Baron Dave Romm
Post Debate Thoughts -- VP
By Baron Dave Romm
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Immediate reaction to the VP debate: Everyone heard what they wanted to hear
Joe Biden won the VP debate. He was intelligent, knowledgeable, and answered the questions. Palin did better than her Katie Couric interviews, but that's about the best you can say for her. She did okay, but she was dead wrong on several issues (such as McCain's position on closing the loophole that let's him keep his 2nd through seventh house during bankruptcy while most people would lose their primary residence) and went out of her way not to answer the tough questions. Joe Biden had the more touching, Main Street, moment, describing his time as a single parent. Palin was cold and aloof. She barely spoke in complete sentences. She might have reassured the ultra-right "base" that she's not a complete ditz, but she convinced very few others. Her cloying and petulant behavior should send her back to her small town. She's clearly out of her league on the national level. Joe Biden nailed the issues again and again. I don't think he changed many minds either, but he reassured the audience that he was ready to step into the presidency now..
Palin did okay, but she was evasive and cloying. She had her talking points (the ones where she was looking right into the camera) and got them in no matter what. She utterly blew off the last question (about changing the tone in Washington) to say "tax cuts" a few more times.
Still, some things stood out.
How can you be for change when you're desperately trying to forget the past? Palin can try to stop "fingerpointing" all she wants, but we're in the mess we are now because her party screwed up bigtime. If she really wants change, she would for the Democratic candidate.
Palin was well rehearsed in a few areas, but she seemed more like a Tupperware saleslady than someone aspiring to higher office, doncha know. "Folksy" is all well and good. I remember "Jimmy" Carter. But you have to have the chops to back it up, and Palin is well out of her league. Even Alaskans are ashamed.
Picking good people is important: McCain learned as a prisoner, not as a soldier, and forgot his lessons when he became a politician
By his own admission, at his RNC acceptance speech, John McCain was a poor soldier, the privileged son and grandson of admirals who was a reckless pilot and lost five planes. As a POW he forged a new, stronger, sense of identity. I admire him for that. I don't admire his infidelities when he came home, abandoning a wife and three kids to go off gallivanting in Washington. (The "values voters" have an enormous double standard for the sexual peccadilloes of Republicans and Democrats.) Running for Senate, he said he would never use his time as a POW for political purposes. Well, that was then and this is now. A family forgotten, a campaign promise in the dust. Maybe he was a maverick once, but now he's just another right wing Washington insider. The selection of Sarah Palin as VP shows just how bad he will be at appointing people to important posts. John, go back to the Senate where you can vote with your party almost all the time and raise money from gullible Republicans.
The adulterer and the flirt
The more I went over the debates and the punditry afterwards, the worse it was for both McCain and Palin
The Presidential debate was between the steady and intelligent Barack Obama and the emotional yet sometimes lost John McCain. McCain did okay. I notice that the GOP has stopped making "family values" such an issue. That's what happens when your candidate is a philandering fornicator. McCain, like Rudy Giuliani, may sling a good sound bite, but his personal life is not one that anyone would want to emulate. He distinguished himself as a prisoner, not a leader. He can claim to be a "maverick", but his voting record says otherwise. He can claim to be a conservative, but he can't speak to the sphincter conservatives who want to control your sex life.
The VP debate was between the winking and stumbling Sarah Palin and the confident and experienced Joe Biden. Biden continually praised Barack Obama and proudly shared his long record in the Senate. Palin stumbled over names (such as the general in charge of the war in Afghanistan), was dead wrong about major aspects of her short terms as mayor and governor and couldn't speak in coherent sentences unless it was one of her memorized set pieces. Biden would make a great VP; he would make a great president if it comes to that. Palin wants to continue the shameful actions of Dick Cheney, and is insecure when she has nothing to fall back on. Cynical conservatives can try to foist their version of reality on Minnesotans, but we're too smart. In two debates, we know what we saw. Obama/Biden is a great team, and will do extremely well in the White House.I don't know what debate the writer was watching, but it wasn't the VP debate between the winking and stumbling Sarah Palin and the confident and experienced Joe Biden. Biden continually praised Barack Obama and proudly shared his long record in the Senate. Palin stumbled over names (such as the general in charge of the war in Afghanistan), was dead wrong about major aspects of her short terms as mayor and governor and couldn't speak in coherent sentences unless it was one of her memorized set pieces. Biden would make a great VP; he would make a great president if it comes to that. Palin wants to continue the shameful actions of Dick Cheney, and is insecure when she has nothing to fall back on. Cynical conservatives can try to foist their version of reality on Minnesotans, but we're too smart. In two debates, we know what we saw. Obama is intelligent and pioneering. McCain abandoned a wife and three kids. Biden was a single parent who has been on the world stage for decades. Palin shamelessly flirted with her "base" but has no substance or integrity. Obama/Biden is a great team, and will do extremely well in the White House.
