Public Servant Citizen Hero

Newark Mayor Cory Booker saved a neighbor's life last week:

Newark Mayor Cory Booker was taken to a hospital Thursday night for treatment of smoke inhalation he suffered trying to rescue his next-door neighbors from their burning house.

"I just grabbed her and whipped her out of the bed," Booker said in recounting the fire. Booker told The Star-Ledger he also suffered second-degree burns on his hand.

The fire started in a two-story building on Hawthorne Avenue in the Upper Clinton Hill neighborhood, shortly before the mayor arrived home after a television interview with News 12 New Jersey.

Five people were taken to the hospital for treatment: the mayor, a woman from the house and three members of his security detail. The woman was listed in stable condition at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston with burns to her back and neck.

...

After being released from the hospital, Booker recounted his experience at the fire and said he thought he might have to jump out of a window because of the heavy flames.

"We got everybody out of the house, but their daughter’s screaming, ‘I’m upstairs!’ " he told The Star-Ledger.

One of his security officers, Detective Alex Rodriguez, tried to stop him from going back in.

..."Now we actually get into a fight because his job is to protect me," Booker said of Rodriguez. Booker said when he reached the second floor, he was engulfed in flames and smoke.

"I suddenly had the realization that I can’t find this woman." Booker said. "I look behind me and see the flames and I think "I’m not going to get out of here. Suddenly I was at peace with the fact that I was going to jump out the window."

Then he heard her cries in a back bedroom.

"I just grabbed her and whipped her out of the bed," Booker said. The two made their way downstairs, where they both collapsed, Booker said.

Rodriguez, who had helped others out of the house said when he saw the mayor go in, he thought his career in protection was over.

"Once he went in, I said, 'Oh my goodness, this is it.' " Rodriguez, 39, said.

...

"Thanks 2 all who are concerned. Just suffering smoke inhalation," Booker tweeted. "We got the woman out of the house. We are both off to hospital. I will b ok."

Shortly after midnight, Booker tweeted an update, lauding the heroics of one of his security officers: "Thanks everyone, my injuries were relatively minor. Thanks to Det. Alex Rodriguez who helped get all of the people out of the house."

Sure feels nice to read about a politician who's a real-life hero.

I don't know what political ramifications might shake out however for Mayor Booker, but he's shown leadership in rebuilding his city from the top to the streets, and good leadership is a highly transferable skill.

Rushing into a burning building like that is pure leadership: leading the self. Without for a moment doubting his instincts, secure in his intellect, physical capability and clearly an alert individual, he directed his body into the heart of the catastrophe with a clear intention to bring that woman out alive.

Then, of course, he got lucky. God surely asks that we make our own luck, but the two of them were lucky to make it out of there alive.

Lucky that Mayor Cory Booker was present.

More Hostage Taking

If someone dies over the next month due to a failed FAA safety inspection, you have your Republican Congress to thank, once again:

Earlier Wednesday, Democrats decried what they saw as Republican "hostage-taking" -- since the situation had forced 4,000 agency employees out of work and airport safety inspectors to continue working without pay.

Democrats blame Republicans for the partial FAA shutdown, accusing them of reneging on their promise to put Americans back to work because the stand-off has prevented tens of thousands of construction workers to continue building airport projects.

"The FAA is in limbo. Airports are the economic engine of the small communities around the country, and that economic engine is now stuck in neutral," Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters Wednesday. "Under the cover of the debt ceiling crisis, they are holding these aviation workers hostage until they get everything they want...they have taken brinksmanship again one step too far."

If the FAA impasse continues through Labor Day, the IRS stands to lose an estimated $1 billion in tax revenues on airline ticket sales because when the FAA financing expired last month the agency lost its ability to collect the taxes.

Looks like the GOP is -- again -- unionbusting:

The dispute centers on the House GOP’s insistence that the reauthorization of the FAA make it harder for unions to organize. The House passed an FAA reauthorization bill that would reverse an earlier policy that would allow union efforts to organize airlines to be decided by simple majority vote. Unions have pressed Democrats hard not to pass the House bill, and so far, they have agreed; this, plus other sticking points, led to the impasse over reauthorization.

A big GOP favor for Delta Air Lines?:

Delta, one of the few large airlines that is largely nonunion, has beaten back recent efforts by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers to organize 13,000 Delta baggage handlers and other fleet service workers and 15,000 ticket agents and other passenger service workers. In November, the Association of Flight Attendants failed in its effort to be recognized as the union representing 20,000 flight attendants at Delta.

