A Pilgrim’s Digression

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but Washington area metro (WMATA) is cashing in on the Barack Obama inauguration.  While waiting for the train this morning, I heard an announcement over the PA system encouraging riders to buy their “Obama Commemorative Edition” fare cards and SmartTrip cards.

What?  Are you serious?

Oh yes.  You can read about it here at the Metro website.

Why do I say they are cashing in?  Because a SmartTrip card with no value on it only costs five dollars.  When you buy it, you are charged $30.00, $25.00 of which goes onto the card as value for fare.

The Obama Commemorative Edition SmartTrip costs $10.00 and comes with no value on it at all.

Or if you’d rather, you can buy a paper Commemorative one-day pass for $10.00 (regular cost for a one day pass, $7.80).

Considering Tuesday, January 20th is probably going to be the single worst traffic day in the history of Metro, during which Metro is going to charge rush hour rates all day long, charging more for the paper one-day pass seems particularly outrageous.  I can understand that the SmartTrip card is plastic, has to be specially ordered, etc.  But a paper ticket?

From all accounts I’ve read, on Inauguration Day, people are going to be waiting on train platforms for long periods of time (up to an hour), just to crowd onto a train where they will likely be packed like sardines in a can.

I suppose you can say, “Well, if there are suckers out there willing to pay a premium for a lousy farecard with Obama’s face on it, let them pay it.”  I just hate to see people taken advantage of because of a desire to participate in a once in a lifetime historical event.

This is just one more reason to stay home, as far as I’m concerned.

Update: a co-worker of mine who rides MARC into Washington from Maryland said that MARC is also raising its rates for one day only.  Even customers who bought their usual monthly ticket for January will have to buy a special ticket just to ride the train on January 20th.

Excuse me, but aren’t these trains running on what we call public transportation systems.  Public.  As in (at least partially) tax-payer funded.

This from the Washington Post, Think You’re Booked? Think Again.

With skyrocketing demand for inauguration week housing, Washington area hotels are enjoying the kind of bargaining power usually reserved for hotels in cities that play host to Super Bowls, Final Four college basketball tournaments and soccer’s international World Cup, industry experts said.

Some hotels have doubled or tripled usual prices, required customers to stay at least four nights and collected full payment up front, no refunds allowed.

I’ve been following Inauguration-related stories in the news quite closely, because I had hoped to take my family for the swearing-in. Increasingly, every sign I’m seeing points to the notion that we just need to stay away from the city January 20.

In particular, I’ve been really irked by how the hotels are unfairly taking advantage of the situation.  As the story above relates, some people who reserved rooms months ago are now receiving notices from hotels that they are “renegotiating” the price agreed to in advance.  That is, the hotels want more money for rooms they already booked.

I like that word “renegotiating,” though, in this context.  It implies that you actually have some choice, or bargaining power.  You don’t.

Then you have jerks like this Durso, president of the Hotel Association of Washington, who by implication defends the practice: “What you have is a lot of venues that don’t normally face this kind of demand.  They’re dealing with it for the first time. They were dumb enough to give out rooms over the inauguration dates months ago at a low price. Oops — now they have to fix it.

Or how about the manager of one hotel, who defended the practice of changing the terms of the agreement by saying that “because the hotel had a waiting list of 100 people, it was necessary to weed out those who were not seriously interested in staying.”

No, there’s no benign policy of sifting the wheat from the chaff here–the committed inauguration-goers from the wishy-washy.  What hotels are doing is kicking out early reservations–people who aren’t paying enough–so that people booking late can be taken to the cleaners.  This just makes me sick.

I requested tickets to the swearing-in from both my Senator and Congressman, but now I’m rather glad that I have an almost non-existent chance of getting tickets.  I don’t even want to go.  We don’t even have to reserve a room, since we live close enough to drive to a Metro (or we could stay at my landlady’s, for that matter).  But I don’t want to go.

