Fun stuff

With the economy tanking, consumer prices falling by the largest amount in 50 years, the Fed cutting rates to unheard of levels (apparently unaware of the complete failure of supply side economics over the last year), and Madoff adding to gloom and doom, I thought something more entertaining may be in order.

Dick Cavett recently got an earful for his amusing piece, "The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla" where he explores gems such as: "My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars." It's stuff you can't make up.

His latest piece on Gov. Blagojevich is equally amusing, as he ponders, "The question overhanging this sordid mess, you might agree, is, “How did such a specimen ever get elected?”

It’s as if a soldier, tested for his fitness as potential combat leader, passed his physical despite scurvy, pyorrhea, Jake leg, leprosy, the quinsy, contagious influenza and at least two trick knees."

It's just what I was wondering.

And, if you missed it, President Bush provided his contribution with the famous shoe ducking incident, which just about summarises his presidency.

Palinisms

I recently came across a quote from Sarah Palin where she strings together seemingly sagacious phrases and multi syllabic words to produce sentences that defy explanation. I began to ponder whether, with Bush about to fade away, Palinisms are going to be the new Bushisms. I started trawling the net for a list of fun examples and it seems I wasn't the first to think of this idea. Here is a list of some famous Palinisms. A review of this attempt to diagrammatically represent her sentences reveals why I believe Palinism is to Bushism like Ulysses is to a Western flick. Enjoy :)

Sarah Palin related gossip

OK. It seems Palin was worse than we imagined. It now seems Sarah Palin was more clueless than we imagined. It's being reported that:

• She didn't know that Africa was a continent. She thought it was a single country.
  
• She thought South Africa was just the southern part of the country of Africa.
• She didn't know the countries in NAFTA.
  
• She didn't know the countries in North America.
• She didn't know what "American exceptionalism" meant.
  

Here is Fox News report on her.



Here's the reporton O'Reilly factor. See how the Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron tears her apart while O'Reilly tries to defend her.

This and this are some excerpts from gossip reported by Newsweek (the article portrays McCain in much better light than Palin, citing cases where McCain actually vetoed negative ads). I have reproduced some of the stories on Palin below (verbatim):

• At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

• McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

• Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

• NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family--clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

Meanwhile, Fox reports that Palin apparently refused preparation help for her interview with Katie Couric and then blamed her staff, specifically Nicole Wallace, when the interview was rightly panned as a disaster. After the Couric interview, Palin turned nasty with her staff and began to accuse them of mishandling her.

They also report that Palin would view press clippings of herself in the morning and throw "tantrums" over the negative coverage. There were times when she would be so nasty and angry that her staff was reduced to tears.

Sarah Palin gets pranked

I can't believe that Sarah Palin fell for this:



For those who didn't get the jokes, here are some of them:

1. The French saying that 'Sarkozy' cites about hunting translated to: 'Maybe we can kill some baby seals, too'

2. The name of the song that 'Sarkozy' says Carla Bruni composed for Sarah Palin translates to: 'Lipstick on a Pig'

3. Here's the exchange between 'Sarkozy' and Palin on the Prime Minister of Canada:

Sarkozy: Some people said in the last days and I thought that was mean that you weren't experienced enough in foreign relations and you know that's completely false. That's the thing that I said to my great friend, the prime minister of Canada Stef Carse.

Palin: Well, he's doing fine, too, and yeah, when you come into a position underestimated it gives you an opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder.

Palin pretends to know the Canadian Prime Minister. The problem is that the Canadian Prime Minister's name is Stephen Harper.

4. Here's the exchange between 'Sarkozy' and Palin on the Prime Minister of Quebec

Sarkozy: I was wondering because you are so next to him, one of my good friends, the prime minister of Quebec, Mr. Richard Z. Sirois, have you met him recently? Did he come to one of your rallies?

Palin: I haven't seen him at one of the rallies but it's been great working with the Canadian officials. I know as governor we have a great co-operative effort there as we work on all of our resource-development projects. You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife. Oh my goodness, you've added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours.

The problem: Quebec is not a country its a province of Canada. It doesn't have a Prime Minister. It does have a chief minister whose name in French translates roughly to first premier. His name is not Mr. Richard Z. Sirois but Jean Charest. Again, note, Palin claims to know him.

5. At one stage 'Sarkozy' says: 'Yes, you know we have a lot in common also, because except from my house I can see Belgium. That's kind of less interesting than you.' The problem is that to the best of my knowledge Sarkozy does not have a house on the Belgian border.

