That's mavirckiness we can believe in, my friends

I hate to say it, but Sarah Palin has a point.

He's got a lot of experience and just stating the fact there, that we've been hearing his speeches for all these years. So he's got a tremendous amount of experience and, you know, I'm the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he's got the experience based on many many years in the Senate and voters are gonna have a choice there of what it is that they want in these next four years.

Got that? Don't vote for the old guy who's been in the Senate--like--forever. Vote for the new kid with energy and ideas. This must be why McCain has started chaperoning her to her interviews.

Speaking of mavirckiness we can believe in, those clever kids over at FireDogLake found a Mother Jones interview with McCain from 1998 when he was opposed to Clinton going after bin Laden.

Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted? Most of us have never heard of him before. And where there is a parallel with Vietnam is: What's plan B? What do we do next? We sent our troops into Vietnam to protect the bases. Lyndon Johnson said, Only to protect the bases. Next thing you know.... Well, we've declared to the terrorists that we're going to strike them wherever they live. That's fine. But what's next? That's where there might be some comparison.

We shouldn't let that Laden guy lure us into a global war on terror, because you never know what kind of unforeseen consequences that might have.

(Both quotes via AmericaBlog.)

Bailout fallout

The bailout bill just failed and the stock market dropped 600 almost 800 points. Boehner and the Republicans are saying they voted against the bill because Pelosi hurt their feelings. I'm not sure whether the bill was good or bad, but I do know a stock market crash is not good.

Update: The final count on the Dow Jones is possible the biggest single day drop in history.

Earlier today, the McCain team was pushing the narrative that he personally saved the deal by pararchuting in last week. Now he's he's stamping his well-shod feet and shouting that Obama personally ruined the deal.

The House Republicans are sticking by their statement that they threw the deal because Pelosi hurt their iddle widdle feelings. Presumably, that means they were ready to vote for the bill on its merits until Pelosi said something mean. That's quite an amazing thing to admit. We always suspected that they were a bunch of drama queens who cared more about having their egos massaged than about doing what they think is best for America. But it's something else to hear it from their own mouths. Mind you, these are the same manly men who claim they are the only thing standing between us and total victory by the terrorists, immigrants, homosexuals, rap musicians, and Putin.

While it's true that they more likely changed their minds and scuttled the deal that John McCain personally negotiated because they thought running against the deal might be a way to save their pathetic jobs in November, it doesn't change the fact that claiming to be a bunch thin-skinned crybabies is really an amazing thing to announce in public. An not something that inspires confidence.

McCain can't do two things at once

John McCain has been taking a drubbing in the campaign lately and now he wants to call time out.

John McCain said he and Democratic rival Barack Obama should suspend their presidential campaigns and delay Friday's scheduled debate to work with lawmakers on a plan for addressing the financial-markets crisis.

McCain said the Bush administration's proposal to rescue struggling financial companies and unlock credit markets won't pass Congress in its current form.

He said he will return to Washington tomorrow to join congressional deliberations, and won't participate in the debate unless there is a resolution by then.

I'm sure some in McCain's campaign think a time out is a good idea as it can be used to slow the momentum of his decline. The economic crisis provides perfect cover for this maneuver. The McCain campaigners want their guy to be seen rushing back to take charge of this important issue. They want him to be seen as caring more about what's good for America than about campaigning for president. I'm sure many will take his actions at face value and be impressed by them. Not me. I don't believe a word of it.

First, McCain is largely responsible for this mess. During his twenty-six years in congress he has been a tireless voice for deregulation, doing a way with the structure of laws and oversight that pulled us out of the depression in the thirties and prevented a repeat of those horrible events for over seventy years. That structure has been good for American workers, consumers, and retirees, but opposed by speculators who make huge profits by exploiting short-sighted gains and running away before they have to pay the consequences. Led by his advisor Phil "Whiners" Gramm, the Republicans finally succeeded in undoing the work of the New Deal Under Reagan and the Gingrich-DeLay congresses. After that, it was just a matter of time before things collapsed. Many economists and responsible, civic minded businessmen like Warren Buffett warned that this was coming, but people like McCain mocked them as "nay-sayers" and encouraged the builders of our economic house of cards. As one of the architects of this mess, McCain is one of the last people we should look to as a leader in fixing the problem.

