Post-Palin Brains

[elfs]

US Invades Pakistan

Remember how Barack Obama swore he would, unlike the Bush administration, hunt down Osama Bin Laden to his cave? And the right-wing punditocracy suddenly started beating their chests and pulling their hair and saying, "Does that mean Obama would invade an allied nation?

The Bush Administration has just done exactly what Obama said it should do, and what McCain's surrogates said would be wildly irresponsible.

A List of Obama's Accomplishments in the Senate

The next time someone tells you Obama has no major accomplishments, ask if he's heard of the Obama-Lugar Nuclear Nonproliferation Act, the Obama-Lugar Ethics in Government Act, or his work on personal privacy for users of professional tax preparers, the avian flu awareness bill a year before anyone else cared, lobbying reform, veteran's health care, and my favorite, a public database of all federal spending and contracts.

Looking through Obama's actual record, I become more impressed. This is a guy who actually worked to get things done, whose thrust in the Senate was mostly to the benefit of Americans rather than merely the people of his own state.

Thanks to Sarah Palin for giving the media a chance to point out that Obama is a wonk in the same mold as Al Gore, a man who gets things done, who tightens the screws, and who makes government effective. Unlike Constitution-wrecking grandstanders like McCain-Feingold.

Anyone else notice that Dick Lugar isn't welcome at the Republican National Convention?

Sarah Palin left Wasilla "The Meth Capital of Alasaka."

To be fair to Palin, she was the mayor of the town, not controller (or whatever it is) of the county territory around Wasilla, but it's still telling that there's absolutely nothing on her record about the meth problem in her hometown. No, she was too busy pressuring the town librarian to ban books she found offensive and telling people that her Lutheran opponent wasn't Christian enough.

An attempt to reproduce the Wakefield experiment returns negative results

Fourteen years ago, Andrew Wakefield released a study claiming that the temporal relationship between vaccinations and autiusm was a causal relationship, and people stopped vaccinating their kids. The result is a sudden rush of measles outbreaks in the US and UK. The study was badly flawed, and Wakefield has taken a lot of heat.

And well he should. Attempting to reproduce the study has resulted in negative results. There is no correlation at all between MMR vaccinations and autism. None at all.

Paul Offit was right!

McCain lies badly

At least Joe Biden isn't quite so embarrassing. McCain uses the "close to Russia" talking point, only to be corrected that Palin never once gave a command to the Alaska National Guard and never once met with anyone, even from the US, who had an association with the Russian government.

Comments

[tagryn]

The problem I see with her argument is that silence implies consent. If folks don't speak up and take the press to task when they're writing about things like how bad a (woman) candidate's hairstyle is or what shoes she's wearing today, or whether her daughter should marry her baby's father, that's pretty much agreeing that that is a legitimate thing to measure female candidates by. The sexist slant is no more legit than if a Deep South paper ran an article about whether Obama's skin is light enough or not; should the campaign just 'shut up and deal' on that also, were it to happen?

Another analogy: in the debates, when the candidates went along with that juvenile "raise your hands if you agree with XYZ" trick, the minute they stuck their hands in the air they were agreeing that that was a legitimate avenue of questioning. Not objecting = agreement, at least as far as dealing with the press goes.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

This is true, and silence isn't the way to go. However, there's a world of difference in how a person/candidate/party can choose not to be silent.

I could understand that response if there was nothing but the lurid tabloid scandal topics. (which both parties do gleefully engage in) *understand* it, but not advocate it, because even then, you can whine and cry unfair, or rise above it and respond with a bit more dignity, detailing exactly why a particular claim or question is specious and full of crap.

It's not at all, however, a valid response when somebody starts asking legitimate questions about a candidate's background and qualifications. That's really the point Ursula was making. Not just that they're going "boo hoo, you mean reporters should stop asking all these hard questions!!!" but that they don't seem to have much else as an over-arching strategy.* It's especially amusing in a pot-kettle-black sense when considering all of the blatantly racist and bigoted crap the conservative press was churning out about Obama for months, and the flip-flop on the sexist/gender issue (http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card) coming from that court is even funnier.

Legitimate and serious questions about Palin's ethical issues, the vetting process she underwent, her qualifications, and potential abuses of her office's power up in Alaska, are coming up, and are being met not with answers and explanations, but cries that the press is being Unfair. I realize that the conservatives know their hardcore base has a nice martyr complex going on, and that there isn't a better way to rally that hard core than to say the horrible liberal press is attacking them again, but it redlines my bullshit meter.

*and if that's the best they can manage now, how will they respond to an actual crisis?

[tagryn]

I don't think the GOP party reps have come out and specifically tried to counter the "Troopergate" charges with the sexism charge, because that would be obvious BS. In fairness, the press deserves some of the blame for the signal noise too by choosing to focus on "she's a WOMAN! WOW!"

I'm hoping that when the hoopla from both conventions dies down and the debates get closer, both parties will be forced to address the issues that actually matter to most of America - the economy, energy, Iraq, health care. Palin's daughter's pregnancy, for example, or that she has a baby with Down's syndrome really doesn't matter in how each side plans to address those things.