Late Night Open Thread: Eternal Verities
4 hours ago
Showing posts with label Judgment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judgment. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Why Exposing Sarah Palin Still Matters
The Daily Dish has a must-read new article on why exposing the Sarah Palin insanity still matters:
Let's be real in a way the national media seems incapable of: this person should never have been placed on a national ticket in a mature democracy. She was incapable of running a town in Alaska competently. The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months - and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish - is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the two-term presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural "identity". Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again. And we have to find a way to prevent this from recurring. She is a dangerous, unqualified know-nothing who very nearly became the replacement for the most powerful person on earth.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Esquire Endorsed Obama; First in 75 Years
Esquire magazine endorsed Barack Obama today -- the first such endorsement in 75 years.
On Obama:
Senator Obama is the only one of the two candidates who seems to believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, that there are those things -- be they the guarantees in the Bill of Rights or mountains in Alaska -- that we own together. Barack Obama stands, however inchoately and however diffidently, for the notion that a common purpose is necessary for common problems, that "government," as it is designed in our founding documents, is our collective responsibility. It is this collective responsibility that built America into a great power without peer in the history of the world. And it is this collective responsibility that has succumbed to nearly thirty years of phony rightist populism, corporate brigandage, and the wildly cheered abandonment of a common American civic purpose. It is shocking that in America an argument for salvaging the common good is regarded as a radical notion by anyone, but that is where we are. And that is what Barack Obama seems to stand for. After all, as a young man with his potential, he could have headed straight to midtown Manhattan and made a fortune. Instead, he took a church job working for poor people in Chicago, and for his troubles, he and those poor people have been viciously jeered by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. Such is their regard for the common good. And such is Obama's promise. And in that, however inchoately and however diffidently, Obama stands not only against Bushism, but against Reaganism, which gave it birth. And that is more than enough.
On McCain:
[Obama's] Republican counterpart is one of the first presidential candidates in history to run as a parody of himself. John McCain has decided on a cheap and dishonorable campaign. He has embraced the tactics with which he was slandered in 2000, and he has hired the people responsible for them. In so doing, he has become something of a mockery of everything he once purported to be. He has stated that he wouldn't now vote for his own immigration bill. He has operated in violation of the very campaign-finance law that bears his name. And even though his own body bears the scars of torture, he has silenced himself on the issue of the torture sanctioned and designed by the government he seeks to lead, so as not to alienate "the base." The most underutilized trope of the campaign is the notion that John McCain is running against John McCain.
Read the Whole Thing
McCain Surrogate Eagleburger: Palin Not Ready
This from McCain supporter Lawrence Eagleburger:
A former Republican Secretary of State and one of John McCain's most prominent supporters offered a stunningly frank and remarkably bleak assessment of Sarah Palin's capacity to handle the presidency should such a scenario arise.
Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush and whose endorsement is often trumpeted by McCain, said on Thursday that the Alaska governor is not only unprepared to take over the job on a moment's notice but, even after some time in office, would only amount to an "adequate" commander in chief.
"And I devoutly hope that [she] would never be tested," he added for good measure -- referring both to Palin's policy dexterity and the idea of McCain not making it through his time in office.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sen. Chuck Hagel Rips into Sarah Palin
Thank God for the ever-reasonable Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE):
Hagel may be the only senior Republican elected official who has publicly criticized McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. “I don’t believe she’s qualified to be President of the United States,” Hagel told me. “The first judgment a potential President makes is who their running mate is—and I don’t think John made a very good selection.” He scoffed at McCain’s attempts to portray her as an experienced politician. “To try to make the excuse that she looks out her window and sees Russia—and that she’s commander of the Alaska National Guard.” He added, “There is no question that this candidate is arguably the thinnest-résumé candidate for Vice-President in the history of America.”
Palin Unqualified? Blame McCain's Judgment
When we I correctly criticize Sarah Palin for being an unprepared, bumbling buffoon, what I think can get lost in the weeds is the key concern that this should raise in people's minds.
It is not enough to dismiss Palin as an ineducable wingnut with zero understanding of serious domestic or foreign policy as many in McCain campaign and Republican Party are doing right now; e.g.:
"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."
Get beyond the immediate travesty that Sarah Palin embodies -- seriously ponder what this says about McCain's poor judgment in picking her as his running mate without doing any serious vetting.
