Posts Tagged Sarah Palin

Are you there, God? It’s us, America. Please make Sarah Palin go away.

November 12, 2008 at 2:24 am · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

I used to enjoy bashing Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  I found her to be incredibly unprepared and unapologetic, both in her unpreparedness and in her attacks on then-candidate Barack Obama, and on the intelligence of American voters.

And so it was with glee that I was looking forward to her sheepish retreat into relative, if temporary obscurity, in the coming weeks and months.  But, like the diva she apparently was, Palin ain’t retreating.  She’s now unmuzzled, and speaking her mind, there.  Because in speaking to the people, you know, unfettered and transparently is gettin’ that back to the people, and knowin’ she knows she knows her geography in there is just not what’s it’s all about there.  Ya know?  

Seriously, I just want her to go away.  For a while.  Give us all a break.  Deciphering her syntax is exhausting.  But, no.  Palin wants to save her reputation.  So, she’s showin’ those jerks and talkin’ to every reporter in sight- ha!  That’ll show’em.  Yes, while Stephen Colbert may still be morose over how “the damn Democrats have spayed our pitbull,” I think that John Stewart is really more on to something: “Sarah Palin has been tagged and reintroduced into the wild.”

I can imagine that 10 days after the election, there is a segment of the Republican party at large – a goodly chunk of the rock bottom 30% GOP supporters (that is a number I’ve seen in post-election polling of how fearful respondents are about President-elect Obama) – that wants to see more of Sarah Palin now, and wants her to defend herself from the McCain staff leaks spilling out in the media this last week.  Her supporters must be extra thankful, then, to hear that Palin will not hesitate to plough through any open door God helps her to see, including the door to the White House in four years.  

This governors’ meeting in Florida should certainly be good for drama – Tim Pawlenty and Charlie Crist (washed up almost were’s), Mike Huckabee (a fellow aw shucks’n), Arnold Schwarzenegger (you just want him to mix it up) and potential rockstar Bobby Jindal (who was smart enough to turn down vetting before his time) come face to face with the now most controversial figure in the Republican party (George Bush must sure be relieved).  

Does anyone really think that among the Republican governors, is there a one that wants to crown the Governor from Wasilla the party’s inheritor?  Or how about the new comeback kid, Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker, architect of the last Republican revolution in memory?  He claims to like Palin but he’s not vying to head the Republican National Committee for naught (I’d bet), from where he should easily be able to launch a campaign for president after what will hopefully be a minor improvement in Republican fortunes in 2010.  Expect Ms. Palin to share a crowded stage in 3 years.  It will certainly be curious to see how that goes for her. 

But what most needs saying?  For God’s sake, Governor, setting the fashion record straight does not a president make.  You should be above comment on these sorts of stories – that is, assuming none of them are true.

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Was the media in the tank for Obama?

November 12, 2008 at 1:30 am · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

I’m sick of reading and talking about the media’s supposed bias toward Obama, and so let me address the topic in hopes I can exorcise it (next exorcism: Sarah Palin).

The Washington Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, studied the Post’s coverage of the election and concluded that there was an “Obama tilt” to its coverage.

But why would we not expect Obama, who only clinched the Democratic nomination four months after McCain emerged the victor among Republican candidates, to rack up more coverage during that period?  Then, once Obama became the nominee, and particularly from mid-September onward, Obama led McCain in most and then all polls.  

Greg Mitchell reminds us that more than 1,200 Post stories simply covered the horse race; around 500 covered issues.  Readers can criticize the media for this imbalance.  But that, and not playing favorites, likely explains a perceived Obama tilt.  By virtue of being ahead in the horse race, Obama was more than twice as likely to net positive coverage.  Mitchell concludes:

So we will be reading for years about the strong media “bias” against McCain — look at all those “unfavorable” stories about him — when it was mainly (although perhaps not completely) a matter of Obama leading the horse race and getting credit for that by reporters who were, surprise, not deaf, dumb and blind. Does anyone doubt that if McCain had roared to the lead in October and stayed ahead until the end that the results of the studies would have been completely different?

Yes, the press is biased — in favor of recognizing who is winning and stating that (perhaps too often).

Also: Can the media be faulted if one candidate is committing the major share of gaffes or (in this age of fact-check sites) making the most inaccurate statements in speeches and in ads? Is it “bias” to recognize that? Or to vet a candidate for vice president who (we now know) had not been vetted by anyone else?

If you want to talk about lopsided coverage, how about the endless loop of Reverend Jeremiah Wright played for three months this past spring?  Who did that nonstop tape favor?  Certainly not Mr. Obama.  And does anyone believe nonstop coverage of former Weatherman Bill Ayers for the final 2-3 weeks of the general camapign really boost Mr. Obama?  

What is so ironic is that McCain himself was long the media darling, and that he only ceased to be once his media availability became more a liability to his campaign than an asset.  And there’s no one to blame for that except the candidate, and the campaign.

What’s fair to say, though, is that Obama the candidate was indeed a refreshing change from the waning days of the Bush administration, and a weakened, defensive Republican party.  President-elect Obama, and the enthusiasm his candidacy generated, proved exciting to cover.  Republicans, listen up: all you really have to do to get the press spotlight back is to make news.

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Sarah Palin’s next stop: U.S. Senate?

November 5, 2008 at 11:04 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

You had to know she wasn’t going away.  Like Arnold Schwartzenegger, Sarah Palin will be back, barring further disastrous developments (like, getting impeached over troopergate?) . . . in 2012.  

In fact Palin’s first step toward 2012 was a rather unseemly step away from the man who made her a household name by putting her on the Republican ticket, John McCain.  I just caught a post-election clip on MSNBC’s 1600 Pennsylvania Ave (formerly Race to the White House) with David Gregory of Sarah Palin responding to a question about her effect on the losing ticket. Palin insisted that the pundits shouldn’t ” attribute John’s McCain’s loss to me [being on the ticket].” 

