A Second Hand Conjecture

Here is a site that streams all the New Orleans, plus some others, TV stations.

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For up to the minute straight skinny on what is happening. You can chat while you are at it.

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David Bernstein puts to rest the whisper that Palin was a clandestine Buchananite. She supported Steve Forbes in 1999 (as un-Buchanan as you can get), and evidently the only source for the alleged 1995 support, is a vague recollection from Pat Buchanan himself. (ping for Roland, as he was concerned about this story).

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Perhaps those Zogby numbers weren’t so crazy after all.  CNN confirms the erasure of the Obama lead on an apparent Sarah Palin bounce.

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They know what butters their bread!

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I often find former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s supporting arguments irksome and occasionally even masochistic. But she has a certain knack for ending up in the right place by the wrong course. It’s a unique skill really.

Thus it is that she denounces US policy toward Russia as too hostile, emphasizes assuaging largely fabricated Kremlin territorial security fears, and criticizes overt US solidarity with Georgia…but (there’s always a *but* with Maddy), in the end she rejects South Ossetian and Abkhazian annexation and demands the eventual integration of Georgia into NATO.

As always with Maddy,  my feeling is that however we got to the same page matters not, so long as we’re both on it.

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It has become a serious question to ask if there is any argument in Obama’s perceived interest that Andrew Sullivan will not advance. In the latest project for that question, Sullivan argues that Palin represents the most “irresponsible” pick for the office of Vice President since Dan Quayle, on grounds of her alleged inexperience. It’s left to John Podhoretz to indirectly remind Mr. Sullivan that Quayle’s twelve years in Washington prior to 1988 made him vastly more experienced than Mr. Sullivan’s own choice for president, Barack Obama.

At some point here Sullivan and the other proponents of this line of attack against Palin have to recognize the untenability of their charge, at least as active supporters of Mr. Obama. I’ve no serious objection to anyone rejecting Sarah Palin for her qualifications after all, I can only object when it’s done in the service of a candidate for higher office who possesses even less relevant experience.

It is impossible to believe that Barack Obama’s resume qualifies him as experienced to assume the presidency at the end of this year, whilst Sarah Palin’s resume does not qualify her to serve as vice president at that same moment. Either they are both unqualified, or neither is. Charles Krauthammer for instance quite logically argues that both are unqualified. To argue one over the other, is only to expose yourself as a fantastically obsequious partisan of the saddest sort.

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I’m beginning to sense that anti-Palin hysteria is building toward a collective psychological meltdown of truly epic proportions on the Democratic side of our political divide. Today, Democratic consultant Dan Conley angrily pushed us a little further to the brink of that by arguing that the selection of Palin by McCain was “cynical, undemocratic and frankly, unpatriotic.” Wow.

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Rasmussen reports that Obama has returned to a +3 advantage over McCain, which is where he was before the Democratic convention.

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RightWingNation has some good photographs from the Pennsylvania McCain/Palin rally. Evidently the crowd kept drowning Sarah out with adulatory chants.

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Magomed Yevloyev, a prominent Ingushetian critic of the Kremlin, has been gunned down by Russian police while in their custody. Earlier this month his website was ordered shut down by the state. Russian police are claiming they shot him to death accidentally. Sigh. Moscow isn’t even trying anymore.

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The Weekly Standard
Newt Gingrich nails it.

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When all else fails, just start making stuff up. You really have to feel for Barack Obama, who is at heart an enormously classy guy. The DailyKos diarists do him few favors in his efforts to elevate political discourse in this country. (via: Insta)

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She raised less than $500k for the Alaska governor’s race in 2006. But as McCain’s running mate, Palin’s inaugurated a seven million dollar surge in donations to the McCain campaign. Given the excitement (near ecstasy, really) on the political right over the selection, it’s not difficult to see why. Put her on a stage anywhere near conservative donors and collect, John.

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Ken Davenport has a brutal piece in TWS this morning on the frankly rather embarrassing opposition of the National Organization of Women to Sarah Palin’s candidacy. It still astonishes me to no end that an organization which would be splendidly placed to speak as the pluralistic voice of the majority demographic group in the country (women=51.1% of US population), is so eager to consign itself to speaking only for a fantastically smaller band of Democratic Party partisans.

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photo: Michael Levesque

It seems the international media is crawling all over the tiny town Sarah Palin began her political career in. Being fond of leaders for whom membership in the general public is a recent memory, I think it’s great to see.

