Contratimes's blog

I already touched on this in a comment elsewhere here, but I thought I'd throw this out to everyone.

Did Joe Biden get his facts wrong? Has anyone here done any research (my day is just beginning, so I am behind schedule here).

Immediately after the debate, Fred Thompson asserted that Joe Biden had indeed made several serious factual errors. I wonder what will become of Thompson's claims.

Here is what one blogger had to say this morning. I have not checked the blogger's own "facts," but if what the blogger says is true, then it would seem to me that there will be some significant negative fallout for Mr. Biden. In other words, perhaps Mr. Biden did not do so well at all.

Any thoughts?

I am wondering if we are watching the greatest political meltdown in American history. I am also wondering if the "Lipstick Defense" is a cover-up.

James Taranto simply passes over something I find absolutely incredible, especially since accusations of plagiarism have been hurled at both Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the past.

Please, read (right now) the monologue bubble to Tom Toles' September 5 cartoon in the Washington Post. And then read what Barack Obama said FOUR DAYS later (as printed in the LA Times):
 

"John McCain says he's about change too...So I guess his whole angle is: Watch out, George Bush -- except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics, we're really going to shake things up in Washington.

"That's not change. That's just calling the same thing something different. But you can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, and it's still going to stink after eight years." [emphasis mine]

Pretty amazing, huh? How did this go unnoticed? Why did this go unnoticed? Did Sen. Obama preface or end his remarks with due attribution to Tom Toles? I believe he did not.

Seriously, I have never seen such a swift and immediate meltdown. I did not think the lipstick remark would be all that devastating to Barack Obama. Alas, it seems it highlighted a part of his speech that Sen. Obama would have liked to conceal. How ironic that he would have used lipstick to highlight his apparent plagiarism!

©2008. All rights reserved.

[It is another cloudless morning here in New England, just like the morning seven years ago. Back then, two planes were already in the morning sky; observers on the ground might have seen them from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont or New York. There would be a different flight plan that day.

Today, 9/11/08, both John McCain and Barack Obama will visit Ground Zero. In honor of that visit, and in honor of that infamous and painful day, I repost a reflection I wrote several years after 9/11/01. Tomorrow, I will offer another reflection, I think, if I feel so moved.]

Yesterday morning, Friday, July 1, I walked west on Liberty Street and came to a slow stop. It was my first time to visit the World Trade Center since it became Ground Zero. I could see the wide-open 16-acre crater left in downtown Manhattan. But it was not the view that stopped me, but something much smaller. For there, in the southeast corner of Ground Zero, stood a street sign that, for me, was full of symbolic irony. I was at the corner of Church and Liberty.

I noted the irony, perhaps with bitterness touching my heart. And then I walked into the open space, tears filling my eyes, sobs erupting from deep within.

I had not expected this. I had not expected to want to fall to my knees, to wail on the ground, to daven before a new sort of Wailing Wall. I had not expected to feel that I could never leave this place; that I could never go back to something simple, safe, tidy, even naive. I had not expected to want to keep this hole in my heart; this hole from which people leapt and fell through tumult and smoke and confusion.

There was no surprise, however, at the enormity. I had always understood that; had felt it; had known its significance. I always understood the mechanics and the engineering; the aerodynamics and the flight paths. I had already stood on the ledge of a broken window; I had fallen. I had huddled with my child in the back of a plane; felt the pressure change in my ears and the turbulence of a bad pilot; I had seen the sparkling Hudson and the September blue; the smoke ahead; and I had felt the tipping of the wings as the engines were throttled full. I had waited for death to come in 3,000 different ways; and yet my imagination remained intact enough to remind me that I had not died even once.

What I had not expected were the tears. I thought that I had passed through that. I thought that I was, if not insouciant, so to speak, I was at least through with all the grief. But I was not. And clearly neither were many of the others walking by me, slowly, each pausing at various signs, reading them, performing a sort of Stations of the Cross along a postmodern Via Dolorosa. An old man, huddled against the massive, imposing fence, his long white hair and flowing beard tangled around his weary face, played an old silver flute, its dulcet tones reaching out and up, Amazing Grace trembling in my ears. He was crying in each breath.

