Sunday

Sarah Palin skewered by a Rich Frank

Back to the topic at hand. Normally I'm not crazy about Frank Rich. But I found this article insightful on our pal, Sarah Pal-in

Op-Ed Columnist

The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket

Published: September 13, 2008

WITH all due deference to lipstick, let’s advance the story. A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Frank Rich

Barry Blitt

It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

The ambitious Palin and the ruthless forces she represents know it, too. You can almost see them smacking their lips in anticipation, whether they’re wearing lipstick or not.

This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palin’s acceptance speech. Aligning herself with “a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri” who “followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency,” she read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” Then Palin added a snide observation of her own: Such small-town Americans, she said, “run our factories” and “fight our wars” and are “always proud” of their country. As opposed to those lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans — she didn’t have to name names — who are none of the above.

There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.

Palin, who lies with ease about her own record, misrepresented Pegler’s too. He decreed America was “done for” after Truman won a full term in 1948. For his part, Truman regarded the columnist as a “guttersnipe,” and with good reason. Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese,” he called them) were all likely Communists.

Surely Palin knows no more about Pegler than she does about the Bush doctrine. But the people around her do, and they will be shaping a Palin presidency. That they would inject not just Pegler’s words but spirit into their candidate’s speech shows where they’re coming from. Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, said that the Palin-sparked convention created “a whole new Republican Party,” but what it actually did was exhume an old one from its crypt.

The specifics have changed in our new century, but the vitriolic animus of right-wing populism preached by Pegler and McCarthy and revived by the 1990s culture wars remains the same. The game is always to pit the good, patriotic real Americans against those subversive, probably gay “cosmopolitan” urbanites (as the sometime cross-dresser Rudy Giuliani has it) who threaten to take away everything that small-town folk hold dear.

The racial component to this brand of politics was undisguised in St. Paul. Americans saw a virtually all-white audience yuk it up when Giuliani ridiculed Barack Obama’s “only in America” success as an affirmative-action fairy tale — and when he and Palin mocked Obama’s history as a community organizer in Chicago. Neither party has had so few black delegates (1.5 percent) in the 40 years since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies started keeping a record.

But race is just one manifestation of the emotion that defined the Palin rollout. That dominant emotion is fear — an abject fear of change. Fear of a demographical revolution that will put whites in the American minority by 2042. Fear of the technological revolution and globalization that have gutted those small towns and factories Palin apotheosized.

And, last but hardly least, fear of illegal immigrants who do the low-paying jobs that Americans don’t want to do and of legal immigrants who do the high-paying jobs that poorly educated Americans are not qualified to do. No less revealing than Palin’s convention invocation of Pegler was the pointed omission of any mention of immigration, once the hottest Republican issue, by either her or McCain. Saying the word would have cued an eruption of immigrant-bashing ugliness, Pegler-style, before a national television audience. That wouldn’t play in the swing states of Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, where Obama already has a more than 2-to-1 lead among Hispanic voters. (Bush captured roughly 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004.)

Since St. Paul, Democrats have been feasting on the hypocrisy of the Palin partisans, understandably enough. The same Republicans who attack Democrats for being too P.C. about race now howl about sexism with such abandon you half-expect Phyllis Schlafly and Carly Fiorina to stage a bra-burning. The same gang that once fueled Internet rumors and media feeding frenzies over the Clintons’ private lives now express pious outrage when the same fate befalls the Palins.

But the ultimate hypocrisy is that these woebegone, frightened opponents of change, sworn enemies of race-based college-admission initiatives, are now demanding their own affirmative action program for white folks applying to the electoral college. They want the bar for admission to the White House to be placed so low that legitimate scrutiny and criticism of Palin’s qualifications, record and family values can all be placed off limits. Byron York of National Review, a rare conservative who acknowledges the double standard, captured it best: “If the Obamas had a 17-year-old daughter who was unmarried and pregnant by a tough-talking black kid, my guess is if they all appeared onstage at a Democratic convention and the delegates were cheering wildly, a number of conservatives might be discussing the issue of dysfunctional black families.”

The cunning of the Palin choice as a political strategy is that a candidate who embodies fear of change can be sold as a “maverick” simply because she looks the part. Her marketers have a lot to work with. Palin is not only the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket, but she is young, vibrant and a Washington outsider with no explicit connection to Bush or the war in Iraq. That package looks like change even if what’s inside is anything but.

How do you run against that flashy flimflam? You don’t. Karl Rove for once gave the Democrats a real tip rather than a bum steer when he wrote last week that if Obama wants to win, “he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president,” not Palin for vice president. Obama should keep stepping up the blitz on McCain’s flip-flops, confusion, ignorance and blurriness on major issues (from education to an exit date from Iraq), rather than her gaffes and résumé. If he focuses voters on the 2008 McCain, the Palin question will take care of itself.

