Richard Grenell’s Frightening Appointment as DNI

Trump's new toady who will subvert
America's intelligence agencies.

Many homocons - gays who loyally support the GOP despite its virulent anti-gay agenda and harm that it does to the larger LBGT community - are likely applauding the appointment of Richard Grenell who is gay and a homocon if there ever was one  to the position of acting Director of National Intelligence.  Never mind that Grenell has zero experience in the field of intelligence.  His appointment bf Trump stems from two things: his ultra-right wing ideology, and his willingness to do whatever Trump tells him to do.  In some old movies gays were depicted as scary and dangerous characters or those willing to betray their country.  Grenell frighteningly fits that mold and will likely work to turn America's intelligence agencies into Trump's personal tools to further enrich himself while blocking any investigations into Trump's betrayal of the national interest.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this very disturbing appointment while the Washington Post slams Grenell's appointment here.  Here are highlights from the NYM article: 

After 9/11, reformers created the position of director of National Intelligence to improve coordination between America’s sprawling intelligence bureaucracies, and prevent the kinds of oversights that allowed U.S. spies to miss an imminent terror attack.

It’s fair to say they weren’t thinking that the person who held the job should also be coordinating the embassy in Berlin and American efforts to help keep the peace between Serbia and Kosovo — while simultaneously aiding a sitting president’s efforts to squeeze foreign governments to investigate his rivals. But, like the product of some late-night infomercial, Ambassador Richard Grenell now seems poised to do all that and more for the Trump White House.

Grenell’s tenure as ambassador to Germany has been rocky, at least from Berlin’s perspective. He has palled around with far-right groups, spoken openly of a desire to change Angela Merkel’s government, and made statements about U.S. views that sounded like direct orders to sensitive German ears. Last spring, leaders of two German political parties called him a “brat” and a “failure” and urged his ouster. Even in the annals of awkward things done by Trump appointees overseas, this was unprecedented. But if anything, those controversies have only helped Grenell’s reputation in the eyes of President Trump.

He popped up in all kinds of places you wouldn’t expect for someone in his position. . . . . He also made appearances in the scheming of Rudy Giuliani and his allies, according to now-indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas. Parnas told the Daily Beast that he was told to ask Grenell for advance notice if the Department of Justice were to move to extradite an indicted Ukrainian oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, from whom Giuliani hoped to get compromising information. Parnas also claims Grenell said he would comply. It would, to put it mildly, not be normal or legal for an ambassador to tip off a private citizen to a law-enforcement move. It would also be odd, because Firtash was not in Germany, and so one wouldn’t have expected the U.S. ambassador there to know anything about criminal procedures involving him.

Media coverage so far has focused on the concerns of intelligence professionals, allied countries, and Democrats that Grenell lacks intelligence qualifications. But that line of critique misses the point. One might argue that Grenell has been serving, unrecognized, as Trump’s high commissioner to Europe, and this Cabinet-level appointment gives him more authority in that role. But it also places an absolute loyalist in a position to, from Trump’s perspective, manage the intelligence community so that it cannot do him harm.

[Trump] The president has made it clear, again and again, that he seeks to remake the national security infrastructure so that it does his bidding and promotes his ends. He does not recognize the idea — sacred to national security professionals — of a higher national interest to which even a president must subordinate her or himself.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Joseph Maguire, a previous favorite for the job, was dropped by Trump because of his perceived personal disloyalty. It has been reported that Grenell will hold the job only in an acting role because he is too controversial to be confirmed.

But in fact, the Senate has already given its advice and consent to this future for our security bureaucracy, by voting to acquit Trump of charges stemming from his misuse of U.S. power in Ukraine.

Apparently the many Republican senators who created the director of National Intelligence position in order to have a senior, impartial leader enabling U.S. intelligence agencies to speak with one, non-politicized voice, also think it is fine to have a president who openly and repeatedly turns the tools of intelligence, law enforcement, and national security to his personal ends.

