Would Your Mother Make a Good VP?

I got asked in a telephone poll yesterday whether I viewed Sarah Palin favorably. How do you answer that? Fortunately, the pollster was pretty loose and accepted my non-responsive answer of, Yeah, I'd like her to stay my governor.

You may love your mom and still not think she'd be a good vice president or president.

Rating Palin as a Person

My first personal interaction with Sarah Palin - an early political talk and question and answer session at the University of Alaska Anchorage being the one in which I actually talked to her - left me feeling both impressed and a little skeptical. She was unpretentious, didn't pretend to know things she didn't know - she just said, "I need to learn more about that" or "What do you suggest on that?" I'm generally a pretty good judge of whether people are genuine and if she wasn't that day, she got past my crap detectors. But it also seemed like she had a long way to go to beat the Republican establishment, and then the former Democratic Governor. But she did both. So I'm cautious about underestimating her now.

But it's possible to evaluate someone differently for different roles. The public person I saw was someone I liked. I don't agree with things she believes, but she listened to others and didn't have any of the facade politicians normally have. I realize that people in Wasilla saw a lot more, if not cunning, at least very focused drive to get what she was after.

All in all, I think she's smart, but has been raised in a limited environment where she was overly influenced by fairly narrow religious beliefs. I personally don't think abortion is a good thing, but I think it is morally much more ambiguous than right-to-lifers would have it. The fewer the number of abortions the better, but ultimately, each woman has to make that decision for herself. But someone who truly believes there's a soul from the moment of conception, probably has a moral duty to stop abortion. But teaching creationism alongside evolution? That's just ignorance in my mind. But I think that Sarah is smart enough and curious enough that she could grow beyond her roots on some of the more stifling beliefs.


Rating Palin as a Governor

Running for governor she took on her corrupt party leaders. It didn't hurt her cause that the FBI raided some of their offices and indicted some of them during the campaign. And then she did stand up to the big oil companies in Juneau. First on the petroleum profit tax increase and then on the Alaska Gasline Incentive Act.

In some ways these were ethical stances - the oil companies had done their best to buy the legislature through campaign contributions, trips to Prudhoe Bay, and other junkets, and through Bill Allen (pled guilty) on the PPT bill and the gasline. She had good advisers on this and stood up to the oil companies. But basically, she wants to drill ANWR (no Alaskan politicians think they can oppose drilling and win), and fought protection of polar bears that might threaten offshore oil drilling. And in recent weeks (is it really only weeks ago this came out?) her firing of the head of the troopers was the first public glimpse of another side of Palin.

All in all, while I didn't vote for Palin, I think by standing up to the Republican party and the oil companies, she probably did a lot more good for Alaska than her Democratic opponent would have done. Up til now, she's been a good governor and that's why she's got such high ratings.

Rating Palin as a VP or President

Most people who eventually run for president have had pretty broad life experiences in their college and early post college years a time in their lives when they are still forming their moral understanding of the world. I don't think Palin had those kinds of experiences until she was in her 40s as Governor, an age when it is harder - though not impossible - to change. Only then did she make her first trip outside the US (not counting Canada I assume), did she deal with people outside of Alaska on serious issues. (There could be other experiences I'm unaware of, but I doubt there was much significant interaction with people different from Palin.)

The Republican spin machine is ludicrously calling black, white in their effort to paint Palin as experienced. Despite their claims that being head of the Alaska National Guard gave her commander-in-chief experience and that Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her important international policy experience, any Alaskan who knows anything, knows that's total nonsense. I doubt that Palin could have named more than one or two current Russian leaders before last week, or could have picked out Georgia on a world map. (I'm not sure she could have picked out the state of Georgia on a US map.) Or could tell us about the Russian Revolution, even when it was, let alone who played leading roles. (Most Americans couldn't do that either, but most Americans aren't running for vice president.) When I read Ropi's blog, I'm amazed at what a modern Hungarian high school student studies. In many ways I'd say Ropi's knowledge would make Palin's knowledge of the world embarrassing. That's not to say Ropi is in any way ready to be a US Vice President, but I'd dare say his basic knoweldge about the world, about world history, and even his least favorite subjects like math and biology, are well beyond what Sarah Palin or even most American high school graduates know.