Historic event it may be; I’ll watch on television, thank you.  It makes you wonder how many other people will reach the same decision–and whether after all, the inauguration is going to be such a huge event.  There must be many people like me who want to go, but who look at the craziness surrounding the event and just say, “Screw it, I’m staying home.”

Oh, and I should add in closing that it isn’t just hotel owners and managers taking advantage of the situation.  Private individuals are renting rooms in their homes for over a thousand dollars for a one-night stay.  My landlady has been joking that she is going to rent my room out for $1500.00 a night during that week.

Only I’m not so sure she’s joking.

The dissection, or perhaps vivsection, of the McCain campaign and how it died is going to be brutal.  Newsweek has an article coming out tomorrow providing a behind the scenes look at both campaigns, but the interesting bits are about McCain and Palin.  Republicans are going to have plenty to feed on in the section detailing all the negative ads that McCain nixed.

As for McCain’s advisers, specifically Schmidt and Salter, they should never again be allowed within 10 feet of a Republican candidate’s campaign.  Schmidt, especially, has to be wondering what he’s going to be doing, now.  The guy is only about 36, and this was his first time heading a Presidential campaign, and he blew it.  Schmidt took a respected, moderate politician with a great personal story and an impeccable reputation for honesty, and he blew it.

I don’t see how Schmidt works in this town again, after that.  Maybe some obscure congressman will hire him and give him the chance to rebuild his career.  No serious contender for the Presidency will have him on board.

My own “morning-after” take on the election is that it was a nail-biter, but in the end it turned out much as the polls predicted.  Indiana was probably the biggest surprise, in terms of an upset victory for Obama.  It is also the largest failure of the McCain campaign.  There is no state in the union more conservative than Indiana.  For McCain to lose it is an even larger blot on his campaign than losing Virginia.

I listened to the election on XM from about six until nine, as I drove back to Washington last night.  I flipped back and forth between CNN and Fox, but finally settled on Fox.  CNN had the worst election night coverage of any network in history, in my opinion.  Not only were they overly cautious about calling states for one candidate or other, but they substituted general election analysis and prognostication with a microscopic level of scrutiny of election results in individual counties.  In states such as Virginia, this made it seem like McCain was doing better than he actually was.

After initially calling Vermont and Kentucky at seven, I don’t think CNN called another state until nine o’clock.  But I wouldn’t know–every time I flipped back over from Fox, the commentator was saying, “Now let’s look at the vote down here in rural Campbell County, Virginia.”

Meanwhile, I would flip back over to Fox and Brit Hume would be calling another state for Obama.  Fox called Pennsylvania around eight o’clock, a half hour after the polls closed, and Ohio at nine.  Ohio was the clincher.  Hume was talking to Karl Rove at the time, and Rove had just stressed the importance of Ohio to any hope of a McCain victory.  Hume broke in to say that Fox was calling Ohio for Obama, and even over the radio, you could hear Rove exhale sadly.  Honestly, though, he probably already knew it was over when McCain didn’t win Pennsylvania.

Up until Pennsylvania, I was genuinely afraid McCain was going to win.

Now it’s all over, and I have to find something else to write about, I suppose.  Oh, and I have to get tickets to the inauguration.  I told Brendan if Obama won, I’d try to get us good seats to see him sworn in.  Somehow I think tickets may be next to impossible to come by, though.

A little before 8:00 AM Eastern, I cast my vote for Barack Obama, Mark Warner, and Sam Rasoul–a straight democratic party ticket. Lynn went about a half hour before me, on her way to school.

It’s raining here in Virginia, but people’s enthusiasm doesn’t seem to have been dampened. The court house where I voted was crowded, though no one had to stand outside in the rain…except one man. As I approached the courthouse, a smiling man who looked about sixty-five handed me a “sample ballot.” I looked at it and did not have to read the “by” line at the bottom to know it was printed by the local Republican committee. All the Democrat names on the “ballot” were grayed out; only Republican names were checked and in bold print.