I became quietly indignant (I was too humbled to be truly self-righteous) at those tourists from "far-away" who posed for digital cameras. And I was miffed, though only mildly, by the hawker silently moving through the crowd with a photo album, 9/11 pictures for sale, though numerous postings declared that such sacrilege was strictly forbidden. But I could forgive all this, for grief and horror do strange things to people. The abundance of cameras reminded me of a funeral I went to last spring, where the family of the 39-year-old father killed in a tragic accident gathered at the funeral parlor before the burial so that portraits could be taken around the open casket. My friend, the owner of the parlor, told me that it "happens all the time." Grief does strange things indeed.

I strolled north, stopping frequently. A young woman next to me, her back to the scene as she waited to cross Church - heading toward the Millenium Hilton - blurted into her cell phone, "I am going to get SO f***ed up tonight!" I moved away from her and closer to the fence, admitting to myself, a little sadly perhaps, that the world is indeed a very diverse place. The brown-haired woman to my right stared in disbelief westward, her lips trembling, tears on her cheeks. She wasn't thinking about getting "f***ed up." She was grieving for those who no longer could.

But there was one thing that was physically surprising to me, and beyond the scope of my imagination. It was that, with all the buildings surrounding the site, with the highest to the north, east and south, it was if I was INSIDE something, like a temple, cathedral or sanctuary. What happened on September 11 in New York was literally IN New York; with walls echoing sounds like the Whispering Gallery in St. Paul's Cathedral. I could see the Twin Towers, their heads poking through the ceiling of New York, and I could hear sounds. Sounds unbearable.

Later, I spoke with a woman who witnessed nearly everything on September 11. She told me that she was in the shower of her 23rd floor apartment on Liberty (the southwest corner) when the first plane smashed into the North Tower. She confessed that that she didn't realize what was happening until she was drying herself off. She said she heard a roar of jet engines overhead (the second plane), and then, echoing throughout her house, the sound of thousands of people screaming. (I think I can hear that sound right now.) And I know it was one of the sounds I could still hear trembling in the faint murmurs of the buildings surrounding Ground Zero. The walls do speak. And they speak sorrowfully. (The woman, a Manhattan lawyer I fortuitously met on the train home, told me that she was never able to return to her apartment after closing the door to it just before the towers fell. It was essentially uninhabitable, at least for her. And she told me her entire harrowing story: the dust cloud filled with glass particles; the people screaming and pressing in the dark, the leaping into a boat on the Hudson, a thrown puppy, the vomiting, the uncertainty about more attacks, and so much more.)

But at the end of my too-short visit to Ground Zero, I could not shake from my mind the street sign, Church and Liberty. For Osama bin Laden attacked America - at least according to his own fatwa - because of its "Christian" infidelity (and its support and alliance with infidel Jews) and the liberty both synagogue and church provide. And it was America's liberties, our very freedoms, he turned against each of us: our freedom of travel, our easy borders, our freedom to build, and work in, tall buildings; our freedom to believe in God and liberty, or not. This is our vacant lot: that our virtues were turned against us by a man and men too impotent to build a nation, too weak to fill it with soldiers and weapons and wealth and commerce and hope; and too poor to attack us with something created by the superiority of their own vision. No, they attacked us with our own virtues, turned into weapons against us. They did not attack us with their virtues, but with their own spiteful vice. And for a moment, we staggered.

This morning, though far from New York, I still stand at the corner of Church and Liberty. I look up and understand: This is the World Trade Center. And I ask myself, "What world are you willing to trade?" My enemy has already asked that question, and he has shown me his answer. And now I give him mine: I am not trading.

