I don’t know about the rest of the interview, but this part is highlighted on TPM. In it, Gibson asks Palin what she thinks about the Bush Doctrine. She is obviously clueless–does not know one of the major policy stands of the current administration–and after trying to fake her way out of it, trying to trick Gibson into giving her the answer, she takes a blind stab instead of saying “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Given how she went into specifics about a few other things but failed to know such a broad, basic element of current governance shows up how she has crammed so much as of late; such rush study allows you to appear schooled until you hit a hole in your study, and the shallowness of your knowledge becomes apparent. This is not a person who is familiar and well-versed in policies and current events, this is someone who stays up late reading CliffsNotes.

Then Gibson actually pushes her to say whether or not she approves of the recent crossing of the border into Pakistan–a beautiful question, as it shows up a McCain hypocrisy, as McCain ruthlessly slammed Obama for suggesting such a thing be possible, and now Bush is carrying out such raids himself–so Palin either has to support Obama’s judgment over McCain’s, or call attention to the hypocrisy of her running mate. Pressed three times for a straight answer, Palin comes back only with bluster about “all options” being “on the table.” While a weasel answer, it effectively agrees that the decision to make the raids–thus confirming Obama was right and McCain was wrong–and shows up McCain’s hypocrisy. Plus, we get to see Palin rather blatantly trying to squirm out of giving a straight answer.

I didn’t know Gibson had it in him; I would guess that he heard all the criticism about how people would react to a fluff piece and decided it was better to risk being kicked out of the rest of the coverage than to be shown up for a shill. If the rest of the interview went like this, then Palin is in big trouble. If it was just this and the rest was fluff, then at least Gibson got a few points for not letting Palin get away scot-free.

Update: Here are a few more excerpts. Palin still acts the part of the consummate politician, dodging questions instead of answering them, and Gibson lets her get away with a lot. Palin, for example, claims that foreign policy is not important because (a) energy is more important, and (b) gosh, Charlie, lots of vice presidents had little or no experience, so I’m in good company.

By the way, did anyone else notice the inordinately high number of times she called Gibson “Charlie”? Not that she was being informal or presumptuous, but who repeats a person’s name so often in a conversation? Small point, but kinda weird.

Trust me on this, she’ll be ready with an answer for the “Bridge to Nowhere” lie, though it’ll probably have to be a whopper in and of itself, as there’s no substance to her claim at all. She’ll also be ready on Troopergate, Lipstick on a Pig, and the eBay Jet.

Instead, she should be asked technical questions. She has experience with Russia? Fine. Sarah, name three foreign policy issues you dealt with regarding Russia during your term as governor so far. Outside of the Georgia issue, what are the three biggest policy challenges the United States faces with Russia?

She has Commander-in-Chief experience? Great. Ask her some questions about how she would respond to specific military challenges. Ask her to highlight three military programs currently in Congress that she feels need attention.

Not only do such questions have substance (more than just “Who is the leader of Pakistan?”), but they would be hard for her to answer without (a) someone feeding her information through a hidden earpiece, or (b) actual experience or knowledge in the areas Republicans have been claiming are her strengths. Not to mention that all of these are questions that would not even begin to faze Obama or Biden, who speak regularly on such issues with thoughtfulness and clarity.

As for McCain, ask him about Czechoslovakia training al Qaeda terrorists crossing over the Iraq/Pakistan border during the Miss Buffalo Chip contest, and his head will simply implode.

The McCain campaign went ballistic with faked outrage after Obama, referring strictly to McCain’s continuation of Bush’s policies and making no reference whatsoever to Sarah Palin, called McCain’s claims about his policies “lipstick on a pig,” as well as “old fish in a newspaper.” Somehow this was supposed to be a slur against Palin, though there is literally zero connection to Palin in the statement, and the expression “lipstick on a pig” is a common one, especially in politics. But the idea is that lipstick must refer to a woman and therefore Obama called Palin a pig is somehow in order, and, we are forced to assume, Obama must from this point on refrain from using any metaphors which contain any reference to anything related to the female gender, even when talking about things completely unrelated to Sarah Palin.

However, a statement made by McCain late last year was found to include the same expression; when talking about Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, he said, “I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” McCain repeated that expression this year in May. So by the McCain campaign’s own standards, McCain’s statement was offensive, disgraceful, and sexist, and he owes Hillary Clinton a sincere apology. It was worse than Obama’s, in fact, because McCain was referring to a woman’s policy, and so the expression was far more direct in its insult. Not to mention that McCain only laughed and sympathized when one of his supporters called Hillary a “bitch.” (Of course, McCain has called his own wife a “trollop” and something else I won’t print, so this should be nothing new.) So McCain really needs to apologize to Hillary and to women everywhere. By his own campaign’s standards.

Or we can recognize that the McCain campaign is dishonorable, disingenuous, and hypocritical, and just leave it at that.