Trump’s Administration and A Glaring Lack of Expertise

There are many things to be fearful about a Trump presidency (I feel the urge to  be ill just typing the phrase), especially if one is LGBT and has followed the appointment of leading anti-gay extremists to Trump's transition tea.  But one thing that ought to terrify most Americans and which much of the lame main stream media is ignoring as they bloviate about the "smooth transition of power" is the frightening lack of experience and/or lunacy of  likely Trump appointees, particularly in the realm of foreign policy (although in other ways the thought of Ben Carson as Secretary of Education is equally terrifying).  

Driving home I heard part of a discussion on Steele & Ungar on satellite radio with Noah Rothman, editor of Commentary Magazine, that sent a cold chill down my spine.  Trump has been reportedly been maintaining an "enemies list' that notes the name of everyone in the GOP who did not support him.  The list includes the vast majority of GOP foreign policy experts.  The frightening result? Trump appointees will be lacking in experience and expertise and/or will be nut cases picked from groups to which Trump made campaign promises. Here are excerpts from Rothman's piece that I located:

“Everybody who has signed a never-Trump letter or indicated an anti-Trump attitude is not going to get a job. And that’s most of the Republican foreign policy, national security, intelligence, homeland security, and Department of Justice experience.”

This was the assessment of Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior official in George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security. He speculated that President-elect Donald Trump would not lack for top-tier GOP talent to fill high-profile Cabinet slots, but that thousands of positions at lower levels of the administration within the nation’s national security apparatus would be harder to staff.  Without the GOP expert class, the lower ranks of the Trump administration’s will be staffed with novices and political sycophants.

Trump ran explicitly on a message of resentment toward the expert class, whose members, he contended, were responsible for the increasingly dangerous international security environment. They returned the favor: Nearly 200 of Republican foreign policy and national security experts came out publicly against Trump as a candidate who could not be trusted to lead this nation’s armed forces.

Their denunciations of Donald Trump as fundamentally ill-suited to serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces were thorough and compelling. But on Tuesday, they lost the argument. Now that the public has decided, the question is: Can Trump do without them? Doubtless, he and his people think they can. But there are literally thousands of jobs to fill here. Can the administration’s foreign and defense policy be managed without their institutional knowledge and expertise?

Trump has some dubious views when it comes to the conduct of American national affairs abroad. Foremost among them is his conspicuous deference to the geopolitical objectives of Russian President Vladimir Putin—objectives that often conflict with those of the United States. Trump has explicitly flirted with the notion of refusing to come to the aid of America’s NATO allies in the Baltic if they were attacked by Russia (a real and terrifying prospect). Trump has also indicated that he could outsource the job of fighting ISIS in Syria to Moscow, despite the clear evidence that Russia’s chief interest is in preserving the integrity of the Assad regime and the threats it faces from CIA-backed assets. 

Even if he is resistant to their advice, it would be better for him, the country, and the world, if Trump surrounded himself with advisers independent enough to argue that Vladimir Putin’s interests are antithetical to those of the nation he will soon swear to defend.

A sense of morality may prevent these and other skilled professionals in the public policy sector from seeking positions in the next administration. Certainly, Trump and his people are beginning their staffing plans by drawing up a do-not-hire list on which most of these names will appear. 

Trump and the movement he led is one that rejects expertise, as do almost all revolutionary/reactionary movements. But every revolutionary society that does away with its expert class soon finds that the mechanisms they had taken for granted soon cease to function.

There is no such thing as a competent administration without expertise, and the conduct of American military affairs is one area in which the president has almost sole discretion. 

Positions staffed by sycophants and/or those wit no experience or expertise.  Combined this with Russia confirmation that Trump's campaign was communication with Putin's regime throughout the campaign cycle and, to me at least, it is very disturbing.  The irony is, of course, that Trump's supporters back a campaign to "make America great again," but it may well be Russia and China, both of which remember their years of glory, who end up being the beneficiaries of Trump's policies.  Assuming he doesn't quickly get us into a nuclear war.

