August 29, 2008
Thanks, Darrell: you're all about the American virtues. Mom, apple pie, and mashing the enemy into powder under one's boot. (But, you know: with love.)
Posted by: Attila Girl at
11:25 PM
| Comments (4)
| Add Comment
Post contains 84 words, total size 1 kb.
$12; or
$120; or
$1200; or
$12,000. (Although I think that last one is illegal because someone injected some irrational rules into the system a while back. I think that person needs a naughty librarian to help him see the error of his ways.)
Posted by: Attila Girl at
10:48 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 95 words, total size 1 kb.
You might end up with your body ventilated—by her, by her husband, by her son. By me.
Just try not to do it, Boy, okay?
Via Flopping Aces, who has some delicious insight into how the hardcore Hillary people are reacting to the Palin pick. Some are suggesting that we be on the alert for overt sexism (which has not been difficult to find today, of course). Some are voting for the McCain-Palin ticket. Some are already sending money to The Party That Dare Not Speak Its Name.
Popcorn. I will need a lot more popcorn around here to watch all this unfold.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
10:43 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 117 words, total size 1 kb.
Via a tweet that Hackbarth (see his analysis of Palinmania here) sent to Bluey, which I cleverly intercepted using this newfangled spy technology they call "Twitter."
Posted by: Attila Girl at
09:47 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 44 words, total size 1 kb.
1) The people at "Stuff We Like" enjoy breaking down the fourth wall, or whatever you call it when you're watching The Monkees, or Moonlighting, or Freakazoid!
2) This John P. McCann fellow is really interested in how this DVD is selling. Hm. Maybe he is a shareholder at Warner Brothers, or something like that. Somehow he reminds me of Douglas Douglas, but I can't quite figure out why . . .
Posted by: Attila Girl at
05:50 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 78 words, total size 1 kb.
(Okay, okay—Noonan's Goddessness would have to come after Susan B. Anthony's and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's respective Goddessossitude; for some reason those two are on my mind this week: the fighter and the intellectual. Kirk and Spock. I hate to break it to everyone, but they were both pro-life.)
Noonan footage via AllahP.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
05:08 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 116 words, total size 1 kb.
Come on: she's a mother. Does anyone remember which gender of bear you're supposed to look out for in grizzly country?
But Ace is right: she'll get more points for "grit" after she takes the razor wire to Biden.
His Aceness claims to be deducting "style points" for her "cuteness" and "sweetness," but it's impossible this time to tell whether he's joking. He acknowledges that there's real sexism going on out there in some of the reactions to Palin, but won't disclose for real whether or not he's sipping a little of that particular Kool-Aid. (At least, I can't suss it out. Does someone else have the "Moron Code Book"?)
She surprised me today. She was confident and unfazed, direct and sharp. I'm looking forward to being surprised further. But I guess I do need to be surprised further, as do many voters.Adorableness has its advantages, but it has its drawbacks too. She's got to show some real iron. And maybe cutting apart that soft-handed starched-shirt Joe Biden woud be a good start.
On a related note... Here's some sexist bias—some say women might be all in favor of women achieving great things in principle, but when it comes to specific women making concrete achievements, suddenly they're a bit lukewarm on the whole idea of sisterhood.
Jealousy and envy, I'm talking about. [We know, Ace: it's called "the Queen Bee syndrome," and every working woman has encountered it.—Ed.]
Is that real? Will this actually backfire and drive women away? [Maybe. One. Her initials are HRC, and she may actually, today, be contemplating voting for Barack Obama, for the very first time.—Ed.]
Attack Dog: Actually, a good start in dispelling the "too nice, too sweet" impression would be to play the role of the attack dog well. If she's thought of as being 25% a ball-breaker . . . well, win-win.
Burn on Barracuda: I wanted to google some of Palin's attacks against the Dems to remind myself of how well she did.
Allah has one, wrapping "fearmongering" on energy production around Joe Biden's pencil neck.
She has a sweetness to her as she "attacks." (Attacks in quotes, because of course what she's saying is both true and vitally relevant; but anytime a Republican notes a Democrat's votes or quotes it's an "attack," most often of the "intolerable and unacceptable" sort.)
I have to deduct style points, though, because that bubbly, sweet, gosh-darn sort of manner just doesn't seem serious or dour enough to me.
I know we've got that in spades from Mr. Warmth McCain, but still... I think she'll have to ease up on the sweetness and get a bit more grim.
On the plus side: Everything she says is right and informed. The only knock is the style one.
Yeah, well. Lady Thatcher made breakfast for her husband every goddamned day when she was P.M. But she seemed to acquit herself just fine on the job, despite the "handicap" of femininity.
Stacy Mac claims that some of the "morons" are genuinely conflicted about whether it's okay to ogle our next "vpilf," or quite possibly our next "cicilf." He suggests that they "go for it," but I suspect that the dudes doth protest too much, and . . . . what? Does anyone honestly think that they aren't already Googling "Sarah Palin naked"? Are you kidding me?
