The scariest thing about Sarah Palin isn’t how unqualified she is – it’s what her candidacy says about America

Writing from the RNC, the ever-trenchant Matt Taibbi makes some observations on the cynical pick for Republican VP. Worth reading in its entirety.

[...]

All around me, a million cops in their absurd post-9/11 space-combat get-ups stand guard as assholes in papier-mache puppet heads scramble around for one last moment of network face time before the coverage goes dark. Four-chinned delegates from places like Arkansas and Georgia are pouring joyously out the gates in search of bars where they can load up on Zombies and Scorpion Bowls and other “wild” drinks and extramaritally grope their turkey-necked female companions in bathroom stalls as part of the “unbelievable time” they will inevitably report to their pals back home. Only 21st-century Americans can pass through a metal detector six times in an hour and still think they’re at a party.

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into a sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague they were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation at the Xcel gates.

“She totally reminds me of my cousin!” the delegate screeched. “She’s a real woman! The real thing!”

I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. 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.

[...]

Sarah Silverman’s latest project: The Great Schlep.

The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor.

The audio for this clip is, perhaps unsurprisingly for Silverman, NSFW.

McCain was supposed to appear on Letterman last night.

McCain canceled last-minute so he could rush back to Washington and save the economy.

Then Letterman discovered the live feed of McCain having his makeup put on so he could interview with Couric.

Letterman did not pull punches.

In his Newsweek column criticizing Sarah Palin for her religious zealotry, Sam Harris also defends that favorite GOP whipping boy, “elites”:

Ask yourself: how has “elitism” become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.

via Wil Wheaton:

From: Minister of the Treasury Paulson

Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

Maureen Dowd got him to do it:

Now that he’s finally fired up on the soup-line economy, Barack Obama knows he can’t fade out again. He was eager to talk privately to a Democratic ex-president who could offer more fatherly wisdom — not to mention a surreptitious smoke — and less fraternal rivalry. I called the “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin (yes, truly) to get a read-out of the meeting.

OBAMA You’re saying race doesn’t have anything to do with it?

BARTLET I wouldn’t go that far. Brains made me look arrogant but they make you look uppity. Plus, if you had a black daughter —

OBAMA I have two.

BARTLET — who was 17 and pregnant and unmarried and the father was a teenager hoping to launch a rap career with “Thug Life” inked across his chest, you’d come in fifth behind Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and a ficus.

OBAMA You’re not cheering me up.

BARTLET Is that what you came here for?

OBAMA No, but it wouldn’t kill you.

Today, at Tom the Dancing Bug, it’s John McCain as… The Maverick!

We’ve often accused the Republicans of trying to re-invent the wheel and of co-opting Democratic ideas, but this is just ridiculous:

Sarah Palin likes to tell voters around the country about how she “put the government checkbook online” in Alaska. On Thursday, Palin suggested she would take that same proposal to Washington.

[...]There’s just one problem with proposing to put the federal checkbook online – somebody’s already done it. His name is Barack Obama.

In 2006 and 2007, Obama teamed up with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn to pass the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, also known as “Google for Government.” The act created a free, searchable web site – USASpending.gov — that discloses to the public all federal grants, contracts, loans and insurance payments.

Thanks to Julia for the link.

Sarah Palin has been conducting government business from her Yahoo account instead of her government account, the latter of which is subject to laws requiring retention of government records. How do we know this? Because her account got hacked.

Meanwhile, the Onion provides its own snapshot of Obama’s inbox (NSFW).

This charming story over at Mudflats:

I attended the Welcome Home rally for Sarah Palin this morning. Hooo. It was an experience. About a thousand (maybe) hard-core Palin supporters showed up to hear her speak at the new Dena’ina Convention Center in downtown Anchorage.

After shaking it off with a good double shot of espresso, and a brisk walk back to my car, it was time to head to the Alaska Women Reject Palin rally. It was to be held outside on the lawn in front of the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage…

So, as I jettisoned myself from the jaws of the ‘Drill Baby Drill’ crowd and toward the mystery rally at the library, I felt a bit apprehensive. I’d been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, in Anchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it’s a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there that aren’t sent by Eddie Burke, we’ll be doing good. A real statement will have been made. I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing “socialist baby-killing maggot” haters.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody’s trunk. When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state.

This week’s Newsweek features a must-read (seriously) from Jonathan Alter on the candidates:

“Listening to him [Obama] speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform—not even in the state Senate,” Palin said. “In politics there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change. They’re the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms[...]”

Obama served eight years in Springfield, and has been in Washington nearly four so far. In the Illinois state Senate, he authored about a half-dozen “major laws” on issues ranging from ethics to education. The best example of his leadership style was bipartisan legislation to require the videotaping of police interrogations, which is now a national model. Obama brought together police, prosecutors and the ACLU on a win-win bill that simultaneously increased conviction rates and all but ended jailhouse beatings. In Washington he has his name on three important laws: the first major ethics reform since Watergate; a much-needed cleanup of conventional weapons in the former Soviet Union, and the “Google for Government” bill, an accountability tool that requires notice of all federal contracts to be posted online. Besides that, Obama hasn’t been around long enough to get much done.

