The Feminist Question

Putting aside the massively depressing implication that Warner recognizes this attitude because she believes it to be somehow written into the female condition, let's consider that there are any number of women who could have been John McCain's running mate -- from Olympia Snowe to Christine Todd Whitman to Kay Bailey Hutchison to Elizabeth Dole to Condoleezza Rice -- who would not have provoked this reaction. Democrats might well have been repulsed and infuriated by these women's policy positions. But we would not have been sitting around worrying about how scared they looked.

-from http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/30/palin_pity/index.html

I think the real feminist question is not what other women could McCain have chosen, but what other candidate, regardless of sex, could McCain have chosen with "Maverick" credentials who would have been better suited to the job than Palin. I guess that's why Joe Lieberman is so upset.

Some Clever Comments

Glad some people out there are listening.

"Why is it continually assumed that we all would want to "have a beer" with some Bible-waving idiot who can't complete an original sentence?"

"Still, where does that leave those of us who prefer informed leadership to shovelfuls of regurgitated BS?"

"Just an idle observation: Iran's Ahmadinedjad has held more interviews with American media than Palin. Why is that?"

YIKES

HANNITY: Senator Obama on the campaign trail — and Senator Biden as well — they often criticize John McCain, that, well his plan is — he's going to continue the policies of tax cuts for the wealthy. For those that maybe buy into that class warfare agreement or think, why shouldn't the rich pay more? My question to you is the converse: why does everyone benefit if the rich pay less or if everybody pays less in taxes? Why is that good for the economy?

I'm just getting around to reading the infomercial now, and boy is it scary: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,424346,00.html

Hypocrisy

me: “While the New York Times and other media outlets were silent in the face of Barack Obama’s shameless and dishonorable attack on John Mccain, even Obama’s own running mate has now condemned the ad as terrible,” said spokesman Brian Rogers in a statement. “Barack Obama has brought the sleazy gutter politics of Chicago to our national stage, exposing his call for a ‘new politics’ as a lie and embarrassing even his own running mate with the low road campaign he’s running.”

GAAAAH

campaigners must have so much fun writing these things. it's like, How much can we get away with, how many negative words can we string into one sound bite

politics should not be this machiavellian; it's like the mccain campaign ppl live in an alternate universe. how can they get away with this??

D: the same way that their support increased when palin joined the ticket; people will believe what they want to believe, and pick out the parts that fall in line with what they want to hear and ignore the rest. and now they are making it so that to respond Obama will have to appear to be on the defensive

me: but can any normal rational person really appreciate this kind of blatant hypocrisy and hyperbole?

D: most people are not rational when it comes to politics. their own prejiduces interfere too much

me: sure, when it comes to their vote, but this level of two-facedness is unprecedented

D: yeah, it is so frustrating

me: PALIN: Yes it is gridlock and that's ridiculous. That's why we don't have an energy policy. That's why there hasn't been the reform of the abuse of the earmark process. And real reform is tough and you do ruffle feathers along the way. But John McCain has that streak of independence in him that I think is very, very important in America today in our leadership.

what level of consciousness do you think that Palin has when she is saying this, that McCain never showed up to vote when the energy bill came up...8 times. and of course Hannity won't call her on it

D: i'm sure that wasn't actually her speaking, they have probably taught him how to disguise and project his voice so it sounds like her but is actually him. you know they don't let her say anything that hasn't come straight from them

me: hahaha

PALIN: I have that within me also. And that's why John McCain tapped me to be a team of mavericks, of independents coming in there without the allegiances to that cronyism, to that good ole' boy system.

isn't "team of mavericks" kind of oxymoronic?

me: PALIN: Well, what we're doing up there is returning a share of resource development dollars back to the people who own the resources. And our constitution up there mandates that as you develop resources it's to be for the maximum benefit of the people, not the corporations, not the government, but the people of Alaska.

Sounds like socialism to me

D: haha, socialism, but where the majority of the money goes to the oil companies and to build more hockey rinks

Don't Be Fooled

In early 1995, after Republicans had taken control of Congress, Mr. McCain promoted a moratorium on federal regulations of all kinds. He was quoted as saying that excessive regulations were “destroying the American family, the American dream” and voters “want these regulations stopped.” The moratorium measure was unsuccessful.

“I’m always for less regulation,” he told The Wall Street Journal last March, “but I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight” in situations like the subprime lending crisis, the problem that has cascaded through Wall Street this year. He concluded, “but I am fundamentally a deregulator.”

Later that month, he gave a speech on the housing crisis in which he called for less regulation, saying, “Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”

-http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/us/politics/16record.html?hp

But if you've already chosen McCain, chances are you believe he will learn from his mistakes and do the right thing in office. I'd believe the same of Obama.

