Palin Sells Conservative Morality Well

Beware, social progressives! Sarah Palin is actually good at speaking about some subjects off-the-cuff. She's quite adroit at packaging right-wing Christianist dogma wrapped in specious reasonableness, while deftly avoiding being nailed down on specifics. This was apparently her strong suit while campaigning in Alaska, where her opponents tried to bring her down by painting her as an extreme Fundie. That was their mistake. Though she actually is an extreme Fundie, as the various videos of Born Again Sarah in action demonstrate, she's learned all the tricks of palming it off on the public like a Three-Card Monte artist.

In her last interview session with Katie Couric, Palin shows her skill at coming off reasonable and non-scary. For example:

Couric: But ideally, you think it should be illegal for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an abortion?

Palin: I'm saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in. And, um, if you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an … abortion, absolutely not. That's nothing I would ever support.

Couric: Some people have credited the morning-after pill for decreasing the number of abortions. How do you feel about the morning-after pill?

Palin: Well, I am all for contraception. And I am all for preventative measures that are legal and safe, and should be taken, but Katie, again, I am one to believe that life starts at the moment of conception. And I would like to see …

Couric: And so you don't believe in the morning-after pill?

Palin: ... I would like to see fewer and fewer abortions in this world. And again, I haven't spoken with anyone who disagrees with my position on that.

She's slick, make no mistake about it. Doesn't want to put women in jail for getting abortions, but how about doctors or anyone who performs or facilitates obtaining abortions? That's a pretty glaring omission, which Coric failed to cover with a follow-up. In favor of contraception? If it's "legal" and "safe", which leaves the door open for some kinds of contraception being declared "unsafe" by the government and therefore made illegal. Just get the FDA to raise "safety" concerns about the morning after pill, and viola! - no longer legal!

But this is all presented with her best, non-scary hockey mom delivery. These are the kinds of questions she got in Alaskan political campaigns, and she knows how to field them.

Conclusion: progressives shouldn't push for journalists to grill Palin on her social conservatism, with the possible exception of nailing her on her position on abortion for victims of rape and incest, which is way off the mainstream. Because Palin's slippery and she knows how to handle those questions. This is what the right-wingers mean with their call for "let Palin be Palin!" Social morality issues are her comfort zone, and she's good at dodging questions about her radical views.

Wilma Palin

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times:

"Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said.

"Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska."

Epic Bailout, Epic FAIL

Kent Brockman: Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside?

Professor: Yes I would, Kent.

Barney Frank puts to rest the usual Republican nonsense that everything is the Democrats' fault.

A Message from the Obama Campaign

Really. Stop with the fainting couches and pearl clutching already. Obama did exactly what he wanted to do in the debate. They've got a strategy, and they're sticking to it. Remember, his campaign took down what was believed to be the unstoppable Clinton juggernaut. I'm going to assume for now they know what they're doing.

See what James Fallows at The Atlantic has to say - you know, one of those elitist experts on politics and the media.

And for a bit of fun, here's what I'm talking about:



Update: From WaPo, a fly on the wall report from the White House meeting. This explains a lot.

Grandpa Grumpy McSame - FAIL

No, Obama didn't deliver a knockout punch, but that was not the objective. "National security" is McCain's signature issue, and anything but a decisive win on that topic is counted as a failure, especially when you're behind in the polls.

But more devastating for Gramps, and the polls show this unequivocally, is that he came off as a snide, grumpy old man. It's painfully obvious he holds Obama in supreme contempt, as in, "why is this uppity nigra on the same stage as me?!?!" Not that I think McCain is closet racist, but that's how it comes across, whether or not he meant it that way.

I guess they wont be running that "McCain Wins Debate" blog ad after all...

One of my favorite conservatives (the geniune kind), Daniel Larison, lays it out:

Maybe I am influenced by how poorly Obama used to do when he debated Clinton, but I thought he did so much better than he has before that it has to be scored as a win for him. McCain was more aggressive, no doubt, but it is my impression that it translated into contempt and condescension, which are the things that everyone has been saying that Biden has to avoid when he debates Palin. He used the word naive how many times? He was scolding him as if he were a school master, but it is far from clear in any of the exchanges that he knew more. Obama was not forceful enough, but he was so much more focused than he was earlier in the year. McCain came off, in my view, as a snide, bitter old man. His comments betrayed the sentiment of, “How dare you even think that you can compete with me.” This is what Clinton thought, and it destroyed her.

And from the other side, here's WaPo's Eugene Robinson:

Here’s the politically incorrect way of phrasing one of the central questions about tonight’s presidential debate: Did John McCain come across as too much of a grumpy old man?

That might not be a nice question, but it’s an important one. Americans like to vote for the nice guy, not the grumbling prophet of doom. Throughout the 90-minute debate, McCain seemed contemptuous of Obama. He wouldn’t look at him. He tried to belittle him whenever possible -- how many times did he work “Senator Obama just doesn’t understand” into his answers? His body language was closed, defensive, tense. McCain certainly succeeded in proving that he can be aggressive, but the aggression came with a smirk and a sneer.