Secondly, despite his sneering dismissal of Obama's patriotism, it is McCain who cares more about getting elected than anything else. It is McCain who has racked up a higher absentee rate over the last two years than anyone in the Senate. While Obama warned of the coming crisis and offered solutions, McCain travelled the election circuit proudly bragging about his record of fighting regulation, confessing his ignorance on economic matters, and promising more and longer wars for the next generation to fight.

Finally, why should he be allowed to opt out of the election process now? What better time for the American people to hear what he has to offer, to make him explain why we should trust him?

This call for a time out should fill us with doubt and fear. When the president is called on to deal with one crisis, America's other problems and enemies don't patiently wait until he finishes, has a nap, and is ready for them. Today, Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the next hurricane aren't going to wait until we're done with this problem before causing trouble. Their manners won't get any better during a McCain administration. If McCain doesn't have the energy, attention span, or ability to do more than one thing at once, McCain doesn't have what it takes to be president. Period.

Palin's excellent dinosaur adventure

Uh oh. Those relentless investigative reporters of the right think they have caught lefty celebrities and mainstream media stars getting hoaxed by a humor site and spreading lies about Sarah Palin. Warner Todd Huston has a column up on a dozen or so right-wing sites with the poop on our latest perfidy.

As if we needed another reason to think that the excitable Maureen Dowd and the empty headed Matt Damon are... well, excitable and empty headed… we get the newest raindrop in their river of blather as proof that their "research" into a subject seems to consist of hearing an unsupported claim and deciding it represent gospel truth. Our latest proof is that they both seem to have been taken in by a nutrooter lie, a fake quote that claims Sarah Palin said, "dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago."

Both seem to have fallen for a parody of Governor Palin invented by a blogger whose post seems to have been taken literally. The following self-identified "fake Governor Sarah Palin Quote" was posted on August 30: "God made dinosaurs 4,000 years ago as ultimately flawed creatures, lizards of Satan really, so when they died and became petroleum products we, made in his perfect image, could use them in our pickup trucks, snow machines and fishing boats."

[...]

[H]ow do these two darlings of the far left explain away their use against Palin of a known nutrooter lie? I suppose, like most leftists, truth doesn’t matter to them if the end result is a win for their side. After all, for the left, the ends truly do justify the means.

Huston shouldn't be so quick to declare victory on that one. Many creationists do believe that the men of Genesis and dinosaurs lived together, that Noah carried dinosaurs on his ark, that dinosaurs are the dragons and monsters of ancient and medieval lore, and that they have only gone extinct in historical times. Google the word dinosaur along with Behemoth and Leviathan. Take Ken Ham (please! Ba-dump), the owner of the fancy new creation science museum in Kentucky.

In the Bible, in Job 40:15-24, God describes to Job (who lived after the Flood) a great beast with which Job was familiar. This great animal, called 'behemoth,' is described as 'the chief of the ways of God,' perhaps the biggest land animal God had created. Impressively, he moved his tail like a cedar tree! Although some Bible commentaries say this may have been an elephant or hippopotamus, the description actually fits that of a dinosaur like Brachiosaurus. Elephants and hippos certainly do not have tails like cedar trees!

[...]

Interestingly, the word 'dragon' is used a number of times in the Old Testament. In most instances, the word dinosaur could substitute for dragon and it would fit very nicely. Creation scientists believe that dinosaurs were called dragons before the word dinosaur was invented in the 1800s. We would not expect to find the word dinosaur in Bibles like the Authorized Version (1611), as it was translated well before the word dinosaur was ever used.

Also, there are many very old history books in various libraries around the world that have detailed records of dragons and their encounters with people. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly for creationists), many of these descriptions of dragons fit with how modern scientists would describe dinosaurs, even Tyrannosaurus. Unfortunately, this evidence is not considered valid by evolutionists. Why? Only because their belief is that man and dinosaurs did not live at the same time!

