Policy and Politics
tfk | September 19, 2008A Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day to all yez scurvy buckets o' chum.
Accarrrrding to Ye Hill newspaper "Palin won’t say whether veep is an executive post":
Vice President Dick Cheney has said his office only partially belongs to the executive branch. Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden disagrees and Republican rival Sarah Palin isn’t saying.
Sen. Biden (Del.) believes the office he is seeking is solely in the executive branch, according to his staff. But aides to Alaska Gov. Palin did not answer the question.
“Unlike Dick Cheney, Joe Biden won’t have to create a…
tfk | September 19, 2008Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Ned Ryun, the nepotistic son of Jim Ryun, a consarrrrrvative runner and formerrr Congressman lately marooned by his crew of Republican seadogs, needs a lesson in arrrrrrithmetic. Arrr nashnul debt be held by:
Japan, China, the United Kingdom and Oil Exporting nations, in that order. You combine all four of those nations’ holdings and they have $1.577 trillion of our debt. That’s about 1/8th of our debt. You combine China and the Oil Exporters, and that’s almost $700 billion between the two, or about 13% of all our debt."
So now 700 billion…
tfk | September 18, 2008In which I again attempt to reconstruct Sarah Palin's past positions, accounting for crustal movement.
Here are a few reasons that Palin's friends may not vote for her:
When asked to reveal something about Palin that no one knows, one woman offered, "She doesn't care for cats very much," and another chimed in, "Oh, yes, she's afraid of my cat."
As Defenders of Wildlife points out, Palin has also encouraged the brutal and unsportsmanly slaughter of wolves. And she sued the federal government when the feds tried to step in and stop polar bears from going extinct.
This adds up to a bit of a…
tfk | September 18, 2008Talking Points Memo:
yesterday John McCain was interviewed on the Florida affiliate of Spanish radio network Union Radio. And in the interview McCain appeared not to know who the Prime Minister of Spain was and assumed he was some anti-American leftist leader from South America.
After the interviewer presses him a couple times on the point and tries to focus him on the fact that Prime Minister Zapatero isn't from Mexico and isn't a drug lord either McCain comes back at her saying, "All I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the Hemisphere that are friends…
tfk | September 17, 2008I don't know, but I suspect that Republicans think we Obama-voters are thinking this about the collapse of AIG and Lehman brothers:
I can't wait until President-for-life Hussein Obama X puts these people all up against the wall and expropriates their funds to pay for slave reparations.
As Atrios explains, we're heading towards a drastic financial situation. John McCain's response to the imminent collapse of the 18th largest corporation in the world is to claim that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Obama knows that they aren't and haven't been for some time now. George Bush…
tfk | September 17, 2008Yesterday I mentioned that Carly Fiorina, a top McCain advisor and former CEO of Hewlett Packard, had declared Sarah Palin unqualified to run a major corporation. That's not all she thinks of the Republican ticket:
Asked about that remark on MSNBC, she made the same unprompted assessment of the GOP presidential nominee. "I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation." ...
A top McCain official contacted by CNN ... said Fiorina would be discouraged from additional media interviews.
Another top campaign adviser was far less diplomatic.
"Carly will now disappear," this source…
tfk | September 16, 2008Salon.com talks to Alaskans about Sarah Palin:
"If they ask her foreign policy questions, she'll deflect them by saying something like, 'I may not know a lot about Azerbaijan, but I know a lot about my country,'" predicted [an anonymous] Democratic consultant.
But the truth, said Michael Carey, former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News, is that Palin knows little about the United States either. "She's spent her whole life up here in Alaska, except for a few years in college in Idaho."
And a brief stint in Hawaii, also in college. She attended 5 colleges in 6 years. Why she…
tfk | September 16, 2008On the McGraw Milhaven radio program, out of St. Louis, MO, McCain advisor Carly Fiorina, former head of Hewlet Packard, said:
Milhaven: Does Sarah Palin -- John McCain obviously thinks she has the experience to become president of the United States. Do you think she has the experience to run a major company like Hewlett Packard?
Fiorina: No, I don't. But you know what, that's not what she's running for. (Laughs) Running a corporation is a different set of things.
Exactly, running the world's last remaining superpower is a hell of a lot harder and more important than running HP.
tfk | September 12, 2008A site called Opposingviews.com has asked the question: Does intelligent design have merit?
Defending the proposition that it does, the Disco. Inst. responds officially and through two sockpuppets: Michael Behe, and Jay Richards (both Disco. fellows). Taking the position that it doesn't, we've got the National Center for Science Education, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and (of all places) the Ayn Rand Center or Individual Rights.
When we were approached about posting to the site, the administrators suggested having 3-4 responses of 300-400 words each. Of course, the…
tfk | September 12, 2008Yesterday, Sarah Palin demanded that Charlie Gibson:
Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that.
Except, well:
Last year, she told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, "I'm not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity." And in an interview Newsmax magazine just released, which was conducted before she was selected as John McCain's running mate, the Alaska governor said, "A changing environment will…
tfk | September 12, 2008In which I attempt to reconstruct obscured positions and correct for crustal movements.