The selection of Vice President is important. Many VP's have gone on to be president, sometimes suddenly. Republicans consistently have chosen poorly. They pick VPs for starkly political reasons without thinking about the country. Calvin Coolidge was a disaster, and his administration set in motion the Great Depression. Richard Nixon was needed by Eisenhower to reach out to the conservative "base" and he turned out to be the most corrupt and wicked person ever to assume the presidency... up to that time. Ford was a nothing. Poppy Bush was weighed down by the failed Reagan policies and when he tried to do the right thing was pilloried by the "base".
Fact checking the flirt
Here are a few checks on the remarks of Sarah Palin during the debate, via Daily Kos.
126 Mistakes or lies Palin made in the debate. Partisan and subjective but thorough listing of Palin's statements in 10/2 debate. davefromqueens DKos diary 10/3/08. A brief example, after quoting one of Palin's remarks from the debate:
Mistake 27 - The "tax thing" makes her sound childish.
Mistake 28 - She actually admits that she may not answer the questions.
Mistake 29 - "John McCain's adherence to rules and regulations" Ah does she know what she is talking about?
Mistake 30 - She raised food taxes as Mayor of Wasilla. She's lying.
ABC expose Palin lie about divesting from Sudan. OhDem DKos Diary 10/5/08. Sample, starting with a Palin quote:
When I and others in the legislature found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars,"So said Governor Sarah Palin during Thursday night's debate. One problem - it's a complete lie. Les Gara (D) an Alaska State Representative from Anchorage co-sponsored a resolution early in the year to force the Alaska Permanent Fund to divest all funds with ties to the Sudanese government. Apparently this numbered in the millions of dollars. The Alaska Permanent Fund for those that do not know is a 40 Billion dollar investment fund which distributes dividends to all Alaskan residents on a yearly basis (with exclusions for felons and habitation requirements). This is mainly oil money of course.
In it's research ABC News finds that:
But a search of news clips and transcripts from the first three months of this year did not turn up an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns about Alaska's investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover, Palin's administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its opposition in a public hearing on the measure.
Hatemongering then and now
McCain/Palin, losing badly because their message got out, now desperately needs to go negative. This will clench the sphincters of the "base" while annoying everyone else and setting the tone for the next four (or eight) years. Much like they just randomly made shit up about Clinton until they finally got something that turned out to be true, sort of. The next month will not be pleasant.
McCain sat on the board of ultra-right racist group. Tirge Caps DKos Diary from 10/5/08 (why aren't all Bartcop-E people on DailyKos?). The Swiftboaters are going negative and are hammering home very tenuous connections between Obama and an unsavory character from long before Obama's time. (Note how they say he has no experience but insist he's been in politics for for decades...) Meanwhile, McCain is beholden to some very evil people.
The right's two-pronged religion of rage and self-pity. Glenn Greenwald in salon.com (click through the ads) 10/2/08, on the right's self-imposed "victimhood":
Go pick whatever right-wing journals or polemicists you want and (with some isolated exceptions) what you will find is this simultaneously self-loving and self-pitying worldview permeating virtually everything they say, think and believe. You can reduce most of their arguments, and all of their group-based drives, to a rudimentary logical proposition: "I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness." It doesn't matter what "X" happens to be for any one of them -- conservative, male, Republican, Christian, Jewish, religious, white, Western, American -- that is the formula that expresses how they perceive the world and their role in it.
Petulance and self-pitying grievance is what fuels them. This endless need to self-victimize would be one thing if the groups to which they belonged were small minorities targeted by a hostile and more powerful majority. But the exact opposite is true. By and large, the groups to which they belong (and therefore see as oppressed and treated with unparalleled unfairness) are the most numerous and the most powerful in the country and always have been. Yet still -- nothing is their fault; they face hopeless obstacles imposed by Evil and Omnipotent Forces which hate them; "I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness."
They have run the country for the entire decade. For the last 14 years, they've controlled the House for all but 20 months. They spent substantial parts of the last eight years in control of all branches of government simultaneously. They've won 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections. The country's largest and richest corporations -- including the ones owning the most powerful media outlets -- pour money into their party and perceive, correctly, that their interests are served by the Right's agenda. But still -- they can't get a fair shake; everything is deeply oppressive to them; it's all so unfair.
As they've ruled the country, it's been driven into the ground on every level. The President they revered and endlessly glorified is the most unpopular in modern American history. They've ushered in disastrous wars, virtual economic panic, state-sanctioned torture andastonishing debt. Their leaders have been exposed as bloated, corrupted criminals and hypocrites. Their current candidate chose as his Vice President someone who can barely string together a complete sentence or opine on the simplest of matters, and himself acknowledges that he's been joined at the hip with the failed Bush Presidency on virtually all key issues.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
--////
The Weekly Poll
This week's poll is... the Paul Newman 'Tribute' edition
What are your favorite Paul Newman movies and why?