As Steve Benen puts it:
[I]f Palin was hopelessly ignorant and unable to learn the basics, why on earth did McCain pick her? If the McCain/Bush aides hope to gain an edge by preemptively blaming Palin for a defeat, it doesn't exactly clear their boss -- McCain chose Palin to be one 72-year-old heartbeat from the presidency. If she's the disaster who gets the blame, it's still McCain who bears responsibility for the fiasco.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Schwarzenegger: Sarah Palin Isn't Qualified
In an interview with CNN's Campbell Brown, California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger revealed that he doesn't think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President... yet (?):
BROWN: Do you think [Palin is] qualified to be president?
SCHWARZENEGGER: I think that she will get to be qualified.
BROWN: She will get there? What do you mean? She's not ready yet?
SCHWARZENEGGER: By the time that she is sworn in I think she will be ready.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Palin Spending Spree is Illegal
As you may have heard by now, the RNC took Sarah Palin on a $150,000 shopping spree (with cash and prizes!) at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue using RNC campaign contributions.
Leaving aside the sheer boneheadedness of the politics of spending $150,000 on Sarah Palin's wardrobe, makeup and hairdos (which is more than what most people in the country spend on clothes in 80 years) during a financial crisis when people are struggling to pay their bills, let's focus on the fact that this is illegal.
Let's examine the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act of 2002:
SEC. 313. USE OF CONTRIBUTED AMOUNTS FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES.
(a) PERMITTED USES- ...(b) PROHIBITED USE-
(1) IN GENERAL- A contribution or donation described in subsection (a) shall not be converted by any person to personal use.(2) CONVERSION- For the purposes of paragraph (1), a contribution or donation shall be considered to be converted to personal use if the contribution or amount is used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate's election campaign or individual's duties as a holder of Federal office, including--
(A) a home mortgage, rent, or utility payment;(B) a clothing purchase;(C) a noncampaign-related automobile expense;(D) a country club membership;(E) a vacation or other noncampaign-related trip;(F) a household food item;(G) a tuition payment;(H) admission to a sporting event, concert, theater, or other form of entertainment not associated with an election campaign; and(I) dues, fees, and other payments to a health club or recreational facility.'
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Poll: Palin is #1 Negative Concern About McCain
What do voters worry about when they think of John McCain? His age? His temperament? His similarities to George Bush?
A new NBC News poll reveals that most voters' top negative concern about McCain is Sarah Palin. Oh, sweet, sweet, justice:
Palin’s qualifications to be president rank as voters’ top concern about McCain’s candidacy - ahead of continuing President Bush’s policies, enacting economic policies that only benefit the rich and keeping too high of a troop presence in Iraq.
As Andrew Sullivan puts it:
Yes, 34 percent rank Palin as their major issue with McCain, above the 23 percent who are concerned that McCain will be a third term for Bush and the 20 percent who don't like his economic policies.
Poll: Palin is Worst VP Pick Ever
An interesting number hidden in a new New York Times poll:
Mr. Obama’s favorability is the highest for a presidential candidate running for a first term in the last 28 years of Times/CBS polls. Mrs. Palin’s negative rating is the highest for a vice-presidential candidate as measured by The Times and CBS News. Even Dan Quayle, with whom Mrs. Palin is often compared because of her age and inexperience on the national scene, was not viewed as negatively in the 1988 campaign.
Mitt Romney Unsure If Sarah Palin is Qualified
Oops, Mormo-robotron 2000 Mitt Romney got caught in a brain freeze recently when asked whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be President:
When asked by host Wolf Blitzer whether she is “ready to be President,” Romney hesitated and offered this stuttering response: "Well, that — that’s something which I — I believe the American people will, uh, assess individually and say, uh, yeah, she’s got the kind of executive experience that you’d hope to find from a person who’s been a governor and a mayor."
Palin as President
This is brutal but hilarious.
Check out the site PalinAsPresident.us.
The site envisions what Sarah Palin's oval office would look like -- with audio!
Click on all the items to hear her take on topics and issues of the day. I especially like the audio for the empty diploma frames: "Learnin's HARD!"
Ha!
Monday, October 20, 2008
Conservative Ken Adelman Endorses Obama
Conservative foreign policy hawk Ken Adelman joins the ranks of the Obamacons.