Robert Gates: Trump is "Beyond Repair"

Yet another prominent Republican, while not endorsing Hillary Clinton, has declared Donald Trump utterly unfit for the office of the presidency and in response to those in the GOP who are trying to tell themselves that Trump can be controlled or moderated, described Trump as "beyond repair."  This time the Republican is former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  His take down of Trump is scathing even as it has cautionary words for Hillary Clinton.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at this latest condemnation of Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates ripped both presidential candidates in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Friday, but particularly blasted Donald Trump, calling him “beyond repair.”

Gates, who served under former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, knocked Trump for everything from his attitude to his thoughts on foreign policy. He characterized him as someone who is “willfully ignorant about the rest of the world, about our military and its capabilities, and about government itself.”

“He has no clue about the difference between negotiating a business deal and negotiating with sovereign nations,” Gates wrote. “A thin-skinned, temperamental, shoot-from-the-hip and lip, uninformed commander-in-chief is too great a risk for America.”

Gates urges Clinton to give voters more reason to trust her and to focus on her national security policies in speeches.

'"Mrs. Clinton has time before the election to address forthrightly her trustworthiness, to reassure people about her judgment, to demonstrate her willingness to stake out one or more positions on national security at odds with her party’s conventional wisdom, and to speak beyond generalities about how she would deal with China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, the Middle East — and international trade. Whether and how she addresses these issues will, I believe, affect how many people vote — including me,” Gates wrote.

For Trump, Gates had this to say: “He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief.”

While Clinton has not publicly addressed Gates’ op-ed, Trump took to his favorite medium, Twitter to blast Gates, saying that he has never met him, but that he does not like his work.

Indeed, Trump doesn't "like the work" of anyone who doesn't fawningly kiss his extremely ample ass.

The New Yorker Savages Michele Bachmann

I know that I've already written about Michele Bachmann earlier, but The New Yorker has a must read profile on Bachmann. While the article is entitled "A Leap of Faith" it might just as well be captioned "The Face of Insanity." Conservative pundit David Frum found it impossible to not comment on The New Yorker article in a piece on his blog bearing the title "Inside Bachmann's Brain." Here are some highlights from Frum's piece:

"Here’s a route into her head; remember Bachmann’s statement about the Founders tirelessly working to end slavery? The statement was widely ridiculed as an expression of pure ignorance. Lizza takes the statement instead as a route into Bachmann’s own personal alternative knowledge system:

Bachmann’s comment about slavery was not a gaffe. It is, as she would say, a world view. In “Christianity and the Constitution,” the book she worked on with [John] Eidsmoe, her law school mentor, he argues that John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams “expressed their abhorrence for the institution” and explains that “many Christians opposed slavery even though they owned slaves.” They didn’t free their slaves, he writes, because of their benevolence. “It might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible.”

You don’t want to invest a lot of time nit-picking the historical inaccuracies here. (For example, John Adams was a Unitarian who rejected the divinity of Christ, Alexander Hamilton avoided church, and while all three genuinely abhorred slavery, only Jay can be said to have worked to end it.) The anecdote is valuable as an illustration of the way in which Bachmann processes information. Lizza found a 2005 interview in which Bachmann was asked about books she liked. She praised two: Ann Coulter’s Treason and Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. Lizza explains the latter:

[Pearcey] teaches readers how to implement Schaeffer’s idea that a Biblical world view should suffuse every aspect of one’s life. She tells her readers to be extremely cautious with ideas from non-Christians. There may “be occasions when Christians are mistaken on some point while nonbelievers get it right,” she writes in “Total Truth.” “Nevertheless, the overall systems of thought constructed by nonbelievers will be false—for if the system is not built on Biblical truth, then it will be built on some other ultimate principle. Even individual truths will be seen through the distorting lens of a false world view.

As Lizza points out, Bachmann regards even the most mundane political facts through the prism of a worldview that would probably seem extremely strange to most Americans. One of her first great political causes was to attack federal vocational education programs on the grounds that they promoted:

a “new restructuring of American society,” beginning with “workforce boards” that would tell every student the specific career options he or she could pursue, turning children into “human resources for a centrally planned economy.”

This kind of talk would sound paranoid to most of us. It emerges from a religious philosophy that rejects the federal government as an alien instrument of destruction, ripping apart a Christian society. Bachmann’s religiously grounded rejection of the American state finds a hearing with many more conventional conservatives radicalized by today’s hard economic times.

