By The River

Did you notice? Sarah Palin received NOT ONE tough question from moderator Gwen Ifill in the vice presidential debate tonight.

Nothing about the Bridge to Nowhere. Nothing about, "I can see Russia from my house." Nothing about her vehement opposition to abortion and stem cell research. Nothing about her demand that "Intelligent Design" be taught alongside evolution in high school biology classes. Nothing about firing the director of the Alaska State Police because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law, then involved in a bitter child custody dispute with her sister. Nothing but softball questions.

Ifill, a former New York Times reporter who now works for PBS, appears to have been thoroughly cowed by the rightwing attacks on her credibility that preceded the debate. Her "sin" in their eyes was to have a book coming out in January that included Sen. Barack Obama as one of four "breakthrough" black politicians. Which, win or lose, he is.

Ifill failed to keep Palin on topic, admittedly a tough task. Palin simply didn't answer questions she didn't like or couldn't answer, and at one point boasted that she wasn't going to be bound by the questions asked but would instead "tell my story to the American people." Palin showed that when she is coached for several weeks she can sound competent on stage. Why can't she do the same in an interview with Katie Couric?

Biden generally did well, better than I hoped. He smiled too much, though, and should have denounced Palin for accusing Obama of "waving the white flag of surrender" by wanting to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. That was despicable. I think she knew Biden was going easy on her and decided to chance taking a few cheap shots to please her handlers. It was gratifying to see that CBS's audience of undecideds showed (via their Nielsen meters) a sharp negative reaction to Palin's slur.

And Palin's voice. The "Fargo" voice. The dropped 'g's and the "betcha's." My younger daughter, age 11, finally announced that Palin's voice was quite annoying. She stuck out the entire debate, though, and I'm proud of her for that.

Posted by David at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

On paper, Sen. Joe Biden should wipe the floor with Gov. Sarah Palin in the vice presidential debate tonight in St. Louis. He is an experienced and respected U.S. Senator who heads the Foreign Relations Committee. Palin, on the other hand, has managed to make cringe-worthy remarks on each of the few times the McCain campaign has allowed her to speak to the press, most notably in the recent Katie Couric interview.

But Biden is prone to what I'll call "honest gaffes" in which the vocal cords get out ahead of the brain synapses. A recent example of this was when he commented that President Frankin D. Roosevelt spoke "on television" to the American people about the Great Depression. Of course, he meant FDR's famous "Fireside Chats" on radio. He knew that. He just misspoke himself. The danger is that this sort of a gaffe can prove a distraction to his and Barack Obama's overall message.

Not that I think it's going to matter. Obama is surging in the polls, taking a significant lead over McCain overall and in important swing states like Pennsyvania, Ohio, and Florida. I was driving through Hampden Twp. in West Shore suburban Harrisburg yesterday and was pleased at the number of Obama yard signs I saw in this Republican stronghold. If Obama can keep up the good work, our eight-year national nightmare that began with the stolen election in 2000 may soon be over.

Posted by David at 06:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Barack Obama did what he had to do in his initial debate with John McCain.

He stood up to McCain's repeated taunts and delivered cogent arguments in support of the foreign policies he would embrace as President. Whether you agree or disagree with his positions, he argued them well and didn't ever flounder. Unlike McCain, Obama didn't mangle the names of foreign heads of state or veer off on weird tangents, such as when McCain tried to make "watch Ukraine" the new national watchwords. The CBS audience meter showed a decided spike for Obama when he drove home the point that McCain had supported the Iraq War from the start and helped spread Bush's nonsense about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

My only disappointment in Obama's performance was his embrace of the "Russia all bad, Georgia all good" argument that McCain and his neo-conservative supporters have been advancing since Russia moved troops into South Ossetia to defend the population there against Georgian aggression. I wish he would have thrown more caveats into his support for Georgia. McCain again voiced support for bringing Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO, which should increase the risk of a needless and bloody war with Russia by quite a bit.

The debate was nearly as much about economics as it was about foreign policy. I credit Obama with keeping the economic focus on the middle class and how they are struggling. McCain probably solidified his support with the "cut taxes and cut government programs" crowd who don't care if America doesn't solve its problems as long as they're not inconvenienced. But I doubt if he won much support among average Americans struggling with layoffs and no health insurance.

No knockout punches were landed by either candidate, but Obama won on points by sounding smart and informed and not like a babe in the woods on the important foreign policy issues of the day. That's supposed to be McCain's strong point, at least if you ignore a lot of things.

Posted by David at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Project Censored, which has been around for 32 years, has released its annual list of the top 25 "censored" stories, meaning those that haven't gotten the attention of the media but which seem like they ought to have.

Topping the list is the allegation that 1 million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. occupation of their country. Bringing up the rear is the claim that former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer was brought down by the Bush Administration (with help from his dalliance with a prostitute) because of his war against the sub-prime mortgage mess now making headlines and giving John McCain an excuse to maybe duck tonight's debate with Barack Obama.

Project Censored picks their "censored" stories from a leftist perspective, but whether you agree or disagree with their choices, they do make you think.

Posted by David at 06:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So on the day that new polls show Barack Obama significantly widening his lead over John McCain, in large part because the public is terrified of the tanking economy and doesn't believe McCain has a clue, the Arizona senator dramatically "suspends" his campaign and asks that the Presidential debate scheduled for Friday night be postponed for the supposed good of the country. He wants to work with Obama to craft a consensus on a bail-out plan for the fat-cat bankers who got us into this mess, preferably without inconveniencing them in any way.