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But did you catch that?  It was John McCain who lost last night.  She’s practically kicked him to the curb hardly twelve hours later.  True, people vote for the top of the ticket, but it’s still a ticket, a team, a duo.  And I’ve heard, anecdotally, a lot of folks say that they were turned off by McCain’s judgment in selecting Palin.  And then there’s CNN’s non-scientific text-your-response poll result: 82% of respondents said that Palin’s presence on the ticket hurt McCain.

Now, I admit that this is a nutty theory that I am about to espouse, but in my defense, I am not the only one.

I think Sarah Palin might make a run at the U.S. Senate via recently-convicted, possibly re-elected (seriously, Alaska??) felon and senior senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens.  Even if Stevens wins his race, which has yet to be called for either candidate while absentee votes get counted, you have to imagine that the Senate Ethics Committee will give him the boot.  (Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said Stevens should go.)  His early departure would leave an empty chair for the governor of Alaska to fill on a temporary basis, until a special election for the seat can be called.

Would Palin – could Palin – appoint herself??  I’m not sure I know the second part of the answer, but of course, she would only take the seat after her supporters had begged her to do it.  After what Ted Stevens put Alaskans through, it’s the least she can do.  And it would be an awfully convenient way to stay in the national spotlight and to gain national experience (it worked for Barack Obama).

I do think, however, that she will probably stay where she is for one simple reason: it’s the quickest path to run for her party’s nomination in four years.  Sarah Palin has two more years in Alaska to leave a mark on the state by which she can be favorably judged by the pundits and the people when she again seeks higher office.  She can also take speaking engagements that keep her in the limelight, and help to burnish a national political persona over time.  Then, she would be in position to get re-elected in Alaska (assuming she remains popular enough) and run in earnest for the Republican nomination.  Last night, fifty-two percent of Americans chose a candidate who hadn’t even finished one Senate term in Washington; but I doubt they will be eager to do so again so soon.

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Fox News takes down Joe the Plumber

October 31, 2008 at 2:42 am · Filed under foreign affairs, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

I never thought I would see a Fox News anchor go Campbell Brown on a McCainiac.  But that is exactly what Shep Smith did to Joe the Iconic Plumber.  Take a look for yourself, and see if you can figure out what happened:
 


I’m guessing that it was this statement from the now famous plumber that most galled Shep: “I’m just going to push it back on your listeners to figure out why I would agree to something like that.” Um, excuse me, did he just get away with that?  

In a bizarre twist to the last lap in this presidential election, John McCain has elevated Joe the Plumber to – basically – running mate status.  Joe’s out on the stump gladhanding and taking more press questions than Sarah Palin has in the whole general election.  The media obediently reports everything this guy says now.  But the beauty – or the horror, to a journalist – is that Joe is accountable to no one for what he says on camera (except maybe to his kids, who aren’t old enough to be embarrassed).  It’s like he’s Tucker Bounds, except he gets away with it.

It’s all a little surreal.  Joe’s now got a publicist (who will keep him from saying such stupid things in the future), and there’s talk of a country music album now.  Joe the plumber would be the most famous swing voter in history . . . if he were in fact a swing voter.  But, he’s not, and he never was. He made that perfectly clear, even before “endorsing” McCain last week.  And now he’s basically become the campaign’s mascot; a formulaic symbol, replicable into Phil the Bricklayer, Rose the Teacher or Tito the Builder (who’s stumpin’ with Sarah the Hunter Palin in Virginia now).  

I suppose it was inevitable that someone was gonna knock this guy off the pedestal John McCain has set him on; I just never thought it would happen on the Fox News Network.  Well played, Shep. Finally fair and balanced.

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The road to the White House will run through Virginia

October 20, 2008 at 6:21 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I agree with Simon Rosenberg at the Huffington Post, who counsels election watchers not to mistake a tightening race this week for a McCain comeback.

My sense now is that McCain is likely to gain 4-5 points in this these final few weeks and return to a respectable level for a credible GOP candidate. Part of what may drive this movement in the next few weeks is McCain bouncing back up from his current below-the-floor position. I mean 43 percent for a major GOP candidate in a two-way race? No way we are going to end up there.

McCain’s gains these coming weeks will be because he had been so dramatically underperforming since his successful convention. His erratic performance in the debates, his very public confusion during that first week of the financial crisis, the cratering of Sarah Palin, have all combined to leave him several points below where he should be at this point. In these next few weeks he will in all likelihood regain ground he should have been occupying all along but lost due to his disappointing campaign. So in many ways, McCain’s likely uptick is more a sign of his current weakness than any newfound strength.

Getting back up to 46, 47, 48 is not the same as winning. My guess is there will be a lot of confusion about this in the chattering classes in the next few weeks.

Remember to factor in a couple of points for Bob Barr and perennial candidate Ralph Nader, and keep in mind that George Bush won in 2004 with just 49 percent of the popular vote.  So long as Obama’s national poll numbers hover around and above the 50% mark, he’s in a good position.

Then take into account possible factors like the cell phone vote (who are not really accounted for in most polls) and of course the fabled Bradley effect.  Some analysts have also referred to a possible reverse Bradley effect, suggesting that some people who live in communities less likely to vote for a black man may not feel comfortable expressing support for Obama in a phone interview, but might actually vote for Obama once inside the booth.  This hypothesis originates in a study done on the 2008 Democratic primary results found that Obama outperformed poll spreads by an average of 7%.

The researchers attributed the inaccuracy of the polls to social influences. For instance, Greenwald said many women told pollsters they were voting for Hillary Clinton but ultimately cast their ballots for Obama.

“I don’t think they’re lying to pollsters,” Greenwald said, explaining that pollsters are contacting people who are undecided and may feel pressure to say they’re voting for the candidate who most closely identifies with them socially. 

Greenwald said he expects to see the reverse effect in the general election, but mostly among older voters who say they’re supporting John McCain. He expects many will pull the lever for Obama based, on multiple reasons, including the financial crisis. This trend could determine the outcome of the election, Greenwald said, if Obama’s lead shrinks in some state polls. 