As both Palin and McCain continue to repeat, again and again, the baldfaced “Bridge to Nowhere” lie, I checked the major news outlets: only one, CBS, had a story on the bridge lie on their front pages. Everyone else had stories about McCain and Palin getting big crowds (I thought that was a “celebrity” thing) and enjoying their post-convention poll bounce. A few other major news sources–including, surprisingly, Fox–have stories in their databases fact-checking the claim (MSNCB and CNN don’t show such a story after a cursory search), but none feature the story–a story which should be a big one, because McCain and Palin continue to repeat it, often, even after it has been wholly discredited and shown up for an outright lie–and the McCain campaign is even basing their major theme–“a pair of mavericks”–on this claim.

I thought that this time there would be a chance of some light being cast: an article which promised a “fact check” on whether the charges against McCain and lobbyists were true. The piece started out OK, but quickly started making unnecessary equivocations.

The first is limiting the attention only to “top advisors,” ignoring the fact that the campaign hires dozens of other lobbyists at all levels of the campaign.

The second comes when the article stresses McCain’s BS line about how none are “currently registered,” a distinction without a real difference, as the New York Times pointed out. For example, one lobbyist who is mentioned, Randy Scheunemann, received payments from Georgia just months earlier despite being currently “unregistered”; additionally, while Scheunemann is unregistered, the firm from which he is on a “leave of absence” is still highly active. In short, “none are currently registered” is a false front meaning that they made some changes on paper to make it look like they aren’t lobbying–but they obviously are.

However, the kicker comes in the end of the article, when the author makes the same old stupid argument of equivalency:

But the bottom line is, both sides have ties to lobbyists, meaning whomever wins will have a hard time backing up the rhetoric about change and shaking up Washington.

“Both sides”? True in a technical sense, but wildly inaccurate in a quantitative and qualitative sense. Saying that “both sides have ties to lobbyists” is like saying “both sides have candidates of advanced years.” In the case of one candidate, the statement is barely true; in the case of the other, it is far more strongly the case than is made to appear.

The Liberal Media™ at work again, remaining ever-vigilant.

Update: Steve Benen points out another example of CNN equivocating and refusing to do the most fundamental tasks of journalism, this time on the “bridge to nowhere” lying issue.

Here we go: Churches want full power to play in politics and still maintain their tax-free status:

Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.

The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

“For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the church,” ADF attorney Erik Stanley said. “It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It’s not for the government to mandate the role of church in society.”

One can only suppose that these churches have become so used to their tax-free status that they believe it is a gift from god, and not part and parcel of the separation of church and state; that the whole reason for being tax-exempt is not because churches just naturally deserve it, but because paying taxes is inextricably tied to representation. Churches already get away with so much–they have powerful lobbies, they get mentioned far more than is comfortable in places of legislative and executive power, and candidates bow and scrape before their leaders and covet their endorsements, all this without being taxed. Now they wish to tear down the last remnants of the wall separating church from state and become fully, openly political, completing the transformation they have been fighting to achieve, merging the church with government, while still claiming as their inalienable right freedom from being taxed–setting them up as a special, elevated group which gets full political privileges without having to pay the cover charge everyone else does.

The timing of all of this is also clearly opportunistic; coming just two months before the election, they want to have the full impact of supporting McCain, and they are probably hoping that they can use the Supreme Court challenge for cover–that if they lose, they can claim that they were shielded by the blanket protection of that challenge and can keep their tax-exempt status afterwards. And with the Bush administration covering things at least until January, they might be safe in that assumption.

But there is a very good chance they will not lose, or at least that they will make some gains; the new Bush court leans somewhat in that direction. You know that the Wingnut Four will always vote as a block for anything the right wing wants them to, so it’s a matter of getting Kennedy to agree with them just enough. And even if they don’t get that, they might be able to use this to energize the base–kind of a reverse Roe v. Wade, a way of telling Christian conservatives that if McCain wins, they get even more influence.

It’s very good political strategy, which should scare you, unless you like the prospect of religion gaining more power in politics–which many religious people probably think is a spiffy idea. But if you are religious, you should be afraid of religion marrying into politics. Very afraid.

I will now step aside and let Tim continue in the comments.

The McCain campaign’s utter gall is getting more and more impressive with each passing day. The latest:

Rick Davis, campaign manager for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., just told Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace that McCain running mate Gov. Sarah Palin won’t subject herself to any tough questions from reporters “until the point in time when she’ll be treated with respect and deference.”

I wanted to say that she’d better not go anywhere near Bill O’Reilly, but then I recalled that it’s only Democrats that Bill-O treats like scum.

All snarkiness aside, just exactly how snide and abusive does the McCain campaign have to get with the media before it all backfires? Pretty snide and abusive, is my guess, but you never know–the media can be fickle, but I think they know that if they start reporting straight, Obama will start running away with it and it won’t be the close race they’re hoping for. But I betcha there are a lot of reporters out there who are chafing at the bit, held back only by their editors and publishers.

Still, demanding “respect and deference” before granting a media interview? And they call Obama an “elitist”? What a ripsnorter that is!

