Left Oblique

Humorous Observation from Pandagon

Dave — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:18:31 -0400

Actually, from the comments section; unfortunately, the link doesn't take you to the correct comment.

The following comment by "Phoenician in a time of Romans" addresses fears about the harm that the vitriol being spewed by the McCain-Palin campaign could do:

Amanda Marcotte writes:

Sabotaging Obama’s Presidency. Like Krugman says, with the sort of fuel added to the right wing fire, they’re going to be completely insufferable, even compared to the Vince Foster/Whitewater nonsense of the Clinton years. The seed that was planted with conspiracy theories and fake expose videos blossomed into the impeachment trial, and also, I’d argue, the election theft. If democracy works this time around, the right will not take it lying down, but do everything in their power to destroy the democratic process.

Isn’t it good, then, that President Obama now has the power to declare any right-wing activist an “enemy combatant” and hold them indefinitely without trial or habeous corpus rights?

Feel free to point that out to any wingnuts who are worried about him *now*…

Oh, the irony.

Report Link and Analysis

Dave — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:10:37 -0400

First, the Palin report.

It's clear from the report that:

The Palins had a very clear vendetta against trooper Wooten
Todd Palin had a tremendous amount of influence in the governor's office and may actually have been driving the vendetta
The Palins pushed the issue, despite numerous warnings from the people they were leaning on that their actions were potentially illegal and could at the very least draw a serious lawsuit from Wooten
The Palins had an incredible sense of entitlement on the issue; they believed that if they felt Wooten was a bad guy, then there was no reason not to fire him. Furthermore, it's obvious that they took Monegan's refusal to break the law and go along with their requests as a personal rebuff and not the actions of someone attempting to do their job.

It's the fourth point that really bothers me. Any idiot could have understood that Monegan was just trying to follow the law and keep from getting sued for either (a) improperly terminating an employee or (b) disclosing confidential information. And even if they didn't get it right away, after having it explained to them multiple times, it shouldn't be too hard to grasp. Instead, the Palins seem to have taken Monegan's resistance as a personal affront - in other words, the thought process appears to have been "Wooten is a very bad person so anyone who doesn't help us punish him is either a bad person or wants to spite us."

Assuming everyone else sees things the way you do is the kind of thinking you see in small children and the mentally ill, not in people who should be running a state government. The only other alternative is that the Palins just have a complete disregard for the legal system and think that they deserve absolute power as the heads of the Alaska government (i.e. "Dick Cheney Syndrome"). Either way, it doesn't make the idea of a Palin [vice-]presidency very appealing.

That's not good.

Dave — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:11:15 -0400

Numerous news outlets are reporting: Alaska legislators have determined that Sarah Palin broke the law in firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.

From cnn.com:

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska's governor and violated state ethics law by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police, a state investigator's report concluded Friday.

"Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states.

Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan's refusal to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten from the state police force was "likely a contributing factor" to Monegan's July dismissal, but Palin had the authority as governor to fire him, the report by former Anchorage prosecutor Stephen Branchflower states.

However, it states that her efforts to get Wooten fired broke a state ethics law that bars public officials from pursuing personal interest through official action.

Palin Clears Self of Wrongdoing

Dave — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:57:31 -0400

You can't make this stuff up, folks.

From msnbc.msn.com:

Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing.

Lawmakers were expected to release their own findings Friday. Campaign officials have yet to see that report — the result of an investigation that began before she was tapped as McCain's running mate — but said the investigation has falsely portrayed a legitimate policy dispute between a governor and her commissioner as something inappropriate.

How much says that in the future, when "Troopergate" is brought up, Palin will refer to her own report and claim she's already been cleared (regardless of what is in the actual report)?

Going Meta, Part II

Dave — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:19:52 -0400

Since I'm not always a great judge of these things based on my own reaction (due to my existing biases, as I've just mentioned), I like to go to third-party sources to find out how the candidates did. Of course, there are the snap polls, but even before that, you can get a pretty good idea of how things went (regardless of whether you watch the debate or not).

Here's the key. Go to sites on opposite sides of the political spectrum. See how they've been spinning the pre-debate expectations. Then, see how they react. For example, before tonight, the liberal blogs were spinning that Obama doesn't do as well in debates and that McCain is good in town hall-type settings. So in the event of a tie or loss, I would expect them to say that he did "well enough" because he's ahead and doesn't need to really win or prove anything. But reviews from the left after the debate have been mostly very positive (perhaps helped along by CNN's instant dial feedback, which is like crack for political junkies).

