Yet another bizarre video of McCain/Palin supporters. What got me about this one, though, is that this is a segment taped for Al Jazeera. This is what people are seeing of America in the Middle East (and around the world):

Identity politics indeed

Ezra Klein at The American Prospect has a piece up about "Sarah Palin's Retrograde Gender Politics" that's really worth reading for its parsing of her political language. A sample:

And, in perhaps the most offensive display of her "wimp factor" agenda, she attempted to discredit community organizing by feminizing it. She sarcastically told conventioneering Republicans (along with millions of Americans watching on television), "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities." It was an eerie echo of what oblivious men in positions of traditional power have been saying for centuries: that the work of community building -- whether it be child-rearing, elder-caring, teaching, nursing, social work, or, yes, community organizing -- isn't really work at all. That, despite being the backbone of our economy and the heart of our civic life, it doesn't count because it doesn't involve power suits and bottom lines. What makes this ridicule of community-building even more ironic is that the GOP is simultaneously glorifying Palin's role as caregiver of her own sprawling family.

[...]

Men are, first and foremost, protectors in Palin's antiquated world. McCain is "not afraid of a fight;" he will "defend America." She assures the American voters that there is "only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you," discounting with one pithy line the 35-year political service of Joe Biden (many of them spent specifically focused on foreign relations) and all the ways in which Obama has tried to fight for the security and safety of this country, including his role in nuclear non-proliferation policy. The Palin worldview is clear -- real men are warriors and the rest of 'em are wimps.

[...]

Palin is standing by her new man, McCain, in the sugary-sweet manner of a '50s pop song. Sure, she's a little feisty, but only in the service of making her war hero look manly and her own heroics look momly. She was strategically chosen as the sidekick who can call Obama a sissy without fearing the repercussions, and sway disappointed women voters in the process.

The obligatory post on Sarah Palin

The experience argument isn't really what it's about. I don't think she's ready and I don't think this was a natural next step in her political career; and yes, Obama is also inexperienced, but has had many tests of judgement and grasp on the issues since he's been running. But do we actually think McCain is going to drop dead his first week in office?

Of course it's possible. But for many people, this really isn't about the dangers of having a neophyte running the country, because it's not actually imminent. It's about values, culture wars, and most importantly self-representation.

The Left can't stand her not because she's inexperienced but because they can't take her seriously. Obama signaled from the beginning that he was a serious and thoughtful person, and a big part of that for the Left was demonstrated intellectualism and curiosity. I don't see anything wrong with that; those are two qualities I would certainly want in my President. Sarah Palin is not about intellectualism. She's about biography and strategy and working her way up. Again, nothing wrong with that, in large part (for me) because she is in fact very smart--but intelligence is not what her persona is about. It's not how she defines herself.

Now, I keep hearing that Palin exemplifies Red State-ness, and that that's why she makes lefties nuts. Part of it, of course, is because Democrats have seen the last two elections slip away in a manner that was frankly baffling to us: George Bush was simply not a credible candidate, and Gore and Kerry were both smart guys and distinguished public servants. How the fuck, we wondered, could this be possible? There was a serious sense of alienation in our own country for many people who could neither stand nor credit Bush. The second time around, especially, was like a slap in the face: clearly half the country was living in a different world than we were.

I also keep hearing that many conservatives see themselves in her; that "she's just like us," "she's real," "she knows what we go through." Many media and blogger types have made the point that we should not want a President who's just like us; rather we should want a President who is exceptional. Fuck beer, the argument goes; get the smartest person you can for this job.

To be honest, though, here's what I think about that. I think it's the exact same thing on either side. I think a lot of the people who write those things are very smart and furthermore probably think that they wouldn't want to try, but if they had to, they could get a team together and handle being President. If I'm being honest, then yes, I think I am smart enough. Resilient and morally able enough? Perhaps not. Able to win an election, absolutely not. But once sitting there, could I manage to understand these problems and tackle them with the best wisdom available to me? Yes, I viscerally believe I could, no matter how much I try to foster greater humility in myself.

