Rebecca Traister over at Salon has a biting, seething, angry, and extraordinarily well written piece about, what she calls, “the Sarah Palin pity party.”
Make sure to read the second page, where Ms. Traister offers up an indictment of Palin in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson’s list of grievances in The Declaration of Independence.
Ruben Navarette has an absolutely priceless column on CNN today about the looming financial crisis, tonight’s scheduled debate that may or may not happen, and John McCain’s choice to suspend his campaign and come back to Washington for the sake of the economy.
Here’s the money quote:
“I think McCain deserves applause for having his priorities straight and for showing real leadership. For the past several days, the media and members of both parties have been scaring the daylights out of the American people by calling this the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.”
Priceless. Navarette sets up McCain, the presidential candidate who said the economy is not his strong suit, as the only person showing “real leadership” on this issue and having “his priorities straight.” Yet negotiations for this bill have been going on for days now without anything coming up for a vote, and yesterday’s meeting at the White House turned into a joke; a farce; a lousy photo-op. Some sources have said McCain barely spoke.
And McCain’s priorities? Two days ago his only priority was getting this bailout deal done. He suspended his campaign. He asked to delay tonight’s debate. He cancelled an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. Then he taped an interview with Katie Couric, stayed a few more hours in New York, and arrived in Washington without yet having read the three page proposal. Now he is on his way to Mississippi for the debate he wanted to delay to work on the bailout proposal which has yet to be passed.
McCain deserves applause for his conduct over the passed few days? Now that is some serious spin.
Sarah Palin sat down for an interview with CBS’ Katie Couric. When asked to defend her foreign policy credentials, Palin touted Alaska’s proximity to Russia and Canada. When pressed by Couric, she simply repeated the same claim.
This was not a “gotcha” question in any way, shape, or form. Sarah Palin’s inability to answer a simple question on foreign policy means one of two things:
She is not ready for primetime.
She has no answer to give.
Either way it does not reflect well on the McCain-Palin campaign or the Governor herself.
An important component of the CERN Large Hadron Particle Collider failed soon after the “Big Bang” machine was turned on for preliminary testing, and now scientists at the European facility are saying that the doomsday device will not be ready for use again until spring.
The delay will be caused in part by the fact that the component in question is located in a part of the collider that must be chilled to near absolute zero. So, this part of the machine must first be warmed to a point where technicians can actually come in and fix the thing, and then it must be rechilled before the collider can begin more tests. Adding to the delay is the fact that the CERN laboratory shuts down during the winter months.
Here’s a question, why does a machine that needs to function at the coldest temperatures shut down in the winter, when the climate cools? Shouldn’t it require less energy to cool the collider when it is naturally cold outside?
Just a thought, here’s the story from CNN.
GM suit and just plain asshole Bob Lutz, famous for saying global warming is a “total crock of shit,” was a guest on The Colbert Report. Would he repeat his ballsy assertion? Or would he hem and haw like an idiot, proving that he is no expert on the subject and should stick to his day job, running GM into the ground?
Watch the video to find out.
Haven’t given out the What’s Wrong With America? title in awhile, so we figured we’d give it to John Stossel since he seems to need an audience so much.
Here’s his semi-coherent article from RealClearPolitics.
This is a slightly different version of What’s Wrong With America that Stossel will receive because it is not so much what he says in his article that has us riled up, but his blatant opportunism.
The article is titled “Barack Obama and White Privilege,” and while Stossel analyzes the latter to a fair and intelligent degree, the former seems to have been thrown into the title merely to ensure a healthy readership. The article is mostly dedicated to the opinions of conservative pundit Shelby Steele, and one could probably rightly assume that Barack Obama wasn’t contacted for his opinion on the subject, even though his name figures prominently in the title (but not so prominently in the piece itself).
And the whole point of this piece seems to be that because Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for President he is proof that we live in a “meritocracy,” and racism has been defeated once and for all.
But wait, Stossel then writes, “There are plenty of people in America who want to vote for someone because he is black.” After which he brings up Geraldine Ferraro’s comments from months ago.
So what is the point? Are we completely a meritocracy or are we all racists? Don’t know and neither does Stossel, but he does have good advice for everyone at the end:
“There is black privilege — and white privilege. It’s time to stop complaining about past discrimination and to treat people as individuals, not as members of a certain race. “
Thanks John, as someone who went to Princeton, we’re sure you know a lot about white privilege, but maybe you should stop tossing people’s names into your titles to attract readers when your “insights” really have nothing to do with them.