Update: The McCain campaign announced that they would grant an interview to ABC (how magnanimous of them!). One can only guess at what level of “respect and deference” ABC had to scrape and bow to in order to get the interview. We won’t know until we see it. The McCain campaign claimed that there were “no ground rules on our end,” but the details took two days to work out–so we’re really buying that load of bull about no ground rules. And there may be significance in the fact that they specifically chose Charles Gibson for the interview–the same guy who tore into Obama during one of the debates, so viciously that the audience started booing him.

One of the big themes of the McCain/Palin campaign has been about how elitist Obama is, how he and liberals in general snidely look down upon those in rural areas, with “common” American lives and values.

I have said it before and will say it again: it’s conservatives, and at least some rural people who seem to be elitist, feeling that their way of life is far superior, looking down on the urban liberals. Back in the San Francisco Bay Area, anyone who made snide remarks about “hicks” would be excoriated and generally regarded as an ass; in the notably liberal atmosphere of the college office where I work, anyone who put down rural America just because of their lifestyle or common values would be instantly looked down upon with scorn. Those are “San Francisco values.” Apparently, they don’t have the same kind of values in the GOP.

Apparently, at least among conservatives, it is perfectly acceptable to look down on urbanites for no other reason than the perceived arrogance, and to presume a superiority inherent in their own preferred way of life. Note that when people like Palin sneer at the straw-man “elitists” they create, they then act like it is their own way of life that is superior.

Imagine if a Democratic politician went before a crowd and said the same kind of thing in reverse–instead of putting down “Washington elitists,” they put down “small-town hicks,” and generally lorded the urban experience over rural folk. Imagine if Barack Obama had made this speech:

A writer observed: “We produce good people in our big cities, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.” They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America … who manage our businesses, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a big city, working as a community organizer. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a community organizer is sort of like a “small-town mayor,” except that you actually help people.

Imagine that Obama then sneered at how right-wingers actually looked down on working people, saying, “We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in New York and another way in Podunk.” Now imagine the conservative response. Would this, or would this not, produce cries of “liberal elitist!” from the right wing? Would they not decry it as a call of left-wing arrogance? Would they not attack Obama for taking on airs of smug superiority? And yet, that is the text from Palin’s speech, with the terms reversed, from right to left.

I recall a member of one of my Linguistics classes back in college who made an interesting point about wealthy families and the way people in the middle class perceived them. Not just the stereotypes, but the specific language used. Wealthy people don’t use words like “chauffeur,” they use “driver”; they don’t say “mansion,” they say “house” or “home.” The point being that the popular view of wealthy families was one that presumed a haughtiness, a smug arrogance that, more often than not, did not in fact exist. It was an imagined attitude, a straw man opinion that made it easier to look down upon rich people, seeing oneself as superior. In short, manufacturing the illusion of arrogance on the part of another in order to justify one’s own arrogance over them.

That’s what we have here: the entire “elitist” mythology is a carefully constructed straw man created for the sole purpose of justifying an arrogance conservatives want to themselves enjoy. Like an office employee imagining his company is corrupt as a way of justifying his embezzling from it, the idea of liberal elitists is nothing more than a way for conservatives to commit the very wrongs they assign to others.

McCain just doesn’t care about the truth. He is lost in a fog of his own truthiness. It began with some pretty outrageous stuff–Obama canceled a visit to the troops because reporters with cameras wouldn’t be there, Obama wants to lose the war so he can win the election, and so forth. He lied about himself–that he doesn’t know how many houses he has, that he is reluctant to talk about his war record, that he’s a reformer, he’s not surrounded by lobbyists, he will bring change from the Bush campaign, etc.

And now, he has a whole new half of the ticket to lie about, and the lies come more smoothly and quickly, as if he has stopped trying to make the lies sound plausible in the light of any fact-checking, as if he can change any detail he wants to make it sound good. Palin was thoroughly vetted. Palin was against the “bridge to nowhere.” Palin fought against pork. Palin has executive experience because she lived in proximity to Russia. Palin is the best qualified person in the Republican Party to step up and be president should McCain pass away.

Now he seems to be starting a Two For One sale. He said:

You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor, and sold it on eBay — and made a profit!

Except that she didn’t sell it on eBay, and she sold it for a loss. Now, maybe somebody told him that story and he just bought it fully, showing him to be irresponsibly gullible and irresponsible with the facts. But frankly, I think that at this point, he’s just making things up. I think that he has gotten away with blatant lies so often, for so long, that he thinks he can just let them flow like a river and nobody in the media will call him on it.

After all, Gore, at most, lied about a few small things, like how many times he’d visited the scenes of forest fires and with whom–the kind of thing that is far more easily seen as a slip or something in the blur of PR appearances–and got branded a serial liar, a label which the media gleefully adopted. McCain has been lying outright for quite some time, and even now, with the eBay story, you get headlines like “The eBay Myth,” or “McCain version of Palin’s eBay story goes a bit far.” Myth? Goes a bit far? McCain was lying.

Gore told the truth when he said he took the initiative in creating the Internet and is still called a liar for that to this day; McCain makes crap up out of thin air and says the most preposterous untruths, and he “goes a bit far” in his “mythmaking”? As John Kerry said, you gotta be kidding me.