So of course people like me want to see, well, people like us in the White House. We want smart people who turn to their intellects above all else to tackle these massive problems, because that is the way the world makes sense to us and that is what has worked for all of us in our own lives. By the same token, people like Sarah Palin want to see people like them in the White House--people who believe in hard work, who have stories that they recognize, who draw on their culture and background in tackling these problems. (The intellectualist lefty types draw on their culture, too--we just don't admit that that's our culture, not just pure lofty rational thought. That's the difference between rationality and rationalism, see?)

I believe elections, underneath all the hoo-ha and the shitty advertising, are statements about who we are as a country and who and what we value. Within the nation, there are wildly varying views about what each statement really means, but at the very least we as observers interpret elections as such.

This is why the conservative movement began as a political insurgency: it was about resentment (which is not at all unique--if you think current liberals aren't feeling some resentment you are living in a very happy bubble), as Nixon's tactics from college on through Willie Horton demonstrate, and it was about saying that the people it drew on had voices, too. It was about saying that they still mattered even though the discourse had been about someone else for a long time. This is why Bush's elections hurt many of us so much: they said not only do we lefty intellectuals not matter, we're irrelevant and out of touch with the country, and everything we believe about how to make your way in the world (intelligence) is wrong (see: gut).

So the Obama campaign is precious to many as the campaign of an explicitly smart guy who owns his intelligence and has demonstrated its efficacy several times by correctly predicting the course of world affairs (don't go to Iraq; now that you're there, get out; we should really send more troops to Afghanistan; we're probably going to have to make ground strikes in Pakistan). In many ways, his inexperience speaks to us because it says that all you have to do is bring a sharp intellect and ravenous curiosity and do a lot of homework, and you'll be all right. Not just all right--you'll do pretty damn well. In a continuation of the bizarre yin and yang this campaign has turned into, Palin's inexperience appeals to the people who are "just like her" because it says that their ways of making their way through life and succeeding are valid.

Palin twists the knife further in the liberal ribcage because she is stealing our beat. We watch with disbelief as she twists feminism, populism, and concern for working people into shapes we don't recognize. It's like a bad dream where a friend is possessed and you're the only one who knows--beneath that familiar and beloved exterior is something completely different, something that doesn't speak to you; your greatest fear is that other people will take it for the real thing.


Now, this is an unusual amount of Republican empathy for me, and I still believe that a lot of the small number of people actually pulling the levers for the past eight years have been highly disingenuous. I also believe that the lefty brand of authenticity is much easier to possess in reality after spending years in Washington than the conservative brand is--it's just hard to remain working class, un-elite, etc. in that environment. Intellectualism, I believe, is easier to maintain. This may or may not have something to do with liberals' willingness to forgive personal transgressions of liberal politicians: their main qualification, intelligence and judgement that makes sense to us, remains untouched. Family values are more easily compromised, at least in the public eye.

At this point I'm just rambling. But my main point is this: we all vote based on who's just like us. It's just that intellectual types like me and many bloggers and liberals I've known remain convinced that our calculus is purely rational when it is not. If you ask me, it's that more than anything else that makes us vulnerable to elitism--because we pretend we are immune to cultural solidarity.

Oh, yeah, Sarah Palin--I completely disagree with her polital positions. But what this post is really about is this: what bothers me more than anything else about her is the fact that those positions might be approved of by enough people that she and McCain win the election, and I might have to go on living as a stranger in a strange land.

All I have to say about the RNC

That, and (not that anybody's listening, certainly not guilty parties that I know of): if you want Obama to win, lay OFF Sarah Palin. Because every time people sneer at her, or mock her accent, or her outdoorsiness, or her conservative Christian mom-ness, you reinforce the feeling that a lot of people have that you're laughing at them too.

That is "elitist" behavior (more properly: acting like you're culturally superior), and I fully sympathize with people who are turned off or offended by it. Hell, I'm turned off by it.

