Next Generation Veterans for Obama

I just received an email from a group of Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans who call themselves Next Generation Veterans for Obama. They were kind enough to send along a video to share. So I'm sharing it:

Let's Solve the Bailout Mess Once and for All!

Ol Phat Stu has done it again. Here's his suggestion raising cash money for the bailout:

SELL ALASKA BACK TO THE RUSSIANS FOR $700 BILLION--AND INCLUDE THE WHOLE PALIN FAMILY!!

Why didn't we think of that earlier? It's not as if the Palins have been all gung-ho about having Alaska remain as part of the USA.

UPDATE:

Meanwhile....(in case you trust BushCo to do the right thing)

O Canada! Please read THIS statement by Margaret Atwood!

"To be creative is, in fact, Canadian
Mr. Harper is wrong: There's more to the arts than a bunch of rich people at galas whining about their grants"

MARGARET ATWOOD

As I was reading this, I thought of all the beautiful, creative Canadians who have entered my purview: Robertson Davies, photos of whom taken by dear Lida Moser adorn my hallway (Stu...I do have LOTS of pictures that do not show up in that video); and of the ubercreative Mojo, aka Ronniecat, and Shammickite, still bloggin & singin & dancin & takin pitchers in Canada, last I heard.

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

September 24, 2008 at 11:00 PM EDT

What sort of country do we want to live in? What sort of country do we already live in? What do we like? Who are we?

At present, we are a very creative country. For decades, we've been punching above our weight on the world stage - in writing, in popular music and in many other fields. Canada was once a cultural void on the world map, now it's a force. In addition, the arts are a large segment of our economy: The Conference Board estimates Canada's cultural sector generated $46-billion, or 3.8 per cent of Canada's GDP, in 2007. And, according to the Canada Council, in 2003-2004, the sector accounted for an “estimated 600,000 jobs (roughly the same as agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, oil & gas and utilities combined).”

But we've just been sent a signal by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that he gives not a toss for these facts. Tuesday, he told us that some group called “ordinary people” didn't care about something called “the arts.” His idea of “the arts” is a bunch of rich people gathering at galas whining about their grants. Well, I can count the number of moderately rich writers who live in Canada on the fingers of one hand: I'm one of them, and I'm no Warren Buffett. I don't whine about my grants because I don't get any grants. I whine about other grants - grants for young people, that may help them to turn into me, and thus pay to the federal and provincial governments the kinds of taxes I pay, and cover off the salaries of such as Mr. Harper. In fact, less than 10 per cent of writers actually make a living by their writing, however modest that living may be. They have other jobs. But people write, and want to write, and pack into creative writing classes, because they love this activity – not because they think they'll be millionaires.

Every single one of those people is an “ordinary person.” Mr. Harper's idea of an ordinary person is that of an envious hater without a scrap of artistic talent or creativity or curiosity, and no appreciation for anything that's attractive or beautiful. My idea of an ordinary person is quite different. Human beings are creative by nature. For millenniums we have been putting our creativity into our cultures - cultures with unique languages, architecture, religious ceremonies, dances, music, furnishings, textiles, clothing and special cuisines. “Ordinary people” pack into the cheap seats at concerts and fill theatres where operas are brought to them live. The total attendance for “the arts” in Canada in fact exceeds that for sports events. “The arts” are not a “niche interest.” They are part of being human.

Moreover, “ordinary people” are participants. They form book clubs and join classes of all kinds - painting, dancing, drawing, pottery, photography - for the sheer joy of it. They sing in choirs, church and other, and play in marching bands. Kids start garage bands and make their own videos and web art, and put their music on the Net, and draw their own graphic novels. “Ordinary people” have other outlets for their creativity, as well: Knitting and quilting have made comebacks; gardening is taken very seriously; the home woodworking shop is active. Add origami, costume design, egg decorating, flower arranging, and on and on ... Canadians, it seems, like making things, and they like appreciating things that are made.

They show their appreciation by contributing. Canadians of all ages volunteer in vast numbers for local and city museums, for their art galleries and for countless cultural festivals - I think immediately of the Chinese New Year and the Caribana festival in Toronto, but there are so many others. Literary festivals have sprung up all over the country - volunteers set them up and provide the food, and “ordinary people” will drag their lawn chairs into a field - as in Nova Scotia's Read by the Sea - in order to listen to writers both local and national read and discuss their work. Mr. Harper has signalled that as far as he is concerned, those millions of hours of volunteer activity are a waste of time. He holds them in contempt.

I suggest that considering the huge amount of energy we spend on creative activity, to be creative is “ordinary.” It is an age-long and normal human characteristic: All children are born creative. It's the lack of any appreciation of these activities that is not ordinary. Mr. Harper has demonstrated that he has no knowledge of, or respect for, the capacities and interests of “ordinary people.” He's the “niche interest.” Not us.

It's been suggested that Mr. Harper's disdain for the arts is not merely a result of ignorance or a tin ear - that it is “ideologically motivated.” Now, I wonder what could be meant by that? Mr. Harper has said quite rightly that people understand we ought to keep within a budget. But his own contribution to that budget has been to heave the Liberal-generated surplus overboard so we have nothing left for a rainy day, and now, in addition, he wants to jeopardize those 600,000 arts jobs and those billions of dollars they generate for Canadians. What's the idea here? That arts jobs should not exist because artists are naughty and might not vote for Mr. Harper? That Canadians ought not to make money from the wicked arts, but only from virtuous oil? That artists don't all live in one constituency, so who cares? Or is it that the majority of those arts jobs are located in Ontario and Quebec, and Mr. Harper is peeved at those provinces, and wants to increase his ongoing gutting of Ontario - $20-billion a year of Ontario taxpayers' money going out, a dribble grudgingly allowed back in - and spank Quebec for being so disobedient as not to appreciate his magnificence? He likes punishing, so maybe the arts-squashing is part of that: Whack the Heartland.

Or is it even worse? Every budding dictatorship begins by muzzling the artists, because they're a mouthy lot and they don't line up and salute very easily. Of course, you can always get some tame artists to design the uniforms and flags and the documentary about you, and so forth - the only kind of art you might need - but individual voices must be silenced, because there shall be only One Voice: Our Master's Voice. Maybe that's why Mr. Harper began by shutting down funding for our artists abroad. He didn't like the competition for media space.

The Conservative caucus has already learned that lesson. Rumour has it that Mr. Harper's idea of what sort of art you should hang on your wall was signalled by his removal of all pictures of previous Conservative prime ministers from their lobby room - including John A. and Dief the Chief - and their replacement by pictures of none other than Mr. Harper himself. History, it seems, is to begin with him. In communist countries, this used to be called the Cult of Personality. Mr. Harper is a guy who - rumour has it, again - tried to disband the student union in high school and then tried the same thing in college. Destiny is calling him, the way it called Qin Shi Huang, the Chinese emperor who burnt all records of the rulers before himself. It's an impulse that's been repeated many times since, the list is very long. Tear it down and level it flat, is the common motto. Then build a big statue of yourself. Now that would be Art! Adapted from the 2008 Hurtig Lecture, to be delivered in Edmonton on Oct. 1

She's Got It!!

Of course, C-Span had to follow this stirring address with a video clip of the Chimp chuckling away....It's not maddening enough that this man is in charge of this grand theft, but we get to see him laughing about it.

HAVA OYSFORSHN!! Is YOUR vote safe??

For those of you who know Yiddish, I'm hoping the title of this post means "Come! Let us investigate!!" So, who do I think I am? Connie Francis??

HAVA doesn't only mean "Come!", as in the beloved Yiddish melody "Hava nagilah"--"Come, let us celebrate!"--Connie Francis's best-selling all-Yiddish recording of ALL TIME.

It also is the acronym for the 2002 law called "Helping America Vote Act." Please click the link and check it out for yourself.

As Robert F. Kennedy and Mike Papantonio's "Ring of Fire" radio broadcast is quoted as saying in Monday's Truthout, HAVA

was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans but it was passed by a Republican congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote, and then for Democrats to have their vote counted.