I noticed too how focused Obama becomes when he's a wee bit pissed off, and it's good for him. The hesitancy vanishes, his verbal tic of saying "ahh" between points evaporates. I think subconsciously viewers got to see him getting insulted by Ol' Grumpy and not rising to take the bait, and steadiness is something people want in a president right now. I think this explains a lot about the favorables Obama got last night. Obama is willing to look his opponent in the eyes.

And indeed, Biden now has the key to his winning the comparison to Palin: be calm, cool, collected and clearly knowledgeable, and let Palin flail about a impale herself. Sweet, sweet schadenfreude!

Don't Change Dicks in the Middle of a Screw...

"...re-elect Nixon in '72!"

How come all the talking bloggerheads are describing McCain's "running against the media" as out the "Rove" playbook?

How soon we forget, but Tricky Dick invented the gambit.And Nixon had his own malfunctioning Veep robot, the infamous Spiro Agnew, who resigned in disgrace in 1974.

Former Republican speechwriter and current professional wingnut curmudgeon Pat Buchanan penned mouth noises for the Spiro Robot to regugitate, and denouncing the "liberal media" was his most famous choice of noise, which yielded the immortal line, "the nattering nabobs of negativity."

Take it away, Spiro!

The purpose of my remarks tonight is to focus your attention on this little group of men who not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every Presidential address, but, more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues in our nation. First, let’s define that power.

At least 40 million Americans every night, it’s estimated, watch the network news. Seven million of them view A.B.C., the remainder being divided between N.B.C. and C.B.S. According to Harris polls and other studies, for millions of Americans the networks are the sole source of national and world news. In Will Roger’s observation, what you knew was what you read in the newspaper. Today for growing millions of Americans, it’s what they see and hear on their television sets.

Now how is this network news determined? A small group of men, numbering perhaps no more than a dozen anchormen, commentators, and executive producers, settle upon the 20 minutes or so of film and commentary that’s to reach the public. This selection is made from the 90 to 180 minutes that may be available. Their powers of choice are broad.

Of course, the prospect of Sarah Mooseburgers becoming the V.P. to a doddering old man president makes me pine for the good old days of Nixon. Gods, what have we become?

One Foot Over the Cliff, Pushing Off With The Other

And so John McCain, that paragon of honor, integrity, and patriotism, is about to jump over that line, too, and become even more of a whipping boy than his running mate:



From CNN, sorry - commercial leading.

All I have to say is: bawk bawk! Chicken! Come take your beating like a man.

Hold it!

Wall Street: "Hand over the $700 billion dollars, taxpayers, or the economy gets it!"

Bush: “Hold it, Congress. He’s not bluffing.”

Wall Street: "“Gimme that money, or I swear I’ll blow this economy's head all over this town.”

Paulson: “Listen to him, Congress! He’s just crazy enough to do it.”

Wall Street: [now speaking in a higher voice] "Oh, lo'dy, lo'd, he's desp'it! Do what he sayyyy, do what he sayyyy..."

Obama: "Isn't anybody going to help that poor economy?"

Pelosi: "Hush, Barry, that's a sure way to get it killed!"

Wall Street: [higher voice] "Oooh! He'p me, he'p me! Somebody he'p me! He'p me! He'p me! He'p me!"

Wall Street: [low voice] "Shut up!"

Reid: "Just give them the money, Nancy!"

[Wall Street drags itself away, picks up the $700 billion, stuffs it into its pockets]

Wall Street: "Ooh, baby, you are so talented! And they are so DUMB!"

---

UPDATE: What Robert Reich says.

Sarah Palin - Laughingstock

Can you hear it?

A few weeks ago it came out as honest gasps of amazement and dismay. “Who is this person?!” cried the political junkies of a nation. So began the vetting. As we learned, the consensus split. Each side labored mightily to shape it to their desires.

The Republicans made Sarah Palin out a small-town heroine. A feminist, oh pardon me a post-feminist success story. But it began right then. A pro-Palin site called VPILF was started. And sardonic eyebrows were raised and smirks appeared all over the blogosphere.

The Democrats had a single, simple word. “Lightweight”. And then by and large they proceeded to ignore her completely and concentrated on attacking McCain. Since they didn’t fall into the trap of legitimizing her, the GOP turned to their old standby device – fauxtrage.

Both sides of the political divide roared over the “lipstick” nonsense. The Right, newly awakened to the political leverage that can come from accusations of sexism, suddenly became ardent feminists. The Left essentially replied “Get out of here, you fucking wankers”.

And then. And then… McCain couldn’t keep her away from the intent gaze of the nation any longer. The political junkies of the nation held their breath.

Palin didn’t know anything about the Federal Mortgage companies.
Palin didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was.
Palin made victims pay for rape kits in her town.
Palin was a follower of a witch-hunter. No, really. No, not figuratively - literally. Read Max’s post, just before mine, damn it.