Also, shut up about whether she should be at home with the kids, and probably the safest thing to do is just not to mention Briston Palin's name.

Attack McCain, and emphasize, if you must, that she's so right wing she has to go in a full circle when she wants to turn left. But the last--THE LAST--thing to do is to allow this to turn into an argument about Obama vs. Palin. Because you just demoted the Democratic Presidential candidate.

I don't know if you guys know about InTrade, but it's pretty cool.

Basically it's a futures trading market for political prospects. Rather than betting on trading on projections for the price of oil, for instance, people trade on their predictions of what will happen in the presidential campaign, or in Congress.

Because it functions as a free market, InTrade and other sites like it reflect aggregates of individual decisions (just like the actual market), and as a result they tend to be pretty damn good predictors of what actually will happen. Not perfect, of course--market failure FTW!--but given that politics, too, is in large part an aggregate of individual opinions (or individuals responding to an aggregate), it's not a bad crystal ball.

It predicts, so far, that Sarah Palin will be taken off the Republican ticket.


Personally, I think JMac is way too stubborn for that--not to mention it almost ensures defeat and it would piss off the religious right base, further ensuring defeat. She would have to be a really, really, REALLY huge liability for that to be feasible even to someone who isn't as proud and sulky as John McCain.

In addition, the people who tend to hang out on these sites, I wager, are some very politically savvy people--junkies, poeple who follow the media and the news cycle, the blogs, etc. Most people may not be aware of everything that's been coming out about SP lately. Many may not even know it's POSSIBLE to replace your VP candidate; I didn't, until all the Eagleton comparisons started popping up.

Anyway, I doubt it'll actually happen. But The Market that those fiscal conservatives love so much is telling them to lose her.

Cliché warning

Cliche warning:

Internet and computer technologies are totes awesome because they (can) democratize media and give a platform to more voices.

And allow random dudes at home to come up with professional-grade ads that a campaign team wouldn't or didn't think of.





You won't learn anything new unless you're not familiar with McCain's voting record relative to Bush, but it's a well-done ad and hell, maybe somebody will send it to their undecided aunt. Not to mention it's more on-target than the Obama camp has been lately. (The election has turned into a referendum on Obama instead of a verdict on Bush/Republicans. This is bad. The campaign has not done very well at turning it around.)


In other news, I'm back from Greece--spending the day in Boston and then going home to work for another month or so before school starts.

I can't really pinpoint why, but I really wish it were autumn.

"Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms," said Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King. Upsetting but not surprising, sadly. The need for a particular ore in making, among other things, PlayStations, has been fueling violence and conflict in Congo. (Note that the article emphasizes Sony's video game products--a frivolity--but glosses over the use of the same material in cellphones and other items that we aren't giving up, not from our cold dead fingers. Convenient, no?) You'd think in the Information Age these things would come up sooner. Oh, right, we don't care.


In other news, John McCain, supposedly the Second Coming of foreign policy, is seriously addled. Why, exactly, would we even bother talking about throwing Russia out of the G8? It's dumb, unproductive, and--oh, yeah--impossible.(The G8, for your edification, is the Group of Eight, a forum for the leaders of eight powerful nations in the world. They hold a yearly summit--the most recent was in Japan, where Bush made us all so very proud by signing off saying, "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter!" Aww, what an authentic, beer-drinking cutie!)





IllDoctrine is pretty much always the shit. Now, what he's saying here I know well, and many of you do too, but it's worth spelling out always. Especially keep it in mind next time a public figure/politician is called on any form of discrimination--racism, sexism, sizeism, ableism, heterosexism, homophobia, classism, any and all of them, this kind of thing applies.

Because that's the thing about oppressions--while they're all different in whom they affect, how they affect them, and how they feel, many of the patterns are the same. That's why intersectionality is so everpresent, and why the Oppression Olympics a) won't go away and b) are useless.