McCain served four years in the House and has been in the Senate almost 22 so far. But he, too, has authored fewer than a half-dozen major laws. Trying to fix immigration counts for something, but nothing passed.

…Part of the problem is McCain’s explosive temper. He blows up, then apologizes and is quickly forgiven. The forgiveness is “directly related to an appreciation of what he has suffered [in Vietnam],” says a Democrat who didn’t want to be named talking about a colleague. “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Republican Sen. Thad Cochran told The Boston Globe in January. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.” Cochran, a McCain supporter, now says McCain has learned to control his emotions better. But I’ve spoken to four senators and two former senators in recent weeks who believe Cochran’s concerns are widely shared in the Senate. Five of the six think that McCain is temperamentally unsuited to the presidency. None would speak for the record.

Palin’s right that McCain has at least tried to “use his career to promote change,” even if he hasn’t succeeded. But she’s wrong to deny the same to Obama. The faith-based community organizing Obama undertook (and that Palin continues to trash) exemplifies the very idea of putting social change before selfish career. Why else take a job for a fraction of what he could have made elsewhere? As for temperament, Obama is unflappable, perhaps to a fault.

Record and temperament. They might not be campaign issues, but they tell us a lot more about the future president than all the trivia that passes for news at the moment.

I’m pleased to announce that, in yesterday’s primaries, Jason Lewis won his primary by a 2-to-1 margin, and Carl Sciortino won his write-in campaign! Good news all around.

Oh, and John Kerry won his primary, too, but duh.

Turnout for the primaries is much lower than the general election, so each vote carries a lot more weight. That makes it all the more important to Get Out And Vote.

I’d like to first talk about the primaries for the areas I know best, the 31st and 34th Middlesex:

31st — Rotondi ran for this seat as a Republican eight years ago; he only became a Democrat four years back. By contrast, look at Jason Lewis‘ endorsements and his platform.

Rotondi has sent me a few mailings, but Lewis has done a heck of a lot of door-to-door, which I respect a lot more. Jason Lewis already has my financial support and he’s absolutely getting my electoral support as well.

34th — Incumbent Carl Sciortino isn’t on the ballot due to some sort of filing situation I don’t fully understand. His opponent, Trane, seems like a decent enough candidate, but Sciortino has solid credentials as a liberal and a progressive. I’d write in for Sciortino.

State Senate for both regions is Pat Jehlen, who’s unopposed. Pat Jehlen is five feet, four inches* of pure awesome and you should absolutely vote for her.

For US Congress, Ed Markey is also unopposed, but the guy’s been such a warrior on climate change that you’d be a fool not to return him to Capitol Hill even if he had an opponent.

For US Senate, all I know about John Kerry’s opponent is that Somerville’s crusty, right-wing local rag endorsed him. Really, even if that was all you knew about the race, it’d be enough to vote for John Kerry. I don’t need to give you John Kerry’s credentials here; you already know he’s a force for good.

* I have no idea what Pat Jehlen’s actual height is.

I don’t even play Magic:The Gathering and I found this post from Mighty God King hilarious.

Tim Wise writes:

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

Read on.

McCain has gone in some of his ads — similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the ’100 percent truth’ test.

The speaker? Rove.

The NY Times reports:

Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

…an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

Radio and TV host (and lifelong Republican) Michael Smerconish writes in Salon:

Where the hell are Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? And why does virtually no one ask anymore? What’s changed since the days when any suburban soccer mom would have strangled either of them with her bare hands if given the chance? And what happened to President Bush’s declaration to a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11 that “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” Doesn’t that apply to Pakistan?

These are things that I wonder as I watch from my perch in Philadelphia, where I’m a talk show host, columnist and MSNBC talking head. I have also spoken and written about them incessantly, so much so that I’ve exhausted my welcome with many conservative members of my own talk radio audience… I can’t help myself. So strong is my belief that we’ve failed in our responsibility to 3,000 dead Americans that I am contemplating voting for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in my life.

[...]Unfortunately, even after dangling my vote in front of Sen. John McCain, the nominee from my own party, he only offered a continuation of the Bush administration’s policy. In a conversation I had with the senator on June 13, 2008, he first attempted to say that our counterterrorism efforts were working and that remaining on good terms with Pakistan was imperative to our safety… Put quite simply, the support for this failed policy is driving me to the edge of my long Republican career. And despite never pulling a lever for a Democratic presidential candidate, I believe the election this November will present the chance to relieve this country of the conventional wisdom that President Bush has offered for seven years and Sen. McCain appears resigned to advance: that President Musharraf was a friend who did what he could to prevent Pakistan from defaulting toward further extremism; that the hunt for Osama bin Laden is nuanced and U.S. forces are doing everything they can to find him; and that the war in Iraq is a necessary one that hasn’t distracted from the fight against those who perpetrated and planned 9/11.

That wisdom has been proven unequivocally wrong.

While I generally think that celebrities have no more (and sometimes less) political insight than anyone else, I happen to agree with Matt Damon on his questioning of Gov. Sarah Palin’s credentials to be VP.

Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever…

Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.

Read on at the NY Times.

(thanks to Jim for the link.)