Just one more thing, not fully related. How can the Republicans all cheer when their candidates so snidely insult the act of community service, when half the people in the arena are waving “service” signs, and when the theme of the entire campaign is “country first”? As if being mayor of a small town, firing people because of personal vendettas, and running up a huge debt is far more noble and selfless than helping build housing for the poor and the needy? “Country First,” my ass. These people simply have no morals when it comes to winning elections, none at all.

This really needs to be pushed. Palin has lied repeatedly about having “killed” the already-dead “bridge to nowhere,” when she was actually a big supporter. She’s being cast as an anti-Washington, cost-cutting, reformist earmark-killer, when, in actuality, she was a positive earmark shark, hiring lobbyists to bring more pork to wherever she was.

Everyone’s onto this: an embarrassing screw-up, right smack in the middle of McCain’s speech. What first appeared to be a green screen, it showed what could have been a luxurious mansion owned by John Cindy McCain. It was supposed to be Walter Reed Military Army Medical Center. It was really Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood. (Hollywood? McCain’s an elitist!!) Bizarre error, considering that Google Image has great high-res images of the medical center; how they screwed that image up is rather surprising. Not just that one person got it wrong, but that they either (a) had only one person checking what went on the screen behind McCain, or (b) they had lots of people and no one caught it. Once again, a lack of preparedness and responsibility.

The McCain campaign can’t go very long without yet another screw-up. Not that we should get over-confident, but neither should we worry too much. McCain just had his convention. When that’s over, things will get a lot tougher for him–and the Obama campaign is running things pretty well, going after McCain and not Palin, showing the kind of restraint most of us have not had.

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So, now that the convention is over and Palin does not have the excuse of training and practice for her speech, of course she’ll be appearing in public and answering questions, right? Weellll, maybe not. If these reports are correct, she’s going to “hole up” in Alaska. On the surface, she’s doing it to see off her son. More likely, they want to keep her away from an unscheduled moment in public until they can get her trained well enough not to make a wrong move. After the Campbell Brown incident, they’re probably scared to death some uppity reporter will try to ask Sarah a question she can’t answer well. I think they know how paper-thin her popularity is outside of conservatives, and what propensity she has for lying, badly. So no wonder they’re hiding her.

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John McCain a few weeks ago: “I still believe the fundamentals of the economy are strong.” Reality: Unemployment hits 6.1%, a 5-year high.

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Obama faces off with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, and handles himself very solidly in the face of strident attempts to attack and/or catch Obama in a slip-up. (Seriously, watch the interview–if any reporter treated McCain with such snide disdain, the McCain campaign would go nuclear and viciously attack the reporter, the network, and anyone else with a ten-mile radius.)

Now it’s McCain’s turn to appear on Olbermann. McCain? McCain??

Hmm. The War Hero™ seems a bit chicken. Obama can take it; McCain can’t. Maybe he can send in his #2.

Oh, wait, I forgot, she’s hiding out in Alaska, too afraid to talk to anyone in the media. Put her up against Olbermann, and we’d see her “foreign policy executive experience” go up in flames in ten seconds.

So much for the idea that Palin is more capable than Obama.

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Finally, a note: the McCain’s aren’t elitists, and here’s why: not because they only use four of their seven or maybe ten homes, not because McCain likes to ride nine-car motorcades to pick up his grande cappuccino from Starbucks. The proof comes in the fact that during the convention, Cindy McCain wore an outfit and accessories priced at roughly $300,000. That proves they’re not elitist: with “rich” starting at $5 million a year, Cindy was slumming it in an outfit barely worth chump change.

Here’s McCain just a few months ago:

“I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences,” he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the “heroes” who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.

“I am always reluctant to talk about these things,” McCain said.

Today? Not so reluctant. His entire campaign is pretty much two things: “I’m a war hero” and “Obama is a traitor.” But the “I’m a war hero” is something he talks about far more than anything else.

Reluctantly, of course..

Wow, that didn’t take long. As McCain is hiring for her the same agent who ruthlessly smeared McCain in 2000, Palin uses Alaskan taxpayer money to hire a slick lawyer to defend her in the Troopergate scandal, and that lawyer is now using every Bush tactic in the book. First, she won’t testify, using the bogus “executive privilege” dodge–the Bush’s “screw the law, I’m not talking” tactic. Second, her lawyer wants the investigation handed over to a state review board–which is run by three appointees hand-picked by Palin herself–the Bush “we’re in charge of investigating ourselves, and we won’t” tactic.

In short, she’s trying to tell the American people, as well as the people of Alaska, that she’s better than they are–she’s above the law and doesn’t have to answer for her actions.

Meanwhile, the avalanche of scandals, lies, and generally sordid details around Palin continues. How about this one: just two weeks ago, Palin was in church listening to her pastor announce that Jews suffer terror attacks as part of god’s justice for not being Christians. Those silly Jews, they apparently don’t know that Jesus was Jewish! According to Palin’s pastor, anyway. Of course, the media isn’t reporting on this, probably because there’s no way they can verify it, I guess. Check out audio and transcripts of Palin’s church’s sermons here.