At least one Alaskan claims Palin went along with this theory up until a few years ago. From Philip Munger's Progressive Alaska. "[In June 1997] I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time." In another version of the story, Munger told an interviewer "I pushed her on the earth's creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she'd seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them." About eight years later he ran into her again. "At this time, people were beginning to encourage her to run for Governor. Once again, we found ourselves being able to talk privately. I reminded her of the earlier conversation, asking her if her views had changed. She was no longer 'necessarily' a young earth creationist, she told me. But she strongly reiterated her belief that 'The Lord is coming soon.' I was trying to get her to tell me what she felt the signs were, when she had to move on." Unless Huston can discredit Munger as a witness, the truth on this one is, at best, that she used to believe that people and dinosaurs once lived together, but now she isn't sure.

By the way, the Matt Damon clip that is circulating does not "propagate [that] as fact." He question it. He says it is important to find out if that is something she believes. But lets not let facts get in the way. If there is one thing the right loves as much as a good press bashing, it's a good Hollywood bashing. By linking Dowd and Damon on this one it's a twofer Huston and his readers. Huston can be as snide and sarcastic as he wants, but he's wrong on this one. So, how will they explain away the use against Dowd and Damon of known wingnut misinformation when this gets out? Will they just ignore it? "I suppose, like most leftists rightists, truth doesn’t matter to them if the end result is a win for their side. After all, for the left right, the ends truly do justify the means." Yeah, my enemy is just plain evil, that must be the explanation.

Palin Rumors: Part 2

Charlie Martin has moved his Palin Rumors debunking to a new home and begun updating and adding to the list. I'll continue my practice of fisking his debunking as long as he keeps adding to the collection. Here are the next few on the list:

72. No, she didn’t try to charge rape victimsd personally for rape kits. This is one of those complicated ones with a tiny hint of truth behind it. First, the Cheif of Police in Wasilla did apparently have a policy of asking a victim’s health insurnace to pay for the rape kit as part of the ER visit. This, it turns out, is policy in a number of states, including Missouri and North Carolina. Second, the way this became an issue was after the then-governor of Alaska signed a bill forbidding it; this law was signed before Palin was Governor and no one tried to reverse it while she was Governor. Third, what the CoP in Wasilla wanted to do was charge the perpetrator as part of restitution.

I wrote extensively on this one already, here. Again Charlie hamstrings my attempt to do a thorough follow up by not citing his sources. Did someone really say she tried to reverse the Croft bill outlawing the practice or is he just being sarcastic? I'll probably never know. In any case, his attempt to justify her practice is bogus. First, who care if other states bill the victims? If they jumped off a cliff.... It's still wrong. Second, Chief Fannon's claim about wanting to bill the criminals is a weak effort at damage control at best. The rape kit is an investigative tool. Does Fannon bill the victims of shootings for ballistic work? Does he bill the victims of burglary for fingerprint work (if any is done)? In no other crime is the victim charged for the investigation. If the courts want to charge the criminal restitution for the costs to the police, nothing is stopping them. Fallon's action singles out the victims of this one crime for special--and cruel--treatment.

Two things about the crime of rape make the victims stand apart from the victims of other crimes. They are almost entirely women and they can become pregnant as a result of the crime. The rape examination can, but doesn't necessarily, include a morning after pill to stop a potential pregnancy. And, like any medical procedure during pregnancy, the exam has a slight risk of causing a miscarriage. Palin is an anti-abortion extremist; she opposes abortion even for rape and/or incest. Early in her political career she was active in picketing and driving away the only abortion provider in the Susitna valley. Many anti-abortion zealots oppose morning after contraception and encourage pharmacists not to carry it. Finally, the practice of billing the victims was introduced into Wasilla by Palin's hand chosen police chief and was not practiced by the chief she fired.

73. Yes, she did say that she figured if "under God" was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it was good enough for her. No, in context I don’t think that means she thinks the Founding Fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.

In context, I don't see how it can mean anything else. Since Charlie doesn't actually link to the context, I will. You can make up your own mind whether Charlie or I are correct. Note: Eagle Forum, the Phylis Schafly group that originally polled her on this has taken the poll results offline. This copy is from the Anchorage Daily News. There are dozens of other copies of the poll out there. Eagle Forum isn't very internet savvy.