Those last two paragraphs are total duh obviousness for those who are into the study of any of the above isms and I'm almost embarrassed to write them, but I guess that's why this is a livejournal and not a real blog--I get to be as dumb as I want! Eat it! Sucka FOOL![*]

[Obviously, that was written when I was still writing on Livejournal.]

I, like Digby, am amazed that this article hasn't gotten more play.

When you're registered to vote, your place of residence is part of your registration. That tells the system what district you live in, etc.

However, when you're a beleaguered family in foreclosure whose house is gone and now you're living in an apartment across a county line, or with your mother in the next state, or something, probably updating your voter registration isn't the first thing on your mind.

These circumstances, in addition to the new, more stringent voter ID laws coming into effect in some states (Indiana the most recent and most prominent)--that is to say, what kind of identification you have to have on you in order to be allowed to vote--set us up for a whole lotta disenfranchised voters. Ballots will not be counted, votes will not be allowed, special ballots will get clogged in the system, and there will be mass chaos.

Note that these issues are particularly paramount in swing states. Economically (foreclosures), that's an unfortuate coincidence. Legally (voter ID laws), it smells pretty fishy to me. (Not to mention that voter ID laws disproportionately affect the poor, the less educated, people of color, etc.)

This is also part of the same meme as the right wingers trying to say that Obama's popularity makes him a fascist. Basically, since nobody wants to vote for the Republicans, they're trying to a) keep people from voting and b) imply that having people want to vote for you makes you Hitler (who is foreign, just like that black-Muslim-African-tooEuropean-latte-sipper of a Democrat), so vote reluctantly for the other (white, familiar, unfascistly unpopular--he's a Maverick, remember?) guy and be a Real American (TM) .

John McCain went on CBS News for an interview. He was asked about the surge, his signature policy on his (formerly) signature issue. McCain got the timeline and causality hopelessly wrong, and CBS covered it up. They edited out part of his bizarre answer and spliced in an extra question to make the rest of it look sane.

The page I linked to contains video of the broadcast and then a link the online transcript; the two are obviously different. Why they would fail to cover their tracks in this way is beyond me, but there it is. The supreme irony is that this took place as the McCain campaign was complaining that the media gives Obama more favorable treatment.

I hope the significance of this is obvious. If there was ever any question about whether the news media is a fundamentally broken system, I think that's over. As the author said, someone needs to lose their job over this.

Probably, though, no one will.

I urge you to tell everyone you know. The media cannot go on this way, and John McCain is in no way the right man for the presidency--he doesn't even seem to be compos mentis, at this rate.

ETA: If the original link doesn't satisfy you in explaining how McCain was wrong, go here.

Okay, so.

A while ago, Nouri al-Maliki, the president of Iraq, said that he likes Obama's plan for a 16-month withdrawal of US troops. By name. He said "Obama."

So this leaves John McCain pretty well fucked. He's been arguing for a continued troop presence in Iraq, and the president of that nation just came out and said he was wrong. The campaign has argued that al-Maliki doesn't actually believe this, that he's just playing domestic politics, but that's a dumb-ass argument--all it says is that the Iraqi people, more than one man, want us out. Oh, well, then, guess we should settle on in.

On top of it all, Obama is expected to have a million people at his rally in Germany, making it the largest political rally in German history. Just think about that for a minute.

This is an ouchy weekend for McCain.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16229.html#more-16229

This is really interesting. Obama's about to go on a grand tour of Europe and the Middle East. People there are really excited about it. He's got between 53% and 72% variables in England, France, and Germany. Leaders of Ireland and Lebanon complained he wasn't going to visit them, too.

The general line going around is that basically the world is totally ready and willing to love again. Specifically, to love the U.S. again, and Obama is the key to its heart.

Such a big deal is this that CBS, NBC, and I forget what other network are actually going to FOLLOW HIM AROUND and do their nightly broadcasts from campaign stops. I mean, damn.