Races always tighten toward the end.  We are nearing the final sprint in the race, and as Rosenburg points out, McCain’s poll numbers over the last month reflect how badly he and Palin damaged their numbers. Absent further missteps, McCain could get back into the mid to upper 40’s.  But he will have to watch out for the “Why bother?” effect on his side: if he looks sure to lose in the final days, some McCain leaning voters may just stay home.

At the same time, Obama needs to make sure his supporters don’t get complacent, and he has warned as much.  Obama’s numbers will also be affected by whether his campaign has been able to get out the early vote, when voters were comforted by his calm demeanor through the financial crisis and McCain was cratering.  This year is an important test, as well, of whether the Democrats can get their new and less-likely-to-show-up voters to the polls.  For all their disadvantages this year, the Republican party is typically quite effective at turning out its vote through churches and neighbor-to-neighbor contacts.

Obviously, the election doesn’t come down to the national popular vote tallies.  In my opinion, Obama’s clearest path to the White House runs through Virginia.  If he can hold this state, it is nearly impossible for McCain to win (Obama stands at 286 electoral votes with the Virginia, New Mexico, Iowa and New Hampshire battlegrounds in his column).  The Obama campaign’s effort to court a host of red and newly purple state voters – North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada – is smart because it forces McCain and Palin to spend precious time in these states.  Plus, if these states do actually swing to Obama, then he’ll walk into the White House with not just a Democratic Congress but with a mandate.

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McCain-Palin’s growing fringe

October 18, 2008 at 9:31 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

When the subject of hate speech at McCain and Palin rallies over the last few weeks came up in the final presidential debate, McCain had this to say:

Let me just say categorically I’m proud of the people that come to our rallies.

But to somehow say that group of young women who said “Military wives for McCain” are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything — and those veterans that wear those hats that say “World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq,” I’m not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they’re great citizens.

McCain has shrugged off some of the worst hate peddlers as “fringe” people. Now, you’d certainly think that by far most people at these rallies are there because they are proud of their nominees. And yet, if you were to watch a video such as this one below, you don’t hear anyone yelling out things like “Military wives for McCain!” or “Proud of Palin!”

This video gives you the impression that the phantom fringe is all there is (which I know cannot be true; of course there are dignified, thoughtful people who support McCain). Why are these people more audible, why does their energy seem to dominate the mood? Perhaps the media is just feeding off of and amplifying them? But this video captured the vitroil without any filter at all.

Many Americans found themselves repelled by the ignorant, divisive and rascist tilt of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. It strikes me as only logical that people should be just as disgusted with the ignorant, rascist venom countless “fringe” people have expressed at McCain Palin rallies. In fact, the rallies seem to be the place to go and vent their hate.

I’m proud to be an American. But I am ashamed of Americans who would embrace this hate. If McCain can’t bring himself to say, “I categorically do not want the support of anyone supporting violence against my opponent,” he has no business running for president. Luckily, that is something on which more than fifty percent of Americans can agree.

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The Todd and Sarah Palin amateur hour

October 12, 2008 at 11:47 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We all knew that Sarah Palin, her husband and a good many of her staff had been pressuring former police commissioner Walt Monegan, literally since she took over as governor, to fire an Alaska State Trooper, Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Mike Wooten.  So, it really comes as no surprise that the bipartisan legislative investigation into the matter found on Friday that Palin improperly used her office to achieve satisfaction of a personal matter.

The real story here, as Nathan Thornburgh writes, is how very “amateurish” the Palin administration was, and so obviously in for a thorough public humiliation over its bullying and cronyist tactics.

The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor . . .

Not only did people at almost every level of the Palin administration engage in repeated inappropriate contact with Walt Monegan and other high-ranking officials at the Department of Public Safety, but Monegan and his peers constantly warned these Palin disciples that the contact was inappropriate and probably unlawful. Still, the emails and calls continued — in at least one instance on recorded state trooper phone lines.

The state’s head of personnel, Annette Kreitzer, called Monegan and had to be warned that personnel issues were confidential. The state’s attorney general, Talis Colberg, called Monegan and had to be reminded that the call was putting both men in legal jeopardy, should Wooten decide to sue. The governor’s chief of staff met with Monegan and had to be reminded by Monegan that, “This conversation is discoverable … You don’t want Wooten to own your house, do you?” 

. . . One telling exchange: Deputy Commissioner John Glass, who worked under Monegan, told Branchflower he was “livid” after a Palin staffer, Frank Bailey, went outside the chain of command and called a state trooper in far-off Ketchikan to complain about Wooten. Why had Bailey called the trooper? Because, Bailey said, this trooper had gone to church with Sarah Palin back in Wasilla, so he felt “comfortable” talking to him about Wooten. Glass, too, tried to sound the warning that continuing to pressure anyone and everyone in the matter would end in “an unbelievable amount of embarrassment for the Governor and everybody else”.

 . . . Another amateurish sign: Todd Palin’s outsize role in the mess. Branchflower said it was out of his jurisdiction to pass judgment on the First Gentleman, but his report paints an extralegal role for Todd Palin that would have made the Hillary Clinton of 1992 blush. In the report, the head of Gov. Palin’s security detail says that Todd spent about half of his time in the governor’s office — not at a desk (he didn’t have one), but at a long conference table on one side of the office, with his own phone to make and receive calls. It became a shadow office, the informal Department of Getting Mike Wooten Fired.

Shadow office.  Todd Palin’s outsize role in his wife’s administration.  Quick: what two oft-maligned pols do those characterizations make you think of?  Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton?  

Sarah Palin should count herself lucky that she was less directly involved in the harassment of Commissioner Monegan, having outsourced the job to everyone around her instead.  But Thornburgh is right that the overwhelming and truly sophomoric intimidation campaign — started within days of her term as Governor — that Sarah Palin tolerated and encouraged is the greater indictment of her short time at the helm in Alaska.  Power in office is a privilege and a responsibility, not an advantage to be exploited to settle personal vendettas, no matter how noble the cause.  

Sarah Palin has styled herself the outsider who will clean up Washington.  In truth, she is no more suited to the task than the Washington insiders she so often bludgeons with her hypocritical Youbetchas.