Obama’s one break last week was the McCain camp’s indication that it’s likely to minimize its candidate’s solo appearances by joining him at the hip with Palin. There’s a political price to be paid for this blatant admission that he needs her to draw crowds. McCain’s conspicuous subservience to his younger running mate’s hard-right ideology and his dependence on her electioneering energy raise the question of who has the power in this relationship and who is in charge. A strong and independent woman or the older ward who would be bobbing in a golf cart without her? The more voters see that McCain will be the figurehead for a Palin presidency, the more they are likely to demand stepped-up vetting of the rigidly scripted heir apparent.

But Obama’s most important tactic is still the one he has the most trouble executing. He must convey a roll-up-your-sleeves Bobby Kennedy passion for the economic crises that are at the heart of the fears that Palin is trying to exploit. The Republican ticket offers no answers to those anxieties. Drilling isn’t going to lower gas prices or speed energy independence. An increase in corporate tax breaks isn’t going to end income inequality, provide health care or save American jobs in a Palin presidency any more than they did in a Bush presidency.

This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president — like Iraq — invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.

As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.

Shame on Metrolink

Okay, I'm time out from piling on Palin to point out the phoniness of the Metrolink announcement, moments after the crash of its train headlong into a freight train that the cause was "due to an engineer who ignored the red signal."

Now, what about this statement seems unusual? Do companies usually claim responsibility before the facts are in? Why would they do that? Out of compassion?

Hmm. A casual search shows that a company called Viola is responsible for putting engineers on the trains. Interesting. The govt outsources the people who run the trains. And Viola is owned by a worldwide conglomerate.. so.. what is Metrolink's responsibility?

They maintain the track. Oh, I get it - you decide to put trains on a single track (where else in the world do trains run on one track? Are we saving track space? Apparently only in California). Then you blame the dead engineer, because obviously he can't say that the equipment was faulty.. he can't say anything. So why not blame the dead guy because then Metrolink won't be RESPONSIBLE?

Or am I just being too cynical?

Now there's an outcry that there was a "rush to judgment." How about a heinous act by an evil corporate entity? Wow. Cravenness, callousness abounds.

That's my two cents and I'm spending them here. Here's the NY TIMES.. repeating what Metrolink told them was the case.. and it ain't the case yet, now is it?


LOS ANGELES — An engineer who ran a red signal here and crashed head-on into a freight train likely caused the nation’s deadliest commuter train wreck in nearly four decades, a spokeswoman for the rail line said Saturday.

Skip to next paragraph
Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the scene in the San Fernando Valley on Saturday as the investigation continued. More Photos »

The death toll rose to at least 25 from the collision on Friday of the northbound Metrolink train carrying about 225 passengers and the freight train in Chatsworth, a mostly residential district in the northwest San Fernando Valley, officials said. The number of dead may rise, they said, because of the 135 people injured, 40 were in critical condition.

The federal investigation into the crash had just begun, but a rail line spokeswoman, Denise Tyrrell said, “Our preliminary investigation shows it was a Metrolink engineer that failed to stop at a red signal and was the probable cause of the accident.” She acknowledged that it was unusual for the agency to announce findings before a federal team investigates.

The crash was the deadliest commuter train accident in the nation since 1972, when 45 people died in Chicago, and the deadliest train crash of any kind since the 1993 Amtrak crash in Mobile, Ala., in which 47 people died.

At the crash site, firefighters and other rescue workers toiled nonstop Saturday, sifting through and searching for bodies under tons of twisted metal, shattered glass, charred seats and engine parts.

The engineer was the only one of five train workers — three on the freight train and two on the commuter railroad — to die in the crash, Ms. Tyrrell said. She said the engineer, whom she did not identify, worked for an Amtrak subcontractor that had been used by Metrolink since 1998.

Ms. Tyrrell said her agency’s preliminary findings determined that the signal on the track was working properly, and that both trains appeared to be traveling about 40 miles per hour. The conductor of the train, who gives the commands to the engineer, was being interviewed by law enforcement officials, she said.

Metrolink disclosed its findings so quickly, she said, because officials of the rail line, “want to remain on honorable grounds with the community.”

“One way to do that is to be honest and forthright from the beginning,” she said, adding, “We don’t come to this conclusion lightly.”

National Transportation Safety Board officials were far less conclusive. A safety board member, Kitty Higgins, said that while the agency could “absolutely not rule out” human error, it would examine track signals, equipment and many other factors. Three data recorders taken from the two trains, as well as a video recorder from the freight train, would be analyzed, she said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, who arrived at the scene midafternoon, said, “The investigation, of course, continues on.”

