Nonsensical Hitchens Has Become a Joke

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

I remember the first time I read Christopher Hitchens. I wasn’t that old, maybe 13 or 14, but even at that young age I recall being dazzled by his command of the English language, his razor-sharp mind and the courage he demonstrated in unashamedly taking on society’s sacred cows – those institutions or individuals elevated to sainthood by popular culture for reasons often divorced from reality. Hitchens has dispatched Henry Kissinger and Mother Theresa with righteous ferocity during his career.

I had been bought up on a self-inflicted diet of George Orwell, and, as a kid, I remember wondering what it might be like to have a mind of Orwell’s caliber when talking about current events. Hitchens was not Orwell, but I trusted him in the same way, believed that he had an independent mind; that he would not lie if he knew the truth.

As an ex-pat British journalist now living in the United States, just like Hitchens, I still follow his career and writings with keen interest. He is now a big, bright star in the American media firmament, talking on endless chat shows and lending his writings on politics and literature to a host of august journals.

Back when I first started reading him Hitchens was on the left, but that wasn’t what attracted me to him. He used his journalism to take on the powers that be, whether they were left, right or center. He had a disdain for platitudes, for lazy narratives and baseless hearsay. He had written expertly on the criminal Turkish occupation of Cyprus, the subject of his first book; he penned acerbic polemics on the criminal U.S. war in Indochina; he vented against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Hitchens was never a bien-pensant on the left, however: he supported the Falklands War, and intermittently came out with shock positions that would offend his comrades. But even if you disagreed with him, you had to concede he was thinking for himself, and his equations had some equilibrium.

Hitchens is a different man now. His facile word skills are still there, his fearless attacks on venerated institutions, his quick mind, but he’s not serious like he was. His pronouncements make no sense and have no inherent logic. Instead of expressing rational thinking in cute phrases, he now, in the words of Norman Finkelstein, dresses up flatulence in bouquets.

I’ve been watching him during the 2008 election and his illogical and strange pronouncements have really been embarrassing to watch. It’s telling that the point when his political bearings went off-kilter was the same point when the establishment started to accept him with open arms. Now he is everywhere; you literally can’t turn on the TV without his brash private-schoolboy schtick in your face.

His position in the 2008 election is that you have to support Obama because, (a) John McCain is senile, for which Hitchens provides no evidence, apart from a few linguistic lapses, which are inevitable as the factor of speeches goes up on the campaign trail. And (b) Sarah Palin is a religious fanatic hostile to reason and science.

On (b) he is undoubtedly correct and any right-thinking person couldn’t disagree (probably she doesn’t even). But, wait. Hitchens himself voted for George W. Bush in 2004. Yes, the same president who doesn’t believe in evolution, wants creationism taught in schools, is against stem-cell research and acted like a zealot in the Terry Schiavo case. Doesn’t that qualify as religious fanaticism? Why does he suddenly care now about religious fanaticism when Bush’s pea-in-a-pod Sarah Palin is the vice presidential candidate?

The only reason I can think of is after supporting the Iraq war, he just doesn’t want to be caught on another sinking ship.

Just think about it. McCain is Hitchens ideological bedfellow:

(1) Hitchens says he used to be a single-issue voter on the threat of Islamic fundamentalism to the Western world. Well, McCain is probably even more hawkish than Bush (if possible) and wants to bomb Iran. Surely that would get Hitchens on board, especially as Barack Obama wants to – shock, horror! – talk to the leaders of Iran before bombing them.

(2) McCain, like Hitchens, had a religious fervor when supporting the war in Iraq and the surge. But Obama was against both.

(3) And Hitch, if religion is your problem, McCain is much less fanatical than Bush. Even McCain’s foreign policy is closer to Hitchens than Bush. Bush recently took the slave state North Korea off the terrorist list, against McCain’s wishes, and I’m assuming Hitchens’. Obama has said he would talk to Kim Jong-Il.

So Hitchens’ ideas are nowhere; he is scrambling to patch together his disintegrating platform and it shows. He has used Palin’s fanaticism – nothing worse than his previous favorite for top office, Bush – as an excuse to go against a presidential candidate who is actually in agreement with all his ideas. It’s cheap and see-through, but hey, this is Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens nowadays is even too dense to have an opinion on domestic policy. Nowhere does he comment on taxes, or health care; he just doesn’t care. Why? Well, foreign policy gives his ego full license to wander off on macho rants about murdering scum fascists, but you don’t get any of those primal screams on domestic policy because it’s not some abstract fantasy about Good and Evil, about democracy and fascism or any other puerile oppositions.

