RNC Cancels First Night: The Vengeful Ghosts of Katrina
When the post-mortems are written on the now diseased McCain campaign and — more generally– on the demise of the Reagan Era, the three top contributing factors of death will be listed as Katrina, Sarah, and Gustav.
As I wrote at the time, the ebbing flood waters of New Orleans exactly three years ago where a grim, but rather lyrical symbol of the evaporation of the Reagan Era. All the national mythologies of the previous twenty years were breached and flushed when the 17th Street levee cracked and FEMA fumbled.
Since then, it’s been only deepening waters for the conservative movement, and with rather perfect timing, comes the rise of one Barack Obama.
A principle-free John McCain did his best these past months to dredge up all the psycho-political hobgoblins of the past 40 years — alternately suggesting that Obama was something akin to an uppity, elite, remote and ultimately dangerous, feckless tyro. McCain swaggered onto the stage, redolent of jock straps, locker rooms and jet fuel exhaust, reassuring us that in such troubled times only his dead-serious maturity and stability could see us sternly through the storm.
Just when he was on the brink of successfully selling that story, he was unfortunately overcome by his inner frivolity and he chose a laughable and affable nobody zealot from a three stop-light town to be his running mate. I think it was all pretty much over last Friday.
But now, to finish things off , come the vengeful ghosts of Katrina — in the form of Hurricane Gustav– madly howling right onto center stage at the St.Paul RNC. If the political campaigns refused to come to New Orleans — as many had insisted — than it seemed somewhat cosmically inevitable that New Orleans would come to the campaigns. Here she is.
Always the opportunist, McCain and what’s-her-name from Alaska immediately flew to Mississippi for the usual sort of photo-op. As if McCain’s presence on the Gulf is going to save even one life. But there’s simply no way to positively spin this for the woeful Republicans — except that some strategists’ quiet prayers have been answered by diverting Bush and Cheney away from the convention stage.
That ain’t enough, though. Whatever happens in New Orleans in the next 48 hours — and let’s hope it’s as little as possible– the cable news split screen coverage will be a ’round the clock reminder of the total and unmitigated failure of the entire Republican approach to non-government. Alas, this election should be about the Big Things, not what kind of Moose Pie or what kind of shotgun Miss Congeniality prefers.
This is about our future. About everything from the use of American military power to providing health care to rebuilding our national infrastructure. Ultimately, it’s about the quality of the leadership we generate and choose.
Gustav has blown what was left of the Republican Revolution right off the Monday night tube and, most likely, right into the deep, dark sea.
August 31st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Of course Marc, as Frank Rich wrote today, our news media is particularly addled this year and completely missed what really went on in Denver. They’re probably going to flub Minnesota as well. And who is to say that the new Dynamioc Duo won’t look just “Super” down there and when McCain delivers his acceptance speech from “Ground Zero” there won’t be a dry eye in the press box.
An election about big things? Tell that to Andrea Mitchell!
August 31st, 2008 at 1:22 pm
You hit the bulls eye, Marc.
I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard Sen. McCain fess up this morning and say the “celebratory” nature of the convention has to take a back seat to the preparations of Hurricane Gustav. (Note to self: celebratory… celebrity. Hmmm…) Yeah, maybe someone ought to get the Gulf Region ready for this big storm. Ya think? Imagine, 7 and 3/4 years into the Bush Presidency, the GOP has finally embraced basic competency in governing.
Dowd’s column was pretty good, too.
August 31st, 2008 at 6:19 pm
“I think it was all pretty much over last Friday.”
That was the Iowa caucus, right ? After which Hillary no longer stands a chance ? Oh…wait a minute. I got caught in a time warp of Marc’s Incredible Prediction Machine.
Seriously, I hope you’re right but there’s an “undead” zombie factor in this election cycle that’s unsettling.
August 31st, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Sorry for muddying the waters with facts about Sarah Palin (rather than just lampooning her, which is all she deserves from us serous folk – like MoDo!) but there’s this from the Washington Monthly blog:
On a couple of the Sunday morning shows, John McCain and his chief surrogates touted Palin’s opposition to the now-infamous “bridge to nowhere,” a $398 million bridge to connect the town of Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents. To McCain and his supporters, Palin’s firm stand against the congressional earmark is compelling evidence of her courage and conviction.
But what McCain and his cohorts are claiming is simply untrue. Palin supported the funding for the project, and kept the federal funds after the bridge deal fell through. Indeed, she ran for governor on a “build-the-bridge platform,” and ended up directing federal funds to other wasteful pork projects, for fear of having to return unused tax dollars funds to the federal government.
This isn’t an example the McCain campaign should be bragging about; it’s an example the campaign should find embarrassing. (end clip)
(sorry for no URL MT, but I’m too lazy right now.)
August 31st, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Great blogger’s angle on the GOP convention:
Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic blogroom:
There is a God
31 Aug 2008 06:54 pm
So I’m not religious, but this is the sort of thing that will pull me out my heathenism. Focus on the Family dude prays for rain at the Dem convention, now the GOP may have to cancel their convention because of hurricane headed to Gulf region. Heh. Alright, alright I know the dude was being humorous. Still, come on my conservative brethren…this is a freebie!
(Incidentally, Ta-Nehisi’s blog is well worth checking out and bookmarking – it’s not always the same-old-same-old repeated on lots of liberal blogs.)
August 31st, 2008 at 9:27 pm
The Mandate from Heaven has been wrested from the Emperor.
Great writing, Marc.
Unfortunately, the Reaganite US Empire is not Imperial China.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:42 pm
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002523.html
I largely agree with this article. The US Empire is pissing blood.
Her comes President McCain/Romulus Augustulus.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:45 pm
About as good a time to revist the 18th Brumaire as any.
August 31st, 2008 at 10:29 pm
It’s amazing to me that a city built houses in land that is below the sea level and subject to hurricanes, the former governor of Louisiana (Dem.) dropped the ball on preparing for evacuations, the mayor of New Orleans (Dem) let school buses get flooded rather than use them to evacuate people, citizens (Ignorant) ignored advanced warnings and advice to leave, the levees built decades earlier failed, and people didn’t have adequate home insurance–BUT, that is all George Bush’s fault.
Not only that, but the same idiots are moving back only to be evacuated again, and that is Bush’s fault, too! Bush aims hurricanes at black people!
The problem isn’t that the Republicans did anything wrong. The problem is that the liberal press anxiously bought into the Democratic lies to pass their blame onto the Republicans and to spread that falsehood far and wide–while the Republicans didn’t stand up and call them on it.
It’s not the job of the President to monitor hurricanes, to evacuate cities in their paths, and rebuild them on swamp land. If I ran the Republican platform, I’d point out these facts and tell the N.O. residents, who would never vote Republican anyway, just how sorry I am but that the country doesn’t owe them a free pass on all their failures and those of their state and city officials.
I’d send Dick Cheney into N.O. with a loaded shotgun and tell the people to get the hell out of the city and never to come back.
August 31st, 2008 at 10:44 pm
“I’d send Dick Cheney into N.O. with a loaded shotgun and tell the people to get the hell out of the city and never to come back.”
I’d be all for letting you do that, Woody, because you’d lose the election for sure in the process!
August 31st, 2008 at 10:59 pm
At least I would be putting people ahead of politics.
Hey, let’s not forget Obama.
FactChecking Obama
He stuck to the facts, except when he stretched them.
August 31st, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Dick Cheney with a loaded shotgun…
Failures…
Katrina…
I’m thankful to anyone who helps keep those images fresh in voters’ minds…
August 31st, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Ah, the left-wing press…. They’ll lie to their consumers just to further political agendas. As with Katrina, the lefties are caught, but the lie takes root in the minds of ignorant voters of whom the Democrats take advantage.
Scholars question Palin credentials
August 31st, 2008 at 11:29 pm
“Sorry for muddying the waters with facts about Sarah Palin ….”
You mean “facts” like she was “scrubbing” her website of an administrative order she made about climate change? An order that had already been reported in the press, not to mention duly noted (verbatim) in another official website of the state government of Alaskan? Are you telling me you seriously believe that she’d try to ditch something that’s in the public record, simply because (he racks his brain for some sort of motive) … uh … because it aligns rather well with the thinking of her new running mate? (Wait, no, that can’t be it … hm … well, motives hardly matter, do they? After all, she’s mad, I tell you, mad! Not to mention a ditzy beauty queen.)