At a news conference, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles said the last of the dead had just been pulled from the wreckage of the freight train’s 11 boxcars and the three Metrolink cars, which had been traveling from downtown to the city’s northern suburbs. The mayor quoted a firefighter who he said had told him: “It was very, very difficult. It was like peeling an onion, to find all the victims.”

Nearby, the Los Angeles County coroner set up a large tan air-conditioned tent in the grassy area between the wreck and Chatsworth Hills Academy.

Many passengers described how their quiet commute had been dotted with chatter about the coming weekend until it was punctured by instant terror and carnage shortly before 4:30 p.m. Friday.

Passengers flew into one another’s laps; nearly severed limbs became tangled together, and blood spilled along the cars’ aisles. In some cases, the living were trapped beneath the bodies of the dead.

The first sound was “a huge explosion,” said Greg Tevis, 59, who regularly rides the train from his downtown law office.

“People who had their legs under the seats got broken legs,” Mr. Tevis said. “People were moaning; you had to get them off the train. One lady was trapped under a seat, and we asked her if she wanted us to pull her out, because we didn’t know whether her spinal cord was hurt. She said to take her out.”

Rebecca Cathcart and Michael Parrish contributed reporting from Los Angeles, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.

Friday

Sarah Palin is a Bad Disney Movie



Couldn't agree more. Great comment Mr. Damon. Bravo.

Sarah Palin is a bully. She lies, and then covers it up. (Watch the ABC interview - she can't admit she was "for the bridge and then against it." She admits it but won't admit it.) She's already abusing power, and she's only been in office a couple of years. Books banned from libraries. Advocating creationism. Demanding to erase choice as a woman's option, except in the case of her daughter.

Mark my words; the next time you see her daughter on stage with her "fiancee" she will be wearing a wedding band or fake engagement ring put there by the McCain campaign. Not an accusation - who cares? - just an observation.

Sarah Palin is a Bad Disney Movie. The past 8 years have been NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. Lies about going to war, smearing CIA agents from the White House, from the Office of Vice President!! He should be charged with crimes against the Constitution. 8 years of BS.. I'm just sick of it. Enough is enough.

The country is going to be on the edge of its seat everytime John McCain coughs if he's President. A spot appears on his face, and people will be scrambling to build nuclear shelters. What's this country come to? We'll elect anyone because they believe in creationism? Because they go to Church? Because they have a sarcastic streak, and bully those who are beneath them?

Yesterday NPR reported she made employees sign a loyalty oath. That the librarian that she harassed out of her job, wouldn't sign the oath.

THAT'S WHAT A NAZI DOES.

We're at a crossroads in this country. We're nearly bankrupt. Our children's children will be paying the interest on the loans we took out to finance this ridiculous and unjust war. And now more men have died in Afghanistan than in Iraq. The just war, the war that went after the people responsible for 9/11, was shifted to another theater, making the victory in Afghanistan a hollow one. Why is that? It's because the WAR CRIMINALS IN THE WHITE HOUSE took their supplies and intelligence and men away from them so they could satisfy their own cravings for justice, to "spread democracy," to protect the oil supply - whatever it is, they're guilty of throwing our nation in front of a bus. And they're still war profiteering on it as they sail into the sunset.

If McCain had picked someone who wasn't a complete fake - after all, he spoke to John Kerry about being his vice president - if he had any balls, he would have done the same.. but by picking this Bad Disney scenario, he's lost any respect he had. And the world will treat him as they treated Bush - a dolt who doesn't know what he's doing.
It's so sad to see our nation divided once again, over culture wars. The right wing pretending to be blue collar, and the left wing pretending to be blue collar. When neither collar fits them. I'd throw my hands in the air, but when all is said and done, someone's got to go into the White House, and I'd prefer to bet my money on Obama and Biden to lead us into the future.. and not into a comedy from hell.

Thursday

Sarah Palin as President... the odds are one in five.

This is a variation on a blog going around about SP. Kudos to the artist who photoshopped the vogue picture to our left. Good work.
Just some bullet points about our next President, Sarah Palin.

Enough is enough. I'm frankly, tired of this same old nonsense of the country lying our way into and out of trouble. I think its hilarious that John McCain has picked a rock star of the right wing to be his running mate, and is now tied up in her skirts, only appearing when she appears. I wonder if she'll be onstage when he debates. Either way, I wish her well and a nice retirement back in her home state where she's sorely missed.

I think its hilarious that women are calling the media sexist for asking her questions. The media savaged and trounced on Hillary for years, and only recently did anyone cry 'sexism.' But when you run for President you should be able to answer any question thrown at you - whether it's what the heck the Bush doctrine is, or why you call the Iraq debacle "God's War", where we invade a secular country (which by the way, means "non muslim" or at least "non muslim by decree" as opposed to what Saudi Arabia is, and our other non secular allies represent) and deposed its ruler, and now will spend our children's future on paying for this mistake, to why she can get away with the lie that she was against the "bridge to nowhere." If Joe Biden or Barack Obama say something stupid, they should be raked over the coals for it. But McCain picked her, and since she's a half a heartbeat away from the most powerful office on Earth, she'd damned well better be up to the task. And if she's not, he deserves to be soundly defeated.