Part 1 of my fisking is here.

Now that I own an insurance company

The US, better known as you and me, just bought an 80% majority of the insurance giant American International Group Inc., better known as AIG. I'll leave conservatives to fret over this socialist takeover of private industry, I'm concerned about how our company has been run. Now that we are the majority stakeholders I expect we will have most of the seats on the company's board of directors and executive compensation committee. From those positions, I think we should fire all of the current management above the department head level and institute a stockholder's lawsuit against those former executives and board members who have so badly mismanaged our company. Besides suing them to return all pay and compensation received during their disastrous tenures, I think we should ask for sizable punitive damages to make an example of them. And, since we are now a socialist dictatorship like Denmark, where's my damn socialized medicine?

Unemployed again

For the last year, I've had a part-time job writing content for the beta version a news chat site (which is the official excuse for my sparse posting over here). But that came to an end Friday. The site is now mature enough that they can generate discussion without paid ringers like me to keep things going. It was a part time job and only provided pocket money for me, but I enjoyed it. Now, I need to find an income again. Sigh. I'm a hard worker and good at a number of things, but networking and finding work are not among my talents. So here's the situation: I'm a skilled writer/editor in the Seattle area available for full-time, part-time, temporary, or contract work. My dream job is writing content for a project that uses one of my areas of knowledge. That would be news, politics, science, history, or literature. I have written catalogs for collections, press releases, newsletters, book reviews, software helpfiles and manuals, and even a little marketing text. Send those tips and job offers to the e-mail at the left or drop them in the comments. Thanks.

Alaska is right next to Russia

When others have mentioned this fact as something that qualifies Sarah Palin for vice president, most people have laughed. Therefore, I was surprised to hear her bring it up herself.

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

In her defense, maybe she thought Gibson said "What sight do you have..." in which case her geography factoid might have been a correct answer. She was referring to the Diomede Islands which straddle the International Date Line in the Bering Straits. Big Diomede is on the Russian side of the line and Little Domede is on the Alaskan side. There is a village of about 150 Eskimos on Little Domede who live mostly by fishing and walrus hunting. The islands are only two and a half miles apart, so it's easy to see one from the other on a clear day. In the winter when the ice is frozen you can walk across in about an hour.

This point was a laugh line a week ago but, since they don't have anything better to offer with Palin, the McCain campaign is trying to repackage it as a serious argument. If they repeat it enough, reporters might start to take it seriously (or, at least, report it seriously in their he-said-she-said narrative). Supporters, who will repeat anything their side says, will have no problem swallowing the koolaid that this is a serious argument. By the old propaganda principle called the "big lie," if you repeat something enough times it becomes conventional wisdom, regardless of how silly, false, or unbelievable it may have been at the beginning.

I see a big flaw in this big lie. Even if it is true that a person can become a foreign policy expert just by seeing the shoreline of Russia, I can find no evidence that Sarah Palin has done so. I can locate no news articles or any other evidence that she has ever been to Little Diomede or that she has seen Russia. Even she said, you can see Russia from Alaska, not that she has seen Russia from Alaska.

I lived in Alaska for nineteen years and I've been to Russia. I guess that makes me a thousand times the foreign policy expert she is. Former Python Michael Palin has been to Little Diomede, so I guess he's qualified to Prime Minister.

About those rape kits

Earlier this week, reporters and bloggers looking into Sarah Palin's record as mayor came up with a horrifying story from the local Wasilla paper The Frontiersman. The story was that under Palin, the police department of Wasilla had a policy of billing the victims of rape for the medical tests used by the police in their investigation. The reason for the original news article was that the Alaska state legislature had passed a law forbidding police departments from continuing that practice. Most cop show fans will be familiar with the term "rape kit" used for these exams. What the television dramas don't mention is that these exams and related lab work cost between $300 and $1200 apiece. That's a big burden to drop on someone who is already traumatized by being the victim of a violent crime. The new law required police departments to pay the costs themselves.

The governor signed House Bill 270, sponsored by Rep. Eric Croft, D-Anchorage, outside the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) exam room at Alaska Regional Hospital. In attendance at the signing were members of victims advocate groups, law enforcement agencies and legislators.