That’s the sort of moronic paranoia I ordinarily associate with Woodbrain’s anti-AGW rantings. I’m sorry, reg, but we’re talking about it suddenly not being able to find something on a website. A government website, subject to democratic oversight. For an officeholder who has members of her own party going for her jugular, members who would gladly seize on any embarrassment they could find. You think she’s trying to bury a widely documented and unburiable decision she made, simply by losing links to it on her website? You must think this woman is a total dingbat.
I say: never attribute to deceptive intent what’s more easily put down to a mad scramble to reorganize and redesign a website, when the site designers happen to caught flat-footed by a sudden requirement to overhaul everything. Which we have every reason to believe is what’s really going on here.
Well, no: I’m really just playing devil’s advocate here. I’d, like, totally believe you if you told me, for example, that, even as I write this, Alaskan state troopers are, under Palin’s order, besieging the webhosting facility for this website, demanding that the hard drives be wiped. After, those servers contain exquisitely well-indexed PDFs with really embarrassing stuff for Palin, like a report from a GHG Mitigation committee formed under that administrative order she “scrubbed”, saying, among other things:
“The federal system may have some gaps in required GHG reporting – for example, only apply to facilities over a certain size. If gaps in federal reporting are significant, there may be opportunity for recommendations for GHG reporting for Alaska. This option consists of monitoring and reviewing federal rules for protocols and suggesting expansion if needed.”
Geez, that’s some hot stuff, some of it as recent as mid-July. She can’t afford to have it get out there. Maybe she’ll try to bribe Eric Schmidt to get it “scrubbed” from Googlecache, after her staties are done melting down the hard drives at the web host? What do you think, reg? Is it time to blow the whistle on this madwoman?
September 1st, 2008 at 1:47 am
“(sorry for no URL MT, but I’m too lazy right now.)”
Lucky (?) for you, reg, I’ve got a few minutes here and there between chores. So here’s the largely negative but still somewhat more nuanced Anchorage Daily News story, “Palin touts stance on ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ doesn’t note flip-flop”, that you just didn’t have 20 seconds to go look up.
I paid only passing attention to the “bridge to nowhere” flap at the time. I just thought “Oh pork — and here’s a minor partisan ripple in the quiet bipartisan consensus on that, nothing new”. I must also admit some disdain that our system gives so much overrepresentation in Congress to such a small-population state as Alaska, but hell, nobody signed my petition about that issue, so you all get the mediocre democracy you deserve, I guess.
Having now looked into the “bridge to nowhere” in some detail, I see it’s yet another cautionary tale about buying into bumper-sticker politics. There’s more there under the surface than I’d realized.
Full disclosure: whether you consider it a source of bias or a source of insight, I must confess before continuing that I’m in the travel and tourism business. The bustling little hotel I help run is in a part of Tokyo that is as much “nowhere” for Tokyo as Ketchikan (fifth largest town) might for Alaska, a state that is much more dependent on tourism than Tokyo could ever be. There’s not much to see, right around my student-community neighborhood, but we’re a great jumping-off point for seeing the rest of Tokyo, which can keep sightseers busy for weeks on end. And Ketchikan is the best jumping off point for an area described credibly as “The Yosemite of the North”. (As former Sierra Nevada-haunting rock-climber, I have this opinion not just from Wikipedia, but from Valley wall-rats far more adventurous than I.)
As I baste in the late-summer heat and humidity of Tokyo, Misty Fjords is a “nowhere” I’d love to have somewhere right around the corner. Maybe I’ll go retire in Ketchikan, but still run an inn.
I wouldn’t be alone, drumming my fingers at the counter, though. Not nearly. The “bridge to nowhere” would have crossed a narrows from an airport that can (and probably does) accommodate international flights to a town through which some 500,000 tourists pass every year. And they aren’t coming to mill around the airport, or visit the approximately 50 people who live on Gavina Island. Next stop is Ketchikan (by ferry, every 15 minutes during peak season), and after that, it gets eyepopping.
Now, I admit, even if you figured all possible tax revenue for Alaska from all that tourist traffic to and through this “nowhere” (including visits to other Alaska destinations), you still don’t have a business case for building a $400 million bridge from an airport to a tourist trap town. So it’s no wonder that, when Alaska’s share of that bill went up to over 80% of the total, they diverted whatever federal funding they could get into other transportation projects (including looking at how to better accommodate those half-million who cross the water the bridge would have crossed). But does that mean that the $160 million Alaskan retained was money poorly spent, pure pork with benefit for any other Americans, including the many who visit Alaska? I’m not so sure — please note my sources of bias (insight?) above.
I’d say the saddest thing about this whole episode is the lack of policy creativity and economic sophistication, how it all devolves so easily into partisan bickering. I’m a Keynesian (neo-, anyway.) To me, money poured into infrastructure can be a good move, economically, even when it’s pork, even when it’s not optimal infrastructure. I’m also a fan of the tourism industry, especially where it might make ever greater numbers of people look at the damage global warming might cause — and is causing — in some of the most beautiful places in the world.
So why did this whole political tempest-in-a-teapot get the narrative “poor Katrina refugees versus the bridge to nowhere”? Why couldn’t it have been “federally-funded job training for Katrina refugees, so that they could go help build transportation infrastructure supporting tourism on federally protected lands featuring some of the nation’s best scenic resources”?
I can’t vote McCain-Palin, I just can’t. But when Palin talks about how Alaska moving from Red State to Purple would be good, because it would dampen counterproductive partisan politicking, it’s music to my ears. We should have more such music.
I just don’t think we’re dealing with some dim ideologue here. Does Palin believe that human life begins at conception? Yeah? OK, well, Obama believes this: that there was this guy 2000 years ago who was the Son of God the Father, who got lynched for being too honest, then woke up from the dead and rolled away this huge rock from the cave where they interred his body, and met all his old friends again, then flew off into the sky to be with Dad. No really, he does! How crazy is that!
Does Palin (daughter of a science teacher) believe that creationism (the former scientific consensus) ought to be taught as part of teaching how we got to the current scientific consensus on evolution? Yeah? Well so does Michael Balter, who shows up here from time to time. And I agree with him about that, because it looks like the few experiments done with teaching evolutionary theory that way have only produced more students who believe in Darwinism.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:52 am
For “pure pork with benefit for any other Americans” please read “pure pork with no benefit for any other Americans”.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:23 am
Gee Michael – I “hate” to have to correct you. And I admit I’m such a lazy fuck that it’s difficult to even put fingers to keyboard in the effort, but here’s the URL that I didn’t give you earlier:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_08/014490.php
That’s the WM blog post that I stated I was quoting. (Admittedly I left the heavy lifting to a single semi-colon.) But that’s the URL I would have supplied if I thought it was even remotely important. I assumed most folks know the Washington Montly’s venerable Political Animal blog and probably even read it regularly as I do.
As for your more extensive discussion on the “Bridge to Whatever”, my iinterest in this issue pretty much wanes after noting whether or not Palin is being honest in using it as a horse to ride in her journey of image creation. She’s not being honest. (Shades of Troopergate, where she’s also got a fairly egregious lie hanging out there.) End of story for me. Call it my desperation that this choice of McCain’s end up looking as bad as it actually is. Others, I’m sure, have broader and less desperate interests in Alaskan tourism and such.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:29 am
“There’s more there under the surface than I’d realized.”
One more thing Michael – I save myself a lot of hassle by assuming there always is. But there are also salient points that can be distilled out of the ever-present complexities that are useful in the game of politics. With all due respect, you’re not very good at that.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:57 am
God Michael – I finished your post and it, unfortunately, gets a lot worse the longer you go on.