Although, how strange it must be for the residents of Wasilla to suddenly have the Los Angeles Times looking for perspectives on leadership in the Mocha Moose Cafe, or The Guardian speculating on the size of their town, or Deutsche Welle trying to divine foreign policy perspectives from their suddenly famous neighbor’s vacation travel.

Has to be fun.

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I’d heard that Hitch addressed the situation in Zimbabwe in his introductory remarks at the Freedom Fest 2008 debate with Dinesh D’Souza, but I hadn’t seen the video of it until today. It’s worth a watch.

The subject of the debate itself wasn’t Zimbabwe, but the general subject of conflict and religion. If you’ve seen one D’Souza/Hitchens debate on God and man, you’ve seen everything that follows this clip, so I’ll only post the first part.

Hitch takes the opportunity to examine his marginal complicity in fostering the Western mythology of Robert Mugabe as a heroic anticolonial guerrilla leader resisting Rhodesian tyranny. A Western moral investment that Mugabe has been trading on ever since, to the unbelievable misfortune of his people.
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Everyone’s jumping on the Zogby poll, which alone seems to show McCain/Palin taking the lead over Obama/Biden. I personally find such a result hard to believe in the extreme. Rasmussen’s finding that Palin might have arrested the slide seems more plausible; a complete reversal of fortune is a bit much to expect. However, what would be genuinely remarkable about the Zog results isn’t the McCain/Obama break, but 5% of likely voters casting for Bob Barr. This too is hard to believe though.

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I was searching for an image on my backup drive today and came across a cache of header graphics I’d thrown together for posts over the years. The diversity of subjects was kind of interesting as a gallery. Here’s a few rather random selections:

The HIV Epidemic:

Eurabia:

Slobodan Milosevic:

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Well, here is an embarrassing prospect. It seems the Republican leadership may boycott the Republican convention in Minnesota, for fear of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

The top elected Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was already boycotting. But now we learn that President Bush is said to be unlikely to attend, whilst Senator McCain may deliver his acceptance speech via satellite.

One would hope someone could prevail on both the president and the senator that this would represent egregious folly after a flawless, unifying Democratic convention, with its leadership in attendance. Evidently that’s something of a fortuitous luxury when the wind blows these days.

It should be plain that only an appearance of fear and disarray could possibly be conveyed by the abstention of Arnold, Bush and McCain from their own convention. The Republicans wouldn’t have hesitated to level such charges, had such a similarly ridiculous plan been proposed by the Democrats for Denver.

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It’s almost as if the Dems can’t help but to resort to misogynistic antagonism in dealing with Gov. Sarah Palin. This comes courtesy of Alan Colmes, citing Rogers Cadenhead who questions Palin’s maternal abilities:

One bit of weirdness associated with Palin concerns the birth of her youngest child. As the Alaskan media reported, Palin was attending an energy conference in Texas on April 18 when her water broke four weeks before her due date. After this happened, Palin didn’t head to a hospital or even leave the conference, even though the premature rupture of fetal membrances is normally a cause for an immediate examination by an obstetrician, who will observe the fetus on a monitor to guard against infection and other life-threatening complications. Two other reasons for heightened concern were Palin’s age, 43, and the fact that prenatal testing indicated the child had Down syndrome.

Palin stayed at the conference and delivered a 30-minute speech, then boarded a 12-hour Alaska Airlines flight from Dallas to Anchorage, neglecting to tell the airline her water had broken — most airlines won’t fly a woman in labor. The motivation for all of this appears to be the Palins’ desire that the child be born in Alaska. Her husband Todd told the Anchorage Daily News, “You can’t have a fish picker from Texas.”

When she arrived home, Palin was hospitalized immediately and the baby was born prematurely after labor was induced in the middle of the night.

Aside from baby Trig suffering from Down Syndrome, the child was quite healthy at delivery and has been doing fine ever since. It is true that when amino leaks occur, the general advice of doctors is to get to the hospital immediately, but that is not always the case. In fact, when delivery proceeds within 24 hours of an amino leak (a.k.a. water breaking), the risks of any complications to the baby are quite low. Indeed, some women experience minor leakages, as Palin did, well before they are due without any complications whatsoever.

In Palin’s case, she delivered Trig well within the 24 hour window recognized as “safe,” and actually had to be induced because she wasn’t in labor. Moreover, she was in touch with her physician throughout the event, and he did not advise her to act otherwise.