As for The New Yorker article itself, here are some other interesting highlights that underscore the fact that Michele Bachmann is utterly unfit for the presidency - or any other elected office for that matter:

Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared. Bachmann said in 2004 that being gay is “personal enslavement,” and that, if same-sex marriage were legalized, “little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and that perhaps they should try it.” Speaking about gay-rights activists, that same year, she said, “It is our children that is the prize for this community.” She believes that evolution is a theory that has “never been proven,” and that intelligent design should be taught in schools.

In the fall of 1975, Bachmann enrolled at Winona State University, a small school in southeastern Minnesota, where she became more devout and tried to lead her dormmates to Christianity. There she met Marcus, whom, she has said, God called her to marry. She had a vision while praying “of me marrying this man in the valley where his parents have a farm in western Wisconsin.” According to Michele, Marcus was simultaneously having a vision about marrying her.

[I]n January, 1977. Later that year, they experienced a second life-altering event: they watched a series of films by the evangelist and theologian Francis Schaeffer called “How Should We Then Live?” . . . . In the films, Schaeffer—who has a white goatee and is dressed in a shearling coat and mountain climber’s knickers—condemns the influence of the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Darwin, secular humanism, and postmodernism. He repeatedly reminds viewers of the “inerrancy” of the Bible and the necessity of a Biblical world view.

Francis Schaeffer instructed his followers and students at L’Abri that the Bible was not just a book but “the total truth.” He was a major contributor to the school of thought now known as Dominionism, . . . . Sara Diamond, who has written several books about evangelical movements in America, has succinctly defined the philosophy that resulted from Schaeffer’s interpretation: “Christians, and Christians alone, are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.”

Bachmann enrolled at the new O. W. Coburn School of Law, at Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. . . . . Among the professors were Herbert W. Titus, a Vice-Presidential candidate of the far-right U.S. Taxpayers Party (now called the Constitution Party), and John Whitehead, who started the Rutherford Institute, a conservative legal-advocacy group. The law review published essays by Schaeffer and Rousas John Rushdoony, a prominent Dominionist who has called for a pure Christian theocracy in which Old Testament law—execution for adulterers and homosexuals, for example—would be instituted. In a 1982 essay in the law review, Rushdoony condemned the secularization of public schools and declared, “With the coming collapse of humanistic statism, the Christian must prepare to take over, he must prepare for victory.”

At Oral Roberts, Bachmann worked for a professor named John Eidsmoe . . . . . Bachmann worked as Eidsmoe’s research assistant on his book “Christianity and the Constitution,” published in 1987. . . . . Eidsmoe has stirred controversy. In 2005, he spoke at the national convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a defiantly pro-white, and anti-black, organization. (Eidsmoe says that he deeply despises racism, but that he will speak “to anyone.”) In Alabama last year, he addressed an event commemorating Secession Day and told an interviewer that it was the state’s “constitutional right to secede,” and that “Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than did Abraham Lincoln and Daniel Webster.” Bachmann has not, however, distanced herself, and she has long described her work for Eidsmoe as an important part of her résumé.

Around this time [the late 1990's], Bachmann became interested in the writings of David A. Noebel, the founder and director of Summit Ministries, an educational organization founded to reverse the harmful effects of what it calls “our current post-Christian culture.” He was a longtime John Birch Society member, whose pamphlets include “The Homosexual Revolution: End Time Abomination,” and “Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles,” in which Noebel argued that the band was being used by Communists to infiltrate the minds of young Americans. Bachmann once gave a speech touting her relationship with Noebel’s organization. “I went on to serve on the board of directors with Summit Ministries,” she said, adding that Summit’s message is “wonderful and worthwhile.”

While looking over Bachmann’s State Senate campaign Web site, I stumbled upon a list of book recommendations. The third book on the list, which appeared just before the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s Farewell Address, is a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins.

Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North. This revisionist take on the Civil War, known as the “theological war” thesis, had little resonance outside a small group of Southern historians until the mid-twentieth century, when Rushdoony and others began to popularize it in evangelical circles. In the book, Wilkins condemns “the radical abolitionists of New England” and writes that “most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of goods for a comfortable, though—by modern standards—spare existence.”

There's much more in The New Yorker article. All of it paints one overall picture: Michele Bachmann is religious extremist nutcase who has disconcerting ties to racists as well as Christian Dominionist. Anyone who cares about the separation of church and state and equality for all races ought to be terrified that someone as extreme - and in my view mentally deranged - as Bachmann is in the top of the polls in Iowa at the moment.

Palin Driving Voters to Obama

UPDATED: Former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria this week he intends to vote for Democrat Barack Obama on Tuesday. The condemnation of Palin for VP by rational Republicans just just keeps on coming. Meanwhile, the Kool-Aid drinkers think she's the future of the GOP.
*

John McCain's "maverick" pick of "I can see Russia from my window" Caribou Barbie for his VP seems to be one of the large factors as to why voters are fleeing the GOP presidential ticket. The chorus of conservatives who are condemning her as not ready for prime time continues to grow. Now Lawrence Eagleburger has joined the list of those finding Palin totally inadequate to the job. Here are some highlights from the Huffington Post:

*

Lawrence Eagleberger, who served as Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush and whose endorsement is often trumpeted by McCain, said on Thursday that the Alaska governor is not only unprepared to take over the job on a moment's notice but, even after some time in office, would only amount to an "adequate" commander in chief.

*
"And I devoutly hope that [she] would never be tested," he added for good measure -- referring both to Palin's policy dexterity and the idea of McCain not making it through his time in office. . . . Asked by the host whether Palin could step in during a time of crisis, Eagleburger reverted to sarcasm before leveling the harsh blow. "It is a very good question," he said, pausing a few seconds, then adding with a chuckle: "I'm being facetious here. Look, of course not."

*

As the New York Times is reporting, the general public other than the Kool-Aid drinker set seems to concur with Eagleberger's assessment. Palin may be the darling of the delusional Christianists but to those in touch with the real world, she's poison. Here are highlights from the Times story:

*

A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

*

And in a possible indication that the choice of Ms. Palin has hurt Mr. McCain’s image, voters said they had much more confidence in Mr. Obama to pick qualified people for his administration than they did in Mr. McCain.

*

Over all, views of Ms. Palin were apparently shaped more by ideology and party than by gender. Ms. Palin was viewed as unprepared for the job by about 6 in 10 men and women alike. But 8 in 10 Democrats viewed her as unprepared, as well as more than 6 in 10 independents and 3 in 10 Republicans.

New York Times Slams Palin Debate Performance

I watched the vice presidential debate this evening with a group of friends and while Sarah Palin did not come across as the complete cretin that she is in reality, I believe Joe Biden clearly won the debate. Palin frequently never even answered the question posed to her and repeatedly slipped into GOP talking points and double speak when she had no earthly understanding of the question and/or how to answer it. She clearly confirmed that the GOP revels in ignorance. After all, the Christianist base of the GOP rejects science, rejects evolution, and rejects competent medical and mental health expert opinion. Why should Palin be any different? The one interesting point is that Palin said she agreed with Biden on civil legal rights for gay couples. James Dobson, et al must be having a veritable stroke. I suspect the Chritianists will rip Palin a new one for that comment. Here are some highlights from the New York Times:

*

We cannot recall when there were lower expectations for a candidate than the ones that preceded Sarah Palin’s appearance in Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate with Joseph Biden. After a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives about her fitness to serve as vice president, Ms. Palin had to do little more than say one or two sensible things and avoid an election-defining gaffe.

*

By that standard, but only by that standard, the governor of Alaska did well. But Ms. Palin never really got beyond her talking points in 90 minutes, mostly repeating clichés and tired attack lines and energetically refusing to answer far too many questions.

*

When it came to domestic issues, Ms. Palin mainly relied on enthusiasm and humor, talking about hockey moms, soccer moms and Joe Sixpack almost as often as she used the word “maverick” to describe Mr. McCain or herself. But she offered virtually no detail — beyond the Republican mantra of tax cuts — for how she and Mr. McCain would address the financial crisis or help Americans avoid foreclosure or what programs they would cut because of the country’s disastrous fiscal problems.

