It has been 16,287 days, and Sarah Palin still hasn’t visited Iraq. Open thread.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Sarah Palin
And I Can See Russia From My House!
Tina Fey was as good as expected. The part at about a minute in when they contrast Hillary and Sarah is priceless, starting with them talking about how they agree on nothing and ending with her not knowing what the Bush doctrine is should be played on infinite loop everywhere.
*** Update ***
Via the comments, this:
There were howls of laughter from the sizeable press corps covering Palin’s first foray on the campaign trail without her running man as a chaperone.
But, from the front of the plane, silence. The flight attendants assured us Palin and her entourage were watching. What she thought, though, is anybody’s guess.
Palin has yet to say so much as hello to the press corps.
The campaign is doing its best to keep Palin well away from inquisitive reporters, going so far as to book the press corps into a separate hotel from the candidate.
The bolded part of that is just shocking.
Shooting The Moon
Josh Marshall caught a telling soundbite:
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to the Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign’s factual claims: “We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”
Looks like the honorable old John McCain won’t be calling his campaign back from fringe crazytown. The decision was no doubt clinched when they introduced Sarah Palin with a press conference full of lies. Maybe I’m giving the campaign too much credit, but in those bizarre first few days the campaign most likely had no idea that Sarah Palin is a compulsive liar. Judging by reports in the news, the McCain camp realized how deep they were in it around the same time that we did. This is the kind of trouble that the GOP avoided when it jettisoned Jack Ryan for lying to them about his dirty divorce.
But as they say, in for a penny in for a pound. By convention time the McCain camp could either toss Palin or toss their credibility, but choice A would turn the campaign into an instant joke. Choice B would drag the party’s reputation to a place reserved to crack junkies and tobacco executives, but at least there’s an outside chance that tMcCain and Palin can lie and bluff their way to victory in November. God knows Republicans have leveraged the media’s inability to deal with shameless bullshitters into victory before.
This approach is basically the same as shooting the moon in Hearts, a strategy where a player with a terrible hand goes for a perverse win state that requires taking in every negative card in the game. Shooting the moon only works if you take every demerit card. Take all but one and you end up with a score so bad that you might as well quit and go home. It’s an all or nothing move.
The analogy here isn’t that the McCain campaign went all in; every candidate goes all in. Nobody in a political campaign goes home with half the pot. The McCain team is shooting the moon. They can’t apologize for the bullshit and they can’t back off. If you think that John McCain has run “the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history”, you’ll love what’s coming next.
Saturday Night Open Thread
Q: How can you tell when John McCain and Sarah Palin are lying?
Barring something crazy, this is your last thread of the night.
*** Update ***
It just never stops:
Palin claims Alaska “produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.” That’s not true.
Alaska did produce 14 percent of all the oil from U.S. wells last year, but that’s a far cry from all the “energy” produced in the U.S.
Alaska’s share of domestic energy production was 3.5 percent, according to the official figures kept by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
And if by “supply” Palin meant all the energy consumed in the U.S., and not just produced here, then Alaska’s production accounted for only 2.4 percent.
Dan Drezner Cuts To The Chase
Dan Drezner, after watching the Palin interview, asks a question:
Question to other GOP policy wonks: is it possible to support a candidate that campaigns on the notion that expertise is simply irrelevant?
The depressing thing is that this has been the GOP platform for years now. Expertise is overrated. Gut instincts, being “tough,” and being “decisive,” and not “blinking” are all far more important than actually knowing things.
Look at the thorough disdain for science the GOP has displayed for the past few years. Amorphous morals trump reason and science, and then those morals are conveniently discarded or altered when it becomes inconvenient for the GOP (see: family values, David Vitter).
The funny thing about all this is that the new savior of the GOP, Sarah Palin, is the one who is finally waking everyone up to what the Republican party really is all about. They are not serious about foreign policy (Fallows is just brutal). They are not serious (or honest) about scientific policy. They are not serious about economic policy (other than cutting taxes). They are not serious about an energy policy (just drill, baby, drill).
They just are not serious about, well, anything.
And Sarah Palin is the distilled essence of wingnut. She has it all. She is dishonest. She is a religious nut. She is incurious. She is anti-science. She is inexperienced. She abuses her authority. She hides behind executive privilege. She is a big spender. She works from the gut and places a greater value on instinct than knowledge.
And most dangerous of all, she is supremely self-confident to the point of not recognizing how ill-equipped she is to lead the country. This from last night stood out for me:
Charles Gibson, the interviewer, asked her if she didn’t hesitate and question whether she was experienced enough.
“I didn’t hesitate, no,” she said.
He asked if that didn’t that take some hubris.
“I answered him yes,” Ms. Palin said, “because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”
George Bush in a dress. The Palin interview should be a gut-check for Republicans and conservatives who think the last eight years has been a perversion of conservative principles. I am betting most of them will not even put down their pom-poms, though.
We’ll Stop Calling Her a Liar When She Stops Lying
Reihan Salam, co-author of “Grand New Party” asks if people will please stop calling Palin a liar:
So will we stop hearing that Palin “lied” about the Bridge to Nowhere? I’m guessing we won’t.
Daniel Larison brutally puts the brakes on that nonsense:
Well, Reihan, we will keep hearing about it because she has been lying.
You really have to read the whole thing. Trust me, you will be smiling at the end.
BTW- If Reihan’s hackery regarding Palin is any indication as to what is in his book, I think we can rather safely conclude that the Grand New Party is neither grand nor new, but instead rather much like the old one.
We’ll Stop Calling Her a Liar When She Stops LyingPost + Comments (51)
The Rape Kit Imbroglio
I see, via Memeorandum, that the rape kit story has bubbled up into the MSM:
In 2000, Alaska lawmakers learned that rural police agencies had been billing rape victims or their insurance companies $500 to $1,200 for the costs of the forensic medical examinations used to gather evidence. They quickly passed a law prohibiting the practice.
According to the sponsor, Democrat Eric Croft, the law was aimed in part at Wasilla, where now-Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor. When it was signed, Wasilla’s police chief expressed displeasure.
“In the past, we’ve charged the cost of exams to the victims’ insurance company when possible,” then-chief Charlie Fannon told the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, the local newspaper. “I just don’t want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer.”
I don’t know when the practice started or if it is fair to pin this on Palin, but the craziest thing about the whole affair is not that they actually did it, but that they thought of charging the victims in the first place. I honestly can not think of one other crime in which upon reporting it, the victim is assessed with a fee. Now granted, this does not include false reports or things of a fraudulent nature, but real crimes.
Can you think of any? I can’t imagine someone getting hit by a drunk driver being forced to pay for their breathalyzer. No one would even suggest something like that. I can not imagine someone being viciously beaten being charged for the photographs the Police Department would take as evidence. Why on earth would anyone think it makes sense to charge rape victims for the rape kits?
As far as I am concerned, while going through with actually charging them is pretty perverse (even more so when justified as a savings for taxpayers), it is the thinking that even led to someone suggesting that the victim pay for the kit that is the problem. That is downright crazy. My dad was the mayor (and by nature of the position, chief of police) of our small town for 20+ years, and he would have shit an absolute brick if someone had suggested something like that. Can you think of a situation in which the victim is charged for services?