The best watchdog team out there!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card
* can't say I coined the howler monkey phrase ... see previous post called "Enough! Here's Why the Polls are so Damn Close!" by Bob Cesca.
Oh, and doesn't Dick Morris remind you of Harvey Fierstein? You know, the husky-voiced, drag queen on Broadway!
Yes, it makes for dry cocktail party convo, but here's what I gleaned from an interview b/w Tom Ashbrook [ http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/09/the-financial-crisis/ ] and Lawrence Summers, acclaimed economist, past president of Harvard and former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton.
But to be clear, there is another detail a friend of mine reminded me about today ... something about the democratic process ...
"Prior to Reagan, taxes on the upper echelon were crazy high--something like 90%--I'm not kidding--and no matter how much Reagan lowered them, they started at such a high level, it had to be a slow-and-steady decline that took 20+ years to accomplish. It would have been too much of a shock to the system to lower them to current levels in one fell swoop. [But] nothing [candidates] propose ever gets through Congress without major revision. It's the democratic process.But ... it will take time to raise them. You can't jack up taxes overnight ... Continuity matters."
Thank you, Greg Barrett, for that important piece of perspective.
From the Huffington Post this am. Originally from Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog! Go!
I've never read anything that better sums up the ridiculousness of the political landscape. And he's a pretty damn funny, freakin' genius writer.
***
Today's edition of Morning Joe on MSNBC was especially ridiculous. And Pat Buchanan wasn't even there, which meant that everyone else had to overcompensate to make up for the conspicuous absence of awful.
Back story: Senator Obama released a two-minute commercial about the economic crisis -- also known as "the worst financial crisis in a century," according Alan Greenspan and Mort Zuckerman. It's a smart, effective ad that serves two purposes: it outlines what Obama plans to do about the crisis, and it continues to hammer home Senator Obama as a tough yet presidential would-be chief executive and steward of the economy.
David Brooks writes in the New York Times that Sarah Palin is unqualified:
In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation's founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin. I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn't just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence. ... Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.
In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation's founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.
I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn't just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.
And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.
... Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she'd be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.
Ross Douthat agrees at the Atlantic:
Now that we've seen the entirety of the Palin-Gibson tete-a-tete, I concur with Rich Lowry and Rod Dreher. The most that can be said in her defense is that she kept her cool and avoided any brutal gaffes; other than that, she seemed about an inch deep on every issue outside her comfort zone. Yes, the questions were tougher than the ones that a Tim Kaine or Tim Pawlenty probably would have been handed, but they were all questions that a vice-presidential nominee needs to be able to answer. And there's no way to look at her performance as anything save supporting evidence for the non-hysterical critique of her candidacy - that it's just too much, too soon - and a splash of cold water for those of us with high hopes for her future on the national stage.
And in the Washington Post, Richard Cohen goes off on McCain, seizing on the Palin pick as a sign of how far gone the candidate is:
McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though. ... His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.
McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though.
... His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.
from. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/16/conservatives-turn-on-mcc_n_126749.html 9/16/08
The following are just a FEW of my objections to Sarah Palin as nominee for VP:
Achem.
Sorry.
Kinda went off the rails there ... mixing flames, broken back metaphors w/ white supremists. I'm a little worked up over this stuff in case you couldn't tell.
Whew, so, moving on ...
But in Palin's meager defense, she did give taxpayers quite a chunk of change--$1200/every man woman and child in the state. You can do that when you're oil rich. So maybe she has high approval ratings in her state, but how hard was that to accomplish in a mostly white, conservative, evangelical population that got an extra $1200 in their pockets? What's not for them to like? But does anyone really think she has anything to contribute to reducing a $10 Trillion debt in a $14 Trillion economy [or dealing w/ the worst Financial crisis in our economy since the Great Depression}? You think she can fix that by cutting taxes? [of course, I’m speaking in the ghastly case of a Palin-McCain administration]. Not only that she has a history of secretiveness and NOT reaching across the aisle. All you have to do is google and dig a little. And trust me, if I can get this, that means it's not rocket science.
But in Palin's meager defense, she did give taxpayers quite a chunk of change--$1200/every man woman and child in the state. You can do that when you're oil rich. So maybe she has high approval ratings in her state, but how hard was that to accomplish in a mostly white, conservative, evangelical population that got an extra $1200 in their pockets? What's not for them to like?
But does anyone really think she has anything to contribute to reducing a $10 Trillion debt in a $14 Trillion economy [or dealing w/ the worst Financial crisis in our economy since the Great Depression}? You think she can fix that by cutting taxes? [of course, I’m speaking in the ghastly case of a Palin-McCain administration]. Not only that she has a history of secretiveness and NOT reaching across the aisle. All you have to do is google and dig a little.
And trust me, if I can get this, that means it's not rocket science.
"Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies."It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list."
"Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies."
It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list."