That effort failed even though the National Mediation Board, which oversees airline and railroad labor matters, a few months earlier changed a 76-year-old rule, making it easier for unions to win a representation election. Under the old rule, workers who did not vote were counted as “no” votes; under the new rule, only those casting ballots count.

...

Delta has spent $1.6 million this year lobbying on airline issues, including a bill that includes a Republican-proposed change in the voting rule. Gina Laughlin, a Delta spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview, “We’ve been consistent in our opposition to the rule change since it was proposed back in 2009.” She noted that JetBlue, SkyWest and FedEx have also opposed the rule change.

Good luck, all of you who are flying this summer.

Just be sure to pack your own parachute.

Crazies

Any politician or scam Fox pundit who calls Barack Obama anti-American is at best a cowardly McCarthyite liar, at worst pure evil doing Satan's bidding. That's Christine O'Donnell, Republican Party Senate nominee for The First State, Delaware:



That's today's GOP.

Any two-bit fascist who says that, if elected, he will use his powers as Governor of The Empire State, New York to make suddenly, single targeted, authoritarian use of eminent domain to keep Cordova House from being built, make it a war memorial, and block any buildings of an Islamic tint from any place in NYC that the dust from the World Trade Center bombing reached, is at best a major league reactionary or, at worst, the Devil walking the earth, i.e. the Republican nominee, Carl Paladino:



And any candidate who still thinks Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional at around eighty and forty years down the line and who's platform is basically to end them is at best a buzzkill and at worst Lucifer made Galt, Republican Senatorial nominee in Alaska, lawyer Joe Miller:



or Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharon Angle:



Or Colorado Senate Republican nominee Ken Buck.

They aren't the GOP, they're the Republican Party on steroids, led by the 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee. This is the Party coming home. This is people power in that Party, and it is like the mask ripped off to reveal rubes who have turned the tables. It's hilarious that Karl Rove is feuding with them, because he fed them his red meat and his bosses' red meat every day for eight years and more before that.

There is no moderate Republican Party in this election. Any power they get is power to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) who could be the next Senate Majority Leader, if the same people that elected Barack Obama let these candidates win.

Because any or all of these candidates could win their races in the November mid-term election. This is serious stuff, threats to the Republic.

If you want to be petulant, if you want to be apathetic, if you don't see that as flawed as it may be, it is a clear choice, and elections are all about choices, then you're being reckless.

Then you're just as crazy as they are.

Back

Apologies to regular readers of Nettertainment, but I've been out on family vacation in Maui this past week sans PC, quite liberating. I didn't want to draw attention to my leave basically because I wanted my home to remain safe, but I do hope I haven't lost any of you with the one week gap.

That said, it's kind of a joy to have missed the foul waters of the Glenn Beck rally, the Tea Party takeover of the otherwise rudderless GOP, and more Obama-bashing and weak-sistering from those on the Left who would pout through this November's election and let the U.S Congress fall to the dogs. Let me be frank: if you aren't speaking up, if you aren't opinion-making with your own friends that the Obama Administration armed with even this particular Democratic legislation branch is the best thing to happen to America since, well, Bill Clinton, then you are just as responsible for continuing the disaster of eight years under Bush-Cheney that we will still be working to dig out of over the next two years should the Dems hold both houses.

If you have any doubt, here are the accomplishments this far and a Facebook group to join about them.

So I'm back and thinking about possible changes to the blog format, but for now, in an America being so stirred to hate that this happens, I suggest you step up and be more like this guy -- unless you'd like to give up our country to these billionaire brothers.

Warning

There's hints that the Public Option for health insurance reform may be in danger of being dropped.:

The “public option,” a new government insurance program akin to Medicare, has been a central component of Mr. Obama’s agenda for overhauling the health care system, but it has also emerged as a flashpoint for anger and opposition. Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said the public option was “not the essential element” for reform and raised the idea of the co-op during an interview on CNN.

Mr. Obama himself sought to play down the significance of the public option at a town-hall-style meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., when a university student challenged him on how private insurers could compete with the government.

Let us be clear: any reform without a public option will simply further enrich the for-profit health insurance corporations. Any government mandate or government assistance to citizens unable to afford health insurance without such help will simply be either a pilfering of the American citizen or another Bush Era-type raid on the U.S. Treasury -- citizen money.

