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.

Hmm… Obama gets clear weather and a huge, unprecedented crowd to watch his Democratic Party star-studded convention, despite some conservative Christians praying for rain in Denver.

Now that the Republican convention is starting, a huge storm approaches, and Bush, Cheney, and several others cancel their visit to McCain’s party. (Though it seemed Bush & Cheney seemed almost too ready to cancel…)

If the storm gathers up steam and news coverage right through the convention… then stops short of land and does no one any harm… well, I might start believing a little bit more than I used to.

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.

One of the biggest frauds which helped George W. Bush in 2000 was the expectations game. Both candidates had their strengths and faults in debating, but the media played up Al Gore as somehow being a debate genius, and George Bush as being a disaster waiting to happen. Because we Democrats liked to overlook Gore’s speaking style for his substance and greatly enjoyed pillorying Bush for his gaffes, we played along with it. The problem with that was the fact that it set up Bush to win: all he had to do was not pee himself and he would be declared the “winner.” Gore did not help with his exaggerated sighs, but the fact was, as far as oratorical skills went, Bush had the better skill set: where Gore sounded wooden, Bush sounded folksy. So despite having the better argument, Gore lost.

In a perfect world, the debate would be judged purely by the strength of one’s argument. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about that; the media always judges debates on expectations, and there’s no sign they’ll make a change this year. The only thing we can do is try to prevent another case where the Democrat is given far too much credit, allowing the Republican to win by losing.

And in the Obama-McCain calculus in terms of the expectations game, McCain is favored here, though it’s kind of complex. On the one hand, McCain has made lots of really bad gaffes, and we’ve given him grief over it. But on the other hand, the media has played these down somewhat. And yes, McCain does stumble sometimes, but the fact is, when he’s prepared well enough, he can come across as solid. While McCain is not as good an orator as Obama, this doesn’t come across the same way in the debate setting; McCain has tons of experience in town hall settings.

On the Obama side, the thing that will hurt him most is his oratorical skill; the McCain side will play this up to no end, and it won’t hurt them as they’ve already turned it into an attack, borrowed from Hillary (“he’s all about words”). The problem is that debating is not speechmaking. While Obama can soar on the stump, in a debate, he is much less graceful, with lots of pauses and “um”s and “ah”s. While McCain’s platitudes are composed of misrepresentations and panders, they are simple and come across strongly; Obama is more about reason and nuance, qualities that tend to lose the audience.

I think it’ll be necessary to make these points: McCain can sound solid and polished in a practiced setting, his message, while wrong, is simple and strong, and his extensive town-hall experience has groomed him to hit a home run in a debate, while Obama’s rhetorical skills won’t serve him nearly as well in debates as they do in his stump speeches, and his nuance and wonkery in answering policy questions plays far less well to crowds. McCain is a Q&A man, Obama is not.

Get the word of accuracy out, before the right-wingers wake up and again successfully set up the false expectations.

A lot of people have praised Sarah Palin for “standing up to colleagues in the Republican Party over matters of principle.” Let’s examine this. Remember, reputations can be wrong; McCain has a reputation for being a “maverick.” Today, that reputation is completely false; he has turned into a poster boy for the hard right wing, and bucks the party on very little, if anything. Even in 2000, when he was strongest in this area, his maverick-ness was relatively tepid, extending to compromises on only a few issues; he still remained strongly conservative, and mostly made a show of being centrist.

So let’s ask the same question of Sarah Palin. Why does she have a reputation for standing up to her party?

There are two major examples given which, upon even a cursory examination, prove to be false. One is when she “opposed” the “bridge to nowhere,” showing she doesn’t approve of pork, even for her own party. Except for the fact that she opposed it only after it was dead in the water; before then, she actually supported the project, stating that porkbarrel money was too slow in coming to Alaska. Hardly bucking the party.

The other example was the benefits for same-sex couples; she vetoed a ban on such benefits. So, hey, she’s pro-gay! Whaddaya know? Except… she only vetoed the bill when it was made clear to her that the courts had ruled that such a ban was unconstitutional, and was guaranteed to be overturned. Instead of bucking her party, she actually went so far as to suggest amending the state constitution to make the ban legal, and then she’d sign it. So again, she doesn’t really buck the party line… but only makes a show of it when the results won’t be affected by her decision.

