He also proposed sitting the Sunni and Shiites down and telling them to "cut the bullshit."

This would be the proverbial jawbone of an ass?

Better the "jawboning" of a free society than the regimentation of a socialist state.

Has Mr. McCain looked at the fiscal condition of the states (and subsequently the state universities) lately?

Better the "jawboning" of a free society than the regimentation of a socialist state.
For myself, I can't wait till they build the socialist re-education camps and I get a chance to denounce you, Al.

Behold the quintesential right-wing approach: I don't care that the solution doesn't work! It's ideologically pure!

This is the problem with Republicans governing: most people like their problems, you know, solved.

The doctrinaire freemarketeer says in response Capitalism is Good! and proposes a solution based on blind faith and matchsticks--and when it doesn't work, screams at and vilifies the people for wanting the problem solved.

The nation has had a bellyfull of this incompetent idiocy.

Mr. Benen:

I think this plays right into your prior post about gambling. Stating before your begin a poker game that you intend to rely heavily on bluffing is absolutely idiotic. Your adversaries will naturally call your bluff. Same goes for Bush. Personally, since his family and Cheney's family are so intricately connected with the oil industry I never believed Bush would actually "Jawbone" anyone regardless of how ineffective jawboning them would be.

I believe you or some other blogger (TPM?) observed that Obama prefers poker while McCain prefers craps. The former is a game for thinking people whereas the latter is a game for impulsive people that rely on luck.

Telling colleges you are going to browbeat them into keeping costs down is 100% guaranteed to fail. Do you think the school boards are going to endanger operating in the black because the President guilt tripped them? What a crock.

Oh and another thing about higher education. McCain may be partly responsible for making higher education cost more.

This actually is not very complicated. McCain has always helped out his banker friends. Early in his career it was to pressure regulators, for which he was admonished.

Later in his career, he and his Republican cohorts realized that they would get into trouble by "working the refs." Solution, get rid of the refs entirely. You don't have to worry about pressuring regulators if you get rid of the regulations. So the Republican Congress phased out the rules that protected the taxpayers and depositers and mortgagors and were surprised to find that unrestricted greed does not lead to anything good. There is a reason that states have consumer fraud laws, because business people lie about their products. They say there is more vitamin C than there is. They say it works when it doesn't.

How does this tie into higher education? Many, if not most elite colleges have massive endowment funds. My alma mater, Stanford, was among the few that led the way. They said their endowments were so large that they could afford to allow applicants that were admitted to Stanford (Harvard did this, so did Brown) that made under 100k to go for free. Free! That's good because my son is smart and both my wife and I work and we cannot afford to send him to Stanford, or any other private university for that matter.

Where was a lot of this money invested? In mortgage backed securities. Don't be surprised if many of these colleges roll back on their proposed generosity because their endowment funds are taking a bath.

Regardless of massive endowment funds, all universities have large cash reserves that they invest. Those investments are tanking because their reserves just got smaller and their investment income just decreased. Their costs will have to go up.

Well done Republicans, and McCain. Gas is more expensive, energy is more expensive, food is more expensive, we have less money to borrow, less still in our investment portfolios, and we cannot afford to send our kids to college. All hail the free market.

You are overly dismissive of McCain's approach. Rather than spend money we don't have to fund tuition, he proposes removing existing tax credits unless tuition growth slows. If you accept the premise that Universities are fat and inefficient and need motivation to become more efficient this is actually a good idea. Given that tuition increases far outstrip inflation, I'm with McCain here -- cut the fat at Universities: trim ridiculous faculty, increase faculty teaching loads and pass the savings on to the students.

Better the "jawboning" of a free society than the regimentation of a socialist state.

This (among a zillion other things) makes me wonder: is there anyone, anywhere who calls Obama a socialist who has actually read Das Kapital?

And by that I mean, has actually read it, in some not-lying-their-ass-off way?

Don't forget, Bush later refined his jawboning: "If it's possible, your majesty, consider what high prices are doing to one of your largest customers..."

The word "jawboning" always makes me think of the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey. And it's easy to put either Bush or McCain into that picture, squatting by the waterhole, telling his fellows to "cut the crap."

Rock said:
"I'm with McCain here -- cut the fat at Universities: trim ridiculous faculty, increase faculty teaching loads and pass the savings on to the students."

Likewise you can lower the price of hot dogs by just adding more sawdust.

Ah, but when McCain says 'jawbone,' he's really making a biblical reference- in Judges 15, Samson kills 1000 Philistines using the jawbone of an ass as a weapon.

So, clearly, McCain is trying to say that he'll threaten to kill 1000 college administrators unless they lower the cost of college.

Or something.

Hey, it's better than most of his ideas, isn't it?

-Z

Hey, it's better than most of his ideas, isn't it?

It would certainly be a lot clearer than most of his ideas. Right now, all we get is that he'll bring down gas prices by "taking bold action to bring down gas prices", and he'll get bin Laden by "knowing how to get bin Laden", and on and on and on. Um, yeah, ok.

Hey! Al's back! And off his meds again!

John McCain's message on higher education is the same as his message on everything else - "I've got my education. For the rest of you chumps, suck out.
"

I seriously wondered why Bush didn't try jawboning the banks when the story was that their fear of lending was driving the economic crisis. I guess proposing a huge bailout of his Wall Street base seemed easier.

I seriously wondered why Bush didn't try jawboning the banks when the story was that their fear of lending was driving the economic crisis. I guess proposing a huge bailout of his Wall Street base seemed easier.

That, or the idea that bullying conservative politicians can get their way simply by pushing people around is, you know, bullshit.

If only we could "jawbone" these damned McCainiac vermin---but there just aren't enough jawbones of asses around to do the job. I could dig up every no-longer-really-needed, dead-and-buried ass's jawbone on the entire planet, and still not have enough to do the job.

This is a tip from McCain that he's going to nominate the underpants gnomes as his secretary of education.

Speaking as someone who teaches at a university, I say sure, let McCain "jawbone" universities about keeping tuition low. But he'd better expect the response that "sure, we can do that if you give us a lot of Federal money." Oops, redistribution!

Rock on, how will you determine just what constitutes "ridiculous" faculty? Those who teach subjects that seem unimportant to you because you've never heard of them, and/or don't understand them? Like, for example, those who research fruit-fly DNA? How useless is THAT? Um, actually, pretty crucial to modern medicine. But never mind! There must be some clown out there researching bear DNA, just because the Department of the Interior wants to know the health of wild animal populations in key areas. There must be lots of these freeloaders that you could fire and replace with grad student TA's working for a subminimum wage. Only the best for our kids, right?

The bottom line about "jawboning" is that it is just empty talk. Who the hell needs empty talk at this point? People need to see real policy changes, new programs - REAL programs, not free market philosophies or "blah, blah, blah" crap while students start out their careers many tens of thousands of dollars in the hole with only "service economy" burger-flipping jobs available.

The GOP's larder is bare. All they have left is not even jawboning itself but PROMISES of jawboning, which is even one step FURTHER removed from substantive action!

Promises about discussing it - WOW! Mr. McCain, where do we sign up?

The same people who come up with "jawboning" will tell you that Obama "only has some speech he gave in 2002"...

What's next, a blue ribbon commission?

>Remind me, how does it work out when conservative Republicans promise changes based on jawboning?

Zorro beat me to the punchline.
Jawboning has NOT been effective since Biblical times.

And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. Judges 15:16

georg bush has been "jawboning" the saudis for years. and by that I mean blowing them