Debating Sarah Palin

Andrew Halcro has written an interesting article about debating Sarah Palin. Halcro ran against Palin in the gubenatorial race in Alaska.

On April 17, 2006, Palin and I participated in a debate at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks on agriculture issues. The next day, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner published this excerpt:

"Andrew Halcro, a declared independent candidate from Anchorage, came armed with statistics on agricultural productivity. Sarah Palin, a Republican from Wasilla, said the Matanuska Valley provides a positive example for other communities interested in agriculture to study."

On April 18, 2006, Palin and I sat together in a hotel coffee shop comparing campaign trail notes. As we talked about the debates, Palin made a comment that highlights the phenomenon that Biden is up against.

"Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, 'Does any of this really matter?' " Palin said.

Thanks to Bill for the tip!

Link: The Christian Science Monitor

JPMorgan's idea of a welcome basket

From the Consumerist:

Bobo and Joy Dickson bought a house that had been headed for foreclosure, but JPMorgan Chase apparently didn't get the message that the former owners had moved out and the new owners were in residence. So, naturally, they hired a firm to drill the Dickson's locks and take everything they owned, including their food.

Oops.

Link: Consumerist.com

Two republicans ousted after making racist comments

Didi Lima, the Clark County GOP communications director, was fired twice Saturday.

The spokeswoman for the Republican Party in Nevada was first removed from her post after she said the Democratic Party made black people,

"dependent on the government."

Later that same day she was removed from her volunteer role as a Hispanic community liaison when she said,

"We don't want (Hispanics) to become the new African-American community," Lima told The Associated Press. "And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create more programs and give them handouts, food stamps and checks for this and checks for that. We don't want that."

"I'm very much afraid that the Democratic Party is going to do the same thing that they did with the African-American culture and make them all dependent on the government and we don't want that,"

Lima isn't the first campaign member to make such racist comments in the last week. Frenando C de Baca resigned as a county chairman of the Republican party after making the following comment,

"Hispanics consider themselves above blacks" and won't vote for Obama.

Link: USA Today

Lots of talking but little is said

I watched the second part of Gov. Palin's interview with Katie Couric today. Couric asks Palin several questions related to the economy and her responses were simplistic at best, nonsensical at worst.



Man, woman or pitbull, convince me you're going to help me and I'll vote for you. Obama has a comprehensive plan that is well documented and available for the public on his website. McCain and Palin have yet to tell me how they're going to help me and have surrounded themselves with many of the people who I feel are directly responsible for deregulating our financial industry and lead us to the crisis we're currently in.

Update:
I'm inclined to embed another version of the interview that contains an additional 30 seconds of footage in advance of the above video. This woman is not qualified to be vice president of the United States. She's a talking head.

McCain lambasted by Letterman after a last minute cancellation

Senator McCain canceled a planned appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman last night. According to Letterman, McCain phoned him the day of the show and said he needed to head back to Washington DC to deal with the state of the economy.

Letterman was clearly irritated by the fact that McCain did not immediately leave for DC and instead used the time he would have been on Letterman's show to tape an interview five blocks away with Katie Couric. Letterman cut to a live feed of McCain being prepped before the Couric interview at one point while talking to his replacement guest, Keith Olbermann.



Additional coverage and transcript can be found on the LA Times website.

LA Times

Lobbyists? We don't have no stinkin' lobbyists!

Senator McCain has repeatedly stated that campaign manager Rick Davis left the lobbying firm, Davis Manafort in 2006. When recently questioned about this, again, McCain suggested the NYT investigate the allegations themselves. So they did. (Can you see where this is going?) Turns out Davis is still a corporate director and treasurer for the company and was receiving $15,000 a month from client Freddie Mac until just last month.

Why would Freddie Mac need a lobbyist you might ask? Well to help them fight government regulation and oversight of course! (No, I'm not kidding.)

I'm sure if I were to quit my day job Microsoft would be happy to continue paying me an enormous monthly salary as well! Maybe he got the same deal that campaign representative Carly Fiorina got from HP but he opted for the monthly payments rather than the single $40,000,000 lump sum plan!

For someone promising to remove lobbyists from politics, McCain certainly seems to enjoy surrounding himself with them.

An expensive drop in the bucket

The folks over at Architecture 2030, a group I'd never heard of until recently, put together an interesting graphic showing the benefits of off-shore drilling in the United States. Based on statistics found on the Energy Information Administration's* website, they state the following:

According to the US Energy Information Administration, oil production from drilling offshore in the outer continental shelf wouldn't begin until around the year 2017. Once begun, it wouldn't reach peak production until about 2030 when it would produce only 200,000 barrels of oil per day. This would supply a meager 1.2% of total US annual oil consumption (just 0.6% of total US energy consumption). And, the offshore oil would be sold back to the US at the international rate, which today is $106 a barrel. So, the oil produced by offshore drilling would not only be a "drop in the bucket", it would be expensive, which translates to "no relief at the pump".