The new law makes it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims insurance companies for the costs of examinations that take place to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault did occur.

While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests. Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams. "In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer," Fannon said. According to Fannon, the new law will cost the Wasilla Police Department approximately $5,000 to $14,000 a year to collect evidence for sexual assault cases.

The response to the article has been incredulous and loud. Obviously, outrage has been the primary response on one side of the aisle. On the other side three primary responses have emerged. First, simple dismissal. Any criticism of Palin is a smear, negative campaigning, and motivated by sexism.

The second response is an argument from ignorance. The respondent refuses to believe it could be that bad.

The only conceivable possibility is that there may have been cases for which insurance didn't pay (the article provides no evidence of this), in which case the most likely scenario would be the department paying as in the city of Palmer. ... There is no evidence in the slightest than any[one] ever had to pay a cent, and this would be obvious and easy for the newspaper to have checked - and I'm sure the DNC's team of operatives would have turned up something better than this hit job if there were any such thing to find.

The author here has no facts beyond those in The Frontiersman piece but makes assumptions about what must have happened and denigrates the article as a "hit job." Note: the DNC "team of operatives" he refers to is a Republican urban legend. There is no DNC team of operatives as described in his link.

The third defense is the bad underling defense. The respondent says that if it did happen, it wasn't Palin's fault, she couldn't have known about it, and that it was the police chief's fault. This response also depends on making assumptions without presenting any new facts. This ignores the fact that she hired the police chief and that in politics responsibility flows upward, not down.

No one seems to know if anyone was ever actually charged for their rape kit. Charlie Fannon, the police chief Palin hired after firing Irl Stambaugh, said, "In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible." Does that imply it wasn't always possible? If so, what who paid? Tony Knowles, the governor at the time, and Eric Croft, the primary sponsor of the bill, both say the bill was specifically aimed at Wasilla. The reporter who wrote the original Frontiersman article that started this whole brou-ha-ha made a rather clear statement that "the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests." Is the certainty of this statement based on it having happened or on her understanding of Fannon's policy? Again, no one really knows.

The one truth in this is that during Palin's term as mayor, the police chief she hired had a policy of placing the responsibility for paying for a vital investigative tool on the victims rather than paying for it out of police funds. Did he also require the victims of shootings to pay for ballistic testing of guns and bullets? Singling out rape for this kind of treatment certainly indicates a gross insensitivity toward the victims and probably that he placed a lower value on solving these crimes than on others.

This is an issue where Palin and McCain are in perfect agreement. In 1994, John McCain voted in the minority against legislation -- pushed by Joe Biden -- that helped put an end to charging rape victims for sexual assault exams. That bill, H.R.3355: the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, provided funding for a variety of law enforcement programs, but would have denied funds to any police department that billed victims for their rape kits. As recently as 2007 McCain voted against reauthorizing that program. There is far more reason to absolve McCain than Palin. In his defense, the 1994 bill was a large bill with many provisions; the rape kit section was one among many. Palin has no such defense.

Much, if not most, of the bump that McCain received from adding Palin to his ticket has come from white women. If there was any strategy at all involved in picking her, and she wasn't just the lucky result of a tantrum McCain threw when they told him he couldn't have Lieberman, this was it. The Palin bump is the last hurrah of the disgruntled PUMAs. Unfortunately for McCain, Palin's position on the issues that the press usually identifies as "women's issues" is not good. When the novelty of her wears off, many of the women who moved to the R column last week will move back to the D column. But they won't move without help. The Obama campaign needs to move agressively to reestablish the Democratic brand superiority on those women's issues

More Obama sexism

Brace yourself.

President Bush's announcement Tuesday that he would bring home 8,000 troops from Iraq early next year did not win over Barack Obama. The Democratic presidential nominee said the move just "kicks the can down the road" to the next president.

He said "can"!!! That's clearly a reference to Palin's butt! I'm outraged at the sexism of Obama, the Democrats, and the liberal media. I demand an apology!! I demand a denouncement!!! Where's my smelling salts? Besides, Al Gore has a bigger can than Palin. So there.