So, as you can see, evaluating Sarah Palin isn't that easy. It depends what you're evaluating her for. I think that socially I'd enjoy her company and conversation at dinner [aside from the fact that she's the VP candidate.] We have different values and beliefs, but she's bright and it would interesting to hear what she has to say about what she believes.

For her performance as governor, I give her high marks so far. The Monehan affair is a sign of her lack of experience in the ethics of organizational protocol, especially governmental organizations, where merit systems are the standard. Whether she would have (under normal circumstances) learned and adjusted in response was one of the things that would have told us whether she was just a fluke who came along at the right time with the right qualities, or whether she had the potential to grow into a serious stateswoman.

As a potential Vice President, and thus a potential President I have to assess her against very different criteria. A gifted ice skater who's sent to the Olympics without a lot of training and competitive experience could do well, but the odds aren't good. Our Olympic tryouts wouldn't let that person in. Palin hasn't tried out. She hasn't competed beyond the Alaska championships. We're a state with fewer than 700,000 people! That means she really hasn't been tested at all in the big leagues. And we're talking about one of the most important jobs in the world. Scary is all I can say.

The Peace Corps, at least when I was in training, had a category called "high risk - high gain." It meant they thought the trainee could either be a super volunteer or a total washout. In Sarah Palin, at this point, I see the high-risk part, but I simply don't see the high-gain part. (Yes if my life was dedicated to fighting abortion and gay rights, and bringing back SUV's, God into schools and government, I could see the high-gain label, but that isn't me.)


What Happened to the Fighter Who Stood Up to Her Corrupt Party Leaders?

One more observation. The one thing most Alaskans would agree on about Sarah Palin is that she stood up to her corrupt party leaders, at a time when that really was risky, and declared her party chair unethical. She resigned saying she simply couldn't continue on the Oil and Gas Commission under the circumstances. That was a gutsy thing to do and bought a lot of credibility for her among Alaskans.

But what happened to that Sarah Palin? Now we see a Sarah Palin who is compromising those brave acts by following the orders of the likes of Karl Rove and his Orwellian soulless-mates. The Palin who spoke of cooperation and who worked with Democrats in Juneau, is now throwing mean, baseless accusations at Obama (Making "community organizing" into an epithet is consistent with the Republican game plan of poisoning every word that describes their opponents.)

The openness that impressed me so much when I first saw her has turned to deception about her record in front of the national audience and a week in hiding from the press. The old Sarah Palin would have giggled at the claim that her position of governor gave her serious commander-in-chief experience or that she was a Russian policy expert. Rudy Ruedrich (the Alaskan Republican Party chair she outed as corrupt) must be wondering how that strong-willed Sarah Palin has turned into the docile, obedient student of the even more corrupt Karl Rove and gang.

One explanation is that Sarah Palin is a superb actress and brilliant strategist and her fight against the Alaskan Republican party was a devious Machiavellian plot, and Lyda Green has pegged Palin right all along. (A great example of Palin's amateur status is her giggling on the radio talk show when the hosts called Lyda Green a bitch (hmmm, I never thought I'd cite Dan Fagan as a reference, but he paints the picture of the audio I heard when it was available) instead of telling them they went way over the line. That YouTube tape now has this message: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by a third party.")

A more likely explanation is that Palin is absolutely no match for the level of play in national Republican circles and that being on McCain's ticket has her totally compliant to the Rovian team that sold George W. Bush to the American public. Twice.

Former Doolittle aide pleads not guilty in Abramoff inquiry

Let's see if this McClatchy piece gets into the ADN tomorrow. [Update, Sept 9: There's a two paragraph excerpt, less than I have below, in News Digest in Section B today] Or maybe it's only in the Sacramento Bee because Roseville is just outside Sacramento.

By Marisa Taylor and Rob Hotakainen - McClatchy Newspapers

Last Updated 6:28 pm PDT Monday, September 8, 2008

WASHINGTON -- A former top aide to Republican Rep. John Doolittle pleaded not guilty Monday to public corruption and obstruction of justice charges in an indictment that provides new details about links between the California congressman, his wife Julie and convicted superlobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The Roseville congressman and his employees were showered with free lunches and tickets to concerts and sporting events, according to the indictment. In exchange, Doolittle provided legislative favors to Abramoff's clients, including work on a $16 million appropriation and a bill to provide statehood to Puerto Rico, the indictment said.