Now is the time to find out how YOUR OWN VOTE stands in your state. Yes, YOUR VOTE. One of the things HAVA has spawned in some states is a program called "Perfect Match." With Perfect Match, states can look at all the program addresses listed for you--social security records, motor vehicle records, voter registration--and see if they match...perfectly. Kennedy says,

if I registered as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and yet my motor vehicle license said Robert Frances Kennedy Jr. I'd be removed from the rolls. If your initial is different, if you leave an initial out, if you leave a "Jr." out, if you leave a hyphen out in your name.

This speaks to me very personally. My parents named me Mary Ellen, and sometimes I put the whole shebang down as my first name, and sometimes, if the form actually asks for a middle name, I put just Mary.

This is not my parents' day, when nobody considered things like this when they named their kids.

This is 2008, and the Republicans are working overtime to cleanse the records of all those nasty Democrats so they can foist their candidates on us once again. We've got a little more than a month to make sure every vote counts, especially our own.


If there IS a discrepancy that would purge you from the voting rolls, HAVA allows you to vote provisionally beforehand, but you have to get cracking on this.

MAKE SURE YOUR OWN VOTE WILL BE GOOD. I'm gonna check mine today.

Write to Your Senators & Representatives in Congress.....

Uh, huh....sure. And in my case they would be....Eleanor Holmes Norton and Whatshisorhername? You're kidding, right? You mean the ones without a VOTE!!??

It's hard to be a citizen when your views don't even have a chance of being represented in our nation's government (ha...can we even say that any more without making "quote" marks in the air?).

I am, of course, a resident of the District of Columbia, favorite meddling place of conservative voting congresspersons from Virginia (especially) who think they know what's best for us (more guns), never mind what we want or need (no guns, thanks).

Well, if anybody's listening, here's what I want and think.

*I want my elected peeps to vote NO on the blank check to Wall Street.

*I want them to vote YES to impeaching Bush and Cheney, who are running the country now as if we were all back in the days of King George.

*I want them to make the Republicans get back into convention (without all the ugly cops) and give us candidates other than a doddering old foof (and don't give me that war hero crap...he's been doing his best to screw veterans for some time now...like ever since he got back from Viet Nam and a whole bunch more didn't...but sssshhhh...we can't talk about THAT!!) and a hockey mom who can see Russia from her back yard. (Doubt that....she doesn't live on an island, I don't think--the one from which you actually can see Russia.)

*I want ALL BALLOTS for this election to be paper and hand-marked with ink, and

*Related to that, I want the November elections to be overseen by an international group, like the United Nations.

*I want NO ELECTION RETURNS ANNOUNCED ON TV or RADIO until they have had time to count all the ballots and certify the results in the far western states (including Alaska, if they haven't seceded yet, and Hawaii, home of the strange foreigners called...guess what? Americans).

*Lastly, I want NO nostalgic programs devoted to the patron saint of the neocons, Ronald Reagan, aired while they are counting the ballots, and NO GASBAGS ANALYZING EXIT POLLS OR THE PRODUCTS OF THEIR OWN ENTRAILS. Programming suggestions: what we used to get when TV first was aired publicly: test patterns, local weather, and great old British movies.

Michael Palin for President

I dunno why the little video clip to the right suddenly got clipped (oh, pun!), but the Michael Palin for President YouTube is too funny to be half visible. Here it is, in all its glory:

"Hockey Mom: Keep the Puck out of DC"

It's tomorrow already so I'm not violating my "last post of today" promise made in the "Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator" post just before this one.

I just read a fabulous blog post on an Alaska Women Reject Palin rally. If you haven't seen this or read about it, give yourself a treat. It has lots of photos of the protest, including one of a big sign reading "HOCKEY MOM: KEEP THE PUCK OUT OF DC" Amen to that!!!

I got it from Clothes Line, a Minnesota blog. Read 'em both...or all.

Why hasn't anyone done this in the City of Satan? Well, today was Sunday and there was a Nationals game and Metro's platform signs kept saying "track work today" and lots of Obama folks were out registering voters in Virginia and I was at a great French movie, "Tell No One." Perhaps we've moved on from our initial shock and outrage and are pouring our ire into creative projects (see LRH's Pig in Lipstick condom amulet) and working to get Obama elected.

Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator

Last post of the day, folks....this is too good to leave alone.

Nite, all....love from Pick Beef Palin

"Give us $700 billion or the dog gets it"

Dear Taxpayer: I implore you to read Digby today if you believe the Bush government's bailout of Wall Street will help YOU (just as the trickle-down economic theory has been helping you all along).

There ARE other ways to deal with this financial mess besides handing a BLANK CHECK to Wall Street. Note especially Digby's noon post today, "Paul Krugman And The Epic of Gilgamesh" by Tristero, where it quotes Robert Reich:

1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company shoves onto the public. So when and if Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.

2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish their current stock options and this year's other forms of compensation, and agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm profitability. Why should taxpayers feather their already amply-feathered nests?

3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next, all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers. Why should taxpayers finance Wall Street's outsized political power - especially when that power is being exercised to get favorable terms from taxpayers?

4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure, capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be convened immediately. After all, inadequate regulation and lack of oversight got us into this mess.

5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their homes. Why should distressed homeowners lose their homes when Wall Streeters receive taxpayer money that helps them keep their fancy ones?

As IF....

Snuggle

Frustrated, enraged, aghast this election season? Read this true story about Belle, a wonderful dog whose natural instincts have been enhanced, not squashed, by her trainer--who happens to be my niece Lu. As Lu tells it:

One of the cues we teach our dogs is "Snuggle". When given the cue, the dog rests its head on your shoulder. For a person with quadriplegia - this cue gives them the chance to feel their dog. It's an incredible cue.

An interesting thing happened during the meet and greet session between State Fair Demonstrations last week-end. A young man and his personal attendant came up to talk with me and to greet Belle. Belle's reaction was both instantaneous and spontaneous - she wanted to greet this man in the worst way. Until then, Belle had been a model of propriety with everyone she met. She politely offered a paw for shake, and if I released her, she would gently step next to them to get a head scritch. With this young man, however, Belle was beside herself. I asked the young man if it would be okay for Belle to do a rise on his lap and when he replied, "oh, yes!", Belle happily rose and then, unexpectedly laid her head right on his shoulder. No cue for snuggle - she just rested her head right next to his cheek and stayed there for a very long moment. Then she kissed him on the cheek. Those that were watching audibly groaned at the touching moment. It was an amazing experience to observe.

In the days since the Fair, I've related this story several times. Each time I've told it, I've been asked, "why do you think she did that?" I still don't have an answer. Although Belle has worked with several HP graduates, none of our training is specifically designed to teach the dog to single out individuals in wheelchairs for this type of greeting - yet Belle somehow knew just what to do - and how to connect best with this young man. As her foster mom - it was such a proud moment to see what she could sense and then give so freely. I know what you're thinking, "she's a golden retriever - that's what they do". Still, this was different than her typical happy greeting behavior. She really wanted to give that man a snuggle - and she doesn't typically (at least with me) offer snuggle except on cue.

I'll never know what prompted her incredible response. I'm just so glad I could witness it.

Lu, you've done a marvelous job of training a LOVING and SENSITIVE dog to do the right thing at the right time. That's one incredible achievement! and what a dog! Congratulations to both of you. (What a lucky young man her new owner is, too)....

Stu Started It.....

Earlier this week, I got my first news of Sarah Palin's e-mail account being hacked from Stu Savory, our inimitable blogger colleague from Germany. He sent the info in an email with "PigLips Hacked" in the subject line.

A day or so later, Salon's Glenn Greenwald posted on this incident.

Greenwald's newest post is titled "The Bush/McCain/Palin contempt for subpoenas and the rule of law" and begins with Palin's husband's refusal to obey a subpoena to testify. This is a crime in this republic, which if Palin's husband's group had had its way, would NOT include Alaska.

After a lengthy, serious discussion, the likes of which have endeared Greenwald before to lovers of America's constitution and republic, he says this:

And it's that precise anti-democratic mentality -- "the people don't need any say in what our Government does; it's best if the President rules without any political accountability" -- that has enabled Bush officials and now their would-be GOP successors simply to decide that they're above the law and that they can exempt themselves from investigation and accountability.