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This isn’t country first, it’s country last

October 11, 2008 at 3:34 am · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

John McCain has created a monster, one he can no longer control.  The increasing virulence of his supporters has finally reached a such a pitch that McCain himself has had to backpedal.

Today, a McCain supporter (an older white woman) told the senator how scared she is of Barack Obama becoming president.  He nodded, and could be heard to say, “I hear you!”  But what happened next demonstrates the dangerous detour McCain and Palin’s rallies have begun to take.  “He’s an Arab,” declared the supporter.  And, finally, to his credit, John McCain shook his head, took back the microphone, and said, “No, ma’am, no he’s not.”  He went on to say that Obama is a decent family man with whom he deeply disagrees on philosophical and policy grounds.  

McCain also found himself having to disassociate himself from a warm-up act in which the speaker repeatedly called the Democratic nominee “Barack Hussein Obama,” and continued an impassionated character attack (taking also a few potshots at the Clintons and the media as well).  He’s now several times found himself repeating to frantic, booing supporters that Barack Obama is someone he respects and does not want to attack.  Huh?

After his rally, McCain insisted to the press that he has repeatedly expressed “respect” for both Obama and Clinton, and called them both “honorable people.”  Such a declaration, of course, has no meaning, after a straight week of these in-person and on the air attacks on Obama, and specifically calling Obama dishonorable (notably, for making the same judgment about air raid civilian casualties caused in Afghanistan that McCain once lamented in the air war over Kosovo).

McCain did the right thing by setting that supporter straight who believed Obama to be an Arab (which regrettably has become a dirty word in parts of America).  It is a despicable thing to encourage such hateful ignorance among his supporters.  But what else should he expect when he whips up the crowds – asking who is the real Barack Obama, and what do we really know about him?  But in fact, this has merely served to raise serious and timely questions abut who John McCain really is.  

Just how far backward he and Sarah Palin have taken this country in the last two weeks is deeply unsettling.  They’ve encouraged people to hate and fear Barack Obama, never contemplating the ugly consequences of their audience taking them seriously.  When was the last time you heard an American yell at a rally, “Terrorist!” or “Traitor” or “Kill him!” or “Off with his head!”

This isn’t country first.  This is country last.

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Michelle comes out classy, Cindy and Sarah stoop low

October 9, 2008 at 3:25 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Remember back in June, when Cindy McCain said we would see no negative campaigning at all from their side?

Gosh, seems like eons ago, doesn’t it?  At rallies from Florida to Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign is pulling out all the stops to attack that other side, including this from Cindy McCain:

“The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son while he was serving sent a cold chill through my body, let me tell you,’’ Mrs. McCain said, in an introduction before Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin delivered speeches at Lehigh. “I would suggest that Senator Obama change shoes with me for just one day.’’ Mrs. McCain was referring to a vote against troop financing that Mr. Obama cast in 2007 because the legislation did not include a timetable for withdrawal; Mr. Obama has voted for all other war-spending bills since he entered the Senate in 2005.

It’s worth mentioning as well, that John McCain voted against funding the troops when the bill contained a timetable to bring them home.  Cindy McCain knows full well that no troops would go without their flak jackets because of that vote; it was simply about forcing the president to adopt a timetable (or as the president later acquiesed to in negotiations with Iraq back in June, what you might call a “time horizon“).  Cindy McCain’s comments were a demeaning exploitation of her son’s service.  And Cindy McCain thinks Barack Obama is the one waging the “dirtiest campaign in American history?”

That’s rich.  How quickly she forgot the bruising 2000 Republican primary, in which Bush aides now working for McCain suggested that Bridget McCain, a bangladeshi child Cindy McCain brought back from an orphanage in India, was John McCain’s illegitimate black child.

And then there’s this campaign.  I’m sure Cindy McCain was so very proud of Mike Scott, the uniformed sheriff who warmed the crowd up in Bethlehem, PA yesterday, warning of “Barack Hussein Obama” becoming president.  (He’s now under investigation for politicking on the job)  And let’s not leave out Sarah Palin’s relentless attempt to associate Senator Obama with a 1960’s radical turned Chicago professor, Bill Ayers.  Palin’s baiting has famously riled supporters up this week, one of whom yelled “Kill him!” after she accused Obama of being best buds with a former terrorist.  Angry supporters booed the press corps covering a Florida rally– one taunting an African American among them, “Sit down, boy.”  Yes, I’m quite sure the McCain camapign will go down as the cleanest campaign on the record books.

Obama has not engaged the Bill Ayers stories, instead dispatching aides to shut them down (Robert Gibbs ably knocked Sean Hannity off his high horse yesterday).  Joe Biden’s been the only campaign principal to really hit back on the stump this week, calling McCain, “an angry man, lurching from one position to another.”

Last night, Michelle Obama, who has kept largely out of the limelight since her reintroduction at the Democratic Convention, reappeared.  But, the campaign is not bringing Michelle out to defend her husband.  They’ve brought her out to make Cindy McCain look ungraceful, and to underscore that the Obamas keep a steady hand.

Not for lacking of trying, Larry King and John Stewart were unable to draw out the wrath of Michelle Obama.  Instead, Michelle had this to say about Sarah Palin:

“You know, I’m a mother with kids and I’ve had a career and I’ve had to juggle,” Mrs. Obama said on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

“She’s doing publicly what so many women are doing on their own privately,” she added. “What we’re fighting for is to make sure that all women have the choices that Sarah Palin and I have.”

And, declining to hit the Republican ticket for the barrage of negative attacks against her husband, she had only this for Cindy and John McCain:

“You can’t tear up the game so much so that, you know, you don’t leave people something to come back to,” she said. “You know, we’re going to need John McCain, we’re going to need Cindy McCain, we’re going to need independents and Republicans working hard to fix this crisis.”

You can’t get more gracious or classy than that, which is exactly what the Obama campaign was looking for.

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When we still had freedom, and monkeys

October 7, 2008 at 2:18 pm · Filed under domestic policy, Economy, Environment, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

At last Thursday night’s debate, Sarah Palin issued a dire warning about our way of life as we know it:

It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we’re going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.