If, like Nettertainment, you care about this issue enough that you would not vote for your Democratic Representative, Senator or President in any upcoming election should they fail to achieve this basic citizen right (see every other industrialized Western nation), then this is your fair warning, and maybe the only one you'll get.

Let your Congressperson know how you feel here.

Let your Senator know how you feel here.

Let the White House know how you feel here.

And, for good measure, tell these two men who hold so much of this in their hands:

Sen. Max Baucus (D - MT)
(202) 224-2651
baucus.senate.gov/contact/emailForm.cfm?subj=issue

Sen. Kent Conrad (D - ND)
(202) 224-2043
conrad.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm

Warning to you delivered. Make your warning to them known, pronto.

The Bravest Man

My father once said you have to be a little bit crazy to want to be President. You surely need a strong enough ego. And since Presidents all too often make targets (and not just for criticism, you do need some degree of courage.

But President Barack Obama must be the bravest President of all.

The ginning up of violence is well underway. Not that the most virulently racist element of American society, borne of slave owning, trading and abusing four hundred years ago, needs all that much prodding. They call it being anti-health reform, they call it fear of socialism, but when hysterical white folks are crying that the America they once knew is disappearing, that's simply code for non-white, non-straight, and even non-Christian, per Andrew Sullivan:

But the vicious anger from the far right, which is to say what is currently the right, seems totally out of proportion to these reforms.

Where does that come from? It comes from the same place as the tea-party protests. It's partisan, of course - most Republicans, including Glenn Reynolds, ignored the deficit under Bush, blamed Obama for it within minutes of his election, and never refer to the impact of the recession on deficits. But it is also surely cultural - an expression of the rage some in white America feel at the new social make-up of their country. I just sat through a PJTV segment on Sarah Palin, in which the host blithely referred to the heartland as "real America."

If that is what you really believe - that people in cities or suburbs, that minorities, that gays, that blacks and Hispanics are not part of "real America" - then of course, you are angry. You believe a fake America has taken over. You cannot understand this. So you start believing that we have a fascist/communist dictatorship, that there was some fraud allowing a non-citizen to become president, that the government is about to "take over" all healthcare provision ... and on and on. And no one is left in the GOP to challenge this, to calm it down, to present practical alternatives to the obvious crushing problems the country and the private sector have in paying for increasingly costly healthcare.

To me, this is a triumph of ideology. And conservatism is now an abstract anti-government ideology, fueled by cultural, racial and sexual resentment. This is a recipe for more violence, and more marginalization.

Even ABC News is noting the threat to the very first African American President -- and his family:

Experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges.

The Secret Service is investigating a Maryland man who held a sign reading "Death to Obama" and "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids" outside a town hall meeting this week. And in New Hampshire, another man stood across the street from a Presidential town hall with his gun on full display.

Los Angeles police officers apprehended a man Thursday after a standoff with him inside a red Volkswagen Bug car in Westwood, CA [outside the Federal Building] – the latest disturbing case even though officials said the man had mental problems.

Ginned up by the usual suspects, including the most influential Republican:

Garrett said statements like one recently made by controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh comparing a logo for the White House plan to a Nazi symbol "legitimizes people who are on the edge to go do something or say something."

"And if you go and take a look at this, you will find that the Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo," Limbaugh said.

Later, someone painted a swastika outside the office of Congressman David Scott of Georgia, one of Obama's supporters.

Lest we forget, one man has already paid with his life for crossing Operation Rescue. Obama receives 400% more death threats that his predecessor, and one man has been detained this week for making his violent feelings clear in public:

The Secret Service is investigating a man who authorities said held a sign reading "Death to Obama" outside a town hall meeting on health-care reform in western Maryland.

The sign also read, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids," referring to the first name of President Barack Obama's wife, said Washington County Sheriff's Capt. Peter Lazich.

Lazich said deputies detained the unidentified, 51-year-old man near the entrance to Hagerstown Community College about 1 p.m. Wednesday after getting calls from a number of people attending the meeting held by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. Obama was not at the meeting.

The sheriff's office turned the man over to the Secret Service, Lazich said.

Paul Krugman calls the current GOP alliance with the reactionary crazies over "death panels" lies a Republican Death Trip, and he's right. Just like the Nazi's they claim to hate and try to pin on a pro-health insurance reform left, they use fearsome imagery of death, essentially more classic KKK-style hate porn, to roil the blood and make reality recede through fiery eyes.