The descent of Hitchens into some fat joke, the risible and edgy plaything of the American right wing, has really been solidified by his weird performance in the 2008 election. Conservatives in the U.S. have expressed surprise at his about-face, and this is a perfectly legitimate emotion. Hitchens disgraced himself by backing Bush in 2004, but perhaps, worse now, he has now shown himself to have no spine, his faculties of clear thought and logic have been jettisoned in clear daylight by not backing McCain.

It’s not tragic though. Hitchens is good for a laugh. Watch him on a show and he will be arrogant and rude, he will make funny one-liners, he will give you all the good branding he has worked on so assiduously. But that’s what he is: a stand-up comic, not a political thinker.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

McCain Meets with Chilean Dictator in 1985

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

On Thursday, the Huffington Post published an article showing that John McCain had a secret meeting with the dictator Augusto Pinochet of Chile in December 1985. That same year various human rights reports condemned the country for violations against personal freedom and political liberty, not to mention torture.

Below are three paragraphs from the original article posted on the Huffington Post.

“The trip was arranged by Chile’s ambassador to the United States, Hernan Felipe Errazuriz. According to a contemporary government document obtained from Chile, Errazuriz arranged for a special government liaison to help McCain while in Chile for the ’strictly private’ visit, and described him as ‘one of the conservative congressmen who is closest to our embassy.’

“McCain, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time, made no public or private statements critical of the dictatorship, nor did he meet with members of the democratic opposition in Chile, as far as could be determined from a thorough check of U.S. and Chilean newspaper records and interviews with top opposition leaders.

“McCain’s visit with Pinochet took place at a moment when the Chilean strongman held virtually unrestricted dictatorial power and those involved in public, democratic opposition were exposed to great risk.”

It came also at a moment when “methods of torture reported include beatings, electric shocks to the genitals and other parts of the body and rape of women prisoners,” according to an Associated Press report.

Only 12 days later Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy was welcomed with eggs and a road blockade when he visited in a show of support to the Catholic Church and human rights groups.

That year the current Miss Chile was born, John Denver visited and the brothers Vergara were killed.
It is also the year in which the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published a review of the human rights situation in Chile, from 1973 to 1985.

It was published in September 1985. Here are some excerpts.

Under the section, Right to Personal Liberty:

“As may be seen from the foregoing account, the right to personal freedom has suffered a sustained deterioration because of the measures adopted by the Government of Chile during the period covered by this report. The periods of preventive detention have increased, from 48 hours under the earlier system to 20 days in the situation the present regime provides for. ”

That might seem of interest to McCain.

Under the section, Political Rights at Present:

“The intolerance of any form of opposition by the Government of Chile that follows from the exposition in Section C of this Chapter, and the absence of channels of participation of the Chilean population as a consequence of the rigid application of the provisions of the 1980 Constitution, have helped to generate serious social problems which have begun to emerge more forcefully since 1983.”

So in case the situation in Chile is not clear enough, a final section from the report concludes: “It must therefore be concluded that the right to personal freedom has been and is seriously violated by the Government of Chile, which is consequently creating a pervasive state of insecurity in the population and giving rise to conditions for the commission of extremely serious violations of the right to physical integrity and life, as follows from the accounts contained in the respective chapters.”

That also might be of some interest to McCain.

1985 also was the year in which a team of five doctors visited Chile as a delegation of the American Human Rights Committee. According to press reports at the time, the group, citing firsthand accounts of torture victims, said that Chilean physicians were aiding the Chilean security apparatus in an effort to kill fewer victims and make torture more effective. The job … “examine the blindfolded victims to assess before, during and after how much torture the victim is able to withstand.”

An Associated Press report from 1985 states the following:

“Since 1981 the U.S. State Dept. has recorded 286 cases of torture in Chile with the number increasing each year. Statistics kept by the Chilean Commission for Human Rights are more than three times higher.

In the past six months, however, the focus of the torture has apparently shifted from extracting information from political prisoners to “communicating with the population about the reign of terror that now exists, said Dr. Robert Lawrence, chief of medicine at Cambridge Hospital.”

McCain. How could you? What has changed in your judgment between then and now?

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.

How ’Bout a Juicy McMac?; Celebs, Ads Don’t Sway Voters

By JASON WALKER, Columnist

What have we become when a vice presidential nominee has to make an appearance on Saturday Night Live two weeks before an election and a presidential candidate has to do a makeup appearance for getting on David Letterman’s bad side?