Hmm, what a coincidence that she would talk about “extinction” and tellin’ our kids and grandkids about what life used to be life.  1,700 conservation researchers met for the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Barcelona this week, and they delivered a similarly dire, if a bit more specific, warning:

The researchers concluded that 25 percent of the mammal species for which they had sufficient data are threatened with extinction, but Schipper added that the figure could be as high as 36 percent because information on some species is so scarce.

Land and marine mammals face different threats, the scientists said, and large mammals are more vulnerable than small ones. For land species, habitat loss and hunting represent the greatest danger, while marine mammals are more threatened by unintentional killing by pollution, ship strikes and being caught in fishing nets . . .

Primates face some of the most intense pressures: According to the survey, 79 percent of primates in South and Southeast Asia are facing extinction.

But Governor Palin gets it.

We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.

Well, sort of.

The chant is “drill, baby, drill.” And that’s what we hear all across this country in our rallies because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into . . . And we’re building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline which is North America’s largest and most you expensive infrastructure project ever to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets . . . And East Coast politicians who don’t allow energy-producing states like Alaska to produce these, to tap into them, and instead we’re relying on foreign countries to produce for us.

You just don’t get a sense of urgency from either campaign about the state of the natural world around us.  And when they talk about it, they never talk about human development – no matter what kind of fuels it uses – and its nearly total encroachment of wildlife habitats.  The climate is in crisis; from the air we breathe, to the animals large and small, land and marine, that depend on complex, fragile econsystems that are experiencing a meltdown more dangerous and irrevocable than a handful of giant banks holding bad paper.

Where’s the climate bailout?  Where are the regulators?  Our forests and our oceans are over-leveraged and it is time to inject some liquidity into this market.

When I hear Sarah Palin boil it all down to buying less oil from ‘countries that don’t like us very much’ and more from the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, I shudder.  I see myself reading to my disbelieving grandchildren about yesterday’s forests and up in the treetops, animals called monkeys used to swing.

But it doesn’t have to end that way – not yet.  The International Union for Conservation of Nature study came just before tonight’s townhall-style presidential debate.  Surely some audience member will ask the candidates to think about the planet, and all life on it, for just a moment?

The issue of humans and our interdepedence on this planet is still considered softball territory in the American political debate landscape.  (Gosh, China sure has an overpopulation problem!) But how seriously and in depth McCain and Obama take the question will tell us something about their commitment to the real transcendant threat of our times.

Both campaigns badly want to turn the page on the Bush administration.  Reinvigorating U.S. leadership on the climate crisis is an easy, and strategic way to truly do it, and show the world that America cooperates again.  Let’s hope someone asks the candidates.

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Swiftboat season begins

October 5, 2008 at 5:36 pm · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Get ready for four straight weeks of the grimiest trench warfare you’ve yet to see in this campaign.  The numbers don’t look good for McCain-Palin, and word is, the gloves are coming off.  

“We’re going to get a little tougher,” a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. “We’ve got to question this guy’s associations. Very soon. There’s no question that we have to change the subject here,” said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity . . . 

McCain’s only positive commercial, called “Original Mavericks,” has largely been taken off the air, according to Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political ads . . .

McCain hinted Thursday that a change is imminent, perhaps as soon as next week’s debate. Asked at a Colorado town hall, “When are you going to take the gloves off?” the candidate grinned and replied, “How about Tuesday night?”

If  you hadn’t already read up on a Chicago professor named Bill Ayers, you might want to start this week.  Ayers, now a professor in Chicago, was once a member of the radical anti-Vietnam war group “Weather Underground.”  Here’s some background:

In an article that by chance was published on Sept. 11, 2001, The New York Times wrote about Mr. Ayers and his just-published memoir, “Fugitive Days,” opening with a quotation from the author: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Three days after the Qaeda attacks, Mr. Ayers wrote a reply posted on his Web site to clarify his quoted remarks, saying the meaning had been distorted.

“My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy,” he wrote. But he added that the Weathermen had “showed remarkable restraint” given the nature of the American bombing campaign in Vietnam that they were trying to stop.

Most of the bombs the Weathermen were blamed for had been placed to do only property damage, a fact Mr. Ayers emphasizes in his memoir. But a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco attributed to the group killed one police officer and severely hurt another. An accidental 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village town house basement killed three radicals; survivors later said they had been making nail bombs to detonate at a military dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And in 1981, in an armed robbery of a Brinks armored truck in Nanuet, N.Y., that involved Weather Underground members including Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, two police officers and a Brinks guard were killed.

So, where does Barack Obama come into this story?  A quarter of a century later, according to a front page New York Times story published Saturday.  Barack Obama first met Bill Ayers, by then a professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, in 1995.  Starting in 1995, they served together on a board in charge of the Chicago Annenberg Project, which oversaw a citywide school reform project funded by philanthropist Walter Annenberg.  According to the report, they each attended six board meetings until Obama left the board in 2001.

While the New York Times report concludes that Ayers and Obama have not been close friends, nor does Ayers advise Obama in any way, it found that the Obama campaign has sought to downplay their contacts.  The most damaging of their contacts was the year they first met, and when Obama first made a run for the Illinois state senate.

It was later in 1995 that Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn hosted the gathering, in their town house three blocks from Mr. Obama’s home, at which State Senator Alice J. Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced Mr. Obama to a few Democratic friends as her chosen successor. That was one of several such neighborhood events as Mr. Obama prepared to run, said A. J. Wolf, the 84-year-old emeritus rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel Synagogue, across the street from Mr. Obama’s current house.

In 1997, the Chicago Tribune asked Obama, then a freshman state senator, what books he was reading.  He cited one by Mr. Ayers, “A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court,” which Obama called “a searing and timely account of the juvenile court system.”  

Sarah Palin, who proudly read her copy of New York Times on Saturday, is now hitting Obama for “palling around with terrorists.”  McCain won’t be far behind her; it’s only a question of whether he wants to gamble on such a low blow in Tuesday’s townhall debate format.  

