bustardblog

Can Sarah Learn?

2008-11-08T15:35:34-05:00

The NY Times reports that Palin calls McCain aides "cruel and mean-spirited." And of course, she's right.

"It’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks” - she astutely observes. " Taking things out of context and then [trying] to spread something on national news. It is not fair and not right.” Randy Scheunemann spoke of McCain aides spreading lies.

Although accurate assessments, they will only matter when Palin realizes and admits that these were the people giving her her talking points about Obama; that those who are happy to smear her, are the same ones whose smears about Obama she so forcefully spread.

The Times reports that "Ms. Palin said that her experience made her realize how brutal national politics could be." When she realizes how brutal, cowardly, and dishonest a campaign she was a part of - then she'll have learned something.

h/t memeorandum

They Shoot Wolves - Don't They?

2008-11-06T17:09:09-05:00

Max Blumenthal's reporting, of late on Sarah Palin, has been invaluable. As a pundit, he's awful. He aspires to membership in that route of wolves we Democrats turn into whenever we win an election.

Today he led the pack in eating our own young - heavily criticizing Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel. According to Blumenthal, the pick invalidates Barack's claim of post-partisanship. Yes, the problem with Emanuel is that he will fight too hard for Obama and that Republicans don't like him. David Corn joins in circling the prey, faulting Emanuel for being a "highly effective partisan,"and "a guy who gets things done." Another problem with Emanuel is that he is too much of a centrist. (except when he is being too much of a partisan) Obama clearly should have picked a purer ideologue - someone along the lines, of say, Ralph Nader, perhaps?

This is not the time for an uncle Ralph. It is the time when we must support and trust President-elect Obama, or at least give him the benefit of the doubt for 48 hours. It's not like he doesn't have enough challenges in front of him.

Maybe hunting out of helicopters is not such a bad idea?

P.S. Blumenthal likes the idea of Jon Corzine taking charge at Treasury - - every year the governor comes to the dinner held by the Nation Foundation (Blumenthal's employer.) Actually, you can shoot me instead.

h/t memeorandum

Progress

2008-11-04T13:11:44-05:00

The wondrous watertiger has a photo of the line leading up to our polling place. Separately, she and I pulled the lever for an African-American in an antiquated voting booth at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center on 13th Street. That is where we actually voted. This country has come along way - as a kid, I carried protest signs when my mother took me to demonstrate against the Rialto Movie Theater's policy not to admit "negroes."

The white building in watertiger's photo is not the Center. It is the O'Toole building, and it's about to be torn down and replaced by a thirty story tower. This, and another huge tower to be built a block south, will be as knives in the heart of the Landmarked Greenwich Village Historic District. Sometime Progress Sucks. Good-Bye Village, Hello Condo Developers.

New York & John McCain

2008-10-27T12:13:19-04:00

Admittedly, New York is a Democratic town - despite the eight years each of Bloomberg & Giuliani and the 12 years of Pataki.

But in 2000, and in 2004 - I saw plenty of people wearing Bush buttoins.

So far this year I have not seen a single McCain/Palin pin.

English First

2008-09-17T17:54:36-04:00

Sarah Palin thinks Obama's criticism of McCain about our 'fundamentally strong economy' are unjust:

"an unfair attack on the verbage that Sen McCain chose to use."

Todd Palin doesn't seem overly fond of being called 'First Dude:

He prefers being called Todd - it "works good" for him.

Call me an elitist, I don't mind.

Enron and Lehman

2008-09-15T18:32:45-04:00

Let's not forget the McCain team's history as we try to understand today's economic meltdown.

Phil Gramm, who is McCain's financial guru, was a part of the Enron family.

"When Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy danced, it was most often to Enron's tune."

Phil Gramm, "a demon for deregulation", is married to Wendy Gramm, who

"headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration. And she was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993.

In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron's board of directors.

According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, ''Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001.''

Phil Gramm helped craft the legislation that ended regulations which had historically prevented the kind of collapse we saw today. Since leaving the Senate, Gramm has been closely tied to UBS.

McCain relies on this repeat offender for economic policy.

(memeorandum)

Putting Palin in Her Place.

2008-09-15T18:07:52-04:00

John McCain's jealous streak is well established. Jack Cafferty has spoken forcefully and clearly about it. (the video is half way down this link) When Obama draws a big crowd, McCain throws a tantrum.

And apparently he hates it when Sarah Palin does it too. She always receives a vastly more energized response than he, even though he's the top of the ticket. Just today, McCain proved how little of a draw he is on his own, when his crowd numbered about 3,000 - in a stadium for 16,000.

Failed businesswoman and current McCain mouthpiece Carly Fiorina was selected to put Palin in her place. Speaking of the brilliant Tina Fey's imitation of Palin on Saturday Night Live, Fiorina used words like "dismissive" and "sexist."

I am defintely no fan of Palin's - but even I credited her with a better sense of humor. In fact, reports are that Palin laughed out loud with the press on her plane. She loved it - especially since she had once dressed up as Tina Fey for Halloween, according to her spokesperson. She must have recoiled with pain at the implication that she would whine about the skit being "sexist" and "dismissive" - totally undermining the image she would like to project.