While there's a prairie fire of racist violence always ready to spark in America, hopefully burning out by the end of our lifetimes, those with the matches feign innocence when they're earning off the very target lists they create. Just ask mass murderer -- in a Knoxville church -- Jim David Adkisson:

This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence.

Rachel Maddow exposed it all last night, and everyone needs to watch, listen, and beware:



Lest we forget, the very first U.S. President to be felled by assassination was killed by a Confederate racist.

That's right, America. The first U.S. President to be assassinated was the President who freed the slaves.

America vs. Our Brownshirts

The whole teabagging movement is a further development of the phony but devastating "Brooks Brothers Riots" that the GOP pulled together in Florida back in 2000 to disrupt the Presidential election recount. This was falsely reported as "populist rage" in the media and the result was George W. Bush as acting President with Richard Bruce Cheney as actual President and eight years of snowballing economic disaster (financial meltdown), catastrophic foreign policy (Iraq, isolation, clearing away Iran's enemies, continuing Israel-Palestine crisis), failure to deliver basic services (Katrina) as had been successfully executed under President Bill Clinton, fascistic practices (unauthorized wiretapping of Americans, torture of innocents along with any guilty) not to mention more and more Americans losing their health insurance or finding themselves not getting the benefits they paid for.

The danger is back.

With the fascistic shouting down of civil discourse by ignorant rightwing cranks both coordinated and egged on by the GOP and their proxy organizations and media, America risks dropping back into the rabbit hole that is decreasing our life expectancy against the rest of the world and threatening to permanently establish a class-tiered system for basic survival in the U.S. This threat cannot be understated. If the corporations behind and people in front in this brownshirt shout-down movement are allowed to succeed in scuttling real health insurance reform this summer, you'll see cowed Representatives, some dropping out for fear of violence, and status quo America as feeding trough for the parasitic rich for the rest of its history, until it collapses under the weight of it's own lack of foresight.

Here's how the DNC is finally laying it out and fitting the pieces together:



Here's the media struggling to reveal the truth, even if it's corporate parents would rather not:



It looks like they've picked up the Libertarian "LaRouchies" now, another crackpot group that used to be marginalized when I was growing up but, like birthers and Birchers, is poised for legitimization by Fox News and their fellow travelers.

Yesterday I called this fascist movement racist as well. Thomas Edsall backs me up today:

With Republican party leaders so constrained by ideological blinders that none of their positions is likely to produce gains among non-white minorities, especially Hispanics, the GOP is finding it has no real alternative but to revert to a "white voter" strategy.

To some extent, it's working. The party's opposition to President Obama's agenda -- particularly his cap-and-trade energy proposal and health care reform plan -- is resonating strongly with disaffected white Democratic voters. Republican grievances about Obama, combined with race-baiting commentary from the far-right ideologues who have become some of the most dominant voices of the modern GOP, have led to a precipitous drop in the president's approval ratings among whites.

It's all very reminiscent of the party's notorious Southern Strategy, which carried the GOP for decades.

Think I'm being alarmist? Think my racism charge is going too far?

Then why is our President receiving an unheard of thirty (30) death threats a day?

Even if you may consider yourself to the right of center, is this really where you want our Republic to end up?

All over a public option to guarantee all Americans health insurance?

Pretty Fascist

Back when I was in a Semiotics in college, one professor, Michael Silverman, said to think of it more as an "anti-Semiotics" course, in that we were learning how those in charge of political imagery used basic, resonant symbols such as those of nationalism to sow a message that would bring them to power or keep them there.

Like wrapping oneself in the flag:



Or wrapping oneself in the military:



Laugh now at Sarah Palin, but I see her as a clear and present danger to our republic until she is neutralized or vanquished in electoral politics once and for all. Check out why here.

And to think we have John McCain to thank for it. It didn't just disqualify him from the Presidency. It makes his entire judgment system suspect as well. Like on healthcare reform.

Scary.

Mad Tea Parties

`Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'
`You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take more than nothing.'
`Nobody asked your opinion,' said Alice.
`Who's making personal remarks now?' the Hatter asked triumphantly.

