November 7, 2008
Reflections on Elections
I have had to take a few days and let things "settle in" before I was ready to comment. I have lots of comments already written, actually. But it is sort of like that email that you are wise enough to think about overnight before hitting "send". I have many thoughts and opinions. Some of which are clearly contradictory :-)And I want to take a bit of time before I do my "wrap-up" posts on the election.
Because ... it is now behind us and it is time for this blog to get back to doing more than simply focusing on a presidential race. [We also appear to have elected a Senator who was just convicted of a felony ... there is lots to discuss here ... and we will.]
For now though, I'd like to say ... thank you Governor Palin. I'm proud of you.
Over at the Anchorage Daily News McClatchy Mouthpiece Online Edition they are running a story entitled (at the moment, the title keeps changing: "Palin Speaks:'those guys are jerks'". They are running videos on the site of her impromptu news conference when she walked back into her office with reporters lined up waiting. She spoke of a new time in America. A time of excitement and change under Barack Obama. A time to pull together and look at America's future. And the reporters asked her asinine question after asinine question and came up with titles like "those guys are jerks" which completely distorts the entire context of everything she said. And there are hundreds of comments ... almost all from Outside Palin haters who log on to unquestioningly repeat the lies the media has been telling them like catechisms and to sneer and gloat and say vicious things about her.
I finally couldn't stand it any longer and added a comment:
"My mother taught me that being a bad loser was a dishonorable thing ... but that being a bad winner was *much* worse. Gloating winners demonstrate an incredible lack of class - trying to kick someone while she's down (which doesn't speak well to their upbringing - someone should have a talk with *their* mothers :-)
It is of note that post-election Sarah *still* has a 68%-70% approval rating in Alaska; the highest of any Governor! Alaska thought she was by far the strongest and best part of the ticket. McCain was way down in the primaries and he and Palin got ~62% of the presidential election vote, much lower than her approval rating. Rasmussen's latest says 69% of the Alaska Republicans thought she *helped* McCain. So, folks, just ignore the jeering of children (whatever their age!). And thanks, Governor, for having vastly more class than they do!"
I think I'll leave this at that for now. I don't mind a candidate I back losing an election! I almost never vote for anyone who wins :-)
But the vileness of the jeers and character assassination is utterly disgusting. There were some Alaskans posting also. Not many. A few of them were trying to stem the tide and say positive things about our Governor. But they were drown out. I'm also ashamed to say that there were some who at least claimed to be Alaskans who joined in the jeering orgy. Of them I'm more ashamed than any.
5.11.08
3.11.08
Opening the Troopergate
November 3, 2008
Opening the Troopergate
Now that it is essentially too late the non-partisan (and procedurally valid) investigation of the nonsense the punditocracy labeled "Troopergate" has been released. The only truly remarkable part of it is that the McClatchy-owned Alaska Daily News titled their article on it: "New Troopergate Report Clears Palin".
Apparently now that it is too late for most of the electorate to learn about it in time to make a difference they decide they can be honest with the title.
As was crystal clear all along to those of us who were paying attention, the new legitimate!) report finds that:
- There is no cause to believe Palin violated the state ethics law in deciding to dismiss Monegan as public safety commissioner.
- There is no cause to believe Palin violated the state ethics law in connection with Wooten.
- There is no cause to believe any other state official violated the ethics act.
- There's no basis to conduct a hearing to "address reputational harm," as requested by Monegan.
As a matter of fact, I read the inital "Troopergate report" and it also exonerated Governor Palin, although not quite as definitively. And I said so! I titled my article "Mediagate aka Troopergate Report" because I thought the real travesty was the fact that the Alaska McClatchy News (aka Alaska Daily News) decided to entitle the article on the initial report "Troopergate report: Palin abused power" even though the primary finding of that first report was that what Palin did was "proper and lawful".
In fact, much of the coverage of this entire election by the jack-booted punditocracy marching in lock-step to destroy Palin's reputation should be a tremendous "Mediagate" scandal.
I would rail at some length about that, but time is too short. The world frankly needs to know about this even though it is probably too late to do any good. So, excuse me while I go attempt to inform them :-)
Opening the Troopergate
Now that it is essentially too late the non-partisan (and procedurally valid) investigation of the nonsense the punditocracy labeled "Troopergate" has been released. The only truly remarkable part of it is that the McClatchy-owned Alaska Daily News titled their article on it: "New Troopergate Report Clears Palin".
Apparently now that it is too late for most of the electorate to learn about it in time to make a difference they decide they can be honest with the title.
As was crystal clear all along to those of us who were paying attention, the new legitimate!) report finds that:
- There is no cause to believe Palin violated the state ethics law in deciding to dismiss Monegan as public safety commissioner.
- There is no cause to believe Palin violated the state ethics law in connection with Wooten.
- There is no cause to believe any other state official violated the ethics act.
- There's no basis to conduct a hearing to "address reputational harm," as requested by Monegan.
As a matter of fact, I read the inital "Troopergate report" and it also exonerated Governor Palin, although not quite as definitively. And I said so! I titled my article "Mediagate aka Troopergate Report" because I thought the real travesty was the fact that the Alaska McClatchy News (aka Alaska Daily News) decided to entitle the article on the initial report "Troopergate report: Palin abused power" even though the primary finding of that first report was that what Palin did was "proper and lawful".
In fact, much of the coverage of this entire election by the jack-booted punditocracy marching in lock-step to destroy Palin's reputation should be a tremendous "Mediagate" scandal.
I would rail at some length about that, but time is too short. The world frankly needs to know about this even though it is probably too late to do any good. So, excuse me while I go attempt to inform them :-)
25.10.08
The Final Lap (was "Construction")
November 1, 2008
The Final Lap (was "Construction")
I've been doing some work on the site. I hope to have a real menu system working soon. Meantime ... most of the best material regarding Governor Palin and this election is in the September and October archives, so just hit the > on the >9(16) and/or >10(14) above to get a list, or just scroll down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Obviously, I'm not going to have this function fixed before the elections, so it will simply have to wait. I haven't posted much here for the last few days either; although I think I've written as much in the last week as this entire blog contains! I've instead been writing comments in the blogs of others or in news stories. Sometimes Muhammad must go to the mountain. [Oops. That might not be an appropriate phrase to use at this critical juncture of history, religion and politics!:-)]But 1/3 of the electorate will vote before election day in this brave new experiment we are attempting to enable even more people who have no clue what the issues are to be hauled to the polls. (Sorry, was my cynicism showing? :-) As a result ... we are already effectively on election eve. We must focus our efforts in convincing those who vote the way I Christmas shop (making all my decisions and purchases the day before Christmas :-)! For those that vote that way, we need to get them the word and quickly!
The Final Lap (was "Construction")
I've been doing some work on the site. I hope to have a real menu system working soon. Meantime ... most of the best material regarding Governor Palin and this election is in the September and October archives, so just hit the > on the >9(16) and/or >10(14) above to get a list, or just scroll down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Obviously, I'm not going to have this function fixed before the elections, so it will simply have to wait. I haven't posted much here for the last few days either; although I think I've written as much in the last week as this entire blog contains! I've instead been writing comments in the blogs of others or in news stories. Sometimes Muhammad must go to the mountain. [Oops. That might not be an appropriate phrase to use at this critical juncture of history, religion and politics!:-)]But 1/3 of the electorate will vote before election day in this brave new experiment we are attempting to enable even more people who have no clue what the issues are to be hauled to the polls. (Sorry, was my cynicism showing? :-) As a result ... we are already effectively on election eve. We must focus our efforts in convincing those who vote the way I Christmas shop (making all my decisions and purchases the day before Christmas :-)! For those that vote that way, we need to get them the word and quickly!
Please remember [see below post as to why this is true] this is not over! The liberal elite knows it isn't also and they are scared. So scared that there are warnings (even to folks in foreign countries) that if Obama loses there will be blood in the streets and civil war. Read this, then let's win this thing and we can all be remorseful that we caused Jane Fonda's back to hurt even worse: Erica Jong Freaks Out.
I accidentally ran into something I must construe as complimentary, btw. If you run the word "ridda" on Google, you will find a summary of an article from this blog published by nowpublic.com with proper attribution and requests for comments and fact checking! On page 1 of Google! I had no idea we'd made nowpublic or that we would be on the first page of Google in any form at this point. [Ed. note: we got bumped from page one to page three on Google; oh well :-)] On the nowpublic site they make an excellent comment that ... if such is true, we need this to go viral essentially immediately. I agree.
