News Roundup (September 19, 2008)

I decided to take a lead from several other blogs that I like and provide the occasional brief news roundup. Most days I come across lots of interesting little bits and pieces but I just don't have the time to write about or comment on all of them at length. So, I will start providing brief notes and links to some of the more interesting articles as I find them.

Let's start with this story from FoxNews:

McCain town hall style meetings are generally open to the public where anyone may wait in line on the day of the event and come in without an advanced invitation.

However, at tonight’s 3,500 person townhall in Grand Rapids, Michigan–the first time Palin is taking questions from the public– only ticketholders are allowed in.

The McCain campaign confirms that tonight’s event was advertised on the McCain/Palin Web site and local newspapers. People had to pick up their tickets at local GOP offices after RSVPing for the event.

The Kent County GOP headquarters gave out about two thousand tickets.

The rest came from GOP offices in Ottowa and Kalamazoo.

UPDATE–McCain campaign officials insist that none of the questions are being pre-screened.

While questions may not have been screened, it seems more than a bit coincidental that the first time that Gov. Palin takes questions from the public (and she's been the nominee for how long now?), that "public" is limited to Republican party faithful. If the Republicans are so worried that Gov. Palin can't handle tough questions posed to her by someone other than a Republican, what does that say about her ability to serve as Vice President or President? It would be hard to pre-screen Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez... And don't forget that it has been in open town hall style forums that Sen. McCain has usually excelled with his "straight talk". So, there must be a reason why the campaign is suddenly changing the rules about who gets in and who gets to ask questions. Then again, this isn't really a surprise given how the campaign continues to hide Gov. Palin from the press.

Walter Shapiro has an article for Salon looking at the Rumsfeldian "known knowns," "unknown unknowns," and "known unknowns" of this election. Among his observations:

But rarely has there been as drastic or as cynical an overhaul as the one starring McCain in a docudrama titled "The Remaking of a (Would-Be) President 2008." Who could have imagined that different-drummer McCain would emerge as a press-conference-avoiding, media-baiting, fact-fabricating generic Republican?

More and more observers and commentators are starting to recognize just how desperate Sen. McCain is and how bold (not to mention frequent) his lies are becoming. My question is when will the national media and, more importantly, the voting electorate begin taking note?

I also came across the following comments about Gov. Palin from Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), one of the most prominent and well-known Republican Senators:

She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said Wednesday in an interview. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."

...

The McCain campaign has cited the proximity of Alaska to Russia as evidence of her international experience.

Hagel scoffed at that notion.

"I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,'" he said. "That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."

Imagine that, someone saying what they really think instead of just reciting the party line or the approved talking points. Of course, this isn't much different than what we've heard Republican strategists say when they didn't think anyone was listening...

Shaun Mullen, a columnist for TMV has some interesting observations in his essay McCain & Palin Peak While Obama & Biden Climb: Why This Week Is The Game Changer:

McCain seems unsteady without Sarah Palin at his side and is drawing smaller crowds now that he is out on his own. Meanwhile, the post-convention bounce and Palin boomlet have ended with a thud and the Alaska governor’s negatives are intersecting with her positives in public-opinion polls.

While Palin’s selection as a running mate was brilliant for its element of surprise, it is likely to go down in political history as an extraordinarily short-sighted move that dragged McCain down, not pulled him up.

Palin has had the unintended effect of making McCain seem ever more the unsteady septuagenarian, is not drawing in disaffected Democratic women in appreciable numbers because of her starkly un-feminist views, her superficiality is apparent in her scripted, cue-card assisted appearances, and the most damning criticism of her has come not from the opposition but McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina, who like “Foreclosure Phil” Gramm has now been thrown under the campaign bus.

Meanwhile, the drip-drip-drip of negative news concerning Palin from Alaska will dog and distract the ticket from here on out, while the record reveals that her reputation as a house-cleaner as small-town mayor and governor is trumped by her penchant for appointing unqualified friends. Case in point: The high school classmate whom she named as Alaska’s agriculture secretary who cites her childhood love of cows as a qualification.

The McCain campaign’s strategy of mud slinging and serial lying — and lying about lying — has had legs, but it has become a story in and of itself and there is now a small army of commentators, including many from the right-of-center, who rue the once principled war horse’s descent into sleaze, another issue that will dog and distract the ticket.

Worse yet, developments on Wall Street have exposed McCain at his most inept. His initial response — to channel Herbert Hoover and declare that the economy is fundamentally sound — was widely-derided. His revised response was plan [sic] scary. And both are political manna for Obama.

There is an opportunity for the Democrat to hammer home the obvious: The economic crisis is a direct result of Republican deregulation efforts led by Gramm, McCain’s erstwhile economic adviser, and enthusiastically endorsed by the candidate himself, whose political career was resurrected after the Keating Five scandal because people believed his vow that he was swearing off lobbyists and going straight. That was smoke and mirrors, of course, and McCain is a poster boy if ever there was one for coddling the rich and shortchanging the middle class and poor.

It is nice to see that not everyone has forgotten Sen. McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal -- part of the last great financial crisis to affect America's banking system. Um, why exactly should we trust Sen. McCain now?

David Talbon, another writer for Salon, has an interesting article about Gov. Palin's time in Wasilla's government and her clashes with Baptist minister Howard Bess. Among the items that struck me in that article:

• Gov. Palin (then either a city council member or mayor) was among a group of anti-abortion activists protesting in front of a doctor's office.
• A community activist asked Palin how she could believe in creationism, noting that her father was a science teacher. Palin's response: "We don't have to agree on everything." That activist then pushed her on creationist belief and asked if she really believed that the earth was less than 7,000 years old and that dinosaurs and humans had existed at the same time. Palin's response was "yes" because she had seen images of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them.

Kind of hard to even respond to that... In addition, the article quotes Rev. Bess:

It's truly frightening that someone like Sarah has risen to the national level," Bess said. "Like all religious fundamentalists -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim -- she is a dualist. They view life as an ongoing struggle to the finish between good and evil. Their mind-set is that you do not do business with evil -- you destroy it. Talking with the enemy is not part of their plan. That puts someone like Obama on the side of evil.

"Forget all this chatter about whether or not she knows what the Bush doctrine is. That's trivial. The real disturbing thing about Sarah is her mind-set. It's her underlying belief system that will influence how she responds in an international crisis, if she's ever in that position, and has the full might of the U.S. military in her hands. She gave some indication of that thinking in her ABC interview, when she suggested how willing she would be to go to war with Russia.

"Alaskans liked that certitude when she was dealing with corrupt politicians and the oil industry -- and there is something admirable about it. But when you're dealing with a complex and dangerous world as commander in chief, that's a different story."

Don't forget that video from Gov. Palin's appearance earlier this summer at her church where she nods her head as the minister talks about how Alaska will be a "refuge" in the upcoming "end of days". Is this really someone that we want to be a heartbeat away from the nuclear trigger? Is this really someone that we even want to be in the same room as those discussing how to respond to an international crisis? Compound that with Sen. McCain's well-known temper...

And in the category of "you just can't make this stuff up", take a look at the article "Palin linked electoral success to prayer of Kenyan witchhunter" which describes Gov. Palin's affinity for an African evangelist known for conducting actual witch hunts and exorcisms in Kenya! Gov. Palin is quoted as talking about his bold prayers for her to become governor. So, just to be clear, Gov. Palin appears to believe that world is less than 7,000 years old, humans and dinosaurs coexisted, and "bold" prayers from evangelising witchdoctors helped her get elected governor of Alaska. Um. OK. And people thought Nancy Reagan's reliance on astrology was nuts...

McCain Getting Desperate?

Either Sen. McCain has simply lost the ability to tell fact from fiction and truth from lies or he is getting so desperate that he just doesn't care. As I suggested yesterday, I think that he wants so badly to be President that he is willing to lie -- and damage the democratic process -- in order to achieve that ultimate goal. So, I've decided to start laying out some of Sen. McCain's lies as I find them (and I'm not going to bother with the claim that Sen. McCain invented the BlackBerry ... that's just too easy).

