Under the fold, due to length. Like the previous couple of roundups, take your time - bookmark, read, and use later.
Clever Wife regularly participates in a forum for craftspeople who make soap. Lately the forum has included some long digressions into politics. She is usually capable of responding to the misinformation she sees, but occasionally she asks for my help. The other day someone posted a list of "rumors" about Sarah Palin debunked by someone named Charlie Martin, a computer programmer in Colorado. Charlie's list on his blog Explorations is now up to 71 points and has earned him a spot on Fox News along with tens of thousands of blog hits.
Clever Wife thought that Charlie's debunking shows a solid pro-Palin slant. It looks that way to me, too. It's not so much about setting the record straight as it is about presenting a partisan defense of Palin against any criticism. CW asked if I could help her debunk some of Charlie's debunking. Some of his debunking is just fine, but many of the answers leave important information out, simply accept the McCain/Palin version of events, blame the victim, or take cheap shots at the mainstream media. After trying to hit just a few of the more difficult points on his list things rapidly got out of hand. I decided to take on the whole list fisk-style. I wish he included the source for some of the rumors because they really are quite stupid and Charlie is right to dismiss them.
Tie-Breakers. Advantage Obama. Advice? Take Nothing for Granted:
The recent CBS and Rasmussen polls show the race between Barack Obama and John McCain to be tied. Gallup has McCain taking a slight 3 point lead. At the moment, all indications point to a very close contest between the GOP and Democratic nominees - but I want to point out that 57 days is a very long time in a Presidential campaign and anything can happen to blow the doors off the race in either direction.
However, if the race stays closely fought to the end, there are a number of possible tie-breakers that could decide the outcome:
Palin - Republican Party Infiltrator? Damning Video.:
"Our current governor, we mentioned at the last conference, the one we were hoping would get elected, Sarah Palin, did get elected. There's a joke, she's a pretty good looking gal, there's a joke goes around we're the coldest state with the hottest governor. (laughter) And there was a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town -- that was a non-partisan job. But to get along and go along -- she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won't go into that. She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership."
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"If there is ever a time that is right for change, this is it. In our own situation, we discussed several options. Do we try and get our case into the International Court of Justice, or to the World Court? Several Native Alaskan organizations are taking that route, independent of us. They want to do it on their own terms. They haven't realized, in my mind, the potential of their own political party. The pitfalls of an organized political party - you don't have any control over who joins that party. They put the X next to it on the registration form, and if they join the -- go into the primary, and win that primary, they're your candidate, like it or not. I think Ron Paul has kind of proven that. He's a dyed -in-the-wool Libertarian. He came to Alaska and spoke as a Libertarian. And he put the Republican label on to get elected. That's all there is to it. And any one of your organizations should be using that same tactic to infiltrate. I know that Christian Exodus is in favor of it, I know that the Free State Movement is in favor of it. I don't know that they even care which party it is. Which ever party you see where you can get something done, get into that political party, even though it does have it's problems. Right now that is one of the only avenues. If you can get a few people on the city council, or a town board, you can have some effect."
Citizen's media is the answer!:
Okay, so Sarah Palin agreed to an interview with Charlie Gibson at ABC News, but we all know (right?) that it's going to be softball questions that can be answered with glib one-liners. Not going to get answers to the questions real citizens (i.e. taxpayers, voters) have. Permalink to this paragraph
But it turns out if you happen to run into Sarah Palin in a restaurant, she'll answer questions, and say things that her handlers almost certainly don't want her to say. Permalink to this paragraph
Okay, let's cede a point, the Republicans were brilliant, if cynical, in nominating Sarah Palin for VP. It one-upped Obama in newness, in a year when newness matters, and it shines a different kind of light on McCain, he got his "maverick" back -- even though he never really was that much of a maverick. Obama can try to refute it, but it probably isn't worth it, it probably won't work. Permalink to this paragraph
So is Obama stuck on the sidelines, like McCain was when he took his European pre-victory tour? Is there any way Palin's sparkly newness could fade before Election Day? The answers seem, at first to be yes he is stuck and there's no way to make her seem less new before we vote. So, do we lose, as Adam McKay thinks we must in today's Huffpost? Permalink to this paragraph
Jim, who sent us this post and photos, has now asked Sarah Palin more questions than the entire political press corps COMBINED. Nice work, Jim. If only the traditional media types could be so industrious.