6. Finally, if you pay close attention to the very soft background conversation at the very end, Palin seems to say to her administrative assistant that its a prank call from France. She doesn't seem to know that Montreal is in Canada.

I realize that most of us would be hard pressed to know all these. However, Palin is the Governor of a state that neighbors Canada and Palin is supposed to have dealt with officials from Canada, so her lack of knowledge of the Canadian Prime Minister is galling.

Did attraction had anything to do with it?

This is a very interesting Op-Ed piece where Kathleen Parker speculates that McCain may have selected Palin because he was subliminally attracted to her. I wonder ...

Channeling Miss South Carolina

By popular demand, I am posting this video of Miss South Carolina trying valiantly to answer a question:



Compare this answer to the style of evasion employed by Sarah Palin in some of her interviews. For instance. consider these:

Sarah Palin on the Bush doctrine:




On Supreme Court decisions:




On foreign policy:



In some of these cases, she would have been forgiven for not knowing the answers. However, the way she tried to cover up was channeling Miss South Carolina, and to me, made it worse by making her seem inauthentic. In any event, she clearly uses a beauty pageant style for answering questions.

Palin on troopergate etc.

Palin reacting to the Troopergate report. Rachel Maddows is a huge Obama supporter, but is also a very smart and witty reporter who does a news report that's more like a partican version of the Daily Show than news. So, I usually avoid posting her. However, this one was just too funny to miss.



Meanwhile, it seems that Palin's son-in-law to be, Levi, dropped out of High School to support his newly pregnant girlfriend, Bristol. Call me an elitist, but how does getting a teenager to drop out of school make you a good mother or have the right values?

Finally, here is John Cleese on Sarah Palin. I read similar exclamations of disbelief from blogs around the world.

Racist, where art thou?

This is a clip from Countdown on MSNBC. If you had been wondering where all the racists had got to, wonder no more. They were all at the McCain-Palin rallies.



Palin has managed to draw all the racists and bigots to their fray.

Is she qualified?

If you have not seen the Katie Couric interviews of Sarah Palin, then here they are. They speak for themselves.

Watch her extraordinary confidence and ease when she gets a question which she (or her handlers) anticipated and what happens whenever she's asked for a deeper explanations on unexpected subjects.

(In case you don't have the time here are some short summaries:

This is a quick (somewhat biased) summary of the highlights:




This is SNL's take some of her more interesting answers (there are more such versions on youtube):



)


Here are the longer clips.

These are clips on the economics:







In case you missed it, here's Cafferty on one of the more lucid bits. I mean talk about liberal bias:




Did you get all that? I mean, I studied this stuff for years and even I didn't follow what she said about why the $700 Billion is necessary! What an intellectual!


This is her on foreign policy:




Here, among other things, she tries to remember newspapers she reads. Remember she's a journalism major:




This is what she said on Supreme court cases:




Here's the transcript of what she said on her foreign policy credentials:

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?


PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia--

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.


Here is CNN's attempt to verify whether she can see Russia from Alaska:

McCain interview and more ...

Very interesting interview with McCain, and its interesting to see the line of attack and the explanations that McCain offers.

And this explains why a lot of comics are praying for a McCain-Palin victory.

Speech perfect ...

Interesting! I just watched Sarah Palin's speech. I hate to be proven right, but the media is so predictable and so reactionary. The press had set such low expectations for her that she couldn't fail to meet them. Now, the CNN commentators are falling over themselves complimenting her, "Wow! She can speak. How touching! How feminine!" ... How predictable. They now predict that the race will be close, and McCain could win. Surprise.

While everyone is falling over themselves praising her, what did they expect?

That she'd be an inarticulate bumbling speaker? But, we knew she could speak well. Its the one quality that all beauty pageant contestants must learn, and anyone who watched her speeches would have known that.

That her speech will be badly written? This, unlike many of Obama's speeches, wasn't a speech she wrote. It was written for her by expert speechwriters, Matthew Scully, who's one of the top speechwriters in the country. So, its hardly surprising the speech was well crafted.

The three things that struck me about the speech were that:

• This was a very strident speech that questioned their opponents character, unlike Barack Obama and Biden, who tend to focus on issues. McCain has clearly abandoned his commitment to running a clean campaign.
• The speech criticised Obama and Biden, but didn't lay out any specifics of what she and McCain would do. Her only promise was that she and McCain are people of good character, so people should trust them. Let's hope that McCain will do more.
• She was extraordinarily smug and sarcastic - I believe she just told the public, "bring em on". Expect the DNC to do just that.