But it's their graphical depiction of this that makes it really clear. A picture is worth a thousand, or at least the 113 above, words.



As an additional tidbit, they also state it would take 12,954 nuclear power plants to replace the current fossil-fuel based energy demand.

* The EIA is part of the Department of Energy

Energy Information Administration

Architecture 2030

Who buys this?

I found this in the local Safeway the other day. Seriously, who would buy this stuff? Old Milwaukee Non-Alcoholic?? Is it so popular as a gag gift that it's profitable to carry?

Frank Rich: Truthiness Stages a Comeback

Frank Rich has written a(nother) great op-ed on McCain's campaign style and how it has borrowed all the worse qualities from the Bush/Rove handbook with documented examples of how the media is so swamped with lies that it's unable to keep up and call the campaign on them all.

NYTimes Op-Ed: Frank Rich

How Come He Gets Horsies?

Brilliant

Flickr: Daniel Kongos

Homer + The Duke = Bush?

I can't remember where I found this but as it's an Ad for a newspaper, I'm sure they won't mind if I give them some free promotion.

McCain Invented the BlackBerry?

Filed under: Oops

There's little meat to this, it's just entertaining to watch the competition screw up. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, one of McCain's economic advisors, was asked what John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets. His response was to whip out his BlackBerry, point to it and say, "He did this."

He went on to say the committee was essential in promoting innovation in the telecom industry and that McCain's work therefore related directly to the invention of the BlackBerry but the mainstream media is going to walk away with an image of this campaign that is eerily similar to Al Gore's often incorrectly quoted statement that he invented the Internet.

Oh, and not to rub it in, but the BlackBerry is made by Research in Motion. A Canadian company.

Link: Politico

Palin favorability: Education, backlash or blip?

Within two weeks of her announcement as VP candidate of the Republican party, Gov. Palin's public approval rating (the percentage of people polled who had a favorable perception of her) had risen to 52%, making her the most popular of the four candidates running for the White House. In the last three days however, these numbers have been falling as more comprehensive reporting on Palin comes to light. As of today, Palin's approval rating has lowered to 48%. A minor, and expected, drop given the nation's relative ignorance of her prior to this month.

More important to note is her DISapproval rating. At the time she was experiencing a 52% favorability her disapproval rating (the percentage of people polled who had an unfavorable perception of her) was a relatively low 30%. In the three days since, that number has increased to 36%.

As Andrew Romano of Newsweek points out, that's a 10 point swing (52->48 & 30->36) over the weekend. It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a larger downward slide or if the country's buzz has worn off and public opinion is now established. Then again this is three days worth of data and a single data point does not a trend make.

Even more important than that is whether or not Saturday Night Live is once again responsible for where the media is paying attention.

Link: Newsweek

Tina Fey as Gov. Palin

Tina Fey, my hero. She did a fantastic job as Governor Sarah Palin on the Saturday Night Live intro. Lets hope we see a lot more of her in this role. (Well, through November. After that I have no interest in hearing about Palin.)

Oil vs. Food

Link: Ben Dib: MinuteManMedia.org

Terror Spelled W-A-T-E-R

This German water slide has you start out in a nearly vertical position sending you straight down once the floor is removed. After gaining enough momentum you shoot up a loop-de-loop before plunging back to Earth.



This sure puts the water slide at the Grand Hyatt in Kauai to shame.

Get thee to a laboratory

Quick, get this kid a $200 million dollar budget. 16 year old Daniel Burd spent a few weeks working on his school science project in which he isolated two strains of bacteria that break-down the molecular structure of the polyethylene plastic used in plastic bags.

The result? Plastic bags that currently sit in garbage dumps for thousands of years before decomposing can now be completely consumed in weeks. No word on if anyone is attempting to create massive cultures of the bacteria, but the possibility of such work now exists.

Oh, and he won the Canadian national science fair.

Link: TheRecord.com

RateMyBunny.com

Recently I've seen a number of sitcoms set up a gag where one of the characters makes up a ridiculous website address only to have it revealed later that the site actually exists. RateMyBunny.com isn't that absurd, but it felt like one of those jokes when I came across it.

Bryan, this one's for you. Try not to spend all day there.

Link: RateMyBunny.com

Soda vs. Pop

I don't agree with the results of this unscientific poll, but at the very least it's attractive to look at. Contrary to what this chart shows, I think Rochester and Seattle are both more fond of the term "Soda". I'm biased as a "Soda" man but in the spirit of bi-partisanship, I'll agree to "Soda-pop".

(Click the map for the full-size image and a breakdown by county.)

Damon on Palin

An amusing commentary from Matt Damon on Sara Palin as a VP choice. Yes, he's an actor, no, his opinion isn't worth more than mine or yours, but I still appreciate his analogy of her becoming president to a Disney movie where through some kooky turn of events a 'hokey mom from Alaska' ends up president. 'Dave' is one of my favorite movies, but it would sure scare the shit out of me were it to ever happen.

In any case, the clip is only about a minute and 40 seconds long.