Let's start with a stump speech that Sen. McCain gave on Tuesday, September 16 (the day after declaring that the fundamentals of the economy were sound even as Lehman Brothers was going bankrupt, Merrill Lynch was being bought for pennies, and AIG was being bailed out by the government for $85 billion). What did Sen. McCain say on September 16? According to FactCheck:

In a Sept. 16 stump speech in Vienna, Ohio, Republican presidential nominee John McCain went after Barack Obama, his Democratic counterpart, charging that Obama can’t possibly hope to change Washington. After all, McCain said, Obama is a big part of the problem. Why? Here’s McCain:

"McCain (Sept. 16, Vienna, Ohio): He talks a tough game on the financial crisis, but the facts tell a different story. Senator Obama took more money from Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac than anyone but the chairman of the committee they answer to, and he put Fannie Mae’s CEO, who helped create this problem in charge of finding his vice president. That’s not change, that’s what’s broken in Washington."

McCain’s allegation about Obama’s contributions from the FMs is not true. As we’ve said many times, it’s illegal for candidates to accept contributions directly from corporations. But the FEC does keep track of the employers of individuals who give at least $200 to candidates. And according to the respected nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2008 election cycle Barack Obama has received $18,150 from employees of Freddie Mac. CRP does not list any Obama contributions from Fannie Mae.

But Obama is not No. 2 on the list of those getting contributions from the two companies, as McCain said. In fact, he ranks fourth in combined contributions, trailing Sen. Christopher Dodd, Rep. Melissa Bean and Sen. Lamar Alexander. McCain also neglects to mention his own $9,500 from Freddie Mac.

Obama is second on the list of those getting contributions from employees of only Freddie Mac. But, seriously, neither candidate’s number really makes much difference. Obama has raised more than $389.4 million in the 2008 election cycle. That makes his combined contributions from the FMs work out to roughly 0.005 percent of his total contributions. And McCain has raised about $174.2 million, making his combined FM contributions work out to … 0.005 percent.

Oh, and that part about Fannie Mae’s CEO being on Obama’s VP committee? Sort of. On June 4, Obama announced that Caroline Kennedy, Eric Holder and Jim Johnson would head his VP search committee. Kennedy, of course, is the daughter of JFK. Holder was Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general. Johnson remained on Obama’s committee for just a week. He resigned on June 11, amid allegations that Johnson received preferential treatment from Countrywide Financial Corp.

But Johnson wasn’t the current CEO of Fannie Mae, as you might think from listening to McCain. He left nine years ago, in 1999.

How many lies did Sen. McCain manage to shove into one short statement? And we're supposed to think that Sen. McCain is an honorable, straight talker?

For some analysis of some of Sen. McCain's other recent lies, see There He Goes Again, Energetically Wrong, Belittling Palin?, Off Base on Sex Ed, and McCain-Palin Distorts Our Finding (all from FactCheck.org and all from within the last 8 days). FactCheck.org also finds fault with some of the statements coming from Sen. Obama's campaign, but not of the same character or frequency.

And on the subject of telling lies, Leonard Pitts, Jr., a columnist for the Miami Herald (carried by The Indianapolis Star) has an excellent essay on the prevalence of lies in the campaign. His conclusion echoes some of the concerns that I expressed yesterday and last week:

Like so many other things in this country, it has become splintered and factionalized. These days, every ideology has a ''truth,'' and everybody's ''truth'' has an agenda. Nothing is settled and known. All things are up in the air, all things open to interpretation. Indeed, truth hardly seems to be the point anymore. Lies serve just as well. As a result, we are no longer grounded in the same shared body of facts and in a very real sense, have no basis upon which to reason together, no basis for shared mission, purpose or identity.

Those bases are, not incidentally, foundation blocks of nationhood.

Already the political sides in this country talk past each other like Mars and Venus. If the games of obfuscation and fabrication political hacks play really are becoming common among real people, it can only get worse.

They think they're helping a candidate win an election. Truth is, they're helping all of us lose a whole lot more.

By the way, as to the notion that Sen. McCain is getting desperate, there is an interesting anecdote in The New York Times (confirmed by several other sources):

After Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, his running-mate, riveted the overflow crowd at an airplane hangar here for 16 minutes, it was Mr. McCain’s turn, and people in his audience began murmuring and drifting away midway through a 14-minute speech that was flat and cheerless. When Mr. McCain made his first appearance without Ms. Palin, on Monday morning in Jacksonville, Fla., he faced an arena that was one-quarter full.

MSNBC reports that the Jacksonville, Florida, rally mentioned above had an attendance of only 3,000 people in an arena with 16,000 seats (the Huffington Post has some great pictures of the nearly empty arena). Of course, the McCain campaign doesn't want you to know that Sen. McCain hasn't been able to pack people in to his rallies; in fact, his campaign has been caught lying about attendance figures.

In other words, while the nomination of Gov. Palin may have energized and excited people, that excitement and energy may not actually be rubbing off on Sen. McCain, himself, but the campaign is willing to lie about that too.

When it gets to the point that practically every word coming out of the candidate's mouth is a lie, exaggeration, or gaffe (I hope to have more on Sen. McCain apparently thinking that Spain is in South America and that it isn't one of our allies as the story gets fleshed out...), and when you compound that with errors in judgment (Gov. Palin and the "fundamentally sound" economy, for example), one has to wonder just why anyone would vote for Sen. McCain. More importantly, you to wonder just what a McCain administration would look like? Why would we trust the judgment of a President McCain and why would we trust a President McCain to tell us the truth?

Update (September 19, 2008)

Just so nobody can claim that I'm trying to play fast and loose with facts, FactCheck, which I quoted above, has corrected its facts concerning political contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

We said originally that Obama was the fourth largest recipient of donations from troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That’s wrong. Our post was drawn from data from the Center for Responsive Politics’ Web site, OpenSecrets.org. But the data we used were incomplete.

We talked to a spokesperson from the Center for Responsive Politics who told us that looking at all election cycles since 1989 (the first year for which CRP has data), Barack Obama is in fact the second-largest recipient of contributions from employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, their unemployed spouses and dependent children and both of the FMs’ political action committees.

According to CRP, Obama’s total contributions from the FMs work out to $126,349. Of that sum, $6,000 comes from the FMs’ political action committees, and the rest from individuals who work for one of the two companies. Obama’s FM contributions account for about 0.03 percent of his total contributions to date. McCain’s FM haul is a smaller $21,550, all from individuals. That’s about 0.01 percent of his total contributions. We stand by our doubts that either candidate will be much swayed by numbers of this size.

I find it hard to get worked up over political contibutions from individuals (or a whopping $6,000 from a PAC) that total $120,000 out of nearly $400,000,000 that Sen. Obama has raised, especially when I remember that Sen. McCain has surrounded himself with lobbyists including lobbyists who worked for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

LibraryThing: "By Royal Command"

I updated my LibraryThing catalog with a review of By Royal Command [Young Bond #5] by Charlie Higson. I'm currently reading The Lost Constitution by William Martin.

American Idol Candidate

I don't normally like to simply reprint chain emails that I receive. For one thing, I prefer to know the source of material that I copy or cite. For another thing, I usually try to check the facts before printing them. An email that I received yesterday, however, is interesting enough to reprint here, even though I don't know the actual source. The subject line for this email was "The American Idol Candidate":

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
• Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.
• If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
• Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
• Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
• Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
• If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
• If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
• If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
• If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
• If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.
• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
• If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Interestingly, while trying to track down the source of that email, I came across an interesting essay from Roger Ebert, movie critic for the Chicago Sun-Times that was also entitled The American Idol Candidate:

I think I might be able to explain some of Sarah Palin's appeal. She's the "American Idol" candidate. Consider. What defines an "American Idol" finalist? They're good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they're darned near the real thing. There's a reason "American Idol" gets such high ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that could be me up there on that show!

My problem is, I don't want to be up there. I don't want a vice president who is darned near good enough. I want a vice president who is better, wiser, well-traveled, has met world leaders, who three months ago had an opinion on Iraq. Someone who doesn't repeat bald- faced lies about earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere. Someone who doesn't appoint Alaskan politicians to "study" global warming, because, hello! It has been studied. The returns are convincing enough that John McCain and Barack Obama are darned near in agreement.