As an aside, the accusation that Trig was born prematurely does not seem to hold water (no pun intended … well, maybe a little) since Palin was past her 36th week, and the definition of “premature birth” is a baby born prior to the 37th week of gestation.

In any case, these are just facts that undermine the credibility of anyone asserting such ridiculous accusations. That Obama supporters are seriously challenging Palin’s credibility and competence as a mother is just stunning on a political level. Not just in the brashness, but also in the sheer stupidity of leveling such charges. I mean, how do idiots like Colmes and Cadenhead think women are going to react to their second-guessing of Palin’s birthing decisions?

I can hear my wife’s retort now: “You try carrying a bowling ball in your belly for 40 weeks, and then shooting it out your pee-hole with the entire hospital staff staring at your nether region. And that’s not even mentioning having to pee every 20 minutes, feeling like a fat cow, persistent fatigue, and constantly worrying about how your caring for unborn child. Plus you have to do your job just as competently and efficiently as you always did before you were pregnant (including dealing with any previously born children), only to be confronted with some a$$wipe having the nerve to tell you ‘You’re doing it wrong’.”

I imagine that a lot of women would feel the same way.

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Redstate
Obviously not written by an Obama supporter but there is some truth in spite of a bit of snark.

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NRO
“Critics are already trying to damn Sarah Palin for her perceived lack of foreign-policy experience, but what they are not allowing for is something more important — that she has the right basic attitudes and sense of priorities. She understands that aggression has to be resisted and commitments have to be honored.”

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Here at ASHC we get an enormous amount of traffic from people looking for Sarah Palin photographs. My friend Jason over on postpolitical says he’s experiencing the same phenomenon on his blog, and we took to calling it the hunt for “Palinporn.” Toward that, my favorite keyword from this hidden web image search also comes from Jas: “A MILF we can believe in.”

Of particular interest I’ve found, are those lovely pictures of casual Sarah in the Kuwati desert visiting Alaskan National Guard troops. So here is a gallery of all the pictures we have of that, culled from public-domain government websites, some of which appear to be no-longer publicly accessible.

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Chronicle of the Conspiracy
David Brooks skewers Obama a la Iowahawk.

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Pro-McCain sign at rally.

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The hard sacrifices of the unselected.

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The explosion of enthusiasm for Palin on just about every conservative blog and media outlet has apparently gone unnoticed at the DailyKos, which is predicting that Sarah represents a divisive force, who will soon fracture and ultimately destroy the Republican party. Hmm.

Now, there has always been a tendency among ideological people to retreat to fantasy in moments of peak political crisis, when the ideological narrative they’ve been following suddenly runs aground of some protruding reef of reality, but this is almost too much. I’m not sure it’s even possible to be more comprehensively mistaken in a single political assessment.

In truth, Palin is of course the ultimate force for unification and it’s why she or someone like her was so desperately needed by McCain and the Republicans. How much of a unifier is she? When the neoconservatives and Ronpaulists like the selection, if you are familiar with the party beyond name, you need say no more.

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Rasmussen’s first Palin poll suggests that while many Americans still need more information to make a judgment, she’s already made a superior impression to Biden on the day of his selection by Obama.

Of enormous significance is the finding that she receives a 63% favorable rating from independents, and a 61% favorable rating from independent women.

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Hot Air – Ed Morrissey
“Would you rather have the man who set the trap dealing with our enemies abroad, or the man who fell into it?”

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Bill Whittle argues reasonably and persuasively, on a lefty blog, about the real reason for choosing Sarah Palin. I stumbled across this at Brutally Honest but follow the link to Whittle’s full comments. They are excellent.

I think, for me, it’s a sense that this is an honest person – not just another politician. A breath of fresh air in a honorable profession gone bad. She convinces you through the strength of her character and beliefs not through triangulation. She does not see gaining office as a quest for power but as a sacred duty in the service of others. Kinda like our forefathers when they pledged their sacred honor when signing the Declaration of Independence.

Perhaps my expectations are too high. I think not. I hope not.

I know some folks read and participate on lefty blogs in order to understand the opposite point of view and to argue the conservative point of view. Whittle has done this masterfully. I applaud those who can do this, I can’t. I have little patience for the left’s arguments.