The McCain camp is kind of hung from their own petard on this one. They made their overseas trips at the height of the Democratic primary battle, and they made a big deal of agitating for Obama to go overseas. Now he is, and he's getting massive amounts of attention for it, partly due to their hammering away at him for not having gone before. Oops.

Oil jumped past $147/barrel briefly today.

I don't drive, so I haven't been hit that hard by this, but I am not looking forward to the winter heating bill. At all.


Also, John McCain, who likes to saber rattle at Iran all the time, said he couldn't comment on I forget what military initiative because he didn't know "the nature, the progress, or the status" of...whatever our problem with Iran is (besides that they threw out our pet dictator back in the seventies and they're dirty dirty Muslims who don't like hold hands (literally) with the President like the Saudis do).

Just to recap, he also frequently has confused Sunni and Shi'a ("Al Qaeda is working with Iran!" "...um, sir, they hate each other."); he has argued for continued military presence in Iraq by comparing it to South Korea and Germany, which is like comparing apples and marmosets; he has professed ignorance on his own position on whether birth control pills should be covered by insurance; he has said himself that he doesn't know much about economics and then denied ever saying so.

I'm just trying to figure out what John McCain isn't confused about. I mean, I would say he was pretty clear on wanting to be president, but I feel like the only rational explanation for someone who managed to appear intelligent, competent, and principled for so long suddenly turning into a befuddled gaffe machine is self-sabotage. Maybe he decided he doesn't want the job after all.

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/07/stay-classy-dubya.html

HOW IS THIS MAN OUR PRESIDENT?!


I just--I can't--it's not just that he's stupid. He's socially inept and the man has NO FUCKING MANNERS. Maybe that's why we don't even try diplomacy anymore.

Maybe he's actually an actor from SNL or Second City and this whole thing has been satire. Maybe? Please?


Also, the fact that I just wrote "it's not just that he's stupid" is really really mindbogglingly symptomatic of how pathetic this situation is.

[If you don't feel like clicking through, we just had a G8 summit in Japan. Emissions control was discussed. The US was generous enough to say that it would "consider" halving emissions by the twelfth of never. And at the final meeting, as Bush was signing off, what does he say? "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter!" I DON'T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE.]


In other news, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest mortgage lending companies in the nation, are looking pretty precarious financially. I won't go into all the details, but if either one failed, let alone both, the national housing market would come to a near-standstill, losses would be declared pretty much all over the world (the two banks were always secure enough that pretty much the whole world has stakes in them--big ones), and the credit crisis (which makes it hard to get student loans, housing loans, or any other kind of credit) would get another bump. Even a bit more instability would raise interest rates on pretty much all mortgages (because even mortgages not actually tied to the two banks are tied to banks that loan to them or that get loans from them, and the interest rates go back to the interest banks charge each other).

The government is considering putting them in conservation, which basically means that if they can't guarantee all the debt they launder, taxpayers have to. That sounds really fucking shitty (helloooo, deficit), but the alternative is worse: no bailout, or the government bailing the situation out further down the line for even more money (a few trillion dollars that taxpayers would still be responsible for). And just to be clear, no bailout = economic and housing disaster of epic proportions.


On a COMPLETELY UNRELATED note (cough cough), John McCain plans to continue the Bush tax cuts, add more tax cuts, expand the Pentagon's budget, keep both wars going (Iraq and Afghanistan) and, judging by his propensity to joke about dead Iranians, probably start fucking with Iran--but don't worry! He'll balance the budget by 2013! He'll have to do it by balancing a checkbook, though, because he doesn't know how to use a computer. (No, really. He said so.) Maybe a whiteboard? Or an abacus! That would look really presidential in the Oval Office, don't you think?

Incredible

God, the McCain campaign just makes me sad sometimes. They can't come up with a logo and stick with it. When they do, it's a blatant copy of the Obama logo and iconography. They can't come up with their own slogan ("A Leader We Can Believe In" sounds an awful lot like "Change We Can Believe In"), and even then they can't stick with their choice of someone else's slogan: they're now using a line the Tories ran with in England in the '70s. "Don't Hope for a Better Life; Vote for One."