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

I have little doubt that conditions could be building for the rise of a strong nativist fascist political movement in America, and that the FDR-like moves by the Obama Administration will only have a limited time to stay ahead of this threat. However, America has certain inherent safeguards that other more racially pure countries do not, i.e. racial diversity, so it may be tougher to form a majority coalition along such lines. So for now we have a very loud, very angry minority who are being used by wealthy Conservative forces, amplified by these forces, and in all likelihood organized by these forces from the get-go.

I'm referring to the so-called Tea Party movement. This supposed grassroots taxation revolt seems as ridiculous as a Mad Hatter's tea party, since the working class members will receive tax cuts under Obama, and the core protest would seem to be a return to Clinton era tax levels, i.e. a rise of 3% for the highest income bracket. But while more Liberal wags enjoy the self-identification of this group as "teabaggers" due to the street definition of the term, what's really going on is that corporate lobbying groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are behind this so-called movement. The former is funded by the mega-wealthy Koch Family, while the latter is chaired by former House Majority Leader, Republican Dick Armey, with a corresponding foundation vice-chaired by Steve Forbes.

The proper term is "astroturfing" and as a valued reader pointed out to me in an email, it's been going on since Nixon ran for President without anyone being called on it.

Now Fox "News" is not only providing complete "coverage" of the events with their commentators in-person, but new wingnut darling Glenn Beck is doing a $300 per plate fundraiser for them. (You know, $300 per "grassroots" activist.) One wonders if there are any government protections for legitimate journalistic enterprises that might be possible to strip away from this obvious advocacy organization.

Because what these events are quickly morphing into are more than just tax protests. They are catch-alls for anyone with a gripe against Obama, who feels marginalized because, uh, their side lost this past Presidential election. The ones who claim he wasn't born in the United States despite Obama's birth certificate. The ones who want to burn college books. The ones who appear unhinged in fear that Obama will somehow take their precious guns away:



The right-wing fearmongering is increasing, and one wonders its ultimate purpose. Is all this agitation for hate actually a recruiting mechanism?

Are we entering a Parallax View-type situation?

Too Much

There's been a landslide of Sarah Palin. I can't be the only person wanting her off the ticket so she and her whole family and checkered history get out of my head. McCain I can handle, but not with Palin by his side. The two of them together, it's too McCreepy.

I'd like to have something original to say about the whole thing, and there's a lot of whole thing there. The lie about her being anti-earmark -- she loves earmarks when they're for her dominion. Her ironic, and tragic, slashing of funds for homeless teenage mothers. The affiliation with the anti-U.S.A. fringe Alaska Independence Party who's founder curses the American government and our flag. Her being in church a few weeks ago when the founder of Jews for Jesus spoke (easy way to lose Florida for McCain) and

described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.

Now the National Enquirer is on the case and if what they did for John Edwards' career is any indication, the mudslide will continue, along with other mainstream publications with lurid headlines.

Heck, McCain's "maverick" choice even has mainstream media doing its job:



A shock, I know. But the material keeps on coming -- who knew that the Palins had a car wash that fell in to non-compliance by not filing or paying fees. Or that her spokesperson lied about her having visited Ireland. (This with the Wikipedia that had to be scrubbed, including her phantom Miss Congeniality award, all reinforce Palin as a resume padder.) And the McCain people getting handily scooped again today, on her Mayorial papers at the Wasilla town hall.

At dis-juncture like these, the beast is more apt to be laid bare. Witness McCain Campaign Manager, Rick Davis, giving the game away:

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain's presidential bid, insisted that the presidential race will be decided more over personalities than issues during an interview with Post editors this morning.

"This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

In other words, they can only run on image, not issues. It's McCain, not Obama, who's the supplicant at the alter of celebrity culture. And there's Phil Gramm today, reiterating that those criticizing the current oligarchical economy are "whiners". Seriously. He's proud of that shit.

Sully has the killer quote from all of tonight's RNC speeches:

"What you can expect from John McCain as President is precisely what he has done this week," - Joe Lieberman.

Terrifying.

Unsalvageable?

The title of this post might refer to the Republican National Convention, coming on the heels of the gladiatorial challenge that was the Democratic National Convention (with Obama coming out not into the Parthenon as the GOP spinmeisters mistakenly called it, but rather the Coloseum as if in his hard-hitting speech he was calling to McCain, "Come out, come out, wherever you are..."), or it might refer the Sarah Palin GOP VP nomination, or it might refer to John McCain candidacy itself.

