Category: Politics & Elections

McCain, in his overwhelming desire for office, is unloosing forces that are likely to make the country only barely governable no matter who wins. This would be very bad juju at any time, but George Bush has so seriously weakened the country over the course of his administration that we don’t have a lot of room for error left if we want to avoid losing the war on terror for good and turning America into a banana republic while we’re at it. We need to start turning the ship around now.

Kevin Drum

But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let’s stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We’ve got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They’ve both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office.

Josh Marshall

Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government “thanks but no thanks” to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.

The Wall Street Journal

The question is: what of it?

There is absolutely no penalty for lying, in politics. None. Zip. Nada. Sarah Palin could stand atop a stage and declare herself moon-goddess of Endor, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. Yes, the papers would correct her. There would be a few cable stories on how there was no prior record of her being declared a moon-goddess. In the end, however, it would not matter, and it would not matter because Republicans have decided that it does not.
. . .

So what of it, if Sarah Palin says crooked things with a straight face? Name me one Republican who will object. Name me one — just ONE — diehard conservative who will be angry at the lie, instead of praising her for it. To hell with facts, there is another election to be won.

This is why I consider the Republican Party to be, at this point, a wrecked party. There is no self-consistent philosophy other than the acquisition and protection of their own power: there are certainly no moral or ethical boundaries that the party will internally enforce. John Edwards, a Democrat, had his political career effectively terminated when news of an affair came to light; a Republican can visit a prostitute wearing a diaper, and find himself easily forgiven. You can lie, you can staff your government with morons and ideologues, you can give a speech saying one thing while doing the exact opposite …. but you would be hard pressed to find even a single, lone Republican in Washington willing to buck the moral collapse of their own party.

Hunter, Daily Kos

Governor Palin Talks To Local Reporter Before Handlers Break It Up!

With the election just 8 weeks away NewMexiKen wanted to pass along this public service announcement. Because of difficulties counting ballots in Florida after the 2000 vote, and in Ohio after the 2004 vote, and in New Mexico after any vote larger than for 8th grade class president, there has been a change of procedures nationwide.

All who wish to vote for Barack Obama for President are still supposed to vote on November 4.

All who wish to vote for John McCain for President are supposed to wait and vote on November 6.

Remember, November 4th for Obama, November 6th for McCain. Don’t show up on the wrong day.

So let me get this straight.

A Gallup Poll late in August found that 81% of the American people were “dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time.” 18% were satisfied, and 1% don’t know what the hell they think.

Right now the election is seemingly close; Gallup says 45% favor John McCain.

We’ll grant that the 18% who say they are satisfied will vote for the incumbent party. That still means that 27% of the American people who are dissatisfied intend to vote for the party that got us here. (18+27=45)

Or, put another way, 27% of the electorate are insane — that is, doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.

So the McCain campaign googled for a photo of Walter Reed Medical Center to put behind McCain during his speech last night and they got Walter Reed Middle School (of North Hollywood, California). And that’s what they used.

Now, that’s competence you can believe in my friends.

Talking Points Memo has the scoop.

The parent team — or at least its player-manager — could see their chances of making the playoffs diminish, so they called up the kid from A ball.

And in her first at bat, before a home town crowd, she knocked it out of the park. Got to give the rookie credit. (Some argue it was only a ground rule double.)

But I suggest we withhold judgement until she faces a major league curve ball on the road playing every day.

From the Anchorage Daily News, April 3, 1996, the first appearance of Sarah Palin in any news account:

Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana.

And there, at J.C. Penney’s cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist.

“We want to see Ivana,” said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, “because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.”

Ivana Trump, the former Czechoslovakian Olympic skier who found fame and wealth as the wife of the New York tycoon, came to Anchorage Tuesday to push her line of perfume.

More than 500 people waited as long as half an hour in J.C. Penney to chat with her and receive an autographed photo.

Above via Glenn Greenwald relying on Nexis.

[Note I personally think Sarah Palin is wrong on most issues and stunningly ill-prepared. That stated, I just thought the above was interesting. It isn’t intended as piling on. It’s also the 45th mention of Costco on NewMexiKen.]