And when would the first debate be held? Why, it would be on Oct. 2 in place of the vice presidential debate. When would the vice presidential debate be held? Uh, they're working on that. At a later date. Sometime. Maybe during Game 7 of the World Series.

Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania pointed out to the New York Times that it was highly unlikely Congress would be in session on Friday at 9 p.m., when the first debate is scheduled. Obama, who has wisely rejected McCain's call to suspend his own campaign and postpone the first debate, said being President is nothing if not about multi-tasking several crises at once. He said the American people deserve to hear how he or McCain would handle the Wall Street crisis when one of them takes office in January.

This is a transparent political ploy by McCain to draw attention away from his slumping poll numbers and, even more importantly, to stop the vice presidential debate between his ball-and-chain, er, running mate, Sarah Palin and Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden. Judging by her halting performance in her interview with Katie Couric of CBS News broadcast tonight, McCain has real cause for concern.

Posted by David at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a fun new drinking game. Watch Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric of CBS News. Everytime she drops a "g," take a drink of your favorite adult beverage. You'll be sloshed in no time! Last man or woman standing wins! If nothing else you will numb the pain and temporarily ease the gut-wrenching fear you have that Palin might become President.

Posted by David at 09:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Obama leads McCain by 52 to 43 percent among likely voters in the latest Washington Post poll. Voters believe he is more likely to deal with the current economic woes than McCain. And they are figuring out that Palin gives them the willies.

Don't get over-confident...

Posted by David at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After four weeks on the ticket, Republican John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin still isn't deemed ready to meet the press. The McCain campaign tried to exclude all reporters from a "meeting" Palin had with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. They only intended to let in cameras, and only for half a minute, but CNN then announced it was pulling out its cameras and Palin's handlers relented. Sort of.

You have to understand that most polticians allow reporters to attend and ask questions at photo ops. Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania is famous for it. But Palin is obviously deemed by her handlers to be so vulnerable to saying something stupid about a whole range of things that they can't risk letting her "inform" the public except through carefully scripted statements she reads off a teleprompter.

This is no laughing matter. What if McCain drops dead or is incapacitated in his first month in office? Do you want Palin running the country and controlling our destinies? In truth, she would be a figurehead president controlled by lobbyists. Much like McCain already is.

But it's looking better for Obama. He's doing well in key polls.

Posted by David at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We find ourselves at an odd juncture where economics have overtaken politics, where the collapse of Wall Street titans like Lehman Brothers has, at least for now, pushed McCain, Palin, Obama, and Biden out of the main headlines of the day.

That will change this Friday, of course, when the first of the Presidential Debates is held. But for now, Wall Street has our attention. No one has jumped out of a building, other than figuratively, but the collapse and the $700 billion no-strings bail-out proposed by the Bush Administration has changed, perhaps permanently, the tenor of the campaign. The only real questions being asked anymore are whether the candidates support the bail-out or support it with modifications.

Just as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, wiped out the obsessions of the summer of 2001, most notably the Chandra Levy case, Wall Street's woes have terminated our current obsessions over Sarah Palin's qualifications, or lack thereof, and the pressing question of whether Obama is really a radical Muslim anti-Christ. Yes, the anti-Christ. Toss that around while you're passing the rattlesnakes. I hope Palin, a rightwing religious zealot, is asked directly at the Vice Presidential Debate whether she believes this garbage.

And there I go, obsessing about Palin when George W. Bush wants to hand $700 billion to Wall Street to repair the woes the Republicans created with their "government bad, deregulation good" schemes over the past eight or so years.

Posted by David at 06:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Kudos to the folks at NarcoNews.com in Alaska for digging out the story about the tanning bed Gov. Sarah Palin had installed in the Governor's Mansion in Juneau. They got a tip from a citizen and broke a story which, while not as cancerous (in metaphorical terms) as some of the others, raises a lot of interesting questions.

But first, tanning beds are those sarcophogus-shaped machines in which one lies down to get an off-season tan. I used one myself a couple of times when I was heading down to Latin America and wanted to get a base tan to reduce my chances of getting a bad burn. NarcoNews quotes a Fairbanks tanning salon operator as saying a tanning bed costs upwards of $35,000 and the electric work is extra. Interestingly, the mansion has had a lot of electric work lately, but an official spokesman insists it was merely to bring the house up to code. No doubt.

Palin's spokesman says she paid for the tanning bed herself, which is what you'd better say if your the reform queen and don't want to go to reform school. Well, I guess adults can't do that. Using taxpayer funds would turn your reform credentials into something looking like a bad application of Tanfastic, if they still market that stuff. Accepting it as a gift would mean disclosing it on her financial disclosure form, since its value is higher than $150. That's Alaska law. NarcoNews says there's no mention of it on her form.

So we are left with the possibility that she dropped $35,000 on an impulse purchase, which is nice if you can manage it on a salary of about $115,000 a year. But none of her kids appear likely to incur any college expenses, so maybe Palin was feeling flush. Of course, there's that shotgun wedding to pay for, but how much is a box of shells?

All kidding aside, the steady drip, drip, drip of embarrassing revelations about Palin can't be helping her standing among voters. Or at least I hope.

Posted by David at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

John McCain, reeling from harsh reaction to his Hoover-like comment today that "the fundamentals of the American economy are strong," unveiled what may be a new attack line against the Democrats: that criticism of the sad state of the economy means you're "against" American workers.

Now that isn't exactly what he said, but it's the clear implication of his follow-up comments. To wit: “My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong…. Our workers have always been the strength of our economy, and they remain the strength of our economy today.”