“Does Palin (daughter of a science teacher) believe that creationism (the former scientific consensus) ought to be taught as part of teaching how we got to the current scientific consensus on evolution? Yeah? Well so does Michael Balter…”
You’re making a characteriztion that, at least in the political context wherein Palin is a current poster-girl (literally) for the GOP rightwing base (mostly crazy people), is utterly unfounded and totally misses the point. I’m not sure what Michael Balter believes, but it’s not necessarily the last word on anything. If he believes that creationism should be taught side-by-side with evolutionary theory in high school science classes and students should then pick between the two, he’s abandoned the notion of credible science. If he believes that a narrative of the history of science that examines pre-evolutionary theory, the “evolution” of evolutionary theory and post-Darwinian challenges to evolutionary theory might be an effective and interesting course, it’s a point well taken. Of course, that’s an AP class that goes beyond what many schools are capable of offering. Do I think that biology teachers should be smart and creative enough to anticipate “creationist” biases among many of their students and deal with those arguments effectively ? Of course. But the notion that evolution and creationism should be taught side-by-side , like there’s some “menu” for students to choose from after they’ve been presented with each and that’s propoer science instruction is preposterous. And if that’s not what Palin believes – which frankly would not be inconsistent with some of her other known biases – it’s surely what she wants the GOP’s ever-excitable-if-you-pander-to-their-prejudice-enough base to think at least for the next two months or so.
Also, comparing Palin’s own religious beliefs about when life begins to Obama’s religious beliefs (wink, wink – they’re all wacky, right ?) is again missiing the point on the grandest and most clueless of scales. I don’t give a shit about when Paliin thinks life begins. I don’t give a shit about when Obama thinks life begins or even if he or she gets their information on this subject from communicating with somebody who flies around heaven on golden wings, just above the clouds. What I DO give a shit about – and what’s at issue regarding Palin’s beliefs (and as I’ve said, I admire her carrying her developmentally challenged baby to full term in line with her expressed personal ethics re: abortion) is that Paliin wants to impose her personal value system – including ending rape and incest exceptions – on everyone else. I don’t know if that’s the definition of a “dim” ideologue, but it’s the definition of an extremist ideologue on the abortion issue in the context of American politics. Obama believes that abortion decisions should be left to individual women and their doctors. So however crazy his religious beliefs, he’s at least got enough of a grip to know better than to impose them on others. Palin doesn’t. It’s pretty simple. Really. You’re free to dig deeper into this one, but the question really does boil down to “Does one guy want to impose deeply held abortion ethics on every woman, whether she holds to the same beliefs or not ?” That’s it. Doesn’t mean somebody might not agree with Palin that “this is equivalent to murder and of course we’ve got to use the criminal code to impose our interpretation of Christian morals.” But that’s all it’s about. It’s not about whether Obama believes in flying saucers or some such that may well be more bizarre than Palin’s belief that life with full and independent “human rights” within the context of our criminal justice system begins at conception. (Sometimes I’m actually impressed with your skill at obfuscation. Here, not so much.)
September 1st, 2008 at 4:17 am
Addendum to “Do I think that biology teachers should be smart and creative enough to anticipate ‘creationist’ biases among many of their students and deal with those arguments effectively ?” I should add “sensitively” and, most important, in a manner that allows for students to understand the limits not just on their religious faith (i.e. don’t try to compete with scientific theory) but on scientific theory (i.e. it’s not immutable, not does it pretend to be – nor can it explain much beyond “how” things happen. It’s got nothing to do with any “whys” in the ultimate sense that religion attempts to.) Which is simply to say that the best way to diffuse this in a relatively elementary science presentation is to note the different domains of science and religion as soon as these questions come up. But to teach “creation science” on an equal footing with evolutionary theory is an abuse of science education. I’ll let Michael Balter speak for himself, but I’m betting if he wants creationism “taught” in science classes it’s to debunk it. If an alleged science teacher “taught” evolutionary theory in a high school class with the intent of “debunking” it in favor of some variant of creationism, I’m betting that Michael would be up in arms (let’s stretch the hypothetical to his having a kid in that class.) The fact is, it’s impossible to teach “creationism” and evolutionary theory side-by-side as equal in a science class because one is scientific theory and the other, a priori, isn’t.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:18 am
“diffuse” should have been “defuse” – lots of other bad stuff, but that jumped out.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:48 am
“…. the GOP rightwing base (mostly crazy people) …”
Reg, about every weekend I go hang out at a cafe with some half-dozen or more guys, some of whom I count as friends, some as only acqaintances. Among them there is one who is creationist, pro-life to Sara Palin’s extreme, and pretty much everything else I assume you would associate with GOP rightwing base. There is another who is a Darwinian, and is pro-choice, generally a liberal, etc. (And quite intelligent, too.) The first one, I don’t agree with much at all, politically, but there’s no question in my mind: he’s quite sane. The second one (a very recent arrival) recently started talking about how he’s afraid his employer might be plotting to kill him. He’s giving us all the creeps.
Believe me, I know who the fruitcake is, of the two. Rightwing fundamentalist Christians really bother me in a lot of ways, but mostly in their defining beliefs. In most other ways, they don’t seem much more or less sane than average.
Reg, above you said you don’t really have to pay attention to anything Sarah Palin says about the “bridge to nowhere” because she’s already proven to be dishonest about it. But are YOU honestly saying that the GOP base is crazy? As in “insane”, in any psychological sense? That makes at least a couple members of my immediate family insane, even though I’d say they otherwise have fewer problems upstairs than the rest of my family. (Maybe not by much, but it’s enough so you’d notice.) Are you being truly honest here? Then I have to wonder: Do you in fact know nobody who meets the definition of “GOP base”? If you don’t, you should get out more. Definitely.
If you’re not being honest about that, well … why should anybody listen to you, by your own standards of what’s worth paying attention to?
So can we proceed on the assumption that the GOP base is largely sane, just very different from us, politically? If not, you don’t have much to say that I want to hear, because either you’re too willfully ignorant of what you’re talking about to have anything of interest to say to me, or you’re a lot nuttier than most of these people you despise so much.
By the way, I’d say of the half-dozen or so of these guys I hang out with weekly, almost half think AGW is a bunch of crap, or at best overblown. You know my own positions, obviously. It makes for interesting conversation sometimes. I don’t run away from them screaming about how they are psychotic for being climate skeptics. For one thing, if I did, people would think I was nuts. And maybe they’d be right.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:11 am
“But are YOU honestly saying that the GOP base is crazy? As in ‘insane’, in any psychological sense?”
Michael – get a grip. I’m talking about crazy in the sense of the policies they want to impose via political action. People with a “crazy” agenda – i.e. not pragmatic, not based on emprical evidence, extremely likely to culminate in failure and/or very bad and presumably unintended consequences.
Sorry for the vernacular. And you’re getting more than a bit annoying. I’d have appreciated more of your time spent on the other stuff I brought up in response to your comments than your finding a brand-new and quite silly nit to pick over my use of the term “crazy” to describe a certain category of policy conjecture, especially when promoted with a vengeance (as it is in the GOP’s “excitable base” that apparently loves Palin.) Perhaps I should have used “not credible” – which is the way George W. Bush just recently chose to characterize that crazy sonofabitch John Bolton he’d appointed as his UN Ambassador. In Bolton’s case, he might actually need some anger management therapy, although that’s not my beef with him.
“you don’t have much to say that I want to hear” – I know the feeling.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:31 am
I’ll add that “crazy” in the sense I’m using it also refers largely to social policy that I’d characterize as primarily “faith-based” – like eliminating abortion choice for all women because it’s one’s personal belief that it’s sinful, teaching creationism on equal footing with evolution in science classes or proposing economic policy from a doctrinal “free market” or conversely from a socialist ideological perspective rather than an essentially empirical and pragmatic approach. Lot’s of room for disagreement still, and for taking differing value systems into account, but it still cuts through a lot of crap out-of-the-gate to give less credence to arguments motivated solely by ideology.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:32 am
I’ll add that “crazy” in the sense I’m using it also refers largely to social policy that I’d characterize as primarily “faith-based” – like eliminating abortion choice for all women because it’s one’s personal belief that it’s sinful, teaching creationism on equal footing with evolution in science classes or proposing economic policy from a doctrinal “free market” or conversely from a dogmatically leftist ideological perspective rather than an essentially empirical and pragmatic approach. Lot’s of room for disagreement still, and for taking differing value systems into account, but it still cuts through a lot of crap out-of-the-gate to give less credence to arguments motivated solely by ideology.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:55 am
Michael, having been to Ketchikan I would have to agree with you; Open an Inn (need a partner? that ought to make for interesting fireside chat on politics). I have photo’s of two large homes that would make the base of a terrific Bed ‘N Breakfast.