A brief bio from the New Yorker:
Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.
In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life.
Here's an excerpt from his endorsement:
Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?
Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.
Voters Reject Ayers Argument and Palin
A new ABC News poll shows voters rejecting Ayers as an issue and questioning McCain's judgment due to his pick of Sarah Quaylin:
More challenges for John McCain: Likely voters overwhelmingly reject his effort to make an issue of Barack Obama's association with 1960s radical William Ayers. Fallout continues from McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for vice president, with 52 percent saying it weakens their confidence in his judgment. And on optimism, it's Obama by 2-1.
Skepticism about the Ayers issue was one of the factors cited by Colin Powell in his endorsement of Obama yesterday, and in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, likely voters broadly agree: 60 percent say Obama's relationship with Ayers is not a legitimate issue in the presidential campaign; 37 percent say it is.
A couple of other nuggets ferreted out by Steve Benen:
And while I tend to think the media's interest in "optimism" is overstated, I suppose it's also worth mentioning that Obama enjoys a huge edge -- 62% to 30% -- when respondents are asked with candidate is more optimistic. Similarly, Obama also enjoys a big lead - 54% to 37% -- on which candidate has the better personality and temperament for office.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Rolling Stone Disembowels Palin Candidacy
Holy mackerel! An absolute must-read article in the new Rolling Stone lays into John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin with the ferocity of a Piranha and the gut-level incisiveness of a street philosopher. Ouch!
Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
This excerpt in particular sums up my rage at the Republican electorate this year:
Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.
And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin' Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.
And to finish it off (yes, it's harsh but tell me how it's not true):
Here's what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins "Country First" buttons on his man titties and chants "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.
The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn't that she's totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and horked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: that you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we'll not only thank you for your trouble, we'll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for a few hours around election time.
Friday, September 26, 2008
McCain's Economic Histrionics
Matt Cooper sums up McCain's unhinged histrionics since the start of the financial crisis last week and his gumming up of the Congressional works:
McCain certainly hasn't helped and now we're at a point where a deal seems unlikely tomorrow in time for the debate which means McCain will have to make another decision--whether to swallow his pride and show up for the Meeting in Mississippi or be the biggest no-show in the history of American politics. Since he doesn't seem to have added anything to the negotiations in Washington, it's hard to see why on earth he should show up for the debate with Barack Obama.
Incredibly, McCain has said that he hasn't read the Treasury plan--all three pages of it. Since this crisis began ten days ago, nothing McCain has done, from declaring the economy strong to calling for the illegal firing of Chris Cox to flailing about the bailout to shrilly trying to blame the crisis on Obama and finally to the debate-canceling gambit has been reassuring about the prospect of a McCain presidency. This is the 3 AM phone call and McCain is blowing it.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Palin's Performance 'Frightening', 'Pity-Inducing'
Salon's Glenn Greenwald (finally) sees the light:
Sarah Palin's performance in the tiny vignettes of unscripted dialogue in which we've been allowed to see her has been nothing short of frightening -- really, as I said, pity-inducing. And I say that as someone who has thought from the start that the criticisms of her abilities -- as opposed to her ideology -- were much too extreme. One of two things is absolutely clear at this point: she is either (a) completely ignorant about the most basic political issues -- a vacant, ill-informed, incurious know-nothing, or (b) aggressively concealing her actual beliefs about these matters because she's petrified of deviating from the simple-minded campaign talking points she's been fed and/or because her actual beliefs are so politically unpalatable, even when taking into account the right-wing extremism that is permitted, even rewarded, in our mainstream. I'm not really sure which is worse, but it doesn't really matter, because with 40 days left before the election, both options are heinous.
Judge for yourself in this video of her on Katie Couric. If the thought of this unprepared neophyte as President of the United States doesn't chill you to your bones, you're an ignorant buffoon:
Friday, September 19, 2008
The Swift Disintegration of Sarah Quaylin
Chait has an incisive article up on The New Republic on the swift disintegration of Sarah Palin and her parallels to imminently ludicrous former Vice President Quayle.
A few sample points:
- Conservatives received Quayle's selection rapturously. L. Brent Bozell pronounced himself "ecstatic," and Jerry Falwell called the surprise pick "a stroke of genius." After a media frenzy, Quayle's speech was well-received. The convention hall burst into cheers of "We want Dan!" NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said that Quayle executed "flawlessly," and CBS's Bruce Morton called it "a good speech."
