Sunday, September 21, 2008

Sunday Potpourri

I really liked Patrick McIlheran's post on the candidate's reaction to the financial frenzy of last week. As I have said before, the reaction of the Obama campaign is unadorned demagoguery. After an intial commitment to reason ("the fundamentals of the economy are sound"), McCain matched Obama's scapegoating, railing against corruption, Chris Cox and short sales. By the end of the week and the market's recovery (it essentially ended on Friday where it started on Monday), both candidates had sobered. Obama, essentially, seems to have withdrawn from the debate while McCain gave a more measured speech in Green Bay in which he focused on the importance of regulation seeking transparency rather than control.

Some of the readers of this blog have chastized me for my inability to see that Obama is a new kind of politician who will not seek to divide and who will abandon something called the "politics of Karl Rove." Can those claims survive Obama's race-baiting and fraudulent Spanish language ad that 1)distorts some old comments of Rush Limbaugh and 2) implies that Limbaugh and McCain are allies on immigration when, in fact, the opposite is true? I'm just asking.

Joe Biden says that it is patriotic to pay higher taxes - to "get in the game and be part of the deal." Let's take the top 1% of taxpayers who consistently pay a percentage of income tax that is about twice as high as their share of total income. That's fairly progressive. How much more does patriotism require?

Does the Brewers invertebrate collapse create real business problems for next year. The team had a wonderful year and set attendance records only to finish in a way that has been so bad - so consistently impotent - that it overshadows everything that went before it. When you add the loss of likely loss of Sabathia and Sheets, how much fan enthusiasm can we expect for next year? I fear that the Brewers will fall off the cliff unless they make some substantial offseason investments. I wouldn't bother with Sheets who will almost certainly not be worth whatever he is paid and Sabathia may be too rich for anyone outside Los Angeles, New York or the north side of Chicago (horrors!). But Anastacio has to do something to purge the smell left by the team's self immolation. I bet he will.

1 comment:

Terrence Berres said...

"Some of the readers of this blog have chastized me for my inability to see that Obama is a new kind of politician who will not seek to divide..."

Perhaps they're not on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee email list, which indicates he will be helpless with less than a 60-40 majority.