Ouch

A FOX News reporter blogs:

Palin responded to a question about the economic recovery plan, which was hashed out overnight. She answered, but she made it clear that she was then going to concentrate on the Blue Star Moms, “Bailout? Ok? Then I’m going to talk to these gals whose sons are also in the service. But, thankful that John McCain is able to have some of those provisions implemented in that Paulson proposal to have more sound oversight,” Palin said. “Taxpayers aren’t going to be assumed to be called upon to bail out so I’m glad that John McCain’s voice is heard and his leadership too.”

Directly after that answer, the press was escorted out for 15 minutes and then re-positioned to a staircase in the middle of Di Bruno Bros.—which was too far away to hear what the women were talking about or to ask the Vice-Presidential candidate any other questions.

I think it’s fair to say, when FOX is snarking on the Republican VP candidate, things are not going well for the Republicans. Hee hee.

When Palin was picked, the estimable David Silbey predicted that the responses to attacks on her would be “Noun, verb, woman.” And that was a pretty good prediction. But we didn’t realize we’d have to spot her the noun and verb.

(via Yggi)

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Where We Are Now

Richard Just writes about the first presidential debate:

A 90-plus minute debate about American foreign policy and not a single question about human rights. To be clear: Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, and grand strategy are the major international issues facing the next president and they were rightly the focus of the debate. But surely in a 90-minute conversation about the future of U.S. foreign policy, questions of human rights and genocide prevention should merit five or ten minutes. The subjects came up in passing once or twice, but it would have been nice to hear Jim Lehrer devote at least a short segment to them.

My reaction is that human rights questions now belong in the domestic policy debate.

Republicans Purchase $10 Million Worth of Beatings

Chris Bowers makes the case that that’s what happened during the Republican Convention, as the GOP bought a $10 million dollar insurance policy to indemnify St. Paul police against police brutality lawsuits, and the police proceeded to (among other things) beat and arrest journalists for Democracy Now! Charges against the journalist have been dropped. Bowers includes this video of one of the arrests:

which looks a lot like the end of the Blair Witch Project:

except more obviously brutal.

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Is there anyone else out there who’s kind of thinking, “If I ever encounter Homi Kharas of the Brookings Institution I’m going to have to punch him in the mouth?”

[Because he keeps talking at me about the intertwining of the food and fuel markets whenever I move my mouse over the top of about half the web pages I visit. I’m sure Homi Kharas is a lovely person, and the intertwining of the food and fuel markets is very important, but YOU CAN SHUT UP ABOUT IT NOW THANK YOU.]

Not Prepared for All Contingencies

You may have heard that John McCain just published an article under his name in Contingencies, the magazine of the American Association of Actuaries, in which he said:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation

among other stupid things.

What I want to know is: Why is McCain publishing an article in Contingencies at all right now? Steve Benen says, “As far as the McCain campaign was concerned, few would actually see the piece, and the likelihood of it having a serious impact on the campaign was negligible” (I assume this is based on inference rather than talking to anyone in the campaign). But then what would be the benefit of having the article published?

As far as I can tell the campaign created a situation where the article would be publicized only if it created some jaw-dropping stupidity that could be used against him. What were they thinking? You don’t see Obama sending stuff to law reviews right now.

How To Make Me Feel Sorry for a Convicted Alaska Legislator

Vic Kohring asked for a bribe to help him with a $17,000 credit-card debt resulting from a surgery he’d had three years before.

That wouldn’t happen if we had decent national health insurance, and it also might not happen if Alaska had a full-time legislature. As far as I can tell, when you only keep the legislature in session part-time you get what you pay for.

Mixed Message

I think it would’ve been smarter for McCain to put the “approve this message” sting at the beginning of this ad. As it is, the closing montage runs, bunch of grumpy-looking white guys, smiling black guy, grumpy-looking white guy. Who represents change again?

(Anyway who has a strong opinion of Chris Dodd and hasn’t already made their mind up about the Presidential election?)

Put Out More Flags

This story had to be linked with that title.

…and how low is it to steal a bunch of American flags and then lie about it to make it look as though your opponent is disrespecting the flag? Sheesh.