I would also want someone who didn't make a teeny little sneer when referring to "people who go to the Ivy League." When I was a teen I dreamed of going to Harvard, but my dad, an electrician, told me, "Boy, we don't have the money. Thank your lucky stars you were born in Urbana and can go to the University of Illinois right here in town." So I did, very happily. Although Palin gets laughs when she mentions the "elite" Ivy League, she sure did attend the heck out of college.

Five different schools in six years. What was that about?

And how can a politician her age have never have gone to Europe? My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe. I had Arthur Frommer's $5 a Day under my arm, started in London, even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later, I was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.

You don't need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country once, on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin's travel record is that of a provincial, not someone who is equipped to deal with global issues.

But some people like that. She's never traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa, South America or Down Under? That makes her like them. She didn't go to Harvard? Good for her! There a lot of hockey moms who haven't seen London, but most of them would probably love to, if they had the dough. And they'd be proud if one of their kids won a scholarship to Harvard.

I trust the American people will see through Palin, and save the Republic in November. The most damning indictment against her is that she considered herself a good choice to be a heartbeat away. That shows bad judgment.

Ebert has touched upon a number of the feelings about Gov. Palin that I've been trying to express over the last few weeks. When I read Ebert's essay, I finally remembered what Gov. Palin's nomination most reminds me of. Remember when President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court? The President told us that Thomas was the best person available, but did anyone really believe that? After all, Thomas was largely unknown and did not even receive a unanimous "qualified" from the American Bar Association. But Thomas was: (a) an African-American being nominated to replace Thurgood  Marshall, the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court, and (b) a conservative. Maybe Thomas was the best conservative African-American available, but he certainly was not the best person available. That's exactly how I feel about Gov. Palin. She may be the best conservative woman available (and, frankly, I'm not even about to concede that...), but she is certainly not the best person available.

President Bush chose Thomas because of his race. I don't think that anyone being intellectually honest with themselves would dispute that. And Sen. McCain chose Gov. Palin because of her gender. When the nomination of people to serve on the Supreme Court or in the office of the Vice President stops being about true qualifications and starts to be about racial or gender politics, then we all suffer because rather than having the best, most qualified people serving our nation, we instead end up with people with dubious qualifications so that particular demographic cohorts can be placated or pandered to. America is supposed to be about the best and brightest; it is not supposed to be about the best and brightest of the right race or right gender or right religion. American democracy is about ideas not skin color or genitalia.

I lost a lot of respect for President Bush when he nominated Clarence Thomas. As I said yesterday, I lost the last of the little remaining respect that I had for Sen. McCain when he nominated Sarah Palin. Sen. McCain's refrain of "America First" means very little and, in fact, rings totally hollow, when he dives into the gutter to play gender politics. By choosing a running mate on the basis of her gender rather than her qualifications, Sen. McCain is telling us that he is more concerned with being elected than with the fate of the country. And isn't that precisely what Sen. McCain criticized Sen. Obama about with regard to Sen. Obama's views on the war? Sen. McCain said that Sen. Obama would rather lose the war than lose the election. It is clear to me that Sen. McCain would rather hurt our country than lose an election.

Over the last few weeks, we've seen that Sen. McCain will do absolutely anything to get elected; he has nominated an unqualified person, he is having his campaign work diligently to stop an ethics inquiry into that candidate, and he is lying to the American people, day in and day out about virtually any and every subject. Sen. McCain wants to be President and it appears that he will leave no dirty trick unplayed to get there. Sen. McCain talks about change; he has certainly changed from an honorable man to just another politician willing to lie and cheat to get elected. The military hero who likes to talk about honor should now be hanging his head in shame for the campaign that he is now running is shameful and making of mockery of the democratic process and ideals that are the foundations of our nation.

Yet More Reasons Why We Can't Let Sarah Palin Get Close to the White House

I'm beginning to feel a bit like this is SNN - the Sarah News Network. But the nomination of Gov. Palin has (in case you haven't figured it out yet) got me steaming mad at Sen. McCain. I used to like the guy, I really did. I disagreed with him on some issues, but I always felt that he was a straight shooter. Unfortunately, when he decided to cozy up to the evangelical right wing of the Republican party my respect for Sen. McCain began to wane. When he selected Gov. Palin I lost what little respect I had left. And now the Straight Talk Express wouldn't know the truth if it hit him in the head.

Part of the reason for focusing so much attention on Gov. Palin is to counter the ridiculous positive attention that she has been getting and the support that she has been able to build for Sen. McCain. But query whether that support is for Sen. McCain at all. News reports talk of people chanting "Sarah" while Sen. McCain tries to give his stump speeches. And campaign rallies without Gov. Palin are very poorly attended. Gov. Palin has become the Republican superstar (wasn't Sen. Obama's superstardom "bad"?) and appears to have eclipsed the man at the top of the ticket. Thus, I think that it is critical that people learn more about Gov. Palin and her ideas (especially given that the national media is practically giving her a free pass) so that they aren't fooled by the constant stream of lies coming out of the McCain campaign.

One of the most important tasks for a person elected to an executive branch office is to surround themself with intelligent, articulate people who have expertise that can be drawn upon. One of President Bush's greatest failings is that he surrounded himself with people who told him what he wanted to hear rather than telling him the truth (and if people didn't tell him what he wanted to hear, they didn't stick around for long). Compare the choices made by Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain for their respective Vice Presidential candidates. Is Gov. Palin really the best person to help Sen. McCain? I trust the advice the a Vice President Biden would give to a President Obama. But I don't trust that a Vice President Palin would be able to give sound advice to a President McCain. And, let's consider how Gov. Palin selects the people to surround her. According to The New York Times:

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

...

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’”

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

Just to be sure that you read that correctly, Alaska's State Division of Agriculture is headed by a former real estate agent who cites her "childhood love of cows" as the reason that she is qualified to run the agency. And the qualifications of the manager of Alaska's economic development office? He established a franchise for Mailboxes Etc. Think of yourself and your own business experiences and skills. Are you qualified to be the head of a state's division of agriculture or economic development office, even if you did love animals as a kid or start up your own business as an adult? What do these selections tell us about Gov. Palin's judgment?

And while Gov. Palin stocks her administration with unqualified people, she refuses to meet with other elected officials:

Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

An anti-abortion rally was more important than meeting and talking to the mayors of Alaska's cities. You'd think that Gov. Palin, a former mayor herself, would value the input that the state's mayors could provide. Obviously, she does not.

Does any of this make you think that Gov. Palin is qualified to be Governor, let alone Vice President, or, heaven help us, President? That Sen. McCain selected Gov. Palin demonstrates how irresponsible Sen. McCain is and what a poor judge he would be of those he would selecte to advise him (and don't forget that 7 of Sen. McCain's top campaign advisers are lobbyists...).

And it just keeps coming...

For the past 8 years, we've had a Vice President who doesn't seem to think that people deserve to know what he's doing. He won't release information about meetings he's held (recall that Vice President Cheney went all the way to the Supreme Court to keep from divulging information about his energy policy meetings) and won't release information that the law requires him to release (claiming, incredibly, that the Vice President is not part of the Executive Branch). Unfortunately, it looks like Gov. Palin comes from the Cheney school of secretive government. Again, according to The New York Times:

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.

Elsewhere in that same article:

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”

On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”

Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!

Nothing like having your staff work to find ways to be sure that you never have to disclose information to voters. Ah, yes, transparent government by and for the people!

Finally, one more charming piece of information about Gov. Palin's policies. As you've no doubt read, Gov. Palin opposes abortion unless a doctor determines that the woman's life is in danger. That opposition extends to cases of rape or incest. In other words, Gov. Palin believes that a woman who is raped should be forced to have the child. You would think that, despite her views on abortion, that Gov. Palin would be otherwise sympathetic to rape victims. Think again. Gov. Palin apparently believes that after a rape victim has been assaulted by the perpetrator she should be fucked by the police as well. In 2000, Alaska's legislature passed a law to prevent police departments from charging a rape victim for the rape kit used by the police to obtain DNA evidence. Gov. Palin has since said that she did not "believe" that rape victims should be forced to pay for the kit, but it was her appointed police chief Charlie Fannon (remember that she fired the police chief when she took office and appointed Fannon in his place) who enforced the policy (noting that he didn't want to see any more burdens placed on taxpayers). It seems to me that if then-Mayor Palin really opposed this policy, it would have been easy for her to pick up the phone and tell her appointed police chief to change the policy. But she didn't; not even when Alaska's legislature was discussing legislation to end the practice. No. Mayor Palin had a chance to show that she supported rape victims; instead, she allowed her town to fuck 'em again, just in case the first time wasn't enough. Her cries of innocence and lack of "belief" in the policy are meaningless because she missed the opportunity to actually do something.