At the moment, I seem to be able to reach more people more quickly by commenting elsewhere than blogging here (although I usually do refer folks here for a fuller discussion of a point I've made elsewhere). A result of all my postings elsewhere is that I've drafted enough new material to add greatly to this blog, both in substance and quantity. Unfortunately, by the time I could get it here and edited into shape for this blog, the election would be over! :-)
The apostasy issue is huge and the press has intentionally kept it as hidden as possible. American Muslims that speak out simply are not reported. And the Islamic countries have their own reasons (sometimes different ones for different countries) for not wanting the issue raised. It is also possible that some Islamic countries have been trying to get the word out and our lockstep press has been ignoring them. That issue, and so many others, have simply not reached the public yet. It is critical to get word out as quickly as possible. Chain letter it if necessary. Send the site url and a "teaser" paragraph on a topic that you find important to 10 of your friends and ask them to each send to 1o and so forth. A valid and helpful use of the "pyramid" technique.
The second most important thing we must do is NOT GIVE UP (sorry about the shouting). That is what the Obamanation wants you to do. If McCain/Palin supporters figure it is hopeless they aren't as likely to brave the rainstorm or line up a baby-sitter or do whatever they need to do to get to the polls. Make them understand ... use the article below ... that it is not hopeless and that we desperately need a huge turnout. The democrats will be busing people for days on the "vote early, vote often" theory. Well, let's hope I was joking about the "often" part. But we must do the same.
Despite the above cite where Erica Jong demonstrates the level of panic among the liberal elites, my belief remains that the Obama camp, and likely voters, suffer from overconfidence which is their possible undoing. It is time for us to do all we can to help Senator McCain pull off his Lazarus imitation one more time and win this thing. Thanks folks. Let's do this!
The Fat Lady Ain't Singing
October 25, 2008
The Fat Lady Ain't Singing
I’m starting to run into a sense of defeatism - or at least tangible pessimism - by the pro-McCain/Palin camp. It runs from hard-core solid McCain supporting bloggers (eg: TexasFred's comment beneath the linked story) to the few pro-McCain journalists that run in the mainstream media (eg: Krauthhammer talking of all the conservative "ship-jumpers" who want to be on the winning side.) Only a few days from the elections and polls are showing Obama having a nearly double digit lead. In fact, some polls are showing Obama has a double digit lead.
McCain supporters are beginning to lose hope and Obama backers are already breaking out the champagne.
This article should help the McCain folks regain some of that hope and should convince the Obama folks not to pop any corks yet.
I certainly wouldn’t want to wager my retirement income [oh wait, that disappeared in the financial meltdown and is already gone ... never mind] on McCain and Palin pulling this off. But I don't think the McCain/Palin supporters should be ready to throw in the towel yet. I’m listening really closely and the fat lady isn’t singing yet.
To some extent it is realistic to believe that McCain never really had a chance because he was playing in a rigged game with marked cards. Or, as Newt Gingrich and I separately said on the same day purely coincidentally [at least I doubt he’s getting his guidance from my blog and I hadn’t seen his comment when I first wrote mine] ... "the fix is in".
Well, the fix has been in from the beginning. There is no way that Obama on his own could have made it to the point of being a presidential contender. He is way too young, fresh, unknown and inexperienced. No ... he didn’t get there on the merits. He was chosen. Ultimately "by whom" is a fascinating question. Who is the real puppeteer? Who pulls the strings? Who are we really electing when (if!) we swear Obama in as President? I don’t know. But he was selected and then handed to the Chicago machine and used as a charming, naive front man. I think Obama probably believes he got where he is on his own merits ("woke up on third and thought he must have hit a triple"). But he’s just a pretty face with the ability to read a teleprompter speech well.
I know I’m beginning to sound like Hilary and her "vast right-wing conspiracy". But whoever is running the Chicago machine (or perhaps is even the puppet master of the Chicago machine as well), has the national pressography in lock-step compliance. Virtually the entire mainstream media (with some possible exceptions ... or perhaps only a few "apparent" exceptions so that it doesn’t look any more obvious than it does) is acting as campaign workers for Obama. "Someone" even managed to "get to" Powell and convince him to turn on his very good and close friend of decades. After much thought ... I cannot believe that Powell truly believes what he said, (although it is true that he has clearly shown extremely bad judgment before). He does not appear to be an easy man to intimidate and I’ve always believed he was too honorable to be bribed. So I don’t know how they did it. But I believe "someone" must have.
In a rigged game ... did McCain ever stand a chance?
Oddly, the answer is yes. And oddly I believe that is largely due to something that is widely perceived as a dangerous character flaw in McCain: he is a gambler. Literally, as in spending time playing the craps tables in Vegas; and figuratively in that he is willing to roll the dice on decisions that drive the RNC and his own staff up the wall (his selection of Governor Palin as running mate is an excellent example). McCain has been playing in rigged games all his life and knows how to beat the house even when the cards are stacked against him.
He had (by all appearances) zero chance prior to his Palin selection. The question was just how badly he was
going to be beat. Obama was the anointed one. To suggest that Obama's ego got a little carried away with itself is putting it much too mildly :-) He was so certain that he was selected by "higher powers" to this role he gained a Messiah complex. He is right that he was selected by higher powers. But they are very earthly powers. They deal in back rooms and hide, perhaps in plain view. But whoever they really are, these the Powers that Be ("PTB") possess enormous power and influence.
Vegas wouldn’t have even run a line on McCain at that point. He was "just another Bush"; an ultimate Washington insider who had voted with the President way too often for his own electoral good. Essentially anyone that was on the bandied about list of his "likely choices" would have assured the defeat that looked like a forgone conclusion.
So he did what all experienced gamblers do when they see the cards are marked: he brought out a new
deck and shuffled. He chose someone the Obama camp and the PTB had not anticipated nor planned on how to respond. And he caused absolute and total panic among all the Obama supporters, the media, the left-wing blogs ... and Obama himself (who allegedly took up smoking again very shortly after hearing the news).
After the initial panic, the entire "vast left-wing conspiracy" [:-)] went to work bringing their considerable resources to attempt to destroy the public image of Palin and to use her as an example of McCain’s poor judgment. As one who actually knows a fair bit about our Governor (and did long before she was selected - see various posts below), it is mind-boggling to me the lengths to which the media has gone to attempt to discredit her as a credible candidate. She is nothing like the caricature the media has painted of her. No negative rumor, no matter how bizarre and unsubstantiated, is too loony for the punditocracy to print about her. If there is absolutely no substantiation, the press can (and does) go with their standard fall-back position by pointing out that there isn’t much to substantiate the rumor. It is a journalistic trick as old as the profession of muckraking.
"The widely reported story that, yet again, Sarah Palin was found passed out from booze and pills in a hotel bathroom has not been sufficiently documented that we are able to attest to its veracity."
I haven’t actually seen that headline yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I did.
And it has had an enormous effect. The PTB are back in apparent control, Obama is warning against overconfidence, which is excellent evidence that he is overconfident!
But the fat lady ain’t singing yet.
John McCain has been dead and buried, only to rise again, so many times that Lazarus is jealous. Based on that alone I wouldn’t count him out. But there are other reasons not to believe the fight is over or that McCain can’t pull it off.
The first is that a lot of polling is done with the express purpose of attempting to show whoever the pollsters (or whoever hires them) wants to win is doing so. This is because there is a widely held belief (which I don’t know is accurate, but don’t dispute), that, in general, Americans (or perhaps anyone) are sheep that want to be on the winning side and so if the poll shows that Obama has a comfortable lead and the lead is widening ... people will be more inclined to vote for him. I’ve never truly understood that psychology (but as I say, I don’t dispute that it is real), but that may simply be because I’m inherently a contrarian who tends to float upstream and swim against the tide.
Poll results are all manipulated to "adjust" the raw data for such things as the pollster’s belief in the likelihood of whether certain identified groups of respondents are likely to vote, or to make the sample mirror the actual population in things such as gender, party affiliation, race, age, etc. Beyond that, the exact wording of the question is critical and minor changes in what is asked and how it is asked can bring dramatic changes to the final results. Ultimately this means that a poll can be heavily manipulated to produce desired results.
So I take all national polls with a grain of salt. I don’t know what McCain’s own pollsters are discovering. But he isn’t looking discouraged enough for me to believe that they agree with Pew or McClatchy.
There is another, very powerful, reason to not give up hope. People lie.
It is PC now to be an Obama backer and very un-PC to think highly of Palin or to suggest that you might actually vote for the McCain ticket. And, sheep that we are, people don’t want to appear un-PC. So they lie. They lie to their friends, they lie to their co-workers, they lie to reporters ... and they even lie to telephone pollsters (because no one is ever really sure that their responses will be kept confidential).
This is particularly true in this race for several reasons, one of the main ones being that Obama is black. There is a sense that if you oppose Obama, you must be a racist and in this day and age that is the last thing that anyone would want to be accused of. So they tell everyone that, of course, they are going to vote for Obama. But in the privacy of the voting booth, many of those people will pull the lever for McCain.
And then they’ll lie to the pollsters on their way out of the voting place.
This same thing happened four years ago. I predicted then that, even though Kerry was comfortably ahead in the polls, that once inside the booth, a lot of people who said they were Kerry supporters would vote for Bush and would lie about it afterwards. I said that if I was correct, the exit polls would be way off and that the actual vote would be much higher for Bush than the exit polls show.