In addition, Abramoff provided Doolittle's wife with a job in which she received $96,000 working for a non-profit group, according to the indictment. It said Abramoff sent an e-mail to a consultant of the company, saying: "I want her to help, but not be overburdened with work." For the whole article.

Don Young's Abramoff related former aide has pleaded guilty and presumably is talking to prosecutors about his former boss. From an April 20, 2008 ADN story by Rich Mauer:

Last year, Mark Zachares, whom Young hired as a top aide on the House Transportation Committee, pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from Abramoff and agreed to help investigators. Before going to work for Young, Zachares, originally from Alaska, had been a labor and immigration official for the Mariana government. Prosecutors said Abramoff placed Zachares on Young's committee, and Zachares used his insider spot to help Abramoff's clients. Since Zachares' plea 12 months ago, Young has refused to explain what he knows about how Zachares got his job.

Thanks Chris.

What's a Political Blog?

Julia O'Malley, a reporter at the Anchorage Daily News asked if I'd talk to her about about Sarah Palin and Alaska blogs. So we talked this afternoon briefly. I'm not sure we covered the things that are really interesting to me. For instance:

What is a political blog? I think there are a lot of ways of categorizing them. Here are a few:

1. Partisan political blogs
   These blogs explicitly support a particular political party. They tend to post things that support the candidates of that party and oppose the candidates of other parties. They choose what they post, in part or in whole, on whether it supports their candidates.
   
   
2. Ideological political blogs
   These have a particular political ideology and post things that advance that ideology. There may be overlap with partisan politics, but these blogs need not be tied to a particular political party. Note, the blogger may write from a particular ideological perspective and not even know it. Bloggers may be so totally conditioned by their culture (however narrowly or broadly you want to interpret that) that they assume their world view is the only true world view.
   
   
3. General political blogs
   These blogs take the view that everything is political. They can look at anything and write about the political implications. Here, politics is used in the broadest sense of how power is distributed in society. It looks at knowledge as a form of power, assuming that as people become aware of the side effects of what they do, as they become aware of alternative ways to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, that people then can free themselves from the culturally, economically, religiously, socially conditioned ways of seeing the world that limit their options.
   
   
4. Ostensibly non-political blogs
   These blogs appear to avoid politics altogether. But in a bigger sense, everything affects the distribution of power - including someone's cooperative compliance with unethical orders or someone's simply ignoring the unethical actions of others. Thus, in this sense, everything is political. And blogs that do not address the actions of politicians, government officials, and business leaders are accepting the power status quo. Their lack of protest is taken as a tacit sign of approval. For an excellent discussion of this, see Vaclav Havel's "The Power of the Powerless." This is a discussion of ways the Soviet Union and the Communist government of Czechoslovakia gained power by making citizens comply with meaningless regulations. (It's always easier to see these things when the 'enemy' does them than in one's own culture. But once you see it there, you can start seeing it at home.)
   

So, when Julia raised the issue of political blogs, it wasn't easy to answer. I'd like to think that I am definitely not in #1. Mostly this blog is #s 2 and 3. Sometimes #4.

I think most personal blogs mix several of these.

And then there's style:

1. Carefully considered opinion supported with facts, references
2. Loose and unsupported opinion
3. Basically facts with some interpretation

And tone used:

1. Humorous
2. Serious
3. Snarky
4. Respectful

And the media used:

1. Words
2. Pictures
3. Audio
4. Video
   

Again, I think blogs tend to mix all the styles, tones, and media, though most lean more in one direction or another.


Does any of this matter? Why not just say it's political or not? The more you know about something, the more complex it gets. At one level, we could just talk about cars. But, if you want to buy one, you have to get more and more specific - types of cars, models, features, etc.

The same is true about how we think, how we know things. But the categories that we use shape how we understand things and are much more amorphous than categories of cars. We could come up with lots of ways to categorize political blogs. We just need to shuffle until we find categories that closely reflect what's out there and are useful for communication. And we need to always be testing our categories.

Think about how the rest of the world is labeling our governor, and how, based on those labels, people think they understand all about her. So, ultimately, the words we use play a large roll in how we think, what we know, and what we think is possible and impossible, and the decisions we make.

I'm NOT saying complicated is good. The better we understand something, the simpler we can explain it. Yet some things are inherently complicated. But somethings are unnecessarily complicated because:
1. The speaker/writer hasn't thought it through enough and it's still confused
2. The speaker/writer doesn't want others to understand
a. so that the writer looks smarter than everyone else (since the writer understands it)
b. because knowledge is a form of power when you have it and others don't

And when we deal with intangibles like power, interpersonal relations, it is difficult to prove something true or false, so it gets even more complicated.