But what about her rabid environmentalism? Yes, she does back oil, coal, and the standard conservative energy policy–but hey, she’s an environmentalist! OK, fine: how is she an environmentalist? What measures does she support–actual protection, or fake protection like the Bush administration does? After all, this is a person who thinks global warming is not man-made, opposes protections on endangered species such as the polar bear and the Beluga Whale because their protection might interfere with oil drilling, favors major mining operations in the midst of a salmon fishery, and supports drilling in ANWR. She is for research into renewable energy sources, but that hardly counts because everyone voices support for that, and Palin has said she doesn’t see these as being useful any time soon–in other words, she supports them as a someday-maybe kind of thing. Meanwhile, she heavily supports mining and drilling prospects which are even further off in the future in terms of being viable, and harm the environment much more.

So what are the ground-breaking environmental issues she supports?

Umm… I can’t find any. The only thing I found was that “Palin also chairs the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a multi-state panel ‘that promotes the conservation and efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and the environment.’” That’s it. So while Palin may have some pro-environmental stances, none have shown up in her actual policies and decisions. In fact, every time there is a conflict between environment and drilling/mining/resource-extraction, the environment loses with Palin. As far as I can tell, Palin’s “environmentalism” is purely for show, and has no substance.

As for “bucking her party”? Hardly.

Now, there is the matter of windfall oil profit taxes; she did approve of them in Alaska, and that does buck the party trend. But this seems to be less because of her maverick ways and more due to the fact that she’s a big spender. In fact, she’s (1) a big spender, (2) a tax-hiker, and (3) a deficit-raiser. When mayor of Wasilla, she mismanaged a sports complex project that ended up paying way too much for the land it was on, and otherwise massively increased city spending–so much so, that when she left office, every citizen of Wasilla was $3000 more in debt than they were when she came in. Similarly, as governor of Alaska, she signed into law the biggest state budget ever.

So, to help pay for the bigger budget she wanted, she went for what is arguably the easiest tax hike imaginable: tax oil companies, but only when they make huge profits.

I’ll give credit for that much, but let’s get real here: as far as being a “maverick” goes, it’s pretty tame, and taken together with the spending and the deficit generation, not the most positive quality you’d want in an executive.

In short, while Palin will cross her party, it is only in one place–and that is to raise taxes on huge profits in order to pay for ballooning expenditures. On every other issue, every other principle, she’s a hard-line conservative who toes the party line, and then some. At best, she’s an opportunistic, for-show-only maverick, only when it doesn’t matter much if at all.

I wouldn’t call that being an actual “maverick.” Not by a long shot.

It’s a little hard to say exactly what McCain is looking at here. But it’s hard to imagine that he’s looking at something else, particularly with his beauty-queen fixation. Even if it’s not what it seems, it’s still funny creepy as hell.

McCain met Palin once, and spoke to her over the phone once.

Palin is involved in a scandal in her office and is under investigation. Apparently she wanted a state trooper who messily divorced her sister fired; when the official in charge would respond to pressure from her and other family members, she fired him. Results of the investigation are due to be released just before the November elections. Video report. Update: she replaced the guy she fired with one who had just been sacked for sexual harassment, and the guy she put in lasted only two weeks. Palin gave him a $10,000 severance package. Way to save taxpayer money.

Palin wants creationism taught in public science classes.

As mayor of Wasilla, she shocked a librarian: “Palin asked her outright if she could live with censorship of library books.”

A few weeks ago, Palin voiced support for Obama’s energy plan, with the only variations being “more oil” and “don’t tax oil companies.” Hmm.

Just what we need: another VP in the pocket of big oil.

Palin one month ago: VP position “doesn’t seem productive,” she had no idea of what a VP does. (video)

Palin doesn’t know “what the plan is to ever end the war that we’re engaged in.”