Also, it appears that Palin herself spoke at the church, calling the war in Iraq a “task that is from god,” and that in addition to Iraq being a holy war, the Alaskan pipeline is just as holy. But we all knew that.

And oh yeah, in my last post I mentioned that the McCain people who were insisting that they thoroughly vetted Palin relied on claiming to have used methods that cannot be checked out, like online searches–indicating that they were making it up. And indeed, they seem to have been doing just that. One of the methods they claimed to have used was an FBI background check. What they didn’t figure on was the FBI denying they did any such background check. Oops.

Do you think that the McCain people are keeping Palin locked up so no one asks her how well abstinence education works? Nah, that’d be too easy for Palin to take and make herself seem like a victim. Maybe they’re worried that they’ll pull a Campbell Brown and ask her to give an actual example of an executive accomplishment that isn’t embarrassingly trivial. Or perhaps they’re concerned that she’ll just say anything at all–let’s face it, not an hour goes by without some new, excruciatingly tawdry revelation about Palin coming to light (which reminds me, did you know that the ass-kicking redneck hockey-playing high schooler who knocked up Palin’s underage daughter is actually going to attend the Republican convention?) and they don’t want her to become unhinged on national teevee. Or, most likely, they’re just too busy attempting to encase Palin in a block of impenetrable plastic before anyone with an uncontrolled mic can get close to her.

Meanwhile: Obama’s Revenge. In return for McCain walking all over Obama’s speech to the nation by announcing Palin’s nomination just hours later, Obama has taken a rather daring risk himself–he has agreed to appear on O’Reilly’s show on Fox opposite McCain giving his speech. Though frankly, I’m having trouble believing this is not a hoax of some sort. While I believe Obama could argue O’Reilly into a smoking pile of cinders, I don’t trust O’Reilly to do something incredibly stupid. Which could have benefits for Obama just as easily. But then, the volatility itself is probably good for very high ratings, which could draw more people away from McCain and maybe even win some respect for Obama from conservatives.

Still, that’s just weird.

Update: Like I said, not an hour goes by. Now it appears that she fired the Wasilla police chief because (a) he made bars close at 2 am instead of 5 am so as to reduce drunk driving, and (b) the NRA didn’t like his stance on concealed weapons laws. This in addition to Palin trying to fire the city librarian after she refused to censor books Palin didn’t like.

I’ll see if I can stay up another hour and catch the next story about Palin.

One thing that always puzzled me about Hillary supporters was their propensity to claim that “whenever” they criticized Obama in any way, they were subjected to cries of racism. The thing is, I never saw any of that. (If anyone knows of an example, please point me to it.) Now, if there was some kind of criticism from the Clinton camp that was racially charged, then sure–like when Bill Clinton suggested that Obama’s campaign in South carolina was just like Jesse Jackson’s, for example, or when a Clinton pushed a photo of Obama in Somali garb–items which emphasized race without any real substance backing them. Perhaps the Clinton supporters simply denied to themselves that the Clinton actions were racially charged, and so felt that the Obama camp accusations were an unjust playing of the race card.

So perhaps I am missing what the Obama camp is doing to deserve this criticism:

In a comment sent out by the Arizona Republican’s aides, adviser Carly Fiorina said she was “appalled by the Obama campaign’s attempts to belittle Governor Sarah Palin’s experience. The facts are that Sarah Palin has made more executive decisions as a Mayor and Governor than Barack Obama has made in his life. Because of Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the Presidency and the treatment she received, American women are more highly tuned than ever to recognize and decry sexism in all its forms. They will not tolerate sexist treatment of Governor Palin.”

Unless I’m mistaken, they are simply taking a charge of inexperience–well-deserved at that–and calling it sexist on the idea that of course Palin in eminently qualified to be vice president and therefore president–so the only explanation must be that Obama is denying her experience only because she’s a woman. Um, yeah, right, because nobody could possibly believe that Palin isn’t just oozing presidential authority.

I think we can pretty solidly say that the McCain camp is now officially playing the gender card–and are trying to use it as a shield against any criticism, despite there not being any sexism involved. Not a surprise, as the McCain campaign has tried the same thing–with a great deal of success–with McCain’s POW past. So now any criticism made against their VP choice will be given the “you can’t criticize her because she’s a woman” charge.

Is it my imagination, or is everyone in this election except Obama throwing up some sacred-cow personal attribute–gender, POW status–as a way to deflect genuine and deserved criticism?

Obama widens his lead in the polls, breaking 50% in the dailies. Apparently, he had it all wrong: you become popular by letting the other guy get all the attention. McCain apparently knew this secret–else why was “Obama” the most-used word on McCain’s site?–but slipped up with the Palin nomination and inadvertently got the media to focus on his campaign. Big mistake.

So, Palin actually did have her fifth baby, not her daughter. Now we can talk about it. Not the fact that she decided to have a Down’s baby–good for her for going through with the pregnancy–but the fact that Palin apparently showed unimaginably horrendous judgment when the baby was born. When her water started leaking and contractions started when she was 7 1/2 months pregnant and on the road in Texas, she should have gone straight to the best hospital she could find, screw her political appointments–the baby first, right? Apparently not. She went on to give a speech at a political luncheon, and then inexplicably boarded a plane to Anchorage (not even non-stop, there was a layover in Seattle), and even after that, bypassed better hospitals in Anchorage to go to her smaller town to give birth. With a premature Down’s birth, such activity and delay are more than “spunk,” rather it demonstrates a bizarrely disastrous lack of judgment. Judgment flow chart here (h/t to Randy).