So that's why we need to understand logic, to use words in their agreed upon meanings (or clarify exactly what we mean by them), and to think through the arguments we hear. A good case for this was in this Leonard Pitts column.

"We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big-government liberals." -- Mitt Romney, Sept. 3, 2008

And then the gorilla run knee socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn't we sing hats?

Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney's? If he's allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he's spoken intelligently, why can't I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can't I?

And you can see how one thing leads to another, so I'll end this in mid....

McClatchy chief executive Pruitt quits 4 family trusts

How long will it take the ADN (McClatchy owns the ADN) to tell its readers about this? Or maybe this isn't important enough to publish? When I Searched the ADN site for Gary Pruitt to make sure I didn't miss something, the last piece on Pruitt I found was dated June 16. This is from the Miami Herald.

Posted on Sat, Sep. 06, 2008

McClatchy Co. (MNI) Chief Executive Gary Pruitt resigned from four family trusts that control about 41 percent of the newspaper company's voting power.

The trusts hold 12.5 million Class B shares, the Sacramento, Calif.-based company said in a regulatory filing Friday. Pruitt holds 1.2 percent of the Class A shares that have one-tenth the voting rights.

The 51-year-old executive's departure as co-trustee could be a sign that the founding McClatchy family plans to review its options for the company, said Ken Doctor, an analyst at media consultant Outsell in Burlingame, Calif.

McClatchy, which owns The Miami Herald, has lost 93 percent of its market value since March 2006, when Pruitt announced the $4.1 billion acquisition of Knight Ridder.

''They've got to be looking at some kind of a financial restructuring,'' said Doctor, who worked at Knight Ridder before McClatchy bought the company.

McClatchy climbed 20 cents, or 5.8 percent, to $3.66 Friday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and has dropped 71 percent this year.

The family may be looking at a range of options, including a change of leadership, diversifying its holdings or a going- private transaction in which Pruitt may even participate, Doctor said. Pruitt isn't a family member, he added.

''You can't be on both ends of the transaction,'' Doctor said.

McClatchy Watch carries the article above and speculates on what it means. Essentially, he (and the commenters) say the family has watched Gary Pruitt bleed the company dry and only a wholesale removal of all the officers has a chance of success.

What will Alaska look like without a major newspaper? While McClatchy may have done things to speed the decline, the general prognosis for the newspaper industry isn't rosy. Will TV news expand to cover more local stories?

This is not a minor event. What will inherit the mantle of 'journal of record' for the state? We may not agree on the ADN's choice of stories to publish or not publish, however, it is a source that gives us a common set of stories every day, and keeps an eye on local, state, and federal elected officials, as well as businesses. Often people don't appreciate what they have until they lose it. Wait until television, weeklies, and blogs are covering the news to find out what all we take for granted from the ADN.

My Fair Sarah

From the E&P [Editor and Publisher] which I got to through Alaskan Abroad:

We're now into Day 9 of America's Media Held Hostage (i.e., denied any chance to interview or even chat with Sarah Palin). I know this because there is a widget going around that ticks off the days and hours and minutes. It was at 9:12:41 last I checked. Unfortunately we may have to tick off the days here for quite awhile for, as a McCain spokeswoman said on Friday, "who cares?" McCain campaign manager Rick Davis says Palin won't give any interviews until she feels "comfortable" giving one. This morning he added that she wouldn't give any "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

What are they doing with our fair Sarah?

In My Fair Lady,[from IMDB]

A misogynistic and snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.

They start from here:



until she finally gets it:



Now imagine Karl Rove as the misogynistic and snobbish professor transforming a freshman Alaskan governor into a credible vice presidential candidate. Imagine him teaching Sarah choice phrases on the politics of the former Soviet Union, the deficit, and health care, and how, when an interviewer strays beyond her new sound bites, to change the subject, attack her opponent, and more important, attack the questioner.

Who is intensively training America's media to ask probingly with respect and deference as they test the new Sarah?

Like Liza, Sarah isn't dumb, she just didn't get raised in the 'right' environment.

In the musical, Higgins wins his bet.