At this point the RNC is a shambles, with Monday a, um, wash as Hurricane Gustav managed to force massive program cancellation but then made land more safely than expected, thank God, saving lives but denying any dramatic visit by McCain or McCain/Palin to the distressed area.



It doesn't help that tanks are roving the streets of St. Paul to quell protests and even Democracy Now's Amy Goodman has been arrested for expressing her Constitutional right to free speech:



Meanwhile, why haven't I seen any new photos or live video of Palin this past 24 hours? Am I missing something, or is she under wraps as she lawyers up on her Troopergate (and gets a deposition date), reveals a teen pregnancy in her family in order to end rumors of another teen pregnancy that might seem even stranger, turns out to have been Wasilla's "Mayberry Machiavelli" ordering loyalty tests as Mayor, appears to have lied in her Wikipedia entry about winning Miss Congeniality in a beauty contest, and been a member of a fringe Alaskan secessionist party:



You know, putting country first.

Worst political day ever? How about when right-leaning cable heads like Campbell Brown start to wail on your experience claims:



What all this does is the very thing it was meant to avoid: split the Republican Party. You've got serious government and security Republicans faced with a Presidential nominee who doesn't do sufficient vetting on the first major decision of his office, thrown into post-vetting instead and only beginning that process on the first day of their national convention. You've got what appears more and more to be a cynical violation of "country first" principle calling into question the candidate's judgment and playing right into the Obama's argument against McCain, along with the "four more years of the same" meme. You've got the first Administration Republican in history lawyering up before even being nominated. You've got a campaign that tried to throw the long-ball diversion (as Obama calls non-issue, non-policy politics) of all time boomeranging back to create the hugest possible diversion for the GOP itself at the very week where it needs to bind together in full.

You've got a Party out of any possible control by the candidate and ostensible Party Leader:



Big question: if Palin is forced by the party elders and hands to Eagleton out, who will run with the damaged McCain? McGovern couldn't do better than Sargent Shriver, who had started The Peace Corps but never held national elective office. In situations like these, the stink of the loser is too great, the label of second choice too humiliating.

My guess is McCain will/would wind up with his original choice, Joe Lieberman, mainly because that's another guy with nothing left to lose.

As for Governor Palin, I just think all of this backwoods Alaskan smalltown stuff makes her look more and more disconcerting to the average American voter, and will remain so even after she's left the scene.

Very disconcerting.

Hang Time

How long before Gov. Sarah Palin is off the GOP ticket?

I'd give it 12 more days. Maybe Gustav manages to save her and the GOP with McCain able to grandstand on Monday rather than have Bush and Cheney speak at the Convention. Maybe it just gives them more hang time.

Easily the most telling news I've read these past 24 hours is that the vetting process was so deficient that a Democratic opposition researcher has revealed that he was the first to contact her hometown newspaper for the archived stories not available on the paper's Website. Word is that the McCain campaign only today sent eight "researchers" (ratio of researcher to fixers?) to the town, but the Dems obviously got there first.

This tells us two things: Sen. John McCain made an ill-prepared decision, and the Dem side just made sure they can't be cut in line by McCain's team without everyone knowing it's a fix.

And they can pass stories to the press first, too.

The more current stuff, her "Troopergate," is starting to come out. The potentially damning story begins :35 in.



Look, I've read the suppositions and question-provoking time-line and photos about her family and wonder if it's the greatest Karl Rove plant ever, so I think it's a place to tread carefully, and ultimately only germane as yet another demonstration of John McCain's dangerously unsuited-to-the-Presidency decision-making style. This wouldn't even be a question if we'd already gotten to know her nationally, or via a major state. Or if she'd be 100% vetted.

It also calls into question two other core McCain strengths: his honor and integrity. It also calls into question just how adolescent is his personality -- per Hilzoy:

The more I learn about this choice, the more it reminds me of Bush's choice of Harriet Miers. I don't think it's at all similar in its political ramifications -- Miers' nomination was seen as a betrayal by social conservatives, the very people who are thrilled by Sarah Palin. But it is similar in the manner in which each was chosen. In each case, the person who made the choice had wanted to pick someone else, someone he regarded as a close friend., In each case, he was told that he couldn't choose that person because it would be politically disastrous. In each case, the person who made the choice responded not by sitting down and thinking about who might fill the role s/he was to be nominated for with distinction, but by making a quick and ill-considered choice of a plainly unqualified person, a choice that seemed like an insult to the office that person was nominated to fill.

