget, too conservative for the conservative movement, with a long history of racist and antidemocratic action, all undertaken in the name of liberty. They believe that there’s a shadow government working to undermine the U.S. in favor of a one-world state, headed out of the UN. That the United Nations does not presently have full control of their own building doesn’t faze them; the NAFTA superhighway is going to destroy us all!

Needless to say, that Palin didn’t react to Bircher propaganda with revulsion puts her to the right not just of all Democrats and independents, but the vast majority of Republicans. She’s entirely the wrong person to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, or indeed, within the same universe as the president. Heckuva job, Maverick.

So John McCain yesterday appeared not to realize that Spain was 1) A NATO ally, 2) Not in Latin America, and 3) Led by Prime Minister Zapatero. ¡Muy mavericky! So naturally, given that Spain is one of America’s closest allies (yes, they left Iraq, but that just proves they have sense) and given that McCain himself said in April that he’d welcome Prime Minister Zapatero to the White House, and given that the McCain campaign could probably just blame this on McCain not understanding the interviewer’s accent (despite the fact that she clarified that she was talking about Spain multiple times, and that McCain is from Arizona, which at last report had a few native Spanish-speakers) because hey, that’s like a foreign language and stuff…well, at any rate, surely the McCain campaign would just admit their candidate misspoke, rather than causing an international incident.

Right?

Asked to explain McCain’s apparent shift in tone and position since April, [McCain flak Randy] Scheunemann gave almost no ground.

“In this week’s interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally,” he said in an e-mail. “If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America’s adversaries. It’s called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world’s worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office.”

Oh, snap! That would be awesome, except for that little part where you referred to Prime Minister Zapatero as President Zapatero.  Or the part where you insinuated that McCain would actually formally snub a NATO ally because, I don’t know, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is really Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in disguise. Or maybe because Zapatero set up those special courts to deal with violence against women. Or because McCain just doesn’t like the cut of his jib.

This, of course, takes us from “misspoke” to “full-blown international incident.” The McCain campaign has evidently decided that they’d rather insult an ally than admit that their supra-genius foreign policy wonk misspoke. That’s, to put it mildly, abhorrent. If this is how John McCain deals with his friends — and Spain is a friend, and a good one — then I can’t wait to see the wondrous foreign policy McCain would create. It sure is good to know he’s ready to insult our friends even before day one. I’d hate to see what a neophyte like Obama would do if he tried to insult our friends.

If only a great team of hackers worked with Obama.

I think the perfection of this may be lost on people who aren’t familiar with The Dark Knight (the graphic novel, not the movie), but trust me, it’s brill.

Okay, look, not everybody is going to know who the King of Spain¹ is, but if you’re a U.S. Presidential candidate who prides himself on your nigh-infinite knowledge of the world and your ability to lead from day one, and you’re doing an interview with Spanish media, you might want to know that first, Juan Carlos I is the King of Spain, but only has ceremonial powers, and second, that the actual governmental leader in Spain is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, of the PSOE.

If you’re John McCain, you get an “incomplete” on the first, and an epic fail on the second:

So McCain is the candidate with the foreign policy experience ready to lead on day one. But he doesn’t know who the leader of Spain is. He gets confused in an interview, apparently thinking Zapatero is someone from Latin America who is an enemy of the United States and manages to create a minor international incident.

Spain, of course, is:

1. Not in Latin America
2. A NATO Ally
3. Not in Latin America
4. A NATO Ally

I mean, for God’s sake, I understand that Joe Bagadonutz might not be able to name the Prime Minister of Spain. If pressed before tonight, I wouldn’t have been able to name the Prime Minister of Spain, and I live for random trivial knowledge like that.²

But I’m not running for President on a platform of being able to bring Mavericky Change with Experience. I’m not making my superior awareness of foreign policy the centerpiece of my attacks on my opponent. If I were, I’d make sure that I actually knew my stuff.

But knowing your stuff is evidently too much to ask of a maverick like John McCain. And so McCain tonight has managed to insult a critical ally. Badly. He had no clue what he was talking about. That’s not change we can believe in, my friends. Indeed, it’s all too much of the same.

1. I guess I’m always hoping that you’ll end this reign, but it’s my destiny to be the King of Spain. (back)
2. To my legion of Spanish readers, please understand that I hold you in the highest regard, and that I could at least have stated correctly that the leftists were in charge. Heck, I even know an officer in the Spanish Army. For real! What up, Ignacio? (back)