Yesterday I walked through New York wearing a T-Shirt my wife gave to me two years ago. It reads on the front, in small print, "July 4, 1776: Remember Why." On the back, in quiet letters, it reads, "Live Free." I was amazed at how many people looked at my simple message as I passed through subway lines or strolled The Mall in Central Park. It is a good message.

Remember why.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Ground Zero, World Trade Center, wtc, Fourth of July, Independence day, Liberty, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, New York City, Manhattan

One would have to be disengaged not to notice that the Democratic Party, and the party's scribes in the press, are really quite angry about the ascension of Sarah Palin. But it is not Sarah Palin that has them upset; it is not John McCain or George W. Bush or Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani that has the left in high dudgeon. It is not any one person or defined group that has given them fits. What has them so agitated is that the very visible Republican National Convention showed Republicans doing the worst of all possible things: It showed Republicans laughing at the Democratic Party and its candidate. And there really can be no greater sin.

Please take a few minutes to read the inane (and mostly insulting) comments of New York Times columnists Paul Krugman, Judith Warner, and (inane to a lesser degree) Bob Herbert. You should also read today's piece by the Times' Frank Rich, "Palin And McCain's Shotgun Marriage." I urge you to read these pieces because they prove two things: they prove that Mr. Krugman is wrong that Democrats, at least many Democrats, do not consider themselves elite, and they prove that Republican laughter is justified.

If we simply take as a starting point Mr. Krugman's apparent incredulity at the assertion that Democrats who propose to lead this country come across as elitists, and juxtapose this with the essays mentioned above drafted by his own colleagues, we end up not merely with a glaring contradiction. What we end up with is a rousing good joke. We end up with something to laugh at (even if we are not Republican). And we end up with something to pity.

The very title of Frank Rich's piece is condescension of the highest order. It is the sort of condescension one would expect to hear in the Hamptons, or perhaps over cocktails on a Montauk veranda. McCain and Palin -- a shotgun marriage? How funny! How cute, Mr. Rich! How clever and deft! How deliciously and naughtily adroit in an ironic and pleasing "get-the-dinner-guests-laughing" sort of way! (Of course, you prove that Paul Krugman must be in another room.) And that first line, Mr Rich. How daring and devilish! Who would have thought to describe John McCain as old? Brilliant. I love to hear you speak truth to power!

Ms. Warner's statements hardly help Mr. Krugman's defense of the indefensible. Nor do Mr. Herbert's. When Ms. Warner (she found Gov. Palin's nomination "nauseating") suggests in an essay about Ms. Palin that women "are perhaps reaching historic lows in their comfort levels with themselves and their choices," you know you are not just hearing a malicious woman, you are hearing an elitist woman. But if you can't hear Ms. Warner's elitism, perhaps this quote will shout elitism loud and clear, and in a most vicious tone:

"Why does this woman [Sarah Palin] – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so 'real?'"[emphasis added]

And this statement by Mr. Herbert is surely not issued from the muted bowels of intellectual lowliness, but from the voluble summit of smugness:

"If there were any good ideas at this convention of mostly rich and mostly right-wing delegates about how to haul the country out of this mess that the G.O.P. has gotten it into, they were kept well hidden. Perhaps they were tucked away behind the more prominently displayed creationism and “just-say-no to global warming” documents."

That "creationism" pokes its head up here is as funny, as twistedly funny, as Mr. Krugman's swipe about alleged Republican anger at the convention being in part fueled by "fundamentalists" ticked off about evolution and abortion (forget those pro-life Catholics, for they suggest so much more than "fundamentalists"). Surely the truly sophisticated among us know what these columnists are doing: they are reacting from their very high places, throwing out insults and code words all designed to make the smug even more smug (and playing on elitists' fears). And Republicans do, and should, find all this rather funny.