As it turned out, we don’t use a ballot in Virginia anyway. We have the electronic touch-screen voting machines. I cast my votes in probably thirty seconds and was done.

As I left the courthouse, the man passing out the sample ballot smiled and asked, “Did you have fun?” I said, “Oh yes.”

Still, I find it hard to believe that the Democrats are going to sweep Virginia. Yes, we’ve been trending Democrat on the local level for the past couple election cycles, but nationally we’re still a red state…or at least we were. I can’t forget that John Kerry was thought to have a strong chance of winning Virginia in 2004 and George Bush won the state by nine points.

I am prepared for disappointment tonight.

Pennsylvania also worries me. Lynn’s mother called last night, seemingly to pick a fight. She called just to say she’s not voting because she heard, probably on the radio, that Obama is from “Nigeria” and does not have an American birth certificate.

Lynn lost it. I’ve never heard such an argument between a mother and daughter. At first I thought her mother was just playing a prank, but it became clear she was serious. She really believes the myths, and has apparently made up at least one of her own (Nigeria?). To some extent, the argument was one of those that escalates out of control and the people involved end up saying things they don’t mean. Later, Lynn’s mother called back and apologized, blamed her medication, and said she was going to swallow her doubts and vote for Obama on Lynn’s recommendation.

I asked Lynn if she thought her mother was lying. She said, “I don’t know, but if she is lying that’s what she should have done to begin with, instead of picking a fight.”

Murtha was right about western Pennsylvania, by the way. That’s where Lynn’s family is from. Lynn can’t think of a single family member on her mother’s side who would vote for Obama. I told her, “I can’t think of a single family member on your mother’s side who would vote, period.” That’s some consolation, anyway. The ignorant rarely turn out to the polls. Lynn said at least one of her uncles can’t even register because it would probably trigger the state to come after him for child support.

I think Lynn convinced her mother to vote for Obama. I don’t think she was lying. Lynn told her that she was listening to radio hosts who have only entertainment and a partisan agenda in mind, and no regard for the truth. She ought to listen to her two educated daughters and their husbands. It might seem like a anti-rational argument to make for voting for a candidate, but people vote for worse reasons than because a friend or family member told them to do so. Is it any better to vote for McCain because the conservative media tells you to?

Still, Pennsylvania worries me. Virginia worries me. I have neighbors on two sides of me, one of whom is voting McCain judging by his yard sign, and the other who is probably voting for McCain judging by the broken down cars in his yard, the hunting dogs chained to the broken down cars, and the drunken hotrod-building parties in his garage.

On the other hand, there is a mixed-race family living beside us, too, and a black family across the street, both of whom are voting Obama.

But there is a self-employed fence builder next to the black family who has been fighting with his teenage daughter because she wants to date a black boy. Will he vote Obama?

I guess the better question is, will he vote? I guess we’ll know how it turns out around eight Eastern tonight. Polls in Virginia close at seven, at eight in Pennsylvania, and seven-thirty in Ohio. The decisions in those three states will probably decide the election, or at least give a good indication of how the country is trending. Until then, I’m going to try to keep calm, but it won’t be easy.

For one thing, although I haven’t mentioned it much in awhile, there is the little matter of this jinx I always place on an election. I’ve never voted for a winning candidate in a Presidential election. Maybe tonight, the jinx will be broken for good.

This guy’s video blog at Politico is probably my favorite blog of the campaign season. Below is just one example:

What I find fascinating about this story of “fake” Virginia, Palin’s remark about “real” America, and both of those coupled with Sarah Palin’s wardrobe fiasco, is how quickly Democrats have turned the tables on Republicans.  Used to be, this was a Republican line of attack: find a way to portray your opponent as un-American and elitist, and then make fun of them.

This feeling of schadenfreude is why I’ve been enjoying the wardrobe story so much.  Seeing Palin and McCain hoisted by their own petard is as pleasurable as watching a televangelist explain his consorting with male prostitutes.  Self-righteousness always gets its comeuppance.