Why does David Letterman’s or any celebrity’s opinion matter to us? He can’t even beat out Leno, but scathing remarks after being stood up by a candidate causes a dip in the polls?

Celebrities don’t care about us. There are a few who are genuinely nice and care about mankind, blah, blah, blah. But most have had to step on the faces of rivals to get where they are and the most important thing to them is staying on top.

Have you ever stopped to think that the endorsing celebrity could have concerns about taxes, education or any number of issues in direct opposition to your own?

Let’s not forget that it’s also an issue of ego as well. Liberal celebrities have had it handed to them by the Bush administration for the last eight years. Their egos have been bruised because no matter how hard they’ve campaigned for the opposition or pointed out his obvious flaws, Ol’ Dubyah has kept right on truckin’. These self-important asses want to feel like they can actually have an effect on the direction of the country as much as, if not more than, they actually care about the well-being of the country.

As I watched Palin bobbing her head to the beat I wondered if Gerald Ford ever had to yuck it up with a few talking heads on some cheesy network morning show. I don’t recall Big Bush dropping by SNL and surprising Dana Carvey.

Just as I began to feel queasy over the thought that an appearance on late-night television could be a deciding factor in an election I realized something … that really hasn’t happened yet. Despite all the pulling and prodding by the media we always seem to elect whoever we want. Advertisements and appearances just serve as supplements to keep us interested until Election Day. I can’t think of a time in history when we’ve let outside opinions change our minds about candidates. Whoever you wanted to vote for when the nominations were accepted is probably the same person you want to vote for now.

Which makes me wonder, does any amount of campaigning ever change a person’s mind? We’re only interested in the evidence that supports the decision we’ve already made. We form our opinions based on the sum of our experience and don’t usually change our minds no matter how compelling the argument. So for now I have found some peace by convincing myself that people aren’t directed by the media when they cast their ballots.

So why was Palin on SNL this week?

I prefer Coke over Pepsi. The difference between the two is negligible, but I’m always choosing Coke. In my mind no amount of advertising is ever going to change that. That’s the point. Whenever I made my cola decision advertising played a big part in it. Now that I’ve picked my side it’s up to them to remind me of what a great choice I made. I want to back a winner and be affirmed that I’m a winner for making that choice as much as possible. I even go as far as to root for Coke to have better commercials and higher sales.

Of course no one is going to decide who to vote for because of a boat, but somewhere someone felt good about seeing it and said to themselves, “I haven’t seen any Obama sailboats out today.” The candidates need to keep reminding their supporters that they’ve made a good decision.

It’s our nature. We want our candidates to be superhuman. We want them to be the most amusing when telling jokes, the most eloquent when debating and the most intelligent when discussing policies. They do whatever they can to sustain that image. Whether it is charming late-night appearances, well-scripted commercials or kissing babies in minimalls. We will always love them for doing it.

Politicians know something that we don’t. In the end they are all just people like you and I. That’s why Palin can laugh off Tina Fey’s impression of her and kick it with Lorne backstage at 30 Rock. That’s how Obama and McCain can have a heated debate one night and act like a couple of open-micers the next. Most of us have this thought stuck in our heads that Democrats and Republicans are these two competing factions in an all or nothing battle for supremacy.

In reality, they’re no more different from each other then McDonald’s is from Burger King. Either way you’re still going to go get that delicious, fatty garbage in you. All elected officials have the same goals ― try to accomplish something positive and not get booted before you’re ready to go. They respect and relate to each other the same way employees at Mickey D’s relate to their contemporaries at BK.

They know we are as influenced by the image created around a candidate as we are by their actual accomplishments. Obama’s the smart, young, contemplative diplomat we need to unite the country and turn things around. McCain is the strong-willed, experienced, maverick that will buck the system and lead us to a better tomorrow. Big Mac, Whopper.

Jason Walker may be reached at Jason_R_Walker@comcast.net.

Politics and the Brain

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

For all those arm-chair observers who see themselves as a pop psychologist as much as a “student of politics,” Shankar Vedantam is the journalist for you. National reporter and writer of the “Department of Human Behavior” column for the Washington Post, Vendhatam’s articles dig into the scientific aspects of how we see, hear and think about this election cycle and its array of circus-like acts. He also covers terrorism, autism and why Eliot Spitzer paid so much for his prostitutes.