Moreover, in each case that choice reflected the fact that the person making it was chafing at the discipline required of him. As far as I can tell, Bush reacts very badly to the idea that his powers as President are limited in any way, or that he owes anything whatsoever to his party or his allies. McCain is similarly undisciplined: he has been willing to do what his party requires of him, up to and including sacrificing his honor and his principles, but he visibly bridles at it, and he seems to be thrilled at the chance to be a maverick again. If that requires picking a vice presidential nominee who is wholly unprepared to take over as President, without doing anything like the vetting a Presidential campaign would normally require, then so be it.

I heard someone working at the supermarket who was clearly leaning to embrace the Palin pick today say that it showed McCain was a gambler -- as if that was a good thing. We know Obama plays poker and used those skills to recognize when Hillary had revealed her "tell" -- an in-person encounter during the Primaries when he knew he had gotten to her. We know McCain loves to play craps, throw those dice, and he did it again on Friday. Both are a form of gambling, but Michael O'Hare explains the difference:

Poker is a game of nearly infinite subtlety and complexity, in which money is managed across a constantly changing information landscape as deep as the psychology and perspicacity of all the players. Smart poker players are much better at it than dumb ones, though smart in the usual sense is not enough to be good at it. Some people are bored with poker and can't concentrate on it well enough to succeed, but not because it's beneath their intelligence. The nearest analogy is investing in securities, or perhaps commanding small units in combat, except for the team aspect of the latter and the impersonal dimension of the former.

Craps, like roulette and a slot machine, is a simpleminded exercise whose players pay a fee for a particular kind of reptile-brain excitement. It is not social, and no player can change the odds on the next move, which are a set of nine numbers that never change (though more complicated side bets are possible, they also depend on a fixed small set of probabilities). There is no such thing as being good at craps, and no such thing as being a steady winner.

But let's let some video tell the story. Is Palin somehow a foreign policy expert due to geography? Ask expert Cindy McCain:



Is she, after just one date, what John McCain described today as his "soul-mate?"

Is there anything telling about this hilarious and maybe unfair video dissection from The Jed Report?:



Now, compare all that drama, which the McCain campaign clearly wanted to stir up in hopes of catching the news cycle and from there the campaign in an exponentially greater way than even the Clinton tried back during the primaries, with the Obama-Biden team, interviewed in Denver by 60 Minutes just minutes after Obama's historic acceptance speech Thursday night:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Which team seems more trustworthy to run this great country?

My next prediction: with Huckabee chafed for not being vetted, with Romney pissed that he did so much to defend McCain these past few months after coming in second but got dissed, Pawlenty probably thrilled that the convention in his city is being shortened after being told he all but had the job last Wednesday/Thursday morning and ending up with eggface, and even some serious neocons offended, McCain either makes Palin work or by a month from now, especially if she does an Eagleton, he'll be like kryptonite -- radioactive.

My earlier prediction that by November 4th voting for John McCain over Barack Obama is still on track. Maybe they can whitewash Palin fast enough, but her first two weeks may be the hardest to survive. Troopergate questions at the Biden-Palin debate could be devastating just for being asked, and I don't think the GOP elders would let her get that far.

There's a reason that McCain's choice is sucking all the air out of the campaign, and there will be reason why we'll be grateful for more Obama when he chooses to expose nationally again (I'd bet not until the debates) rather than his increasingly popular state/local visits. We don't want to be disappointed, we want this country run right again.

Maybe I'm mistaken, maybe it'll take longer than I'm thinking to metasticize, but with Palin I'm thinking John McCain just rolled snake eyes.

Shiny

Although it's a bummer that I'm participating in the same cheap political ploy that has, as even the Obama campaign expected, taken the media's eye off the epic glory of Barack Obama closing the deal last night (and without a goddamned teleprompter!), it's just too perfect. In fact, if anecdotal reports are correct, McCain flipped the last few customers over to Obama for good this morning.

What have we learned from the past 24 hours?

About John McCain, I've learned that he's attracted to shiny, newish things. For his first Presidential decision, he hired the person who could very possibly replace him before the end of his first term, whom he had met exactly one time before this week, and spoken on the phone with once. Because, according to McCain camp and GOP reports, he wanted someone from outside Washington who would reinforce his defunct "maverick" image. So he went as far out as possible. To Alaska.