What I find fascinating is how quickly Republicans have resorted to the sexist double standard as an excuse for Palin’s outrageous spending.  The woman spent $150,000.00 of campaign funds on her and her family’s clothing and accessories over a 55 day time span–but she had to do it, you see, because women are held to a double standard whereby if they don’t look good, they will be endlessly criticized.  She just had to do it.

“Fake” Virginia, “real” America…the only phony I see in this campaign is a woman who consented to be dressed up in clothing she can’t afford in real life, on a budget that would pay off the mortgage on an ordinary American’s home, in order to look the part of Vice-President.  Because god knows she isn’t fit for the role any other way.  She isn’t a Vice-Presidential candidate, she just plays one on TV.

I was listening to WMAL, as I always do in the morning, and of course the hosts Grandy and Andy were offering this as a defense–Grandy going so far as to call it an “investment” in her political future, and saying that $150,00.00 wasn’t nearly enough to spend on this woman.  Then there were callers, mostly men, calling in to say they didn’t think it was wrong to spend that much money on her clothing (she’s hot, after all, and we wouldn’t want to look at her in something from a middle-class mall store).

Then the other line of defense was “well, Michelle Obama wears expensive clothes, too, so why can’t the McCain campaign waste money on baby clothes for Trig Palin and $3000.00 outfits for Sarah and a leather jacket for Todd?”

The utter hypocrisy is amazing.  However, I agree there is a double standard at work here.  I want you to put the shoe on the other foot for just a moment.  Let’s reverse this story.  Suppose, for a moment, it was revealed that Michelle Obama spent $150,000.00 on clothing for her, her daughters, and her husband’s wardrobe because they’re black people, and they have to look better than average so whites take them seriously and don’t criticize the way they look.

Do you think Republicans would be ranting about that on conservative radio today?

This morning, I woke up at 3:25, a full hour before I had to get up for work.  I woke up panicked with the thought that the alarm didn’t go off and I was late.  I had to check the alarm clock, my watch, and a clock on the dresser before being assured that I still had an hour before I had to get up.

Then I got back in bed and lay there thinking about the election until the alarm went off an hour later.

Last night, driving in to Washington, I listened to Fox News on XM and uncontrollably bit my fingernails until my fingertips were sore.  I’ve always been a nail biter, but certain stimuli can make it worse.  Listening to Sean Hannity is one such stimuli.  Fox News is like a parallel universe in which John McCain is within one or two percentage points of snatching victory from the grasp of Barack Obama.  It’s all within the margin of error, Hannity and his cohorts keep repeating to themselves.

It doesn’t help that Alan Colmes is a lapdog.  He can’t defend us, give voice to our fears, or even tell Hannity to shut his yapper.

Read more…

The Powell endorsement ought to effectively dispel all doubts about Obama’s readiness, particularly on foreign policy.  Powell is the kingmaker, at least as far as Obama is concerned.  I don’t see how McCain recovers from this. It’s not even the endorsement as much as Powell’s pointed criticisms of the McCain campaign in this video; criticisms such as Powell’s statement that if Ayers is a “washed up terrorist,” then why do we keep talking about him?  Criticisms such as Powell stating that he has heard “senior members of my own party” suggest that Obama is a muslim.

These criticisms combined with the endorsement are a crushing blow to the McCain campaign and the Republican party. It’s going to be fascinating to listen to conservative talk radio tomorrow.

Obama begins this week as, in effect, the President-Elect of the United States.

This morning, I am a bit torn in deciding who won the Presidential debate last night.  On the one hand, I think Obama clearly made the better case for himself; he defended himself well and pointedly against every charge made by McCain.  McCain’s best line of the evening–potentially a killing blow to Obama–was “I am not President Bush.  If you wanted to run against President Bush, you shoulda run four years ago.”

However, Obama did not let that remark stand as a rebuke; he came back with the comment that if he sometimes mistakes McCain for President Bush, it’s because their economic policies are virtually identical.