Political misinformation and why it is effective on our brains - he’s got it. Along with, how politicians evade questions. Do viewers actually remember the question posed to debaters? - that too.
And if you continue to be interested, see an August column titled “How Terrorist Organizations Work Like Clubs,” which is actually about “the generic problem of the question of why people having useful knowledge can’t be bribed to reveal it,” and stay loyal, according to the political scientist quoted.

Check out the archived show of the Kojo Nnamdi Show, a public radio talk-show out of Washington D.C., where Vedantam was the guest to speak to today’s column called “The Art of Evasion.”
Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.

Polling Palin NOW and Forever

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

Here on the fringes of electoral engagement, a flurry of emails urges me to fight an organized right-wing effort. The battleground, a plainly designed poll with a dark blue background that was posted on a news Web site after the explosion of energy post-Republican National Convention. The question was straightforward: “Do you think Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President of the United States?”

Turns out just fewer than 50 million people have also visited this unscientific poll since it has begun its extraordinary life as a September 5th complement to a PBS NOW broadcast, and then as an orphaned link on emails.

It all started with a regular weekly poll that many PBS programs broadcast as a trick to draw people deep into their site. Some shows count their daily poll page views in the hundreds. NOW polls ordinarily draw thousands, according the Director of New Media for NOW, Joel Schwartzberg. NOW is a weekly newsmagazine broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System, and has recently been counting daily page views for the poll in the millions.

“PBS is doing a poll which asks if Palin is qualified to be VP,” goes the email. “The
right wing has organized a yes campaign–and the ‘yes’ is, at the moment,
winning. Take literally two minutes, go to:
http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html and vote!”

Oh the fear, THE FEAR! I received three messages in a two-hour span on Tuesday and one on Monday, all urging me to help to push the vote to the other side in frantic tones. Many right-wing comments cite the existence of the question on PBS as an evidence of bias.

I voted all four times, and each time after that just to check on the race. But on Wednesday an announcement stifled my participation. “PBS acted because the entire pbs.org site had been experiencing system overload due to massive accessing of the poll,” according to the Web site, and they would insert internet cookies on my browser to restrict me from voting repeatedly. They reasoned it would increase the mobilization of participants and reduce the manipulation of the results.

NOW’s September site traffic, if you compare one day to another, is up 7,000% percent when compared with August, according to Schwartzberg.

From the 5th to the 11th, the normal lifespan of NOW’s polls, the Palin poll received under 10,000 daily page views. But its popularity would only surge as the URL was archived on the site, replaced by another poll. It then took on a life of its own as a viral email.

Jumping from 10,000 page views on the 15th, to 90,000 on the 16th, the poll’s popularity exploded to 907,000 page views three days later. On Monday the 22nd, the poll received more than two million page views.

Links underneath the poll have “exploded exponentially” in popularity when added to the poll. The current poll on Obama has boomed in traffic, partially driven by the Palin poll popularity. The phenomenon has driven visitors to the other parts of NOW’s site, which includes a recent segment titled “Women, Power and Politics,” that included an interview with Sarah Palin from 2007.

As of Wednesday, the Palin poll is now the most visited page on the entire PBS Web site, searches related to Palin or polls represent nine out of the ten top searches, and NOW sites occupy eight places in the top ten PBS sites. PBS was so giddy they even released a statement declaring it hit an all-time record of site visits. Much of that, said Schwartzberg, is from the Palin poll.

So, it only makes sense that the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that almost 55% of people are “following the presidential election very closely,” more than 48% in 2004 and 27% in 2000.

When will this fascination with Palin end? Any thoughts on what spurred the viral email? Oh, and you may wonder when the poll ends? NEVER. Despite having the cookies installed, it is still active and there are no plans to de-activate it.

Vote on!

So, who’s winning? On Monday she was winning 50 – 49, on Wednesday, 50 – 49, and alas, a change. Late Thursday, a tie!

For an index of now polls in time, go here.

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.

The Turbanless Taliban

By MATT KENNARD, Columnist

I don’t want to get too much into the whole debate around Sarah Palin because it gives her credit she doesn’t deserve. She is the American Taliban: evolution is a myth, abortion is wrong even in cases of rape and incest, climate change is not man-made. She’s Alaska’s answer to Osama bin Laden, except maybe her kids are more fecund.

She is depressingly doltish, and speaks with a squawk that riles my innards, its inflections acting like a knife to my cerebral cortex.