Guilt by professional association with Ayers is a tactic the Obama campaign should not be too complacent to tear down.  This is the Obama campaign’s swift boat moment.  It may not be enough to simply stay above the fray.

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Scrappy Palin, serious Biden: they both won, sort of

October 3, 2008 at 2:13 pm · Filed under domestic policy, Economy, foreign affairs, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

You’ve got to love Peggy Noonan.  You can always count on this former Reagan speechwriter to tell it like it is.  And if you are a Democrat, you really need to read her stuff.  She keeps you grounded and honest.  And sometimes she even reassures you (she’s not exactly Palin’s biggest fan).  Plus, she’s funny:

Sarah Palin saved John McCain again Thursday night. She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles: Clear! Zap! We’ve got a beat!

But seriously, Noonan’s commentary on last night’s debate hits most of the nails right on the head. No matter who you support in this election, it’s hard to argue with her analysis. 

She killed. She had him at “Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?” She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man. She was not petrified but peppy . . .

As far as Mrs. Palin was concerned, Gwen Ifill was not there, and Joe Biden was not there. Sarah and the camera were there. This was classic “talk over the heads of the media straight to the people,” and it is a long time since I’ve seen it done so well, though so transparently. There were moments when she seemed to be doing an infomercial pitch for charm in politics. But it was an effective infomercial . . .

Joe Biden seems to have walked in thinking that she was an idiot and that he only had to patiently wait for this fact to reveal itself. This was a miscalculation. He showed great forbearance. Too much forbearance. She said of his intentions on Iraq, “Your plan is a white flag of surrender.” This deserved an indignant response, or at least a small bop on the head, from Mr. Biden, who has been for five years righter on Iraq than the Republican administration. He was instead mild.

The heart of her message was a complete populist pitch. “Joe Six-Pack” and “soccer moms” should unite to fight the tormentors who forced mortgages on us. She spoke of “Main Streeters like me.” A question is at what point shiny, happy populism becomes cheerful manipulation.

Palin’s shiny, happy populism overlooks a critical shortcoming of her ticket: there is no evidence that their policies would help mainstreeters.  Palin talks a great talk when there’s virtually no follow up from (filter between) the media.  How does their tax policy, which gives no tax break to 100 million middle “mainstreeters” but instead targets $4 billion in tax breaks to corporate America?  How is it helpful to mainstreet Americans with employer-based healthcare to lose their healthcare plan and get a $5,000 tax credit toward purchasing insurance that will surely cost double that amount out of pocket? Biden hit McCain and Palin on this point with perhaps the best zinger of the night: “So you’re going to have to place — replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company. I call that the “Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere.”

Had Joe Biden not been beaten into submission before the debate (“don’t come off too mean!”), he might have engaged Palin a bit more combatively than he did.  Palin came in with that advantage, and she worked it aggressively.  Still, while Palin won on appearance, Joe Biden won on substance. And this election, more than any in recent memory, demands substantive, reassuring leadership.  Joe Biden spent most of the night effectively articulately the Obama – Biden ticket’s policies.  When he hit back it was mostly aimed at John McCain.  Near the end of the debate, after Palin had used the word “maverick” so many times it made me cringe to hear it, Biden delivered a powerful indictment against the sunny maverick McCain image Palin continually invoked:

He’s been a maverick on some issues, but he has been no maverick on the things that matter to people’s lives.

He voted four out of five times for George Bush’s budget, which put us a half a trillion dollars in debt this year and over $3 trillion in debt since he’s got there.

He has not been a maverick in providing health care for people. He has voted against — he voted including another 3.6 million children in coverage of the existing health care plan, when he voted in the United States Senate.

He’s not been a maverick when it comes to education. He has not supported tax cuts and significant changes for people being able to send their kids to college.

He’s not been a maverick on the war. He’s not been a maverick on virtually anything that genuinely affects the things that people really talk about around their kitchen table.

Biden even made up ground on Palin’s home turf- her image as just an average mom with an average family to juggle.  He was proud and then vulnerable, recalling the days after his first wife and daughter died in a car crash (in which his two sons were critically injured):

But the notion that somehow, because I’m a man, I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone, I don’t know what it’s like to have a child you’re not sure is going to — is going to make it — I understand.

All in all, Biden turned in a strong performance (aside from his excessive grinning at inopportune moments), perhaps stronger than we realize, given that so many of us went into this forgetting that Palin excels at debate, particularly a debate with such stringent rules on followup discussion (the sort of followup that Katie Couric was able to do in her interviews).  Again, Noonan is instructive:

[Palin] is not a person of thought but of action. Interviews are about thinking, about reflecting, marshaling data and integrating it into an answer. Debates are more active, more propelled—they are thrust and parry. They are for campaigners. She is a campaigner. Her syntax did not hold, but her magnetism did. At one point she literally winked at the nation.

As for those pundits who said that Palin’s goal going into this was merely to survive gaffe-free, I disagree. Her goal was to bloody up the Democratic ticket, and in doing so win points for “feistiness”.  She threw some cute and some tough punches, but nothing that Biden didn’t counter. Palin reclaimed some of her dignity last night, and succeeded in slowing, but not stopping, her own campaign’s bleeding–you don’t pull out of Michigan unless you are in deeper trouble than one debate performance can fix.  The Couric, Gibson and even Hannity interviews did irreparable damage to both McCain and Palin that just can’t be fixed with a wink and a cutesy “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”  

Here’s some final analysis from NBC’s Political Director Chuck Todd (who has inherited Tim Russert’s white board):

Palin started strong and proved to be a folksy cliché machine, which probably came across as extremely charming. She lit up the screen at times with her smile and occasional winks.

She proved extremely adept at avoiding questions or topics she didn’t want to answer, which is the big difference in her fairly smooth performance tonight and her near-disastrous performances in those one-on-one interviews.

This debate may have a shelf life of about 24 hours, perhaps 48 hours and that’s about it. 