And then…and then, right on the heels of that disaster of an interview on ABC, came Tina Fey with the deadliest possible portrayal of Palin. Accurate, understated, and hilarious.

And a nation laughed. And is still laughing. And just may laugh all the way to election day.

Burn the Witch!

Governor Mooselini has her own "preacher problem".

No, not just her regular fundamentalist whacko preacher who fleeces his flock for cash, telling them that after the imminent Rapture®© Alaska will be the haven for survivors, and sells them "Rapture®© Insurance©. No, that's just business as usual in Jesusland.

No, this guy is a real piece of work.

This from the Daily Mail:

Vice presidential pick Sarah Palin is known for her strident views on religion and the power of prayer.

But her credibility is once again being questioned after an African pastor she credits with helping her political career was revealed to have waged a witch-hunt against a woman who was said to cause car crashes with her "demonic spells."

In June, Palin told how a visiting pastor from Kenya had foretold she was destined for greater things.

She told other members of the Assembly of God church in her home town of Wasilla, Alaska, that Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her head and prayed over her when they met in 2005.

After what the 44-year-old described as his "awesome" prayer she went on to become Alaska's first governor.

Here, let little Sarah tell it in her own words:



Muthee described his offensive against a demonic presence in the town of Kiambu in a trailer for a evangelical video “Transformations”, made by a Christian research and information agency.

Details of what happened were reported at the time in the Christian Science Monitor, as well as on numerous evangelical websites.

According to the Monitor, six months of prayer and research identified the source of the witchcraft as a local woman called Mama Jane.

Her alleged involvement in fortune-telling and the fact that she lived near the site of a number of fatal car accidents led Pastor Muthee to publicly brand her a witch.

He ordered her to offer her up her soul for salvation or leave Kiambu.

“Muthee held a crusade that 'brought about 200 people to Christ'”, the Monitor said.

They set up round-the-clock prayer intercession and eventually, says the pastor “the demonic influence was broken”, and Mama Jane fled the town.

According to accounts of the witch-hunt circulated on evangelical websites, after Mutheee spoke out against Mama Jane many villagers demanded she be stoned.

Police raided her home and shot a pet python which was believed to be a demon.

Muthee,who said he became a pastor after "God spoke" to him in 1989, has frequently referred to this witch-hunt in his sermons as an example of the power of “spiritual warfare”.

Ph33r TeH Hakkurz!

One of the more interesting bits of the whole Sarah Palin nonsense has been the fact that she (and others of her staff) haev been conducting state business out of email accounts other than those provided by the state. (If this M.O. sounds familiar, it's because the Bush Administration has done it, and then conveniently "lost" the mail when it was subpoenaed.)

But in a perfect expression of the ever-increasing incompetence of the GOP, Palin used a Yahoo email address for this.

Wait, you may ask, how is this stupid? Ask your friends who have had their Yahoo accounts broken into - like Sarah Palin's just was!

Oh but it gets even better. You see, Palin has been trying to claim executive privilege for the stuff that went through her Yahoo account. Nevermind that such is explicitly against the law, she was trying it anyway. She can forget about that dodge, now.

Oh, and a tip o' the hat to flemco, over on LiveJournal, for the item.

Pirates of Wall Street

I've written a speech for Barack Obama. It's time for some straight talk, and I think Obama should steal that meme from McCain like McCain stole "Change" from Obama. Pick a place to make a major address that resonates, like a closed auto plant or (heh) a closed brokerage house. Dispatch the Obama field wokers to deliver a crowd. Look people right in the eye and level with them, Barack.

My fellow Americans, it's time for some real straight talk.

One: the financial regulatory system is broken. John McCain and the Republicans aren't fooling anybody. The captains of Wall Street are no longer wise admirals and commanders who bring law and order to the economic seas, they're like the pirates of the Caribbean! You can even see it in the lingo they use, like corporate raiders and hostile takeovers. Folks, pirates of the Caribbean is no way to run the American economy.

It's become a game to these people, and they're playing the game with your money. They lose your money, your jobs, your savings, your taxes, and then walk away with a golden parachute worth millions. Enough!

[Insert unemployment and other grim financial statistics here. Tick them off one by one.]

Let's not fool ourselves. We can't fix what's broken until we admit it's broken.

Two: what do we do about it, both in the short term and the long term, because this is a long term problem we have to solve.

[Tick off short term governmental remedies to soften the economic hits taken by the working and middle class. e.g. Expansion of unemployment insurance, treasury-backed mortgage re-financing, basic job stimulus package.]

In the long term, this game must have rules. Teddy Roosevelt once said unfettered capitalism leads to corruption. The way you fight corruption is with rule of law, rules that hold people and corporations responsible for their failures. It's true that the old rules created in the 1930s needed to be changed for the modern economy. But modernizing the rules doesn't mean scrapping the rules, unless you're a Republican. Because that's what Republicans have done for the past eight years, they scrapped the rules. John McCain has said repeatedly he doesn't like regulation at all. John McCain's friend and economic adviser Phil Gramm led the way in the Republican's rampant deregulation of the financial industry, and we could end up with that man, who called you "a nation of whiners", as Secretary of the Treasury!