An additional point that is particularly notable about this whole sickening episode: In order to qualify to receive federal funds under the federal Violence Against Women Act, states are supposed to pay the costs for these rape kits. The Violence Against Women Act was passed by Congress in 1994. Its author? Joe Biden, who has said:

I consider the Violence Against Women Act the single most significant legislation that I’ve crafted during my 35-year tenure in the Senate. Indeed, the enactment of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 was the beginning of a historic commitment to women and children victimized by domestic violence and sexual assault. Our nation has been rewarded for this commitment. Since the Act’s passage in 1994, domestic violence has dropped by almost 50%, incidents of rape are down by 60%, and the number of women killed by an abusive husband or boyfriend is down by 22%. Today, more than half of all rape victims are stepping forward to report the crime. And since we passed the Act in 1994 over a million women have found justice in our courtrooms and obtained domestic violence protective orders.

Yet sexual violence in Alaska remains a major problem. According to ABC News:

Evangelicals and social conservatives have embraced McCain's vice
presidential pick for what they call her "pro-family," "pro-woman" values. But
in Alaska, critics say Gov. Sarah Palin has not addressed the rampant sexual
abuse, rape, domestic violence and murder that make her state one of the most
dangerous places in the country for women and children.

Alaska leads the nation in reported forcible rapes per capita, according to the FBI, with a rate two and a half times the national average – a ranking it has held for many years. Children are no safer: Public safety experts believe that the prevalence of rape and sexual assault of minors in Alaska makes the state's record one of the worst in the U.S. And while solid statistics on domestic violence are hard to come by, most – including Gov. Palin – agree it is an "epidemic."

...

Some members of Palin's administration were focused on the issue of sexual violence. Officials in the Department of Public Safety were devising an ambitious, multi-million-dollar initiative to seriously tackle sex crimes in the state, but Palin's office put the plan on hold in July.

Days later, Palin fired its chief proponent, Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, after he declined to dismiss a state trooper Palin accused of threatening her own family members. Palin has said she fired Monegan because she wanted to move his department in a "new direction," and he was not being "a team player on budgeting issues." The dismissal is now at the center of a hotly-contested investigation by the state legislature.

I wonder whether all of these women that Republicans are counting on to be swayed by the inclusion of Gov. Palin on their ticket will really be comfortable voting for Sen. McCain when they learn some of Gov. Palin's real thoughts on "women's issues" (I put that last in quotes because I believe that rape or sexual violence are human issues).

In case I haven't made myself clear, I think that it will be very, very bad for our country if Gov. Palin is elected to a higher office. Even if you are a supporter of Sen. McCain, his choice of Gov. Palin should put enough doubts in your mind as to his judgment to make you reconsider your choice in November.

Push Polling Is Back

As if there weren't enough reasons to vote against the Republicans this year, another of Karl Rove's favorite strategies, the push poll, has apparently been revived. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a push poll uses questions designed to elicit a particular response -- usually a very strong negative response. In addition, the real threat from push polls comes from the often completely fabricated information that is at the core of the "question". The goal of the push poll is not to determine what voters think; rather, the push poll is designed to put "bad" information in front of the voter to scare that voter away from a particular candidate. As defined by SourceWatch:

A push poll is where, using the guise of opinion polling, disinformation about a candidate or issue is planted in the minds of those being 'surveyed'. Push-polls are designed to shape, rather than measure, public opinion.

Case in point? According to Crooks & Liars (and repeated elsewhere on the web today), Jews in Florida are receiving phone calls from a pollster. They are asked if they are Jewish, if they are religious, and if their "opinion of Barack Obama would change if [they] knew that Obama had given lots and lots of money to the PLO". Sen. Obama has not, of course, given money to the PLO. But the intended effect of the "question" is to mislead voters into thinking that Sen. Obama had done just that. If enough Jewish voters can be scared into thinking that Sen. Obama supports terrorists (or, perhaps more simply, would not be a strong supporter of Israel), then those voters can (so the theory goes) be swayed not to vote for Sen. Obama. If a voter elects not to support Sen. Obama because they have genuine concerns about his support for Israel (or any other issue), that is fine; but when those concerns are based on false information disseminated solely to create false concerns... Houston, we have a problem.

These same sorts of smear tactics were used by then-Gov. George W. Bush against Sen. McCain in the 2000 primaries. Voters were asked if they would be less likely to vote for Sen. McCain if they knew that he'd fathered an illegitimate black daughter. Sen. McCain has an adopted daughter from Bangladesh. The point is, it didn't matter that the "fact" in the question was false; what mattered was that the question went to the heart of racial politics to turn voters against Sen. McCain. And it worked.

These tactics represent the absolute worst in American politics and are a real danger to our system. The use of push polling can serve to cripple a voter's basic trust in their candidate, without allowing nasty details like truth or issues to intervene. No matter which candidate you support, you should be outraged by these sorts of tactics. We should choose our elected leaders on the basis of their proposed policies, not on the basis of fraudulent fears.

One more thing, that I couldn't pass up. While I was looking for some examples uses of push polls in previous elections, I found this great example of what the most egregious sort of push poll might look like:

If you knew that bleeding-heart liberal senator John Kerry regularly had sex with an underage Muslim male terrorist, would you (A.) Feel it was a private matter between Kerry and the terrorist? (B) Have no opinion, one way, or another? (C.) Feel President Bush should stay the course in his honorable struggle against the terrorists who want to destroy America and their immoral, America-hating Democratic supporters?

While I find the example humorous, it is, unfortunately, not too far removed from what real push polling looks like.

Finally, it is worth noting that push polling (or pre-determinative polling) is not limited to Presidential elections or even to elections in general. I've seen numerous mailings from state and local office holders asking my opinions on certain matters in which the elected official has written the question with a predetermined outcome in mind. A terrific example of this sort of pre-determinative polling can be found on the website of the National Republican Congressional Committee. I think that my personal favorite is question 5 ("Do you think that House Republicans should continue to push for pro-growth policies that create jobs and oppose tax increases that would add a burden to working families and set back our economy?") but I will acknowledge that question 12 ("Do you agree that winning back a Republican Majority in the House of Representatives is essential to stopping the Nancy Pelosi Democrats from raising our taxes, destroying our economy and endangering our homeland?") has a certain scandalous appeal. Nothing like clean, unbiased questions designed to truly gauge support for or against a proposed policy. Unfortunately, in the case of pre-determinative questionnaires like this, the party promulgating the poll will use the "statistics" to back up their proposed policies but will usually rephrase the question to become much more innocuous and neutral.

If you receive a push poll, tell the pollster where to put it. Don't be gentle; after all, the use of push polling is a true threat to our democratic process. Then call the campaign for whom the pollster was probably working and tell them that you don't approve of those sorts of election tactics. Perhaps the campaigns will begin to listen if enough voters cry foul.

LibraryThing: "The Assassin"

I updated my LibraryThing catalog with a review of The Assassin [Ryan Kealey #2] by Andrew Britton. I'm now reading By Royal Command [Young Bond #5] by Charlie Higson.

When a Lie Becomes an Insult

We all tell lies. Thus, we aren't surprised or offended when politicians, especially those campaigning for office, tell lies. We expect it. Of course, we should expect more from our candidates, but that is another topic. I do want to look at the types of lies that candidates tell. What do those lies tell us about the candidate? What do they tell us about our democratic process?

First, of course, is the promise. How many times have we heard a candidate promise to do something? Unfortunately, it appears as if many times that promise is completely hollow and the candidate has no intent to follow through. That lie may help us evaluate the candidate, but ultimately, the candidate will pay for the lie in the next election. Of a slightly different character is the promise that the candidate would like to fulfill but which the candidate knows full well is not within the scope of the office for which the candidate is running and therefore is a promise that will also go unfulfilled. Again, this lie may tell us something about the candidate's position and probably won't come back to bite the candidate later because the candidate can blame others or external forces for the failure to follow through.