- [Quayle] did his best to turn [questions about his readiness] into elite condescension toward small town America. Quayle, in his acceptance speech, spoke movingly about the small towns in Indiana where he had grown up, and later disparaged Dukakis for "sneer[ing] at common sense advice, Midwestern advice."
- [D]uring the campaign, [Quayle's] supporters believed that media skepticism of Quayle had rallied ordinary Americans to his side. Dukakis "looks down on his fellow Americans. He looks down on Bush and Dan Quayle as--in his word--'pathetic,' " wrote right-wing columnist Michael Novak. "Thus, the 'feeding frenzy' of the press in New Orleans stirred a national backlash. It united all the scorned of America as one."
Sound familiar?
Read the Whole Article Here
Friday, September 12, 2008
Would You Hire This Person?
Here's a thought exercise for the day.
Let's say you're the HR manager for a company. In walks a job applicant -- let's call her "Sarah" -- for an interview for a top management position. In that interview, Sarah makes the following claims in her case for why she should be hired on at your company:
1. "Faced with a wasteful and expensive IT project forced upon my predecessor by the board of directors, I stood firm and said 'Thanks, but no thanks' to what we dubbed the 'IT Project to Nowhere' in order to trim the budget and reduce costs."
2. "The office building of my old company sits right across the street from Google, so I am obviously qualified to take on the role of chief negotiator for your company with respect to contracting matters with Google."
3. "In my prior position, I took great pride in my integrity and I always treated my employees with fairness and dignity."
4. "One of my chief concerns was always how our company did its part to address mankind's contribution to climate change."
After the interview is over, you reflect on Sarah's answers, make some calls to her previous company, and do some research on The Google. Doing this, you discover the following:
1. In spite of her claims, it turns out that Sarah repeatedly championed the "IT Project to Nowhere" before she was promoted to her current position. Some time after the project was authorized, it became a laughing stock among the company's employees and the board ultimately deauthorized the project just before Sarah was promoted. To top it all off, Sarah took the money designated for the project and spent the entire amount on other company priorities, thereby slashing no money from the budget and contradicting her claim to be a cost cutter.
2. Upon further reflection, you realize that Sarah's claim to be qualified to take the lead on negotiations with Google simply because her old company's office park was right across the street from Google is, well, f*cking ridiculous.
3. The manager of Human Resources at Sarah's old company told you that Sarah is currently fighting an unfair termination lawsuit brought by Bob Smith, her company's former Director of Company Security. The suit alleges that Sarah fired Bob in retaliation for not caving in to Sarah's repeated attempts to force Bob to fire Sarah's ex-brother-in-law, who still works for the company as a security guard.
4. Contrary to her claims, you uncovered a recent interview given by Sarah to a regional newspaper in which she denies that mankind has anything to do with global warming.
With all that in mind, would you hire this person to be a manager at your company?
How about electing her to the second-most powerful job in the world?
Sarah Palin Lies Twice More on ABC News
Well, add to the list of Sarah Palin lies that (a) it's common for VP candidates to have never met a foreign leader and (b) she never denied that humans have a hand in global warming:
The woman is pathological:
A fact-check report agreed that a part of Russia is visible from Alaska, as Palin stated. But it labeled “false” two other claims– that it’s common for VP candidates to have never met a foreign leader, and that she has not previously denied that humans play a role in global warming. Report said every living VP had met numerous foreign leaders before taking office, and quoted Palin recently saying she’s not one “blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.”
SO when confronted with a decision to own a previous public statement or to lie about it, Palin has lied twice on national television, with documentary proof that she is lying. Josh Marshall has to add two more to his seven demonstrable public lies.
What else is she lying about?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
McCain: Morally Unfit for the Presidency
Sorry I am still AWOL but I just can't handle how depraved and perverse John McCain has proven himself to be right now. Luckily Andrew Sullivan sums up a lot of my angst and disgust more beautifully than I could:
For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?
So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.
And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.
He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than the torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the White House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly deserve. The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country's honor, has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is not the man I thought he was.
And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive debate against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began his general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd MTV-style attacks on Obama's virtues and implied disgusting things about his opponent's patriotism.
And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That's all that is happening right now: a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.
Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.
McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.
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