Ketchikan is isolated accessable by a small airport and by Sea. the roads go 50 or so miles along the coast and that’s it. Isolated except by sea or air.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:55 am
“Isolated except by sea or air.” IIRC
September 1st, 2008 at 7:19 am
If apparent dishonesty in a source can be used to justify one’s “waning” attention to it, reg, perhaps I should just write off Political Animal (and all other sources) when they talk about a bridge to an island inhabited by about 50 people, but fail to mention that the same island has an international airport, or that the bridge would have carried hundreds of thousands of passengers per year who now cross by ferry. I mean, isn’t that the slightest sin of omission, to leave that out? After all, how could the great Kevin Drum not have done his homework? Unthinkable! So he must be intentionally deceiving us, right? And therefore, by your standards, not worthy of much further attention.
I read further anyway. It was (marginally) useful. Even Drum (who I think is genuinely great, btw) gets lazy sometimes.
On the issue of whether and how Palin lied about “bridges to nowhere”, and her campaign against earmark abuse, I’m going to leave some sources here, with comments drawing attention to how issues are getting clouded. Be warned, though: if your attention tends to “wane” the very moment you suspect dishonesty, you probably won’t connect the dots anyway. So why bother. In fact, why not just tune out politics altogether, if that’s how you feel? It’s always a mix of truth, half-truths, lies, and at the bottom of the barrel, rancid truthiness.
1. An op-ed, “Palin not abandoning earmarks altogether” by John Katz, “director of State-Federal Relations and Special Counsel to Gov. Sarah Palin”. After pointing out that earmarks might be abuseable but are not the source of all evil in the world today, he explains the new, much more stringent criteria to Alaskans worried about their paychecks.
2. An interesting anti-Palin blog entry on the “bridge to nowhere” comment in her speech, by a blogger who follows Alaskan politics closely. Interesting to me for the excerpt from Ketchikan Daily News in Aug 2006, where she expresses sympathy to Ketchikaners over the bad press and politicking, and promises that she won’t oppose what the Alaskan congressional delegation — which, if you’ll remember, she was busy demolishing — had tried to get for the region. Also interesting for the quote “We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.” [my emph. added -- see below for why.]
3. As pundits scramble to point out the contradictions between Palin’s defense of earmarks and McCain’s announcement that he’ll veto every single earmark in sight, people who actually think about these things for a living point out that it’s not even clear what McCain is talking about. It all depends on your definition of “earmark.” Does the Federal budget have $60b of earmarks (McCain), or $14.4b Congressional Research Service), or $200m (some creepy lobby, obviously), or $23m (the White House, doncha know)? Maybe everything John Katz talked about as an earmark in that op-ed linked above wouldn’t even count anymore, depending on whose definition you use? Geez, maybe in Katz’s statement there’s more honesty and integrity than you might find on the Dem side of the aisle, most days?
4. Palin’s actual words. “And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress — I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that bridge to nowhere. (APPLAUSE) If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves.”
So — that’s a “blatant” lie? I have to wonder. Nobody in the McCain camp vetted this? Nobody saw the contradiction between a McCain who condemned “bridge to nowhere” and a Palin who supported it? Such blazing incompetence could only be political suicide, and it’s pretty early for that. It’s quite implausible. So maybe it’s not incompetence after all? Could that be? I think there’s a case.
Remember, if McCain loses, Palin has to go back to Alaska. Faced with a rickety bridge ahead, did she just burn the bridge back as well? If so, which one? I’d say it was not the Gavin Island Airport bridge everybody rattles on about, but rather the Knik Arm Bridge, which, from what I can tell, really is a bridge to nowhere. It was originally estimated to cost about as much as Gavin Island’s, but later went up to $1.5 billion on some estimates, and I think was much more the baby of the Ted Stevens Gang than was Gavin Island. Palin still hasn’t been able to kill that project outright, even though it’s far porkier by every measure. It still rasps on, through some respirator. But it will probably never be built, so that’s some consolation, because a $1.5b bridge crossing where there’s not even any year-round ferry traffic is like something out of the Wizard of Oz. The Gavin Island-Ketchikan ferry system handles hundreds of thousands of passengers a year. The Knik Arm Ferry is only proposed, and seems stuck in Real Soon Now — I guess because it’s not in relatively warm Southeast Alaska (remember my emphasis added above?) and would have to be an icebreaker in the winter.
So did Palin lie? Pretty much. Kinda. Sorta. But I think she also signaled an interesting truth at the same time, using one of those Alaskan dog whistles. By reprogramming the (much reduced) federal funding for the “bridges [plural] to nowhere” she also left a true “bridge [singular] to nowhere” in a state of brain-death. Reform-minded Republican Alaskans might be able to parse this one, and curse Stevens et al. for overreaching and trying to fund two mega-project bridges where only one made any kind of sense at all. But maybe you gotta be a real Alaskan husky dog to hear anything on that whistle frequency.
Now, with the Alaska-local political wrinkles all analyzed to death, let me tell you what now-fired-up GOP base voters nationwide think about this flap: they probably don’t give two shits about it. Net political damage to the McCain-Palin ticket: probably zero.
Jump up and down and scream about the rank dishonesty, the Orwellian history-rewriting, blah blah blah. The kind of people who finally went into the tank for McCain because he chose Palin will just point you out to their kids and say, “look at the funny liberal jumping up and down and screaming incoherently about something or other. This is why we homeschool you, so you won’t turn out like that.” Because that’s the kind of God-fearin’, Bible-thumpin’, home-schoolin’, abortion-clinic-picketin’, anthropogenic-global-warming-denyin’ people they are, God love ‘em. It’s all as peculiar to me as sticking a bone through one’s nose, but I’m too much of a cultural relativist to write it off as merely a form of insanity. And maybe that saves me from underestimating the intelligence of their tribal leadership.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:21 am
If apparent dishonesty in a source can be used to justify one’s “waning” attention to it, reg, perhaps I should just write off Political Animal (and all other sources) when they talk about a bridge to an island inhabited by about 50 people, but fail to mention that the same island has an international airport, or that the bridge would have carried hundreds of thousands of passengers per year who now cross by ferry. I mean, isn’t that the slightest sin of omission, to leave that out? After all, how could the great Kevin Drum not have done his homework? Unthinkable! So he must be intentionally deceiving us, right? And therefore, by your standards, not worthy of much further attention.
I read further anyway. It was (marginally) useful. Even Drum (who I think is genuinely great, btw) gets lazy sometimes.
On the issue of whether and how Palin lied about “bridges to nowhere”, and her campaign against earmark abuse, I’m going to leave some sources here, with comments drawing attention to how issues are getting clouded. Be warned, though: if your attention tends to “wane” the very moment you suspect dishonesty, you probably won’t connect the dots anyway. So why bother. In fact, why not just tune out politics altogether, if that’s how you feel? It’s always a mix of truth, half-truths, lies, and at the bottom of the barrel, rancid truthiness.
1. An op-ed, “Palin not abandoning earmarks altogether” by John Katz, “director of State-Federal Relations and Special Counsel to Gov. Sarah Palin”. After pointing out that earmarks might be abuseable but are not the source of all evil in the world today, he explains the new, much more stringent criteria to Alaskans worried about their paychecks.
2. An interesting anti-Palin blog entry on the “bridge to nowhere” comment in her speech, by a blogger who follows Alaskan politics closely. Interesting to me for the excerpt from Ketchikan Daily News in Aug 2006, where she expresses sympathy to Ketchikaners over the bad press and politicking, and promises that she won’t oppose what the Alaskan congressional delegation — which, if you’ll remember, she was busy demolishing — had tried to get for the region. Also interesting for the quote “We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.” [my emph. added -- see below for why.]
3. As pundits scramble to point out the contradictions between Palin’s defense of earmarks and McCain’s announcement that he’ll veto every single earmark in sight, people who actually think about these things for a living point out that it’s not even clear what McCain is talking about. It all depends on your definition of “earmark.” Does the Federal budget have $60b of earmarks (McCain), or $14.4b Congressional Research Service), or $200m (some creepy lobby, obviously), or $23m (the White House, doncha know)? Maybe everything John Katz talked about as an earmark in that op-ed linked above wouldn’t even count anymore, depending on whose definition you use? Geez, maybe in Katz’s statement there’s more honesty and integrity than you might find on the Dem side of the aisle, most days?