All Conservatives Are Racist Pedophiles:
Look, no, there's no possible way to interpret the title of this post as saying that each and every conservative is a bigoted child-lover. There's just not.
The standard for Republicans opening their mouths has generally been that they don't mean the words that come out, but in fact some highly qualified variant on the plain meaning of the words that comes right up to what they obviously meant without actually meaning said thing. If Mitt Romney says that he hopes you die in a puddle of AIDS, all he really meant is that you talk about AIDS a lot and will one day die. In a puddle of it.
McNasty throws another tantrum :
I don't worry that an out of control, hotheaded President John McCain would lose his temper and order the Air Force to nuke Iran or that he'd blow his top at Russia or China or North Korea and reach for the button. I don't even worry that he'll provoke a diplomatic incident by calling a foreign leader names he usually reserves for other Republicans or his own wife.
I worry that his tantrums and his habit of bullying will intimidate his own staff and cabinet and keep him from getting the kind of advice that would prevent a diplomatic incident or head off a military confrontation with Iran, Russia, or China. Who's going to want to approach him to tell him he's wrong or deliver some bad news if it means having to endure one of his foul-mouthed tirades which will inevitably end with humiliation, dismissal, possibly a firing, and all to no avail because the President will probably do just the opposite of what's advisable out of spite and a self-righteous sense of personal aggrievement?
Let's face it, we all believe we could do a better job.
Better than who?
Whoever. The manager of our favorite baseball team. The principal of the local high school. The CEO of whatever company we think is being driven into the ground today. George W. Bush.
We're a nation of armchair generals, Monday morning quarterbacks, and backseat drivers. We're a nation of amateurs just waiting for our chance.
Put me in charge, boy, and just watch my smoke!
That'll be the smoke from me going down in flames like the Hindenberg, but nevermind.
WAS THE MEDIA TOO HARD ON PALIN?:
Judging from my extremely scientific while-I'm-on-the-treadmill sampling method, the cable news networks are working extremely hard to report out a story of crucial importance: "Has the media been too hard on Sarah Palin?" Watching them try to examine this story is sadly hilarious, like watching a puppy unhappily considering whether it has, in fact, been a bad dog.
But beneath the dark comedy is the incoherence. The media cannot "report" this story out. They are the subject. And it requires a judgment. It's a question with one of two answers. Either "yes, for reasons of bias/sensationalism/whim, we have been reporting on Sarah Palin in a way that's not justified by the facts, and the importance of the facts, surrounding her career," or "no, we have been subjecting Sarah Palin to a proper level of scrutiny, and it's not our fault that her career had been previously unexplored and contained more than a few dark corners and surprising twists."
WHY THE PRESS CAN'T REPORT THE CAMPAIGN.:
I think one aspect of the modern press that doesn't get enough attention -- either among folks in the media or folks critiquing it -- is the transition from the fundamental scarcity being information to information being in abundance and the fundamental scarcity being mediation. For instance, the attitude on display in this Marc Ambinder post is fully understandable if you take a newspaperman's attitude towards the whole thing. If everyone got a newspaper once a day, and there were eight political stories, and all of them were different each day, and one of them had pointed out that Palin actually did support the Bridge to Nowhere, then the press would indeed have done its job. The job was to report the story, and they reported it.
But cable news and blogs and radio sort of changed all that and now there's too much information, and so consumers largely rely on the press to arrange that information into some sort of coherent story that will allow them to understand the election. And the press assumed that role -- they didn't create some new institution, or demand that the cable channels be credentialed differently and understood as "political entertainment."
FEWER LIBERALS ON THE TEEVEE.:
MSNBC is taking Olbermann and Matthews off their election-night hosting duties. Makes sense. I'd prefer to watch them, of course, but insofar as you do want pretend objectivity in your newscasts, you probably want to center that tendency in the anchor. That said, MSNBC is currently third in the rankings, but were beginning to charge forward precisely because they'd switched up their formula and injected a bit of electricity into their newscasts. David Gregory should nip that trend in the bud, and MSNBC will get to keep their "objectivity" at the expense of their relevance. That may not be their preference, but if you read the article, it's pretty clear that parent company NBC is worried that MSNBC's perceived liberalism will reduce their access with Republicans, and they'd rather kneecap their spinoff than impede the network.