I was dead on.
When I re-tooled this blog a couple months ago, I brought along some of my old postings. Many of the links didn’t survive the transfer or the linked site is gone now, but they are still sufficient to show, not to put too fine a point on it, that I was absolutely, unarguably, "I told you so" right! :-).
I don’t know whether this phenomenon will be sufficient to put McCain in the winner’s circle. I’m not ready to call the election on his behalf yet. But I do believe that it will have a very real effect and that, once again, the Republican ticket is going to do significantly better at the actual ballot box than they do in the polls.
So it isn’t time for McCain's supporters to give up. That alone can become a self-fulfilling prophecy; whether because of the sheep phenomena by which people want to be on the winning side to just not bothering to vote since it is a "lost cause" anyway. Between McCain’s gambler instincts and his Lazarus imitations ... and my belief that people lie to pollsters, I’m not at all convinced that Obama has this one in the bag yet. And there still could be an "October surprise" which may make a major difference in the election (whether in McCain or Obama’s favor, I have no idea).
But the election isn’t over until it’s over. The fat lady isn’t going to sing until the 4th of next month. No matter what the pollsters and the media tell you.
The Fat Lady Ain't Singing
I’m starting to run into a sense of defeatism - or at least tangible pessimism - by the pro-McCain/Palin camp. It runs from hard-core solid McCain supporting bloggers (eg: TexasFred's comment beneath the linked story) to the few pro-McCain journalists that run in the mainstream media (eg: Krauthhammer talking of all the conservative "ship-jumpers" who want to be on the winning side.) Only a few days from the elections and polls are showing Obama having a nearly double digit lead. In fact, some polls are showing Obama has a double digit lead.
McCain supporters are beginning to lose hope and Obama backers are already breaking out the champagne.
This article should help the McCain folks regain some of that hope and should convince the Obama folks not to pop any corks yet.
I certainly wouldn’t want to wager my retirement income [oh wait, that disappeared in the financial meltdown and is already gone ... never mind] on McCain and Palin pulling this off. But I don't think the McCain/Palin supporters should be ready to throw in the towel yet. I’m listening really closely and the fat lady isn’t singing yet.
To some extent it is realistic to believe that McCain never really had a chance because he was playing in a rigged game with marked cards. Or, as Newt Gingrich and I separately said on the same day purely coincidentally [at least I doubt he’s getting his guidance from my blog and I hadn’t seen his comment when I first wrote mine] ... "the fix is in".
Well, the fix has been in from the beginning. There is no way that Obama on his own could have made it to the point of being a presidential contender. He is way too young, fresh, unknown and inexperienced. No ... he didn’t get there on the merits. He was chosen. Ultimately "by whom" is a fascinating question. Who is the real puppeteer? Who pulls the strings? Who are we really electing when (if!) we swear Obama in as President? I don’t know. But he was selected and then handed to the Chicago machine and used as a charming, naive front man. I think Obama probably believes he got where he is on his own merits ("woke up on third and thought he must have hit a triple"). But he’s just a pretty face with the ability to read a teleprompter speech well.
I know I’m beginning to sound like Hilary and her "vast right-wing conspiracy". But whoever is running the Chicago machine (or perhaps is even the puppet master of the Chicago machine as well), has the national pressography in lock-step compliance. Virtually the entire mainstream media (with some possible exceptions ... or perhaps only a few "apparent" exceptions so that it doesn’t look any more obvious than it does) is acting as campaign workers for Obama. "Someone" even managed to "get to" Powell and convince him to turn on his very good and close friend of decades. After much thought ... I cannot believe that Powell truly believes what he said, (although it is true that he has clearly shown extremely bad judgment before). He does not appear to be an easy man to intimidate and I’ve always believed he was too honorable to be bribed. So I don’t know how they did it. But I believe "someone" must have.
In a rigged game ... did McCain ever stand a chance?
Oddly, the answer is yes. And oddly I believe that is largely due to something that is widely perceived as a dangerous character flaw in McCain: he is a gambler. Literally, as in spending time playing the craps tables in Vegas; and figuratively in that he is willing to roll the dice on decisions that drive the RNC and his own staff up the wall (his selection of Governor Palin as running mate is an excellent example). McCain has been playing in rigged games all his life and knows how to beat the house even when the cards are stacked against him.
He had (by all appearances) zero chance prior to his Palin selection. The question was just how badly he was
going to be beat. Obama was the anointed one. To suggest that Obama's ego got a little carried away with itself is putting it much too mildly :-) He was so certain that he was selected by "higher powers" to this role he gained a Messiah complex. He is right that he was selected by higher powers. But they are very earthly powers. They deal in back rooms and hide, perhaps in plain view. But whoever they really are, these the Powers that Be ("PTB") possess enormous power and influence.Vegas wouldn’t have even run a line on McCain at that point. He was "just another Bush"; an ultimate Washington insider who had voted with the President way too often for his own electoral good. Essentially anyone that was on the bandied about list of his "likely choices" would have assured the defeat that looked like a forgone conclusion.
So he did what all experienced gamblers do when they see the cards are marked: he brought out a new
deck and shuffled. He chose someone the Obama camp and the PTB had not anticipated nor planned on how to respond. And he caused absolute and total panic among all the Obama supporters, the media, the left-wing blogs ... and Obama himself (who allegedly took up smoking again very shortly after hearing the news).After the initial panic, the entire "vast left-wing conspiracy" [:-)] went to work bringing their considerable resources to attempt to destroy the public image of Palin and to use her as an example of McCain’s poor judgment. As one who actually knows a fair bit about our Governor (and did long before she was selected - see various posts below), it is mind-boggling to me the lengths to which the media has gone to attempt to discredit her as a credible candidate. She is nothing like the caricature the media has painted of her. No negative rumor, no matter how bizarre and unsubstantiated, is too loony for the punditocracy to print about her. If there is absolutely no substantiation, the press can (and does) go with their standard fall-back position by pointing out that there isn’t much to substantiate the rumor. It is a journalistic trick as old as the profession of muckraking.
"The widely reported story that, yet again, Sarah Palin was found passed out from booze and pills in a hotel bathroom has not been sufficiently documented that we are able to attest to its veracity."
I haven’t actually seen that headline yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I did.
And it has had an enormous effect. The PTB are back in apparent control, Obama is warning against overconfidence, which is excellent evidence that he is overconfident!
But the fat lady ain’t singing yet.
John McCain has been dead and buried, only to rise again, so many times that Lazarus is jealous. Based on that alone I wouldn’t count him out. But there are other reasons not to believe the fight is over or that McCain can’t pull it off.
The first is that a lot of polling is done with the express purpose of attempting to show whoever the pollsters (or whoever hires them) wants to win is doing so. This is because there is a widely held belief (which I don’t know is accurate, but don’t dispute), that, in general, Americans (or perhaps anyone) are sheep that want to be on the winning side and so if the poll shows that Obama has a comfortable lead and the lead is widening ... people will be more inclined to vote for him. I’ve never truly understood that psychology (but as I say, I don’t dispute that it is real), but that may simply be because I’m inherently a contrarian who tends to float upstream and swim against the tide.
Poll results are all manipulated to "adjust" the raw data for such things as the pollster’s belief in the likelihood of whether certain identified groups of respondents are likely to vote, or to make the sample mirror the actual population in things such as gender, party affiliation, race, age, etc. Beyond that, the exact wording of the question is critical and minor changes in what is asked and how it is asked can bring dramatic changes to the final results. Ultimately this means that a poll can be heavily manipulated to produce desired results.
So I take all national polls with a grain of salt. I don’t know what McCain’s own pollsters are discovering. But he isn’t looking discouraged enough for me to believe that they agree with Pew or McClatchy.
There is another, very powerful, reason to not give up hope. People lie.
It is PC now to be an Obama backer and very un-PC to think highly of Palin or to suggest that you might actually vote for the McCain ticket. And, sheep that we are, people don’t want to appear un-PC. So they lie. They lie to their friends, they lie to their co-workers, they lie to reporters ... and they even lie to telephone pollsters (because no one is ever really sure that their responses will be kept confidential).
This is particularly true in this race for several reasons, one of the main ones being that Obama is black. There is a sense that if you oppose Obama, you must be a racist and in this day and age that is the last thing that anyone would want to be accused of. So they tell everyone that, of course, they are going to vote for Obama. But in the privacy of the voting booth, many of those people will pull the lever for McCain.
And then they’ll lie to the pollsters on their way out of the voting place.
This same thing happened four years ago. I predicted then that, even though Kerry was comfortably ahead in the polls, that once inside the booth, a lot of people who said they were Kerry supporters would vote for Bush and would lie about it afterwards. I said that if I was correct, the exit polls would be way off and that the actual vote would be much higher for Bush than the exit polls show.
I was dead on.