The exchange typified the evening: thrust by McCain; deft parry by Obama.

However, the fact that McCain was on the offense leads me to feel that he probably won the evening.  Both men did what they needed to do, but since it was the first time McCain has done so with any degree of success, he wins.

Was McCain’s success a game changer?  We’ll know soon enough.  Right now, I don’t feel it is.  Even this morning on the Grandy and Andy show on WMAL, some callers were expressing frustration that McCain didn’t fight enough.  He wasn’t angry enough–one fellow even demonstrated the angry tone of voice McCain should have used when he said “I am not President Bush.”

In a way, I think this incessant need to see anger on the part of McCain speaks volumes about the typical Republican voter right now.  The man supposedly known for his temper just can’t be angry enough to please the conservative mob at his back, urging him on.

Ultimately, it won’t be McCain’s lack of passion that kills his campaign, though.  There are a whole host of factors working against him right now, starting with the economy and probably ending with his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president.  Last night, when asked if she was qualified for the position, McCain sounded ludicrous trying to justify her place on the ticket.

His defense of Palin also gave the debate one of its funniest moments, in my opinion, and not only because Palin has become a caricature.  In one of two slips of the tongue (calling Obama “Senator Government” was one), McCain referred to Palin as a “breast of f…” then, embarrassed, quickly corrected himself and said “breath of fresh air.”  I’ve sorta filled in the rest of his Freudian slip in the title of this piece.

There have been a lot of dirty jokes made about why McCain really chose Palin, and some of his comments about her have been rife with double entendre.  His absolutely ridiculous comment  that many times he had “sought Palin’s ear” on foreign policy issues brought to mind an image of the old geezer seeking to nibble his protege’s ear.

Or maybe I’m just a dirty minded man, myself.  No doubt that’s true…but if your running mate is a woman, I think you have to be careful what expressions you use, so as not to give the impression that you harbor secret fantasies about her.

Well, if anything Palin is a breast of air, full of air in fact and little else, and McCain will live or die by the choice he made.  There are still other factors working against him as well, though.  For one thing, his demeanour is so cranky, I think that factor alone turns off many people.  Maybe it should not be a factor, but we live in a telegenic age where innocent expressions on a politician’s face, or a sigh, or a glance at a watch, can potentially turn off millions of voters.

One of the drawbacks of the kind of sitdown debate we saw last night is that it allowed for tight shots of the candidate’s face, many of them reaction shots while the opponent was speaking.  McCain often had this wide-eyed look about him, a deer in the headlights look, as if he were continually surprised at what was being said.  Or perhaps he just coulnd’t believe he was on the stage with this amateur.  Or perhaps he forgot to take his valium before the debate.

He was probably quite tense and anxious, but he can’t look tense and anxious on national television.  His erratic speech patterns and occasional mistake in the beginning seemed to confirm his nervousness.  Obama, on the other hand, is quite telegenic.  He sat there calmly, even when being attacked, and did not alter his pleasant, smiling expression beyond an occasional wide grin when McCain really went off on a tangent.

Obama’s weakest moment of the night was missing the opportunity to really take it to McCain on the negative advertising and campaign of vicious innuendo.  McCain acted very indiginant about Obama’s ads criticizing McCain’s health care plan and economic policies.  Obama should have said, “Look, those ads of mine are negative ads, but they are about substantive policy issues.  Your ads attack my character directly.  Your ads are ad hominem ads, and they are despicable.  There is not a sigle ad put out by my campaign that attacks your character or suggests that you are anything but a patriot and a man of good character.”

Obama missed that opportunity, unfortunately.  McCain’s weakest moment came in that same exchange, when he almost seemed to be whining about how John Lewis hurt his feelings in his comparison of McCain to George Wallace.  Then, a few seconds later when Obama brought up the fact that at McCain’s rallies, there have been people suggesting that someone kill him (Obama), McCain went off on this complete red herring about how he won’t sit there and let Obama criticize old veterans in World War II caps and women who support McCain with signs that say “Military wives for Mccain.”