On the other hand, this move does clarify things hlepfully. MSNBC is not a liberal network. They are a centrist network with two hours of liberal programming in the evenings and three hours of conservative programming in the mornings. Unlike Fox, where Republicanism is an ideology, for MSNBC, liberalism is a business strategy. And not even the only one. In the mornings, conservatism is the business strategy. And on weekends, making sure NBC executives can continue to golf with high-level Republicans is the business strategy. And the liberalism won't be allowed to threaten either one
Calling a lie a lie:
But couldn't it have something to do with the way the campaign press reports news? Back in 2000, the exit polls showed that among the 24 percent of the electorate who said it was very important to them to select an "honest and trustworthy" president, 80 percent voted for George W Bush. This, I assume, had something to do with the fact that the press repeatedly weaved through its coverage of Gore a narrative about Gore's alleged difficulty telling the truth, even though most of the data points where Gore lied or "exaggerated" were actually made up by the press. McCain, by contrast, has not only been caught in several bald-faced lies, but in a few instances -- this business with Palin and the bridge most notably -- keeps on doing it in very high-profile contexts even though they've gotten called on it repeatedly. So where's the narrative about how McCain's key strategy introducing Sarah Palin to the public and turning his campaign around is based on putting lies at the heart of the presentation? There are a few dozen people, of whom Marc is one, in a position to create this narrative. They've chosen not to do so, but that's a decision they've made not a fact about "the way consumers process news."
The positive point is that a small but significant fraction of the electorate seems astonishingly inured to misleading charges and negative attacks. They seem to understand that charges are false, but they don't seem to penalize the offending candidate. They understand that John McCain's summer attacks against Barack Obama were negative, and yet they believed the attacks. The facts suggest that Gov. Sarah Palin did not oppose the Bridge to Nowhere when it was politically inconvenient, but when it became a national bugbear, she opposed it -- although many Alaska politicians continued to support it.
And, of course, though the press has pointed out the Bridge to Nowhere exagerration ever since it was uncovered, it must somehow be the press's fault that John McCain is enjoying a post-convention something-or-other because Americans don't realize that he's a lying liar, or whatever.
Things as They Are Are Changed Upon the Blue Guitar:
All I was observing is that it's perverse for members of the press to make claims about how dishonest campaign tactics are likely to play that treats themselves as non-participants in the process. Creating false beliefs in the public about yourself and your opponent is politically helpful. But acquiring a reputation as a liar is politically damaging. And the public gets a lot of information through the press. Thus, the political impact of telling a lie will have a lot to do with how the media chooses to cover it. If John McCain's decision to release an ad that contains a thoroughly debunked lie about his running mate's record was greeted with lead stories on network news about John McCain has a reputation as a straight-talker but really he's a big fat liar, that would be bad for McCain. But they haven't covered it that way. They have, however, actually drawn some attention to the fact that McCain is lying, which is good. But what they really haven't done is created a narrative about how lying -- in particular, lying about Barack Obama's tax plan and lying about Sarah Palin's record -- has moved to a central place in John McCain's campaign. Perhaps the press has good reason for doing this. But Marc shouldn't treat himself as a passive observer of the fact that McCain can get away with lying, he's one of a countable number of people who are in a position to substantially influence the narrative around McCain and his campaign.
As for the duties and obligations of the press, unlike Glenn Greenwald I don't talk about that stuff because I've had the opportunity to work alongside a lot of journalists over the years and know that, self-righteousness aside, working journalists don't in practice operate as if they have any particular duties or obligations beyond the basic self-interest that drives people in all lines of work.
David Frum, author of "Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again," wrote an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday that has some interesting insights and but also suffers from some of the usual confusions about rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans. Overall I think Frum has some interesting things to say but I want to point out a couple of places where I think he may have been misled by focusing too strongly on the D.C. metropolitan area.
David Frum Doesn't Understand Virginia or Boston:
Conservative writer David Frum has an article in the NY Times magazine where he attempts to understand why wealthy areas like Fairfax County, Virginia, and Beacon Hill, MA are trending Democratic, or even becoming Democratic strongholds. The article would be informative, were it based in any way, shape, or form on what actually happened in Virginia (we'll get to Boston later). Since Frum is describing a change that I lived through, I thought I would offer my reasons why Northern Virginia has changed.