Palin’s ties to a secessionist “Alaska Independent Party” are coming more to light. Her husband was a member for about seven years, Palin addressed their convention, and at least the AIP is claiming Palin herself was a member, despite denials from the McCain campaign. At the very least, there are some ties, and this is a group that hates America and damns the flag. If someone finds video of the AIP guy saying that, will it get any air time? Probably not.

Reports come in from various sources of various reliability, but all seem to agree that she was somewhat ruthless, and governed poorly.

So much for being warm and fuzzy with the media. A CNN anchor has the utter gall to question a McCain campaign spokesman and press him to name one example of an executive decision by Palin that touches on foreign policy–and she doesn’t let him slide out with a BS non-answer, she actually presses him to deliver (link to fun but painful YouTube of the interview), which, of course, he can’t. Result: McCain pulls out of interview with Larry King; bonus: if CNN keeps this up, I might actually think about giving them a second chance and start watching some of their stuff again.

Is the media finally backlashing against McCain? Maybe. One can hope they’ll at least be objective, but the media does seem to have only two positions, “for” and “against.” If the media is turning on McCain, it’s probably because of the Palin thing. Before Palin, McCain was BS’ing Americans, acting like they were idiots, and the media was along for the ride, as well as for the barbecues and tire swings. But with the Palin thing, the McCain camp has shifted, and is now BS’ing the media, acting like the media are idiots, and maybe they don’t like it much.

So, McCain’s pick for veep is not going so smoothly, and supporters are straining to say anything good about her official qualifications, ludicrous as they may be. The thing is, they’ve got nothing–but that’s all they’ve got, and they have no choice but to run with it. You almost feel sorry for them. Almost, of course–it doesn’t help that they’re being dicks about it.

Talk is already flying about whether or not McCain will ditch Palin before the election. Some people seem to be talking about it as a “when,” not an “if.” If McCain does so, he either has to do it quickly–before she accepts the nomination at the convention–or painfully, with lots of paperwork involved.

Back to pregnancies: the irony about Bristol is that the liberals don’t mind the story. We know it’s something that happens all too often–young people make mistakes. We wish the best for her, and I myself feel badly for the poor kid, having her sex life shoved up in front of the whole world like that. Never mind that her boyfriend and looming husband seems to be a bit of a schmuck. No, the irony here is that Bristol, while currently lauded by the Christian right, is exactly the type they usually condemn–a teen who has sex outside of marriage and gets pregnant. Now they’re cheering her for having her baby, but if her mom were on the Democratic and not the Republican ticket, the same people would be reviling her as a whore and worse. Extra point: Mom’s abstinence-only policy didn’t work too well, it seems.

New story: Palin was the “Earmark Queen” of Wasilla, hiring a lobbying firm to win the town large amounts of pork.

McCain’s people are going on and on about Palin’s “executive experience,” hammering in the point that Palin has more “executive experience” than Obama and Biden combined, making the Democrats dangerously unprepared. They seem to miss the point that, by these standards McCain is dangerously unprepared. But they want to have it both ways: Palin is more qualified than a mere senator (like McCain) no matter how long his record, but she’ll have at least four years to learn at “the feet of the master,” that supposedly being McCain. Related news: the chicken is the egg, and McCain is his own grampaw.

McCain is trying to tell everyone that Palin was indeed vetted. They can point to a 40-page questionnaire and a lawyer talking to her. But every other claimed vetting point is non-confirmable–they did online searches and other background checks not involving talking to anyone. (One GOP strategist even says Palin wasn’t even on McCain’s short list, and was only vetted online.) No one in Alaska reports being spoken to, and McCain’s people were not on the ground checking things out. To me, it’s a simple matter: either McCain didn’t vet her, making him an idiot, or he did vet her–which also makes him an idiot. The only real difference is, was he a knowing idiot, or an irresponsible idiot? I report, you decide.

My schedule has been pretty full, but before I dash off to work (yes, I start late some days), I wanted to make a note of something: the McCain campaign is selling some pretty outrageous lies about Palin recently.

First, they’re claiming that Palin opposed the “bridge to nowhere.” It is plainly evident that she didn’t; she only killed it after it was already dead, and before that time, she heartily endorsed it.

Second, they’re claiming that she opposed Ted Stevens, the corrupt senator from Alaska currently under indictment. Also plainly false; she supported him and worked for his 527 group.

Third, they’re making a barrage of claims about Palin’s “executive” experience, as if her having the official role of “commander in chief” of Alaska’s national guard makes her qualified in a range of areas, including foreign policy. This claim is patently absurd, to the point of being laughable.

There’s more, but you get the idea. Now, probably they’re doing this because they simply have no choice; Palin has almost nothing to support her, so they have to use whatever crap they can make up, no matter how tissue-thin the support.