Sarah Palin laughed at Barack Obama on Wednesday night. She poked fun at him. She mocked his ridiculously lofty rhetoric. She pointed out his condescension: she held him to account for his own words about gun-clinging, Bible-hugging, embittered townies allegedly uncomfortable with differences in skin color. On Thursday night, John McCain did the same thing. And they both did so in language that indicates something rather plainly: Republicans made Democrats look like a joke. (And I think this is the root of Bush/Cheney hatred, as both men have been known NOT to take their critics seriously, and have had the temerity to laugh at Democratic Party ideas and tactics.)

Paul Krugman is wrong about the politics of resentment, but only in part. There has never been a columnist, in my opinion, as resentful as Paul Krugman. Resentment is what he sells. But resentment is what his party sells, too. It is the very marrow of class and social warfare; resentment politics are what this election is about. But what Mr. Krugman does not realize is that Republican resentment is bred by men like Mr. Krugman. He -- and countless other pundits and wannbe pundits -- continually portray Republicans as a joke. All the Republicans are doing is demonstrating that they are sick of the gross misrepresentations about them manifested in print, in broadcast journalism, and in film. Republicans are tired of being the media's favorite caricatures, and they fought back in Minneapolis by enjoying a good laugh or two at the big corporation built around the Barack Obama brand.

What Mr. Krugman and his colleagues don't understand is that the reaction to Gov. Palin coursing through the media like a pandemic proves that the Democrats are ultimately a humorless, petulant bunch. They can dish it out, but they can never take it. That's always funny.

And what we are discovering in this political process is that what really galls the humorless Democrats is that Republican resentment manifests itself not as a grimace, but as a very toothy grin.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.

It is quite clear that even leading Democrats are completely tone deaf. That Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has sent out his lead man to denounce Gov. Sarah Palin's speech last night as "shrill and sarcastic" proves that the Democrats are in this to lose. Even if "shrill" is code word to his assumed base, Sen. Reid is apparently so politically deaf that he does not understand how deleterious it is to his cause that he has called a successful and competent woman shrill. In case he has no clue, which he must not, "shrill" is a code word to that other base, independent women (actually, nearly all women).

Besides, anyone who has not sold his soul to a party knows, really knows, the one adjective that cannot be justifiably used to describe Gov. Palin is the one word Sen. Reid chose. Shrill? Come on. She was anything but shrill. Even Barack Obama knows that, and he has sold his soul to his party. (Well, maybe not.)

When the LEADER of the United States Senate, that incredibly esteemed and proud institution, has to send his butler out to denounce a relatively soft-spoken woman for being "shrill," you know you are seeing weakness at its pathetic worst. Is this the best the Democrats can do? Is this allegedly insignificant governor from the hinterlands so great a threat that Senator Reid cannot present his own thoughtful rebuttal to this 'nobody from the north?'

Clearly Gov. Palin is not a nobody. And it seems that if he and his party are not careful, Sen. Reid will be, at least in the Senate, a minority nobody really quite soon.

©Contratimes/2008. All Rights Reserved.

Though the title of this post is facetious, I cannot deny what I just witnessed. I had never heard Sarah Palin give a speech until tonight. I now know why John McCain chose her for his running mate. In fact, I have to say that, at least tonight, she was perfectly vetted.

As far as political theater goes, if we can reduce tonight to so small and cynical a concept, this was the best show I've ever seen. Gov. Palin is country feisty with a smile; she carries a hint of redneck incredulity about her that is squarely aimed at the temerity and presumption of Ivy League and Beltway elitism. She looked quite stunning as she delivered lines that will be iconic by morning. And she created a metaphor that sticks: She's a pitbull with lipstick.

And her family! Oh, my gosh, were they not perfect? Her husband beaming with pride and love; her girls, one pregnant, all smiling and waving and looking lovely, with a future son-in-law in tow; the little baby Trig getting a quick swab of sisterly saliva as his big sister preened him; and the humble gratitude of her mother and father -- Egads! Could it have been written any better? Just seeing her youngest daughter waving, so innocently and with such earnestness, was enough to touch countless heartstrings. Seriously, I am not saying that the McCain-Palin ticket is the better ticket, I am only saying that I have never seen anything like this before. The whole thing was simply amazing. How could anyone disagree?