*

Ms. Palin’s primary tactic was simply to repeat the same thing over and over: John McCain is a maverick. So is she. To stay on that course, she had to indulge in some wildly circular logic: America does not want another Washington insider. They want Mr. McCain (who has been in Congress for nearly 26 years). Ms. Palin condemned Wall Street greed and said she and Mr. McCain would “demand” strict oversight. In virtually the next breath, she said government should “get out of the way” of American business.

*

In the end, the debate did not change the essential truth of Ms. Palin’s candidacy: Mr. McCain made a wildly irresponsible choice that shattered the image he created for himself as the honest, seasoned, experienced man of principle and judgment. It was either an act of incredible cynicism or appallingly bad judgment.

*

The woman is so out of her league that it is terribly frightening. What the Hell was John McCain thinking when he selected this mental midget??

Skepticism of Palin Growing

Meanwhile, polling is showing that people are beginning to wake up to just what an irresponsible choice Sarah Palin was for the GOP vice presidential slot. Let's be candid: from the interviews I have watched, Sarah makes the typical soccer mom look like a NASA physicist. It's down right painful to watch her babble like a cretin on issues about which even average individuals could discuss more coherently. If the GOP thinks Palin is representative of women (other than Christianist women), then American women should be outraged by the insult. I truly hope that McCain/Palin go down to defeat and that perhaps the GOP will wake up to the fact that appeasing the nutcase Party base translates into alienating all other voters. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post:

*

With the vice presidential candidates set to square off today in their only scheduled debate, public assessments of Sarah Palin's readiness have plummeted, and she may now be a drag on the Republican ticket among key voter groups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

*

Though she initially transformed the race with her energizing presence and a fiery convention speech, Palin is now a much less positive force: Six in 10 voters see her as lacking the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her.

*

Nearly a third of adults in a new poll from the Pew Research Center said they paid a lot of attention to Palin's interviews with CBS News's Katie Couric, a series that prompted grumbling among some conservative commentators about Palin's competency to be the GOP's vice presidential standard-bearer. The Pew poll showed views of Palin slipping over the past few days alone.

*

About half of all voters said they were uncomfortable with the idea of McCain taking office at age 72, and 85 percent of those voters said Palin does not have the requisite experience to be president. The 60 percent who now see Palin as insufficiently experienced to step into the presidency is steeply higher than in a Post-ABC poll after her nomination early last month. Democrats and Republicans alike are now more apt to doubt her qualifications, but the biggest shift has come among independents.

*
In early September, independents offered a divided verdict on Palin's experience; now they take the negative view by about 2 to 1. Nearly two-thirds of both independent men and women in the new poll said Palin has insufficient experience to run the White House. . . .

Palin now repels more independents than she attracts to McCain. The share of independent women less apt to support McCain because of the Palin pick has more than doubled to 34 percent, while the percentage more inclined to support him is down eight points.

*

Despite Palin's slip in public assessments, the boost she has provided among some core segments of the GOP base has not faded. Enthusiasm for McCain's candidacy among Republicans, conservatives and white evangelical Protestants climbed sharply after the party's convention in St. Paul, Minn., where Palin made her debut, and it has held relatively steady since.

Palin Is Ready? Oh Please, Get Real.

UPDATED 9/29/08: This from the Washigton Post:

*

While some journalists say privately they are censoring their comments about Palin to avoid looking like they're piling on, pundits on the right are jumping ship. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough says Palin "just seems out of her league." National Review Editor Rich Lowry called her performance "dreadful." Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher described the interview as a "train wreck." Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker urged Palin to quit the race, saying: "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."