But I think there’s a strategy behind the claims, and it speaks to the neoconservative principles the McCain campaign is working from: create a narrative that serves you, no matter how demonstrably false it may be; simply claim it’s true, and enough people will believe you to make it a de facto “truth.”

It’s a matter of creating uncertainty and doubt: yes, she was for the bridge to nowhere, yes, she supported Stevens, and no, she has no credible experience to qualify her. But say the opposites with enough volume and sincerity, over and over on major platforms, and it will become yet another case of “maybe it’s true,” like “global warming does not exist” or “there were WMD in Iraq.”

And I think it’s true that they really just don’t have a choice here, so they’re going with all that they have and–perhaps literally–praying for the best.

But I think it’s kind of hard to succeed at something like this when so many people are laughing at you.

Even though I have been aware of this from the day Palin was announced, I haven’t blogged on this because I felt it was a non-starter. However, I want to quickly comment on it now since it’s generating attention at a few blogs. Yes, Sarah Palin’s reported pregnancy with her 5th child Trig, born with Down’s Syndrome, is riddled with strangeness: Palin didn’t show even into 7 months and possibly later; she took an 8-hour flight from Texas with a stopover in Seattle several hours after her water reportedly broke, an incredibly dangerous move with a premature labor; the flight staff on the airline didn’t notice her being in any discomfort; meanwhile, her daughter, who did show some early signs of pregnancy, was pulled from her school for 5-8 months that just happened to line up with the pregnancy. The best timeline is here.

Now, why not make a deal of this? The answer is because, frankly, it’s not that big a deal. Yes, it plays into Palin playing fast and loose with the truth, and could add to the vetting story, but this is something that is a lot more sympathetic. Furthermore, if the story is true, it harmed no one, unlike Palin’s vindictive firings of city and state officials, and would not have violated any laws that I can see. Moreover, it will only make her look better in many people’s eyes–a noble, caring mother–and the religious conservatives who usually frown on teen pregnancies will instead gush at Palin’s sacrifice and maternal protectiveness. I don’t see how she’ll get negatives from any aspect of this story; it’ll make a mom (or grandma) holding an innocent baby into a victim of heartless liberal attackers.

In fact, trying to make a deal out of this could seriously backfire. If it breaks as a “scandal” and Palin is successful at turning it into a sympathetic victory for herself, it could serve as her own version of the Dan Rather National Guard story. Remember that there was a ton of solid, convincing evidence showing Bush went AWOL, but the Rather story gave him a free pass on it and no one ever questioned it again. In Palin’s case, there are several very serious charges of abuse of power, but if the baby story explodes and she triumphs over it, she could get a free pass on everything else like Bush did.

In fact, if the other scandals do begin to erupt, the smart move for her would be to start fighting the baby story, even if no one of consequence was making allegations, hoping the media would pick it up for her so she could then win the easy one and dismiss all the serious ones.

So, leave it alone, even if she doesn’t. There’s more than enough other stuff to focus on.

Josh Marshall goes into a great deal of detail about Sarah Palin and the Troopergate story, and it really paints a new light on the story. If you haven’t read it, go and do so now. It’s pretty fascinating.

In the end, there are a few important impressions that come from this. The first is that Palin is vindictive, and not afraid to inappropriately use her power to carry out vendettas against people she doesn’t like. As I laid out yesterday, after being elected mayor of Wasilla, she fired the librarian and police chief, both of whom had supported her opponent. That may be legal, but it’s considered improper at best and corrupt at worst.

In the Troopergate story, that impression is only sharpened. Trooper Wooten was in a messy divorce with Palin’s sister, but more significantly, there was a custody battle. Those can get incredibly vicious, and accusations of wrongdoing are commonly manufactured in an attempt to paint the other party as an improper parent for the children. Before becoming governor, Palin and her family submitted a list of 14 accusations against, of which only 5 had any credence. The police acted on that, and suspended Wooten for 10 days, later reduced to 5. After being elected governor, Palin then exerted huge pressure on the Public Safety Commissioner (the state’s top police official, and popular at that) to fire Wooten–and when he didn’t, Palin fired the commissioner.

So Palin is pretty vindictive, willing to abuse her power to settle scores. That’s the first impression.

The second impression is that she’s a liar, and a pretty bad one. When confronted with the fact that she’d terminated the librarian and police chief in Wasilla, she flat-out lied, saying it hadn’t happened. Then the police chief produced a letter she had written and signed, saying she was terminating him. So she writes, signs, and delivers a letter then lies about not having sent it?

Similarly, in the Wooten story, Palin initially denied having put any pressure on the commissioner. When a recording was released showing one of her deputies had quite plainly done so, she lied again and said she hadn’t known about any such effort. Except now the former commissioner claims that not only Palin, but her husband as well contacted him on numerous occasions, pressuring him to fire Wooten–and he even has emails from Palin herself.

So she has lied at least three times about these matters, but more surprisingly, she has lied repeatedly when there is correspondence from Palin herself proving she’s lying. Either she has a bad memory, or she’s not very smart.