When I re-tooled this blog a couple months ago, I brought along some of my old postings. Many of the links didn’t survive the transfer or the linked site is gone now, but they are still sufficient to show, not to put too fine a point on it, that I was absolutely, unarguably, "I told you so" right! :-).
I don’t know whether this phenomenon will be sufficient to put McCain in the winner’s circle. I’m not ready to call the election on his behalf yet. But I do believe that it will have a very real effect and that, once again, the Republican ticket is going to do significantly better at the actual ballot box than they do in the polls.
So it isn’t time for McCain's supporters to give up. That alone can become a self-fulfilling prophecy; whether because of the sheep phenomena by which people want to be on the winning side to just not bothering to vote since it is a "lost cause" anyway. Between McCain’s gambler instincts and his Lazarus imitations ... and my belief that people lie to pollsters, I’m not at all convinced that Obama has this one in the bag yet. And there still could be an "October surprise" which may make a major difference in the election (whether in McCain or Obama’s favor, I have no idea).
But the election isn’t over until it’s over. The fat lady isn’t going to sing until the 4th of next month. No matter what the pollsters and the media tell you.
23.10.08
Smeared Lipstick; the Media's Attempt to Destroy Sarah Palin
October 22, 2008
Smeared Lipstick; the Media's Attempt to Destroy Sarah Palin
As they say in boxing: the fix is in. [I discovered after writing this that I wasn't the first one to use that phrase to describe the current situation.] The pressography will do anything it can to destroy the public image of Governor Palin.
We are in the midst of two wars and the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. We have major issues regarding how to provide our energy needs and our health care and so many other issues. We are only a few days before the election between candidates with dramatically different ideologies and proposed solutions to those problems and others ... and the main political story of the day in the mainstream media and left-wing blogosphere is the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe!
There are only two possibilities: either the game is rigged or the media are chock-full of blithering idiots.
I'm not paranoid by nature, but I'm beginning to believe option one!
This is a total "nonstory" and is completely consistent with the phony caricature image the media has been trying to paint of Sarah. This is just another attempt by the punditocracy to make Palin look as bad as possible. No one's tax money was spent. The RNC has the right to do whatever it wants with money that people have contributed to it. If anyone has a right to gripe it could only be contributors to the RNC. No one else has any legitimate interest or complaint. And people who contribute to the RNC do so giving the RNC full discretion on how to spend those funds. It may or may not have been money well spent. If it helps bring in votes because she looks more "professionally acceptable" to the urban and urbane voters, it absolutely was good judgment, if it doesn't, it wasn't. But contributors to the RNC let the RNC make such judgments. They are pros. They have a better idea of how to allocate funds to maximize the votes they bring in than any of us armchair analysts.
Virtually every Alaskan quoted about her in the national media is opposed to her and has terrible things to say about her, including utter lies about her racism towards the Native people that make absolutely no sense (the reporter for this article apparently didn't realize that her husband was part Yupik when he made up the racist lies. This from a state where she had an absolutely unreal 90%+ approval rating. That should be enough to make any thinking person understand and realize that the national smear campaign is on.
In addition to the serious issues facing the country, there are also critical, significant unanswered questions about Senator Obama. There is a serious question as to whether Obama is an apostate. There are legitimate questions, complete with lawsuits, on whether he is a lawful resident of the U.S. There are major questions regarding his his judgment in his choice of long-term friends, associates and mentors; some of whom are truly scary people including avowed communists, his "hate America" pastor and convicted terrorist felons. These allegations may turn out to be valid or the may turn out to be invalid. But they need to be brought out into the light of day and examined. Can it truly be that the cost of Sarah's shoes is a more important topic than these?
Governor Sarah Palin has, alone among the four candidates, actually run a government. Being in the legislature where you have "opinions" and a vote and then another vote and an "I voted against it before I voted for it" mentality is completely different from being the head administrator of the government. Aren't Sarah's accomplishments as Governor on issues such as free trade (along with the other candidate's "opinions") more important than the cost of her suit jacket? Apparently not according to the punditocracy. The costs of her wardrobe were on the front page of the New York Times!
It is clear that until McCain made the surprising and shockingly brilliant selection of Palin for a running mate, Obama and the puppeteers behind him were certain they had the Presidency locked up. And ... if McCain had chosen almost anyone else, Obama would have been correct. But they had never suspected that Palin was a real option and were not prepared to campaign against her. The absolute and obvious panic of Obama and the left-wing Democrats was fascinating.
There was no way they could beat her on the merits. She is probably better qualified than any of the other three to be President. She was the head of the Oil and Gas Commission in Alaska (a powerful position in this State). She resigned in protest over the rampant corruption; ran for Governor on a "throw out the crooks" platform; won by a landslide ... and did just that. She teamed well and comfortably with the honest Democrats. She fought Big Oil. The bad guys got indicted, she instituted a windfalls profit tax which hurt the oil companies, but was more fair than the deals that they'd received in the past from their bought and paid for Legislature. And then she gave a bunch of that money to every person in the state to help offset the huge rise in fuel and energy costs. Along the way she gained great respect from the Big Oil companies and works well with them. Once they learned that she was uncorruptible; that she couldn't be bullied or bought ... they played the game legit. She has had tremendous executive experience that none of the other three could hope to match. Obama's only chance was to convince the punditocracy to lie and destroy her by a constant barrage of negative, indeed nasty, vicious images of her even if they had to be "made up" or repeat as gospel totally unverifiable (and wrong) rumors. The mainstream press absolutely refuses to give the public any sort of balanced picture about her. I'm sure he and the press feel somewhat secure in doing so because Alaska is far away and little known. Lying about it and people from it is easier than from any other state.
And lie they did. Certainly there are honest reporters and bloggers who simply disagree with her. That's fine. I'm all for competition in the marketplace of ideas. What scares me (and I'm not a man that frightens easily) is that way too much of the pressosphere [the press and the big blogs that, through links and advertising have simply become "part of the system"] is too willing to lie in lockstep. There is more going on here than we are aware. I'm not of the paranoid persuation, but the attempted destruction of Sarah Palin is too widespread and too well coordinated to be legitimate reporting.
The woman I know as Governor of this State does not resemble the image you have of her if you have listened only to the media. Read the articles in this blog. Many of the best background articles on her are in the September archives. Just press the >9(19) button at the top under archives for a list of titles, or just scroll down and see what strikes your fancy. Follow my links. You will discover an entirely different person than you thought she was. And you will, I hope, wonder how this could be. I don't know the answer to that ... yet. But I do know that "when elephants play, the grass gets trampled". There are hidden elephants behind Obama's improbable rise. And you and I are grass.
Smeared Lipstick; the Media's Attempt to Destroy Sarah Palin
As they say in boxing: the fix is in. [I discovered after writing this that I wasn't the first one to use that phrase to describe the current situation.] The pressography will do anything it can to destroy the public image of Governor Palin.
We are in the midst of two wars and the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. We have major issues regarding how to provide our energy needs and our health care and so many other issues. We are only a few days before the election between candidates with dramatically different ideologies and proposed solutions to those problems and others ... and the main political story of the day in the mainstream media and left-wing blogosphere is the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe!
There are only two possibilities: either the game is rigged or the media are chock-full of blithering idiots.
I'm not paranoid by nature, but I'm beginning to believe option one!
This is a total "nonstory" and is completely consistent with the phony caricature image the media has been trying to paint of Sarah. This is just another attempt by the punditocracy to make Palin look as bad as possible. No one's tax money was spent. The RNC has the right to do whatever it wants with money that people have contributed to it. If anyone has a right to gripe it could only be contributors to the RNC. No one else has any legitimate interest or complaint. And people who contribute to the RNC do so giving the RNC full discretion on how to spend those funds. It may or may not have been money well spent. If it helps bring in votes because she looks more "professionally acceptable" to the urban and urbane voters, it absolutely was good judgment, if it doesn't, it wasn't. But contributors to the RNC let the RNC make such judgments. They are pros. They have a better idea of how to allocate funds to maximize the votes they bring in than any of us armchair analysts.
Virtually every Alaskan quoted about her in the national media is opposed to her and has terrible things to say about her, including utter lies about her racism towards the Native people that make absolutely no sense (the reporter for this article apparently didn't realize that her husband was part Yupik when he made up the racist lies. This from a state where she had an absolutely unreal 90%+ approval rating. That should be enough to make any thinking person understand and realize that the national smear campaign is on.
In addition to the serious issues facing the country, there are also critical, significant unanswered questions about Senator Obama. There is a serious question as to whether Obama is an apostate. There are legitimate questions, complete with lawsuits, on whether he is a lawful resident of the U.S. There are major questions regarding his his judgment in his choice of long-term friends, associates and mentors; some of whom are truly scary people including avowed communists, his "hate America" pastor and convicted terrorist felons. These allegations may turn out to be valid or the may turn out to be invalid. But they need to be brought out into the light of day and examined. Can it truly be that the cost of Sarah's shoes is a more important topic than these?