It ought to be striking to read an article that reports this:

(a) X is illegal under the law, punishable with fines and prison;

(b) Political official P just announced that s/he will do X;

(c) The reason is that P knows there will be no consequences for X.

That's the elimination of the rule of law and core democratic processes expressed in elementary logical terms, and that's what the AP just reported yesterday about the Palins' refusal to comply with subpoenas, and what media outlets have been reporting for years about what Bush officials have done. But it's not striking. It's now the standard way our lawless government functions.

The wingnuts have been hysterical with outrage over someone's invading Sarah Palin's privacy, and they are demanding arrest, fines, and imprisonment for the "liberals" behind it, but they totally forgive documented instances of the current administration's widespread use of illegal wiretapping and similar practices.

THIS is why we need to elect someone other than John McCain, who promises to be even Bushier than Bush.

Local Color

Good news, sort of, from Minnesota, where I used to live many years ago and which I love inordinately. This bit of intelligence comes from Shakesville, Shakespeare's Sister's blog.

The horble, stupid charges have been dropped against the journalists who were arrested by the St. Paul thugpolice. Apparently the 60,000+ letters and efforts by FreePress convinced local officials to drop the charges. To wit:

The St. Paul City Attorney’s office announced Friday it will not prosecute Democracy Now! journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman also issued a statement Friday that "the city will decline to prosecute misdemeanor charges for presence at an unlawful assembly for journalists arrested during the Republican National Convention."

Both announcements come two weeks after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention where over 40 journalists were arrested while reporting on protests taking place outside the convention center.

Upon learning of the news, Democracy Now! Host, Amy Goodman said, "It’s good that these false charges have finally been dropped, but we never should have been arrested to begin with. These violent and unlawful arrests disrupted our work and had a chilling effect on the reporting of dissent. Freedom of the press is also about the public’s right to know what is happening on their streets. There needs to be a full investigation of law enforcement activities during the convention."

I say it's "sort of" good news because this never should have happened at all. I'm old enough to remember when police did not have SWAT teams or dress and act like terrorists on our own soil.

HOT PALIN UPDATE, 8 p.m., Friday, 9/19:

This just in from our man in Florida, Rhode Island, and other swell places. Worldly guy that he is, he hangs out a lot with a wealthy crowd who spend time in checkout lines at the supermarket!

Best One Yet!

Truthout.com has a wonderful op-ed piece today by Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski (U.S. Army, retired) on why Sarah Palin is so dangerous. Her viewpoint, which is that of an actual military commander AND a woman, gives us twice as much to think about.

Thanks, Truthout.com, for publishing this and thanks to General Karpinski for writing it.

I recently doubled my contribution to Truthout.com, seeing as it's the only news source I trust these days. Many of my colleagues routinely spend $2.50 per weekday and $6.50 per Sunday to get the neocon spin that passes for commentary in the WashPost and the NYTimes. I hope they will consider contributing even a fraction of that $90 a month to Truthout.com

Making the rounds...

This gem has been making the rounds this week--on my email, anyway....

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you have a quintessential American story.


If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track, you're a maverick.


If you graduate from Harvard law school, you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.


If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

Your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.


If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

You cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress and divorced your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.


If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

While governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system, and your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.


If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

Your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Pinhead Candidates

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a wonderful cartoonist: Rob Rogers. I love his cartoons, but the newspaper has the tendency to put some real wingnut columnists next to Rogers's cartoons. Untrue to form, however, it has a great column there today: Sally Kalson's "Lipstick on a Crocodile."

If you don't know who she's talking about, you've been in a cave since the Republicans wound up their convention in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago. Kalson points out,

When the most heated back and forth of a presidential race revolves around makeup on animals, you know we're heading into an idiotic election season. Even Woody Allen couldn't have invented this, and he's made movies about sheep in black stockings and garter belts.

The Republicans have a lot to answer for in this campaign. It's no wonder they'd rather talk about which creatures should wear Revlon.

This is the party that spent the last eight years tripling the deficit, putting us in hock to China for the next millennium, driving the dollar into the sewer, invading Iraq without provocation, turning the United States into a torture state in the eyes of the world, putting lobbyists in charge of policy and corrupt cronies in charge of government agencies.

But let's not quibble over details. It's much more fun to whip up phony controversies and see how far they'll blow.

I especially like Kalson's take on the "family values" that Palin and John McCain, who more and more looks and sounds like a doddering idiot, are trumpeting:

Pregnant, unmarried teens facing shotgun weddings symbolize family values if the family comprises Christian conservatives. Pregnant, unmarried other teens -- and let's not even add race to the mix -- symbolize the moral decay of a permissive society. Remember, Bill O'Reilly blamed Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy on her "pinhead" parents, but in Bristol Palin's case, well, these things happen.

It doesn't take much to qualify for pinhead parents. But what's with the Republicans? They are offering pinhead candidates for president and vice president to the suffering U.S. public.

the MAW quiz: What does HE say when YOU'RE sick?

Most Arresting Woman (MAW, for those of you into acronyms) goes around looking for folks to arrest. How about those guys who are helpless when the love o' their life catches a flu bug?

MAW sez...

A young friend has had a smokin' fever for several days and been unable to work.

Naturally, her husband has been very upset.

Pick his likely remarks:

a) "Where's my clean shirt/the remote/my dinner?"
b) "The cats/dogs/children are hungry."
c) "There's no fookin' beer in the fridge!"
d) "What do you mean, you didn't go to work?/the hell's the matter with you?"
e) "While you're lying there, why don't you call Papa John's and get a large pepperoni and something for the kids?"
f) "Gee, honey...how are you feeling?/What can i get you?/I'm going to call your doctor/Don't you dare get out of bed, sweetheart."

Hen Pink, MAW's trusty sidekick, sez..."Baaawwk!"

Conservative Andrew Sullivan on John McCain's Integrity

I have more of a problem with John McCain than I do with Sarah Palin, if that is humanly possible. It takes a conservative to spell out why. This just came in from Truthout:

McCain's Integrity

Wednesday 10 September 2008


by: Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

Editor's Note: Historically a John McCain supporter, conservative journalist and blogger Andrew Sullivan takes on the issue of John McCain's integrity as he strives to win the presidency. - vh/TO

For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than the torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the White House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly deserve. The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country's honor, has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is not the man I thought he was.

And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive debate against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began his general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd MTV-style attacks on Obama's virtues and implied disgusting things about his opponent's patriotism.

And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That's all that is happening right now: a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.

Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.

Seniors, Wake up!!

This morning's Truthout shows us how the GOP is already stealing the Ohio vote. And just yesterday, an online article named Columbus, Ohio, as one of the top ten places to retire. Does that mean there are a lot of retirees living in Columbus (and possibly, the rest of Ohio) due to what was called the "low cost of living"? Wake up, seniors!! Read what McCain says about Social Security. Had enough of the GOP way of life?

WEDNESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2008

Ten Ways the McCain/Palin GOP Is Now Stealing the Ohio Vote

Tuesday 09 September 2008

by: Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press

The McCain/Palin GOP is already in the process of stealing the Ohio vote, as was done in 2004. Among those at the center of the GOP strategy is Bush Family computer operative Michael Connell, who programmed the key vote counting mechanisms that were used to give George W. Bush his second term.

Except for John Kennedy in 1960, no candidate since 1856 (James Buchanan) has won the White House without carrying the Buckeye State. No Republican has ever done it.

On October 27, 2004, we published "Twelve Ways Bush is Now Stealing the Ohio Vote" at www.FreePress.org. Despite four years of denial by the Democratic Party and the corporate media, all methods mentioned in that article (plus many more) were used in the theft that gave George W. Bush his second term.

Much has now changed in Ohio, including the transition from a Republican governor (Robert Taft) and secretary of state (J. Kenneth Blackwell) to Democrats Ted Strickland and Jennifer Brunner. Brunner has made strong public commitments to conducting a fair registration process, an orderly election and a reliable vote count this fall. She is being pushed by the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit, filed originally against Blackwell.

To help guarantee an election that truly reflects the will of the voters, Freepress.org will convene a conference on election protection procedures webcast from Columbus this September 26-28. It will reinforce the positive steps Brunner has taken, and will help train poll workers and judges to safeguard the vote in Ohio and around the nation.