Also, McCain got 300 economists to sign a letter saying they like his economic plan. Only, in order to get them to do that he took out two big chunks of his policy (balancing the budget, gas tax holiday), and oops! Looks like a bunch of them signed without reading, or think it's a mistake, or basically don't actually support the plan at all.

He goes on CNN and when a reporter actually asks him how (gasp!) he plans to entrench the Bush tax cuts, add more tax cuts, expand the Pentagon's budget, keep two wars going (and likely attack Iran) and still balance the budget by 2013, he can't explain it. Fancy that. Not only that, he gets pretty freaking pissed off.

Oh, and he said Social Security was a disgrace and "broken" because it takes taxes from young workers and gives the money to old people. Translation: Social Security is a disgrace because it's Social Security and not something else. See, the thing is, "broken" implies that at one point it worked differently and properly. But Social Security has NEVER worked differently. That is HOW IT WORKS. (And if that's so unfair, well, young workers get their turn when they get older. See? Like magic!) If you want to privatize (which he does, but only if you don't call it privatizing), we can have that debate, but don't pretend like you're "fixing" Social Security. You're switching it out for something else.

Oh, and according to this list, McCain, who likes to accuse Obama of flip-flopping all the time, has changed his mind 61 times of late. On every issue imaginable. And that doesn't even count the ones where he changed his position on the same subject more than once--each of those is counted as one, not two or three.


So, yes, that makes me pityingly sad. But what makes me really fucking angry is a media who couldn't be bothered, knowledgeable, or ethical enough to actually TELL PEOPLE THIS.

ETA: I forgot to mention that every time someone like, oh, a decorated retired general (cough cough Wesley Clark) ventures to mention that McCain's military experience, while honorable, has nothing to do with leading, managing, or being president, the campaign runs to Mama (i.e. the media) and whines "He said I'm not a patriot! Why's he spitting on my shiny medals? Why does he HATE AMERICA? WAAAAAH!" The fact that this campaign simply cannot seriously and calmly engage with ANY CRITICISM is very telling.

So I've had Pandora going in the background while at work, and I've noticed something: When I start a station with an artist featuring a male singer, Pandora never suggests anything sung by a woman. So far, having started a station with a female singer, it's suggested only women.

Does this mean that men and women make fundamentally different music? I seem to recall that starting with Suzanne Vega, a woman, does get me some men (though a relatively small number)--so is it just that some musicians are more gendered than others? What about genres? Is Mirah automatically "angry chick rock/singer/songwriter" and Voxtrot nothing but "vaguely classic-sounding-but-still-fresh dude rock" while Suzanne Vega is working in a less gendered genre (folk)?

Hmmm.


Just in case everybody missed this, oil passed $140 a barrel the other day. It came down again, but still--remember when we were all freaking out about breaking $100/barrel? HA.

Also, apparently John McCain doesn't (didn't? I hope) know the difference between the Sudan and Somalia.

It fits perfectly with not knowing Who's Who in Sunnis and Shi'ites--they're all brown anyway, who can tell the difference, right?

...right?

What she said

Rosa Brooks sez:

"Here's the saddest thing about this week's dust-up. Not too long ago -- before he decided that becoming the Republican presidential nominee required him to cozy up to his party's most demagogic extremists and play politics with 9/11 -- McCain was the champion of a common-sense, values-based approach to terrorism.

It was McCain who refused to sanction torture. It was McCain who said Guantanamo detainees "have rights under various human rights declarations. And one of them is the right not to be detained indefinitely." It was McCain who advocated moving Guantanamo detainees to Kansas' Ft. Leavenworth, where they would come under the certain jurisdiction of federal courts. It was McCain who insisted that we respect the basic rights even of enemies who "don't deserve our sympathy" because "this isn't about who they are. This is about who we are."

John McCain, who are you now?"


I have nothing to add.