He either did little vetting of her, or thought she could pick it all up really quickly (meaning, of course, that his "experience" slam against Obama is bullshit), or in some sort of ragingly egotistical way thinks it won't matter because he will never die or be debilitated in office, even after four bouts of skin cancer and a current medical report totalling over 2,000 pages. So he clearly believes the campaign can somehow bamboozle the news media into co-selling a Sarah Palin narrative they are feverishly concocting as I write this for injection into Monday's Republican National Convention.

He stopped thinking with the big head and went for the shiny object.

Look, we all know John McCain likes being around great looking younger (than him) women. He likes charming them, he likes their admiration, if they're lobbyists he shuttles them off with him (Where in the World is Vicki Iseman?), he has dumped a sick wife for one who also happened to be loaded with beer money.

Shiny shiny!

I learned that John McCain is a coward. He wanted to nominate his friend, Joe Lieberman, but his party insiders howled over the Senator's party affiliation and liberal social views. He wanted to nominate his friend, Tom Ridge, but his party insiders told him he would lose the fundamentalist base due to the former Governor's pro choice views. But he had ridiculed former Governor Mitt Romney during the primaries and thanks to his own house counting gaffe they couldn't add another bushel of 'em. And Governor Tim Pawlenty was being laughed about on the air last night, which was when McCain made the final decision.

A snap, reactive, ill-considered, small-ball decision dressed up as big-ball but ah obvious sham to all but the most deluded believers.

McCain was too much of a coward to go with his first choices so he decided to say f.u. to everyone and pulled a 20-month Governor of a tiny population state who's previous job was Mayor of a 6,000 person town, and who has shown absolutely no in-depth study or thought about national security, foreign affairs, or nationwide economic policy.

Think she'll be vetted for potential Commander-in-Chief over just the remaining sixty days? ("Way to go, Brownie!") Way to make us all feel that much more secure, John.

Way to put your own ambitions first and country way behind.

I guess Barack was right last night: John McCain just doesn't get it.

About Sarah Palin I learned that she is not related to Monty Python's Michael Palin. I learned that she's not the breath of fresh air that John's campaign is trying to sell, she's actually a plain ol' Bush-era Republican. After all:

• Due to her ego, she made terrible fiscal decisions that cost her town exponentially more wasted public money than it should have, and left the wreckage for others to clean up.
  
  
• She believes in Creationism and thinks it's fine to be taught in schools as an alternative to proven science.
  
  
• She's against a woman's right to an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest.
  
  
• She doesn't believe global warming has anything to do with man-made factors.
  
  
• She is ignorant of the actual function of government.
  
  
• She rewrites history.
  
  
• Her close GOP party buddy and endorser is in a bribery scandal.
  
  
• She wants to open up protected lands in Alaska for big oil drilling.
  
  
• She hates bears.
  
  
• She's under government investigation for abuse of power.
  
  
• She likes to point out whiners.

What did I learn about Hillary Clinton?

That for all my complaints about her during the primary season, when she finally accepted that she had lost the battle and the dust cleared, she rose to the occasion and, by way of her graciousness and forcefulness, came out more appealing than she went in.

And, praytell, what did I learn about Barack Obama?

He knows how to play big-ball. He knows the right way to go about making a momentous decision and come out with the best possible answer. He doesn't make crucial long-term governing decisions for short-term political gain.

He knows how to manage a media drama, giving the MSM what it needs (Obama/Hillary rift) and then paying it off exactly the way he intended. He knows how to successfully mount a massive event. He knows how to deliver at a crucial moment. He can draw 38 million viewers, more than the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the American Idol finals.

He won't back away from any challenge. He's smarter, more qualified, more suited and ready to be Commander-in-Chief than John McCain.

Today John McCain closed the deal for Barack Obama. John McCain not only proved the truth of the meme that he'd be Bush's third term with his Harriet Miers-esque decision, he actually echoed the first President Bush's choice of the prima facie unsuited Dan Quayle -- as well as Richard Nixon's choice of conservative-appeasing, under-experienced Spiro Agnew, who preceded Nixon prematurely out of office in disgrace.

Taken against Barack Obama clearly, reasonably, and forcefully laying out of where he wants to take this country last night, one now knows everything one needs to know about this crazy, egotistical, dangerous gambler, John McCain, who I learned turned 72 years old today, not a lot of time left to rectify mistakes.

I learned that he's actually unfit for the office of President of our United States of America.