But much of the electoral apparatus remains beyond public control. Serious questions remain about how reliable the final vote count will be, and how much of it the Republican party will cage, confuse and steal in its crusade to put John McCain and Sarah Palin into the White House.

Here are some of the key factors that still endanger the vote in Ohio and around the nation:

1) Illegal Destruction of Evidence Surrounding the Vote Count:

In a federal court decision delivered in August, 2006, Judge Algernon Marbley ruled that all materials related to the 2004 presidential vote in Ohio must be preserved. Standing federal law required that these materials be protected for 22 months dating from November 4, 2004. In response to the King-Lincoln lawsuit, Marbley's decision came in time to make it a federal offense to destroy any poll books, ballots and other records relating to the 2004 election in Ohio at any time.

Around the time of the decision, GOP Secretary of State Blackwell, who also served as Ohio co-chair of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, issued ambivalent orders to the state's 88 county Boards of Elections about preserving these materials.

Blackwell subsequently lost his 2006 campaign for governor of Ohio, and was replaced by Brunner as secretary of state. Brunner publicly announced that she would establish a repository in Columbus for all 2004 election materials. In accordance with the King-Lincoln lawsuit, a definitive recount would then establish what actually happened during the Bush re-election.

But in August of 2007, Ohio Attorney-General Mark Dann informed the King-Lincoln attorneys that 56 of the 88 county Boards of Elections had illegally destroyed all or some of their records and ballots from 2004. No repository has been established for what remains, and no definitive recount is now possible.

Ironically, Florida Governor Jeb Bush did preserve materials from the 2000 election there from all but one of the counties in that state. The materials are being held in a repository in Tallahassee. But no such resource - and no definitive recount - will be possible in Ohio.

There have been no state or federal prosecutions for the illegal destruction of these materials. Nor does there seem to be any guarantee similar destruction will not follow the 2008 election.

2) Massive Residual Elimination of Registered Voters:

In the run-up to the 2004 elections, GOP-controlled Boards of Elections in Ohio eliminated some 308,000 registered voters from the rolls used at the polls to determine whether or not citizens are eligible to vote. The purges were conducted in heavily Democratic districts in Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Lucas (Toledo) and Hamilton (Cincinnati) Counties. The numbers of voters eliminated represented more than 5% of the 5.4 million Ohioans who voted in 2004. The GOP also challenged the right of some 35,000 registered voters to cast ballots, based largely on letters the Republicans sent to voters which then came back undelivered, thus allowing them to claim the lack of a valid address. Challenges were also issued to prevent thousands of ex-felons from voting, even though there is no state law disenfranchising them.

Overall, the removals far exceeded Bush's official victory margin of less than 119,000 votes. After the 2004 election, another 170,000 voters were eliminated in Franklin (Columbus) County, also now heavily Democratic.

Despite massive grassroots voter registration drives, those voters have never been restored to the registration lists. None were notified when they were eliminated, and no public accounting has been made of exactly who was disenfranchised. Parallel purges were used in Florida 2000, and throughout the US in 2004. There is every reason to believe the GOP will repeat them in 2008 wherever possible.

3) Renewed Attempts to Eliminate Additional Registered Voters:

Throughout Ohio's 88 counties, GOP-controlled Boards of Elections have continued "caging" registered voters by sending them notices requiring that the post office return those that cannot be delivered. A loophole in Ohio law allows partisan challengers to then demand that the names of those whose forms come back be eliminated from the voter rolls. This practice has been used by the GOP throughout the nation to purge voter rolls in inner city precincts. In many cases those removed are soldiers currently serving in Iraq.

The Advancement Project has notified Brunner that it will challenge any mass purges in Ohio 2008. For her part, Brunner has ruled that returned notices cannot be used as a basis for eliminating voters from the registration rolls. She has further attempted to counter-act the purges by requiring that any registered voter fingered for removal be issued notice and given a pubic hearing by the purging BOE. But the process remains intimidating for prospective voters - especially the heavily-targeted list of those voting for the first time. With sixty days left to election day, the on-going impact remains unclear.

4-5) Resisting Universal Access to Absentee Ballots While Re-Introducing Chaos:

Brunner and voting rights advocates want the Boards of Elections in all 88 Ohio counties to mail absentee ballots to all voters. Previous restrictions on casting such ballots have been lifted. Brunner has strongly supported the practice of making these paper ballots available throughout the state. It would, among other things, help eliminate long lines at the polls, increase access for the infirm and disabled, and circumvent electronic voting machines, which her office has deemed to be easily corruptible. "As we prepare for Election Day," Brunner has said, "we are promoting clear, consistent, statewide standards for absentee voting. Every Ohioan who requests an absentee ballot should have the same rights and responsibilities," no matter what county they might be in.

Ohio's GOP leadership has made a loud public show of supporting this universal access to absentee ballots. But the Republican-controlled legislature pointedly failed to authorize enough money to the Secretary of State's office to pay for the full mailing. In a stunning display of public cynicism, the GOP leadership has since told Brunner, in a non-binding promise, that she should just go ahead and order the local BOE's to do the mailings. The Legislature, they say, will then vote the additional money at some point in the future.

Brunner has refused to do this, pointing out that the potential shortfall would be in the millions, and that such an order - in essence, an unfunded mandate - might be illegal. As a result, using a calculation based on per capita postage rates, she has informed every BOE how much state money they can expect. She is encouraging those that have the additional money in their budgets to do the mailings on their own.

The GOP-sponsored shortfall has thus introduced chaos into what should have been the orderly, manageable process of providing every Ohioan with a paper ballot prior to election day. As it now stands, some counties will be mailing absentee ballots and others will not. The uneven distribution is expected to favor GOP voters in better-funded rural and suburban districts. Should problems arise as a result of this uneven distribution, the GOP will certainly blame Brunner.

6) Resisting Same-Day Registration and Voting:

A loophole in a recently passed Ohio election law allows voters to register to vote and then cast an absentee ballot at the same time by coming in person to their Board of Elections between September 30 and October 6. Ironically, the loophole was accidentally inserted into an otherwise highly repressive bill by Republican State Senator Kevin DeWine, second cousin of the former US Senator Mike DeWine, who lost his seat in 2006. By allowing voters to cast absentee ballots as they register, they can avoid long election-day lines and the perils of electronic voting machines. Furthermore, the only election ID required is the last four digits of the voter's Social Security number.

The Ohio Republican Party has called on Brunner "to revoke a directive to allow residents to register to vote and cast an absentee ballot the same day." The GOP says her directive is illegal. The party is expected to deploy a full attack on this provision that would otherwise allow thousands of Ohioans to participate in the process for the first time with relative ease and security.

7) The Persistent Spread of Electronic Voting Machines:

In addition to mass elimination of Democratic voters, a principle method of stealing the 2004 election in Ohio was through the manipulation of electronic voting machines. Since then, the Ohio-based Diebold Company has admitted that its machines are vulnerable to manipulation and the dropping of significant numbers of votes. Decertification and lawsuits involving Diebold and other electronic machines in California and elsewhere have proliferated. Some 800,000 Ohio ballots - representing about 15% of the state's vote - were cast on Diebold machines in 2004. Additional votes were cast in Ohio and nationwide on machines made by ES&S, Hart Inner-Civic, Triad and others, all of whom have come under serious legal and legislative scrutiny.

Studies by the Brennan Center, Princeton University, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Government Accountability Office, the Conyers Committee and others, have all concluded that results coming from such machines can be easily manipulated, and election outcomes reversed, with just a few keystrokes. A $1.5 million report to Brunner's office concluded that electronic machines could easily have been used to steal the 2004 election in Ohio.

But because of the Help America Vote Act, authored by former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney (just recently released from Federal prison), electronic voting machines will be in far greater use in Ohio and around the nation during the 2008 election than ever before. The reinstatement of electronic voting machines has also been forced into effect in New York and elsewhere despite widespread attempts to require the use of paper ballots. Without a massive influx of absentee ballots, voters in 54 of Ohio's counties are likely to be forced to use touchscreen machines, with parallel increases nationwide. This includes Ohio's largest city, Columbus, and other major urban center such as Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.