Hopefully, people saw through this transparent attempt at demogoguery–no one is criticizing veterans and military wives for McCain.  Obama’s concern was about people like the elderly crackpot who believes Obama is a muslim.

So I think McCain won?  Yes, unfortunately, rather like Palin won her debate with Biden.  She did what she had to do, and so did McCain.  Unfortunately for both of them, I doubt it will be enough.

So, how long do you think it will be before John McCain fires his advisors?  I’m thinking it will be a matter of days, considering how little time is left.  Really, it’s the only trick left in the playbook.  It might seem desperate, too, but it worked for McCain last fall when he was down and out.  His is a campign that has generated its momentum solely by surprising people, so I’d be on the lookout for just one more.

Meanwhile, McCain’s surrogates on talk radio seem to be holding the line for him, at least for now.  Limbaugh made a mild joke today about how he was going to start using the staple McCain phrase “My friends” as a way of making it grate a little less on his supporters’ nerves.  Apparently conservatives don’t like the way McCain uses “my friends” twice in the same sentence, either.

I can’t remember if I wrote about this already, but Franklin Roosevelt used the phrase “my friends” in his speeches, though perhaps he didn’t sprinkle it so liberally throughout his paragraphs as McCain.

Other than that, conservatives are holding the line, disputing the polls, attacking the media.  Same game in the last quarter as in the first.  Limbaugh did suggest today that all those angry people at McCain rallies shouting “Kill him,” as well as racial epithets, are in fact Obama plants.  Yes, the person who shouted “Kill him!” was actually working for Obama.  Maybe Obama will even bail him out when the Secret Service takes him to jail.

When I first read this article at the Huffington Post, Is Palin Trying to Incite Violence Against Obama?, my first inclination was to say this is an exaggerated fear.  One McCain supporter shouting “Kill him!” at a rally does not mean the campaign itself is trying to incite violence.

However, by insinuating that Obama has terrorist sympathies, the McCain campaign does give hateful people the excuse they need to attack him and his supporters.  I would link the HuffPo article to this one from a UK paper: Man shot three times by racist gunman.  The man in question was shot because he was wearing an Obama tee-shirt.

The linkage of Obama to Bill Ayers, “an unrepentant terrorist” as Sean Hannity puts it, has been going on for close to 12 months now.  It has reached boiling point because of the New York Times story, which unfortunately has given conservatives cover to come out from the shadows and allege openly what they have been insinuating on their talk shows.  Sunday night, Sean Hannity even hosted a 60-minutes-like exposé (without the deference to fact over opinion that 60-Minutes upholds) of Obama’s “radical ties.”  Should Fox news now be considered a Republican political action committee?

More to the point, not only is the conection between Ayers and Obama dicey, but the insistance on calling Ayers a terrorist insinuates that Obama himself is a terrorist or at least a terrorist sympathizer.

In these times, is that not like shouting fire in a crowded theater?  It’s certainly meant to induce a kind of fear response in people.

Although it’s difficult to argue that Ayers is not a terrorist without sounding like a terrorist sympathizer myself, I’d point out that Ayers has stated his goals as a radical were not to kill people.  In fact the bombings he facilitated were planned so as to avoid casualties.  In the end, the only people the “terrorists” killed were themselves.

Their activities were still treasonous, not to mention dangerous since no plot to bomb a building can ever take casualties completely out of account.

Still, it seems to me Republicans are playing with fire by indicating that one of the candidates for President is “palling around” with a terrorist.  Note Palin’s use of the present tense in that phrase, too.  The implication is that the “palling” is still going on.

I doubt anything serious will come of it–Obama is too well protected by the Secret Service.  Still, if even one Obama supporter dies at the hands of someone who takes Palin’s accusations as a call to action, should the McCain campaign bear some responsibility?  Maybe Palin herself, or better yet Sean Hannity, could face a lawsuit.  Wouldn’t that be just lovely.