She is a nonentity and is aware of the fact, as are the puppet masters in the Republican Party. She was chosen to get Hillary voters on their side, so the Republicans could con America into another eight years of corporate rule. It is a cynical ploy and certainly is not “country first,” but why is anyone surprised? It’s not like the Democrats aren’t playing the same game, although they are mini-me to the Republican Satan, it is true.

But the anatomy of the whole propaganda effort after her appointment is interesting. The Republicans must have decided to get a ‘Hockey Mom’ – a euphemism for narrow-minded provincialism – but realized that because she is completely unqualified and startling stupid, they would have to shield her from criticism by inventing a storm of outrage about liberal elitism and misogyny if anyone questioned her slim record.

It was all over the news channels straight away: everywhere there was this outrage at these liberal sexist elites who were dumping so much shit on this poor defenseless woman. But I searched in vain for it. I listened to all this stuff on Fox News and CNN and then turned to the newspapers like The New York Times and tried to find this mocking misogyny, and it wasn’t there. There was literally nothing aside from a few – literally one or two – remarks about having five kids and being VP might be difficult.

The whole thing was made up, and it worked; it put the Democrats on the back foot and they ceded a lot of ground to the Republicans. If you look at all the hours of invective wasted on this topic, no one who is accusing brings up any examples; that’s because it was a completely made-up episode that had been planned before she was even appointed.

Appoint the dumbo, then make everyone feel sorry for her, was the modus vivendi. And even though this is see-through, you never hear it from the Democrats because the Republicans control the debate so much that even drawing attention to this is not permissible.

And how disgusting it is that the Republicans will assume the vernacular of feminism and equality when they have dedicated so many decades to destroying both. But in the mixed-up, shook-up world of American politics, where truth gets buried beneath the semiotics devised by the powerful to keep the rest of us shielded from the truth, when will liberals just stand up and say, “You’re dirty scum!” when the Republicans turn the political arena into a sewer and get by through acting like rats?

Sarah Palin is within ‘a heartbeat’ of the American presidency. There is a good chance McCain will win in November, and owing to the fact he is 73 and not of great health, there is a considerable chance Palin will be the most powerful person in the world within the next eight years. After eight years of George W. Bush maybe that isn’t as scary as it should be, but it is still scary.

The fact that the Republicans have sacrificed the security of America by making this buffoon the VP-elect, is a naked display that they will do anything to get elected. McCain, I suspect, laughs about this idiot in private and Cindy is thought not to like her, which is no surprise.

While Obama’s advance is also a great leap forward for black people in this country, Palin does nothing of the same for women. In fact, by electing a medieval barbarian, who happens to be a woman, to the VP position, this is really a stab in the heart for the feminist movement. If after two waves of the feminist movement and a hell of a lot of struggling, the first woman to get her hands on executive power is Palin, then what does it say about us?

Palin fulfills all the stereotypes of the misogynists; she is a supplicant to an older man, she is as thick as pig shit, she is a backward Taliban and she married another dumb bastard too. The only thing that isn’t a misogynist’s dream is that she’s ambitious. I’m being unfair though.

It’s not her fault she is a misogynist’s dream—she’s just a puppet. But it is the fault of the Republican Party that they chose a woman like this as the first VP candidate – it shows what they really think of women. Far from the Democrats being the sexists, the Republicans are sexist for giving this creature up to the rest of the world as an example of womanhood in the U.S.

Because this has been a cynical public relations ploy, it is likely to die out any second. Palin’s star will wane and she will go back to Kabul – sorry, I mean Juneau – and read her picture books with her grandchild – sorry, I mean child – and fizzle out in the vortex of nothingness from which she emerged so unceremoniously.

Americans should be up in arms that she has been carried by the media for so long, however. She should be laughed out of the shop. How does anyone ask her a serious question without cracking up laughing? I am not exaggerating when I say I would rather trouble the brain of my 12-year-old next-door neighbor about foreign policy than Palin. At least he hadn’t been taught by rote what to say, and might understand a bit of what he was saying.

When the Republic of Rome fell and gave way to the dictatorship of Caesar, there were signals; the Republic of America could fall too if the Republicans are allowed to claim another victory and install the turbanless Taliban. Fascism won’t wear jackboots when it comes to the U.S., it never looks the same, but it could hunt moose and have stupid glasses.

Matt Kennard can be reached at MattKennard@gmail.com.