The right dictates MSNBC's programming decisions:
MSNBC's announcement that it is replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews with David Gregory as anchors for its main political events (the upcoming presidential debates and election) vividly illustrates several long-obvious facts. First, nothing changes the behavior of our media corporations more easily than vocal demands and complaints from the Right, which petrify media executives and cause them to snap into line.
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Quite typically, the very idea that media corporations and their "journalist" employees are -- first and foremost -- eager to avoid offending those in political power and that they (therefore) particularly fear alienating the Right is something that, even after the last eight years, causes people like Time Warner employee Ana Marie Cox to scoff and cackle in disbelief, followed by empty-headed giggling at her own self-defensive "jokes". What is painfully self-evident to so many people -- that establishment media outlets exist to serve and curry favor with those in power -- is something that produces shocked disbelief from most of those in that "profession." They actually continue to believe that they're tough, independent-minded, adversarial checks on political power. The strength of that delusion -- the total inability to engage in even the most minimal self-reflection or self-criticism -- is one of the principal reasons why reforming the establishment press is virtually impossible and the creation of competing alternatives is the only real solution.
I don't, in the abstract, object to replacing them, and indeed would never have given them the job in the first place. The unprepared, trivia-obsessed Matthews has no business anchoring anything. I don't watch Olbermann; I accept the need for a liberal O'Reilly but I'm not interested in watching it, and he's far from an ideal choice as anchor (as opposed to pundit.) The problem is the double standard, and the circumstances of their firing.
The other thing to note is that replacing people because they're too biased and don't meet Brian Williams's journalistic standards is pretty farcical.
Having been through the process of "vetting" prospective cabinet members, I can tell you it's time-consuming, detailed, and thorough. I'd like to think the vetting of a vice presidential nominee would be more so - especially one whose odds of becoming president, should she be elected, are somewhat higher than that of the normal vice president.
Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton's "vetting" team asked me and other prospective cabinet members for (1) our tax returns, going back at least five years, (2) our bank records, (3) a detailed listing of our assets, (4) the names and places of everywhere we had lived, and the names and phone numbers of neighbors whom they could call about us, (5) a description of every job we had ever had, every client we had ever served, and the names of employers and clients with whom they could check, (6) the names of our family members, their ages, their occupations (if any), (7) a description of any civil or criminal investigations or prosecutions in which we had been involved (8) and - perhaps most importantly - "anything we should ask you about, the answer to which might cause you or the administration any embarrassment."
At several points over the last year, I've underestimated Obama's campaign. And I take it that their position now is that they're not going to get knocked off their game. Instead they're staying focused on the ground game in the dozen and a half states where they believe the race will be won or lost. That's difficult for someone in my position to evaluate. The messaging and air war is something that is inherently visible. The ground game is very difficult to evaluate because it's much more difficult to see. So we're left to take it on faith that they know what they're doing, without having much way of seeing for ourselves.
I certainly hope they do. But what I see is a campaign that is for some reason either unwilling or unable to take the initiative in the national messaging war. It's all reactive. And, yeah, that worries me.
I don't think this negates my point about taking and holding the initiative. But I do think this is a very good point. And I was thinking along these same lines over the weekend. Embracing the idea that this is a change election puts McCain in a possibly winning but also extremely perilous position because the claim to represent change is inherently preposterous. The Obama camp should grab onto this concession, bank it and fight the rest of the election on these terms. How can a senator who's been in Washington for 26 six years and embraces all the policies of the president of the last eight years be change? It answers itself.
Charlie Gibson: McCain's Favorite Network Anchor?:
Gibson has been granted exclusives with McCain and his running-mate, which is unusual favoritism by any measure. There's something about Gibson that McCain advisers appear to like a great deal.
Charlie Gibson [hearts] Sarah Palin:
Anyway, as Greg Sargent at TPM Election Central notes, Gibson thinks the only relevant questions to ask Palin are about her positions on issues. No questions about her husband's membership in the fringe Alaskan Independence Party. No questions about her own membership in that party (the McCain campaign has denied that she was ever a member, but several others have said she was, and in any case, she courted the party repeatedly even though they're rabidly anti-American). No questions about what actual vetting Palin underwent. And Gibson says he's REALLY not going to get into the issue of Palin's daughter's pregnancy - you remember that issue, it's the pregnancy the McCain campaign leaked to Reuters and then turned around and blamed everyone else for writing about. Yes, Palin subsequently said she was proud of her daughter's choice in keeping the baby. So she gave her daughter a choice, but opposes giving YOUR daughters a choice. No, Charlie Gibson won't ask about that, because that would be a fact, and facts are mean.