We also have the exaggeration. We all know that candidates exaggerate their own successes and their opponent's failures. It is part of the competitive process, I suppose (but query whether it should be). We all know to take with a grain of salt what our candidates tell us they've done or what their opponent has done (or not done). But, usually these exaggerations (especially when building up the candidate's own record) are based, primarily, in a nugget of truth. And the candidate knows that if the exaggeration is too bold (especially when criticising the opponent) it will be seized on and dissected, often to the gain of the opponent. Thus, if the exaggeration is outrageous enough, it drops out of the campaign rhetoric or, if it is innocuous, its use continues but it doesn't have much meaning.

Of course linked to the exaggeration is the generic lie where a candidate says, for example, "I voted for X" or "I supported Y" when, in fact, the opposite is true. Usually, these generic lies are quickly seized upon by the opponent and the issuer of the lie either issues a retraction ("I meant to say...") or qualifies the lie ("I supported X in the committee hearing before voting against it because of extra measures that were attached..."). Sometimes, these lies have "legs" but usually, the qualification or retraction, rather than the initial statement, becomes the issue. And, usually, the subject of the lie is an issue of importance to voters (did the candidate vote for or against the tax cut, for example). While the lie itself may be bad, at least the response and resulting discussion usually lead to a discussion of actual issues (even if only tangentially).

Unfortunately, two new types of lies seem to have entered the political process. (OK, I'll admit that they've both probably been around as long as elections have, but they seem to be becoming more prominent recently.) The first is the lie of destruction. That lie puts out disinformation about the opponent that has nothing to do with the issues in the election; rather, the lie attacks the opponent's character or fitness to serve. This year, we've seen lies about Sen. Obama's religion and lies about Sen. McCain's involvement in the fire aboard the USS Forrestal. We've seen lies about Sen. Obama's citizenship and lies about Sen. McCain cooperating with the enemy while a POW. These sorts of lies are very damaging to the candidates, and, more importantly, they are very damaging to our very electoral process (would you want to run for office knowing the kinds of things that might be said about you and your family?). Between mass communications and the Internet, these lies can spread faster than they can be rebutted; by the time a rebuttal can be issued, the lie has taken on a life of its own and, to many people, become "true". So, if people are basing their electoral decision on the basis of lies about a candidate's character and background, those electoral decisions will, almost by definition be flawed and the issues on which the election should turn are relegated to a position of lesser importance. This trend has me gravely concerned. If people don't want to vote for Sen. Obama because they don't like his economic policies, fine (although I'd like to talk to them...); but if they don't want to vote for him because "he's a Muslim" then we have a problem. If people don't want to vote for Sen. McCain because he opposes a woman's right to choose, fine; but if they don't want to vote for him because they think he is responsible for the deaths of 134 sailors on the USS Forrestal then we have a problem. And given the prominence of chain emails and websites with just these sorts of allegations, I think that we do have a problem.

And now we have yet another new type of lie: The sound byte lie that sounds so good that it is repeated even after it has been proved false. The case in point is, of course, Gov. Palin's repeated claim that she told Congress "thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere. She made this claim when Sen. McCain first announced her as his running mate. It was a great sound byte and was repeated over and over on the evening news. Very quickly, however, the veracity of the statement was called into question. The timeline of funding for the bridge and Gov. Palin's own past statements demonstrated that she had not told Congress "thanks but no thanks" (after all, Congress stopped funding for the bridge before Gov. Palin was elected) but only killed the project (to be built with Alaskan funds) when Congress refused to allocate more money to Alaska (in fact, she noted that Congress didn't seem interested in giving Alaska more money for the project). She supported the bridge during her campain and for the first year or so of her administration; there is even a picture of her wearing a "Nowhere Alaska" shirt. But here is where this lie differs from others. Ordinarily, when caught in a lie of this sort, a candidate would explain away the position (it's a matter of nuanced understanding...) and the lie would vanish from the stump speech. But not in this case. Instead, Gov. Palin repeated the line in her acceptance speech and has continued to repeat the line day after day in stump speeches across the country even as more and more news media report on the fact that the statement is not true. Of course, the worst part of this lie is that each time she utters it, she is met with thunderous applause. And now, the McCain campaign has even made this lie a part of a campaign ad. Whether she did or did not support the bridge isn't even the issue; rather, the issue is her support or opposition to earmarks (recall that she hired a lobbyist for the town of Wasilla to get earmarks and, as Governor, asked Congress for more money). But she uses the lie to bolster her credentials.

What does it tell us about a candidate who will repeat, over and over, a statement of fact that has been proven to be a lie? To me, it says that the candidate really doesn't care about the truth. That's obvious. But it also says that the candidate is so confident in the appeal of her personal story that the issues won't matter to voters. It tells me that she doesn't think voters care about the truth or will do enough to learn the truth (or won't believe the truth because it comes from the "liberal media"). It tells me that she doesn't have any respect for the democratic process or for democracy as a concept or method of governance; after all, if the public can't trust a candidate to tell the truth (or at least a close approximation to the truth), then how is the public supposed to make a determination of who to vote for? Repeating the lie is cynical and insulting. And, the fact that the McCain campaign has now incorporated that lie into a campaign ad tells me that the cynicism of the selection of Gov. Palin apparently runs much deeper...

And what does the repetition of the lie and the thunderous approval it receives tell us about the voting electorate? It tells us that Gov. Palin just may be correct in her cynical belief that the American electorate is too stupid to analyze issues and will, instead, just vote for the person that they'd rather have over for a mooseburger and a beer. And that is a very, very worrying prospect indeed.

A Little More Campaign Humor

I came across one more funny video that makes a nice companion piece to today's earlier post. So, without further ado, here's the Daily Show's take on some of the current election issues:

I think that Karl Rove's thoughts should be replayed over and over and over. And to see Bill O'Reilly's hypocrisy front and center ... priceless.

My Cousin in a Public Service Announcement

My cousin (whom I unfortunately don't get to see very often) just did a public service announcement regarding underage drinking. She's the one on the left.



Very nice.

Some Campaign Humor

Just to throw a little levity into the election season, my wife found a couple of terrific videos worth spending a few minutes watching:

You've probably heard (over and over and over) Katy Perry's song "I Kissed a Girl". Well, here's an alternate take (let the video load and then forward to about 1:32 -- the first minute or so isn't worth watching):

Did you wonder what it must have been like when Sen. McCain asked Gov. Palin to join him on the Republican ticket:

And in the grand tradition of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, we have The Ballad of Sarah Palin:

Finally, even Steven Colbert had a bit of fun with Gov. Palin's nomination (be aware of profanity at the very beginning of the video and you can probably stop watching at 4:00 when it starts incorporating some footage from The Family Guy cartoon):

Obama on Community Organizing

In yesterday's post, "Sarah Palin: Pit Bull?", I noted the way that both Gov. Palin and Rudy Giuliani seemed to take pride in mocking and ridiculing the work that community organizers do. What does Sen. Obama have to say? Watch:

I particularly like the questions that he poses to Republicans (at about 1:00 into the video):

Why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for? Do they think that the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives is somehow not relevant to the Presidency? I think maybe that's the problem. That's part of why they're out of touch and they don't get it because they haven't spent much time working on behalf of those folks.

Sarah Palin: Pit Bull?

Yesterday, I asked "Who Is Sarah Palin?" Well, last night, the American electorate got their first real chance to see and hear from the candidate. My impressions? Well, she does an excellent job reading well-written speeches off teleprompters in front of a hugely supportive, partisan crowd (but we know, from statements that the McCain campaign gave to the press that Gov. Palin didn't actually write the speech; she was just the actor delivering the lines). I'm still waiting to listen to her talk extemporaneously, especially if she is answering hard questions (sorry, I just don't think that the People interview counts...) from journalists. It is also interesting to compare her well-rehearsed speech last night to the more impromptu speech that she recently gave at her old church.