The way she performed in the speech suggests that she'll do well in debates. The only problem for the GOP is that she may be so steely that it might be make a lot of men nervous and coupled how unknown she is on the issues, the DNC could make her look like Bush on steroids.

Ah ... now its sexism

This is a really good interview with Carly Fiorina.

Apparently, Sarah Palin wasn't picked because she is a woman. She was picked because she was more qualified than Barack Obama. And, its sexism to say otherwise, despite the fact that Carly herself knows nothing else about her. Also, it seems not to matter that Sarah Palin has diametrically opposite views as McCain on key issues such as global warming, because "people don't vote on single issues". Apparently, this is about diversity and coming together, except that many of these issues may be issues she will have to deal with.

Apparently, 20 months as Governor of Alaska (which, I am told has fewer people than a neighbourhood in Bethesda, MD), and 8 years as mayor of a town of 5000 (with 54 people under her) is enough executive experience to be President, more so than years in the US Senate. As Colbert points out in the clip below, by that token, Palin actually has more experience than McCain. Isn't the ticket the wrong way around?

Gyanifying on the palin' buzz

Let me catch my breath.

Astonished and flabberghasted that McCain has the temerity to select such an inexperienced person to be a heartbeat (or lack thereof) away from the Presidency, I have gone a bit overboard with tracking the revelations.

The revelation of how short and last minute the vetting process was probably has been the most astonishing. Apparently, she was only interviewed once on the the day before she was selected. I believe most companies spend more time interviewing most of their candidates than she spent to get the VP post, that too for a Presidential candidate who actuarially has a 1 in 3 chance of dying in the next 8 years leaving her in charge. This of course says little about Sarah Palin and volumes about McCain.

The incredulity about the choice is apparently shared by many senior Republican commentators too, except that they are murmering it in private. There are even bookies offering 8-1 odds that she will be asked to step aside.

Notwithstanding the hoopla though, I think the predictions of her demise may be premature.

I watched her in a number of speeches, and she is actually quite a good speaker, so the speech tonight may surprise people. She has only to memorize it, not to actually develop the content. She is also a pretty effective debator, expecially when the responses are required in short soundbites on tried and tested issues, which the campaign should provide her with the ammunation for.

Her Achilles' heel is likely to be that she has so much to familiarize herself with, that there are probably some less popular issues that she may need to deprioritize learning about. So, I'd say, if there is an embarrassing stumble, then it will be at a town hall somewhere or when being grilled by some reporters, where an unexpected question yields an unexpected answer.

I could be mistaken, but my guess is that given the low expectations of her, she may surprise people to a point where there will be a rise, before the fall. If she's very lucky, the fall may come too late to have any influence on the election.

... and now we have revelations of business failures and more!

Sarah Palin, apart from being a Governor, was also a business woman, with a very mixed record. It seems that she ran at least a couple of business went went south. Sounds like the current incumbent, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, Obama becomes the first candidate to lay down a Science policy. Here are some of his answers.

By the way, interesting pattern here:

• Sarah Palin was Miss Wasilla and runners up in Miss Alaska.
• Cindy McCain (nee Hensley) was Miss Junior Rodeo Queen of Arizona.
• Carol McCain (nee Shepp) was a swimwear model.

... all the women McCain pick seem to have been models or beauty queens.

CNN grilling a McCain surrogate

This is an amusing interview. It is absolutely clear that he has no idea why Palin is qualified. He doesn't have anything beyond the talking points.



Keep watching over the next few weeks. As a blogger I read recently explained, the tactic will be as follows:

1. What, it couldn't be true! She's too good. It's not worth dignifying.
   
2. It's not true.
   
3. Why are you trying to prove it's true? It's media bias.
   
4. You can't prove it's true.
   
5. It's shameful that you have uncovered this evidence.
6. It's not really relevant.

Rumors and lies ...

First, let me provide an updated corrected version of a rumor I helped spread yesterday. Sarah Palin, it turns out, was not a member of the Alaskan Independence Party. Her husband was. Here are some of the details. Of course, the fact still remains that the head of the party said Sarah Palin had been a member, although he may have misremembered.