Palin was a Buchanan supporter when he ran for president. (Irony: Buchanan was gushing so much about how great Obama’s speech was, they had to cut him off for time. Video.)

Palin doesn’t believe that global warming is man-made.

“Palin, who portrays herself as a fiscal conservative, racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla — that amounts to $3,000 per resident. She argues that the debt was needed to fund improvements.” Spiffy.

Her executive experience isn’t much to talk about. She signed into law Alaska’s biggest budget ever, while cutting construction jobs. So she’s a budget exploder and job cutter. Of course, Alaska’s $6.6 billion budget is about on par with some big American cities. It’s less the executive experience of a governor and more the executive experience of the Mayor of Chicago. For one and a half years.

Karl Rove agrees: picking someone who was mayor of a small town and then governor for only 3 years is a bad choice. Rove was talking about Tim Kaine, but everything he says applies much more to Sarah Palin.

She was for it before she was against it: Palin’s getting props for opposing the “bridge to nowhere,” but only took that stand after it was obvious it would never happen. Before then, she approved of the bridge, and even went as far as to say that porkbarrel money was coming to Alaska too slowly. Also in the false props department: she vetoed a ban on gay benefits–but only because it was unconstitutional.

McCain married a former rodeo beauty queen (whom he later suggested would make a great “Miss Buffalo Chip”), and now has nominated another former beauty queen as his VP pick. What’s with McCain and beauty queens?

Resentful-Also-Rans Update: Palin to Hillary supporters: Hillary’s a whiner. Suggestions of female Hillary supporters laughing at McCain for his choice. Some are even scared. Cafferty (one of CNN’s few remaining watchable commentators) suggests that opinion is weighted heavily against Palin. In fact, the choice of Palin may have backlash as supporters of Romney and Pawlenty “feel manipulated.”

Women may also not be impressed that she’s leaving her four-month-old Down’s baby for more than two months so she can campaign. Or that she is alternately dragging him across the country. But maybe not as turned off by that as they would be that Palin is not just pro-life, but opposes exceptions rape, incest, or for the life of the mother. So she thinks that if a 12-year-old girl is raped and impregnated by her father, and then her fetus turns out to be non-viable and will die upon delivery, the girl cannot get an abortion even if she could die in delivery as well. Nice!

Palin’s web site is scrubbed as a Ted Stevens ad is removed–and then her whole site (http://www.palinforgovernor.com/) is quickly changed to redirect to John McCain’s.

“As governor, Palin vetoed wind power and clean coal projects, including a 50-megawatt wind farm on Fire Island and a clean coal facility in Healy that had been mired in a dispute between local and state governments.”

Opposed McCain on drilling in ANWR, and that may be why she didn’t support him in the primaries.

And finally, Republicans are scrambling to find out positive things to say about her. One of them is that Obama won’t be able to make fun of her because she’s a dedicated mom, and won’t be able to criticize her inexperience because of his own. Here’s what they don’t get: Obama doesn’t have to do any of that. Comedians will. And they already are.

This is just after a few hours of oppo research. Yikes.

When asked about Palin’s lack of experience, Obama could say: “Sure, she’s got experience! Just not as much as I do.” They could also make a point about joint experience on the tickets.

But McCain’s claim of “executive experience” won’t fly. One and a half years as governor of Alaska after six years as mayor of a small town? Please.

So McCain, clearly eager to step all over the Democrats’ thunder–and what thunder it is!–declared his VP pick, and it smacks of desperation. The ads McCain ran during the Democratic Convention were mostly aimed at disenchanted Hillary voters, and now we see McCain has chosen to pander to them–and in a huge way.

His choice, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, might seem like a good choice on the surface–a governor, so she has executive experience, right? But–she’s been governor for only two one and a half years, and before that was mayor of Wasilla, a town of maybe 8,000 people, serving for not much longer than she has now been mayor. Zero foreign policy experience, far less than Obama, and infinitely less than Obama’s VP pick. Look forward, at least, to an interesting debate between Palin and Biden.