To me, there are a few important things to take away from Gov. Palin's speech. First, it has long been a political cliche that the role of a Vice Presidential candidate is to be the party's attack dog. In other words, it is up to the Vice Presidential candidate to attack the other party's candidate, thus allowing the candidate for President to "rise above" the petty squabbles. Not only did Gov. Palin demonstrate that she is willing to and will be an effective attack dog, she practically acknowledged as much in her speech: "You know what they say about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick." Well, it appears that Gov. Palin is the Republican party's pit bull in lipstick. She devoted much of the last 2/3 or so of her speech to attacking Sen. Obama and the Democrats.

It is also worth noting that we never heard her say that opposes abortion, even in the case of rape or incest or that she isn't sure that global warming is a man-made problem or that she opposes medically accurate, comprehensive sex education, or that she thinks the War in Iraq is a "task from God". Nope. She spent plenty of time attacking the Democrats, but very little time telling us much about what she believes (and here I'll distinguish Gov. Palin's beliefs from those of Sen. McCain). I can't wait to here what she thinks about stem cell research...


Another thing that I learned about Gov. Palin is that while she may let the Republican party cry foul over the media having made her family a part of the campaign, she wasn't shy about focusing the spotlight on them herself. She seemed perfectly happy to parade her family (and soon-to-be family) in front of the cameras. OK, fine. That's her decision to make. But if she is going to make her family a part of the campaign, then she can't very well cry foul when others question her about her family. She can't talk about part of the family (the son heading to Iraq) but declare the pregnant daughter off limits.


And was it just me, or did her appeal to families of special needs children ring hollow to anyone else, too? Somehow, that one moment of her speech just jumped out at me as political pandering of an almost unimaginable level.


Perhaps the most important thing that I learned above Gov. Palin last night is that she isn't afraid to repeat a lie to millions of Americans; even when that lie has already been demonstrated to be a just that: a lie. Pardon the expression, but that takes balls. When Sen. McCain introduced Gov. Palin last week, she claimed that she had killed the Bridge to Nowhere and told Congress "thanks, but no thanks". She repeated that claim last night. What she failed to mention in her speech is that Congress actually killed funding for the bridge before Gov. Palin was elected governor of Alaska! And, while running for governor, she supported building the Bridge to Nowhere. For the first 10 months of her term in office, she apparently planned to go ahead and use Alaskan money (much of it received from Congress for infrastructure improvements) to build the Bridge to Nowhere anyway. When she finally decided to kill the program, she said:

Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer. Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.

(Emphasis added.) In other words, she didn't tell Congress anything; rather, Congress told Alaska. What frightens me is that she is willing to look straight into the camera and keep telling this same lie over and over. And what frightens me even more is that Republicans cheer her on.


I don't want to continue the comparison of Gov. Palin's experience and qualifications to Sen. Obama's and Sen. Biden's. But I do want to ask why Gov. Palin (and Rudy Guiliani, for that matter) felt that it was worth ridiculing the work of community organizing? As this election is shaping up, it looks like blue collar, working Americans may be a swing voting block. To paraphrase Roland Martin, it is community organizers who are helping people at risk of losing their homes in the sub-prime mortgage crisis, it is community organizers who help people pay their bills, it is community organizers who are trying to help people save their jobs or get retrained and find new jobs when theirs are sent overseas, it is community organizers who help feed the poor, house the homeless, and care for those who can't care for themselves. Years ago, it was community organizers who marched for civil rights and women's rights. Community organizers are all about service to their fellow citizens. You'd think that Republicans would understand service, not ridicule it. Sen. Obama could have stayed at a big Chicago law firm and made a lot of money; instead he choose to spend his time helping people who had lost their jobs when steel mills closed. I think when some of those swing voters think a bit more about community organizers, Gov. Palin's attacks may begin to ring a bit hollow, if not downright mean spirited.


And not to belabor the point, but I couldn't help but feel as if part of the explanation for the repeated attacks on community organizing was that it was meant to appeal to white voters concerned about a black candidate. I don't know; maybe I'm off base here. But in a conversation with a friend (the same friend who expressed concerns that I discussed back in June) last weekend, she equated Sen. Obama's community organizing to working solely within and for the African-American community and not for the working poor or middle class generally. I can't help but feel as if it is that sentiment of racist fear (and I don't know what else to call it but racist and fear) that the repeated ridicule of community organizing was meant to tap in to.


I also want to one more point to the "Who Is Sarah Palin?" semi-rhetorical query that I posed yesterday.

We all remember the flap about Sen. Obama's pastor and the calls for Sen. Obama to reject some of the claims made by his pastor (and, recall, that Sen. Obama did, indeed, reject the pastor's statements). I'm sure, though, that we haven't heard the last of that issue. But, I wonder whether those who criticized Sen. Obama for the statements of his pastor will be equally critical of Gov. Palin. Why, you ask? Well, just a few weeks ago (August 17, 2008, to be precise), Gov. Palin's church welcomed David Brickner, the executive director of "Jews for Jesus". I don't need to tell my Jewish readers much about this shameful, deceitful group of evangelical Christians, but for those who aren't aware, they are a bunch of Christian evangelicals who claim to be "Jews" who have "found" Jesus. If they stopped there, we could put them off to the side as merely another fringe religious element. But they go further and try to actively convert Jews, often engaging in fraud, subterfuge, or lies to accomplish their nefarious purposes (including targeting teens). In introducing Brickner, Gov. Palin's pastor Larry Kroon said: "He’s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism". Following that introduction, Brickner apparently discussed the mission of his group and then explained to the congregation (that included Gov. Palin) that terrorist attacks on Israelis are God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity. After the discussion, Pastor Kroon took up a collection plate for Jews for Jesus. (A transcript of Brickner's and Pastor Kroon's comments is available thanks to Daily Kos.) If Sen. Obama should have walked out on Pastor Wright, then Gov. Palin should have walked out on Pastor Kroon and Mr. Brickner. Or, perhaps Gov. Palin believes that terrorist attacks on Jews are justified...


Finally, when reading today's roundup of coverage on Gov. Palin's speech, I came across one article that was too good not to pass on (and, in the interests of making it easier to read, I've reproduced the entire article below):

Why the Media Should Apologize
by Roger Simon (reprinted from Politico; originally published September 4, 2008)

On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry.

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.

It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols.

Sarah Palin hit the nail on the head Wednesday night (and several in the audience wish she had hit some reporters on the head instead) when she said: “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”

But where did we go wrong with Sarah Palin? Let me count the ways:

First, we should have stuck to the warm, human interest stuff like how she likes mooseburgers and hit an important free throw at her high school basketball tournament even though she had a stress fracture.

Second, we should have stuck to the press release stuff like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it).

Third, we should never have strayed into the other stuff. Like when The Washington Post recently wrote: “Palin is under investigation by a bipartisan state legislative body. … Palin had promised to cooperate with the legislative inquiry, but this week she hired a lawyer to fight to move the case to the jurisdiction of the state personnel board, which Palin appoints.”

Why go there? What trees does that plant?

Fourth, we should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul.

Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”

Fifth, we should stop reporting on the families of the candidates. Unless the candidates want us to.

Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq.

Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried.

Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.)

The official theme of the convention’s third day was “prosperity,” but the unofficial theme was “the media are really, really awful.”

Even Mike Huckabee, who campaigned for president this year by saying “I am a conservative, but I am not mad at anybody,” discovered Wednesday night that he is mad at somebody.

“I’d like to thank the elite media for doing something,” Huckabee said, “that, quite frankly, I didn’t think could be done: unify the Republican party and all of America in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin."

And could that be the real point of the attacks on the media? To unify the Republican Party? No, that is simply the cynical, media view.

Though as Lily Tomlin says, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up.”

I couldn’t resist that. For which I am sorry.

Who Is Sarah Palin?

The Republicans worked quickly to disprove allegations that Gov. Sarah Palin was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party (the AIP), a party that has as its principal goal the "lofty" idea of redoing the 1958 vote that made Alaska a state and, in so doing, allow Alaskans the right to choose independence. Reports surfaced over the last few days that Gov. Palin was a member of the AIP before leaving the party to become a Republican in order to run for Mayor of Wasilla. According to ABC News, Lynnete Clark, Chair of the AIP, said that Gov. Palin and her husband Todd were members of the AIP in 1994 and attended the AIP convention in 1994 (held in Wasilla). The Republicans have now produced voter registration records that confirm that Gov. Palin was registered as a Republican from 1982 onward and Ms. Clark has indicated that she may have been mistaken. Whew. Good to know. But...