This probably would have been a better column if Shelby Steele had written it himself. At least then it might have been about something rather than just injecting racism into the 2008 Presidential campaign for what seems like the millionth time.
Finally, this crazy presidential campaign season has returned to the issues. Enough focus on Paris Hilton and pigs covered in lipstick, the current economic crisis has done the American people a favor by reminding us all that important issues are relevant, even if they are not entertaining. And finally, the current economic situation has brought to the forefront the philosophies of the two candidates and their political parties.
We as voters now have a choice between which direction the country will go, and unfortunately, neither seems to be closer to democracy. No, in this election the choice (on economics) seems to be between Fascism and Socialism.
Many conservative websites and “news” organizations have been calling Obama a socialist for months now, so we’ll just stipulate that Obama’s economic focus is entirely that of “distribution of wealth, with the goal of achieving a degree of social and economic equality.” Rightwingers happy with that characterization? Great. Now it’s time to get pissed; if Obama is a socialist then our current system (which McCain has all but guaranteed he would perpetuate) is nothing more than fascism.
Consider this: In 1936, historian Gaetano Salvemini characterized economic fascism thusly,
“the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise… Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social.”
Sarah Palin is getting more coverage than Jesus, Hitler and Britney Spears combined nowadays (we’re guilty of jumping on the bandwagon too). She’s getting so much coverage in fact, that all the articles can be boiled down to three general themes:
–Sarah Palin’s numerous (minor and manufactured) scandals and other information that could make voters think twice about putting her anywhere near the White House.
–In defense of Sarah Palin getting piled on by the media.
–Bitching about how Palin won’t answer questions from the media.
So rather than read through all of those articles– which are all pretty much the same anyway– we’ve compiled the best of the day:
Juan Cole writes about how closely Sarah Palin’s fundamentalist Christianity resembles that of the Islamic terrorists we are fighting. From Salon.
Pat Buchanan writes a hard-hitting and hilarious defense of Palin. Over at RealClearPolitics.
And finally, E.J. Dionne writes about how Palin’s absence from the Sunday morning talk show circuit is an implicit confirmation of her inexperience by the McCain campaign. From the Washington Post.
Enjoy!
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is ready to be switched on for its first experiment Wednesday, when it will attempt to send a beam of protons around its entire 17 mile circular tunnel. Assuming Wednesday’s experiment goes as planned, the collider would then begin sending particles around the circular tunnel in opposite directions, basically to see what happens when these highly energized protons smash into each other. The ultimate goal of the Large Hadron Collider will be to recreate the conditions present in the universe directly after the Big Bang in hopes of gaining a better understanding of how our world came to be.
Detractors say the particle collider could inadvertently create a black hole, which of course would destroy Earth in seconds and bring life to an end.
Or maybe it won’t, we’ll see on Wednesday.
Here’s the article from CNN.
Capping off a convention filled with excitement, Sen. John McCain gave one of his best speeches last night as he accepted the Republican party’s nomination for President. The sad part, though, is while it was one of McCain’s best performances, the speech was decidedly mediocre. It was hard not to pity McCain early on in the speech as he was interrupted by protesters as well as his own audience, who drowned out the activists with chants of “U.S.A.” (on a side note, where the hell was security for McCain’s speech?) However, the infiltration by anti-war demonstrators was, by far, the most entertaining part of the night.
Once the hubbub died down, McCain got down to business, characterizing himself and his running mate as reformers who will bring change to a broken Washington filled with corruption. Interestingly, Tom Shales, media critic for the Washington Post probably has the best analysis of this part of McCain’s speech:
“It’s like staging a revolution against yourself — saying that the Republicans have got to go so the Republicans can move in and clean up the mess.”
But last night, McCain was not speaking as an ordinary Republican. His was a surprisingly bipartisan speech, surprising because of the alarming level of rancor spouted from the podium over the prior two days. Gone was the derision for Obama as community organizer, and in its place was Sen. John McCain: Maverick, War Hero, change agent.
But in the end it was an average speech given by an average speaker. It was heavy on McCain’s back story and light on specific proposals which will make this country better (other than “drill, baby, drill). And it was telling that McCain received some of his loudest cheers when he mentioned running mate Sarah Palin. This was her convention, not his.