The GOP is accusing the DNC and Obama supporters of running false insinuations against Sarah Palin. This is a bit rich considering what McCain and GOP supporters are running against Obama. This is just one example of the type of rumors and accusations that they are circulating - this one through a paid online banner. The fascinating thing is that a close examination of the photograph reveals that it was doctored to add a cigarette in Obama's mouth.

This does not justify unwarranted and unjust attacks on Sarah Palin, but so far, the respone to her have been rumors which have largely been substantiated. Methinks the GOP doth protest too much!

Changing the paradigm ...

This is one of the most insightful pieces of analysis on McCain's ploy and why it might work. Essentially, it argues that McCain is trying to change the conversation from who is the most qualified and has the better answers to who has the right values. Ultimately, the article argues it is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals. Sarah Palin upends Obama and Biden's appeal to family values and blue collar ideals, by putting a truly woman of the people. It also puts a person with truly Western conservative ideals, putting Obama's Western strategy at risk.

There is early evidence at Rassmussen report that Palin is generating the type of enthusiasm and lift for McCain that he must have hoped for. The question is, will this survive an intense scrutiny of Palin.

It'll be interesting to see how Obama and Co. respond.

More updates on Sarah Palin ...

Hmmm ... now it turns out that Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter, a senior in high school, is pregnant. Sarah Palin says Bristol, her daughter, is planning to marry the father of the child. The salacious aspects of this story aside, it's fascinating that Sarah Palin has decided to run for VP at a time when she has a newborn baby with Down's syndrome and a pregnant teenage daughter. Obama threatened that he will fire anyone on his staff exploiting this story. He says its a purely personal matter.

There is another interesting rumor that earlier this year Sarah Palin had traveled to Texas to speak at an energy conference when she was seven months pregnant when her water broke. Rather than cancel her speech and go to a hospital, she decided to give her speech and take a flight back to her home town in Wasilla (a 14 hour delay). Interesting level of concern about her son. Here's a very funny decision map of what she did.

On Sarah Palin's qualifications, she's supposed to be a big tax cutter, and has fought pork. As an example her introductory claim was that she had said, "Thanks, but no thanks!" to the bridge to nowhere. Really? As an Alaskan newspaper reports, that the facts are somewhat different. Ms. Palin basically supported the bridge wholeheartedly all through her election campaign and even thereafter, and only backed down after the money had already been cut by Congress. It's a bit like saying, "You can't fire me! I quit!" Very different from her claim!

This is even more interesting. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the aggregate earmarks for Alaska in 2008 (i.e. under Sarah Palin's watch) was ~$379MM, about $100MM more than any other state in the US. Also, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she hired the firm of Hoffman Silver Gilman & Blasco to help secure spending projects for her town and from 2000 through 2002, Wasilla received more than $5.5 million in federal cash for transportation and social service projects.

On her clean image, the current troopergate is not the first controversy she has faced. She was almost recalled when she was mayor for firing her police chief and library director for not supporting her in the elections. Sort of akin to the Justice department scandal. Also, she was part of 527 group associated with the indicted Senator Ted Stevens, someone she was publicly supporting until recently.

Oh, and there might be some even more explosive material. It seems that Governor Palin was once a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), a party reportedly dedicated to the secession of Alaska. Here's a video of the head of the AIP boasting about it (around 6 minutes into the video). Here she is again saying relatively nice things to the AIP in an address after becoming Governor. Makes you wonder about her comments about putting Alaska first :) At least, that's what the GOP would have said had she been a DNC candidate. Luckily she is from the patriotic party, so the question will probably never arise.

The GOP candidates ...

Governor Sarah Palin is a surprising VP pick in more ways than one. However, her relative inexperience could lull people into underestimating her, which could be a mistake.

She has negotiated the extraordinarily corrupt Alaskan system for many years (first as mayor of a town with about 4000 to 8000 people, then, for the last two years as Governor of the state), which is commendable, and at the very least, suggests she's an extremely astute politician (perhaps the fact that she has relatively little to lose helped).

She has clearly brought good luck to the campaign, with Hurricane Gustav providing the excuse to get Bush and Cheney off the GOP convention agenda, which must be a huge a relief to McCain and distressing to Obama.

She is a pretty good speaker. An example of her effectiveness is this speech she gave after her gubernatorial election.