Ballin’ Palin Can’t Make a Wrong Move

By JASON WALKER, Columnist

If a bridge goes to nowhere does it really exist?

Despite barely watching any coverage of the RNC I saw this bridge to nowhere issue discussed on multiple networks.

From what I understand, Congress earmarked some money to build a bridge in Alaska. Palin was all for building it until Congress told her they would be going Dutch. Since Congress only gave Alaska around half the money they initially said they would, Palin voted against building the bridge, but kept the money.

And…

I don’t see a problem. Was this “bridge only” money? According to the reports I’ve seen Congress didn’t say ‘if you decide not to build the bridge send it back.’ So isn’t it a good move if she decided the cost for state was too great and it would be better to use the money on other projects that wouldn’t require any additional funding from the residents? What elected official in the country would have given back that money? Who is going to say, “We don’t have anything we could use this for,” or, “This is way too much?” Nobody. And if someone did, why would you ever vote for that dummy again?

As governor her primary responsibility is to the people of Alaska. It sounds like what she did was in the state’s best interest, which makes it a pretty good decision in my opinion. I want my governor to have a state-first mentality. She was elected by the people of Alaska, not the entire United States, so serving those who elected you comes first.

So why bring it up? I guess there isn’t much out there about her to discuss and mentioning it in her speech opens the door for scrutiny. So what, she changed her mind after she found out it was going to cost more than she originally thought? We’ve all done that. I don’t know if there’s enough there for her to be touting it as evidence of her bold leadership, but there definitely isn’t enough there to question either. So why does it keep coming up? I actually thought it was a dead issue until I saw a clip online of an interview on 20/20 where she had been asked about it again.

Am I the only one who thought Charles Gibson was kind of a dick? Why has “hard-hitting journalism” become to mean the reporter acts like a douche bag? You can address serious issues or ask difficult questions without being accusatory or ultra-confrontational. But it seems like few know how to do that anymore. Reporters turn each interview into an audition for their own show or a shot at an anchor’s desk. Everybody wants to be Geraldo. Eighties’ Geraldo, not the one giving away tactical positions or making a fool out of himself in the water.

Anyway, the online clips actually got me interested enough to watch the interview. Even though parts of the interview looked more chopped up than a Clue tape, it still seemed that Palin was not comfortable talking about some issues.

She painfully danced around the issue of homosexuality saying, “I’m not going to judge them.” Yes she does. But don’t worry Sarah, we all do, gay or straight. What else is she supposed to say anyway?

She lost me when talking about her national security creed. It didn’t seem like she answered the question at all. It sort of boiled down to being more secure by reducing dependency on foreign oil.

Then there was “Troopergate.” I actually wish there was something there. It would be interesting if it turned out the trooper was a really good guy and she was an evil governor unfairly wielding her power. Sort of like every political movie you’ve ever seen except with a woman in power and, you know, for real. But it probably isn’t going to amount to anything. If it were that big of a scandal we would have seen that trooper’s face all over like that parade of busted women Clinton felt up. Besides the Republican party would really be slippin’ if they let that one get by them. That dude is still a trooper. If she wanted him gone he would have been gone. If she couldn’t take out some random officer with a shaky record, how can you expect her to help mastermind the next national disaster needed to instigate war? When the Sears Tower or Golden Gate Bridge goes down we’re going to know McCain and Palin were behind it in like a week.

I also thought it was interesting that she was a baller in high school. I bet she’s got way more handle than Barack. Despite his height advantage I bet she would house him in a game of one-on-one. He’s a black(ish) presidential candidate and he may not even be the best basketball player on the ballot. His little weekend games look like doo-doo next to a state championship.

All in all she looked too prepped in this interview. She stumbled through issues like abortion because she had been told to avoid saying certain things. I’m sure as she gets coached up more and learns the playbook she’ll learn to respond to those questions naturally. Then we’ll never be able to trust her again.

This whole Palin nomination is genius. She is Obama/Biden campaign cancer; the perfect decoy selected by the Republicans to distract everyone from the real issues and reflect the weakness of the Democratic Party. They can’t attack her for being inexperienced, they can’t attack her the way they did Hillary and, oh, that’s right, they’re not supposed to. She’s the VICE presidential nominee. By positioning Palin against Obama and evoking comparisons to Clinton the Republicans have set up the perfect stage to pull the upset. How bad does it look if your candidate for president is getting all he can handle from the JV squad? It looks like the Democrats finally woke up, but the media seems a bit behind and the more attention Palin receives the worse it will get for the Democrats. If we’re still talking about her children, bridges that weren’t built and employees who still have their jobs in November, then we’ll also be seeing McCain sworn into office in January.