Given that for the last five years any criticism of the Iraq War meant you were "against" the troops fighting the war--a ludicrous argument, but one hammered home by Republicans--it only stands to reason that the next falsehood from McCain would be an accusation that if Obama criticizes the state of the Bush economy, he must have contempt for American workers.

Don't think it's possible? Too stupid for words? Let's see what you think in a few weeks. I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect I'm not.

Posted by David at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been thinking a lot about the false testimony given by members of the Dover (Pa.) Area School Board during the Intelligent Design trial in Harrisburg in 2005, and how it relates to the strategy of lying being employed by Republican presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin to burnish their own records and tarnish that of Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

To refresh your memory, the Dover school board was taken over by religious fundamentalists in the early part of the decade. By the fall of 2003, their control was complete. A year later, they took steps to introduce their conservative religious beliefs into the teaching of high school biology at Dover. Specifically, students were required to listen to a statement read by school officials (science teachers refused, at great risk to their jobs) designed to cast doubt on Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

A group of parents sued, and the ACLU and the Pepper Hamilton law firm in Philadelphia took their case on a pro bono basis. When members of the school board were deposed under oath on Jan. 3, 2005, they spun a web of lies about their deeds and motivations, denying, for example, that they ever talked about creationism at public meetings, in the face of a host of witnesses who said they did. They continued spinning fantasies when the case went to trial in the fall of 2005. They lost utterly, were thrown out of office by Dover citizens (who were stuck with a million dollars in legal fees), and were denounced for their false testimony by Judge John Jones III in his ruling in the case in late 2005.

This was, I think, a case of misguided faith that they did nothing wrong triumphing over clear and easily available facts. The Dover school board members involved in the case confused faith in God with faith in themselves and their own godliness, and they went down to destruction--although the Bush Administration Justice Department has so far not lifted a finger to prosecute them for perjury.

I don't think Palin is stupid enough to believe she never supported the Bridge to Nowhere, or that she really went to Iraq like she said (the latest controversy), or that she didn't try to get her brother-in-law fired as a state trooper because a bitter child custody suit with her sister. I suspect she and McCain have cynically calculated that the voters from the religious right who worship Palin will take her denials on faith. They need these voters to have any chance to win.

McCain's spokesman told Politico today that they turned to the dark side because the press wasn't covering their "nice" campaign earlier in the summer. McCain has decided to win at any cost.

I know the Clinton haters will come crawling out from under their logs to say that he did it first. Yes, he lied about private, consensual sex. He didn't tell personally damaging lies about George H.W. Bush or Bob Dole, his electoral opponents in 1992 and 1996. That's such a big difference it's ludicrous to even spend any time discussing it. I have to laugh when I think about how newspapers ran stories during the Clinton impeachment in 1998 about how to talk to your children about what Clinton did.

Perhaps it's time for a new round of stories about how to explain to your kids that even if McCain and Palin tell blatant lies, it's not okay for them to do it

Posted by David at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Anchorage Daily News contributes another fine article about Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, this one examining her ultra-conservative religious beliefs. They weren't able to ask any new questions to Palin. The McCain campaign refused to let her answer these questions the public has a right to know.

Same for this accompanying article about how Palin used state funds to travel to a graduation ceremony at an overtly religious school in her hometown of Wasilla and deliver an overtly religious speech. The speech, among other things, urged students to pray for a new natural gas pipeline she favored.

Posted by David at 07:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Don't expect Republican nominee for vice president Sarah Palin to meet the press anytime soon, if ever. She's the only candidate not scheduled for one of the Sunday morning talk shows tomorrow, and no interviews with major national media are in the cards anytime soon. Can the Rove-McCain team pull it off? Can they keep her from saying anything unscripted and embarrassing until the election is over? I'm not even sure she's going to debate Joe Biden. The GOP may brazenly refuse, or set unacceptable conditions for her participation. She'll be portrayed as a chicken, a lightweight, or worse, but that may be better for McCain than for her to go on national television and announce that it's God's will that McCain wins, or say anything about abortion.

And on the "qualified?" front comes word that Palin attended five colleges in six years before limping across the finish line with a journalism degree (see Joe Namath, Alabama) from the University of Idaho. Not that she apparently ever worked at the campus newspaper or TV station. But let's be real: anyone who's been to college knows 5+6 doesn't add up to "serious student." You can be sure the party girl stories are coming.

If any of you think the press is being mean, or partisan, or whatever in digging up dirt on Palin, let me give you two words: George Bush. The press, or enough of the press, didn't do its job in 2000 when Bush was pretending to be a moderate in his campaign against Al Gore. They aren't about to get fooled again, especially when Palin stands a better than even chance of succeeding to the presidency, not getting elected to it. If the press does its job, no one who casts a vote for Palin as vice president in November will be able to claim they didn't know who she really was.

Posted by David at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This just in: Republican Sen. John McCain says he'll spend his entire Presidency in a dank, 4x6-foot cell in the White House basement, just like the one where he spent his P.O.W. years in the Hanoi Hilton. "I did my best thinking there," McCain said. "There's nothing like a good beating to make you think like a Republican."

That's not true, of course, but it might as well be. Enough already. McCain's biographical film last night at the Republican National Convention, his acceptance speech, and just about every other thing said about him during the convention was heavy on the P.O.W., light on specifics of what he would do to get the country out of the mess it has been left in by George W. Bush, who wasn't mentioned by name in the speech. Laura Bush was, but not George W. Neither was abortion.

