Category: Politics

TPM on the bizarre handling of Sarah Palin:

What’s really sobering is that the McCain campaign continues to block Palin from answering questions even though it’s now resulting in reams and reams of bad press for the McCain-Palin ticket. That suggests McCain advisers know that letting her answer even the most elementary questions in an uncontrolled environment is so dangerous that it’s worth weathering the current media drubbing they’re taking in order to prevent it from happening at all costs.

Of course there’s an alternative explanation: they’re worried that she will sound all too good, and will flip the ticket. I mean, she’s already on record as referring to a “Palin-McCain administration”….
No, no, no: I’m only joking. Really.

Andrew Sullivan becomes understandably apoplectic at this nonsense:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

She’s “unblinkingly” ready to become President, but too delicate to handle a televised debate? My bullshit meter just went off the scale and exploded.
I liked the following comment by Skip Evans over at Dispatches From The Culture Wars:

Dear Mrs. Debate Holder,
Sarah will be absent from the debate today, because she has a tummy ache and is not feeling well. Please excuse her absence.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Karl Rove

A number of soi-disant “conservative” pundits have been blaming the sub-prime mortgage mess on “liberal political correctness”. Jim Lippard and Craig Cantoni provide facts rather than FUD:

LAS VEGAS – As part of President Bush’s ongoing effort to help American families achieve the dream of homeownership, Federal Housing Commissioner John C. Weicher today announced that HUD is proposing to offer a “zero down payment” mortgage, the most significant initiative by the Federal Housing Administration in over a decade. This action would help remove the greatest barrier facing first-time homebuyers – the lack of funds for a down payment on a mortgage.

Speaking at the National Association of Home Builders’ annual convention, Commissioner Weicher indicated that the proposal, part of HUD’s Fiscal Year 2005 budget request, would eliminate the statutory requirement of a minimum three percent down payment for FHA-insured single-family mortgages for first-time homebuyers.

“Offering FHA mortgages with no down payment will unlock the door to homeownership for hundreds of thousands of American families, particularly minorities,” said HUD’s Acting Secretary Alphonso Jackson. “President Bush has pledged to create 5.5 million new minority homeowners this decade, and this historic initiative will help meet this goal.”

Today’s snorting-coffee-all-over-my-keyboard moment was provoked by a beautiful fisking of the latest utterance from the woman who “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America” by hilzoy. The comment thread is delightful! And aren’t you glad that “they don’t flag, you know, the molecules”? I know I am!

Scalzi on McCain.

When there is no real-world penalty for lying, distorting and demonizing, then the only thing to stop you is your own moral compunctions. However, if McCain actually had any moral compunctions on this point, he wouldn’t be running the campaign he’s running now. And I would suggest that a man who shows no moral compunction in pursuit of power is not a man who will suddenly find those compunctions once he has power. An election is a job interview, people. If someone lies to you during a job interview, and says to you “yes, I’m lying, what of it?” when you catch them in the lie, and you hire them anyway, well. You shouldn’t be surprised at what comes next.

McCain the liar:

Fallows on Palin

The truly toxic combination of traits GW Bush brought to decision making was:

1) Ignorance

2) Lack of curiosity

3) “Decisiveness”

That is, he was not broadly informed to begin with (point 1). He did not seek out new information (#2); but he nonetheless prided himself (#3) on making broad, bold decisions quickly, and then sticking to them to show resoluteness.

We don’ know for sure about #2 for Palin yet — she could be a sponge-like absorber of information. But we know about #1 and we can guess, from her demeanor about #3.   Most of all we know something about the person who put her in this untenable role.

As I quoted a couple of days ago, Palin is a master mistress of the decisive ignorance thing:

But notice that Palin didn’t dodge the question. She didn’t panic and say she’d need to check with someone, or that she needed more information, or skirt around it. She actually felt confident enough to answer, and lay it all out there – and be completely wrong. She had no clue.

Just like W.

“Energy. She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.”

That’s John McCain on Sarah Palin.

(From Talking Points Memo.)
More than T. Boone Pickens? More than the oil company executives who paid her campaign bills? More than the members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources? More than all the oil executives who contributed to Cheney’s secret Energy Task Force?
Is John McCain simply stupid (or senile), or has he concluded that it simply doesn’t matter what bullshit he spouts?

Juan Cole discusses the “Surge” and Bob Woodward’s new book about Bush at war:

[T]he Surge was not just 30,000 extra troops building blast walls.

The Surge was a dirty war. It was a vast effort at identifying, finding and assassinating the leaders of the Sunni Arab resistance. […]

That is, US officers in Baghdad were playing Col Mathieu in a rerun of the Battle of Algiers, tracking down and killing the members of the Sunni resistance cells with ever increasing efficiency.

Crowing about the success of Surge wouldn’t look so pretty if you were actually celebrating an assassination campaign.

Not so pretty? Perhaps, but in a society that can glorify fictional torture in “24”, and has a war criminal for a president, “pretty” doesn’t seem to matter.

Every time McCain or his staff says something about Palin, another
blooper pops up.