It is worth noting that, according to Gail Fenumiai, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, Gov. Palin's husband Todd did register as a member of the AIP in both 1995 and 2000. Can you imagine the furor and righteous indignation that we would be hearing from the Republicans if Michelle Obama had registered as a member of the Green Party or a socialist party? One of the mottoes of the AIP (found on the platform page of their website) helps to put the party's views in context: "The problem with you John Birchers' is that you are too damn liberal!" (Attributed to Joseph Vogler, the party's founder.) By the AIP standard, George W. Bush is practically a communist...

It would be very interesting to know if Gov. Palin and her husband share similar political views or whether they actually differ on the subject of Alaskan independence. Was she a Republican because she believed in that party's platform more than the platform of the AIP or was she a Republican because it made her more electable? It is also worth noting AIP members recognize that one of their political strategies is to "infiltrate" the major parties.

Some dispute has arisen as to whether Gov. Palin attended that 1994 state convention in Wasilla. Some members of the AIP continue to say that Gov. Palin did attend and, even as recently at the 2008 AIP state convention (held before Gov. Palin became the Republican nominee), the party's vice chairman talked about her membership in the AIP before becoming Mayor. And why, as Governor of Alaska, did Gov. Palin feel it was necessary or even appropriate to send a welcome message to the AIP for their state convention? I'm not exactly convinced that this is just a matter of procedure. After all, I can't see Gov. Daniels sending a welcome message to Indiana's Libertarian Party convention (let alone the Democratic Party convention). I don't recall seeing President Bush welcoming the Democrats to their National Convention. I'd be curious to know if Gov. Palin sent a similar message to Alaska's Democratic Party when they held their state convention. Was her welcome message just a simple ministerial function of her office or did it indicate some degree of support for the views and goals of the AIP?

One other interesting little nugget has also arisen in the last few days. Apparently, during the 2000 campaign primaries, Pat Buchanan visited Wasilla, Alaska (while Palin was Mayor). According to news reports at the time, Mayor Palin was wearing a Buchanan campaign button at the event. A few days later, Mayor Palin wrote to respond to the article and said:

When presidential candidates visit our community, I am always happy to meet them. I'll even put on their button when handed one as a polite gesture of respect. ... The article may have left your readers with the perception that I am endorsing this candidate, as opposed to welcoming his visit to Wasilla.

(Mayor Palin became co-chair of Steve Forbes' campaign in Alaska.) Again, I wonder whether Mayor Palin would have worn an Al Gore button had Vice President Gore visited Wasilla? Would she have worn the button of any candidate, just to show respect? I for one am troubled that the Mayor would extend that kind of respect to a candidate as divisive as Buchanan, especially one known for his antisemitic rhetoric? Would Mayor Palin have worn an Al Sharpton button? What about David Duke?

It just seems to me that Gov. Palin (and then-Mayor Palin) makes odd choices and follows those choices with somewhat implausible explanations.

Oh, remember that whole "Gov. Palin took on the Republican establishment" line that the McCain campaign has been repeating over and over. Well, guess what? According this article in the Washington Post, Mayor Palin was a director of Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc., a 527 group that could raise unlimited funds from corporate donors. Just in case you forgot, Ted Stevens is the now-indicted Alaskan Senator responsible for the Bridge to Nowhere! And, according to the same article, a campaign ad that Stevens made for Gov. Palin during her gubernatorial run was removed from her campaign website shortly after she was announced as Sen. McCain's running mate. It wasn't removed for almost two years after the election; it wasn't removed when Sen. Stevens was indicted; it was only removed when Gov. Palin was thrust onto the national stage. Gee, I wonder why?

And I may as well throw in a few more bits, just for yucks (this stuff keeps showing up online, almost too fast to keep up with -- and she hasn't even opened her mouth yet!).

One of the criticisms leveled against Gov. Palin is her lack of foreign policy and international experience. Not true, says Sen. McCain's wife Cindy: "Remember, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia, so it's not as if she doesn't understand what's at stake here..." Huh? I really, really want to comment on this, but frankly can't quite up with anything pithy enough to live up to the lunacy of Cindy McCain's statement.

What does Gov. Palin think about the war in Iraq? She thinks that it's God's war (watch this video and listen to her comments at 6:11):

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.

And at 11:20 or so, watch Gov. Palin nod as the pastor talks about Alaska being a "refuge" during the "last days" when "hundreds of thousands" of people from the Lower 48 will come to Alaska. It's also worth noting some of the things that Gov. Palin's pastor has said, including suggesting that anyone who doesn't vote for a Republican will go to hell and that anyone who criticises President Bush will go to hell. If Sen. Obama is subject to criticism for things that his pastor said, then Gov. Palin may be equally open to criticism related to her pastor's teachings.

Gov. Palin also supports aerial hunting of wolves in Alaska. (For additional information on this, please watch this video, but be forewarned that some of the images are disturbing.) I'm generally opposed to hunting, but recognize that hunting for food or to protect humans, livestock, or crops is acceptable. But hunting wolves in the Alaskan wilderness from planes? That's like fishing with dynamite. And the bounty on left legs is simply charming, isn't it?

As to earmarks, Gov. Palin's claim that she was against the "bridge to nowhere" also turned out to be incorrect. Apparently, she was for the bridge before she was against it. Only when Congress killed the funding and told Alaska to pay for the bridge themselves did Gov. Palin decide to end her support for the bridge. (Why do I doubt that Republicans will show Gov. Palin as much indignation for her flip flop as they did for Sen. Kerry in 2004...) Moreover, Gov. Palin's most recent requests to Congress for Alaskan earmarks totals $300 for every Alaskan! Maybe in Alaska they call it caribou instead of pork, but it all smells the same.

At the same time that she was asking the federal government to fund Alaskan projects, Gov. Palin was using her line item veto to cut by 20%, the budget of Covenant House Alaska, a series of programs for troubled teens, including Passage House which provides a transitional home for teenage mothers. I guess this shouldn't be a surprise given that Gov. Palin (and Sen. McCain) opposes medically accurate and comprehensive sex education programs and funding to prevent teen pregnancy. Abstinence only, baby!

I know that I'm rambling a bit, but I also wanted to briefly address the charge that some Republicans have levelled that the amount of scrutiny being aimed at Gov. Palin is unfair or is on account of her gender. My response to that? Bullshit. The problem is that nobody has ever heard of Gov. Palin and nobody knows what she stands for. Sen. Obama, Sen. Biden, and, for that matter, Sen. McCain (not to mention Sen. Clinton and all of the other former candidates for President) went through many months of talking to voters and the press, answering questions about their records and their plans and their ideas. They've debated each other, in public, repeatedly. Their detailed platforms have been posted online for all to read. The voting records (not to mention written records, in some cases) of the candidates have been examined in detail as have the numerous speeches and talks that the candidates have given. Each statement has been picked apart analyzed and reanalyzed and each gaffe has given rise to volumes of press and posts. But Gov. Palin comes to the process without all of this. She is an unknown thrust upon the national stage just days before she is to be formally nominated to run for Vice President. So neither the media nor bloggers nor the public have the time to wait to get to know Gov. Palin. The election is two months away and it is critical that as much information about the candidate become available as quickly as possible. That much of the information coming out is negative? Well, that just raises questions about the vetting process and Sen. McCain's judgment.

Finally, I couldn't help but chuckle at a story in this morning's The Indianapolis Star in which a Hoosier delegate to the Republican convention is shown proudly wearing her "Hoosiers for the Hot Chick" button. Can you imagine a "Hoosiers for the Black Dude" button? Nope, this election isn't about race or gender politics at all...

I'm not the only one with questions for Gov. Palin. Many members of the media would love to ask her questions about the AIP, troopergate (I just read that she refuses to testify...), earmarks, and numerous other things (oh, like issues, for example). But, since being named as the presumptive nominee last Friday, she has not answered any substantive questions from reporters except for an interview that she gave to People magazine (known for its hard-hitting political reporting...). Is she hiding from interviews and tough questions or are the Republicans working so hard to train her and bring her up to speed that they don't have time (or dare take the risk) of letting her be grilled yet? Ah, yes. The true spirit of the marketplace of ideas at work.