From the other side...

Brooks:

Near the start of his book, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” Barry Goldwater wrote: “Every man, for his individual good and for the good of his society, is responsible for his own development. The choices that govern his life are choices that he must make; they cannot be made by any other human being.” The political implications of this are clear, Goldwater continued: “Conservatism’s first concern will always be: Are we maximizing freedom?”

I'm not sure I'm right there with Barry on the logicial procession from "Man must make his own decisions" to "Man needs Freedom". Man has always operated within certain social parameters. I haven't read the book, and Brooks is paraphrasing to make a point similar to mine, so I'm sure there's more to it; nevertheless, I wonder what exactly it is that Goldwater is saying. What are his underlying assumptions here? Are decisions that an individual makes him- or herself more powerful than decisions imposed upon them by society? Why does more freedom lead to a better society? I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm just wondering what Goldwater's reasoning is.

Campaigns to Administrations

From Krugman's op-ed today:

But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.
I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.
I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

Well, I think Krugman has a point. If McCain feels okay with lying to the American people to promote an agenda now (we need more drilling!), what's to say he won't lie to enact those policies once in office. He's providing "answers" that aren't answers at all, but a simplification of the issues that actually prevents any real tackling of the issues themselves. Of course politicians are going to pander during campaign season, but they pander in their administrations as well, and if McCain doesn't mind pandering with outright lies, that's something to be concerned about.

However, what does Obama's campaign say about how he would run his administration? Would he be weak an indicisive, as the media is portraying his campaign now? How do we cut to the actual character of a campaign through the media slog, since that is the lens through which we all come to learn about the candidates and their potential administrations?

Our Future First Lady?

I hope the American public saw this interview between Katie Couric and Cindy McCain, in which McCain can't remember her own husband's position on Roe vs. Wade!!! Here's another gem on Creationism vs. Evolution:

"McCain: I think both sides should be taught in schools. I think the more children have a frame of reference and an opportunity to read and know and make better decisions and judgments when they are adults. So, I think you know I don't have any problem with education of any kind."

I wonder how she feels about sex education...I actually think she is against abstinence-only programs. I guess that would be a rather hush-hush subject for a Republican campaign.

Too Cool for School

"By selecting Barack Obama as their nominee, the Democrats may have given Republicans an opening: the very qualities that inspire many fervent Obama supporters — the candidate’s high-flown eloquence, his coolness factor — have also laid him open to a Nixonian backlash. Unlike many observers, I wasn’t surprised at the effectiveness of the McCain “celebrity” ad. It didn’t make much sense intellectually, but it skillfully exploited the resentment some voters feel toward Mr. Obama’s star quality"

From Krugman's op-ed today.

How the Republicans do this, I don't know, but it's genius and amazing political sleight of hand. It's schoolyard politics; they have turned this campaign into a popularity contest. In a strange twist of events though, they have branded it as an anti-popularity contest: don't vote for the cool snob who looks down his nose at you; vote for us every day normal folk. Here's the ringer, though: McCain is the traditionally popular and cool wingman and Palin is the beauty queen bitch that everyone loves to hate, so how have they become the underdogs in this fight?!?!? Just another brilliant maneuver by the social elite to punish those who try to upset the social order or exist outside it? Class reproduction/preservation? The way of the world?

Can't Resist Commenting on Palin

Well, word on the street in my social circles is that Palin nailed her speech last night in St. Paul. For the most immediate audience, I would say Republican insiders who were shocked or disgruntled at her nomination and other skeptical RNC attendees, she did. She had to prove herself to the Republican establishment, prove that she was not just a maverick gimmick, poorly vetted and ill-conceived. She hit all the red-meat notes while delivering a speech that probably resonated with the personal experiences of many Americans. She was strong and convincing where she needed to be, and familiar and sympathetic in all the right places.

In that way, it was a very polarizing, divisive speech in my opinion. Really, it was the second half that got me riled up, in that it hewed to party lines and was all rhetoric (albeit effective) and little substance--politics as usual, in other words. For instance, she played up Obama's proposed tax hikes and her own use of executive power to veto tax hikes in Alaska, obfuscating the real issue at stake and downright misrepresenting the facts (her own tax hikes in Wasilla probably affecting more people than would be affected by Obama letting the Bush tax cuts expire). I know, ALL POLITICIANS DO THIS. I'm just saying, I find this personally very polarizing because by telling Republicans what they want to hear, it shores up their righteousness in their own views and their disdain for the other side, while infuriating Democrats and making them ever more convinced that Republicans are all conniving idiots. It just gets worse and worse. On that note, I am retiring from politics.