Click here to see the whole 20/20 interview.

Jason Walker may be reached at Jason_R_Walker@comcast.net.

A Bigger Truth

By TOMÁS DINGES, Correspondent

In a political world swamped by information and misinformation, the impact upon voters is the same, they choose to believe what they want or not at all.

I was struck by a Washington Post article early on in the campaign, when a journalist reached out to residents in “Flag City, U.S.A.,” or Findlay, OH, where people were “funny about the change.”

A man who was conflicted between what he read in the papers, or what he heard from his respected friends, neighbors and the Internet, was consulted about Obama. The papers had the facts on his Christianity, shaking hands with troops in Afghanistan; his other sources put him up as a gay, Muslim racist who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Like never before the press and independent think tanks, like Factcheck.org, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, The New York Times’s Check Point and St. Petersburg Times’ Politifact, have sought to check these rumors and the statements by the candidates. Even the candidates have created anti-rumor sites.

But, despite the strange occurrence that “truth-squad” has become a verb, fact has come to be questioned.

For example this quote by Republican strategist John Feehery in The Washington Post: “The more The New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there is a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are that she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent.”

Karl Rove believes that McCain has “gone one step too far,” “beyond the 100% truth” but doesn’t believe any of the fact-checking organizations, according to a New York Times story.

The bigger truths are also better truths. Might they be more factual? Does it matter? It seems not at all.

The bombard of information coming from distinct news media outlets kills the message, even when campaigns try to arrest this growth. See Adam Nagourney’s article in the September 15th New York Times: “It has reached a point where senior campaign aides say they are no longer sure what works, as they stumble through what has become a daily campaign fog, struggling to figure out what voters are paying attention to and, not incidentally, what they are even believing.”

But most importantly, individuals just don’t believe even when faced with the facts.

Some of that harks back to developmental psychology, which says that parents should always speak in positive reinforcement to their children. Research by Hebrew University’s Ruth Mayo shows that there are things called “negation tags” which allow one’s brain to omit the word “doesn’t” from the statement: “Iraq doesn’t possess Weapons of Mass destruction,” for example.

The statement “Obama is not a Muslim,” leads to a large and persistent number of American people who believe that he is not Christian (which he is). According to a July Pew Research report, 12% of people, equally Republican and Democrat, believe he is Muslim, unchanged from March of this past year.

How could this nebulous existence occur? According to an early September article in the Post, it’s been happening since your grandparents voted. “By every measure social scientists have devised, voters are spectacularly uninformed,” according to the story. Additionally, the reporter informs us, Bill O’Reilly viewers are just as smart as Jon Stewart’s viewers.

It’s so happened that one has to wonder if fact has any meaning any more.

Obama is dipping his toes into these waters and it’s dangerous for him. As a mixed-race, but, for all intensive purposes, black man, Obama can do everything wrong. Trusting him seems to be hard enough for the average American, even if he has led a relatively clean campaign up to date. It is also bad for McCain, but he’s white, and business as usual will proceed. Furthermore, he has already drank the Kool-Aid of the ex-Bush campaign team, one that strikes hard and fast, but also dirty.

Ensconce the entire candidacy in a mist of uncertainty, and communicate your message with the hope that the innate conservativeness of the rational voter desiring to protect his or her self-interest, home, family, job, kicks in. A more detailed discussion of the phenomenon of the rise of Republicanism, using the divisive paradigms of race and taxes, are fleshed out in Tom Edsall’s incredible 1991 book, Chain Reaction.

And so we arrive to the current state of things, when the financial sector, and maybe soon the economy’s blow-up, will put our candidates through a unique pre-presidency crucible.

But, Monday’s conference call by Steve Schmidt, McCain’s chief strategist, was not about the implosion of the U.S. financial system. Instead it blasted The New York Times for siding its coverage, and “abetting” the Obama campaign. He continued on, alleging coverage favoritism by The New York Times, and not doing enough in-depth stories on Obama and Biden. Schmidt had had enough. A vast left-wing conspiracy, if you will?

So when Politico.com questioned the assertions (taken for fact) presented during McCain’s press conference, the campaign responded charging that Politico was “quibbling with details,” and later, “in the tank,” with the O campaign. Biden’s camp called Schmidt, stupidly, for “lying” about a claim that Biden’s son Hunter lobbied for the credit card industry.