Governor Sarah Palin has, alone among the four candidates, actually run a government. Being in the legislature where you have "opinions" and a vote and then another vote and an "I voted against it before I voted for it" mentality is completely different from being the head administrator of the government. Aren't Sarah's accomplishments as Governor on issues such as free trade (along with the other candidate's "opinions") more important than the cost of her suit jacket? Apparently not according to the punditocracy. The costs of her wardrobe were on the front page of the New York Times!
It is clear that until McCain made the surprising and shockingly brilliant selection of Palin for a running mate, Obama and the puppeteers behind him were certain they had the Presidency locked up. And ... if McCain had chosen almost anyone else, Obama would have been correct. But they had never suspected that Palin was a real option and were not prepared to campaign against her. The absolute and obvious panic of Obama and the left-wing Democrats was fascinating.
There was no way they could beat her on the merits. She is probably better qualified than any of the other three to be President. She was the head of the Oil and Gas Commission in Alaska (a powerful position in this State). She resigned in protest over the rampant corruption; ran for Governor on a "throw out the crooks" platform; won by a landslide ... and did just that. She teamed well and comfortably with the honest Democrats. She fought Big Oil. The bad guys got indicted, she instituted a windfalls profit tax which hurt the oil companies, but was more fair than the deals that they'd received in the past from their bought and paid for Legislature. And then she gave a bunch of that money to every person in the state to help offset the huge rise in fuel and energy costs. Along the way she gained great respect from the Big Oil companies and works well with them. Once they learned that she was uncorruptible; that she couldn't be bullied or bought ... they played the game legit. She has had tremendous executive experience that none of the other three could hope to match. Obama's only chance was to convince the punditocracy to lie and destroy her by a constant barrage of negative, indeed nasty, vicious images of her even if they had to be "made up" or repeat as gospel totally unverifiable (and wrong) rumors. The mainstream press absolutely refuses to give the public any sort of balanced picture about her. I'm sure he and the press feel somewhat secure in doing so because Alaska is far away and little known. Lying about it and people from it is easier than from any other state.
And lie they did. Certainly there are honest reporters and bloggers who simply disagree with her. That's fine. I'm all for competition in the marketplace of ideas. What scares me (and I'm not a man that frightens easily) is that way too much of the pressosphere [the press and the big blogs that, through links and advertising have simply become "part of the system"] is too willing to lie in lockstep. There is more going on here than we are aware. I'm not of the paranoid persuation, but the attempted destruction of Sarah Palin is too widespread and too well coordinated to be legitimate reporting.
The woman I know as Governor of this State does not resemble the image you have of her if you have listened only to the media. Read the articles in this blog. Many of the best background articles on her are in the September archives. Just press the >9(19) button at the top under archives for a list of titles, or just scroll down and see what strikes your fancy. Follow my links. You will discover an entirely different person than you thought she was. And you will, I hope, wonder how this could be. I don't know the answer to that ... yet. But I do know that "when elephants play, the grass gets trampled". There are hidden elephants behind Obama's improbable rise. And you and I are grass.
19.10.08
General Powell; Fatally Flawed
October 19, 2008
General Powell; Fatally Flawed
I appear to be reacting instead of acting lately! General Powell's endorsement of Obama brought to the surface some very strong feelings of betrayal that had sort of gotten buried a bit by time. But when they hit, they hit hard. I still honestly believe General Powell to be a good man. I used to believe he might even be a great man. But I learned, to my great disappointment, that his "fatal flaw" is that his judgment and recommendations are simply not to be trusted.
At one time I had a great deal of respect for General Powell. That was before he stood before the United Nations and stared us all in the eye and lied about the existence of WMDs in Iraq, claiming personal knowledge that he knew this to be true. I think the war in Iraq is an abomination and horrendously immoral [and said so, loudly, long before "shock & awe" when I was a very lonely voice].
I wasn't blogging then, but see this from "the last time around": four years ago, shortly after that election:
http://alaskanwoulds.blogspot.com/2008/09/monday-november-08-2004-preemptive.html
I wouldn't have been so lonely in opposing the war initially if General Powell had not made the case for the war ... by flat-out lying. Lots of people who didn't trust Bush trusted Powell. And he sold us down the river. We might never have got into that immoral disaster that has ruined our standing in the world and destroyed our economy (and had more additional negative effects than there is room to list) if it hadn't been for Powell.
This is a link to the verbatim transcript of what he said (plus video, plus copies of the slides he showed ... everything). It was a few years ago so you've probably forgotten parts; it is well worth reading again:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html
For those who can't be bothered, a few specific quotes ... the exact words of General Powell:
"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
"Saddam Hussein and his regime are not just trying to conceal weapons, they're also trying to hide people."
"Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries."
"I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable."
"Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum [sic] toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings."
"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction."
"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets ... Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again, against his neighbors and against his own people."
"People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind, these elicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material."
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more."
"The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world."
And to top it all off, he basically asks the world (and us) to trust him (as so many did because we believed we could) by saying:
"I cannot tell you everything that we know."
And that is just a few tiny snippets ... he really lays it on thick. And we know that he wasn't just innocently making a mistake! He ran the State Department and he insisted that "we know". And we now know that he absolutely did not know and in fact a lot of the supposed evidence was forged, fraudulent junk!
So who is starting to look more like the "continuation of George Bush" now? Bush and Powell lied to us and by doing so did us incalculable damage. Now we have Obama, a proven liar, glowing in the endorsement of the most destructive liar we've experienced in a very long time.
Thank goodness Powell didn't endorse McCain! For any thinking person who believes that we shouldn't have attacked Iraq (one of whom Obama claims to be!), an endorsement by the liar that got us there should be considered the kiss of death. [Yeah, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld ... they all lied also ... but most of us didn't trust them! We, myself included I'm ashamed to say, did trust Powell. When he said we should go to war because he knew Iraq had WMDs I was almost physically ill because someone I respected so much said that (and that was without having a clue that he was lying!).
Well, I don't respect him nearly so much now (although I tried to regain some over the years by attempting to convince myself that he was just repeating what he had been told, but that just isn't a good enough justification - nor is it true - nor is it what he said. He said he knew that Saddam had WMDs) ... but once again he has proven his judgment has huge holes in it. Both his assertion that he knew Saddam still had WMDs and that we should take him out because of it ... and his endorsement of Obama are terrible, terrible judgments.
If his endorsement proves critical to Obama winning, Powell will have the singular distinction of being the only non-president who has led this nation into its two worst mistakes of the last few decades.
I might well have voted for Powell for President in 2000 if he would have run. That's one of the things that keeps me aware that even my own judgment can be wrong; a realization that is clearly not shared by many other bloggers or posters :-)
General Powell; Fatally Flawed
I appear to be reacting instead of acting lately! General Powell's endorsement of Obama brought to the surface some very strong feelings of betrayal that had sort of gotten buried a bit by time. But when they hit, they hit hard. I still honestly believe General Powell to be a good man. I used to believe he might even be a great man. But I learned, to my great disappointment, that his "fatal flaw" is that his judgment and recommendations are simply not to be trusted.
At one time I had a great deal of respect for General Powell. That was before he stood before the United Nations and stared us all in the eye and lied about the existence of WMDs in Iraq, claiming personal knowledge that he knew this to be true. I think the war in Iraq is an abomination and horrendously immoral [and said so, loudly, long before "shock & awe" when I was a very lonely voice].
I wasn't blogging then, but see this from "the last time around": four years ago, shortly after that election:
http://alaskanwoulds.blogspot.com/2008/09/monday-november-08-2004-preemptive.html
I wouldn't have been so lonely in opposing the war initially if General Powell had not made the case for the war ... by flat-out lying. Lots of people who didn't trust Bush trusted Powell. And he sold us down the river. We might never have got into that immoral disaster that has ruined our standing in the world and destroyed our economy (and had more additional negative effects than there is room to list) if it hadn't been for Powell.
This is a link to the verbatim transcript of what he said (plus video, plus copies of the slides he showed ... everything). It was a few years ago so you've probably forgotten parts; it is well worth reading again:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html
For those who can't be bothered, a few specific quotes ... the exact words of General Powell:
"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
"Saddam Hussein and his regime are not just trying to conceal weapons, they're also trying to hide people."
"Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries."
"I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable."
"Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum [sic] toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings."
"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction."
"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets ... Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein has used such weapons. And Saddam Hussein has no compunction about using them again, against his neighbors and against his own people."
"People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind, these elicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material."
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more."
"The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world."
And to top it all off, he basically asks the world (and us) to trust him (as so many did because we believed we could) by saying:
"I cannot tell you everything that we know."
And that is just a few tiny snippets ... he really lays it on thick. And we know that he wasn't just innocently making a mistake! He ran the State Department and he insisted that "we know". And we now know that he absolutely did not know and in fact a lot of the supposed evidence was forged, fraudulent junk!