In 2004, the compiled tabulation of Ohio's electronic vote was designed for Secretary of State Blackwell by Michael Connell, a Bush family loyalist who programmed the Bush-Cheney web site in the 2000 election. Connell directed the Ohio vote count to servers in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which also housed e-mail traffic for the White House. Thousands of emails from Karl Rove and other key Bush Administration operatives have mysteriously disappeared from servers in this basement. Many worked side-by-side with the Connell-designed ones to which Ohio's official election results were outsourced, under supervision by Rove and Blackwell.

Like Rove, Connell now works for the McCain/Palin campaign. An IT associate, Steve Spoonamore, himself a McCain supporter, has stated that Connell's IT apparatus can be used to steal elections. Attempts to force Connell to testify under oath have thus far been successfully resisted by the GOP.

Brunner has ordered a halt to some better-known e-voting abuses, such as "sleep overs" whereby electronic machines have been stored at the homes of poll workers prior to election day. At the behest of attorneys working through the King-Lincoln lawsuit, other potential abuses in the electronic apparatus are being exposed and eliminated by Brunner. She has issued the 2008-74 County Board of Elections Security and Risk Mitigation Plan which requires Boards of Elections to secure the machines and file plans that safeguard the hardware and software as well as establish chain of custody. Her 2008-73 memorandum, concerning "Minimum Security Requirements of Vote Tabulation Servers," mandates that "Each board of elections shall develop and/or maintain a policy for account and password management for granting access to the server and access to related workstations, if any, for its election system." The directive goes on to require that, "Each Board of Elections shall have a policy for maintaining sign-in documentation of server activity and related workstation activity ..."

"We want Ohio's voters and the rest of the nation to see that we have prepared a transparent process of transporting voting equipment, ballots and supplies," Brunner says. "That begins with security practices at boards of elections and polling places, documented chain of custody, and now procedures to make secure voting machine delivery."

But electronic touchscreen voting remains a black hole through which a close election could once again be stolen, in Ohio and throughout the nation.

8) Residual Chaos From Precinct Elimination and Manipulation:

In the lead-up to Ohio 2004, Blackwell eliminated numerous precincts where voters had cast their ballots for decades. Consolidation was uneven. Some 321 precincts have been shifted in Franklin County alone. Blackwell admitted to a Congressional hearing that false, misleading and out-of-date information was posted on the state's official web site, misdirecting thousands of voters to the wrong polling stations. In many cases, they were then denied the right to vote altogether, or forced to cast provisional ballots which were never counted.

The chaos resulting from these precinct eliminations has not been entirely overcome. For financial and other reasons, Brunner has not restored all the precincts to pre-Blackwell levels. It is expected that her website will provide accurate information about precinct status and location. But it's likely some problems will persist.

9) Data Mining:

Early indications are that the Republicans are heavily involved in data mining. Registered voters are already reporting strange letters from undisclosed senders or unidentified nonprofit organizations "welcoming" voters to the system. As in 2004, voters should expect a deluge of phone calls as well, telling them if they vote they'll be arrested if they have outstanding parking and traffic tickets, back child support payments due, or are on parole, probation or reside in a halfway house. None of these are legal grounds for disenfranchisement. But we expect thousands of such calls will be made to keep first-time and uninformed voters away from the polls.

10) Expanded Voter Identification Requirements:

A US Supreme Court decision has upheld an Indiana law, drafted and passed by the GOP, requiring photographic identification for voter registration. Because millions of young, poor, homeless, minority and elderly voters may not have voter ID, various state laws are expected to eliminate large numbers of mostly Democratic voters from casting ballots throughout the country. In key swing states like Ohio, which now require ID other than signature to vote (except by absentee ballot), the outcome of the election could be significantly affected. Attempts by voter registration organizations to help such voters obtain suitable ID are proceeding. But the law may still deprive crucial numbers of citizens their right to vote, and play a decisive role in the November 4 outcome.

Overall, there is no doubt that four years of intense public scrutiny, legal action and grassroots organizing have made the theft of the 2008 election in many ways a more difficult proposition. Widespread training of poll workers, poll judges and independent observers (including video teams) will add to the safeguards available during the registration process, voting and vote count. Should thousands of trained election protection activists committed to the democratic process come to the polls this year, it may prove impossible for the 2008 election to be stolen, as happened in 2000 and 2004.

But the Supreme Court approval of photo identification requirements and the proliferation of electronic voting machines will prove serious challenges to a fair registration, voting and vote count process. Given the number of ploys used by the GOP in Ohio and elsewhere in 2004, it's certain additional methods of election theft will surface this year that no one has seen before.

Unless they are effectively countered, there is little doubt that John McCain and Sarah Palin will follow George W. Bush and Dick Cheney into the White House.

-------

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of four books on the electoral process, including "As Goes Ohio: Election Theft Since 2004," newly published at www.freepress.org and www.harveywasserman.com. They are attorney and plaintiff in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit, and co-convenors of the national election protection conference to be web-cast from Columbus September 26-28 through www.freepress.org. Their other books include "How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008" (Freepress.org, and harveywasserman.com) and "What Happened in Ohio," co-authored with Steve Rosenfeld, from The New Press.

"KATRINA, FOUR-DOLLAR GAS, TRILLION DOLLAR WAR, $9 TRILLION DEFICIT, RISING UNEMPLOYMENT, DEREGULATED HOUSING MARKET, GLOBAL WARMING...NO MORE

Thanks for this one sent by Valerie....This is Adam McKay's article from today's Huffington Post.

“We’re Gonna Frickin’ Lose This Thing” Adam McKay

Stop saying that!" my wife says to me. But this is not a high school football game and I'm not a cheerleader with a bad attitude. This is an election and as things stand now, we're gonna frickin' lose this thing. Obama and McCain at best are even in the polls nationally and in a recent Gallup poll McCain is ahead by four points.

Something is not right. We're coming off the worst eight years in our country's history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R's have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we're going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That's not odd as a difference of opinion, that's logically and mathematically queer.

So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.

Think this is some opinion being wryly posited to titillate other bloggers and inspire dialogue with Tucker Carlson or Gore Vidal? Fuck that. Four corporations own all the TV channels. All of them. If they don't get ratings they get canceled or fired. All news is about sex, blame and anger, and fear. Exposing lies about amounts of money taken from lobbyists and votes cast for the agenda of the last eight years does not rate. The end.

So one side can lie and get away with it. Now let's throw in one more advantage. Voter caging and other corruption on the local level with voting. Check out the article here on HuffPost about Ohio messing with 600K voters. If only five thousand of those voters don't or can't vote that's a huge advantage in a contest that could be decided by literally dozens of votes. That takes us to about a 52 to 48% advantage.

I'm not even getting into the fact that the religious right teaches closed mindedness so it's almost impossible to gain new voters from their pool because people who disagree with them are agents of the devil. I just want to look at two inarguable realities: A) we have no more press and B) the Repubs are screwing with the voters on the local level.

I'm telling you, we're going to lose this thing. And afterwords we'll blame ourselves the same way we did with Gore and Kerry (two candidates a thousand times more qualified to lead than W Bush.) Just watch.. McCain wins by a point or two and we all walk around saying things like "Obama was too well spoken." "Biden wasn't lovable enough." "I shouldn't have split those eights." "Why did I hit on 16? Why?!"

So what do we do?

1) We give definitive clear speeches like Biden and Obama gave the other day about how no one talked about any issues at the Republican Convention and how they outright lied. But we do them over and over again. 2) We use the one place where it's still a 50-50 game -- the internet -- as much as we can. 3) But most importantly we should bring up re-regulating the media and who owns it and what that conflict of interest is a lot more. By pretending there's no conflict of interest we're failing to alert the public that they're being lied to or given a looking at a coin at the bottom of a pool slanted truth. Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. Disney, GE, Viacom, and Murdoch -- all want profits and the candidate and agenda that will get in their way the least.

Obama and Biden should also create a "master sound bite sentence" and repeat it hundreds of times. It should be so true that even the corporations can't screw with it when it makes the airwaves. Here's my attempt: "KATRINA, FOUR-DOLLAR GAS, TRILLION DOLLAR WAR, $9 TRILLION DEFICIT, RISING UNEMPLOYMENT, DEREGULATED HOUSING MARKET, GLOBAL WARMING...NO MORE.