4. Palin’s actual words. “And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress — I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that bridge to nowhere. (APPLAUSE) If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves.”
So — that’s a “blatant” lie? I have to wonder. Nobody in the McCain camp vetted this? Nobody saw the contradiction between a McCain who condemned “bridge to nowhere” and a Palin who supported it? Such blazing incompetence could only be political suicide, and it’s pretty early for that. It’s quite implausible. So maybe it’s not incompetence after all? Could that be? I think there’s a case.
Remember, if McCain loses, Palin has to go back to Alaska. Faced with a rickety bridge ahead, did she just burn the bridge back as well? If so, which one? I’d say it was not the Gavin Island Airport bridge everybody rattles on about, but rather the Knik Arm Bridge, which, from what I can tell, really is a bridge to nowhere. It was originally estimated to cost about as much as Gavin Island’s, but later went up to $1.5 billion on some estimates, and I think was much more the baby of the Ted Stevens Gang than was Gavin Island. Palin still hasn’t been able to kill that project outright, even though it’s far porkier by every measure. It still rasps on, through some respirator. But it will probably never be built, so that’s some consolation, because a $1.5b bridge crossing where there’s not even any year-round ferry traffic is like something out of the Wizard of Oz. The Gavin Island-Ketchikan ferry system handles hundreds of thousands of passengers a year. The Knik Arm Ferry is only proposed, and seems stuck in Real Soon Now — I guess because it’s not in relatively warm Southeast Alaska (remember my emphasis added above?) and would have to be an icebreaker in the winter.
So did Palin lie? Pretty much. Kinda. Sorta. But I think she also signaled an interesting truth at the same time, using one of those Alaskan dog whistles. By reprogramming the (much reduced) federal funding for the “bridges [plural] to nowhere” she also left a true “bridge [singular] to nowhere” in a state of brain-death. Reform-minded Republican Alaskans might be able to parse this one, and curse Stevens et al. for overreaching and trying to fund two mega-project bridges where only one made any kind of sense at all. But maybe you gotta be a real Alaskan husky dog to hear anything on that whistle frequency.
Now, with the Alaska-local political wrinkles all analyzed to death, let me tell you what now-fired-up GOP base voters nationwide think about this flap: they probably don’t give two shits about it. Net political damage to the McCain-Palin ticket: probably zero.
Jump up and down and scream about the rank dishonesty, the Orwellian history-rewriting, blah blah blah. The kind of people who finally went into the tank for McCain because he chose Palin will just point you out to their kids and say, “look at the funny liberal jumping up and down and screaming incoherently about something or other. This is why we homeschool you, so you won’t turn out like that.” Because that’s the kind of God-fearin’, Bible-thumpin’, home-schoolin’, abortion-clinic-picketin’, anthropogenic-global-warming-denyin’ people they are, God love ‘em. It’s all as peculiar to me as sticking a bone through one’s nose, but I’m too much of a cultural relativist to write it off as merely a form of insanity. And maybe that’s what saves me from underestimating the intelligence of their tribal leadership.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:27 am
“…..it still cuts through a lot of crap out-of-the-gate to give less credence to arguments motivated solely by ideology.”
But not your idealogy reg.
“…you’re getting more than a bit annoying.”
But not you reg.
You are the left wing version of Woody Reg, and the sad part is you’re so partisan you don’t even realize it. You guys are so partisan you are part of the problem, not the solution…..no, you guys ARE the problem in our country.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:43 am
Gustav is turning out to be far less than was hoped for by SOME on the left. Shame on those folk who would wish for a disaster (affecting those “working families”) just to hurt the GOP.
And you call THEM rethuglicans.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:45 am
“Lot’s of room for disagreement still, and for taking differing value systems into account, but it still cuts through a lot of crap out-of-the-gate to give less credence to arguments motivated solely by ideology.”
I wonder who reg got to ghost write that for him!
September 1st, 2008 at 8:23 am
It is not people like reg who has brought us a left-wing pop-star with the thinnest resume, thinner than a socker mom from Alaska, who may very will win the most important job in the free world. It is George Bush. It is the anyone-but-Bush vote that will turn this election.
It is George Bush that, like Vietnam, did not send in enough troops to get the job done and over with in Iraq. It is George Bush with his partisan Capitalist ideology that has left the middle class tax-payers worse off, and the out-of-regulation and reduced-taxed Capitalist
run wild and rough-shod over those who actually work, not sit on their ass gambling in the stock market. Capitalism even to the point of taking our houses while handing us their gambling bill. DISGUSTING.
Now what we are about to get for the sins of the right-wing idealogy is the left-wing idealogy. The Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama idealogy. While the right-wing nuts drew our blood to pay for a mismanaged war and unmanaged greedy-by-nature capitalism. the left-wing are getting prepared to draw our blood already emaciated bodies to pay for their Socialism. Free shit for whining lazy useless and needy burgeoning population that are more than willing to give up their freedom, personal decisions, and blood for a free ride as long as NOTHING is expected in return for it. DISGUSTING.
In 8 years the extremist knee-jerk cycle will reverse again, because sure as hell, Socialism will apply enough pain on us to belive the lies of the other party again.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:34 am
It is not people like reg who has brought us a left-wing pop-star with the thinnest resume, thinner than a socker mom from Alaska, who may very well win the most important job in the free world. It is George Bush. It is the anyone-but-Bush vote that will turn this election.
It is George Bush that, like Vietnam, did not send in enough troops to get the job done and over with in Iraq. It is George Bush with his partisan Capitalistic idealogy that has left the middle class tax-payers worse off, and the out-of-regulation and reduced-taxed Capitalist-
run-wild and rough shod over those who actually work, not sit on their ass gambling in the stock market. Capitalism to the point of taking middle-class houses, while handing them the gambling bill. DISGUSTING.
Now what we are about to get for the sins of the right-wing idealogy is the left-wing idealogy. The Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama idealogy. While the right wing nuts drew our blood to pay for a mismanaged war and unmanaged greedy-by-nature capitalism. the left-wing are getting prepared to draw blood from our already emanciated bodies to pay for free shit for spoiled a whining lazy needy and useless burgeoning population that are more than willing to give up their freedom, personal decisions, and blood for a free ride, as long as NOTHING is expected in return for it. DISGUSTING.
In 8 years the extremist cycle will reverse again, because the left will surely force their idealogy on us to the point of disgust.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:30 am
Palin is an End-Timer, she believes the anti-Christ will rise and destroy Israel. She has very many crazy beliefs, concerning Satan’s role on earth and the angels sent to fight him, and a whole lot of other End-Time eschatological notions. The fact the journalists stay away from asking theological questions shows how idiotic our culture has become. These folks should take responsibility for their beliefs and defend them.
She is crazy.
They are crazy and reckless.
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/08/hbc-90003486
September 1st, 2008 at 9:31 am
I miss the participation of Michael Balter. I could disagree with him without having to read long comments.
- – -
Now, that Gustav is petering out, but not exposing itself, let’s look at Palin, courtesy of Daily Kos, which seems to represent the mindset of most lefties here.
I guess reg can quit speculating and spreading this, as he pretends to take the high road.
- – -
But, there is this NEW ACCUSATION from Kos! Palin belong to a secret society to inflitrate government and help Alaska secede from the Union!
The South will rise again…in the Arctic.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:35 am
Jim R: “It is George Bush. It is the anyone-but-Bush vote that will turn this election.”
Jim, you are absolutely correct, however, Bush isn’t running and for too many times we have voted in the “anti-someone or other” hoping for change. Wouldn’t it be nice to vote for someone who stands for something CONCRETE as opposed to either more of the same or pie in the sky?
September 1st, 2008 at 9:38 am
someotherdude (restated with link): Palin is an End-Timer, she believes the Anti-Christ will rise and destroy Israel.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:43 am
Oh, a final thought…If Obama is elected, we’ll see the end of Western Civilization. I just wanted to make it clear who would be responsible.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:49 am
And, one final sharing…Barry Obama without a teleprompter. The “Uh” Count.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:04 am
Gustav is turning out to be far less than was hoped for by SOME on the left. Shame on those folk who would wish for a disaster (affecting those “working families”) just to hurt the GOP.