So McCain’s claims about Obama not having the experience needed instantly fall flat, and the youth and inexperience of his choice highlight McCain’s age and potential to require a vice president to take office. After all, this is supposed to be someone McCain believes is ready to be president. McCain might think he’s gaining youth, but this will accentuate his age, and remove one of his key criticisms of his opponent.

McCain might think he’s just clinched Hillary supporters, but he’s likely in for a disappointment. Whether or not they will approve of the runner-up for Miss Alaska 1984 runner-up is trivial, but less trivial is whether they will stand behind someone who is strongly pro-life, pro-death penalty, pro-gun, pro-oil and coal, pro-ANWR drilling, and anti-gay marriage. Mother of five works for her, but just about everything else doesn’t. And the question remains, how easily will Clinton supporters swoon for nothing that appeals to them save for an extra X-chromosome? How do they feel about McCain presuming that they will switch parties upon the most blatant of shallow panders from McCain?

Because a pander is what it is, clear and simple. McCain didn’t choose her for experience. He didn’t choose her for the electoral votes Alaska promises. He didn’t choose her for her bipartisan credentials. He chose her despite an ongoing scandal in her office, despite the bad electoral math, despite her lack of experience damaging his arguments.

The only thing that stands out about why McCain chose her is that she’s a woman, and McCain desperately wants those angry Hillary voters to come to his side. And that, without any doubt whatsoever, is a pander.

They’re calling it a risk, and they’re right. If Hillary supporters are so focused solely upon gender and don’t give a damn about Hillary’s policies, or if they’re so upset that they will not only ignore Hillary’s own campaigning for Obama, but vote in a president who will betray all of their core principles, then McCain’s gamble will pay off. I have not been too appreciative of the rationality of some of the more stubborn Clinton diehards in the past, but I do believe this: they are not so monumentally stupid as to fall for something like this.

I’ll be interested to see what people like Rush Limbaugh, who claims that Democrats only like Obama because he’s black, will say about a McCain VP pick which is as clearly only about gender as Obama is clearly not only about race.

McCain might get a bit of a bounce from this because of sheer novelty and risk, but it is bound to backfire over time. McCain made a shallow choice for shallow reasons, and he’ll very likely pay a price for that.

The latest inanity from the AP:

John McCain and Barack Obama share common ground on a surprising selection of issues where the age-old Republican-Democratic divide doesn’t cut it anymore.

Both want the United States to join the campaign against global warming in earnest. Both want to cut taxes for the middle class.

Yeah, Obama and McCain are pretty similar… just like Bush and Gore were pretty similar. Does the media ever tire of this old turn-off-the-voters whopper?

Let’s set aside the environmental “earnestness” issue for the moment. As for “cutting taxes for the middle class,” I guess that depends on what the “middle class” is; if you take McCain’s definition, that you’re not rich unless you make $5 million a year, then yeah, I guess you could say that McCain wants to enrich the “middle class.”

However, most views of the middle class are not quite as stratospheric as McCain’s bizarre view suggests. A common range is quoted as $25,000 to $100,000, with the actual middle 20% of the country making between $40,000 and $95,000. The mean annual income for the U.S. in 2005 was $33,000.

By these measures, McCain and Obama are not on the same page. At the $33,000 level, Obama wants to give tax cuts eight times bigger than McCain. McCain’s tax cuts are meager for the poor and only grow as incomes grow, and up to $112,000, McCain still doesn’t give as much as Obama. Only when you go above $112,000–arguably the “upper middle class”–does McCain even begin to out-give Obama. But McCain does not even double what Obama offers until after $250,000, where Obama ends his tax cuts.

If you were able to go through the $25,000 to $100,000 range and compare each plan’s averages, then you’d find that while both “want to cut taxes for the middle class,” one of them wants to do it a lot more than the other one. Painting them as “similar” on this is like saying that they are “similar” on abortion rights because neither likes the ideas of abortion per se. Everyone has “similarities” on just about every issue; what is key is whether the similarities outweigh the differences. Here, they don’t.

Just wanted to say something else about the you-can’t-criticize-McCain issue, but it didn’t fit into the last post.