John Cole points out this bit from Sarah Palin's interview:
Pressed about what insights into recent Russian actions she gained by living in Alaska, Palin answered: “They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.”
Oy.
According to Google Earth, the westernmost tip of Alaska is over 5,000 miles from the fighting in Georgia. Moscow is closer, a mere 4,500 miles away. Even if Palin didn't need glasses, she couldn't see anything that far…
tfk | September 11, 2008This is the beginning of the 8th year in which I'll be trying to understand what happened on 9/11. The eighth year in which I'll see a news clip from September 11, 2001, and feel like crawling inside myself. The eighth year in which the there is a hole in the New York skyline, and in lower Manhattan.
A year ago today, John McCain kicked off seven days of war-mongering over Iraq. Seven years ago, he used the attack by al Qaeda (based in Afghanistan, using hijackers mostly from Saudi Arabia) to argue for an invasion of Iraq, telling reporters that, while he never imagined such an attack (…
tfk | September 11, 2008The Editors ask: McCain: Enemy of Israel or All Out Anti-Semite?:
The media has paid far too little attention to John McCain’s pledge in April to cut off all aid to Israel. Shortly after McCain issued that promise to completely abandon Israel, the McCain camp was forced to backtrack publicly due to pressure from various campaign advisors. But that was for purely cynical, campaign-related reasons, not due to a change of heart. If elected, there is little doubt that McCain will swiftly implement a clean break with Israel.
In fact, it is the ultimate goal of both sides of the GOP ticket.…
tfk | September 10, 2008White House press secretary Dana Perino explains why the Bush/McCain team have yet to catch Osama bin Laden:
So there are human limitations to any -- this is not the movies, we don't have superpowers.
But it doesn't take superpowers. It takes intelligence, and an intelligent approach to pursuing the people who attacked us seven years ago. Invading Iraq, holding the military back from Tora Bora when bin Laden was holed up there, these are failures. Colossal failures. Distractions from what should have been the central goal of any President: defending this nation, and capturing those who…
tfk | September 10, 2008Speaking in Lebanon, Virginia yesterday, Barack Obama went after John McCain's policies:
"John McCain says he's about change, too," Obama said, leading into a string of ways he contends McCain represents more of the same -- economic policy, taxes, education, foreign policy, campaign tactics. "That's not change. That's just calling something that's the same thing something different.
"You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig," Obama went on, and the crowd erupted into shrieks, whoops and cheers. "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink…
tfk | September 8, 2008Kos wonders:
Does O'Reilly really want to maintain that the difference between Jamie Lynn and Bristol is that the Spears daughter was "running around unsupervised"? Because if O'Reilly insists that Bristol, to the contrary, was supervised, then how exactly did she get knocked up? It would follow that ... yeah. Gross.
Of course she supervised. Palin believes in abstinence-only education, so how else could her daughter have learned the basic anatomy, biology, and mechanics necessary to conceive a child?
tfk | September 8, 2008A couple years ago, John McCain staked his future on the idea that sending more soldiers to Iraq would solve all our problems. He was wrong.
In combination with a ceasefire by Moqtada al-Sadr, the surge did help reduce the level of violence, but Iraq's post-invasion problems are deeper than the violence. The nation is politically divided, and that isn't a problem that can be solved at gunpoint. Indeed, the continued presence of an occupying force only emphasizes the political instability, and creates a perverse disincentive to seek genuine reconciliation. The real test of political…
tfk | September 6, 2008It's Cindy McCain, though:
Couric: How do you feel about creationism? Do you think it should be taught in schools?
McCain: I think both sides should be taught in schools. I think the more children have a frame of reference and an opportunity to read and know and make better decisions and judgments when they are adults. So, I think you know I don't have any problem with education of any kind.
Two things to note. First, this is exactly Sarah Palin's position, and also John McCain's, as well as George Bush's. Second, the issue in the question isn't "education of any kind," it's miseducation…
tfk | September 4, 2008In an interview with CBS News, Cindy McCain lights into Sarah Palin:
"We differ on many issues; we differ with, across the board with people. We don't have to agree on every issue," the Arizona senator's wife said.
…CBS anchor Katie Couric asked if she supports an outright ban on abortion including in cases of rape and incest, she said no.
"No? So that's where you two differ," Couric asked.
"Uh-huh," McCain replied.
"What I agree with is the fact that she is a social conservative," McCain said.
No one disagrees that she's a social conservative. Indeed, her views are so far into the…
tfk | September 4, 2008I haven't seen Sarah Palin's speech, but reviews seem pretty negative. ABC's Jake Tapper reports:
The Detroit Free Press invited a panel of Michigan voters to weigh in on Gov. Sarah Palin's speech last night. Their reactions run the gamut, but the independents didn't seem to care for her very much.
Ilene Beninson, 52, Berkley independent: "Her speech contained few statements about policy or the party platform. … I am not convinced that Palin's experience as a mayor or governor in Alaska meet the qualifications to be vice president much less one stroke or heart attack away from being…