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I’ve mentioned before that I lived (in the fullest sense of the word) in Charlottesville, VA for many years in the 90’s. During that time I got to know a great many talented musicians including Dave Matthews. We weren’t buddies or anything but, like many small towns, our paths crossed enough to know who each other was at the time. Dave likely wouldn’t remember me nowadays, but I surely enjoyed his concerts at Trax back then, and I’m always happy to reprise bits of happy moments.

While searching for something entirely different, I came across this is a rendition of “Warehouse” delivered near UVA’s campus at (I believe) a former used record store on Main Street. I thought you all might enjoy it:

In less happy news, the saxophonist for The Dave Matthews Band has, tragically, died:

Dave Matthews Band saxophone player LeRoi Moore, one of the group’s founding members and a key part of its eclectic jazz-infused sound, died Tuesday from sudden complications stemming from injuries he sustained in an all-terrain vehicle accident in June. He was 46.

[...]

Moore, who liked to wear his trademark dark sunglasses at the bands’ live concerts, had classical training but said jazz was his main musical influence, according to a biography on the band’s Web site.

“But at this stage I don’t really consider myself a jazz musician,” Moore said in the biography. Playing with the Dave Matthews Band was “almost better than a jazz gig,” he said. “I have plenty of space to improvise, to try new ideas.”

Lead singer Dave Matthews credited Moore with arranging many of his songs, which combine Cajun fiddle-playing, African-influenced rhythms and Matthews’ playful but haunting voice.

The band formed in 1991 in Charlottesville, Va., when Matthews was working as a bartender. He gave a demo tape of his songs to Moore, who liked what he heard and recruited his friend and fellow jazzman Carter Beauford to play drums, and other musicians.

RIP, LeRoi.

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Saakashvili has finally severed all Georgian diplomatic ties with Russia. A bit overdue, I must say.

Meanwhile, Putin, in his ongoing effort to legitimize the Russian invasion of Georgia, again compared his country’s actions to the NATO intervention against Serbia –which Russia and Putin himself still opposes in principle as illegitimate, but nevermind. Putin argued that NATO intervened because the “White House gave the order and everyone carried it out,” in a rather pathetically ahistorical appeal to transatlantic discord.

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House of Eratosthenes
mkfreeburg discusses Comcast’s decision to manage bandwidth usage.

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I cited Victor Davis Hanson’s NRO post earlier in an easy defense of Palin, but there’s another point therein worth mention: Palin as agent of change for McCain, personally.

On energy, [Sarah Palin] will either blunt McCain’s unreasonable opposition to ANWR, or, in fact — as an Alaskan pro-driller — give him the opening necessary to “evolve” on the issue into a support for drilling there.
(NRO)

An entirely welcome possibility, as ANWR is increasingly looking peculiar within the context of McCain’s dramatically “evolved” (outright changed) positions on domestic drilling and energy independence as general policy principles.

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Paul Begala laments the fact that McCain didn’t select a vice presidential candidate who is more traditional, old, boring, uninspiring…in essence, an ossified agent of the establishment, like Joe Biden for instance.

Well, he doesn’t quite phrase it that way, but it’s the political implication of his complaint. Reviewing his catalog of allegedly superior selections, I feel slightly like shouting out as a teenager: boo-ring. Just as a great many Democratic partisans of Mr. Obama did, when surveying a field of establishmentarian dinosaurs in a year of change.

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Obama moves to distance himself from his own campaign’s harshly antagonistic rhetoric against Palin. Commendable, but probably unwise. Palin represents a direct threat to one of Obama’s core constituencies and thus it would be to his advantage to define her negatively and fast. Even if the ‘inexperience’ attack is hopelessly misguided for obvious reasons.

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Try to stay out of a if you can.

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Curious what Mitt Romney’s take was on Sarah Palin? Nah, me neither. But if you were, where else would you turn but to Hugh Hewitt.

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Now even James Dobson, who famously refused to vote Republican this year on social conservative grounds, has endorsed McCain thanks to Palin.

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Politico notices that the initial attacks against Sarah Palin from the Obama campaign have been, well, fumbling and badly considered. They volunteer some help to the befuddled Obama Nation, by suggesting that Palin’s respect for Hillary Clinton’s complaints of sexism is, um, a little recent. True, but new or old, was she right in women’s view? A nettlesome matter there for Obama.