I'd list them all for you to choose from, but why? You know what they are! You relish the memories of seeing them for the first time. You've looked forward to seeing them again and again since then... So, unload... Let it out... Let us remember a man who was not only a great actor, but a marvelous philanthropist and loyal husband, as well.
BadtotheboneBob
Send your responses to BadtotheBoneBob (BCEpoll (at) aol.com)
Results tomorrow
Steve from 'Dick Eats Bush'
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I confronted a rapist (guardian.co.uk)
Late one evening last June, I woke to the sound of strange noises coming from the front garden.
Susan Kaiser Greenland: Why I'm Especially Proud to be from Michigan Today (huffingtonpost.com)
I can understand why a whole lot of people who grew up in small town America, just as I did, really, really like Sarah Palin. But please, oh great white hunters of the Republican leadership, did you think we were morons?
"Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth about the American Voter" by Rick Shenkman: A Review by Gerry Donaghy
During the fourth season of "The Simpsons," there was an episode where the residents of Springfield gathered in a contest to see who could kill the largest number of snakes on what is called Whacking Day. After Bart and Lisa (with the help of Barry White) show the townspeople the error of state-sanctioned snake slaughter, Springfield's Kennedy-esque mayor arrives with an armload of pre-killed snakes, inciting boos and hisses from the now-enlightened crowd. Mayor Quimby hollers back, "You're all a bunch of fickle mush heads," to which the crowd responds, "He's right. Give us hell, Quimby."
Tom McBride: Brought Low by the List (thecommonreview.org)
Academics, of which I am one, are meant to be serious persons. Once known for their tweeds with patches and their dignified mien at marching ceremonies, they are now serious in other ways. Stanley Fish has commented on how Volvo boxcars are an expression of academic plain living and high thinking. A faculty member once told another that he disliked the Marx Brothers because they were "vulgar" and was shocked when his colleague replied that they were supposed to be. Today's academics are concerned with child rearing, the ecology of foodstuffs, and constructions of social identities. They speak in long paragraphs.
Mike Ragogna: 40 Years Of Creedence Clearwater Revival (huffingtonpost.com)
Decades before Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Son Volt and The Jayhawks re-introduced and expanded the parameters of roots-rock, there was a scrappy little group, originally hailing from El Cerrito, California.
Rosanna Greenstreet: Q&A with Ronnie Corbett, comedian (guardian.co.uk)
Q: What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
A: It's loosely based on the Scout motto. In our business you have to have your armoury ready before the chance of a break. You've got to be able to sing a bit, dance a bit, perhaps play the piano and remember lines. If someone says, 'We've got a job for you', you don't want to say, 'Bugger, I can't do that.' You have to be prepared.
Rick Bentley: Amanda Tapping of 'Stargate' lands in another science fiction series (McClatchy Newspapers)
Network and cable television shows are filled with actresses from other countries using American accents to play their roles. Lena Headey hides her British accent as she battles robots from the future on "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles." And both Yvonne Strahovski on "Chuck" and Anna Torv on "Fringe," who play hard-hitting American government agents, are Australians.
Rick Bentley: Elizabeth Reaser leverages 'Grey's Anatomy' acclaim into her own network series (McClatchy Newspapers)
Elizabeth Reaser, star of the new CBS romantic comedy "The Ex List," is better known to "Grey's Anatomy" fans as Ava. Or is it Rebecca? Either way, the character earned her an Emmy nomination and a lot of fan attention.
Roger Moore: Bill Maher hopes to get people thinking with his tirade against organized religion (The Orlando Sentinel)
Never let it be said that Bill Maher ran away from a fight. The comic and cultural critic is famous for questioning and ridiculing America's sacred cows.
Roger Ebert: RELIGULOUS (R; 3 1/2 stars)
I'm going to try to review Bill Maher's "Religulous" without getting into religion. Is that OK with everybody? Good. I don't want to fan the flames of a holy war. The movie is about organized religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, TV evangelism and even Scientology, with detours into pagan cults and ancient Egypt. Bill Maher, host, writer and debater, believes they are all crazy.
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Television tour: The McCains' Arizona mansion
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Reveals Inspiration
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Bob Dylan has revealed his source of greatest inspiration - the Scottish poet Robert Burns.
The music legend was asked to name the lyric or verse that has had the biggest effect on his life. He selected the 1794 song A Red, Red Rose, which is often published as a poem, by the man regarded as Scotland's national poet.
Dylan revealed the verse to HMV, as part of the music retailer's My Inspiration campaign.
David Bowie kicked off My Inspiration two years ago when he selected lyrics by the late Pink Floyd star Syd Barrett.