And he’s right.  If there’s no blood on the floor, the media will move right along.  Next story: the House votes on that bailout-rescue package today.  It’s going to be nailbiter.

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Palin v. Biden: pre-game analysis

October 2, 2008 at 3:45 pm · Filed under domestic policy, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Democrats, prepare yourselves: odds are high that Sarah Palin is going to charm America’s pants off tonight.  Why?  Because the campaign has been so pilloried for wrapping her in a protective cocoon, feeding her campaign talking points that, when she spits them back out, they sound not merely like platitudes, but like nonsense. There’s no time to actually learn the points behind the talking, and the campaign has learned that lesson after a week of humiliating Katie Couric coverage.  So the story now goes, they are going to free Sarah Palin.  She’s going to be herself, which is what scared Democrats when she first burst onto the scene a month ago.

Tonight, Sarah Barracuda is going up against the bloviator, as his critics call him.  Joe Biden has been in the Senate for more than 30 years.  He’s polished, articulate (ha, and clean too;o) and very knowledgeable on any policy Gwen Ifill might possibly throw at the candidates tonight.  But people won’t relate to him unless his demeanor and answers come off more blue collar than they do Washingtonian.  He has two famous weaknesses: the sound of his voice (he enjoys it too much), and his lack of an “inappropriate comment” filter.  And because of his heightened awareness of his rep as a gaffe-prone monologist, he could turn in a soft performance, or try bizarre self-deprecation, like saying Hillary Clinton would have been a better pick than him.  Still, Biden’s command of all of the issues of the day is reassuring to a panicky cash and credit-strapped electorate.

For her part, Palin is so well known for a sentence structure to nowhere that she has practically nowhere to go tonight but up.  If she turns in a shaky or poor performance tonight, McCain will have two choices: pack it in, or bring back Reverend Wright with a vengeance that may or may not backfire.  But I digress.

Palin was a small town mayor just 5 years ago, and that helps people to relate to her on a personal level.  Her manner of speaking, when it makes sense, is reassuring in its familiarity, if not its substance.  And, I assume Palin got the Barracuda nickname for a reason.  We’ve already seen on the campaign trail that she’s not afraid to hurl canned attack lines over enemy lines.  A Campaign aide claims that Palin is “in a fighting mood” after the criticism she’s received recently.  So, we can expect her to hammer Obama (may not be necessary  to bother with Biden, just as Biden has been advised to politely ignore Palin and hit McCain) and look and sound “fiesty”.  Amy Poehler nailed it in her last SNL skit (she played Katie Couric) when she asked Tina Fey’s Palin “It seems to me that when cornered, you become increasingly adorable. Is that fair to say?”

One of the biggest mistakes Palin keeps making, though, is that it takes her three tries to say, essentially, “I’m not an expert on that, but here’s my gut feeling.”  So, when asked by her press pool of 1, Katie Couric, what other Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with (besides Roe v. Wade), she said this:

Palin: Well, let’s see. There’s, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that’s never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but …

Couric: Can you think of any?

Palin: Well, I could think of … any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I’m so privileged to serve, wouldn’t be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.

She should have said, on the first go, “You know, Katie, I’m not a Supreme Court scholar.  But what I will tell you is that if I should be in the position to nominate anyone to that highest court in this great country, I would be guided by the same principles I stand by on Roe v. Wade.  I’m going to want to see judges who will uphold states’ rights, and stick to the constitution.”  Had she admitted up front to Couric that she simply didn’t have a court case to name, she might have spared herself (and us) the agony.

Joe Biden, who gets so little attention these days, deserves credit for a polished interview with Katie “She’s Everywhere” Couric this week.  Compare Couric’s Q and A on Roe v. Wade with each of them.  Biden handles it delicately, but he’s very articulate (without being too high-minded) and resolutely invokes the critical principle behind the Court’s decision: the right to privacy.  When Couric asks Palin about if she believes in the right to privacy, on which Couric noted that ruling turned, you get the sense she didn’t already know, and didn’t connect the dots.  Instead, she just sort of kept reaching for home base . . . the talking point on states’ rights.

If Palin manages to get through this debate gaffe-free, it won’t be enough to win back the momentum for the McCain ticket.  The Couric interviews irreparably shook people’s confidence in Palin.  But this debate could at least stop the bleeding.

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Smearing Gwen Ifill – just in time

October 2, 2008 at 3:32 am · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

You’ve no doubt heard today that Gwen Ifill, the moderator for tonight’s vice presidential debate, is under heavy fire from conservative corners, nay conservative armies, because of her ‘obvious’ bias toward Senator Obama in the the presidential election.  This smear campaign against a solid journalist has come just in time to, as I like to say, ice the kicker- in this case, the moderator herself.  And even if Ifill doesn’t flinch tonight (which she won’t, because she’s a professional), this false controversy conveniently changes the narrative from will-Sarah-Palin-be-an-embarassment-to-her-ticket tonight, to if she is embarassing, it will be Gwen Ifill’s fault.

I’m going to start by pointing out the obvious: Ifill is black.  Yesterday I began to vaguely worry that some folks out there would begin to presume a color bias from Ifill, especially if she does her job well and Sarah Palin does hers poorly.

But Ifill has actually left the proof of her bias in plain sight: since last year, she has been working on and promoting a new book called – get this – “”The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.”  Clearly, she’s in the tank.

I’m trying really hard to imagine if the roles were reversed. Unfortunately, all I can come up with is what if the moderator were Bill O’Reilly.  It’s just not the same thing, and is of course ridiculous (as would be liberal fave Keith Olbermann).  I can only hope I would be as fair as I expect people to be to Ifill.

Certainly the title itself, especially if you only hear “The Age of Obama” could lead you to imagine Ifill is expressing support for Mr. Obama.  Is she?  And there is the matter of if Obama actually wins . . . then a book about him and post-civil rights political leaders might actually sell better.  Yes, Ifill and her book will benefit from Obama’s election.  So the question is, is Ifill the sort of journalist who would throw a debate for a profit?