This race should be about whether the Republican Party is going to be dismantled or not after the borderline treason of the past eight years. But instead it is about making the word "community organizer" a dirty word and a beauty queen who shoots foxes from a plane. Someone is not in any way doing their job and it's the press. Or more specifically, that job no longer exists
.
Probably the worst offenders are the pundits who take the position that it's all just a game and say phrases like "getting a post-convention bump" or "playing to the soccer Moms." This isn't a game of Monopoly or Survivor. There are real truths that exist outside of the spin they are given and have an effect on lives. 250,000 Iraqi civilians are dead because we let our reality be distorted by the most effective propaganda machine in fifty years, the corporate American press. Money and jobs are flying out of this country as our currency becomes worthless and we're talking about the fact that McCain is a veteran. If someone busted into your house and robbed you would you then forgive them if you found out they were a veteran? Of course not. So why are we forgiving McCain for selling out his country by supporting the Bush agenda?

This is it folks. If McCain takes power we fade and become Australia in the seventies: a backwoods country with occasional flashes of relevance. Except we've got a way bigger military and we're angrier. People will get hurt and we'll pay the bill for the bullets. I'm telling you, unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing.

One Dollar a Day for Food??

As a new retiree, I have really CUT DOWN on my exorbitant trips to restaurants and Whole Foods, et al. (I'm not complaining about WF....I love it. All the good things I need are still there.)

Anyway, I just found this wonderful website. Check it out. (I don't like it that they're asking for donations, but perhaps they need them...and maybe some day I'll contribute.)

I will always be grateful to my friend Sonia, who taught me how to cook rice & beans and survive on them. She also turned me on to cooking kale and other deep green leafy veg and making my own garlic salt. What a gift! One doesn't need a whole pile of expensive food to survive. Thanks, Sonia, wherever you are.

"What's the Difference Between Palin and Muslim Fundamentalists? Lipstick!!"

Juan Cole's brilliant article in today's Salon examines all the ways in which Palin differs from our Founding Fathers regarding the establishment of religion.

What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick

A theocrat is a theocrat, whether Muslim or Christian.

By Juan Cole

Sept. 9, 2008 | John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

McCain pledged to work for peace based on "the transformative ideals on which we were founded." Tolerance and democracy require freedom of speech and the press, but while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin inquired of the local librarian how to go about banning books that some of her constituents thought contained inappropriate language. She tried to fire the librarian for defying her. Book banning is common to fundamentalisms around the world, and the mind-set Palin displayed did not differ from that of the Hamas minister of education in the Palestinian government who banned a book of Palestinian folk tales for its sexually explicit language. In contrast, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it."

Palin argued when running for governor that creationism should be taught in public schools, at taxpayers' expense, alongside real science. Antipathy to Darwin for providing an alternative to the creation stories of the Bible and the Quran has also become a feature of Muslim fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia prohibits the study, even in universities, of evolution, Freud and Marx. Malaysia has banned a translation of "The Origin of the Species." Likewise, fundamentalists in Turkey have pressured the government to teach creationism in the public schools. McCain has praised Turkey as an anchor of democracy in the region, but Turkey's secular traditions are under severe pressure from fundamentalists in that country. McCain does them no favors by choosing a running mate who wishes to destroy the First Amendment's establishment clause, which forbids the state to give official support to any particular theology. Turkish religious activists would thereby be enabled to cite an American precedent for their own quest to put religion back at the center of Ankara's public and foreign policies.

The GOP vice-presidential pick holds that abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape, incest or severe birth defects, making an exception only if the life of the mother is in danger. She calls abortion an "atrocity" and pledges to reshape the judiciary to fight it. Ironically, Palin's views on the matter are to the right of those in the Muslim country of Tunisia, which allows abortion in the first trimester for a wide range of reasons. Classical Muslim jurisprudents differed among one another on the issue of abortion, but many permitted it before the "quickening" of the fetus, i.e. until the end of the fourth month. Contemporary Muslim fundamentalists, however, generally oppose abortion.

Palin's stance is even stricter than that of the Parliament of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2005, the legislature in Tehran attempted to amend the country's antiabortion statute to permit an abortion up to four months in case of a birth defect. The conservative clerical Guardianship Council, which functions as a sort of theocratic senate, however, rejected the change. Iran's law on abortion is therefore virtually identical to the one that Palin would like to see imposed on American women, and the rationale in both cases is the same, a literalist religious impulse that resists any compromise with the realities of biology and of women's lives. Saudi Arabia's restrictive law on abortion likewise disallows it in the case or rape or incest, or of fetal impairment, which is also Gov. Palin's position.

Theocrats confuse God's will with their own mortal policies. Just as Muslim fundamentalists believe that God has given them the vast oil and gas resources in their regions, so Palin asks church workers in Alaska to pray for a $30 billion pipeline in the state because "God's will has to get done." Likewise, Palin maintained that her task as governor would be impeded "if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God." Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of Iran expresses much the same sentiment when he says "the only way to attain prosperity and progress is to rely on Islam."

Not only does Palin not believe global warming is "man-made," she favors massive new drilling to spew more carbon into the atmosphere. Both as a fatalist who has surrendered to God's inscrutable will and as a politician from an oil-rich region, she thereby echoes Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has been found to have exercised inappropriate influence in watering down a report in 2007 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Neither Christians nor Muslims necessarily share the beliefs detailed above. Many believers in both traditions uphold freedom of speech and the press. Indeed, in a recent poll, over 90 percent of Egyptians and Iranians said that they would build freedom of expression into any constitution they designed. Many believers find ways of reconciling the scientific theory of evolution with faith in God, not finding it necessary to believe that the world was created suddenly only 6,000 ago. Some medieval Muslim thinkers asserted that the world had existed from eternity, and others spoke of cycles of hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Mystical Muslim poets spoke of humankind traversing the stages of mineral, plant and animal. Modern Islamic fundamentalists have attempted to narrow this great, diverse tradition.

The classical Islamic legal tradition generally permitted, while frowning on, contraception and abortion, and complete opposition to them is mostly a feature of modern fundamentalist thinking. Many believers in both Islam and Christianity would see it as hubris to tie God to specific government policies or to a particular political party. As for global warming, green theology, in which Christians and Muslims appeal to Scripture in fighting global warming, is an increasing tendency in both traditions.

Palin has a right to her religious beliefs, as do fundamentalist Muslims who agree with her on so many issues of social policy. None of them has a right, however, to impose their beliefs on others by capturing and deploying the executive power of the state. The most noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft wherever they have the opportunity to do so. That is the point of her pledge to shape the judiciary. Such a theocratic impulse is incompatible with the Founding Fathers' commitment to tolerance and democracy, which is why they forbade the government to "establish" or officially support any particular religion or denomination.

McCain once excoriated the Rev. Jerry Falwell and his ilk as "agents of intolerance." That he took such a position gave his opposition to similar intolerance in Islam credibility. In light of his more recent disgraceful kowtowing to the Christian right, McCain's animus against fundamentalist Muslims no longer looks consistent. It looks bigoted and invidious. You can't say you are waging a war on religious extremism if you are trying to put a religious extremist a heartbeat away from the presidency.

the frozen north chimes in on their strange neighbor

great stuff sent by ronniecat with a (brilliant) canadian woman's view of palin!!

ronniecat speaks for millions when she said, "The thought that this stubbornly, wilfully ignorant fool could be the President of the most powerful nation on earth within a year terrifies me.

Can you imagine how helpless the rest of the world feels? We don't even get to cast a vote - a wish - a prayer - that she doesn't get elected!"

VIEWPOINT

A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention
Last Updated: Friday, September 5, 2008 | 8:48 PM ET

By Heather Mallick, special to CBC News

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

So why do it?

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I'm a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too.

John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.

Doyle's job includes watching a lot of reality television and he's well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that's something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave.
'Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am'

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you. Palin's e-mails about the brother-in-law she tried to get fired as a state trooper are fizzing with rage and revenge. Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am.

Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest. Just hours after her first convention speech, the Associated Press did a good fast listing of her untruths and I won't dwell on them.