So who is starting to look more like the "continuation of George Bush" now? Bush and Powell lied to us and by doing so did us incalculable damage. Now we have Obama, a proven liar, glowing in the endorsement of the most destructive liar we've experienced in a very long time.
Thank goodness Powell didn't endorse McCain! For any thinking person who believes that we shouldn't have attacked Iraq (one of whom Obama claims to be!), an endorsement by the liar that got us there should be considered the kiss of death. [Yeah, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld ... they all lied also ... but most of us didn't trust them! We, myself included I'm ashamed to say, did trust Powell. When he said we should go to war because he knew Iraq had WMDs I was almost physically ill because someone I respected so much said that (and that was without having a clue that he was lying!).
Well, I don't respect him nearly so much now (although I tried to regain some over the years by attempting to convince myself that he was just repeating what he had been told, but that just isn't a good enough justification - nor is it true - nor is it what he said. He said he knew that Saddam had WMDs) ... but once again he has proven his judgment has huge holes in it. Both his assertion that he knew Saddam still had WMDs and that we should take him out because of it ... and his endorsement of Obama are terrible, terrible judgments.
If his endorsement proves critical to Obama winning, Powell will have the singular distinction of being the only non-president who has led this nation into its two worst mistakes of the last few decades.
I might well have voted for Powell for President in 2000 if he would have run. That's one of the things that keeps me aware that even my own judgment can be wrong; a realization that is clearly not shared by many other bloggers or posters :-)
Commander Palin
October 18, 2008
Commander Palin
I know we were talking about Obama, but I ran into a post elsewhere that irritated me so I'm doing a quick "response" for those who might be confused enough by the blather to believe the idiot (I'm sorry ... but that poster is an idiot, not just uninformed like many).
The post denigrated both Palin and Alaska's National Guard (and her relationship and responsibilities regarding it). So let me get some facts out there for those who are legitimately uninformed (given the news media "misinformed" may be more common), but in either case please be aware of the following:
Alaska's National Guard is the elite Guard force in the country and the elite of the elites of all arctic fighting forces and is universally considered to be so among those who know about such things. The U.S. Marines (as well as the Army) send their troops up to be trained by and to learn from our National Guard.
America's first line of missile interceptor defense (protecting the entire U.S.) is the 49th Missile Defense Battalion of the Alaska National Guard and Sarah Palin, as Governor of Alaska, is the Commander in Chief of that Defense Battalion.
As such, she is (and was long before any veep candidacy was even considered) routinely briefed on highly classified military issues, homeland security, and counter terrorism by the federal "powers that be". It is an entirely different situation from any other state governor because in most states the national guard is a sort of minor afterthought. In Alaska, it is a big thing and a major part of America's defense system.
In fact, Sarah has a higher classified security rating than EITHER Obama or Biden! She is already entrusted with more national security information than either of them are allowed! (In fact, I have wondered a bit at some of her early apparent "airheadedness" in interviews regarding the international situation and national defense ... and I've come to believe that she was really unsure at first what, if anything, she was allowed to say.) I assume that got cleared up as she has since shown she can certainly hold her own in that arena (even with an acknowledged foreign affairs expert like Biden during her debate with him). She has been taught to keep a secret and she does so. If it is one she is sworn to uphold (such as regarding national security or foreign affairs) she, as a matter of character, would rather be viewed as an airhead than to reveal anything that she shouldn't.
As a result, I think she simply clammed up and accepted looking dumb until she was definitively briefed on where that line was. (If you recall, she was the last of the four candidates to be briefed because she was the last announced and had not gone through the formal security briefing that the candidates all receive at the time of those early interviews ... and she already knew stuff that they couldn't and therefore didn't tell Obama or Biden because of her clearance level. So, I think she simply had not had a chance to get a definitive determination on what she could and could not reveal at that point ... she was thrown into this thing in such a surprise whirlwind that there probably just hadn't been a chance for it before the press got their hands on her.) This paragraph is conjecture. The others are not.
This one is not conjecture either: she met with McCain in February (!) ... and no one ever knew about it (except the tiny handful of people involved). This is a lady that can keep a secret! (In fact ... only tangentially related, but remember how long she kept her recent pregnancy a secret!) She can be trusted with our national security secrets. And, indeed, she already is.
I found it interesting that in his interview regarding her, Major General Craig E. Campbell who was the Major General and head of the Alaska National Guard (and therefore reported to Palin), noted that Palin had ordered troops and helicopters to Louisiana to help with the hurricane damage just the week before the interview. She didn't check with any federal agency or ... anyone. She received a request for help from the Governor of Louisiana and she deployed our troops and 'copters to help out. Even from here we probably got there and did more good more quickly than the federal folks! [You really should see the interview ... he says much more, and says it much more eloquently than I ... as he knows a lot more about it than I.]
But the Major General reported to Palin, not to the President or anyone else. Until and unless the Guard is nationalized (which happens on occasion - eg: our troops in Iraq), she is the sole Commander in Chief. And she was (is) an active and involved one ... even visiting our (Alaska's) National Guard troops in Kuwait long before anyone had considered her for the veep seat.
Those people who claim that her assertion that being Commander of the Alaska National Guard aided her foreign policy knowledge and experience is fluffery and that she was a "Commander" in name only; that it didn't mean anything substantive ... are either uninformed, misinformed, or intentionally misinforming.
She still knows things about our national security that Obama (and Biden) do not, and are not allowed to know!
Thank you for letting me clear the air on that. I feel better now :-)
Commander Palin
I know we were talking about Obama, but I ran into a post elsewhere that irritated me so I'm doing a quick "response" for those who might be confused enough by the blather to believe the idiot (I'm sorry ... but that poster is an idiot, not just uninformed like many).
The post denigrated both Palin and Alaska's National Guard (and her relationship and responsibilities regarding it). So let me get some facts out there for those who are legitimately uninformed (given the news media "misinformed" may be more common), but in either case please be aware of the following:
Alaska's National Guard is the elite Guard force in the country and the elite of the elites of all arctic fighting forces and is universally considered to be so among those who know about such things. The U.S. Marines (as well as the Army) send their troops up to be trained by and to learn from our National Guard.
America's first line of missile interceptor defense (protecting the entire U.S.) is the 49th Missile Defense Battalion of the Alaska National Guard and Sarah Palin, as Governor of Alaska, is the Commander in Chief of that Defense Battalion.
As such, she is (and was long before any veep candidacy was even considered) routinely briefed on highly classified military issues, homeland security, and counter terrorism by the federal "powers that be". It is an entirely different situation from any other state governor because in most states the national guard is a sort of minor afterthought. In Alaska, it is a big thing and a major part of America's defense system.
In fact, Sarah has a higher classified security rating than EITHER Obama or Biden! She is already entrusted with more national security information than either of them are allowed! (In fact, I have wondered a bit at some of her early apparent "airheadedness" in interviews regarding the international situation and national defense ... and I've come to believe that she was really unsure at first what, if anything, she was allowed to say.) I assume that got cleared up as she has since shown she can certainly hold her own in that arena (even with an acknowledged foreign affairs expert like Biden during her debate with him). She has been taught to keep a secret and she does so. If it is one she is sworn to uphold (such as regarding national security or foreign affairs) she, as a matter of character, would rather be viewed as an airhead than to reveal anything that she shouldn't.
As a result, I think she simply clammed up and accepted looking dumb until she was definitively briefed on where that line was. (If you recall, she was the last of the four candidates to be briefed because she was the last announced and had not gone through the formal security briefing that the candidates all receive at the time of those early interviews ... and she already knew stuff that they couldn't and therefore didn't tell Obama or Biden because of her clearance level. So, I think she simply had not had a chance to get a definitive determination on what she could and could not reveal at that point ... she was thrown into this thing in such a surprise whirlwind that there probably just hadn't been a chance for it before the press got their hands on her.) This paragraph is conjecture. The others are not.
This one is not conjecture either: she met with McCain in February (!) ... and no one ever knew about it (except the tiny handful of people involved). This is a lady that can keep a secret! (In fact ... only tangentially related, but remember how long she kept her recent pregnancy a secret!) She can be trusted with our national security secrets. And, indeed, she already is.
I found it interesting that in his interview regarding her, Major General Craig E. Campbell who was the Major General and head of the Alaska National Guard (and therefore reported to Palin), noted that Palin had ordered troops and helicopters to Louisiana to help with the hurricane damage just the week before the interview. She didn't check with any federal agency or ... anyone. She received a request for help from the Governor of Louisiana and she deployed our troops and 'copters to help out. Even from here we probably got there and did more good more quickly than the federal folks! [You really should see the interview ... he says much more, and says it much more eloquently than I ... as he knows a lot more about it than I.]
But the Major General reported to Palin, not to the President or anyone else. Until and unless the Guard is nationalized (which happens on occasion - eg: our troops in Iraq), she is the sole Commander in Chief. And she was (is) an active and involved one ... even visiting our (Alaska's) National Guard troops in Kuwait long before anyone had considered her for the veep seat.
