Month: October 2008

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Ayres, Keating, and Todd Palin

The Boston Globe had a very interesting little piece this morning in which they outlined the stories of Bill Ayres and Charles Keating.  http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/10/07/character_and_ethics_issues_come_to_the_fore/

Read it and decide which you would rather associate with.  Bill Ayres, like a number of ’60’s radicals, including Bobby Rush who is now in Congress and Tom Hayden who served in the California legislature, became a productive and contributing member of society.  How better to make a contribution than to teach teachers?  And Charles Keating?  He went to jail.

I don’t think Sarah Palin has any clue as to what she is being asked to say.  She doesn’t know Bill Ayres and has no clue about what happened in the 1960’s.  If I wanted to get really exercised about her statements, I would point out that her own husband is/was a member of a radical political party.  Is Todd Palin a terrorist? It appears that the founder of the Alaska Independence Party is.  This quote is from an article today by David Talbot in Salon.com:

“My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.”

This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.

Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/07/palins_unamerican/

My take is that trying to associate Barak Obama with terrorism is coded racism. Don’t trust the black man with the funny Muslim sounding name because he secretly is out to hurt you.  I don’t know where this new Republican tactic is going, but I hope and pray it doesn’t lead to an unfortunate violent act.

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Red Sox Beat the Angels

They did it!  After losing a painful 12 inning game (blowing many chances to win along the way), the Red Sox are in the ALCS.  This time it took another dramatic ending: A walk-off single scoring a run to beat the Angels who did have the best record in the American League. 

At least the Sox and Rays are both on the East Coast and maybe someone at the network (Fox?) carrying the game will have an earlier start than 8:30.  I’ve fallen in a pattern of watching the first innings (inning if on the West Coast) then retiring to my bed with the radio.  I then doze on and off, but managed to be awake when the Rays scored in the 12th in Game 3 and when Lowrie got his single last night. 

Having to go to work spoils things a little. But it is reimiscent of when I was a young girl following the Dodgers (Koufax, Drysdale, Gilliam, Wills era) on an old box radio.  I could get statiions out to St. Louis and New Orleans (Houston Astros) and so, was at night, able to follow the Dodgers when they played in LA.  There was something magical about lying in the dark and “seeing” the game unfold.  Then I could mostly stay awake though the game.  No job to get to early.  No school.

Bring on the Rays. Bring on the Dodgers or Phillies if you like. There is plenty of champagne left in New England and Mayor Menino has sent the duck boats to have their tires rotated.

So writes Dan Shaunghnessy in today’s Boston Globe.

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Rachel Maddow deconstructs Palin and other thoughts on the election.

Watching this segment on the VP Debate is well worth anyone’s 7 minutes.  Maddow skillfully looks at the quotes Sarah Palin attibuted to others (and throws in one John McCain quote from the first Presidential debate).  Maddow has found the quote from Ronald Reagan for example and puts it into context playing the actual quote.   Palin’s nice speech about losing freedom with the Reagan quote turns out to be Reagan speaking against Medicaid.  Did the McCain Camp really think that no one would figure it out?  And the McCain quote from the first Presidential debate in which he said that Eisenhower left a note offering to resign if the invasion of Normandy failed – not true.  And there is more. Check out this impressive job by Maddow. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/

This morning’s Boston Globe has an op-ed by Ellen Goodman reminding us that the Supreme Court, which opens for the new session on Monday is at stake in the election:

In the cold world of actuarial tables, the next president is certain to have one choice and probably more. Candidates for retirement are Stevens, the 75-year-old Ruth Ginsburg, and the homesick David Souter. That’s three of the four moderate and liberal justices on a bench that has made an art of 5-4 decisions.

You do the math. If Obama is elected, the court will stay pretty much the way it is. If McCain is elected, Katy bar the door.

McCain, who plays a maverick on TV, promised the court to the right wing. He told the women of “The View”: “I want people who interpret the Constitution of the United States the way our founding fathers envisioned for them to do so.” This prompted Whoopi Goldberg to ask if she should worry about being returned to slavery.

 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/10/04/supreme_court_at_stake/

I’m pretty sure we don’t have to worry about a return to slavery, but we do have to worry about women’s right to choice and more executive power grabs with Supreme Court approval.

A lot of the Electoral College Maps have Obama at 264 – just 6 votes away.  So he needs one more large state like Virginia or Ohio or Florida or Wisconsin – all states in which he is trending higher.  On the other hand, McCain now needs all the toss-up states in order to win.