I did promise to watch the entire convention so you wouldn't have to, but I discovered a neat trick. I switched between the convention and the 2003 folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind on Bravo.

They were indistinguishable. Click on a nervous wreck with deeply strange hair doing a monologue on society today and where it all went wrong. Are you watching Christian belter Aaron Tippin singing Where the Stars and Stripes and Eagle Fly in the Xcel Centre in St. Paul or the actors from Spinal Tap remixing the 1966 version of Potato's in the Paddy Wagon?

Who delivered this line: "To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will." Was it Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family talking about Bristol Palin's shotgun wedding or was it a flashback to the Kingston Trio?

The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party, and that's the mystery of the hick vote. They'd be much better served by the Democrats. I know Thomas Frank answered this in What's the Matter with Kansas?; I know that red states vote Republican on social issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their broken, economically abused existence.

Lie works for Palin

But surely they know Barack Obama is not planning to finish off the ordinary hillbilly when he adjusts tax rates. He's going to raise taxes on the top 2% of Americans and that doesn't include anyone at the convention beyond the Bushes and McCains and random party management. So why cheer Palin when she claims otherwise?

Is it racism? I'm told that it is, although I find racism so appalling that I have difficulty identifying it. It is more likely the dearly held Republican notion that any American can become violently rich, as rich as those hedge funders in Greenwich, Conn., who buy $40-million mansions unseen and have their topiary shaped in the form of musical notes.

When Palin and Rudy Giuliani sneered at Obama's years of "community organizing" — they said it like "rectal fissure" — the audience ewww-ed with them. Republicans dream of a personal future that involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to vote.

So I'm trying to imagine the pain of realizing, as they all must at some point, that it is not going to happen for them. It's the green light at the end of the dock. It's the ship that never comes in, gals, as Palin would put it. But she won't because the lie works for her. It helps her scramble, without compassion, above all those other tense no-hoper ladies in the audience.

American politics isn't short of smart women. Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, who just endorsed Obama, made an extraordinary speech at the Democratic convention (and a terrific casual appearance on The Colbert Report as Palin was speaking). The Republican party has already consumed nearly all of its moderate "seed corn," she said aptly. Time to start again.

Eisenhower, a scholar and journalist, has a point. Or am I only saying that because she's part of the thoughtful demographic that I'm trying to reach here? Think, Heather, think like a Republican! The Skeptics, shall I call them, are my base, and I'll pander to them as ardently as the Republican patriarchs tease their white female marginals.

This Week

Mad Men is scaring me (AMC on Sunday nights). What has Matthew Weiner, a writer from The Sopranos, created, a period soap opera about reality and façade or a horror series on a localized war between men and women? Was Episode 6 of Season 2 a costume drama about the Madonna/whore complex or the operatic rendition of one simple thing, human cruelty?

Or maybe I'm seeing too much into it and it's just a sexed-up version of the Republican convention.

What a yokel!

Palin is not only woefully ignorant, she's dangerous! It's her way or the highway.

Here's a post from today's Salon.com

With a disdain for science that alarms wildlife experts, Sarah Palin continues to promote Alaska's policy to gun down wolves from planes.

By Mark Benjamin

Read more: Environment, Alaska, Science, Animals, Mark Benjamin, Sarah Palin, Environment & Science
News
www.defenders.org


Sept. 8, 2008 | Wildlife activists thought they had seen the worst in 2003 when Frank Murkowski, then the Republican governor of Alaska, signed a bill ramping up state programs to gun down wild wolves from airplanes, inviting average citizens to participate. Wolves, Murkowski believed, were clearly better than humans at killing elk and moose, and humans needed to even the playing field.

But that was before Sarah Palin took Murkowski's job at the end of 2006. She went one step, or paw, further. Palin didn't think Alaskans should be allowed to chase wolves from aircraft and shoot them -- they should be encouraged to do so. Palin's administration put a bounty on wolves' heads, or to be more precise, on their mitts.

In early 2007, Palin's administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage. Ruling that the Palin administration didn't have the authority to offer payments, a state judge quickly put a halt to them but not to the shooting of wolves from aircraft.

Detractors consider the airborne shootings a savage business, conducted under the euphemism "predator control." The airplanes appear in the winter, so the wolves show up like targets in a video game, sprinting across the white canvas below. Critics believe the practice violates the ethics of hunting, while supporters say the process is not hunting at all, but a deliberate cull.

Palin has argued that she is worried about Alaska's hunters, locked in perennial competition with the canine carnivores for the state's prodigious ungulate population. A hunter herself, Palin has battled critics of aerial wolf hunting with the support of the Alaska Outdoor Council, a powerhouse advocacy and lobbying organization for hunting, fishing and recreation groups. In addition to so-called urban hunters, who shoot moose mostly for fun, Alaska is home to a significant number of subsistence hunters, including some of the Native population. Subsistence hunters rely on an occasional moose to make ends meet. The wolves, Palin has said, are stealing food from their tables.

"Palin acts like she has never met an animal she didn't want shot," says Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, based in Connecticut.

The controversy over Palin's promotion of predator control goes beyond animal rights activists recoiling at the thought of picking off wolves from airplanes. A raft of scientists has argued that Palin has provided little evidence that the current program of systematically killing wolves, estimated at a population of 7,000 to 11,000, will result in more moose for hunters. State estimates of moose populations have come under scrutiny. Some wildlife biologists say predator control advocates don't even understand what wolves eat.

State officials stand by their scientific findings on predator control. "Several times over the past several years, our science has been challenged in court," says Bruce Bartley, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. "In every instance it has prevailed."

Yet it is not hard to find Alaskans who say Palin's enthusiasm for predator control fits a broader narrative of how she edits science to suit her personal views. She endorses the teaching of creationism in public schools and has questioned whether humans are responsible for global warming.

In 2007, she approved $400,000 to educate the public about the ecological success of shooting wolves and bears from the air. Some of the money went to create a pamphlet distributed in local newspapers, three weeks before the public was to vote on an initiative that would have curtailed aerial killing of wolves by private citizens. "The timing of the state's propaganda on wolf control was terrible," wrote the Anchorage Daily News on its editorial page.

"Across the board, Sarah Palin puts on a masquerade, claiming she is using sound management and science," says Nick Jans, an Alaskan writer who co-sponsored the initiative. "In reality she uses ideology and ignores science when it is in her way." The initiative was defeated last month.

Gordon Haber is a wildlife scientist who has studied wolves in Alaska for 43 years. "On wildlife-related issues, whether it is polar bears or predator controls, she has shown no inclination to be objective," he says of Palin. "I cannot find credible scientific data to support their arguments," he adds about the state's rational for gunning down wolves. "In most cases, there is evidence to the contrary."

Last year, 172 scientists signed a letter to Palin, expressing concern about the lack of science behind the state's wolf-killing operation. According to the scientists, state officials set population objectives for moose and caribou based on "unattainable, unsustainable historically high populations." As a result, the "inadequately designed predator control programs" threatened the long-term health of both the ungulate and wolf populations. The scientists concluded with a plea to Palin to consider the conservation of wolves and bears "on an equal basis with the goal of producing more ungulates for hunters."

Apparently Palin wasn't fazed. Earlier this year she introduced state legislation that would further divorce the predator-control program from science. The legislation would transfer authority over the program from the state Department of Fish and Game to Alaska's Board of Game, whose members are appointed by, well, Palin. Even some hunters were astounded by her power play.

The legislation would give Palin's board "more leeway without any scientific input to do whatever the hell they basically wanted," Mark Richards, co-chair of Alaska Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, wrote in an e-mail. The legislation is currently stalled in the Alaska state Senate.

Predator control in Alaska dates back to the 1920s and 1930s. Even then, wildlife biologists insisted that wolves were important to the area's natural ecology and not responsible for inordinate deaths of sheep, caribou or moose. Yet the scientists fought a losing battle against ranchers, hunters and government officials, who backed the extermination of tens of thousands of wolves. Aerial hunting began in earnest in the 1940s and continued through the 1960s after Alaska had earned statehood.