Those people who claim that her assertion that being Commander of the Alaska National Guard aided her foreign policy knowledge and experience is fluffery and that she was a "Commander" in name only; that it didn't mean anything substantive ... are either uninformed, misinformed, or intentionally misinforming.
She still knows things about our national security that Obama (and Biden) do not, and are not allowed to know!
Thank you for letting me clear the air on that. I feel better now :-)
16.10.08
Post-Debate: McCain's Only Chance Now
October 16, 2008
Post-Debate: McCain's Only Chance Now
He lost the debate ... at least in the mind of the public and they are the ones that ultimately decide these things. He is way behind, depending on which poll you follow. Time is about out. He has, absent an unexpected major event, only one realistic chance, imho. That chance is that the following (well researched, well documented) article is widely read and understood. This issue was raised briefly many months ago then it "disappeared" from the punditocracy. Somewhat to my surprise (I was dubious when I first looked into it) it appears to be accurate and a potentially serious concern. (Also I now have some thoughts and theories on why the Islamic world is keeping mum on it until after the elections).
There aren't many life-rings left to throw to McCain's campaign. If you agree with this please tell everybody to come and read and add what they know in the comments section. I'm sure there is much that can be added to this and your comments will help the spreading of this understanding to gather momentum. If you (intelligently) disagree ... if you can find where I've made mistakes of fact or logic ... please tell me that also! I'm not on a witch hunt. You'll see I've not been totally supportive of McCain if you read some of my other posts. I have an open mind here. Convince me and I'll change it!
This is a critical issue! If this is right, we don't dare elect Obama! And ...
Uurgh. I can tell this blog is getting too "heavy". I know these are critical issues, but sometimes a little humor is necessary to take the edge off. So take a couple minutes and watch this "thoughtful commentary" on electing Barack Hussein Obama! :-)
Back to "heavy". This really is a critical issue. And the campaign season is nearly over. It really may be that if people understand (the post below this), McCain wins; and if they don't, Obama does.
Post-Debate: McCain's Only Chance Now
He lost the debate ... at least in the mind of the public and they are the ones that ultimately decide these things. He is way behind, depending on which poll you follow. Time is about out. He has, absent an unexpected major event, only one realistic chance, imho. That chance is that the following (well researched, well documented) article is widely read and understood. This issue was raised briefly many months ago then it "disappeared" from the punditocracy. Somewhat to my surprise (I was dubious when I first looked into it) it appears to be accurate and a potentially serious concern. (Also I now have some thoughts and theories on why the Islamic world is keeping mum on it until after the elections).
There aren't many life-rings left to throw to McCain's campaign. If you agree with this please tell everybody to come and read and add what they know in the comments section. I'm sure there is much that can be added to this and your comments will help the spreading of this understanding to gather momentum. If you (intelligently) disagree ... if you can find where I've made mistakes of fact or logic ... please tell me that also! I'm not on a witch hunt. You'll see I've not been totally supportive of McCain if you read some of my other posts. I have an open mind here. Convince me and I'll change it!
This is a critical issue! If this is right, we don't dare elect Obama! And ...
Uurgh. I can tell this blog is getting too "heavy". I know these are critical issues, but sometimes a little humor is necessary to take the edge off. So take a couple minutes and watch this "thoughtful commentary" on electing Barack Hussein Obama! :-)
Back to "heavy". This really is a critical issue. And the campaign season is nearly over. It really may be that if people understand (the post below this), McCain wins; and if they don't, Obama does.
14.10.08
Barack Hussein Obama -- Insult to Islam?
October 15, 2008
Barack Hussein Obama -- Insult to Islam?
This evening's debate is the big political news. So as a registered contrarian I won't really talk about it today :-) I'll comment afterwards, but Barack will win. McCain will pull his punches and only get out half his words and Obama will have him for dinner. Unless ...
Unless McCain asks the one question that will scare Obama into stutters.
"Are you ridda and if so do you understand the international ramifications?"
Ok. Look. I'm not a wingnut. I don't believe that Obama is [intentionlly or under U.S. law] a Muslim and has been lying to us. I don't believe he was born overseas and is therefore ineligible to be President (although I'm still researching that one for fun :-) I don't believe he attended terrorist training camps.
Obama acknowledges that his father and stepfather were Muslim.
In Islam the religion of the father is the religion of the child
Obama has rejected Islam as his personal religion and claims to be Christian
Indeed, he has been slammed by the right-wingers for attending an (admittedly radical, but still Christian) Christian church for the past 20 years or so. Indeed, if I'm right, it would be better for him to convert to Islam! There is no reason we can't have a Muslim as President.
By renouncing Islam and claiming to be Christian, he has committed apostasy (called "ridda" in Islam). That is not a uniquely Islamic concept; most religions and certainly the Christians also claim that one who rejects their religion, eg: Christianity, is an apostate. But the Christian response is generally more benign than the Islamic one.
Nor is there a "universal" Islamic response. It varies from country to country and sect to sect. But it is universally a "big deal" in the Muslim world.
Even without a fatwa, the punishment is death in many Islamic countries and the cultural movement is towards a stricter interpretation and harsher penalties. This is true even in such critical countries as Pakistan and carrying out that punishment is the sacred duty of all Muslims. But it appears likely that fatwas will indeed be issued.
As I understand it, electing Obama would be an insult to Islam, Islamic peoples and the entire Islamic world. Countries the U.S. thinks of as friends, will be insulted. Some of the greatest and most respected contempary scholars and teachers of Islam still say that apostosy should carry the death sentence and is a more heinous crime than murder. Doubtless there are many Islamic governments who would rather deal with Obama than McCain. But even in the most secular Muslim country, there will be enormous pressure from the religious powers not to deal with a country led by an apostate. Moreover, there appears to be a movement towards applying Islamic law (sharia) in even secular countries.
Please understand ... an apostate is very different than an infidel. We're constantly called infidels by some in the Islamic world. We're used to it and think of it as no big deal. But an infidel is just one who has not yet seen the light. Essentially a pagan, if you will. Christians who were never Muslims are infidels, but not apostates.
Granted that this is not Obama's "fault". But hey, there is nothing inherently "fair" about the world. It isn't Obama's "fault" that he is an innately tremendous natural orator. It isn't McCain's "fault" that his mouth and brain aren't always in sync when speaking under pressure. This has nothing to do with "fault". But what is, is.
If things are as I understand them to be (and Obama has been honest regarding his religion), international relations relating to the Middle East will be very difficult if he is elected. Some countries we have considered "friends" will not speak with Obama. Indeed, U.S. participation in peace talks, negotiations, anything related to the Middle East, may be curtailed. [Not that I wouldn't mind a four or eight year break from having to deal with that part of the world ... but it isn't realistic and it would be extremely dangerous.]
Barack Hussein Obama -- Insult to Islam?
This evening's debate is the big political news. So as a registered contrarian I won't really talk about it today :-) I'll comment afterwards, but Barack will win. McCain will pull his punches and only get out half his words and Obama will have him for dinner. Unless ...
Unless McCain asks the one question that will scare Obama into stutters.
"Are you ridda and if so do you understand the international ramifications?"
Ok. Look. I'm not a wingnut. I don't believe that Obama is [intentionlly or under U.S. law] a Muslim and has been lying to us. I don't believe he was born overseas and is therefore ineligible to be President (although I'm still researching that one for fun :-) I don't believe he attended terrorist training camps.
Obama acknowledges that his father and stepfather were Muslim.
In Islam the religion of the father is the religion of the child
Obama has rejected Islam as his personal religion and claims to be Christian
Indeed, he has been slammed by the right-wingers for attending an (admittedly radical, but still Christian) Christian church for the past 20 years or so. Indeed, if I'm right, it would be better for him to convert to Islam! There is no reason we can't have a Muslim as President.
By renouncing Islam and claiming to be Christian, he has committed apostasy (called "ridda" in Islam). That is not a uniquely Islamic concept; most religions and certainly the Christians also claim that one who rejects their religion, eg: Christianity, is an apostate. But the Christian response is generally more benign than the Islamic one.
Nor is there a "universal" Islamic response. It varies from country to country and sect to sect. But it is universally a "big deal" in the Muslim world.
Even without a fatwa, the punishment is death in many Islamic countries and the cultural movement is towards a stricter interpretation and harsher penalties. This is true even in such critical countries as Pakistan and carrying out that punishment is the sacred duty of all Muslims. But it appears likely that fatwas will indeed be issued.
As I understand it, electing Obama would be an insult to Islam, Islamic peoples and the entire Islamic world. Countries the U.S. thinks of as friends, will be insulted. Some of the greatest and most respected contempary scholars and teachers of Islam still say that apostosy should carry the death sentence and is a more heinous crime than murder. Doubtless there are many Islamic governments who would rather deal with Obama than McCain. But even in the most secular Muslim country, there will be enormous pressure from the religious powers not to deal with a country led by an apostate. Moreover, there appears to be a movement towards applying Islamic law (sharia) in even secular countries.