With John McCain in the White House, nothing will change, the same people who brought our economy to the edge of ruin will still be running the ship, and next time it goes over the edge, they'll do what they always do - blame the Democrats.

Enough.

Three: here's the specific changes the Obama administration will bring to the regulation of the financial system:

[Tick off specific policy initiatives.]

With a Democratic congress, and with the help of smart Republican lawmakers who know what needs to be done, I will be able to get new, streamlined regulations put in place to prevent this kind of meltdown from happening again. With John McCain and the Republicans, all you'll get is history repeating itself.

Ok, get me Barack on the Blackberry, stat!

UPDATE: Looks like somebody's got the idea.

And The Stupid Shall Inherit

According to a recent study, it appears that when refuting a falsehood with facts, there is a certain demographic on whom not only does refutation not work, it actually makes it more likely they will continue to believe the falsehood, not less.

Can you guess which demographic that is? The Washington Post has details:

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

Maybe this is the problem with the 21st century progressive movement - we cling to the naive belief that a majority of voters can be swayed by logic, reason and facts. Suddenly it dawned on me why McPalin keeps repeating the "I told them 'no thanks' on the Bridge to Nowhere" canard, no matter how many times the opposition, the press and their own lying eyes tell their supporters otherwise.

The authors speculate that conservatives have a deep-seated cultural distrust of "academic authority" of any kind, and hearing a refutation of something they strongly wish to believe simply makes them cling to their belief all the more. Liberals, on the other hand, do not resist changing their opinions on the basis of facts.

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same "backfire effect" when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration's stance on stem cell research.

Ironically, the conservatives will also dismiss the conclusions of this study, because "studies" that uncover "facts" are written by a bunch of faggy-fag nerds, the kind they used to kick the shit out of back in junior high. Cause they're too smart. Cause smart guys are fags. Unless they're girls, and then they're lezzies.

We have truly become the Idiocracy.

Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out

YouTube seems to think that this video is inappropriate, and has pulled it:



Sarah Palin's Churches and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.


I think it's poorly put together, but damning nonetheless.

The practices of these people remind me of nothing so much as how Christians used to describe Pagan religions. How interesting then that even when I am scornful of my fellow Pagans, I find them to be some of the most civilized, pragmatic, reasonable people I know. Damn few of them go so far as to think they have some divine mission to force their ethos on a nation.

No person who does so think can be anything but my enemy.

Tina Fey, We Love You!

And we love you too, Amy Poehler!

On The Cutting Room Floor

Following close on the news that Obama hates POWs and pistol whips them with Blackberries, comes the new winger rage-gasm bouncing around in Memeorandum this weekend about the “editing” of Palin’s interview by ABC. This is another piece of stupidity that was chopped to pieces by Daniel Larison in American Conservative, ferfugssake:

Perhaps more pathetic than the ignorance defense (”No one truly knows what the Bush Doctrine is!”) is the editing defense, which just draws attention to parts of the Palin interview that were included in the online transcript but were cut out of the televised version, no doubt at least partly to avoid redundancy and save time. There is also probably a desire to find the most succinct and relevant answers that do not ramble on. Selective editing of this kind can be a favor to the person being interviewed. In this case, you have no idea how much better it was for Palin for some of this stuff to have been left out of the broadcast.

The whole interview was broadcast with the “edited out” parts on Good Morning America the next day, and frankly, it made Plain look worse, not better.

I know it’s just lies-as-usual for those guys, but this time the target is different – this stuff is for “the base”, so help them fight off that horrible feeling that Palin really is a lightweight and painfully out of her league. On the other hand, most of their blog blaterings and trolling comment sections are intended as psyops against liberals, to make Obama supporters discouraged. Only by suppressing voter turnout can they win, and despair is a powerful weapon.

But what amazes me is the sheer speed with which the wingnut blogs propagate a story. It’s like they all get the same talking points memo at the same time, telling them what to write. Funny that.

Fear Itself

From the front page of The New York Times:

The McCain advertisements are devised to draw the interest of bloggers and cable news producers — but not necessarily always intended for wide, actual use on television stations — to shift the terms of the debate by questioning Mr. Obama’s character and qualifications.

Mr. Sipple, the Republican strategist, voiced concern that Mr. McCain’s approach could backfire. “Any campaign that is taking liberty with the truth and does it in a serial manner will end up paying for it in the end,” he said. “But it’s very unbecoming to a political figure like John McCain whose flag was planted long ago in ground that was about ‘straight talk’ and integrity.”