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MySpace, apparently in the mood for universal condemnation, has deleted the photographs of burn victim BJ McCombs for being “offensive” on sight. I don’t know about you, but when I think of the limitless number of offensive things I’ve seen on MySpace, young BJ McCombs isn’t among them.

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A couple of days into Russian-declared, universally unrecognized independence (excluding Hamas and Belarus), South Ossetian officials have expressed their desire to be annexed by Russia. The brave new defenders of Russian imperialism on the American Left have thus suddenly found their arguments for fake Ossetian self-determination on Georgian soil dealt a sudden blow.

Apologizing for Russian foreign policy ventures is historically always a tricky business. The sensibility of which is perhaps now restricted to the brief thaw of Yeltsin’s dream of a benign commonwealth of trade and friendship. A dream now sustaining an excruciatingly painful death on the world stage.

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Michael Totten is in Georgia interviewing actual Georgian soldiers and finding out what went on behind the scenes of this conflict. Turns out Saakashvili didn’t start it after all.

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Just got this email from the Fred Thompson PAC.

Friends,

At this crucial moment in our nation’s history, it is vital that we adhere to the fundamental conservative principles that have unified us for over two centuries. On Monday, September 1, Senator Fred Thompson will announce a major new effort to ensure that these conservative principles are supported and defended across our country and at every level of government.

Please stay tuned and join Senator Thompson as he unveils this exciting endeavor.

Not sure what this is about. Perhaps some sort of conservative organization he’s starting/joining?

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It’s rather amusing to see the ticket lacking in any executive experience, with a presidential nominee of extremely limited elected experience, attempting to attack McCain’s vice presidential nominee on grounds of inexperience. Reeling a bit perhaps. A more mature Democratic attack would go after the trooper scandal, the charge of reform hypocrisy and Sarah’s connection to energy company interests. Not that this would prove more successful mind you, but it’s a defter charge that takes account of the Obama campaign’s own manifest weakness in the more important area of the presidential nominee’s inexperience.

It’s also a more traditional process to select a presidential nominee with considerable experience, while taking on a younger apprentice for the vice presidential nominee. Obama, by selecting Biden, is only replicating the George W. Bush and John F. Kennedy departures from this predominant historical pattern. A departure that I think we’ve been arguably ill-served by in both cases.

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Way back in February 2007, when I was still writing for postpolitical, an obscure little blog popped up pitching Sarah Palin for the Vice Presidency. At the time few were that familiar with Sarah’s record or wise enough to predict its national electoral implications. Yet despite the novelty of the idea, I thought then and since that it was an inspired choice. I’ve since journeyed further toward that prescient blog’s recommendation and concluded it was the only choice. Thus it’s fun to finally see Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President reveling justifiably in the moment.

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CNN and Foxnews are reporting. Pretty surprising to me, but a pleasant surprise.

Discussion topic: I am hearing from Obama supporters that she’s a bad pick because she’s inexperienced. Is this an actual argument Obama wants to make? Does this preclude McCain from attacking Obama’s inexpience? Does the fact that Palin has over 100 times more executive expience than Obama help? (100×0=0)

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Ah, the fever of speculation. This is an interesting report from a local paper in Ohio, which found an eyewitness to the alleged Palin plane:

According to Rich Bevis of B&B Aero, the fixed-based operator at Hook Field, the jet, a Gulfstream IV which has the flight range to fly from Alaska to Europe, landed at about 10:15 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 28.

Bevis said the woman “was a real close match to Palin” and added that the flight crew that’s based in the Seattle area was told to fly to Anchorage to pick up their party and fly to Middletown.

Bevis said the jet had a woman, two teenagers and two men on board and that a couple of white vans met the plane, gathered their gear and took the party to an undisclosed location
(OxfordPress)

And yes, Palin has two teenage daughters (Bristol & Willow).

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Thankfully Pawlenty is out, Romney is out, and Matt Drudge is dropping a big tease that it might be Sarah Palin for Vice President after all. I personally would forgive McCain three decades of criticism if he selected her. It would constitute a genuinely visionary decision, for this election and the future of the Republican party. And, it should be said, one very much outside McCain’s normal comfort zone.

CNN is reporting that a plane has left Anchorage for Dayton, Ohio carrying the governor of Alaska. Hmm.

Alaska news is unable to confirm the flight carried the governor however.

ABC News’ Kate McCarthy says Palin is in Wasilla, Alaska. Uh-oh.

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