McCain touted the same economic plan that has been on his website since at least last April. He mentioned once again his plan to "change" unemployment compensation. He gave no details, but you can be sure conservative Republicans don't like the idea of you sitting around and dreaming of getting your old job back. They want to "retrain" you for something else. If you live in a small town with few opportunities, does that mean you "retrain" for McDonald's? Or move halfway across the country? Or lose your benefits if you refuse? He doesn't say. This strikes me as yet another stealth attempt by the right to eliminate or greatly reduce a tax paid by business, in this case the unemployment compensation tax, just as Bush's failed attempt to "reform" Social Security was at its heart an effort to eliminate or reduce the half of Social Security taxes paid by business.

McCain's speech struck me as almost as a valedictory, a summing up of a career more than a serious call to action. He looked old. A vigorous old, but old. With the Church Lady by his side, he will set out for one last joust against the windmill.

Posted by David at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin gave a safe speech tonight in accepting the Republican nomination for vice president. It was devoid of any indication that she is a rightwing religious zealot. She was back in stealth mode, hiding her faith under a bushel. There was not a word about abortion, which she opposes in all instances, or stem cell research, or so-called Intelligent Design.

As Palin delivered her speech in her chirpy voice, smiling broadly, I kept thinking of her demanding that books be banned from the Wasilla Public Library after she became mayor in 1996, and cruelly firing the town librarian when she refused to go along. Public outrage forced her to retreat and restore the librarian to her job. And throwing her own mother-in-law under the bus in an election to succeed her as mayor because she was pro-choice.

And there was at least one moment of pure mendacity in the speech, when Palin claimed she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere" from the beginning, when in fact she was for it long before she was against it and kept the money for other state projects.

The cameras several times showed the tele-prompters that Palin was reading off. Her real test will come when she goes out on the campaign trail and faces the press in unscripted situations where the McCain campaign can't control the questions she is asked. She will be asked again and again about the book banning attempt, her support if not official membership (assuming the records weren't altered) of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, and her documented, on the record support of the Bridge to Nowhere and other earmarks.

And everything else.

Posted by David at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Obviously the Republicans have been singed by the many comments, including here, about the lack of black faces in the audience at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night. I'm watching on PBS, and it seems a black or Asian face pops up every time the camera pans the crowd. Coincidence? A sudden surge of attendance by blacks eager to hear white men and women speak? Doubtful. Ringers? Perhaps. Or artful moving around of the few blacks there as delegates.

Right now, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is speaking and snarking his way through a predictable speech. And old white guys in cowboy hats are jumping up and down and yelling "Zero!" for what they have deluded themselves into believing is the sum total of Obama's experience. Giuliani is the worst. I feel like throwing something at the TV.

Now the delegates are working themselves into a frenzy, yelling "Drill, Baby, Drill!"

Posted by David at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a favorite of the religious right, is speaking right now at the Republican National Convention. He just denounced Barack Obama for going to Europe earlier this summer and bringing back supposedly dangerous "European ideas" like health care for all. Huckabee, like most of his rightwing ilk, calls that "picking your pocket." Big applause from the delegates.

Huck''s an entertaining speaker by and large, if you ignore the deeper meaning of his remarks and who he's really speaking to. He wasn't so great ethically as governor of Arkansas, but that never holds back rightwing Republicans.

Posted by David at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times is reporting tonight that presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, shortly after becoming mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, approached the town librarian about banning certain books from the public library, then fired the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, after Emmons pledged to resist all censorship. Public outcry forced Palin to rescind the firing and back off from removing books that offended her fundamentalist religious beliefs.

This is scary stuff, and it is time to face the fact that Palin is a religious zealot. The article describes how she defeated the incumbent mayor by introducing wedge issues like abortion and guns to municipal elections that had been folksy affairs about real local issues up till then. Even worse, she said that Wasilla would have its "first Christian mayor," a slap at the more casual religious beliefs of the incumbent mayor.

People wonder why the press and bloggers are being so hard on Palin. This is why. I said a few minutes ago that I thought her membership in the secessionist Alaska Independence Party would ultimately be the most damaging thing to come out about her. I take that back. I can't imagine John McCain wants to run with a woman who sought to ban books and fired the town librarian. This is something that goes to the worst fears of many moderates and liberals, and not a few real conservatives.

We in central Pennsylvania have the example of the Dover Area School Board to show what can happen when religious zealots take over government. In 2005, they tried to introduce so-called Intelligent Design to the high school biology curriculum in Dover as a challenge to evolution and in violation of the Constitutional separation of church and state. They lost utterly when they were sued in Federal court by angry parents, and were defeated for re-election, but they cost local taxpayers a million dollars in legal fees and tore the community apart.

Palin can do a lot more damage to America as vice president, or, God forbid, as president, than the Dover Area School Board could. She will be the running mate of a 72-year-old man with a history of skin cancer who won't let his doctors fully and freely discuss his medical history. He was a prisoner-of-war under brutal conditions, an experience that has shortened the lives of other prisoners held in similar conditions. The chance of Palin succeeding to the presidency is much, much higher than it has been for any other vice president.

We have every right to question every aspect of her life.

Posted by David at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Everytime the cameras scanned the audience tonight at the Republican National Convention, I searched for black faces. I think I saw one (Thomas Sowell?), but white people, especially older white people, predominated among the delegates. No surprise, really. The GOP is mainly a white party, dominated by the South.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, completed his estrangement from his party with a speech at the convention endorsing John McCain. He looked uncomfortable, and his wife, Hadassah Lieberman, who made a campaign stop here in Harrisburg in 2000 when her husband was Al Gore's running mate, looked even more so. She was seated next to Cindy McCain, and got the kiss-kiss from Barbara Bush the Elder when Lieberman's obnoxious speech was over.