Spare me your faux outrage. I know of no one who expressed such hopes but I do know that Stuart Shepard of “Focus on the Family” was encouraging evangelicals to pray for rain the night Obama was speaking at Invesco.
Michael Turner,
What Palin said regarding her position about the Bridge to Nowhere was a lie.
Her daughter, btw is off limits as far as I’m concerned.
Palin believes that the founding fathers developed the pledge of allegiance. She’s only off by over 100 years.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:13 am
Screwed up that link. Here it is.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Jim – calm down. You’re not going to get eight years of John Bolton’s, Doug Feith’s and David Addiington’s – or even Gonzalez’s and Mike Brown’s – drawn from the right foisted on you and destroying the country. This reading of Obama as “left-wing” in the sense of some extreme ideologist matching the crazies noted above = or ridiculously above his head (like Palin) – is your fantasy. A chill pill is in order. And, I dare say, you’re not sounding too confident.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:43 am
As for “you’re the leftwing version of Woody” there’s no response to that namecalling other than to tell you to go fuck youself if you haven’t got an argument. You complain about my “ideology” which is essentially social-democratic at about the level of Robert Reich or Robert Kuttner. If you believe that’s as loopy as the crap Woody – and for that matter Roper – consistently lay on us, most of which has been evidence of their utter lack of seriousness or anlaytical competence – please make that clear. If you believe I have made a poor case against the war over these past few years and Woody has made a good one, make that clear. If you believe my steady assertions that Iran is the big external winner in the Iraq war, that Americans sacrificed blood and treasure for is as vacuous as Ropers’ counter that was a completely baseless notion just a couple of years ago and only a nutcase would contend such because of – you know – purple fingers or some such, make that clear as well.
Have you actually got anything to tell me that I desperately need to know in order to look at the world more rationally and not from some asserted “ideology” that you find puke-worthy and at the same level of juvenalia that Woody, et al display here. Or is it the case that you’ve got nuthin’ except your frustration at the corner your ideological soulmates in the political arena have boxed us all in so you’ve got to call me ugly names (that woul be “Woody of the far left”. Because if that’s the case – as it would appear – and your not capable of countering what I’ve put up here with anything more serious than that, I don’;t even have to bother to tell you to shove it up your ass or go “f” yourself. You’re already fucked.
Come back at me with something better than a whine. You’re looking as lame as the rest of the pathetic “conservtives” who for some bizarre reason get drawn to Marc’s pages. It’s all made it a bit too easy – except now it’s utterly boring. That, incidentally, is undoubtedly why Michael Balter rarely appears anymore. Who cares what guys who’ve brought so little to the table here think about anything at this point ?
September 1st, 2008 at 11:06 am
Incidentally Jim – although I opposed the war I was arguing for more troops back in 2003 and all I got from pro-war types like
Woody and Roper was bitching because it was in the context of criticizing Bush as an idiot who was getting our military in deep shit without proper planning or strategy – on top of it being a bogus cause. So thanks a lot for the “Woody of the left” crap. I happen to have supported intervention in Afghanistan and was concerned that there was too much reliance on warlords and wondered why the hell more forces weren’t concentrated in Tora Bora. Again, those concerns were interpreted by righties as “Bush hatred” when at that point I was actually pulling for Rumsfeld to do a good job and for the country to unite around a rational anti-al Qaeda strategy. My biggest brief against Bush in the months after 9/11 was that he didn’t use the moment to announce a “Manhattan Project” toward vastly increasing our energy independence over the next 10 years – or whatever horizon would make sense in the context of mobilizing folks toward a goal bigger than their daily concerns that they could actually begin to participate in and start to see as a combination of crucial national interest and long-term rational self-interest. I don’t think I was posting here at the time, but I said to lots of friends at the time – including super-liberal friends who I consider far more “ideological” than myself in a Berkeley PC kind of way that I find pretty much a joke – give them ANWAR in exchange for a serious, national commitmment to alternatives and renewables. This was in October of 2001 that this was my stated, vocal position on one of the most important things we could do to use the tragedy of 9/11 to the country’s benefit and to disarm those in the Middle East who had become hostile and/or vicious enemies of the U.S. That combined with a tough and smart effort to go after bin Laden where he lived. Compare my “ideology” to what you got not from a crank like Roper for whom John McCain wasn’t conservative enough until he nominated Palin as his Veep (!!?!?!??!?!? – weird but true), or an utterly unserious clown like Woody, but to what you got from your guy – who shortly thereafter started giving utterly loopy “Axis of Evil” speeches or guys like Perle and Frum who wrote a book called “The End of Evil”. REally ? The End of Evil ? Now THAT’S a plan.
So yes, go fuck yourself calling me – or Obama for that matter – “leftwing ideologues.” At least you have the presence of mind to – finally – blame Bush for most of the mess we’re in for his incompetence if nothing else. Truth is, despite my opposition to the Iraq war, I fault him as much for the incompetence and have from early on because it can only be explained by reckless hubris – and that’s a scary mindset when you’re going into a war with grandiose goals (remember “transform the Middle East” etc. that guys like Frum were trying to sell us?)
If you EVER compare me as a “leftwing version of Woody” again, you’ll officially become #3 on my “who cares what idiots think” list and to save myself time and pointless effort, I’ll ignore your comments as “a priori” worthless from here on out.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:20 am
Hopefully Gustav will turn out to be less of a disaster than SOME on the Right have been hoping it would be. On This Week Matthew Dowd, who was Bush-Cheney’s chief strategist in ’04 was talking about the “opportunity” that Gustav presented for McCain. He had a bunch of reasons that it would be good for him, including keeping GW Bush away from the convenion. To her credit, Cokie Roberts, who is a native of NOLA, took him to task for this kind of talk, reflecting the efforts of top GOP strategists to use Gustav as an excuse for a truncated convention that keeps Bush/Cheney out of the picture AND provides McCain/Palin an opportunistic photo-op. I would never accuse rank-and-file Republicans of thinking like this, but it was telling that Bush/Cheney guy Dowd leaped directly into this way of framing Katrina. Pretty disgusting.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am
Yeah, that “Woddy-of-left” slam was out of line.
reg is nothing like woody.
I was more like the Woody-of-the-left when I posted here more often.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:42 am
Gustav?
Forget it!
“reg” is the blathercane of this blog’s comments:
a 24/7 (except for med breaks, I guess) deluge of bombast, vitriol, and impotent and redolent posting and reposting.
reg is left?
Nope. The old Stalinist sputterer is left out and creepily shouting to be noticed.
How sad.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:47 am
Sergio – your not worth a rat’s turd. Really. Even Woody has contributed more of substance here than you.
On Palin, it’s – unfortunately, I have to say on the strictly human level – becoming clear that she’s going to be the greates VP candidate since Thomas Eagelton. I give her another 36 hours at most.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:49 am
I’ll have no more to say about Palin. This whole thing has taken a turn that calls for a long silence while we see if the folks allegedly in charge of the McCain ship figure out their next move.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Randy: “Spare me your faux outrage. I know of no one who expressed such hopes but I do know that Stuart Shepard of “Focus on the Family” was encouraging evangelicals to pray for rain the night Obama was speaking at Invesco.”
Randy, obviously you are willing to keep up with idiots praying for rain, but you didn’t hear of Michael Moore or the two DNC yo-yo’s headed back to S.C. saying that Gustav showed that God was on the Dems side. I’m noticing also that you took such quick offence. No need, I didn’t say any one in this blog did I? Faux outrage? I didn’t say I was outraged either. Methinks thou does’t protest too much (and too quickly!)
September 1st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Happy Labor Day.
Walter Reuther, thanks again.
In case anyone needs a program listing the featured speakers at the GOP convention:
http://www.gopconvention2008.com/news/Read.aspx?ID=580
September 1st, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Opps, that one is obviously outdated…
September 1st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Randy, obviously you are willing to keep up with idiots praying for rain, but you didn’t hear of Michael Moore or the two DNC yo-yo’s headed back to S.C. saying that Gustav showed that God was on the Dems side
A.) No I didn’t hear about it
B.) When one says shame on those folks who could wish for a disaster, I assume that they’re outraged. I certainly would be. Sorry that you’re not.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Also, just for the record, John Hagee made the following statement before John McCain eagerly sought his endorsement:
I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.
