Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Democrats Rebuke Lieberman for Speech at Republithug Convention

Yep, they are saying that they are very, very, disappointed.

Sorry, but Lieberman jumped the shark when he refused to investigate failures during Katrina; in which he clearly showed that he was aggressively covering up for Bush and His Evil Minions&trade, and you did not do anything then.

And we are supposed to expect that you will do something now?

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, we won’t get fooled again.

What the Pundits Really Think About the Palinator

Well, it turns out that right wing pundits Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan got caught in an unguarded moment with an open microphone, and suddenly, when they though that no one was listening, they stopped pretending that John Seymour McCain III was a man of honor.

Chuck Todd is part of the conversation, but he is not guilty of journalistic malpractice here. Journalists have opinions, and their job is to keep them off the air.

Murphy and Noonan, however, are lauding McCain and his alleged “honor” when the red light is on, and calling him an incompetent doddering hack when the light is off.

That is journalistic malpractice.

Transcript:

Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we’ll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We’ll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she’s the right woman for the job Up next, one man who’s already convinced and he’ll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.

(cut away)

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And —

PN: It’s over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this —

MM: They’re all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives —

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

The Politico’s Roger Simon Gets One Right…..For Once

He apologizes for the behavior of the media on the matter of Sarah Palin.

Actually he doesn’t, he explains just what Republicans find unacceptable about media coverage, and his use of the famous Lily Tomlin quote, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up,” is a nice use of quote.

Go read.

I’m not sure if it means much, except that perhaps the “elite media” that McCain is now complaining about, the media that literally heckled Mitt Romney, and did everything it could to get McCain the nomination, is beginning to realize that McCain isn’t another pundit.

It’s only taken them about 26 years that McCain is all hat and no cattle.

Lynn Westmoreland Someone Who Bigots Can Point At And Say

See, I’m no bigot, Congressman Lynn Westmorland of Georgia, now there’s a bigot:

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Needless to say, if he had said this just two weeks earlier, he’d be the vice presidential nominee right now.

I guess we should be grateful that he didn’t use the term n*gg*r.

OK, This Offends My Fashion Sense

Vanity Fair, who gets such thing right, took a look at the outfits worn by Cindy McCain and Laura Bush at the convention, and generated price tag:

Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600–$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

I know that then I comment on women’s fashion, I am way out of my comfort zone, but honestly, I find nothing wrong with ODL’s beige dress, but what Cindy McCain is wearing is fugly, and you can be fugly for a lot less than 300 grand.

If someone could help me out though….There is clearly a MasterCard “Priceless” ad in this somewhere.

Your Government at Work

It appears that the US U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made a tiny error on the new Migratory Bird Conservation and Hunting Stamp (Duck Stamp), which is must be carried for all duck and waterfowl hunters. It costs $15.00, and proceeds go to acquiring and protecting wetlands for said waterfowl.

That would be fine, except for the fact that the most recent version of the self adhesive version of the stamp contains a serious misprint

The correct number, 1-800-STAMP24 (1-800-782-6724), is for people wishing to order additional duck stamps. Levin said two digits of the phone number are transposed on the card that holds the self-adhesive version of the stamp. That incorrect number, 1-800-872-6724, translates to 1-800-TRAMP24. Callers to ‘Intimate Connections’ [a phone sex service] are warned that they must be 18 years or older before proceeding.

This gives the phrase F@#$ a duck a whole new meaning.

Just a Moment, While I Perform a Quick Palinoscopy

We have the former head of the Alaska State Police calling Sarah Palin a liar over “troopergate”.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out, as a former Alaska Attorney General has categorized her legal defense strategy on the matter, that only the state Personnel Board (whose members she has appointed) has exclusive authority to investigate the matter as bogus.

We also have Palin’s own handwriting showing that she was lying over her opposition to earmarks, where we have margin notes in her own handwriting saying that, “We Did Well!!!,” in securing earmarks, and that John Sidney McCain III criticized the very earmarks that she had hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington, DC to get.

Meanwhile, her story of bravely persevering in her speech in the face of the dangers of a broken teleprompter is also a lie. Jonathan Martin of the right-winger funded Politico notes that he was standing where he could read the teleprompter, and it was working as intended, and he confirmed this with a convention organizer.

Of course, this goes along with the Anchorage Daily News’ analysis of her speech, where she is described as stretching the truth.