This is exactly what we've been saying here - or more precisely, it's what this kind of right-wing faux outrage is all about. It's not aimed at the right wing - the pig people have already come home to the sty. It's not aimed at the mass media for consumption by the "average voter". It's sole purpose is to sow despair and hopelessness among the progressive base, to take the wind out of the Democrats sails. That's it. The actual target of these ragegasms and sleazy YouTube videos is us.

Sorry, Mr. Sipple, the Straight Talk Express went over the cliff over a year ago, right after John McCain threw himself under it.

Now's No Time To Turn Gunshy

I have noticed of late that some of the blogosphere's biggest (and smallest) names are beginning to despair of winning the upcoming Presidential election. People who a year ago were saying that a Democratic victory was a sure thing are now coming perilously close to throwing in the towel in disgust with the whole process.

Don't believe me? Read Digby. Read Atrios. Don't bother reading DailyKos ('cept maybe Kos himself).

Now, I'm every bit as disgusted with the conduct of the campaigns as any of them. The McCain campaign is shoveling so much bullshit I'm surprised it's not raining brown on all the cable news programs. It's got so bad that even some of the worst enablers of the Republican line have taken to wrinkling their noses and saying "Man, those guys are really full of shit."

The Obama campaign, in its part, keeps missing chances to hit those mendacious bastards back. Lie after lie after lie is answered with weak ripostes. McCain flips, then flops, then flips again. Obama says nothing. McCain lies about Obama's tax plan. Obama doesn't call him a slave to the money-men. McCain calls Obama a vapid, shallow celebrity. Obama doesn't call him a senile, feeble old man. For Gods' sake, it took Paris Hilton to do that! McCain, desperate to rally his bigoted base in the hopes of creating some sort of motivation for Republican voters, picks possibly the least qualified, most insane Christianist candidate he can find. Obama doesn't call him a whore of the Christianist Right. It's maddening.

And the media keeps feeding the frenzy, doing everything possible to convince us all that it's a close election.

Discouraging? You bet your ass it's depressing.

AND IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE. This is the game the Republicans are playing; faced with possibly the worst political landscape in the history of the GOP, they're going all out on the fundamentals. Bring in Palin to energize the base and get out the Republican vote. They had to, because the party's own GOTV efforts are pathetic, and they're up against what looks like the strongest Dem GOTV operation since the Civil Rights Movement.

Fling shit and disenfranchise voters to depress Democratic turnout. This one ought to be obvious to us all. The formula is so simple even a neo-con can't get it wrong - absent certain kinds of countervailing conditions ("war president", feh. Why did people EVER buy that bullshit?) elections are all about turnout in this country. Low turnout = Republican victory. High turnout = Democratic victory.

Now go back and look at all the coverage from the primaries. Especially the stories about the huge, nearly record-breaking turnout in the Democratic primaries. What was Republican turnout like? Um, yeah. Pathetic sounds about right. No wonder the GOP was in a panic in May and June. Their only option for stopping that oncoming electoral wave is to make participation in the political process so noxious and propagate memes so heinous that the Left, after raging against the unfairness of it all, simply starts shedding votes.

It's what they did to Kerry in 2004, because they couldn't be at all sure that he wasn't going to win, even against an incumbent "war president".

There's no incumbent to beat, this time. This time, it's just a toady, an enabler. But we won't get there unless we stand firm in the conviction that this election matters - that our votes matter.

If you feel otherwise - realise you're HELPING the people that are destroying this country.

Oh Sarah, Don't Leave Me!

So how is McSame going to fare on the stump without his ultra-rightwing mistress running mate?

The first campaign appearance on his own doesn't bode well.

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― Republican Presidential nominee John McCain brought his campaign to Philadelphia Wednesday afternoon.

McCain arrived at the Reading Terminal Market to an equal mix of cheers and jeers as the 'lipstick' controversy remains at hot political topic, however; McCain didn't mention the issue once.

[...]

McCain made a very brief appearance at the Reading Terminal Market where he shook hands with admirers, but did not take questions from any local media outlets. He did meet with small business owners at the Down Home diner for about 45 minutes.

"I think they should talk about the issues and stop making cracks at each other," McCain supporter Karen Westgate said from the Reading Terminal Market.

So far the Mavericky One a pretty pathetic draw on his own. Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.

A Television Golden Oldie - How about an Obama Election Eve Telethon?

In the last days of the 1968 Presidentiual Election, both candidates - Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey - ran two-hour "paid programming" telethons, broadcast on major networks (which, in the days before Cable news channels, were the only games in town.) These are described in the book White House to Your House by Edwin Diamond and Robert A. Silverman.

I'm old and decrepit enough to remember watching these broadcasts as a kid.

The idea was first used by Lyndon Johnson in his 1964 race against Barry Goldwater. Johnson ran a half-hour "paid advertisement" as a follow up to his famous "Daisy" attack ad against Goldwater, called, "Sorry, Senator Goldwater. We Just Can't Risk It," with a parade of military and academic brass that painted Goldwater as a Dr. Strangelove character who would blow up the world. Even though it was overkill by the Johnson campaign (who was already leading handily in the polls), it may have contributed to Johnson's landslide victory.