I'm having trouble finding the pre-debate expectations from the right, but most of the right-wing blogs are alternating between pretty obvious cheerleading and actually admitting that Obama won pretty handily. If people at Red State and Power Line are calling this one for the Democrat, it was a pretty obvious loss for McCain.¹

¹ As an aside, I'm really interested in how the readers of those blogs are responding to the declarations of defeat, but the big conservative blogs don't seem to allow comments.

...and now the snap polls are coming in, and yeah - Barack won. CNN has 54-30, with the Democrat's fav-unfav moving a net +8 (among debate watchers) and McCain's unchanged. CBS shows a smaller win, 40-26, with 68% of voters expressing confidence in Obama's ability to handle the economy (up from 54%).

...and the RNC is now complaining that it wasn't really a town hall, and that's why McCain lost.

Debate Reaction

Dave — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:04:59 -0400

Obama won. McCain was pretty strong on the national security stuff, but I don't think that's what people are really worrying about right now, and he pretty much flatlined on everything else. This was much more cut-and-dry than the previous debates, I think, and I expect snap poll numbers to follow.

Going Meta

Dave — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:07:44 -0400

Because I made up my mind long ago about the presidential race, watching the debates is an opportunity for me to examine my own reactions to political speech - and therefore to really do some introspection of my own inherent biases. Also, by watching CNN and the undecided voters' instant reaction, I can see what similarities I have with "Joe Sixpack" voter and what differences I have.

One of the big things I've noticed is that I tend to get frustrated when the conservative talkers say how many times the liberal voted for/against something, but mostly ignore it when the liberal uses the same tactic. That's the biggest one, I think. Also, it's clear that I'm a lot more critical of what the candidate is saying than how they're saying it than the average voter, but I'm also intentionally trying to pick apart what each of them is doing rather than just listening.

Someone had far too much free time.

Dave — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:17:49 -0400

This lovely image comes to us via Pharyngula, under the heading "Knitters are such delightfully weird people":

(I figured Karen would get a kick out of this.)

Keith and the Girl on Palin's debate performance

Dave — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:11:09 -0400

Quoted verbatim from their latest podcast:

There is not any question that you should answer with "Git-R-Done".

The campaigns step it up a notch.

Dave — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:54:37 -0400

Obama brings up the Keating Five scandal (in documentary form!), which is surprisingly relevant considering the recent bank bailout.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is resurrecting the Bill Ayers attack that Hillary tried (and failed with) during the primary. Even worse is some of the stuff circulating in emails (though that's been a fixture of Republican campaigns since forever). How soon until we see Reverend Wright enter his endless loop on Fox News again?

Also, there's stuff like this, which is not exactly heartening:

From washingtonpost.com:

Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

Finally, there's this piece at Kung Fu Monkey, which is both good and entertaining (though it contains some profanity). Highlights:

National Review editor -- that's the editor -- Rich Lowry:

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

Modern American Conservatives have sunk to the intellectual and emotional level of the guy who thinks the stripper really likes him.

...

All I can see is the winking, giggling folksy void. They tell her to spew some bull[expletive], and she salutes smartly and sells the hell out of it. Asked to go forth and spread old canards about Senator Obama being a "friend of terrorists", something she never seemed to show any interest in before, she does so not just efficiently but with a perky glee. The proper human response, when asked to say things like this about a political opponent and Senator of the United States is so fundamentally "[expletive] no" that it is the unheard test question immediately following "You're in the desert, you see a tortoise lying on its back, struggling, and you're not helping -- why is that?"

In case you were wondering, that last bit is a Blade Runner reference; the secondary implication here is that Palin may be a replicant. In reality, it might not be a bad idea to put all of our political candidates through the Voight-Kampff test just to check for basic humanity.

Now why would you lie about that?

Dave — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:40:10 -0400

During the debate, Governor Palin claimed that she had instructed her state investment fund to divest from Sudan after news came out about the atrocities being committed in Darfur. Turns out that, not only did she not make the request, but her administration actively opposed divestment and effectively killed the measure.

L'Embarras des Richesses

Dave — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:41:19 -0400

Yesterday, Karen and I went to the Virginia Tech football game and then watched my Illini on TV as they trounced Michigan at the Big House, 45-20. Today, I got to watch the Pats win in HD (if only the last few minutes), and the Red Sox are currently three innings and one run away from putting away the Angels. Karen and I got some work done around the place, including putting up all the pictures downstairs, and I even got some good fall grilling in.

I'm sure there's a way this could have been a better weekend, but I'm not entirely sure how.

I found something funny on the internets.

Dave — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:32:54 -0400

So, I decided to reproduce it here:

Graphic lifted from this post at Daily Kos; originally from here.