*

Several people have disagreed with Katleen Parker's call for Sarah Palin to leave the GOP ticket and tried to depict Palin as a libertarian. This analysis is flawed because it ignores the facts that (1) Libertarians do not support intermixing religion and politics (the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas in support of striking down the sodomy statutes, and (2) believe in getting government out of the lives of citizens. McCain/Palin in effect subscribe to four (4) more years of the Chimperator's regime and Palin is a far right religious zealot from what information is available about her past church affiliations and statements. Now, Fareed Zakaria, hardly an ultra liberal is likewise calling for Palin to go away. Perhaps the scariest thing is that Palin doesn't seem to know she's out of her league in true dogmatic Christianist fashion. Here are highlights from Newsweek:

*

Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS's Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn't help.

*

But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb. Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start.

*

In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.

Sarah Palin - The Real Face of Christianists?

It is increasingly obvious that Sarah Palin, a darling among the lunatic fringe who now control the Republican Party, is way, way out of her league and that John McCain, if he actually selected her himself, is as well. Unfortunately, Palin appears all too typical of the Christianists who are dogmatic, act as if they were geniuses, utterly out of touch with real world reality, and unable to address serious issues outside of right wing slogans. The reviews of her appearance with Katie Couric appear almost universally damning and her simpleton like approach to important issues is truly frightening. Admittedly, with its small population, running for statewide office in Alaska is akin to running a local election campaign in many areas of the country. But one still has to ask how the Hell did see ever get elected? Here are highlights from Glenn Greenwald's take at Salon:

*

Three weeks ago -- before Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson was announced -- I mocked the idea that the McCain campaign was afraid to have Palin face our mighty press corps, and I defended Palin. . . . I was so wrong about that -- the parts about Palin, that is, not the press (though, in fairness, Gibson was far more adversarial than I expected and Katie Couric was even better). Just watch clips from her interview last night with Katie Couric. I'll be honest: watching this, I actually felt sorry for Sarah Palin.

*

But Sarah Palin's performance in the tiny vignettes of unscripted dialogue in which we've been allowed to see her has been nothing short of frightening -- really, as I said, pity-inducing. And I say that as someone who has thought from the start that the criticisms of her abilities -- as opposed to her ideology -- were much too extreme. One of two things is absolutely clear at this point: she is either (a) completely ignorant about the most basic political issues -- a vacant, ill-informed, incurious know-nothing, or (b) aggressively concealing her actual beliefs about these matters because she's petrified of deviating from the simple-minded campaign talking points she's been fed and/or because her actual beliefs are so politically unpalatable, even when taking into account the right-wing extremism that is permitted, even rewarded, in our mainstream. I'm not really sure which is worse, but it doesn't really matter, because with 40 days left before the election, both options are heinous.

*

What seems most likely is that she's perfectly conversant in the exceedingly narrow and parochial range of issues she's concerned herself with as Wasilla Mayor and Alaska Governor -- oil drilling on the North Slope, specific local budget items, corruption issues inside the Alaskan State GOP, and evangelical and religious matters. She really doesn't seem to have any thoughts about anything outside of that -- or if she does, she is suppressing them -- and is thus capable of spouting little more than empty right-wing slogans.

*

What's really sobering is that the McCain campaign continues to block Palin from answering questions even though it's now resulting in reams and reams of bad press for the McCain-Palin ticket. That suggests McCain advisers know that letting her answer even the most elementary questions in an uncontrolled environment is so dangerous that it's worth weathering the current media drubbing they're taking in order to prevent it from happening at all costs.

*

[C]ombined with McCain's age -- and what really do appear to be legitimate and growing questions about his health (those are mere suspicions, but appropriate ones that should be answered by McCain) -- makes Sarah Palin's candidacy a very real hazard, something that, by the day, I'm convinced is as important as any other issue in the campaign.

The Palin Candidacy Farce

UPDATED: in addition to the New York Times story discussed below which demonstrates the idiocy of McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Andrew Sullivan has a column uin the Times of London that rips both McCain and the GOP. I cannot say it any better than Andrew has enunciated as to why Palin's selection is an abomination. Here are highlights from Andrew's column:

*

Formerly sane people have written of the McCain campaign’s selection of this running mate as if it represents a new face for Republicanism, . . . I’m afraid I cannot join in. In fact I cannot say anything about this candidacy that takes it in any way seriously. It is a farce. It is absurd. It is an insult to all intelligent people. It is a sign of a candidate who has lost his mind. There is no way to take the nomination of Palin to be vice-president of the world’s sole superpower - except to treat it as a massive, unforgivable, inexplicable decision by someone who has either gone insane or is managerially unfit to be president of the United States. When, at some point, the hysteria dies down, even her supporters will realise that, by this decision, McCain has rendered himself unfit to run a branch of Starbucks, let alone the White House.