I think Democrats should stop prefacing every criticism of McCain with glowing remarks about his being a war hero, a patriot, and all-around great guy. First off, it doesn’t help to be constantly be calling your opponent a hero, when just about every person in the country has heard it a zillion times already. Second, Dems don’t get any credit for it–no one feels that Dems are more electable or even necessarily nicer because they respect their opponent more. Third, McCain is not going to return the favor unless specifically questioned about his disrespecting the opposition.

But most importantly, you have to realize that the “you’re-an-ass-if-you-disparage-a-war-hero” meme has been pretty much accepted now. Therefore, when you preface a criticism with “McCain is a war hero, but…” then you are only triggering that meme and instantly making your listener antagonistic to your criticisms.

The fact is, the less you pay homage to your war-hero opponent, the better. You need look no further than Kerry to understand this. Republicans did not preface every criticism of Kerry with “the man’s a great war hero, but….” Instead, they went with a two-pronged approach: tear down his war-hero status with swift-boating, and simply ignore his service otherwise.

I’m not saying we should swift-boat. What I’m saying is that we should simply ignore the war service stuff unless specifically pressed about it.

Is it because they’re terrified of the prospect of reporting anything negative about a man who was a POW?

Don’t laugh or scoff; remember, the media played into the Iraq War because they were terrified of being seen as anything less than 200% patriotic. And we have Tom Brokaw now announcing that Democrats can’t “rough up” John McCain since he was a POW. Even though every major Democrat prefaces their criticism of McCain by stating that he is (a) a good man, (b) a war hero, and (c) a patriot, and the criticism is not of his war record, but of his political policies and actions.

If Brokaw’s statement is a window into the mindset of the media, then that explains a lot. That they perhaps have fallen, hook, line, and sinker, for the McCain suggestion that any criticism of McCain is blasphemy because you are besmirching a man who lived in a prison cell in Hanoi for five and a half years.

Which, of course, is pretty ludicrous. Not just because if it were a Democrat who went through that then Republicans would have no problem swift-boating him as a liar and a traitor, and not just because Democrats already prostate themselves to McCain’s war-herodom every time they make any criticism about him. It’s mostly ludicrous because the idea simply has no logic to it. We’re talking about electing a president who will determine the country’s fate for the next four years here, not choosing a Senator-of-the-Month who just gets his photo on the wall. This is not just about image.

So when a venerated news anchor says that McCain’s POW history makes any difference when criticizing his policies, you become aware of a disturbing mindset: McCain can get away with just about anything and the media won’t report on it.

Wouldn’t that be a cool way of seeing poverty? If you sleep under a bridge, then count that bridge as a home. Same with cardboard boxes, doorways, etc. They are all shelters, therefore homes. Voila! No more homeless people!

We could do the same with joblessness. So what if you got fired and can’t get re-employed? You’re always doing some work, right? You gotta find food–that’s gotta be hard work without a job. And hey, panhandling ain’t easy. So in reality, nobody is really unemployed. So just count it that way. Voila! No more unemployment!

Now, no one has suggested either of the above in earnestness (that I know of). But an advisor to John McCain and author of a health care provision McCain subscribes to has just made an equivalent claim: anyone without insurance can still go to an emergency room, which is in itself insurance. So just count it that way, and Voila! No more uninsured! Think I’m exaggerating? Then read the original:

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

”So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.“

By the way, that’s not John Goodman the actor, just in case you were in doubt. Though you might at first wonder if it was and that this was from an SNL skit on an episode he was hosting.

Even if you don’t find the emergency care part of it asinine for many reasons, it of course completely ignores every variety of non-emergency care. Plainly put, it’s not just asinine, it’s stunningly stupid. Aside from being incredibly unkind, and blind to the realities of being poor or even middle-class, it’s an expensive, wasteful, and harmful idea. This is the quality we see from the authors of McCain’s policy.

Naturally, the McCain campaign is scrambling to disavow any connection with this guy. But he was an advisor, and though they can make whatever retroactive claims of disassociation they want to, the most important fact is that the McCain campaign’s health care plan does contain policies authored by this guy. So whatever they claim now, their health care policies bear Goodman’s imprint, and just as significant–perhaps more–is that this shows the quality of advisor that John McCain seeks out, listens to, and follows the advice of.