So who is Sarah Palin and why does John McCain think that she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency?

Obama & McCain's Views on Scientific Issues

I just came across an interesting chart comparing the views of Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain on a number of scientific issues, including climate change, stem-cell research, sex education, and evolution vs. intelligent design (thanks to Masson's Blog for finding this). The chart was prepared by Scientists & Engineers for America, a non-partisan, nonprofit, educational organization with a mission to "facilitate evidence-based decision making at all levels of government".

A review of the chart shows that Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain agree on quite a few points. Among the differences that I noticed:

• Sen. McCain favors subsidies for nuclear power but not for other types of alternative energy while Sen. Obama wants to invest money in research in alternative energy.
• Sen. McCain wants to build additional nuclear reactors to address energy needs while Sen. Obama believes that nuclear energy may be necessary but that we need to ensure it is safe and has public support before embarking on the construction of new nuclear reactors.
• Sen. McCain supports President Bush's view that abstinence-only sex education is the appropriate policy while Sen. Obama endorses comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education that is medically accurate and includes information about contraception.
• Sen. McCain favors offshore drilling while Sen. Obama says that he is willing to consider offshore drilling if it would provide short-term relief or be part of a long-term strategy for energy independence.
• Sen. McCain believes that intelligent design should be taught in classrooms while Sen. Obama recognizes the "difference between science and faith" and would not teach intelligent design in the classroom.
• Sen. McCain does not think that the government should get into the issue of net neutrality until and unless it becomes a problem, believing instead that the issue should be left to market forces while Sen. Obama strongly supports net neutrality.

The chart includes much more detail, including quotations and links to interviews and the candidates' respective platforms. Take a look and make up your own mind as to which candidate's views you find most appealing.

For what it's worth, on each of these issues, I generally side with Sen. Obama.

McCain's Choice for VP: America First or Alaska First?

Last week, in one my posts discussing the selection of Gov. Palin as the Republican nominee for Vice President, I included a quotation from an interview that Gov. Palin did with CNBC's Kudlow & Co. In that interview Palin said:

As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I'm used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we're trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question.

When I first referenced this statement last week, I focused on Gov. Palin's lack of understanding of what the Vice President does. However, with recent revelations about Gov. Palin's political affiliations, another part of this statement becomes even more important:

We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we're trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S.

(Emphasis added.) Why have I focused on this statement? Well, it seems that before Gov. Palin decided to run for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she was a member of the Alaska Independence Party.

From what I've been able to gather, the Alaska Independence Party does not believe that the 1958 vote that brought about statehood for Alaska was fair or legal (they claim that ineligible people were allowed to vote and that the vote did not conform to United Nations standards). The party apparently wants Alaskans to have another chance to vote and they want the vote to include the option of Alaska becoming an independent nation. (The reason that the previous statements are left somewhat hazy is because the party's website seems to be giving way under the strain of so many people trying to learn about the party; I haven't been able to access it at all to get a copy of the party's platform.) In 1990, Alaska elected a governor from the Alaska Independence Party. That former governor, Walter Joseph Hickel, was a supporter of Gov. Palin when she ran for the office in 2006. The party's founder, Joe Vogler, is buried in Canada because he refused to be buried under the flag of the United States.

So, with all of this in mind, think back to Gov. Palin's statement that the Vice Presidency would need to be "a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans" and ask yourself whether she is seeking the Vice Presidency to put America first or to put Alaska first. I don't know about you, but the idea of a Vice President who was a member of or supported a party with a secessionist agenda leaves me a bit ... um ... er ... cold.

And, even if her links to a secessionist party weren't enough, her lack of understanding of basic American history is also troubling. While running for governor in 2006, then-Mayor Palin was asked a series of questions by Eagle Forum Alaska in a candidate questionnaire, including the following question and Palin's response:

Q: Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

A: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

Apparently, Gov. Palin doesn't realize that the phrase "under God" was not added to the Pledge of Allegiance until the 1950s (in response to "godless" communism). Moreover, the Pledge of Allegiance itself wasn't written until 1892 (by a socialist Baptist minister)! Neither the founding fathers nor the framers of our Constitution had anything to do with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Constitution does not make reference to God.

That same candidate questionnaire and Gov. Palin's responses also help flesh out some of her positions on other issues:

Q: Complete the sentence by checking the applicable phrases (you can check more than one).
Abortion should be:
Banned throughout entire pregnancy.
Legal to save the life of the mother.
Legal in case of rape and incest.
Legal if the baby is handicapped.
Legal if the baby has a genetic defect.
Legal in the first trimester.
Legal in the second trimester.
Legal in the third trimester.
Other:__________________

A: I am pro-life. With the exception of a doctor’s determination that the mother’s life would end if the pregnancy continued. I believe that no matter what mistakes we make as a society, we cannot condone ending an innocent’s life.

So, it appears that Gov. Palin would not make an exception, even in the case of rape or incest. This position seems far out of touch with the position of much of the electorate, even much of the anti-abortion electorate. Furthermore, as I've discussed in the past, Judaism has a different view when it comes to abortion. Thus, while I respect Gov. Palin's reviews with regard to her own life, I am offended that she wants to tell me that my religion's understanding of life and death issues is wrong.

Q: Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?

A: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.

In other words, Gov. Palin believes that the only information that children (including teens) should receive with regard to sexual education should be abstinence. I, for one, have a very difficult time believing that we should not teach children the truth or give them the full set of facts. How many teens get pregnant (or STDs) because they either didn't have access to a quality, medically accurate, sex education program or didn't have access to contraceptives? I think that it is naive to think that, just because we tell teens to abstain, they will. We tell them not to drink and smoke but they do it anyway; we tell them not to do drugs, but that doesn't always work either. We even have trouble getting kids to do their homework when we tell them to. So why do we think that telling teens to abstain from sex will work? Everywhere teens turn, they are pummelled by images of sex and sexuality and we tell them to just ignore those images and, more importantly, ignore their teenage hormones, and simply abstain. Yeah, right. And if abstinence only education doesn't work, shouldn't we inform teens so that they will be able to make better decisions and better protect themselves, either from STDs or pregnancy? Not in Gov. Palin's world (or, for that matter, in world of Sen. McCain or President Bush or Gov. Daniels here in Indiana).

Q: Do you support the Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling that spousal benefits for state employees should be given to same-sex couples? Why or why not?

A: No, I believe spousal benefits are reserved for married citizens as defined in our constitution.

I don't really have much to add to this position other than to note that the question isn't even about gay marriage, but rather simple fairness of treatment. Gov. Palin doesn't believe that same-sex couples should be treated the same way as married couples. Thankfully (for Alaskans), the Alaska Supreme Court apparently believed that Alaska should not be allowed to discriminate against gay couples.

All I know is that it really appears as if Sen McCain's campaign did a very poor job of vetting Gov. Palin. I can't imagine Sen. McCain choosing a candidate who had previously espoused secession from the U.S. (or even giving people a chance to vote on the issue). And it seems incredible to have a candidate who doesn't even know the history of the Pledge of Allegiance (forget the issue whether "under God" should or should not be included; shouldn't the Governor or a state, let alone the Vice President, know the background of such fundamental American topics as the Pledge of Allegiance?). Add "troopergate" to the list of issues and controversies and Gov. Palin's nomination seems even less sound (but, as I've already suggested that her nomination was never about a quality candidate, but rather about gender politics, then these "extraneous" issues may not have mattered much to the McCain campaign).

Finally, I hope that all of this "disgruntled" supporters of Hillary Clinton to whom Gov. Palin's selection is supposed to be appealing will look closely at Gov. Palin's views on issues like abortion, sex education, and gay rights. Sen. Obama may not be the candidate that you wanted, but if those issues are important to you, then Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are even less worthy of being your candidate. Think about the questions that Sen. Clinton asked during the Democratic convention and ask yourself whether you support Sen. Clinton or whether you support the issues for which Sen. Clinton remains such a strong advocate. I have a hard time believing that anyone to whom those issues are important would rather give in on those issues solely to elect a woman to the Vice Presidency.

This is the third post in a series. Part one was posted on August 29, 2008 and Part two was posted on August 30, 2008.