“[I]t is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is ‘a task from God.'”

— Joe Klein, Time

It is not about her gender.

And it is not about her daughter, who no major media outlet or politician has criticized. Only the McCain campaign is pushing that issue.

It is about her record, lean as it is, and the way it has been misrepresented by the campaign. And, even more, it is about McCain’s careless approach to a major decision he had months to prepare for.

They screwed up and they’re blaming everyone but themselves.

Oh, and this:

“Three times in recent years, McCain’s catalogs of ‘objectionable’ spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time — Sarah Palin.” (Los Angeles Times)

You are being fooled by a shiny, sparkling distraction. My advice: Ignore the pundits and spinmeisters every time they tell you that the McCain campaign chose Gov. Sarah Palin in an effort to deprive Barack Obama of Hillary Clinton voters. Republican leaning pundits use this line because they want to exaggerate Palin’s appeal. Democratic-leaning pundits use this line as a way of mocking McCain for being out of touch with the real concerns of Clinton voters. Non-ideological pundits use this line because they are not reading the polls. It’s too early to tell what impact Palin could have among women voters, but it’s not hard to tell what group of women the McCain campaign hopes to lure. And they are not Hillary Clinton voters. “Hillary got about 10 million women’s votes. There are going to be about 62 million women voters in November,” explains Peter Brown, a pollster at Quinnipiac University. “The Palin stuff is not aimed at the Hillary 10, it’s at the other 52.”

From a longer piece by Michael Scherer at TIME.com: Swampland.

NewMexiKen’s advice: Ignore the pundit and spinmeisters all the time.

In this particular case, there are two huge problems with what McCain did.

The first is the most obvious: in choosing a Vice Presidential nominee, McCain is choosing someone who might well end up taking over as President. This would be true for anyone, but it’s especially true in McCain’s case, since he is a 72 year old cancer survivor. Anyone who “puts country first”, as McCain is fond of telling us he does, would have taken care to ensure that that person was up to the job, and had no unpleasant secrets like, oh, past membership in a fringe secessionist organization. Not bothering to do the most basic due diligence before naming her as his running mate is staggeringly irresponsible.

The second is that McCain was willing to take a huge gamble not just with our country, but with his own political interests. As I said earlier, gambling with the country is worse, but gambling with your own interests is a different kind of bad judgment, and worth noting in its own right. If you are selfish enough to put your own interests above the interests of your country, that’s awful. But it doesn’t move you into the realm of the wholly unpredictable, the people from whom you truly never know what to expect. (It’s like being one of those dictators who are nonetheless rational enough that things like deterrence can work with them: you are bad, but bad in a way that makes it possible to anticipate what you might do next.)

Being willing to take a huge and reckless gamble with your own interests is not like that. It’s not cool and collected selfishness that leaves room for some hope that if your interests and the interests of your country align, you might end up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. It’s sheer impulsive stupidity: an unwillingness to think, in even the most basic ways, before you act. That’s a terrible trait in a President.

Hilzoy, The Washington Monthly

In a way Sarah Palin HAS put her own personal life in play. The religious right she strongly represents claims an abiding interest in the conception of everyone else’s children, the sanctity of marriage, abstinence education and so on.

In my opinion that opens Palin to scrutiny for moral hypocrisy, a character trait that should be found unacceptable in a national leader.

And it’s certainly not about her family.

It’s about John McCain’s failure to either vet her properly or, if as the campaign claims, they did vet her, than it’s about their failure to do it well or to understand what they found.

McCain has, and has always had, poor judgment. That’s the whole point. He is not mentally stable enough to be president of the United States.

… but isn’t it intolerably condescending of the political commentariat to keep talking and writing about whether Hillary Clinton’s supporters will switch to McCain because he selected a woman as his running mate? The two women, Clinton and Palin, agree on almost nothing.

I am not aware that women make political choices based solely on gender without regard to the issues.

Update: No, it’s not just me.