Positive Liberty

Once again I caught the last 20 minutes of the debate, this time in the car driving home from Disney on Ice at the Palace of Auburn Hills (the Auburn Hill, apparently, is the giant landfill looming over the arena). Here are some random thoughts, appropriate only to a casual Friday. Continue Reading »

There’s been a lot bytes spent on Sarah Palin rumors of late. Like, for example, Sarah Palin pretended to give birth to the child her daughter actually bore, to cover up family/political shame. Even the blog that got that incorrect rumor started, and self-admittedly damaged its credibility in the process, is conceding the point.

Inconveniently, two more of these rumors seem to be going down in flames. Continue Reading »

Sarah Palin’s “lipstick on a bulldog” ad lib was all too accurate, even if the substantive points of the speech were not: For starters, she was for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it.

And altogether, the speech was a rather nasty piece of work, wasn’t it? I suspect most commentators wouldn’t be calling it “brilliant” or “a home run” if she’d had a suit, a tie, and a penis. Some commentators all but say it, too. And of course the Republican base liked it. They like anyone who attacks the Democrats and happens to be female. They like Ann Coulter, for crying out loud, so we have to admit the bar is set pretty low.

I know there are these huge impulses to over- or under-sell Palin’s performance, but: It was a typical vice-presidential attack-dog speech, no more and no less. With a few family bits thrown in. That’s all.

Barack Obama says Palin’s family matters are off-limits.  Of course they won’t be, but it’s the right thing for him to say.  Now he needs to get the message to his campaign, so no-one embarrasses him.

However a McCain aide at the RNC was absolutely pwned by CNN’s Campbell Brown asking about Palin’s foreign policy experience.    The first three minutes are about the family issue, but at about the 3:15 mark, the interesting part begins.

First he claims she’ll be fine on foreign policy because she’ll be learning under McCain.  Then, forced to respond to how well prepared she is right now, he falls back on her “executive state level experience” and “commander of the Alaska National Guard that’s been deployed overseas.”  Brown asks for “just one decision she’s made as commander of the Alaska National Guard.”  The aide responds by saying, “Surely you don’t mean to belittle the decisions she’s made as commander of the Alaska National Guard,” then seems to imply that Palin made the decision to deploy the Alaska  Guard to Iraq and how to equip them.

It’s a pathetic display, and the aide is clearly scrambling to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  This doesn’t bode well for McCain.

I’ve been trying to puzzle this pick out, to see if it makes any real sense at all, and I just don’t see it yet.  It looks to me like a pick that will have historians wondering what in the world McCain was thinking.  I suppose it could be an effort to pick up independent women voters, but I doubt it will bring in many (unless they’re independent pro-life voters).  Or it could be an attempt to secure the conservative Christians actually turn out for McCain, but based on my contacts in that community, I think they were going to hold their nose and do so anyway.  So I just don’t see the upside.  Does anyone here see a logic to this pick that I’m missing?