Altogether, you can see Marshall’s point: this is not just a woman protecting her sister, it’s a public official carrying out vendettas and lying repeatedly.

Maybe Democrats will still be nervous about attacking her, but let me point something out: had Obama nominated her as his VP pick, the Republicans would be tearing into her with unrepentant glee. Maybe they can get away with that better than the Democrats can, but in this case, it shouldn’t be hard for the Dems to construct a way of going after her. Simply start asking questions about her conduct in office, not about trying to fire Wooten, but about firing the commissioner–and the lies. Don’t say she lied, simply ask why her prior statements don’t jibe with new evidence. Don’t attack, just question, and if criticized, respond, “Hey, we’re only asking. The American people deserve to know everything about this candidate. If there’s nothing wrong here, then just prove it. We’ll stop asking questions when we hear a credible answer.”

When I first heard that Palin might not make it to election day, I was rather dubious. Now, I’m not so sure. It boggles the mind that McCain didn’t vet Palin–the commissioner claims that McCain’s people never contacted him, and others in Alaska who should have been contacted report that there was no vetting they heard about. McCain seems to have chosen Palin completely blindly–and it could wind up hurting him very badly. The question is, will either the Democrats or the media pick up on these stories?

Remember when our Fearless Leader Bush, wanting to show how He Really Cared after having killed so many people in Katrina’s wake, took some trips down there–and as a result, probably killed some more? Remember when people were still stuck on their rooftops and people were still drowning, but when Bush flew in to tell Brownie what a heckuva job he was doing, he caused several Coast Guard helicopters to be grounded for PR beauty shots (see right) when they should have been out rescuing people?

Well, McCain wants to be like George.

In the day or two before Gustav hits, millions are being evacuated. People are literally running for their lives. Not a single dollar, man-hour, or moment should be lost, lest somebody gets caught in this storm who cannot handle it, and they die.

So what is McCain doing? Getting in the way.

Likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are traveling to Mississippi to check on people getting prepared for Hurricane Gustav.

McKain aides say McCain and his wife Cindy will join Palin in traveling to Jackson, Miss., Sunday at the invitation of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. They said the McCains and Palins want to check on preparations because they are concerned about the people threatened by the storm, which is heading through the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the same area ravaged by Hurricane Katrina three years ago. The storm could hit the coast as early as Monday afternoon.

They will receive a briefing at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency – a permanent operations center monitoring hurricane response.

Excuse me. They want to “check on preparations”? Who do they think they’re possibly kidding? As if they know the first thing about such things, better than people on the ground? What are they going to do, pull out their degrees in disaster management and start fixing all the problems down there?

Hell, no–they’re going to do the same thing they do when they go to Iraq: waste the valuable time of people with an urgent mission so they can look serious in front of cameras and win votes. And by doing so, they are slowing down and generally hampering efforts which people depend upon for their lives.

In choosing Palin, McCain showed that he took politics more seriously than the best interests of his country. By taking this little PR tour of a region bracing for disaster, he is showing that he takes politics more seriously than the lives of his country’s citizens.

Heckuva job, McSamey!

Update: Obama gets it right:

“The thing that I always am concerned about in the middle of a storm is whether we’re drawing resources away from folks on the ground because the Secret Service and various security requirements; sometimes it pulls police, fire and other departments away from concentrating on the job.”

Obama said he would stay clear of the area until things settled down and then decide how to help.

So there you have it: McCain wants PR even if it costs people their lives, while Obama understands that he really can’t contribute anything in person and so wisely hangs back and doesn’t distract people at a critical time.

Whose judgment do you prefer?

Yeah, I know it’s small-town stuff, but if you nominate a small-town mayor with only 20 months experience higher than that, then most of what informs us about her is going to be small-town stuff.

Andrew Sullivan has the story, but basically, this is it: when Palin was running for mayor, the city librarian and police chief supported her opponent. Just a few months after taking office, Palin fired them both because, according to the letters she gave them, she “felt” that they did not give their “full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla.”

When asked about it, Palin lied, saying she hadn’t terminated them. Too bad the police chief still has the termination letter, which reads in part, “Therefore I intend to terminate your employment.”

What Palin did was not illegal–the mayor has the right to terminate anyone for any cause–but it smacks of Bush-style political retribution, derailing someone’s life and career simply out of political retribution.

This, plus the newly-dubbed Troopergate, where Palin fired an official for not firing the trooper she wanted fired, a trooper who was in a custody battle with Palin’s sister–well, it kind of suggests a pattern. That smacks of abuse of power as well–that she used the office of governor to favor her sister in a custody battle, which having the guy fired would definitely do. In that case as well, Palin has lied, saying that she didn’t exert pressure to have the trooper fired, when in fact, she very much did–as did her husband and others around her. Her denial now boils down to the Bushian “I didn’t use the exact phrase ‘fire him’ when talking to those in charge about having him sacked.”

We’re getting to know Palin better, and she is more and more coming across as a very petty person indeed. Yes, she has a swell family, and I’m sure that she’s not petty to them, but petty people have families they love as well as others do. They’re still petty.