Keep it positive guys. It’ll be better for everyone, especially the black man.

The definition of “fact” as per Merriam-Webster:
-a thing done (obsolete)
-the quality of being actual
-something that has actual existence
-an actual occurrence
-a piece of information presented as having objective reality

Tomás Dinges can be reached at tdinges@gmail.com.

McCain Call Gone Awry

By CASEY HYNES, Correspondent

John McCain’s senior strategist and campaign manager spoke with reporters this morning about the Republican presidential nominee’s response to the White House’s proposed bailout of the country’s troubled financial system. Steve Schmidt, the senior strategist for the campaign, and campaign manager Rick Davis emphasized McCain’s concern that the plan could cost taxpayers up to one trillion dollars, and that it would give unprecedented, and largely unchecked, power to the Treasury Department.

During the call they explained that McCain is speaking with colleagues on the Hill to determine “what kind of mischief can go on when these lawmakers get their hands on a trillion dollars” coming through the system. The Arizona senator wants to insure that there are clear guidelines for oversight and accountability in the plan, and advocates “unprecedented transparency” as the bailout unfolds, according to Schmidt and Davis.

Officially, the conference call was supposed to address a new ad from the campaign, titled “Chicago Machine.” The ad is meant to raise questions about Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s connections to certain members of the political establishment in Chicago, including Mayor Richard Daley. Schmidt criticized the media for not investigating more of Obama’s “friends in Chicago,” including William Ayers, who has admitted to carrying out terrorist attacks as a member of the radical Weathermen underground organization.

Schmidt also blasted The New York Times as a “pro-Obama machine” that has repeatedly gone after McCain and his vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, but has done no serious vetting of the Illinois senator. “Whatever The New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization,” Schmidt said.

He went on to say that the Times is “100 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be.”

Casey Hynes may be reached at casey.hynes@gmail.com.

Hockey Mom for Veep

By EUGENE MULERO, Correspondent

I met several hockey moms when I worked in Morristown, N.J., about four years ago. It was a breezy, yucky late-November evening and they were across from the town square, with their hockey-playing sons, asking for donations. The hockey season was fast approaching and the players needed money to buy new uniforms. These hockey moms were in their 30s and 40s. They had short hair and seemed like the type that are active in civic activities, such as the school board and town council.

I remember thinking how dedicated they were. I went back to the newsroom and worked on a political story for my newspaper and forgot about the hockey moms.

Fast-forward to last week: A hockey mom was on TV. Every channel had her on. I never before heard about her, and since I’m pretty plugged into national politics, that meant she couldn’t have been that important.

After researching this hockey mom, I realized I was right. Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) had been the mayor of a small town. She was against abortion rights, even for women made pregnant by rape or incest. She believed in creationism — so much so that she advocates it be taught in public schools. She said the war in Iraq was “God’s war.” She doesn’t believe global warming is man-made and she doesn’t support stem-cell research. She is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and, before I forget, she also is a hockey mom. She actually listed “hockey mom” as a qualification to be our vice president when McMaverick first paraded her to the public.

I can see why McMaverick picked her as a running mate. She pleases the social right; she’s not bright (just clever in debates) and she appeals to disgruntled women who look down at Ivy Leaguers and tree-huggers. She’s the hockey mom with five kids that has a NASCAR dad for a husband who is governing one of the most overlooked states in our country. (Think about it: When was the last time you said you were heading to Alaska?)

And what should really be frustrating to voters is that the McMaverick camp (run by Karl Rove) is not letting Palin go on any of the “hard-hitting” news shows. She’s not scheduled to make appearances before George Stephanopoulos or Tom Brokaw. Chris Matthews or Charlie Rose won’t get to pick her brain. Nevermind The New York Times editorial board. Nope. She may just appear on the Bill O’Reilly propaganda hour. And, if Access Hollywood or The Tonight Show with Jay Leno come calling, she may be allowed to go on, only if there’s a “no-tough-question-rule” established.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), Obama’s vice presidential pick, just got grilled by Brokaw on Meet the Press last Sunday. Palin, who says she’s tough enough to take on corrupt Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) – which is not true – is not tough enough for the Meet the Press treatment. And if she can’t do Meet the Press, can she confront foreign leaders in the Middle East, career generals from NATO or the American public?

Maybe … if all they talk about is hockey.

Eugene Mulero may be reached at Eugene.Mulero@gmail.com.

Next Page »