Some in your side would apparently be wishing for a disaster for political gain and seek out the endorsement of those who did.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
As for your comment in the previous thread that Palin “had taken on Ted Stevens,” she was, in fact, a director of his 527 group “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.”.
Seems like you’ve vetted her as carefully as McCain has.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Hmm…C-SPAN is covering the “Republican National Convention” and we’re getting Tucker Carlson getting wiped out by Arianna Huffington.
The route is on!
September 1st, 2008 at 2:10 pm
The blowhards in the Limbaugh/Focus on the Family/Malkin wingnut wing of the GOP have that Stalinist gene that forces them to say anything in defense of their “cause” no matter how preposterous or contra evidence. This charade is becoming increasingly embarrassing – hopefully not to some of the innocents dragged into the spotlight, although it’s clear nobody was considering their best interests – but to McCain and crackpots like Lindsey Graham who claim both that Ted Stevens was “faced down” by his governor AND that Ted Stevens is a tougher customer than Vladimir Putin and his legions, or the GOP nutball who asserted that Alaska’s proximity to Russian requires it’s governor to have superior foreign policy skills, or CNBC’s Maria Bartaromo who claimed that knowledge of Alaska’s oil industry is the kind of “energy expertise” we need to lead us into the energy future. This is just the dumbest shit in the world. And I think some of them know how full of shit they are but can’t help themselves because they’re nothing but partisan empty suits (probably not Bartaromo, who’s dutifully sold every talking point that’s ever been floated by the Stock Casino crowd – I think she’s just plain dumb.)
This is beginning to look like an old CPUSA convention, the Orwellian bullshit is being piled so high.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Laura Bush speaking…
Acknowledging the priority given to the Gulf Coast. Said it’s the duty of the government to protect the American people…
I think she just proved the cliche that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Randy: “When one says shame on those folks who could wish for a disaster, I assume that they’re outraged. I certainly would be. Sorry that you’re not.”
Randy, you are perfectly welcome to have any emotion you want. I recognize however, that outrage about THAT subject is pointless and non-productive. I am disappointed and I am angry, but outrage? Nah, I’ll save the outrage for the left nuts that are castigating Palin for going through with a pregnancy knowing that the child has Down’s Syndrome. I’ll save the outrage for really outreageous stuff.
Moore and the other two idiots did not have any impact (any more than the idiots praying for rain – t hough you should be willing to admit that praying for rain in an open air site is not as sorry as being gleeful that a really BAD storm could hurt people and say it’s God. Reminds me of the idiots saying 9/11 was God’s judgment on America.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Oh, and Randy, trying to shame me with your comment “…I assume that they’re outraged. I certainly would be. Sorry that you’re not.” is pretty cheap (and not effective in the least).
September 1st, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Randy: (Palin’s) only off by over 100 years.
And, Obama only overstated the number of states by eight (there are actually only fifty – need a source?) (a), and Bill Clinton confused the Gettysburg Address with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. (b)
a. Obama: “It is wonderful to be back in Oregon. Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”
b. Bill Clinton: “The last time I checked, the Constitution said, ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’ That’s what the Declaration of Independence says.”
I’ll accept her error before those two–and, her experience and values.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I don’t want to comment on the Alaskan Governor until some more of the smoke clears, but I have to say I was appalled to see some of the stuff surfacing in the wake of the latest news. Here’s the worst I’ve seen so far, coming from the “Culture” editor of the Moonie Washington Times, the premiere rightwing Beltway newspaper, writing in the American Spectator, who blessed us with so much sliming of the Clintons back in the day. Glad Michael Moore or some other leftwing asshole didn’t write this or it would be all over Hannity and O’REilly as examples of liberal perfidy. Of course, they’ll give their wingnut soulmate from the Washington Times a pass on this. I have to say, at least the Spectator crowd aren’t shameless hypocrites and are proving themselves equal opportunity gutter-snipes in printing this:
‘Responsibilities of Adulthood’ – Monday, September 01, 2008 @ 1:34:58 PM – Robert Stacy McCain
Since the McCain campaign has released a statement declaring that 17-year-old Bristol Palin now faces “the responsibilities of adulthood,” might I be so bold as to suggest that they arrange a press conference where Bristol can attempt to address the horrible embarrassment she’s caused her parents?
Excuse my paternal (and political) indignation but I am in no mood for pleas that the media respect anyone’s privacy at this point. I don’t think it an exaggeration to say that this girl (and her boyfriend) have caused a crisis of global significance, and if her parents are serious about “the responsibilities of adulthood,” Bristol ought to face the consequences, including about 45 minutes in front of the klieg lights while reporters shout stupid questions.
It’s not Bristol’s fault her mother was picked as the GOP running mate, but she certainly should have understood how her personal behavior would reflect on her family.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:32 pm
ooops – URL, just so you can peek and confirm that I didn’t take this out of any context since my supposed reputation for putting total horseshit up here apparently rivals that of Woody’s with a couple of the locals.
http://www.spectator.org/blogger.asp?BlogID=14417
September 1st, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Whoa. This Robert Stacey McCain comes off pretty scary.
Apparently he’s the co-author of Donkey Cons which delves into sex and corruption of the Democratic Party. The book reviews I just read on amazon might suggest he’s found a niche for this kind of fetish market.
September 1st, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Scumbags: “The McCain campaign, as part of its pushback, had an anonymous aide tell Reuters that the Obama campaign has been behind the rumor mongering on Palin’s family life, and for reasons that defy comprehension, Reuters ran the allegation without support or evidence.” (Steve Benen, WM PoliticalAnimal)
September 1st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Hilzoy, from Obsidian Wings:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/9507/32974110
September 1st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Oops sorry… let’s try that link again:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/09/sarah-palins-ch.html
September 1st, 2008 at 4:52 pm
qdp – Hilzoy’s right. Obama’s right. But do you think the folks who pushed the Palin nomination, such as Rush Limbaugh – or classless peckerwoods who roam these links guttersniping endlessly – would honor that if the shoe were on the other foot, and most especially if the family were black ? Answer honestly. And is it fair to wonder what Palin, much less McCain, was thinking as regards her daughter’s possibility of privacy at this point in her life when she accepted the nomination ? Kids are off-limits, but as was clear when folks in these threads – who shall remain nameless but are notorious for their lowlife approach to political discourse – attacked Obama for letting his kids participate in a softball family interview – candidates’ judgement about what they subject their kids to in the context of the political pressure cooker aren’t.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Reg, honestly? If the (high heeled) shoe were on the other foot, I think some of the rightpunditocracy– Rush, Hannity and Malkin, especially– would most definitely be pushing on this teen pregnancy stuff, in all the most despicable ways. (Barack HUSSEIN Obama, anyone?) And other righties would be, rightly, displaying some class and refusing to touch the story. Just like the left appears to be doing today with regard to the Palin’s baggage. It’s also somewhat fair IMHO to wonder for how long and how deeply Palin considered whether the VP slot was right for her, in her relatively unique family situation.
Here’s where you’re welcome to call me a screaming peckerwood idiot if you want Reg, as I’ve a strong hunch that as another conservative haunting this board, that value judgment from you is inevitably coming to me. But from my vantage point, the left and the right are awfully, creepily similar these days. Not just in positions and policy either, but in terms of judgmentalism, hypocrisy, money/honeygrubbing, namecalling– you name it.
This is one of the things that’s always appealed to me about Marc… that he appears to recognize this most of the time, and that the party that most thoroughly adopts the politics of personal destruction, most thoroughly destroys itself. To his eternal credit, Obama himself also seems to understand this, and I’ll happily acknowledge as a McCain supporter that BO has personally run what I consider to be one of the cleanest and most upbeat Democratic campaigns (and convention) in my entire recollection.
But then maybe I’m retarded…
September 1st, 2008 at 5:34 pm
From that same thread:
Ive always enjoyed a good conspiracy theory- the one Im hearing now is that Bristol is not preggers at all. That this is just a smokescreen to get rid of the persistent rumors that Bristol was Trig’s mother (ie she can’t be Trig’s mom if she’s at 5 months- note that this is exactly how long she’d have to be pregnant to rule this out).