While John McCain might not be overtly suggesting that millions of Americans should be happy with the emergency room serving as their primary health insurance coverage, the facts remain that (a) the policy advisor he sought out does think so, (b) that will be the effective result of McCain’s health care plan, and (c) the philosophy meshes nicely with other McCain health care proposals:

Remember, the McCain campaign would offer tax incentives that favor bare-bones coverage; it would also gut state regulations that mandate all insurers cover certain benefits. Most important, perhaps, it’s likely that the McCain health plan would lead many people with employer-sponsored insurance to give up or lose that coverage. While many people would also get new coverage on their own, through the individual market, the benefits would be skimpier–and they would be available only to relatively healthy people, since insurers screen for pre-existing medical conditions when they sell policies individually.

So, is the media covering this?

No. The LA Times has an article, and a few CBS blogs have covered it, but that’s just about it.

Would the media be covering it if it were an Obama advisor?

Hell, yes.

Someone remind me: when was the last time a political figure actually suggested we solve a problem by failing to count it? I know it has been done in practice a lot–the Bush administration avoids heat for killing Iraqi civilians by having there be no official body counts, for example, and in a longer trend, we stop counting the chronically unemployed. But politicians only do these things, they don’t talk about them. I do seem to recall someone making a stir by suggesting something similar to Goodman, but I may be confusing this with fictional situations, like a ”Ministry of Truth“ official on Babylon 5 announcing that homelessness was solved by simply not recognizing the homeless. Someone help out–is Goodman a ground-breaker, or a tradition-follower?

MacDailyNews reports on a WSJ article (behind a pay firewall, so read it at MDN instead), the gist of which is this: music labels resent the fact that iTunes sells songs one at a time, and despite its enormous success and domination of the digital music sales market, are pulling popular songs off the service because they want to force consumers to buy the whole album.

Imagine you like to drink Coca-cola, but instead of being able to buy a bottle, you instead have to buy a twelve-pack with one Coke and eleven other drinks, maybe only one or two of which you actually would want. Imagine you want to buy a new book, but you can’t unless you also buy a dozen other books you have no desire to read.

Now, there are some cases where buying an omnibus is necessary. You have to buy a whole magazine or newspaper for one article, for example. But that’s not because of forced bundling, that’s the nature of the product. And there are no technical reasons why you can’t buy music one track at a time; indeed, Apple has shown that such a model works impressively well. Instead, this is a matter of choice from the seller, making the cola and book analogies above appropriate in this case.

So this is about one thing, and one thing only: using the leverage of one good product to sell a bulk package consisting mostly of sub-standard products which will mostly go unused. In short, it’s a 1000%-or-more price hike. I’m sure that’ll discourage pirating.

From Kevin Drum at his new digs:

Was Chuck Todd even watching the same speech as me? Yeah, Biden flubbed a couple of lines in a minor way, but jeez. Even seen through the lens of my political speech autism (hereafter PSA) I thought it was a pretty moving performance. And Marian thought he was great, which counts as my “woman in the street” opinion since she’s not a political junkie like everyone else I know.

And then Brokaw followed up by saying that the convention sagged today compared to Monday and Tuesday? Did I hear that right? He must have been watching a different bunch of speeches too. Between Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden, I thought this was by far the best night so far.

I thought the same thing. Yeah, Biden could have expected a crowd response and worked the crowd’s willingness to chant in response, but in truth, the beginning of his speech almost brought me to tears, it was that moving. Clinton was great, Kerry was great.

I am beginning to think that the anchors and pundits won’t be happy unless they find some way of disapproving or noting something negative about any given day of the Democratic Convention. After Brokaw’s comment the other night about how McCain never re-invented himself, that he panned this very good night for the Dems is unsurprising. According to some, Kerry’s speech wasn’t even broadcast.

Here’s a prediction and a bet: most nights of the Republican Convention, the anchors and pundits will give glowing reviews, about how McCain and his surrogates are revitalizing the party and the race. Any takers?