Please understand ... an apostate is very different than an infidel. We're constantly called infidels by some in the Islamic world. We're used to it and think of it as no big deal. But an infidel is just one who has not yet seen the light. Essentially a pagan, if you will. Christians who were never Muslims are infidels, but not apostates.
Granted that this is not Obama's "fault". But hey, there is nothing inherently "fair" about the world. It isn't Obama's "fault" that he is an innately tremendous natural orator. It isn't McCain's "fault" that his mouth and brain aren't always in sync when speaking under pressure. This has nothing to do with "fault". But what is, is.
If things are as I understand them to be (and Obama has been honest regarding his religion), international relations relating to the Middle East will be very difficult if he is elected. Some countries we have considered "friends" will not speak with Obama. Indeed, U.S. participation in peace talks, negotiations, anything related to the Middle East, may be curtailed. [Not that I wouldn't mind a four or eight year break from having to deal with that part of the world ... but it isn't realistic and it would be extremely dangerous.]
In fact, Obama may not be physically safe in Islamic countries. [Or anywhere else, although to some extent that comes with the job regardless of your religion.]
I am bewildered at the lack of Islamic uproar about this to date. Possibly most "Joe six-pack" Muslims [yes, I know - just looking for a little gallows humor] in Turkey or Kuwait or Iran don't know (or care) enough about Obama to even be aware of it. But certainly the leaders, both secular and religious, of Islamic countries are aware of this. There are only a few possibilities that I can think of to explain it.
One is that it honestly never occurred to them. I find that difficult to believe, but it is possible. The second is that 
Barack is indeed lying and really is a Muslim and just pretending to be a Christian (and the powers in the Islamic world know this and have kept it quiet. In (particularly) radical Islam such lying is acceptable if it serves the greater Islamic good (in this case, having a Muslim as head of the Great Satan). I don't believe this. It just sounds to wing-nuttish. The third possibility is that I'm wrong. That is certainly possible. If you find an error in my facts or logic, please advise! The fourth possibility is that the entire Islamic world would so much rather deal with Barack than McCain that they are all just tacitly ignoring this "inconvenient" fact. If so, I have to believe that it will be raised after the election by, say Iran, in order to try to further the schism between the U.S. and the Islamic world. In other words, out friends aren't saying anything because they want to deal with Obama badly enough to "overlook" or intentionally "not notice", and our enemies are not saying anything in hopes that he is elected so that they can then use this against us.
It is mildly interesting that I attempted to post a comment [as a true and respectful seeker of knowledge of Islam]on Al Jazeera's online English language site asking that question and the moderators wouldn't print it. I followed it up with an email to them asking the same question, noting that I understood why they might not want to publish the question on the site. I haven't heard back from them either.
Those are the only reasonable possibilities I've been able to discover. Everything else sounds distinctly like something from the paranoid fringe. For instance, there is a dedicated segment of the population who I think of as paranoid conspiratorationalists who believe that this is ALL a setup by the puppet masters that really pull the strings in this world. Under that theory, Obama was selected to be elected by the 
international community of puppeteers and that this is just part of a larger program for bringing down the U.S. and globalizing the world. That theory has been around since at least the '60s when it was a somewhat popular left-wing rant. Indeed, the wingnuts from both the left and right seem to often see this issue similarly but from completely different perspectives. The extreme right-wing thought the attack on the World Trade Center was appropriate because it represented all that was wrong in the world: this conspiracy to globalize and internationalize everything. The extreme left-wing thought it was the right thing because it represented the conspiracy by the giant corporations to take over the world and turn us all into a corpocracy.
I don't believe those theories. I'm truly not wing-nutty enough. But I'm running out of other explanations :-)
I hope (!), especially since it appears that he is going to be elected, that I'm flat wrong. If so, please tell me where I glitched either facts or logic.
Otherwise, we have a problem of Biblical (and Koranic! :-) proportions.
Not Debatable
October 14, 2008
Not Debatable
The punditocracy is relatively unanimous [which is getting really boring and irritating, but they're all getting their pablum from the same sources] that McCain has only one last chance to "turn this thing around". By which they mean the final debate with Obama.
They are wrong. [Gee, what a surprise! :-)] But that may be how it ends up working out.
McCain's does have only one chance to "turn it around". But it isn't the debate; and the debate won't do it.
McCain is not the debater that Obama is. His brain works faster than his mouth and often what emerges is only a portion of the complete thought, making him appear out-of-touch. [Eg: I am sure the "that one" comment which caused such a stir in the last debate was part of a thought process that went something like "And which is the only candidate who voted for the tax increase? ... That one." as he points. But all that managed to come out from all that was "that one". He has no dementia, he is highly intelligent, sharp as a tack and actually a decent speaker. But he often doesn't come across well in a debate. A Presidential campaign is unbelievably exhausting and he's still full of fire and energy. He clearly is not too old or senile.
But he'll still lose because Barack is so smooth that John will sound dorky in comparison. Unfortunately, that is how the "winner" of the debate will largely be judged; not on the merits of their positions.
McCain's only chance, then, was (is) to point the public scrutiny spotlight at Obama ... there is SO much there that the public doesn't know! [Yes, I know. I need to get my series on Obama in print ... soon, I promise, soon! :-)] Even after so many months of campaigning, the public knows less about Obama than it does about Palin! And if they really looked at Obama's life and history ... they will conclude that this is a man who regularly makes incredibly bad judgments [at best].
The fact that McCain pulled back from trying to turn the spotlight worries me. It suggests that Obama "has" something on McCain and threatened to use it if McCain didn't stop. Perhaps it is something we know, but there hasn't been a lot of attention on (McCain has lots in his past that is less than flattering -it could be his wife's (past) prescription drug problem or any number of things.) Or it could be something we *don't* know yet which worries me more.
But it wasn't just polls that made McCain pull the attacks. Something behind the scenes happened. "When elephants play, the grass gets trampled." Us grasses probably will never know. But unless the spotlight is pointed on Obama's past "misjudgments" (which is totally legit since it is indicative of future judgments) ... then McCain has lost and this debate won't help him a bit.
I disagree with McCain on many things. He would not be my choice for President if I could just choose from the world at random :-) But that isn't the way the world works. It will either be McCain or Obama. And after he's sworn in and can be "himself", I have a great concern that this country is going to find itself sick and scared of what we did to ourselves in electing the most left-wing President in history.
Not Debatable
The punditocracy is relatively unanimous [which is getting really boring and irritating, but they're all getting their pablum from the same sources] that McCain has only one last chance to "turn this thing around". By which they mean the final debate with Obama.
They are wrong. [Gee, what a surprise! :-)] But that may be how it ends up working out.
McCain's does have only one chance to "turn it around". But it isn't the debate; and the debate won't do it.
McCain is not the debater that Obama is. His brain works faster than his mouth and often what emerges is only a portion of the complete thought, making him appear out-of-touch. [Eg: I am sure the "that one" comment which caused such a stir in the last debate was part of a thought process that went something like "And which is the only candidate who voted for the tax increase? ... That one." as he points. But all that managed to come out from all that was "that one". He has no dementia, he is highly intelligent, sharp as a tack and actually a decent speaker. But he often doesn't come across well in a debate. A Presidential campaign is unbelievably exhausting and he's still full of fire and energy. He clearly is not too old or senile.
But he'll still lose because Barack is so smooth that John will sound dorky in comparison. Unfortunately, that is how the "winner" of the debate will largely be judged; not on the merits of their positions.
McCain's only chance, then, was (is) to point the public scrutiny spotlight at Obama ... there is SO much there that the public doesn't know! [Yes, I know. I need to get my series on Obama in print ... soon, I promise, soon! :-)] Even after so many months of campaigning, the public knows less about Obama than it does about Palin! And if they really looked at Obama's life and history ... they will conclude that this is a man who regularly makes incredibly bad judgments [at best].
The fact that McCain pulled back from trying to turn the spotlight worries me. It suggests that Obama "has" something on McCain and threatened to use it if McCain didn't stop. Perhaps it is something we know, but there hasn't been a lot of attention on (McCain has lots in his past that is less than flattering -it could be his wife's (past) prescription drug problem or any number of things.) Or it could be something we *don't* know yet which worries me more.
But it wasn't just polls that made McCain pull the attacks. Something behind the scenes happened. "When elephants play, the grass gets trampled." Us grasses probably will never know. But unless the spotlight is pointed on Obama's past "misjudgments" (which is totally legit since it is indicative of future judgments) ... then McCain has lost and this debate won't help him a bit.
I disagree with McCain on many things. He would not be my choice for President if I could just choose from the world at random :-) But that isn't the way the world works. It will either be McCain or Obama. And after he's sworn in and can be "himself", I have a great concern that this country is going to find itself sick and scared of what we did to ourselves in electing the most left-wing President in history.
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