It seems like we have Alaska’s own Dick Cheney here, only she appears to be a better shot then “Deadeye Dick”.

Meanwhile focus groups of Hillary supporters in Michigan and Nevada were significantly more tepid on her speech than the crowd of mouth breathing Neanderthals* in the convention center, with a number of fairly brutal complaints about her.

Bummer of a birth mark, Hal.

*No offense intended to Neanderthals, or those Geico guys.

Economics Update

Things have seemed pretty hectic today.

Normally I don’t mention this, I think that it is just noise, but all three major stock indices are down 3%+, so while it’s not yet raining Katz and Lehmans, it’s pretty ugly.

Note that this is my economic update post, so I’m not going to claim that a certain VP pick’s speech caused anything, and instead point at jobless claims spiking unexpectedly by 15,000, though truth be told, it should not cause that sort of reaction: the weekly data is simply too noisy for any rational investor to act upon the basis of those numbers.

But this isn’t “rational investors” this be Wall Street, so it could have been the Lehman CEO’s choice of shoes today.

The rest of the financial news is no where near as definitive, and even Federal Reserve officials are publicly disagreeing on whether the concern is recession or inflation.

Meanwhile, even though the Bank of England and the ECB kept rates steady, the cost of money in Europe went up, because the ECB has significantly tightened requirements to lend to banks.

In any case, the lack of rate hikes strengthened the dollar.

Mortgage rates are down this week, which would ordinarily be good news, but I think that “the markets” (and I) see this as a sign of a weakening economy, just as “the markets” (and I) see declining oil prices and declining gas prices as signs of a weakening economy.

Even so, the numbers for the service sector were good, so the blood on the street today is a bit odd.

Of course, it sucks to be a bank right now, with Community National Bank of Sarasota looking to be on the FDIC’s Friday afternoon press releases, and Lehman floating the idea of creating a “bad bank” to shift bad assets to.

Someone needs to explain the concept to me, because it seems to suffer from the, “We’ve run out of gullible idiots,” problem.

In any case, it appears that insurance giant AIG is considering something similar.

I’m not sure how piling crap in a separate pile really helps anything.

NATO Conducts Raid Inside Pakistan

Way to piss off an essential ally against terrorism in the region, by sending in a helicopter based infantry assault, and killing some number of civilians.

I’m not sure if this is the start of a new policy, a statement of displeasure regarding Pakistan’s Ramadan cease fire, or some attempt to gin up something for the us elections, but in either case, the consequences, in terms of destabilizing a nuclear armed Pakistan, are very concerning.

Note that this was not the NATO force that did this, as, “American troops in Afghanistan operate under a NATO chain of command, the Special Operations forces who carried out this attack answer only to American commanders.”

In any case, this does not bode well for US-Pakistani relations.

Palin Nomination: Bad for the Jews

Actually, the title is a joke, but it does reflect a sort of American Jewish political idiom that Palin will have to deal with.

The problem is that her church hosted a talk from David Brickner, and unlike Obama and Jeremiah Wright, Palin was in the audience listening happily (see also here)

David Brickner is the controversial founder of Jews for Jesus, a front group for evangelicals targeting Jews for proselytization. Additionally, while speaking before her church, and Palin, he, “told the congregation that terrorist attacks in Israel are God’s ‘judgment of unbelief’ for Jews who reject Christianity.”

Let me be clear, there are some politically conservative Jews who might find a way to alibi for Brickner’s quote, but never for a church inviting the founder of Jews for Jesus.

In American Jewish life, inviting him to your church crosses a line that cannot be uncrossed.

This trumps any concerns about Obama’s middle name for the bulk of American Jews.

Thoughts on Sarah Palin’s Speech

I couldn’t listen to all of it, her voice really grates on me.

I would note that to the to the degree that I could listen to her, it’s clear that she is a big time “movement conservative”, and that her career has been the three Gsm Gods, Guns, and Gays (and abortion)….And not much else.

Certainly, this is getting the Christo-Fascist/Talibaptist* wing of the Republican party energized, but I’m not sure how it will play in Peoria.

*Which term do you think is better? I find that “Talibaptist” flows better, but that it implies that it’s only Baptists, while “Christo-Fascist” is a nice turn around of the admittedly absurd “Islamo-Fascist”.