Tomorrow night is Sarah Palin's night. She will accept the nomination for vice president, assuming nothing surfaces in the morning news cycle to give McCain second thoughts. But I'm not counting on it. Better her withdrawal happen in about two weeks anyhow. Associated Press is reporting tonight that Levi Johnston, husband-to-be of Palin's pregnant daughter Bristol, is on his way from Alaska to Minnesota for a big family values photo-op at the convention after his future mother-in-law's acceptance speech. His mother insists he wasn't pressured into marrying her. Interestingly, she won't say if he's still in high school.

Posted by David at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

President George W. Bush, speaking on a television link tonight to the Republican National Conven tion, endorsed John McCain for president. Even better, he praised McCain's support of the Iraq War. McCain is George's man. Remember that.

Posted by David at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This gets crazier and crazier. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was formerly a member, along with her husband, of the Alaska Independence Party, which favors secession from the United States. So much for putting America first, which John McCain has made the slogan of his campaign for President. Check out the video link on the Jed Report blog, which juxtaposes Palin's welcoming speech to the AIP with a speech by the party's founder at a secessionist convention in Tennessee. If there was any serious vetting of Palin by McCain, this should have been picked up.

Marry in haste, repent at leisure...

Posted by David at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With the announcement yesterday that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five-months pregnant, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin sought to quash rumors that her four-month-old son Trig, the one with Down Syndrome, was really Bristol's child.

Of course, we have to take her at her word that Bristol is only five months pregnant and not four, or three. Palin also said Bristol will marry the father, later identified as Levi Johnston, a hometown boy.

The questions that occur to me are: (1) Did Gov. Palin encourage her daughter to use birth control? Not likely. Palin favors "abstinence only" sex education. (2) Did Bristol want to end the pregnancy? (3) Did she really want to get married to Levi, or was this forced upon her by her parents? (4) Had she planned to go to college after high school, or was settling down with a local boy her goal in life? (5) Will she even finish high school? She already missed a lot last year from "mononucleosis," we're told.

None of this would be any of our business if Palin wasn't seeking the vice presidency of the United States and presenting herself as a so-called "family values" candidate blessed by the religious right, by James Dobson of Focus on the Family himself.

By marrying Bristol off to Levi, Gov. Palin will likely be leaving her behind in Alaska and have one less distraction if she goes off to Washington as John McCain's vice president. Did "Sarah Barracuda" as she was known in high school, let her ambition dictate her daughter's life as well? We now know she threw her own mother-in-law under the bus, supporting the opposing candidate to succeed her as mayor of Wasilla because the elder Mrs. Palin, who lost the election, was pro-choice.

I had to laugh yesterday when I heard that the McCain campaign was sending a team of lawyers to Alaska for to finally do some real vetting of Palin. Marry in haste, repent at leisure.

Posted by David at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh, to be a reporter right now on the staff of the Anchorage Daily News. The big snows haven't come and an important national story has landed in their laps.

I'm referring, of course, to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her pick by Sen. John McCain as his running mate on the Republican ticket. Palin is an embarassment of riches, it seems, when it comes to scandal. The latest story out of Anchorage has the former state police commissioner, the one Palin fired for refusing to fire her cheatin' brother-in-law, saying Palin spoke to him personally about the matter.

If so, that would be (1) an abuse of power, or (2) official oppression, take your pick. Palin would have used the power of her position as governor--a post she's held for all of 18 months--to pursue a private vendetta against the man involved in a bitter divorce and child custody dispute with her sister. The Alaska State Police, like every police department, have rules and regulations governing trooper behavior, and a well-defined disciplinary process. Palin sought to bypass that.

But again, I would point you to the comments in the story that quote the former state police commissioner as saying the McCain campaign never contacted him about Palin when they were supposedly "vetting" Palin for the vice presidency. Alaska GOP leaders say the McCain folks didn't send anyone to Alaska to check into the background of the woman they would put a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Looking at this from a broader historical perspective, Palin would seem to be the latest in a string of Republican appointees who have crashed and burned over ethical issues during the Bush Administration. I guess when you think the federal government is the great Satan, you don't much care who you pick to conduct the nation's business.

As Hurricane Gustav bears down on New Orleans, it would be wise to consider this Republican record of incompetence and corruption and wonder if perhaps Palin ought to make a hasty exit from the ticket. It won't happen, though, because the religious right sees Palin as saintly for her stance on abortion and would erupt in anger if McCain admitted he made a mistake and dumped her. Expect a statement from McCain soon that he is backing her "1000 percent."

The Eagleton in my headline is Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who withdrew as Sen. George McGovern's running mate in 1972 after it was learned he had twice undergone electro-shock treatment in a mental hospital for "nervous exhaustion." Eagleton had been picked on July 14, 1972, after only a minimal background check in which he failed to mention the hospitalizations and treatments. He withdrew on Aug. 1 despite McGovern saying he was backing him "1000 percent." He was replaced by Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver, father of Maria Shriver. The ticket went on to a crushing defeat.

All the talk of Palin being a "game-changing move" for McCain won't matter a hill of beans if she is being battered on a daily basis by new revelations that the minimal background check on her failed to reveal.