But starting in 2003, Murkowski opened the airborne shooting to citizens with special permits and expanded predator-control programs to cover 60,000 square miles of state and federal land, the largest wolf-killing operation since Alaska became a state. The stated goal is to reduce wolf populations in some areas by 60 to 80 percent. Teams of pilots and gunners have killed at least 795 wolves since 2003. Conservationists counter that the total number of wolves trapped, shot from airplanes, chased down by snow machines, and killed legally and illegally in Alaska every year is more along the lines of 2,000.

Scientists insist that the Palin administration is systematically killing wolves with an inadequate understanding of the relationship between the carnivore and hoofed animals. The state responds that predators kill over 80 percent of the moose and caribou that die each year, while hunters and trappers kill less than 10 percent.

Haber says the state's numbers are wildly inflated. His decades of wolf research have shown that wolves are, in fact, mostly scavengers. "Sixty to 70 percent of the moose they eat are scavenged, not killed," he says. He adds that the state's wolf population estimates, based on secondhand observations and extrapolations, are also high.

Palin offered the $150 bounty for wolf paws in 2007 after efforts to kill wolves from airplanes that season were, in her view, coming up short. State officials had hoped that 382 to 664 wolves would be killed during that predator-control season. State officials were disappointed when only 115 wolves were killed from the air.

Palin thought the $150 cash bounties would do the trick. Haber has another explanation for the dry spell. "I can tell you from my own research that the reason they didn't get many wolves in certain years, particularly last winter, is because they have scraped those areas clean," he says.

Last year, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., introduced legislation designed to curtail predator-control programs, except as a last resort. "It's time to ground Alaska's illegal and inhumane air assault on wolves," Miller said. Palin quickly fired off a curt letter in response, applauding the state's programs as "widely recognized for their excellence and effectiveness." She pointed out that her state has "managed its wildlife so that we still maintain abundant populations of all of our indigenous predators almost fifty years after statehood."

Says Jans, co-sponsor of the losing initiative to outlaw aerial wolf hunting: "This is a reflection of a somebody who doesn't have any use for science."

No more. No how. No McCain. --- Hillary Clinton at the 2008 Democratic National Convention

here's a couple of good posts on mccain's choice of palin for VP. i got 'em from the ineffable valerie, who always sends the very BEST of whatever it is--jokes, political commentary.


#1 is from Daily Kos's Brownsox:

No, Senator McCain, Democratic Women Are Not Stupid
by brownsox
Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 06:20:27 PM PDT
So if anyone out there is still convinced that Sarah Palin is a Fantastic, Gutsy, Bold, Mavericky choice that will Appeal to Women and Disaffected Clinton Voters...
...well, the polling would beg to differ.
It's evident by now that John McCain, doubtless spooked by the remarkable show of unity at the Democratic convention, has realized that he isn't going to get millions of disaffected Clinton supporters to flock to his candidacy in droves. It is equally clear that he was counting on those voters to win the election, as his campaign aides attest:

As one McCain aide put it: "We either get Hillary's voters and we win, or we don't. It's not a mystery." Said another: "This campaign is all about the middle."

Hence, the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. As Rasmussen puts it:

Her choice is clearly aimed at peeling away disaffected female voters in the Democratic Party still smarting from Hillary Clinton’s failure to grab the nomination – and Barack Obama’s decision not to even consider her for the number two slot. This was clear when Palin praised Ferraro and Clinton -- to the Republican crowd -- following McCain's introduction of her yesterday. Referring to the number of votes Clinton received in the Democratic primaries, she said, "It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America, but it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."

Comparing herself to Hillary Clinton? How dare she. Not that anyone should be shocked; it's the only winning move for the McCain campaign.
So how's that strategy working out for the Republicans? Evidently, it's not working out in the slightest.
What do Democratic women -- a number of whom, presumably, voted for Hillary Clinton -- think of Sarah Palin, anyway?
They don't want her on McCain's ticket.

Here's a finding from Gallup: Among Democratic women -- including those who may be disappointed that Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination -- 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% less likely.

In other words, Palin makes the McCain ticket less popular among Democratic women, not more popular. Damn, it's almost as if Democratic women care less about a candidate's gender, and more about the economic, social, international and environmental issues they've been fighting for for generations!
And how does the selection of Palin play among independents -- presumably a moderate bunch? CBS reports:

Before the Democratic convention, McCain enjoyed a 12-point advantage with independent voters, but now Obama leads among this group 43 percent to 37 percent. Obama's lead among women has also grown to 14 points (50 percent to 36 percent), and the Democrat maintained the lead he had before the convention among voters who supported Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

That is a very bad moon rising for the McCain campaign. It gets worse:

From Rasmussen: Some 38% of men said they were more likely to vote for McCain now, but only 32% of women. By a narrow 41% to 35% margin, men said she was not ready to be president -- but women soundly rejected her, 48% to 25%.

Ah, but surely she'll do well among working-class white voters, right? After all, just look at her personal story -- she eats mooseburgers! Mooseburgers, I say!
Yeah, well, it seems that most voters prefer this other guy, who himself hails from a humble background as a working-class Catholic...and, you know, has also served 35 years in the U.S. Senate and actually knows a thing or seven about international relations:

"Suppose you could cast two separate votes in November -- one just for president and another vote just for vice president. Who would you be more likely to vote for if you could vote separately for vice president: Joe Biden, the Democrat, or Sarah Palin, the Republican?"
Biden (D) 54
Palin (R) 41

Oh, snap.
Well, surely the populace is convinced McCain, that straight-talking express train that he is, made the decision for the right reasons?
Eh...

"Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?"
"John McCain chose Sarah Palin because he felt the time had come to nominate a woman."
Agree 43
Disagree 56

"John McCain chose Sarah Palin because he thought having a woman on the ticket would help him get elected."
Agree 75
Disagree 25

The public agrees, the press agrees, everyone agrees: this was a Hail Mary pass by the McCain campaign to win the election. It was a move borne out of desperation, as they started to realize that Clinton supporters and Democratic women are, by and large, not sufficiently stupid to abandon their Democratic ideals because their favored candidate lost.
It has backfired. Sarah Palin excites the conservative base, and that's great for them. She doesn't do much for anybody else, and her selection forces the McCain campaign to abandon the one good talking point they had, for if Sarah Palin is experienced enough to be president, Obama is experienced enough to be God.
As Bill Clinton said last Wednesday, in Obama's first presidential decision -- the selection of a vice president -- the Illinois Senator hit a home run.
In McCain's first presidential decision, he has grounded into a double play.

#2 is from a post by roy edroso:

Monday, September 01, 2008
SPEAKING OF SILVER LININGS. I think it's terrific that Sarah Palin's evangelical supporters are "over the moon" with joy that Palin's 17-year-old daughter got knocked up. And, taking a page from our Republican brethren, for whom both everything and its opposite is always good news for the GOP -- you can see a spectacular case of one such character running this game here -- I'm going to tell you how it's terrific no matter how it plays.

First, it offers normal people a piquant reminder that fundamentalist Christians, powerful as they may be in the GOP, are deeply strange. We've heard endlessly from these folks that America is a moral basket case "slouching toward Gomorrah," and that liberalism is the cause. Now the Jesus people are celebrating a pre-maritally pregnant girl and her upcoming shotgun wedding. Rod Dreher, who called a bride a slut for showing a tattoo at her wedding, now rejoices that Bristol Palin will be showing a baby bump at hers. Americans may like God, but they retain a healthy skepticism about the godly, and this case shows why.

Second, as we were also reminded endlessly that Bill Clinton taught youngsters to suck cock, we may expect a wave of rebellion among Republican teenagers now that the strict moral precepts of their parents have been proven conditional. Maybe the other Palin kids will come to the Convention stoned out of their minds, spraying the delegates with silly string and laughing uncontrollably. Why shouldn't they? It would just offer more proof of Palin's "plain folks" credentials.

Now let us dream big: maybe this event will help put an end to political bullshit about candidates' family members. Imagine our politics without slurs of the sort Michelle Obama has had to endure -- and those stories weren't even true. Perhaps we'll even hear less conservative yammering about family values in general. How nice it would be to go through even a single season without candidates taking a strong position on the Old Testament.

This is by far the least likely of my suggested outcomes, but as I said, I'm trying to think like a Republican. Maybe the Democrats should be trying the same thing.

8:30 PM by roy edroso