To his credit, John McCain is completely convinced that Ifill is an “honest, decent journalist” who will be “perfectly fair” to Palin and Biden.  But on second thought, “Does this help that she has written a book that is favorable to Obama?” he wondered.  “Probably not.”  Luckily, Sarah Palin – the potential victim in Ifill’s crosshairs – is totally taking it on the chin.

You know, I’m not going to let it be a concern.  Let me just tell you that John McCain has been in an underdog position before, and this ticket, I think it is safe to say, is in an underdog position . . .

It’s motivating to me, even, to hear Gwen’s comments there because, again, it makes us work that much harder, and it provides even more fairness and objectivity and choices for the voters on November 4, if we try that much harder.

What comments exactly is Palin referring to, anyway?  Has she – or anyone out there – read any excerpts of the book?  What in it tells us that she is an advocate for Obama?  Perhaps a snippet from her August 21st TIME magazine article, (presumably a warm up for the book coming out in January) will bring Ifill’s obvious bias into focus:

Obama’s rise has demonstrated so far that a lot of that protest worked, and this latest wave of black politicians is living, breathing evidence of it. Only one generation removed from the protests their parents led, many are Ivy League graduates in their 30s, 40s and 50s who remember the 1960s–and even the 1970s–only from old video and the printed page.

But Obama is just one member of a generation of political leaders faced with a new task: honoring the contributions of their forebears without alienating the broader, multiracial audiences they need to win. I’ve spent part of the past year tracking dozens of these rising stars and have concluded that anyone who thinks Obama is unique is not paying attention. (emphasis added)

The Daily Kos – seemingly the first and only responder to the smearing of Gwen Ifill all over the internet yesterday – makes a crucial point here, lost in all of the conservative fury:

[Ifill] devotes the article to other black leaders, and specifically not to Obama.  Obama is the mere figurehead to a larger phenomenon in the African American community.  It is not an advocacy for Obama, just that the trend that he represents means a new era.

The McCain campaign, if this misplaced outrage weren’t so convenient, should put this tempest in a teapot to an unceremonious end.  If anyone on their team seriously thought she had a conflict of interest to serve as a debate moderator, why on earth did they agree to her??  Why didn’t they exercise their veto? (Tom Brokaw said recently that the McCain team originally vetoed any moderator from NBC)

It’s possible that Gwen Ifill loves Barack Obama and plans to swing the debate his way (via Joe Biden).  But it is also possible that Ifill, a top notch journalist with so respected a reputation that both sides agreed to her moderating the vice presidential debate tonight, has produced a work not about her idol Barack Obama, but in fact a book about post-civil rights black politicians – among whom she argues, Obama is not unique.  It’s even possible that the internet hissy fit over her book could now actually tilt Ifill’s performance – in favor of the McCain ticket – as moderator.  I guess it all depends on what kind of journalist Gwen Ifill really is.

Either way, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden won’t be the only ones under the microscope tonight.

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Pelosi’s partisan snipe + GOP’s faux protest = dead bailout

September 30, 2008 at 5:33 pm · Filed under domestic policy, Economy, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Wesley Pruden, over at the Washington Times, is one of many conservatives across this land to blame Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker from San Francisco, for the failure of the bailout bill in the House yesterday.  Pruden goes on to make the best suggestion Sarah Palin has gotten all month: she should use Thursday’s debate with Joe Biden to whack the heck out of Nancy Pelosi for killing the bailout package with that pesky partisanship that Palin will end to if the American people so bless her and John McCain with the privilege to serve them.

It’s a great idea, considering there really aren’t any live ones out there to improve Governor Palin’s image of late.  I look forward to seeing how Joe Biden fields direct assaults from Palin.  But seriously, can we really blame Pelosi’s speech for the failure of the bill?  Here is what she said:

“When President Bush took office he inherited President Clinton’s surpluses — four years in a row, budget surpluses on a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus. And with his reckless economic policies within two years he had turned that around and now eight years later the foundation of that fiscal irresponsibility, combined with an anything-goes economic policy, has taken us to where we are today.

“They claim to be be free-market advocates when it’s really an anything-goes mentality: no regulation, no supervision, no discipline. And if you fail you will have a golden parachute and the taxpayer will bail you out. Those days are over. The party is over in that respect.”

She added: “Democrats believe in a free market. We know that it can create jobs, it can create wealth, it can create many good things in our economy. But in this case, in its unbridled form as encouraged, supported by the Republicans — some in the Republican Party, not all — it has created not jobs, not capital, it has created chaos.”

The thing is, the prepared version of that speech was not nearly so direct a condemnation of the Republican party.  I feel for the poor staffer who wrote that speech and had to sit and listen as the boss went off message.  Yes, Pelosi’s comments were clearly not helpful, and they were not in good taste.  She should have waited until after the vote to deliver her stinging condemnation of Republican economic policies.  But was it enough to tank the bill?

One has to ask the question, why were the dozen or so Republicans – who John Boehner and his Republican whip (vote counter), Roy Blunt of Missouri, claim were spooked by the partisan rhetoric – why were they going to hold their nose and vote for a deal they didn’t like and that they thought would certainly hurt them politically?  They were prepared to do it, one can only surmise, for the good of the country, for the good of the economy.  What other reason could there have been?  Moreover, why didn’t all of the Republicans protest?  Why only twelve – the magic number needed to pass the bill?

Nancy Pelosi comes off looking idiotic for her gratuitous GOP-bashing on the House floor before the big vote.  But I cannot accept that her poorly-timed partisan jabs would give those 12 members license to throw the good of the country overboard.  Those members who objected to Pelosi’s partisanship actually succumbed to that very vice by rejecting the bailout bill at the last minute.

Barney Frank, the famously grumpy chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, wasn’t buying it either.

“Here’s the story: There’s a terrible crisis affecting the American economy. We have come together on a bill to alleviate the crisis. And because somebody hurt their feelings they decide to punish the country . . . And there are 12 Republican members who were ready to stand up for the economic interests of America but not if anybody insulted them . . .

“I’ll make an offer,” he added. “Give me those 12 people’s names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they’ll now think about the country.”

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