bailout homework

Adam Davidson, who reports on matters financial for NPR’s Planet Money and PRI’s This American Life tends to describe the credit hysteria of recent months in more dire terms than I would use (again, it’s not that I don’t think there are big problems with our economy, it’s just that I just don’t think that the way the problem has been framed promotes solutions that benefit the majority). However, oddly enough (or maybe this isn’t odd at all), Davidson also sees reason for some hope based on language he believes made its way into the final bailout, er, um, excuse me, rescue bill that passed the House and was signed into law by President Bush on Friday.

Continued on capitoilette. . . .

Mrs. McCain’s sister act

Leo Tolstoy famously wrote that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I have sometimes wondered whether Tolstoy had that quite right, and so, by way of explanation, I submit to you (and to Leo) Mr. and Mrs. McCain.

Last Tuesday, NPR did a story about Cindy McCain, second and current wife of presidential wannabe John McCain, and referred to her as the only child of wealthy beer baron Jim Hensley. It’s not surprising that they reported such:

McCain herself routinely uses the phrase "only child," as she did on CNN last month. "I grew up with my dad," she said then. "I'm an only child. My father was a cowboy, and he really loved me very much, but I think he wanted a son occasionally."

There’s a problem with that touching little anecdote, however—Cindy McCain has an older sister, and Cindy McCain knows it.

Documents show Kathleen Anne Hensley was born to Jim and Mary Jeanne Hensley on Feb. 23, 1943. They had been married for six years when Kathleen was born.

Jim Hensley was a bombardier on a B-17, flying over Europe during World War II.

He was injured and sent to a facility in West Virginia to recuperate. During that time, while still married to Mary Jeanne, Hensley met another woman — Marguerite Smith. Jim divorced Mary Jeanne and married Marguerite in 1945.

Cindy Lou Hensley was born nine years later, in 1954.

She may have grown up as an only child, but so did her half sister, Kathleen, who was raised by a single parent.

[Kathleen Hensley, now Kathleen] Portalski says she did see her father and her half sister from time to time.

"I saw him a few times a year," she says. "I saw him at Christmas and birthdays, and he provided money for school clothes, and he called occasionally."

Big Jim helped put Kathleen’s kids through college, and did give about $10,000 in gifts to their family, but when Jim Hensley died in 2000, he left all of his vast fortune to Cindy. Kathleen got $10,000; her children—Jim’s grandchildren—got nothing.

It is a slight that Cindy Hensley McCain has never attempted to redress.

While it is true that Cindy McCain is not the one running for president, I think there is still something here to explore.

My takeaway on this is that Cindy McCain is icky. I know that sounds a tad juvenile and reductive, but I mean it to be visceral, because that's how I think this story is relevant to the presidential election.

Had her husband chosen a less public line of work, Cindy's family schism would be her affair, but thinking about it in the context of the life and career of Arizona’s oh-so-senior senator, this revelation just adds a (OK, another) sleazy taint to the whole McCain clan. Yes, Pa Hensley made this mess, but Cindy could have gone a long way toward cleaning it up by first correcting the reports that billed her as an only child, and second by sharing some small part of her substantial fortune with the family her father chose to screw.

All families have past sins—it is what a person does to address those sins that matters.

According to campaign surrogates and a fawning press, we are to believe that one of John McCain's great strengths is his judgment. He himself harped on judgment Monday in a speech before the VFW. His camp loves to talk up the idea that you can judge how maverick-alicious he is by the company he keeps. Well, what does it say about McCain and his judgment that he chooses a life partner that is so, I'll say it again, icky?

Obviously, when attacking McCain, this wouldn't be the head of the spear—there are plenty unsavory alliances to fill an anti-McCain quiver—but I am all for letting McCain be judged by the company he keeps. The icky company.

And, I'll just add a nagging question that says so much, I think, simply as a nagging, unanswered, question: Why was it important to the McCain campaign to perpetuate the idea of Cindy as an only child?

Is it perhaps because the Hensley’s unhappiness is so similar to the unhappiness John McCain caused his first family?

What would Tolstoy think?


(cross-posted on capitoilette, Daily Kos, and The Seminal)

give today—so that everyone gets heard tomorrow

I can’t go into the weekend without taking a moment to contrast the candidate interviews aired on Thursday’s All Things Considered with the interview of John Edwards that aired on Wednesday (which I wrote about yesterday).

First up on Thursday was Barack Obama, who got to start his interview by answering a series of questions on the economy. After that, he was asked to detail his “vision” for the presidency, and that was followed-up with a chance to restate his relatively straight and well received answer to the stupid (and substance-free) “name your biggest weakness” question from Tuesday’s Nevada debate.

The second hour included the John McCain chapter of this series, which sounded more like an audio mash note than an interview. Michele Norris referred to the Asshole from Arizona as “very honest, very straight” and called his “straight talk” “courageous.” Norris also asked about how McCain could withstand all those “scurrilous rumors” (without saying what any of those rumors might be), why “people think they can do this” to McCain—and only McCain—and then ventured that after you “got through something like that. . . I imagine you emerge stronger.”

Puh-lease. Get a room.

It is hard for me to imagine that an NPR editor, confronted with the Edwards, Obama, and McCain interviews played side by side could even begin to call their coverage fair or equitable.

But that was yesterday—this is today. Today everyone who is confused, upset, or disgusted by the treatment John Edwards has received from the establishment media has a chance to start toward setting things right. Whether you are a dyed in the wool Edwards supporter or someone who is in favor of letting the voters rather than the media moguls and moneyed interests decide the election for you—or both—today is your chance to make some noise, for today we go for the gold. Seven million dollars worth of it.



And tomorrow, Saturday:

Those of you in Nevada, please get out and caucus!

Those of you in the New York area, please come out and rally!

Rally for the Middle Class
Saturday, January 19th, 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
Union Square, NYC (northwest corner of the park, B'way & 17th St.)

Wear your Edwards buttons, hats, stickers, etc.
Bring signs & banners (homemade ones are great!).
Also, bring your mobile phone & charger!

After the rally, there will be an opportunity to make calls to the voters of South Carolina and tell them why you believe John Edwards is a great choice for president.

Every voice counts. Every vote counts. Make this and every day count—from now till November!


(cross-posted on capitoilette, The Seminal, and Daily Kos.)

Michele Norris wastes some of John Edwards’s time. . . and ours

As has now been acknowledged by practically everyone, John Edwards don’t get no respect. . . at least not when it comes to the establishment media. Not only is equal time for JRE pretty much an alien idea for media outlets, when Edwards does get airtime or column inches, reporters practically bend over backwards to avoid talking about his platform or proposals. To say that these reporters are too focused on covering the horserace is really an insult to sports reporting.

I have written in the past about the pettiness and whining that the New York Times tries to pawn off as equitable coverage; today, let’s examine what NPR calls campaign coverage.

it’s too easy being Greene

It was bad enough that NPR’s All Things Considered turned to the likes of Francis Fukuyama and Max Boot to assess whether President Bush’s Iraq-Vietnam analogy made any sense, but at least the network had the good sense to scrap that piece by morning.

No such luck with an analogy made by NPR reporter David Greene. It has to do with a “vexing tightrope,” Bush’s Iraq troop “surge,” and Democratic presidential hopefuls, and it ran on both ATC and Morning Edition (in slightly different pieces). . . and it’s a doozy!