But Richard Nixon had learned his lesson about the power of television. So his campaign produced their own version, modeled on the "Jerry Lewis Telethon" format. Nixon's broadcast was a slick, expensive, well-executed affair, in which television star Jackie Gleeson introduced Nixon. As the book describes it:

Viewers could call a Los Angeles telephone number that flashed periodically on the screen. "[Our] tremendous bank of girls" on stage would write out the questions. Then, Nixon said, another group of "girls", called the "Nixonaires", would carry the questions to Oklahoma football coach Bud Wilkinson, the interlocutor. The "Nixonaires" were airline stewardesses dressed in short skirts and jokey caps. Later, the writer Joe McGinniss reported that the questions were re-worded backstage before going to Wilkinson (the Nixon people denied the claim). In any case, no questioner played hardball.

Not to be outdone, the Humphrey campaign produced their own version, broadcast on election eve. Humphrey's telethon was similar:

The Democrats' election eve effort on behalf of candidate Hubert Humphrey resembled Nixon's in many respects. It was on for two hours in prime time and it was carried live. Another two-hour show was done for the West Coast, and a group of attractive young women was on hand to take callers' questions. There were, however, differences. The Humphrey telethon boasted such celebrities as Paul Newman, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra, Bill Cosby, Edward G. Robinson, and Burt Lancaster. The stars answered some calls and then read out the questions. The set was supposed to look "authentic." TV cables snaked all over, the floor was littered with coffee cups, "just like a real telethon," remembered producer Bill Squier. When Squier discovered that "some efficient person from ABC" had straightened up just before airtime, he hurriedly restored the disarray - counterprogramming against Nixonian neatness.

Nixon, in his memoirs, wrote that he pushed for the telethon over the advice of his handlers, beleiving it helped produce Johnson's landslide over Goldwater. "It was my best campaign decision," he wrote. "Had we not had that telethon, I believe Humphrey would have squeaked through with a close win on election day."

So how about a blast from the past - an Obama Election Eve Telethon?

Of course, it would have to be re-tooled for 21st century sensibilities - no "stewardesses" in jockey caps, please. No, make it look like a contemporary Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon. Obama would have no problem getting star talent to participate, and like the Jerry Lewis version, it could feature top entertainment as well as political pitches. A call in format would work too. Humphrey encouraged callers on-air to "ask the tough questions, the kind my opponent refuses to answer," to draw a distinction between his telethon and Nixon's. Sounds like a familiar theme...

I think this might be a good idea to dust off for November. How about it, Obama campaign? I know you can afford it.

Original Sin?

Over a Andrew Sullivan's column in The Atlantic, he quotes from Jeffrey Burton Russell's review Alan Jacobs new book, Original Sin: A Cultural History:

Jacobs’s most original and provocative argument is that original sin has strong democratic impli­cations. Denial of original sin leads to elitism: Take, for instance, the duchess who simply refuses to believe that she shares a common nature with the unkempt commoners of field and street, or the self- righteous people who believe that they can make themselves good by stacking up a higher pile of good deeds than of bad ones. Their underlying assumption is that some people have exempt status, or higher virtues, or brighter minds, that others lack— plainly speaking, that some people (usually us) are better than other people (them). Original sin, on the other hand, is egalitarian because it means that everyone is alienated from God and has an innate tendency to sin. Equally egalitarian is the belief that Christ died in order to give everyone the liberty to escape sin. No one person can dare to consider himself or herself better than others, and no nation or race should dare to do so either.

The other way to look at it is as the Buddhists (and Pagans) do: humans aren't born in original sin, but in original divinity. All of us are born Divine, not born cursed. This is every bit as egalitarian and democratic as Jacobs's premise. You, as a human being, are already Divine. Stacking up good or bad deeds doesn't change that, making you more or less Divine. Doing evil is a matter of ignorantly rejecting your inherent Divinity and refusing to behave as the Divine being that you are.

We don't need to be given "liberty to escape sin", because there's no "original sin" to escape from. Unfortunately for Christianity, that kind of negates the entire premise of their salvation narrative. To the Buddhists, "salvation" is unnecessary - the goal is Liberation, so the human being can perceive their natural born divine nature.

I haven't read Jacobs's book, and I don't know why Sullivan, and admitted atheist, would be quoting it. But it is true that fear and degradation are always a good sell.

Obama's Gift To Me

Now I know that many of you were moved (to rage, to tears, whatever) by Barack Obama's nomination acceptance speech at Mile High the other day...

Let me tell you a little about my own experience.

All my life I have grown up knowing that some things were closed to me. Once, when I was twelve, I spent a couple of days trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, because people had been asking me that question long enough that I grew tired of lying to them. I'm pretty sure I knew what I wanted, even then. I wanted to be a politician. I wanted to be president. But when I told people that, I got back the message that this was unrealistic, that white people would ever hold me out of the corridors of power. There was never a coherent why attached to this, no reasoning to support it, but there it was.