Posted by David at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Let us dispense immediately with the thought that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate to "reach out" to disaffected, diehard Hillary Clinton supporters. She is a darling of the hard right, of the religious right, forced on McCain--who met her only once--by Karl Rove, who I suspect would rather have the Republican Party go down to defeat than have a squishy moderate pro-choicer like Tom Ridge or ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman on the ticket. The idea that Hillary's most fervent supporters would support Palin simply because she is a woman is ludicrous, as you will see.

Republican leaders in Alaska say the McCain team didn't send anyone to Alaska to vet Palin (read about 3/4 of the way down the linked story), which if true is an incredibly foolish mistake that hints of a last-minute change-of-mind after Karl Rove warned against picking Lieberman. You can't get the true measure of a person without talking to people who inhabit the same environment he or she does. My gut feeling is that this is going to end badly for McCain, perhaps with a Thomas Eagleton-like withdrawal of Palin from the ticket. He had apparently met her only once.

So who is Sarah Palin? Her choice should quiet Republican claims that Barack Obama is "inexperienced." She has been governor of Alaska, a state with 650,000 residents, for 18 months. Prior to that, she was mayor of the town of Wasilla, Alaska, which on the official city website is listed a having a population of 6,715. To put those population figures in central Pennsylvania terms, she was the governor of a state with a population just a little more than the combined populations of Dauphin, Cumberland, Lebanon and Perry counties. She was the mayor of a town with a population falling between that of Steelton and Camp Hill. And let's not forget her two terms on City Council in Wasilla. She was elected governor with a vote total of 114,697 votes, a couple of hundred MORE votes than President George W. Bush received in 2004--in York County, Pennsylvania.

So okay, Palin hasn't exactly been voted for by huge numbers of people. In fairness, many Democrats in 2004 would have been quite willing to have former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont--a state with even fewer residents than Alaska--become President. And Delaware, home of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, has just 844,000 people.

But where does Palin stand on the issues of the day? Her Palin-for-Governor website has been scrubbed of specific issue papers, but the record is there. She is against abortion except to save the life of the mother, and would require victims of rape or incest to bear their attacker's baby. Palin, 44, has been deified in pro-life circles for refusing to get an abortion, as 80 percent of mothers in the same situation do, after being told her fetus would have Down Syndrome.

The baby is now four months-old and has accompanied Palin on her initial campaign forays with McCain. But here is where the lack of vetting could get interesting. Palin kept her pregnancy a secret for seven months. Why? There is a belief among some in Alaska that this is actually her 16-year-old daughter's baby. The daughter disappeared from school for several months, supposedly with a persistent case of mononucleosis. True? Who knows. Unfair and intrusive? Probably. But if Palin is going to push to take away a woman's right to choose, and hold herself up as a holy paradigm--Focus on the Family founder James Dobson called it "bravery and integrity in action"--it goes with the territory if you're running to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Palin is an evangelical Christian, and attends fundamentalist churches. She is against embryonic stem cell research, and favors the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public school biology classes. She said that in a televised debate while running for governor in 2006.

And on the environment? Her views line up squarely with those of Big Oil. She strongly favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and opposed the decision by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to list polar bears as an endangered species.

How has Palin been as governor? Good in some respects, Republican in others. She is under investigation by the Alaska Legislature for supposedly pressuring, or having her staff pressure, the head of the Alaska State Police to fire her sister's husband, who was then involved in a bitter divorce and child custody dispute, and then firing the head of the state police when he refused to fire the trooper. Palin's brother-in-law sounds like no prize, but governors must refrain from allowing their personal feelings to trump law and common sense. In fact, the whole brother-in-law saga sounds like a trashy reality TV show, which may actually play well in some quarters of the electorate.

Palin deserves credit for having come this far, and for attacking some of the corruption in the Alaska Republican Party, one of the more snakebitten political organizations to walk the Earth. She would probably be a welcome addition to the U.S. Senate. But she isn't ready to stand next-in-line to a 72-year-old President with persistent skin cancer problems that he still won't allow his doctors to fully discuss.

Posted by David at 07:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I felt a lot better about the election last night after watching Bill Clinton's wonderful speech endorsing Barack Obama for President. Anyone Democrat who watched that speech was transported back to the 1990s and the best of Bill Clinton's eight years in the White House. I'm listening to it again today on The New York Times website, and it's just as good. My favorite line: "People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power." That's the same point author Ron Suskind makes in his new book, "The Way of the World," that America will only reclaim its position in the world by returning to its ideals and repudiating the Bush-Cheney torture regime.

Hillary's speech Tuesday night was also good, but she's never been the speaker her husband is. I still worry that her attacks on Obama during the primary campaign will help John McCain, but their speeches in Denver went a long way to repairing that damage.

Posted by David at 07:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Breaking news out of Denver concerns a possible assassination plot against Barack Obama. FBI and Secret Service agents arrested two men and a woman after police in Aurora, Colo., arrested a third man after pulling him over for driving erratically, as if drunk. In the truck were two scoped rifles, ammunition, sighting scopes, a bulletproof vest, and walkie-talkies. He allegedly implicated the others, one of whom jumped from a sixth floor hotel window when authorities arrived to question him, but survived. The plot was supposedly to shoot Obama on Thursday night while he delivers his acceptance speech outdoors before 70,000 people at Invesco Field. One of the men wore a white supremacist swastika ring.

I've linked the Los Angeles Times report on the plot above. I recommend watching the YouTube video it includes of a local Denver television report on the arrests. Here also is a column today from Bob Herbert of The New York Times in which he mentions a Detroit Free Press poll that showed 57 percent of Michigan residents feared that someone would try to hurt Obama because of his race and that they feared for his safety.