But the theater of it all, even if it was much more than theater, is short-lived. I recognize that Gov. Palin's speech was filled with criticisms of Sen. Obama (many of which were quite clever, I must say). I know that she infuriated countless pro-Obama supporters; she flirted with being incendiary. I saw it, heard it, felt it; and I could almost hear folks around the country screaming at their TVs. But what she did tonight is at least part of the political game, and it is quite clear that senators Obama and Biden have their work cut out for them. Gov. Palin, even without John McCain, is a formidable opponent. So I brace myself for what comes next for all involved, Republican and Democrat. I pray we won't witness anything so unfairly brutal or brutally unfair that we regret being Americans.

Here's hoping for a fair and even fight in the days ahead.

Prediction: After tonight, Democrats everywhere will be arguing that the next Democratic Convention in 2012 should follow rather than precede the Republican Convention. Surely they see how easy it was for Gov. Palin to playfully but effectively mock the "styrofoam Greek pillars" of the Democratic National Convention, no?

Peace.

©Contratimes/2008. All Rights Reserved.

Twice this week I've warned the Democratic Party about the dangers of overplaying the Sarah Palin attack strategy. I even invoked a sports metaphor, the very same (and rather lame) metaphor I invoked on the eve of Democratic Party wins during the election in 2006. I warned them of the "offsides trap," a defensive play in soccer (or European football). Not that anyone is listening, but I at least try to sound the alarm.

I find it interesting that tonight on the "The Factor" with Bill O'Reilly, Dick Morris used a metaphor of similar import drawn from military history: he warned Democrats that Sarah Palin could end up being the Democratic Party's Battle of Kursk; that battle was a trap for Germany, a devastating trap used to great success by the Soviet Union in World War 2. I like Morris' metaphor only to a point, as it is hard for me to even remotely hint at sympathy towards the repugnant Hitler and his evil designs (or Stalin's, for that matter).

Such warnings, of course, are aimed at Democrats and all those in the media who support the Democratic Party. They are intended to draw a line in the sand (or the pitch); such warnings say that to cross that line could be perilous. A quick survey of the media largely confirms my suspicion that Democrats have already crossed that line with a series of dopey metaphors (in bold):

• The ever-imitable New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd opined Sunday that Sarah Palin is essentially a real-life "chic flick." In all fairness to Ms. Dowd, who is to literature what phone sex is to oratory, a direct quote should be offered: Sarah Palin's story is a "hokey chick flick [that] came out on the trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime." (My wife sums up perfectly what is wrong with Ms. Dowd: Ms. Dowd's words are born solely of envy.)
• Bill Maher referred to Sarah Palin as John McCain's stewardess. (That's some pretty heady humor there, Bill. Great writing.)
• Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn believes "that a woman with five children, including one with special needs, and a daughter who is a 17-year-old child who is pregnant and about to have a baby, probably has got to rethink her priorities. It seems to me that there is a tipping point, and I think that she's crossed the tipping point." (Ms. Quinn might want to quietly meditate on that tipping point idea for a while.)
• Democratic strategist and linguist/philosopher George Lakoff said of the Sarah Palin story, "It's conceivable a 17-year-old girl just screwed the GOP." (Of course, it should behoove any decent linguist to properly ask himself what he means by "conceivable" and "screwed." Nice metaphors, Mr. Lakoff. I can see why you are a Democratic strategist.)

What is just thrilling good fun is to see whether Gov. Palin can sufficiently tap into her own poetic muse to find the apt metaphor that perfectly fits the expectations of the American psyche, at least a majority share of it, and yet also gives Mr. Lakoff fits of apoplexy (figuratively speaking, of course). Tonight, right now in fact, is her time to be particularly inspired. That is if she's not too tired from breast-feeding. (Sorry. See how easy it is to be a buffoon?)

(Addendum: It seems quite clear that Gov. Palin found her muse and her metaphor.)