Youtube videos by snicu and AGIntermedic

Dark

As we left the home of friends on Bainbridge Island Sunday night, they asked if we needed a flashlight. As Alaskans nearing the end of summer, we laughed and said, no, we're fine. But we got outside and it was DARK. I couldn't see a thing. This was old fashioned, out of the city glare, no moon, night time dark. This was a dark we never see in Anchorage. In the summer it's light most of the time and never really gets darker than late twilight. In the winter, there's usually snow on the ground that reflects any light out, including the the lights of the city, often reflected back down by clouds. There's only a short period in the fall, when it starts getting dark by 10pm and there's no snow yet.




The picture is about 10:30 pm Tuesday as we taxied in to the terminal at the Anchorage Airport. Dark.

Trip Leftovers - Leaving Seattle, Juneau, Home

Ken is one of my daughter's house mates. He just had a show of his photographs at the University of Washington. Unfortunately, my photo of him isn't nearly as good as his. You can see his pictures here.

We flew over Bremerton on the way out of Seattle.

In Juneau, J picked us up in his new Prius.

A couple hours later, we were back at the airport where we bumped into another good friend, Joe Senungetuk, who was hanging in the stairway.

Juneau's airport, like Anchorage's has free wifi. Seattle is ATT and if you aren't with them already you have to pay.

This sign at the Anchorage Airport took on new significance seeing how it was signed by the Republican Nominee for VP.

Unraveling......

[Update midnight: I'm taking down my original post. I heard a story from a person I trust and it was generally confirmed by a second person I trust. The first person said the rumors were on the internet. I found bits and pieces here, here , here , here , here, and here. When I posted this I thought the story was already out there and I was making comments about Palin based on the story. But as I read Philip at Progressive Alaska commenting on the post, I realize that the story isn't out there, just rumors. While I trust my sources, I don't have enough independent information to nail this. So I'll drop my editorial based on this and just offer the basic allegation.

Four high school students were arrested for vandalizing school buses in Wasilla in 2005.

Deryck Harris, 18, and the other three boys - ages 16, 17 and 17 - were each charged with third-degree criminal mischief, first-degree criminal trespass and conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, troopers said. The 16-year-old was also charged with fourth-degree theft and furnishing alcohol to a minor, for allegedly stealing a bottle of vodka from the liquor store at Tesoro 2-Go in Wasilla.

“They stopped at a liquor store where he went in and stole a bottle of vodka and provided it to the others in the group,” Wilkinson said. “Three of the four boys consumed alcohol.”

Troopers did not release names of the juvenile suspects, but David Coon's mother confirmed her son was one of two Burchell High School students involved in the incident. The other two boys are Wasilla High School students.

We also have this story from Detroit's Free Press:

Her oldest son, Track, lived in Portage [Michigan] during most of his senior year in high school. He played junior major hockey. During an interview at the National Governors Association conference in 2007, she told a Free Press reporter that her son went back to Alaska in March to graduate with his class.

Thanks to Lavender Liberal for the previous two links.

The story I was told is that Track Palin was one of them and that he chose to enter the army rather than go to jail (or have a record?).

My original post assumed that this had been confirmed through other sources. I'm assuming the court records of a minor are sealed and that the family doesn't want to discuss this. But a lot of people know about this, including, one would assume, a certain ex-brother-in-law who is a state trooper. But releasing sealed information would surely be grounds for dismissal. Oh this gets curiouser and curiouser.

Discussing politician's children, as Obama has emphasized, should generally be off limits. But if Palin chooses to brag about her son's patriotism joining the military and going to Iraq to make herself a more attractive candidate, then she cannot legitimately say that her children's less flattering behaviors are off limits.

My main source is someone I trust and who is in a position to know something like this. That source discussed this as though it were well known. So I'll leave it at this. Others can pursue it further, but I'm taking down what I originally posted, which assumed this was a certainty.

I apologize to Anonymous (not sure if it was the same Anon twice) for taking down your comments that were based on the original post. Here is part of one of the comments that is Anon's own reflections:

...I have to laugh-- in Anchorage the kids I knew had a high contempt for their parents running for public office, but they all grew up an went to college-- none that I knew actually vandalized anything. We drank in their offices and would sneak wine from their cellars, but this is really classic.

Another later post by (another?) Anon adds documented, factual information and so I'll leave it.]