And the evidence in favor of the original conspiracy, while circumstantial, is not weak or easily dismissed (eg an AP pic of Sarah in tight clothing at 7 months but not showing, her bizarre trip from Texas to Anchorage and then a 45 minute drive *away* from the best neonatal unit in the state to have the baby delivered by her family doc).
If this theory is true, Bristol will have a ‘miscarriage’ soon and everything will go away.
Now, Im not saying that this is true. And I basically agree with hil that this- while fascinating in a car-wreck sort of war- ought not be grounds for political manuvering anyway. That is, no one should be bothering Bristol with any questions, trying to locate the father, etc.
Posted by: Carleton Wu | September 01, 2008 at 08:19 PM
September 1st, 2008 at 6:11 pm
qdp – you’re not retarded at all. You’re decent and honest. I think I am too when I’m dealing with decent and honest people. There’s some stuff I’d take issue with in your post, but it’s a good, from the gut comment that I totally respect.
For the record, over on Celeste’s blog I posted this, as regards not this latest bit but earlier and IMHO totally inapprotirate questions that began to surface about Palin’s little baby:
http://witnessla.com/environment/2008/admin/thinking-of-you-new-orleans/#comment-38689
This had been raised by someone else, earlier in the thread and that was my comment. Here’s what “peckerwood” wrote in response:
http://witnessla.com/environment/2008/admin/thinking-of-you-new-orleans/#comment-38761
Which is why being compared to that pile of clown crap amounts to fighting words with me by this point. I’ve been right about him since the first time I called him out in harsh terms as an embarrassment even to his own “cause”.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:14 pm
uh ….that’s “inappropriate” not “inapprotirate”
September 1st, 2008 at 6:16 pm
For the record, I’ve got a great-nephew with Downs Syndrome who is one of my favorite people in the whole world. Beautiful kid. He’s started his own business at the age of 10 – baking, packaging and marketing chocolate truffles. God’s truth…
September 1st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I’ll add, because I think this is very, very important, that my great-nephew reads more books – Harry Potter-level books – and is a greater store of information and curiosity about the world than any other 10 year old I’ve ever met. He’s saving the profits from his truffle business to travel to Africa to visit an artist friend of his family. One of the biggest challenges these kids face – beyond their disability – is being underestimated and treated like they can’t achieve.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Why Bristol’s baby matters:
http://michael-balter.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-bristols-baby-matters.html
September 1st, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Obama just said something that is consistent with what I’ve been saying…we can’t keep going through evacuating New Orleans every few years and need to restore the low areas back to swamps (he said wetlands.)
Quick! Switch your support to Nader!! Obama said something logical.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Choices Simplified
September 1st, 2008 at 9:47 pm
qdpsteve “… the left and the right are awfully, creepily similar these days. Not just in positions and policy either, but in terms of judgmentalism, hypocrisy, money/honeygrubbing, namecalling– you name it.”
It’s in the nature of zealotry in anything, isn’t it? It makes everything simpler. That GOP base, mostly a buncha crazies, right? Those Kossacks, mostly a buncha crazies, right?
What bothers me more: if you stop and think about the plausibility of positions, and go do careful research rather than just echoing what’s on your favorite blog, then write it all up and present it here, where does it get you? It seems you can end up where I am right now on this thread: with a couple of rather long, well-sourced contributions awaiting moderation. In the meantime, Reg can call people “fucking idiots”, and Woody can provoke him further by posting one easily-debunked gobbet of propaganda after another, but that’s somehow OK.
Well, it’s Marc’s blog, he can manage it how he wants, I guess. He’s not exactly the highly analytical wonk himself on his own blog, and has unapologetically admitted as much at times, IIRC. Maybe I’m just trying to contribute in the wrong place? Maybe all my complaint deserves is a hearty “GYOFB“?
September 1st, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Ironically, one thing political zealotry often blinds zealots to is the nature of politics itself. And don’t politicians know it!
Above I see claims that Palin believes the Pledge of Allegiance was contemporary with the Founding Fathers. The quote the claim is based on checks out, but the claim itself is wrong. Why do I think so? Because it fails to recognize that what we have on our hands is a politician’s statement for public consumption. You don’t know what Palin thinks on this. You know only what she’s said.
Not being a zealot, I’m equally at peace with two hypotheses about how Palin answered that vetting-questionaire question about how she stands on the use of “under God” in the Pledge:
(1) It’s true, she does (or did) believe that the Founding Fathers found theological references acceptable in a recitation that actually wasn’t drafted in their lifetimes. I can imagine her at 3am, nursing Trig, and muttering to herself, “Wew, at least there are some easy questions!”
(2) She passed the questionaire to competent staffers and campaign consultants, who duly informed her which answers worked best, regardless of their factual accuracy.
I can well imagine a consultant telling her “Actually, the Pledge came long after the Founding Fathers, but let’s face it: people who would hold that against you aren’t going to vote McCain anyway, and our research indicates that the GOP base absolutely loves this answer. And that’s what McCain would tap you for, if he did tap you, right? Your base-stoking appeal.”
The problem with dismissing that latter possibility is that you’re doing one of the worst things you can do in any conflict: systematically underestimating your opponent. I have to hand it to the Obama campaign on this point: they don’t seem to be guilty of that, so far. There’s plenty they could be saying about Palin, right now, but from the relatively placid surface, I’d say they’re recalibrating carefully.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:11 am
“a couple of rather long, well-sourced contributions awaiting moderation”
I can tell you one thing which may or may not help you. Don’t EVER use the word “socialist” in a comment. Every time I ever have – which actually happened in this thread – the comment goes into moderation – usually never to come out. I believe a series of multiple URL’s also sets the nanny off. Look at your comments, see if you can use your deductive powers to figure out what set the nanny off, scrub them and re-post. Because they’re not likely to come out of moderation before the thread is so old that nobody’s reading it anymore.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:16 am
Michael – I very stupidly tried to tell you at least one word I’ve found that sets off the comments nanny, and of course – I’m almost embarrassed to state the obvious – my advice went into moderation. Sorry. Okay – it’s a nine-letter word that starts with “s”, ends with “t” and describes the political philosophy of E.V.Debs. That’s one I’ve figured out and avoid. “Fuck you”, as you note, doesn’t do it. This one does. Make sure you scrub it from any comments. If you can use your deductive powers and experience to figure out more “triggers” – I also think numerous URLs set it off for example – let us know.
September 2nd, 2008 at 3:10 am
It’s too bad if having lots of URLs automatically puts a submission on moderation. We need more linking to sources (OK, to useful sources), not less.
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:02 am
MT, you’ll just have to disguise the sources by spelling them out (such as dot com) rather than providing actual links. Marc’s filter has a three link limit, and I’ve learned that there is one political term that blocks the comments, too.
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:57 am
GM,
Boo frigging hoo.
In the midst of this, I see that you, who claimed that Palin had taken on Stevens, ignored the fact that Palin was on the boiard of Stevens 527 and have also ignored her lie about the Bridge to Nowhere.
Typical.
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:13 am
Randy, good attempt to switch topics… You’ll get no answer from me regarding the 527 or the “lie” because unlike you I understand politics and changing mind. You can be supportive of a guy one week and castigate him the next. For example… many of you so called progressives (which is code word speak for confused) championed McCain when he was “THE maverick in 2000… now he is the horses ass and HE hasn’t changed at all… you guys have.) So, stick that and go away!
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:18 am
You’ll get no answer from me regarding the 527 or the “lie” because unlike you I understand politics and changing mind.
Oh please. When Kerry did it it was flip-flopping. In other words in Roper World It’s Okay If You’re a Republican.
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:55 am
For example… many of you so called progressives (which is code word speak for confused) championed McCain when he was “THE maverick in 2000… now he is the horses ass and HE hasn’t changed at all… you guys have.) So, stick that and go away!
Oh please. In 2000 McCain referred to the Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson self proclaimed “Christian” right agents of intolerance. Now he’s their shill. He opposed the Bush tax cuts and voted against them. Now he wants to extend them.
You were against him until he picked Palin. Now you’re all gushy and weak in the knees. Spare me the hypocrisy.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 am
“Spare me the hypocrisy.”
Randy, I fear it’s all they’ve got left. You’re arguing with the emptiest of empty suits.
January 21st, 2011 at 9:05 am
cont… thats why its easier at airport check points, plus you dont have to sand it at all, 20 seconds and you are back surfing guilt free