So I did the research. And I realised that not only had there never been a black president, there had never even been a major party nominee for president. This despite the qualifications of Shirley Chisolm, who ran in 1972. I finally concluded that I was best sticking with the lie, and so I chose the most mind-bendingly difficult job I could imagine, astrophysicist. (BTW, if you think astronomy isn't hard, you've never been anything but a casual stargazer.)

And so began the squashing of my amibition. The highest heights were no longer mine to conquer.

In high school, I took the government class that was required to become a candidate for student body president. I went to the affluent school in Oakland, Skyline High. There were two blacks in a class of about a dozen people. I campaigned like mad. My candidacy was laughed out of contention, never even appeared on the ballot.

I stopped trying to become popular. And I learned some measure of hate for white people. It was not the kind of moronic and active despite commonly seen in the black community. Mine was more general, and quiet. And it eventually scarred over. The lesson my kin taught me was complete. The dream of political power was dead. I turned to other skills for my livelihood, my sustenance. Fortunately for me, I had skills aplenty to choose from. I chose computers (and, honestly, they chose me).

Down through the years, friends time and again have told me I should be in politics. I had the kind of mind that could play that game well, and the kind of uncompromising, ideological spirit that was a hallmark of major (especially right-wing) politicos. Each time I agreed, yes I should. And then I went about my business.

(There's a note here I could insert to soften this tragic tale - a moment I could take to own my shit. But that would break this nice clean narrative. So nope, not gonna.)

The advent of blogging gave me the opportunity to vent my tiny little frustrations, to exercise this side of me that previously only had expression in the kind of meaningless, much-too-loud conversations carried on between friends. It's fun and easy to preach to the choir. But that wasn't what I wanted. And so I took the chance in this newer life to venture my political opinions to the world, safe in the knowledge that I'd still get lost in the noise, and not be subject to the mockery and racism.

And so I have been the Swordfighting Pundit for a few years now.

Until Barack Obama came down, accepted his nomination for the presidency, and called me on my shit.

Hey wait, you say, did you watch the same speech I did? When did he say "Hey Darrin, it's your fault you're not standing here instead of me"? Well, yes, I did.

Well, no, he didn't. What he did do was remind me what hope means. Actually, Biden said it a bit more explicitly. "...get back up" he said. In any case, Obama re-awakened in me those memories of ambition crushed.

So I spent a little bit of time, watching that speech, crying for all my lost time and opportunities. Crying for my life lost. And then...then he kept speaking. He talked about the better future we could build.

And he gave me to understand that I could go in the direction of my childhood dreams, still. That my best days could well be ahead of me. In this age of cynicism and reduced expectations and stagnant wages, and falling standards of living, that is a huge thing.

I'm not the fool I was as a child. I certainly don't think the presidency is within my reach. Governor of California? Heh, maybe.

I have been given much food for thought. Perhaps enough to last me twenty years and a whole new career.
Oh, and thanks to rimblemethis (at LiveJournal) for reminding me to swallow that first bite. I was still chewing on it two days after the speech, and was trying not to accept the implications. Even if I don't go that way, it won't be from simple inertia.

I Suck At Introductions

Good evening (or morning, or whatever the bleep time it is in your part of this all-too-connected world when you're reading this),

I am Snowwy, proprietor of The World Reflected in Fine Steel, longtime student and teacher of the fine art of the sword, incorrigible political observer, and all too given to the sound of my own voice.

I have been invited to join Joe Max here in his establishment as another voice.

My political leanings will become all too clear to you, the reader, as time goes on. Trust me. For a primer, I'm going to repost a couple of my recents over at WRFS. I hope you're looking forward to this as much as I.

The Nelson Muntz Maneuver

The comment below was posted to Sadly, No! and it's of a type that is becoming a common feature of progressive blog comment sections, as well as with the MSM right wing punditry class moving their lips to the latest GOP talking point memo.

The right-wing sower of despair.

"Saul said,

They know that B. Hussein Obama is a leftwing ideologue and a race baiter. According to his voting record in the Illinois state legislature, Obama is a supporter of infanticide, as he voted against protecting babies who were born alive after failed abortions. This is position far beyond being pro-choice. This is infanticide! This is a postion so extreme that even the far-left Nancy Pelosi condemned it.

This position of Obama’s is a matter of public record. He voted this way in the Illinois state legislature. Do you think this sort of fringe postion is gonna go over well in the supposed “swing states” of Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana? These are some of the Solid Red States that Obama bin Biden has to win in order to become President. Good luck, now that the public has been made aware of his extremist postions on issues of life and race.

Heck, this sort of extremism may even swing Pennsylvania in our corner this election. I doubt the blue-collar workers in Pennslvania (who are more pro-life than the national average) are going to find Barry’s postion amusing. Face it lefties, your “messiah” ain’t gonna be elected President, not by a long shot. He is completely unelectable."