After taking office, she was responsible for signing the deal with TransCanada for a gas pipeline. The deal is interesting, because of some of its terms. For instance, it offers a $500MM subsidy to TransCanada. There is also some debate about whether building a pipeline to Alberta, CA was consistent with putting "Country First". This is likely to be spun by both sides. The GOP will sure tout her independence from Big Oil and her executive experience. The Democrats will point out she just shipped US jobs abroad and gave a handout to the oil companies (giving subsidies like this to oil companies is pretty normal, but seems extraordinary in a year when so many people are likely to be in foreclosure).

On the other hand, she apparently got her passport only a year ago. Has not really traveled around the country.

She has several right wing views that directly contradict McCain's. She believes creationism and is pro teaching of 'intelligent design' in school. She believes that all forms of stem cell research should be banned. She believes that global warming is not man made.

She takes an extreme view that abortion should not be offered to rape victims, and should only be offered if the mother's life is in danger. This is from an Anchorage Daily News article on the Alaska gubernatorial debate:

The candidates were pressed on their stances on abortion and were even asked what they would do if their own daughters were raped and became pregnant.

Palin said she would support abortion only if the mother's life was in danger. When it came to her daughter, she said, "I would choose life."

Sum total, if her daughter is raped, Sarah Palin intends to make her bear the rapist's child.

And this is from the Juneau Empire:

Palin, however, isn't interested in talking about her views.

"She would not seek out this issue. She feels like there are several other issues that are paramount to the future of the state," said Curtis Smith, spokesman for the Palin campaign.

Smith said Palin is opposed to abortion, but believes an exception should be made if the health of the mother is in danger.

That's the only exception Palin would make, though, Smith said.

"She doesn't make exception for rape and incest, only for health of the mother," he said.

There is slight nuance here. A health exception could include something that would consider the quality of health of the mother. A life exception is only if the mother's life is in danger. Palin herself advocated the latter. So, if a pregnancy would only, say threaten the mother's ability to bear more children, I assume her answer would be it should not be terminated.

By the way, she also opposes all forms of birth control, including hormonal treatment, condoning only traditional Bible approved approaches. She has advocated criminalizing abortion and banning birth control.

Many conservatives are echoing a view that Geraldine Ferraro expresses, that smart people can learn the issues on the job. However, consider the contrast between the reaction to the two candidates. In Obama's case, he was considered inexperienced despite literally pages of opinions expressed by him on virtually every major national issue dating back, in some cases, more than a decade. In Sarah Palin's case, there is almost nothing on most issues of note, apart from social issues and a few issues that affect Alaskan's. The most astonishingly creative explanation for her experience on foreign policy was Michael Barone who notes, "Alaska is the only state with a border with Russia. And it is the only state with territory, in the Aleutian Islands, occupied by the enemy in World War II."

As a campaign ploy, this is brilliant. It means that she can morph into whatever position McCain wants to occupy. As a former beauty queen pageant, she should have the poise to carry it off. However, it reminds me of the movie The Dead Zone. In the movie, Christopher Walken's character has a premonition about an up and coming star politician (Martin Sheen) who he realizes would plunge the world into a needless nuclear war. In this case, similarly, the US is faced with selecting a VP whose views on most subjects are completely unknown. In fact, in most of these cases, she has probably never thought about the issues at all, and will rely on her advisers. It will be a complete roll of the dice.

It was interesting to note Geraldine Ferraro's unwillingness to endorse Obama was telling of the resentment some Hillary supporters feel. In her case, she is still smarting for having been called a racist. However, the analysis she repeats in the interview, while factually correct, ignores a larger reality. Obama does get 90&+ of the Black vote (although, he got substantially less at the beginning of his campaign and it increased to nearly 100% by the end). However, not even ALL the black votes alone would have won him the election, when Hillary was receiving more votes than any other candidate in history. In fact, Obama led Hillary among every demographic under 45. Its only in the over 45 population that Hillary made it up, by winning both the majority of women and the majority of white working class men. The big divide in the election was age, not race.

It is this fact that McCain may be attempting to address by selecting an even younger and attractive running mate. It may, after all, be what helped Palin to win the position over her more qualified female conservative counterparts.

Meanwhile, McCain is busy reinventing himself. This site is liberal and so biased. However, a look at the sources suggests that even adjusting for the bias, McCain has clearly flip flopped on virtually everything imaginable. He has been very maverick is cavalierly moving from moderate positions to a completely right wing one. As Michael Kinsley so eloquently points out in connection with the experience issue, all this raises the question which John McCain should we believe? Either way, as Michael Kinsley puts it, one of them is, what's the word I'm looking for ... ahh, lying!