*

She is the biggest joke to be put on a ticket in national politics. The most accurate thing said about her in the past two weeks was said on the day she was picked. It was said by Alaska’s Republican state senate president, Lyda Green: “She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice-president or president? Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?”

*

Today's New York Times has a brutal story on Sarah Palin's tenure as Governor of Alaska. It makes it clear that Palin - like all too many Christianists I have encountered in the political realm - has been mean spirited and vindictive once in office and not one to actually practice the true Gospel message. Oh yes, there's a lot of lip service about being pro-life, supporting family values, and opposing the "gay agenda," but when and where it counts, the behavior is amateurish, craven and nasty. Palin comes across as even more peevish than Emperor Cheney and as totally unconcerned about the competence of appointees to an extent that she makes the Chimperator look competent. Secrecy and furthering personal vendettas through political power are NOT what one wants in a vice president and potential president of the United States. All in all, one has to wonder what the Hell was John McCain thinking in selecting Palin? If McCain/Palin promise to bring change, it will be a change of from bad to worse. Here are some story highlights:
*

WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal. So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

*

[A}n examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image. Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

*

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

*

[I]nterviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political. “The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”

*

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral. “People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

*

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

*

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

*

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show. During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins. . . . Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show. *

*
The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath. . . . As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.

*

P.S. Maureen Dowd describes Palin as follows:
*
Like W., Sarah has the power of positive unthinking. But now we may want to think about where ignorance and pride and no self-doubt has gotten us. Being quick on the trigger might be good in moose hunting, but in dealing with Putin, a little knowledge might come in handy.

Pulling the Curtain on Sarah Palin

As news stories in the Washington Post and elsewhere are running about the manner in which Alaska Governor Sarah Palin charged the state for the better part of a year of nights she stayed in her own home (can I get that deal?), E.J. Dionne has a great column that looks at not only Palin's unfitness for the VP slot, but also the idiocy of John McCain selecting her in the first place. First, here are highlights from the WP on the billing issue:

*

ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

*

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

*

The governor's daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel, and many of the trips were between their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show.

*

Whether or not technically legal, the charges surely do not set a good example for cutting government costs and waste. If Palin's family did not want to move to Juneau - Virginia governors and their families move to Richmond - it would seem that the costs of voluntarily "commuting" and staying in one's own home should not be a cost to taxpayers even if Alaska is awash in oil money. As for Dionne's column, here are some highlights:

*

John McCain's campaign acknowledged this weekend that Sarah Palin is unprepared to be vice president or president of the United States. Of course, McCain's people said no such thing. But their actions told you all you needed to know.

*

McCain's advisers clearly don't trust Palin to answer questions about policy and don't want her to answer many of the questions that have been raised about her tenure as governor of Alaska. Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, gave the game away when he said on "Fox News Sunday" that she would not meet with reporters until they showed a willingness to treat her "with some level of respect and deference."

*

Deference? That's a word used in monarchies or aristocracies. Democracies don't give "deference" to politicians. When have McCain, Obama, Biden or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton asked for deference?

*

A week ago, Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times cited McCain sources questioning "how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket." She reported that Palin had been selected "with more haste than McCain advisers initially described." (She also mistakenly reported that Palin belonged to the Alaskan Independence Party. It was her husband, Todd, who had been a member.) It turned out that the McCain side misled journalists. Bumiller was right about the vetting. The lesson is that McCain's counselors are not interested in fair treatment, and they are certainly not interested in the truth.

*

[W]hat matters is not Palin's personal life but whether she is prepared to assume the presidency if called upon. The actions of McCain's lieutenants suggest that they know the answer. And they are doing everything they can to keep the media from finding it.