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Leaving Paramount
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Hollywood directing legend Steven Spielberg is leaving his longtime partner Paramount Pictures to form a new Hollywood-based film venture worth 1.5 billion dollars with India's Reliance ADA Group, Paramount announced Sunday.
Spielberg, director of such legendary works as "Jaws," "Raiders of the Lost Ark, "ET the Extraterrestial" and the "Indiana Jones" franchise, will hold a CEO position in the new venture alongside current Dreamworks' CEO and co-chairman Stacey Snider.
The deal was finalized by David Geffen, co-founder with Spielberg of the Dreamworks film studio, and Reliance CEO Anil Ambani, ranked the world's sixth-richest man in 2008 by Forbes Magazine.
Geffen will not be joining the new company, but the majority of existing Dreamworks staff is expected to be offered positions at the new company, according to a statement from Paramount.
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Despite suffering numerous serious ailments while locked away for 19 years in Yangon's notorious Insein prison, the former journalist remains spry and said he has never regretted his move into politics.
Win Tin was Myanmar's longest serving political prisoner when the military junta released more than 9,000 inmates from its jails on September 23 in an amnesty ahead of elections promised for 2010.
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Translucent images of long ago, of black men and women, backs bent, picking cotton under an unforgiving sun, are artistically displayed on standing glass panels in a museum carved out of an old brick gin mill in the Mississippi Delta.
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More than a half-century after King left Indianola in search of fame, the $15 million B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretative Center has opened in his hometown and is as much a tribute to him and his blues music as the culture that inspired it.
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A Kuwaiti official says authorities abruptly ended a music concert by an Egyptian singer in this conservative Muslim country when a young female fan jumped on stage, hugged the male singer and gave him a kiss.
Qanas al-Adwani, who heads the government department that monitors public entertainment, says the girl's behavior at Friday's concert "defied the conservative traditions" of Kuwait.
Al-Adwani also said Sunday that the fan's behavior broke controls on public entertainment, which were imposed by influential Muslim fundamentalists after they failed in 1997 to ban concerts altogether. Concerts have to be licensed by the government, and monitors from the Information Ministry watch the crowd to make sure nobody stands up to dance.
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After years of exposure to rot and mishandling, a US institution has been pulled back from the brink of collapse with the help of international experts who pooled their knowledge.
But this rescue package had nothing to do with Wall Street. Instead, it was about a massive 360-degree panorama depicting a key US Civil War battle fought in farmland in Pennsylvania, which was painted 125 years ago by French artist Paul Philippoteaux.
When the painting, called "The Battle of Gettysburg", was first unveiled in 1884, 21 years after the campaign it depicts, it was the total immersion experience of the era, a sort of 19th-century version of surround-sound-and-vision cinema.
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The father of a measurement known as the "Smoot" returned Saturday to be honored at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the school where he and his fraternity brothers invented it 50 years ago.
Oliver Smoot was the shortest pledge in the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in 1958 when its members decided to lay him on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge. After discovering Smoot measured 5 feet 7, they marked the bridge in those increments, with an eventually exhausted Smoot getting up and down for each new measurement.
They soon determined the bridge was 364.4 Smoots long.
Today, Google.com's calculator function can convert any measurement into Smoots.
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Caught In Shrinking Natural Habitat
Venus Flytraps
Laura Gadd pauses at the edge of a pristine savanna, delicately lifting her feet to avoid trampling any venus flytraps hidden underfoot.
Buried below wisps of wire grass, a few of the plants advertise their presence with a single white flower - perched atop a long stem like a flag of surrender. Gadd finds a half-dozen this day, enough to warrant a spray of glue and inconspicuous powder used to identify the plants and track down poachers who pluck them.
One of nature's most recognized wonders, the venus flytrap's ability to snatch living prey makes it a favorite of elementary school science classes everywhere. Yet the flytrap is falsely ferocious: It's hardly the man-eating Audrey Jr. from "The Little Shop of Horrors," but a tiny plant only a few inches tall with leaves no bigger than a thumbprint.
These days, the little plant is more vulnerable than ever. And despite its popularity, the people who could protect it seem focused on other problems.
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Weekend Box Office
'Beverly Hills Chihuahua'
"Beverly Hills Chihuahua" was barking up the right tree with movie-goers, who put the Disney comedy at No. 1 for the weekend with a $29 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The top-12 movies hauled in $95.4 million, up 42 percent from the same weekend a year ago, when "The Game Plan" was No. 1 with $16.6 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," $29 million.
2. "Eagle Eye," $17.7 million.
3. "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," $12 million.
4. "Nights in Rodanthe," $7.4 million.
5. "Appaloosa," $5 million.
6. "Lakeview Terrace," $4.5 million.
7. "Burn After Reading," $4.08 million.
8. "Fireproof," $4.07 million.
9. "An American Carol," $3.8 million.
10. Religulous, $3.5 million.
'Beverly Hills Chihuahua'
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