Right-winger operatives like Saul have a purpose in the grand GOP scheme, and it amounts to suppressing liberal voter turn-out. Saul doesn't think in a million years that screeds like that are going to change the minds of anyone who frequents liberal blogs, or even impress the fabled "moderate voter". But that's not the purpose, and Saul is just another minor cog in their machine (I often wonder if they GOP hands out liberal blog target assignments with their talking points - for example, Ace has been assigned to Sullivan.)

The purpose of right-wing freepers trolling liberal blog comments is two-fold: the first is to sow despair, usually by claiming that some poorly defined "average American" is going to not like whatever some thing Democrats say, do or want, and therefore "you guys are so going to lose!"

The second purpose is to ward off any conversions by self-described conservatives who might go all John Cole on them and take the red pill. "We laugh at liberals! You don't wanna be laughed at too, do you Mr. Smart Guy?"

This whole thing could be dubbed the "Nelson Muntz" maneuver. "HA ha!"

And it's not, of course, limited to blogs. The whole right-wing echo chamber will be reverberating with foreshadowing of doom and destruction for Obama and all Democrats and progressives. The goal is to make progressives dispirited and want to give up - stay home on election day and cry.

Here's what they're afraid of:

Obama's ground game and GOTV machine is more than impressive, it's astounding - and terrifying to the McCain campaign. Obama has no cap on his fundraising. McCain has, and he's reached it. Palin's speech on Thursday raised $10 million in one day - for Obama. What's Obama going to spend it on? Why, community organizers of course! Organizers to get out the vote. Their convention rhetoric on Obama's community organizer career exposes how much they fear it.

All we progressives have to do is show up and vote en masse, and McCain loses. He can't win the electoral vote on the base alone. It's inconceivable that Obama is going to lose any Kerry states. If just one medium size Bush state flips for Obama, it's over.

His campaign knows this. It haunts their nightmares. So suppressing the progressive vote is part and parcel of their strategy. Well, it always is, but they won't be able to do the same level of ratfucking as last time. Why? Those Obama community organizers again, assigned to watch the polls, especially in the precincts that got ratfucked before.

So they hope to accomplish it this time thorough intimidation. All we have to do is not let it work.

HA ha!

Who ya gonna call?

"ARE YOU A CONSERVATIVE WINGNUT???"

"um... no."



"THEN... DIE!!!!!"

"Palinzar the Traveler! She will come in one of the prechosen forms. During the rectification of the Reaganaii, the traveler came as a large and moving Cheney! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Republitrex supplicants they chose a new form for her - THAT OF A GIANT HOCKEY MOM! Many shubs and zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Hockey Mom pit that day, I can tell you!"

"There you go again" Redux

They say that "happy warrior" Ronald Reagan blew away the wonky Jimmy Carter with a laugh and a simple dismissal:

"There you go again!"

Obama's been studying the Reagan style book (and why shouldn't he?) and is adopting a similar attitude on the stump.

"And suddenly [McCain's] the change agent? Ha. He says, 'I'm going to tell those lobbyists that their days of running Washington are over.' Who is he going to tell? Is he going to tell his campaign chairman, who's one of the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington? Is he going to tell his campaign manager, who was one of the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington? I mean, come on, they must think you're stupid," Obama said as the crowd laughed and cheered."

This is a smart way for Obama to fight them: Reagan style. It would serve them right if Obama beats them over the head with Reagan's campaign playbook from now until November.

Obama must keep up the image of the happy warrior. If he goes nasty, he's vulnerable. He's got to save that card for only the most despicable of moves by McCain's campaign, something that draws a gasp even from McCain's own camp.

Bashing them is Biden's job. And he's good at it. I think we'll see more of what he's been dishing up, and he'll gradually ease off the obligatory paean to McCain's bravery as time goes on.

As far as Palin's concerned, the best play is to get her riled in debate and with hard questions. Crack the ice queen facade and force the snaggle-toothed barracuda to come out. I get the feeling from Alaskan political blogs, like the excellent Mudflats, that the Moose Queen doesn't handle criticism well. I see that snarky smirk on her face she can barely control, and remarks like "So Sambo beat the Bitch!" seem perfectly in character for her personality type - think Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter. I think the McCain campaign is busy schooling her on anger managment as much as they are on policy. So Obama's side needs to draw out her inner Tracy Flick for the whole world to see.

So here's the scenario:

Make these characters stick in the public mind: McCain as Grandpa Simpson, Palin as Dolores Umbridge, and all their operatives and friends as the same pack of liars and thieves who brought us the last eight years of ruin. If that becomes the "Conventional Wisdom", McCain loses.

PS: Doesn't Palin sound just like Principal Victoria of South Park? Come to think of it, have we ever seen both of them together in one place? Hmmm...

Listen!

"If they get out of control, just use this teargas, ok?"

Mien Furher! I Can Snowmobile!

This is the unretouched, un-photoshopped image from CNN's GOP Convention website last night.

Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S. G.O.P.

Alaska Uber Alles!