Tag: Politics

Baked Alaskan

Friend of Media Nation Al Giordano has broken the news that Sarah Palin had a tanning bed installed in the Alaska governor’s mansion shortly after she was sworn in. Giordano and Bill Conroy, writing for NarcoNews.com, report that Palin paid for the bed with her own money.

I don’t care, and Giordano doesn’t seem to care all that much either. I mention this only in the context of the mockery directed at John Edwards’ $400 haircut (and, for that matter, Bill Clinton’s tarmac haircut), John Kerry’s disturbing preference for Swiss cheese, Barack Obama’s failure to scream for ice cream and similar campaign-trail stupidity.

In other words, Sarah Palin must be … an elitist!

You have to read this

I just finished the New York Times’ deeply disturbing overview of Sarah Palin’s record as mayor and governor.

I could go on and on, but I’ll simply quote Josh Marshall, who says that the article shows Palin to be —

a small-minded person who populates her administration with cronies and grade-school friends, fires those who dare to criticize her and uses the power of her office to pursue personal vendettas. In other words, someone in the habit of abusing official power who should not be let within a mile of being president.

That just about sums it up.

An attempted October surprise

The Bush White House, by all appearances, hasn’t made much of an effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden since that botched encounter at Tora Bora in late 2001.

Now NPR reports that the administration is going all out to get bin Laden before Bush leaves office.

If you listen to the audio version of the story, you’ll come to the inescapable conclusion that the real goal is to roll up bin Laden even earlier than that — say, a couple of weeks before Election Day.

Shameful.

The Enquirer targets the Palins

It seems like a political lifetime ago, but it was only last month that the media were flagellating themselves for having ignored the National Enquirer’s (accurate) reporting about John Edwards’ extramarital affair.

Now the Enquirer is going after Sarah Palin and her family. Should the media dive in and try to verify the Enquirer’s claims? Or should they stay silent and risk being made fools of once again? I’m not sure — but that’s the question I try to answer in the Guardian.

The definition of hubris

Long ago, a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri, he followed an unlikely path — he followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency. And a writer observed, “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity,” and I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.

— Sarah Palin in her convention speech, Sept. 3, 2008, comparing her qualifications for the vice presidency to those of Harry Truman.

Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon and stars and all the planets had fallen on me.

— Harry Truman, speaking to reporters on April 13, 1945, upon learning that Franklin Roosevelt had died and he had ascended to the presidency. Truman was serving in his second term as a U.S. senator when FDR chose him to be his third-term running mate, and had won plaudits for his work as chairman of a committee that investigated military waste during World War II.

[O]n January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I’m ready…. I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink.

— Sarah Palin, Sept. 11, 2008, responding to Charlie Gibson’s question asking her whether she was ready to be president of the United States.

Sending the bill to rape victims

The man Sarah Palin appointed to run the Wasilla police department thinks that forcing rape victims to pay for their own forensic tests is just a swell idea. He said so himself a little more than eight years ago.

Anchorage Daily News reporter George Bryson writes that former Alaska governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat who took part in a news conference yesterday, charged that a law passed by the state legislature to outlaw that loathsome practice was aimed solely at Wasilla, where Palin was mayor at the time.

“There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla,” Knowles is quoted as saying. Bryson continues:

A May 23, 2000, article in Wasilla’s newspaper, The Frontiersman, noted that Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies regularly pay for such exams, which cost between $300 and $1,200 apiece.

“[But] the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests,” the newspaper reported.

It also quoted Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon objecting to the law. Fannon was appointed to his position by Palin after her dismissal of the previous police chief. He said it would cost Wasilla $5,000 to $14,000 a year if the city had to foot the bill for rape exams.

This should be appalling to any decent-thinking person, needless to say. But working-class women who supported Hillary Clinton — one of the prime demographics the Palin pick is aimed at attracting — really ought to take a close look at their new hero’s record.

And please note that Knowles’ accusation, though it is a partisan attack, is backed up by facts reported by Palin’s hometown newspaper at the time this outrage was unfolding. There is no excusing or explaining away such reprehensible conduct.

Fact-checking FactCheck

Adam Reilly has a terrific post on a highly problematic piece put together by FactCheck.org, Annenberg’s normally reliable, nonpartisan debunker of lies and spin. Under the excited title of “Sliming Palin,” FactCheck presents five stories it says the media have gotten wrong about Sarah Palin.

Sliming? There’s nothing personal in there — it’s all on policy and politics, and it includes some errors that have been corrected and some differences in interpretation.

Sliming it isn’t, and the folks at FactCheck ought to think about why they’ve bought into the false construct that the mainstream media (as opposed to, say, Daily Kos and the National Enquirer) are, well, “sliming Palin.”

More on Palin’s religious views

Steve Waldman of Beliefnet, who’s far more learned and sensible on the subject of religion than I am, takes a close look at Sarah Palin’s religious pronouncements and places a few of them in the “scary” category.

In particular, Waldman singles out Palin’s request that people pray that a natural-gas pipeline would be built. “Saying a particular public policy is God’s will is far over the line, considerably beyond anything that George W. Bush ever said,” Waldman writes. “It means the advocate is impervious to argument, and critics are going against God’s will.” No kidding.

My earlier post on the subject.

Tone-deaf Obama

How could Barack Obama be so tone-deaf as to talk about “lipstick on a pig,” given all the lipstick references surrounding Sarah Palin?

The McCain campaign, naturally and shamelessly, is claiming that Obama called Palin a pig, which he didn’t. But, really, Obama is almost inviting the Republicans to misinterpret him. (Via Mickey Kaus.)

Now if Obama wants to call Palin a cheap, grasping hack, that would be entirely accurate.