McCain Campaign Piles Up New Falsehoods On Bridge To Nowhere:
Meanwhile, McCain adviser Tucker Bounds appeared today on MSNBC, where he acknowledged that Palin used to favor the bridge, but said she turned against it for good reasons.
"But as it became more wasteful, the budget ballooned, it became a staple for wasteful spending, she said No," Bounds said. "And she was the one that drove the nail in the coffin that killed the bridge to nowhere."
Nope.
Bush Administration Doing As Much Damage As Humanly Possible:
Think George Deutsch, unqualified appointees to the CPA, the incompetence displayed by companies supplying US troops in Iraq, and attempts to classify birth control as abortion. It is all part and parcel of Republican attempts to remake the country in a fashion the next President couldn't easily undo...
Election 08: Student voting rights at risk by murky state rules:
Time magazine declared 2008 the Year of the Youth Vote, and young voter turnout is indeed skyrocketing: the non-profit group CIRCLE found that 6.5 million people under the age of 30 voted in the 2008 primaries. That boosted the primary turnout rate for youth from 9% in 2000 to 17% in 2008.
But The New York Times reports that murky rules about student registration -- and over-zealous election officials -- threaten to dampen turnout, at least among college students.
As first reported by Inside Higher Ed, a registrar in Montgomery County, Virginia -- following a voter registration drive by Barack Obama's campaign at Virginia Tech -- issued a press release that erroneously warned of dire consequences for student voters:
The Associated Press just wrote about Palin's speech today. She lied in it. A lot. And they caught her.
On NBC's Meet The Press this morning, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman criticized the chanting of "drill, drill, drill" and "drill, baby, drill" at the Republican National Convention last week, saying that's just what Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria want to hear Americans focusing on. "They'd be up there leading the chant. They would be saying, 'this is great, America isn't sitting there saying, invent, invent, invent new renewable energy,'" said Friedman. Friedman added that he isn't opposed to offshore drilling, but we shouldn't be "making that the center focus":
White Man Asks White Man Why He's Hanging With So Many White People:
White guy Bob Schieffer, of CBS News, asked white guy John McCain why the Republicans only had 36 black delegates out 2300 and how the party can survive. McCain, being white, said "it can't."
The Fourth Estate and the Unitary Executive Theory:
One of the battlegrounds in our government over the past eight years has been around executive power. It has shown up in skirmishes where people have attempted to obtain information about how Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy was crafted. It has shown up in repeated battles over what the congress can compel members of the Bush administration to testify about.
So, it should come as no surprise that the campaign appears to be stretching the Unitary Executive Theory to new limits. Let's apply them to Republican candidates for Vice President with regards to the media.
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Yes, that is how campaigns are run. They always make their media choices. It is not only what is said on the media, but isn't said that is important. By not addressing the press, Gov. Palin and the McCain campaign seems to be saying that they want to further the Bush Administration's stonewalling and refusal to be accountable to the American people. They want to make sure that Cheney's refusal to reveal how his energy policy was created is carried on for four more years. In essence, they are saying that they do not want to be a government, "Of, by and for the people."
True, the media isn't all that it could be, but it is better than nothing. So, yes, the McCain campaign can do whatever they want to do. Voters should do the same, and refuse to vote for a ticket that will not speak about positions, policies, or qualifications with the American media.
Update: Ann Coulter on Sarah Palin:
On August 30, I wrote this post wondering about how Ann Coulter might reflect on her statement that she would support Hillary Clinton for president if John McCain was the GOP candidate. Then, on August 31, I wrote this post wondering about how Coulter would handle Governor Sarah Palin's resume and pursuit of the VP role in light of how Coulter analyzed Harriet Miers' resume and pursuit of the Supreme Court nomination (it was withdrawn).
Coulter has a column up now that doesn't satisfy either of those curiosities of mine. I couldn't find a permalink but it's dated September 3, so you can go into the archives if you want to read it once she's posted new columns.
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we are teetering on what might be the biggest financial meltdown in 79 years, and media, liberals, Evangelicals, Presidents, Senators, and pundits are worried about Palin, her appeal and her inexperience.
inexperience don't matter if experience don't matter.