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Morning After Reflections on the VP Debate

I’m had about five and a half hours of sleep and when I woke up, it came to me:  Sarah Palin is like one of those yappy, little dogs with lots of energy that look cute.  Ok, Palin is shrewed, but she, unlike that little dog, is really, really scary.  This is a woman who wants to have more power than Dick Cheney.  From the nonrelease of her tax returns to what appear to be abuses of power both as Mayor and Governor (think Troopergate and the Wasilla Librarian), she would be another Dick Cheney.  Even Kit Bond, a Republican, appeared a little startled last night when asked about her statement about wanting more power.  I hope that the Obama campaign takes that and does an ad contrasting her to Cheney – currently one of the most, if not the most unpopular figures in American politics. 

Dana Milbank has an interesting piece in the Washington Post  this morning.  After discussing her need to show that she could answer questions following her horribly funny Katie Couric interviews, Milbank writes,

On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly a confidence-builder. Palin, in her 90 minutes on the stage Thursday night, left the firm impression that she is indeed ready to lead the nation — with an unnerving mixture of platitudes and cute, folksy phrases that poured from her lips even when they bore no relation to the questions asked.

“Let’s commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation,” she proposed when asked about the mortgage crisis.

“I want to go back to the energy plan,” she said when asked about the federal bailout plan.

“Let’s commit ourselves just everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation,” she proposed when asked about the mortgage crisis.

“I want to go back to the energy plan,” she said when asked about the federal bailout plan.

Biden grew frustrated. “If you notice, Gwen, the governor did not answer the question.”

Replied Sarah Six-Pack: “I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I’m going to talk straight to the American people.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/02/AR2008100204250.html?hpid=topnews

Pretty scary.

In the New York Times, Adam Nagourney observies:

“This is going to help stop the bleeding,” said Todd Harris, a Republican consultant who worked for Mr. McCain in his first presidential campaign. “But this alone won’t change the trend line, particularly in some of the battleground states.”

Short of a complete bravura performance that would have been tough for even the most experienced national politician to turn in — or a devastating error by the mistake-prone Mr. Biden, who instead turned in an impressively sharp performance — there might have been little Ms. Palin could have done to help Mr. McCain. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/us/politics/03assess.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Of course, these are two Eastern papers who don’t understand drilling in Alaska.

So I run off to work with two polls.  The Newsvine unscientific poll on MSNBC has Biden winning the debate by 78.2% and InTrade odds are Obama to win the election at 65 to 33.8 for McCain.

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The VP Debate – some initial thoughts

Exactly an hour into the debate, Joe Biden began an answer by saying, “Facts matter, Gwen.”

To him, maybe. To Sarah Palin, maybe not. The pattern, so far, has been one of Biden presenting facts and Palin countering with… saying stuff. Sometimes she throws in a fact, but mostly she seems to be offering a string of approximate policy positions, encomiums to the American spirit, disputed interpretations of Barack Obama’s record and anecdotes from Alaska.

She has a certain charm, but I wonder how viewers are reacting to the way she just declines to answer the question at hand and pivots to more solid ground. I had forgotten how effective Biden can be in these debates. So far, he hasn’t been patronizing or insulting. In terms of working-class street cred, Palin is in a league – or a universe – of her own. (Don’t ya think?) But Biden holds his own.

I confess, though, I don’t know what anybody is making of this. I don’t even know what I’m making of it. This is the strangest debate I’ve ever seen. It seems like an interplanetary exchange, with poor Gwen Ifill trying to keep the Enterprise from falling into the wormhole.

That was Gene Robinson in the Washington Post

Pat Buchanan has just dismissed Sarah Palin’s saying she wanted to expand the role of the Vice President.  I agree with Joe Biden that given the example of Dick Chaney – we need to be very frightened.  I’m with Rachel Maddow who thought that Palin was not very coherent and made a couple of mistakes.

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Political Chatter for October 1

Paul Krugman from Princeton and the New York Times is saying the new Senate bill is worse than the House bill that passed.  He is saying that the Senate bill will pass and than be redone after the election.  Krugman says the bill is designed more to stop the slide than to fix the problem.

The CBS poll is showing Obama up by 9 (49 to 40) outside the margin of error.  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/us/politics/02poll.html?hp   Obama also leads among women and independents, and appears to have narrowed the gap among whites – both men and women.  http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/sepd-elec08.pdf   The InTrade Quote as I write this is 64.1 to 35.7.  Then a new (to me) website has Obama winning by 336 to 202 electoral votes.  http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/today%27s%20polls

I think, I hope, that the McCain campaign is imploding.  I heard on either Rachel Maddow or Keith Oberman that no candidate has ever come back from such a margin so close to the election.  Voting has already begun and the CBS numbers show people have made up their minds.  We shall see if Sarah Palin can make a dent during the debate tomorrow night or of Joe Biden can hurt.