[UPDATE Sept 21, 2015:  This post today at Immoral Minority claims that yes, Track was part of the group that broke in, but he didn't cut the bus brakes lines.  I knew I'd written a post on this, so I came back here to say that it was reported he wasn't involved in cutting the brakes.  But as I look at this post, there is nothing here that mentions bus brakes.  Instead, this story, if correct, confirms what I wrote seven years ago about Track being part of the group of vandals.  It does not offer evidence of an agreement with the military to avoid jail.]

Nowhere

Dennis Zaki forwarded this picture.



Last night and last Friday she touted how she'd sent the money back to DC and "if we wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves." Great politics, and she did make that sort of speech, but late in the process. But I liked her for doing it. It was good for the world to hear our governor rejecting extravagant earmarks.

But then we get this picture. But Dennis, it's all about context. I'm guessing someone in Ketchikan gave her this sweatshirt and as a gracious gift receiver she 'tried it on' right there. I don't know that's the case, but I also don't know it isn't.

I started this post yesterday and wasn't sure that there was really enough here to make a decent post. Until I read the Anchorage Daily News Letters today. They published 11 letters on Palin. One was positive. But more to the point was this one about Palin in Ketchikan:

Having just finished watching the Wednesday evening edition of the Republican National Convention as well as Gov. Palin's speech, I must express my dismay at the nasty, mean-spirited tone and words used by the speakers. There was hypocrisy contained in Palin's claim to have told Washington "Thanks but no thanks for that Bridge to Nowhere," when she went to Ketchikan during her run for governor and told the people there she felt their pain at being told they were nowhere and that she and they would "make a good team as we progress that bridge project." When Congress removed the earmark language for the bridge but left the money, Palin used it elsewhere and has yet to go back to Ketchikan to explain her decision to the people as promised.

Palin is quick to adopt the "slash and burn" tactics employed by her political party in elections. The "outsider" is rapidly working her way "inside."

-- Gwen Burson

Girdwood

Oh, yes, 99901 is Ketchikan.

"The boy whose descendants came on the Mayflower..."

[This is when I turned on the tv]

So last night, Palin blasted Obama. Tonight it sounds like McCain is blasting the Bush administration. For example, he's not going to pass problems on to future generations. He just isn't mentioning any names.

OK, now McCain is going after Obama, in the most simplistic terms possible. "My plan will cut taxes, his plan will raise them."

Part of me would love McCain to win just to see how he's going to handle all the bills coming due from the Bush administration. And those bills are going to make it much harder for an Obama administration as well.

"Immigration is the civil rights issue of this century." And they applauded. Do they know what he said? He's slid into school reform. So what was he trying to say about immigration? School choice, mmmmm. Vouchers. That means the best students can get out of the public school system, leaving the public schools with the kids the private schools won't deal with.

Now he's attacking unions. Didn't Palin proudly say her husband was a union member?

We're going to stop sending money to countries that don't like us very much. Lots of cheering.

We'll produce more energy at home. We'll drill those off shore oil wells now. Lots of cheering.

Nuclear power, clean coal, wind, solar, electric automobiles. (These are things a candidate should have been pushing ten years ago.) Obama says we can do this without nuclear and coal. But Americans know better than that. (Obama's apparently not an American.)

I will do all I can to build the foundations for a stable and enduring peace. (I can support that.)

We need to change the way government does almost everything. (Hmmmm, Bush takes it on the chin here I guess.) We have to catch up to history and change the way we do business in Washington. The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving the problems isn't the cause, it's a symptom. It's people coming to Washington to serve themselves that's the problem. (This is pretty good.)

I have the scars to prove it. Obama does not. (Is he going to pull open his shirt and show the scars?)

A bi-partisan pitch. (Good. I remember Bush saying he'd do that too. But I believe McCain more than I believed Bush.)

There was a lot of good stuff in the speech - mostly the stuff that called for change in Washington, for working together, going beyond partisanship. Hmmm, sounds familiar. Isn't that what Obama's been talking about all this long campaign?

Meanwhile Democracy Now is reporting that the police state outside the convention is arresting protesters. Last night they said there were broken windows. Given what we've learned about the Bush administration, I wouldn't be surprised if we learned that they also infiltrated the protests and instigated the violence so there would be a good reason to crack down on the protesters. (It's amazing how the Republicans can say how bad government is and come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories, but when Democrats complain they are delusional.)