A nasty put-down of one of the few rising stars in the fading G.O.P. Palin had better book smaller arenas in the future.

(h/t Americablog, memeorandum)

Osama Won

2008-09-11T17:32:15-04:00

Mayor Bloomberg spoke this morning of how seven years ago today "our world was broken." He is right - I remain surprised at how fragile it was.

Part of that fragility is no doubt due to the Michelle Malkins of our world - the significance of the day to her was the contrast between Cindy McCain's presence versus Michelle Obama's absence.

The idea that one billionaire Saudi and 15 of his countrymen, plus 4 others, could force the U.S. into two wars was unbelievable. That he would influence the outcome of three elections, and now, perhaps a fourth, is incredible.

Clearly, Osama won. Not because he is still alive, but because he is such a successful terrorist. He has made fear the dominant issue in the U.S. If John McCain wins in Nov, chalk up another victory for Osama.

( memeorandum)

The Old, Old Party

2008-09-04T19:04:13-04:00

I didn't watch Palin's speech last night. I saw a bit of Giuliani's - enough to know that venomous dishonesty is not something I want to spend a lot of time looking at.

One reader who saw the speech found it ugly, and sad; she "kept waiting for the heads on Mt Rushmore behind her to weep hot, salty tears."

The audience in front of Palin wasn't in tears either. They were joyful. And they were old. My own parents were fiercely independent people who moved eventually into a retirement community. Watching Palin's supporters reminded me of New Years Eve at the "assisted living" facility. Old white people in silly hats drinking a bit too much - trying to recreate their youth, or at least their middle age of half a century ago.

There were significant differences -the people at the retirement home were not nearly as bitter as those at the convention, nor were they as male. The crowd at the Xcel Center was composed of twice as many men as women, which is really astonishingly unbalanced considering the age of those in attendance.

Part of Palin's appeal of course is that she is a throw back to an earlier era - she's a virtual fountain of youth for the delegates. She's from Alaska. Everyone I know who has been there talks of it as the America of 50 years ago. Fishing, hunting, and teen aged pregnancy are part of the culture. Wasilla is a town described as "the worst kind of suburban sprawl of highway-fronting shopping malls and gravel lots." The opening of a Target store in Wasilla next month is hailed as a major accomplishment. The first Target in the lower 48 opened in 1962.

Segregation was legal in 1962. A "communnity organizer" from the South Side was lucky if he was only mocked in the early sixities. In the early sixties, a high school diploma was sufficient to guarantee a good living. In Alaska it still is. Todd Palin, who never graduated from college, earned $100,000 to $120,000 per year as an hourly worker. His passion is finding training others for similar jobs: (in fact he actually sounds like a community organizer himself)

"For those of us who learn by touching and tearing stuff apart and for those who don't have the financial background to go to college, just being a product of that on-the-job training is really important," Palin said one morning over pastries at an Anchorage coffee shop, before meeting with trainers at several companies "

Those listening to Sarah Palin in the convention hall remember when lacking an education was not a problem across the U.S.A. They simply don't get that a high school diploma won't be enough in the globalized 21st century. It doesn't bother them that Bristol Palin hasn't shown up for the start of her senior yearof high school. Neither has Levi Johnston - even though it started three weeks ago. It is far more important to the G.O.P that teen aged pregnancy be applauded than teen agers get educated.

Sarah Palin is not the future. As Gloria Steinhem wrote today

She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

And the Grand Old Party loves her for it, as does the adolescent septuagenarian himself, John McCain.

(memeorandum)

On Announcing a Pregnancy

2008-09-02T16:06:32-04:00

In re Reporting on Palin: Would some reporter please ask when the campaign intended to tell us that Bristol was pregnant? I understand that it was the mean-spirited nasty bloggers who forced Palin to prove that her daughter had not previously had an out of wedlock child, by announcing that she was about to have an out of wedlock child.

Did they plan on telling the nation that the daughter of the Vice-President elect was getting married? Were they planning on keeping the existence of the baby a secret for eight years?

This whole rumor thing about Trig was undoubtedly a plant - by some, admittedly clever, Republican operatives. So far this election, you have to give those operatives some credit - they've been successfully playing the media like total fools.

There has been a hilarious side to the whole thing. Apparently evangelicals, according to evangelicals, have all had bastards and thoroughly approve of single parents. Who knew?

From The Corner:
I asked ... what she thought the larger reaction among evangelicals will be. “Their reaction is going to be exactly as mine,” she told me. “There hasn’t been one evangelical family that hasn’t gone through some sort of situation. Many of us are in this movement because of something that has happened in our lives.”

As for now, at least, evangelicals seem to be completely on Palin’s side. And McCain’s. This is a group that has been skeptical of McCain in the past. Now, it’s probably fair to say that he has never been more popular among evangelicals than he is at this moment. Whether that will last, or whether Palin will cost McCain support among other voters, is not yet clear. But within the confines of the Republican Convention, McCain’s surprising choice of Palin — and the equally surprising news about her family — is paying off.

h/t memeorandum