©Contratimes/2008. All Rights Reserved.

I can't resist (Warning: Shamelessly satirical.)

What I am about to tell you is absolutely true. (In other words, this part is NOT satire.)

On the afternoon of the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995, I was taking a much needed break from my newspaper job. The break was much needed, I can assure you, because the news of the day was really quite stressful.

While I was standing around the counter of the local market gabbing with a knot of men about the horrific tragedy, a customer came in who had not yet heard the news. Once he understood that we were not joking, he became irate, shouting, "What the hell do they think is? This ain't no f***ing foreign country!" With that, he stormed off.

_______________________
 
If you have not yet watched the Sean Coombs video about "foreign policies," then you won't completely understand why I have recalled here the man and his exclamation that America is "no f***ing foreign country."

The broader context into which I want to fit my remarks is the one in which it is asserted Gov. Sarah Palin is not fit for office because she has not traveled enough outside the United States. No one knows exactly how much travel time or mileage are a prerequisite for the vice presidency, but it should probably be as much as Abraham Lincoln's many international adventures.

But let's talk, really talk, about Alaska. Did you know that Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost and easternmost point in the United States? Wait. Did you even know that Alaska is part of the United States? Of course you did. But if 70% of America's 18-24 year-olds can't find New Jersey on a map, then I think it safe to say that a number of Democrats who oppose Gov. Palin's nomination only recently learned that Alaska is actually a place, and not a pun with Delaware and Idaho. I mean, if Alaska isn't at the eastern end of the nearest mall, what good is it?

I wonder how many Americans know that Hawaii, Barack Obama's birthplace, is the southernmost state in the US. Perhaps it doesn't matter. But it does at least suggest that Barack Obama is the truest southerner to be on a presidential ticket in a long, long time; he makes Bill Clinton seem like a Laplander (perhaps Laplander borders on the obscene in this particular application, or Lapplication; but at least Mr. Clinton was known to have traveled abroad ... or two. [Vicious, scurrilous pun, I know.])

So, I think we can conclude several things. Observing that Sean Coombs' pro-Obama, anti-McCain rant comes across a tad provincial and that New Jersey appears to be something some Americans might purchase at the nearest Sports Authority, we can conclude that America is indeed one big, stinkin' foreign country. When you add to the discussion the fact that Gov. Palin's enticing coordinates of easternmost, westernmost and northernmost make her unbelievably foreign (and therefore wildly exotic and desirable), we have proven that she is eminently qualified to co-lead the two -- heck, the many! -- Americas and the many foreign countries of which this particular melting pot is composed. She abounds in foreign policies. Just ask the cosmopolitan Democrats.

©Contratimes/2008. All Rights Reserved.

I find this incredibly amusing: The New York Times reports that Gov. Sarah Palin has not traveled much outside the United States. Apparently the governor did not receive her passport until 2007 when she needed to travel to Kuwait to visit the Alaska National Guard troops deployed there.

One can conclude (and surely some will) that Gov. Palin has no foreign policy experience at all.

But I must make ask a question or two (forgive the sarcasm): Am I wrong for believing that some Democrats in the lower-48 believe Alaska IS a foreign country? And doesn't the fact that Gov. Palin hails from Alaska disqualify her from serving as vice president since Alaska is not only not American (at least to some Democrats), it doesn't even have any stinkin' "foreign policies"?

For a laugh (or a cry), check out the video blog below from a "Big Time" Barack Obama supporter who is utterly committed to "getting out" the youth vote. Despite the rather indecorous language (the F- and MF-bombs, so be mindful), the video contains some delicious "ditties," so to speak, especially near the end. Foreign policies, indeed.

________________________

According to a recent National Geographic Society survey, 70 percent of 18- to 24-year-old Americans can't find New Jersey on a map. In other words, the whole of the United States is one big foreign country. Thus, Gov. Palin has plenty of foreign policy experience.

©Contratimes/2008. All Rights Reserved.