Posted by David at 07:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. Barack Obama has picked Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. Great choice! Pennsylvania now moves decisively into the Obama column. Biden, an Irish Catholic born in Scranton, will do much to recapture the votes of Democrats in the Anthracite Region who went overwhelmingly for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primary. Will this lead McCain to pick former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who is pro-choice, to keep his chances here alive? Or cause McCain to write off Pennsylvania entirely and pick a running mate from the GOP's right to shore up his votes there?

Posted by David at 05:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm just getting around to the latest Franklin & Marshall Poll. It was collected Aug. 4-10 and shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain in Pennsylvania by 8 points among all voters, and by by 5 points among "likely" voters. The poll reinforces the general belief that the election is Obama's to lose, but runs counter to a growing perception that Pennsylvania is McCain's to lose. In fact, it may be why McCain is giving serious consideration to picking former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge as his running mate: he needs help in the Keystone State.

Some of the poll's findings: 77 percent of Pennsylvania residents believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, and 37 percent are worse off economically this year than last. A majority of the state, 55 percent, believe McCain will follow the policies of President George W. Bush and are less likely to vote for him as a result.

Obama leads among younger voters, non-whites, college graduates, women, and residents of Philadelphia. An almost comical 82 percent of Philadelphians are for Obama, compared to just 7 percent for McCain. McCain leads among Protestants, fundamentalist Christians, and among residents of northwest and northeast Pennsylvania. That latter statistic is among reasons Obama is considering Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. Biden is an Irish Catholic who spent the first 10 years of his life in Scranton.

And here's my favorite statistic from the poll: 3 percent of Pennsylvania residents believe President George W. Bush is doing an "excellent" job. Who are these people?

Posted by David at 06:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

When you look at who is being considered by Barack Obama and John McCain as their vice presidential running mates, the importance of Pennsylvania to each becomes clear.

McCain, the Republican, is said to have former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge high on his list. Some rapturous Republicans here think that would give McCain an easy victory in Pennsylvania. I'm not so sure. McCain will get a lot of those votes no matter who he picks, and the Republicans haven't done that well in statewide elections of late. McCain might be betting that Ridge can make him palatable to white Democrats who are reluctant to vote for Obama because of his race.

Ridge carries liabilities here as well, including his consorting with Enron during the push to electric competition in 1996. The records of that are locked away for 25 years under the state's idiotic records laws. Don't count on the Repubican-controlled Senate to allow any consideration of a bill to open Ridge's gubernatorial papers to public inspection. Nationally, Ridge was the first Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, a millstone around anyone's neck. Expect a lot of document searches there under the much-stronger federal Freedom of Information Act to ferret out any dirt from that, especially as relates to the run-up to Hurricane Katrina and the FEMA cesspool.

And of course, there is the whole issue of Ridge being pro-choice and thus supposedly unacceptable to the religious right that forms the base of the Republican Party nationally. I suspect that if Ridge gets the nomination, the right would come to tolerate him. He was never a table pounder for abortion rights, seeming moderate only in contrast to the ban-abortion crowd.

On the Democratic side, Obama has two potential choices with strong Pennsylvania backgrounds. Hillary Clinton's father, Hugh Rodham, was born and raised in Scranton, and the family had a cottage on Lake Winola in the Poconos. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, who is in the running mainly for his foreign policy background, was also born in Scranton and lived there until age 10, when the family moved to Delaware. He is an Irish Catholic--his mother was a Finnegan. Both Clinton and Biden would help Obama win votes outside of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh regions, especially in the Anthracite Region around Scranton.

And of course, Obama could ensure that Pennsylvania's electoral votes end up in his column by selecting Gov. Ed Rendell, who remains popular across the state even if deeply annoying to Democratic liberals who consider him a (DINO) Democrat In Name Only. Rendell has disclaimd any interest, in part because of the Catherine problem. The elderly Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll would become governor if Rendell becomes vice president, and she just isn't up to the demands of the job.

So Pennsylvania appears likely to be fought over in 2008 even more than it was in 2004 or 2000. That doesn't guarantee we'll get a vice presidential candidate on either ticket with state ties. Winning national elections CAN be done without Pennsylvania, even if we relish thinking of ourselves as the keystone to victory.

Update: I think we can scratch Ed Rendell off the list, if he was ever on it. Rendell just named a new Secretary of Environmental Protection, John Hanger. I doubt Hanger would have agreed to take the job without some assurance that Rendell wasn't going to resign in the next couple of months.

Posted by David at 06:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, do you ever wonder how many Americans think Soviet troops invaded the U.S. state of Georgia?

Given the state of geographical and political knowledge here, there have to be at least a few. Sad, really. But let's take this a little further and imagine that the Atlanta government had clamped down hard on its northern counties, say an area of about 31x31 miles. In that enclave, which once was a part of Tennessee, the Atlanta government imposed a language not spoken by 90 percent of the population and took away their right to vote. The enclave declared its independence, attacked state officials send from Atlanta to enforce the new rules, and appealed to the rest of America for help. In response, the Atlanta government sends in the National Guard to brutally suppress the rebellion, burning towns and killing hundreds of old people, women and children in the breakaway counties.

Meanwhile, the Federal government in Washington moves troops across the Tennessee border to free the northern enclave from Atlanta control. Fighting between American troops and the Georgia National Guard is fierce, but the National Guard quickly retreats. American troops continue beyond the enclave and march on Atlanta to punish the state for its murderous actions against the breakaway counties. This draws harsh condemnation from Vladimir Putin in Russia, who is close to the governor of Georgia thanks to a lobbyist on his staff who until recently represented Georgia interests in Moscow. Putin says "We are all Georgians" and urges his country to back Georgia. The European Union sends diplomats to America to try to broker a ceasefire.