Pound away America! If she survives it unscathed, then what the heck, maybe she is the right choice. But just based on the crap that's already come to light in a week since she was introduced, I think I'd prefer to have people in the White House that aren't such complete cyphers that we don't know what they'll do until they actually do it. Enough is enough.

Wednesday

Sarah Palin is a bully

I frickin' HATE bullies.

Don't get me wrong. I liked her speech. I thought it was pretty funny. I thought she was pretty funny. Sarcastic. Dry.

I thought the pick by McCain was equally maverick like "I don't care what anyone says, this is my pick and I'm sticking to it" and creepy "Yes, Karl, whatever you say Karl, if that will get me elected I'll pick anyone."

I think John McCain is either going Ronald Reagan on us, in the mind dept., or he's a liar. Check out Greenberg's new film on the subject.



But Ms. Palin is a bully. She's a bully with librarians. She's a bully with her inlaws. She's a bully with anyone who disagrees with her. Hmm. She'd make a perfect Mrs. Cheney.

America likes bullies. They like to elect creeps. Just look at the creeps we've had in office. Nixon. Bush Jr. Cheney. And now they're going to vote for McCain because he picked Palin. As Ariana Huffington so aptly put it; "America loves a soap opera." Well we've been living in hell for 8 years with this dimwit in the White House and his team of fascist commandos - and now we're supposed to sit back and let it happen again. Man it makes me nauseous.

But as Senator Obama put it today "Enough is enough." I'm fed up with it. So hence the title of this blog. I don't think McCain would be an awful President. I think Bush is awful. But I think Palin would make an awful President. And that's what will happen if we elect him. So get out your checkbooks America, and pop some cash into Obama's campaign; he's going to need it for all the sleaze and crap they'll throw at him.

I frickin' hate bullies. And hate hypocrisy in Govt, and in our leaders. Hate it. Hate it.

Thank God for Jon Stewart.

Okay, this is my clarion call. Onward and upward.

Tuesday

Chinese Hired to Cheer

By STEPHEN WADE, AP Sports Writer Aug 11, 12:03 pm EDTBEIJING (AP)—It was a blowout, the United States women demolishing China 108-63

That couldn’t silence the cheering workers from Beijing’s Capital Steel, a 1,000-strong group that spread itself in square clusters around the Olympic basketball venue on Monday.

Highly visible in yellow T-shirts, they thumped plastic yellow batons, belted out “jia you, jia you” (let’s go in Chinese) and created enthusiasm that belied the score.

“Every single time when we made a mistake, they kept yelling for us, they kept cheering for us,” said Sui Feifei, one of China’s starting five. “We really should thank them.”

Just a few days into the Beijing Olympics, the egg-yoke yellow cheering sections have been spotted at every Olympic venue, part of a government-run program to make sure cheers are polite, organized and atmospheric—even if there isn’t much to cheer about.

The cheering squad from Capital Steel—a sprawling complex in west Beijing that is closed during the Olympics to cut down pollution—shared space with a few groups from other labor unions. But the mission was the same.

“We’ll not give up supporting China until the last minute,” said Huo Liangshan, a Capital Steel employee sitting near the top row in the 18,000-seat arena. “I like the atmosphere.”

China’s communist government has spent more than a year training people to cheer, organizing workshops that often took place in shopping malls or small theaters where workers were given time off to learn how and when to shout— depending on the sport.

“As usual, the Chinese fans were tremendous,” said Tina Thompson, who led the U.S. with 27 points.

Despite the highly regimented training, some of the cheering on Monday was chaotic and spontaneous—maybe a bit more fun than government organizers intended. In the run-up to the Olympics, Beijing city officials boasted citizens were leaning about 20 “civilized cheers.” On Monday, it was pretty much limited to “jia you, jia you.”

“We are supposed to have two group leaders in charge of the cheers, getting us organized,” said Wang Yan, a young woman with the foundry group. “I think the leaders got too busy watching the game and didn’t do their job.”

When the score was 45-14, the cheering clusters still crackled with applause.

They screeched at the halftime buzzer when Chen Xiaoli hit a jumper to cut the U.S. lead to a mere 61-27. At the final buzzer, when a Chinese player was unceremoniously stripped of the ball, several groups jumped to their feet to cheer.

“They are so gung-ho,” said Rossanna Wright, an American fan who said she experienced the same atmosphere at a men’s volleyball match a day earlier.

“They are just great. If they weren’t here, I’d miss them. They make the atmosphere.”


Nuff said...

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