Who would you back in this situation? The state government in Atlanta or the federal government in Washington? Would Putin seem like a belligerant, meddling idiot, seeking to interfere in matters clearly within Washington's legitimate sphere of influence?

The point I'm trying to make, of course, is that Sen. John McCain is pursuing a wrong-headed, dangerous course in his unabashed, unqualified backing for the country of Georgia in the fight it picked with Russia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia (yes, there is a North Ossetia--it is part of Russia). Ossetians are not Georgians. Georgia did oppress them, including imposing Georgian as the national language. Moscow sent troops into Georgia--part of Russia and then the Soviet Union from 1801 to 1991.

I'm no fan of Putin and his efforts to drag Russia back to the oppressive years of Communism. But this is no more our fight than it was Russia's fight when we invaded Grenada in 1983. We can be unhappy about the situation in Georgia, as much of the world was with us after Ronald Reagan's invasion of Grenada and the deaths of more than 100 people. But ultimately, Grenada was seen to be within our sphere of influence and things calmed down pretty quickly.

What makes the real Georgia situation disturbing is that it appears to be yet another effort by the far right in America to mess with foreign policy in ways that endanger America. They remember history and have learned nothing from it, chafing over the past refusal of the United States to go to war with the Soviet Union over its suppression of independence or liberalization movements in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Tragedies both. No doubt about it. But were they worth a nuclear war with Moscow that might have killed tens of millions of people on both sides?

The neo-cons who brought us the Iraq disaster say we must "stand with" Georgia because it sent 2000 troops to help us in the Iraq disaster, withdrawing many of them to suppress the rebellion in South Ossetia. I find it particularly disturbing that McCain appears to have been steered toward his support of Georgia as much by lobbyists as neo-cons, echoing the run-up to the Iraq war, when the neo-cons fell all over Ahmed Chalabi and the myths he spread about how our invasion supposedly would be met with flower petals, not bullets and bombs. McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheuneman, was a lobbyist for Georgia until several months ago.

McCain's approach to foreign policy, as I've written before, is rooted in his belief that the U.S. should have continued fighting the Vietnam War until it won. He does not seem able to rise above reflexive belligerency. A war with Russia in the 21st century would be long and bloody. Even if we pushed them out of Georgia, where would we stop?

On the road to Moscow? A million dead soldiers later, assuming no resort to nuclear weapons? It isn't worth it, or necessary, except in the minds of rightwing bitter-enders.

Posted by David at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you have a strong stomach, read the account in the New York Times today about how federal immigration officials and their camp guards in state and local prisons let a Chinese immigrant, Hiu Lui Ng, 34, die horribly of bone cancer. Indeed, they went out of their way to make it difficult for him to get treatment and actively frustrated his efforts to meet with lawyers who might have helped him.

The Bush Administration's persecution of non-citizens--they have succeeded gays as the main target of the hard right's group hate (in part because they were increasingly hating themselves)--shames everything America stands for. I don't care that Ng didn't have legal status. He overstayed a legal tourist visa at age 19 and had made a good life for himself in America. He had a wife and two young children and a good job providing computer services to a firm in the Empire State Building.

What was done to him in our names is little different than what Hitler did to the Jews or the Argentine dictatorship in the 1970s did to political dissidents. It appears to be murder, and lawyers for the family have asked that a criminal investigation be opened.

That's the difference between America in 2008 and Nazi Germany in 1944. The rule of law can still trump the politics of hate. Not that it's a slam dunk: Attorney General Michael Mukasey yesterday told the American Bar Association he had no intention of prosecuting midstate native Monica Goodling and others who broke the law by using political criteria to hire career Justice Department employees. That case cries out for the appointment of a special prosecutor immune from the influence of Bush and Cheney.

Yesterday I happened to call a plumber in the Harrisburg area. I was taken aback when the receptionist answered the phone, "We're proud to be Americans. [name deleted] Plumbing and Heating." I'm glad they are, but increasingly Americans can make statements like that only with their eyes firmly shut and their ears plugged.

Did you know that the York County Prison and the Snyder County Prison are both immigration prisons under contract to the Federal government? What happened to Ng could be happening right in our own backyards.

Posted by David at 06:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A report is out this morning from the Justice Department Office of Inspector General today with the ominous title, "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of Attorney General."

Here is the full Monica Goodling report.

Goodling, the York Haven, Pa., native, ethically-challenged Messiah College graduate, former West Shore Country Club lifeguard, and, most importantly, George W. Bush devotee, is accused of weeding out Democrats and lesbians from people hired as attorneys in the Justice Department. If true, that's against the law. Political hiring is legal for only a tiny fraction of the Justice Department's 110,000 employees. Hiring of everyone but a few top-ranking people is subject to Civil Service restrictions, which bar basing hiring decisions on politics or even asking about them. Always been illegal (in the modern era), always will be illegal.

The report concludes that she and several colleagues broke the law and violated department policy in their actions. The question is whether she can be prosecuted--she was granted limited immunity for her testimony before Congress where she talked about a lot of this stuff. And the report says nothing about the people above Goodling in the food chain and how they may have been involved in the illegal actions. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, her boss, claims he just didn't know what she was doing.

Perhaps he didn't, although if you believe that, you probably also believe that low-ranking Army enlisted personnel decided on their own that torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was okay. It's time for some high-level accountability in the Bush Administration.

Posted by David at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)