They just want to know whether they should feel guilty about doing it. You're up against biological imperatives, boys. Give yourselves a break.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
03:25 PM
| Comments (3)
| Add Comment
Post contains 574 words, total size 4 kb.
Via Memeorandum. By the way: if you're looking for news over there that doesn't have anything to do with Sarah Palin, be prepared to do some scrolling.
I still don't see the point in holding the election. I mean, that's like when one side says "checkmate," and the other person maintains that the game isn't won until they have physically seen their King taken off the board. It's a bit legalistic, if you ask me.
Though I guess in democracies we are supposed to go through the motions.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
03:03 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 107 words, total size 1 kb.
See, this is why journos in the bag for Obama should await the royal talking points before opening their dullard yaps.CNNÂ’s John Roberts: Palin Too Young and Inexperienced:
During the 9 a.m. EDT hour of “CNN Newsroom,” “American Morning” co-anchor John Roberts gave an analysis of Governor Sarah Palin during discussion of Senator John McCain’s vice presidential choice. Roberts focused on Palin’s lack of experience, saying that a prerequisite for the vice presidency should be the ability to step right into the office, especially because of McCain’s age. Roberts stated [...] “she’s the youngest governor ever in Alaska’s history, and she’s the first woman. She’s only been in office for a couple of years now, which really raises the experience issue here.”Leave aside for the moment the dissonance of pretending to worry about Palin’s “inexperience” should she be forced (by the death of a fossilized McCain) into the Presidency when you haven’t offered the same argument for a man with even less executive experience getting the job outright; that probably has to do with her being “the first woman” governor or something equally patriarchal.
But in making this argument — that a 72-year old candidate is almost certain to kick while in office — what you have further done is begun alienating aging boomers who will soon be McCain’s age, questioning their worth and viability, throwing into doubt their general competence.
—Which means Roberts has managed to 1) highlight the inexperience of the Dem candidate for president by going after the inexperience of the Republican candidate for vice president; 2) has managed to make an implied argument that the inexperience of a woman is somehow more dangerous than the inexperience of a man, or a man of (half) color; and 3) has managed to make an ageist argument that could, at some level, get aging Dem Boomers to believe that their party thinks of them as prop voters, necessary for victory, but after that, to be set afloat on an ice chunk and allowed to drift off serenely into the great political beyond.
Add to that the calculus that many Hillary supporters will be thinking, “that should have been Hillary!” and what we have here is a perfect storm of identity politics for the Dems to try to steer their shiny yacht through safely.
Yup. Come on, People: Energy crisis. Conservation comes first, right? Call off the election. It's just a silly exercise at this point.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
01:50 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 438 words, total size 3 kb.
And, yes: I've always thought Palin had the "naughty librarian" vibe down pat. Something to do with her choice of glasses, and the fact that she's so articulate, without, um, having to brag about her I.Q.
Thanks, Rusty!
Posted by: Attila Girl at
01:27 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 45 words, total size 1 kb.
"I'm not the guy," he said.
And the last time he was interviewed, he reiterated some of the highlights of his resume.
A good soldier, Pawlenty: like Patton. And I'll bet he didn't enjoy it any more than Patton did the runup to D-Day, but the element of surprise is important in these matters.
Word has it that this morning, Palin's staffers still thought she was in Alaska, and that her own mother found out that she was the VP pick from watching television today. I actually believe those two reports: the more people who are in on a secret, the higher the risk.
But I think Pawlenty knew. "I'm not the guy." Nice little red herring, Dude. And you're a heck of a sport.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
12:56 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 167 words, total size 1 kb.
•Sarah Palin used to wrestle kodiak bears in Alaskan bare knuckles fight clubs;
• Sarah Palin once bagged a caribou by staring it down until it died;
• Sarah Palin turned down a job as skipper of a Deadliest Catch boat because it wasnÂ’t challenging enough;
• Sarah Palin fishes salmon by convincing them itÂ’s in their interest to jump into the boat;
• Sarah Palin once guided SantaÂ’s sleigh through an Alaskan blizzard with the light from her smile.
Somehow, I feel like a hat tip to FrankJ is in order, and I'm not quite sure why . . .
Posted by: Attila Girl at
12:27 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 146 words, total size 1 kb.
There are going to be so many crossover votes: both Palin and McCain have been willing to buck the GOP when they found it appropriate. And Palin comes from a union background—she's also gone up against the energy companies from time to time.
Despite out that, the hard-core social conservatives won't be able to help notice that her commitment to life included bearing a Down's Syndrome child.
This election is just about over.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
08:49 AM
| Comments (8)
| Add Comment
Post contains 93 words, total size 1 kb.
That would be Sarah Palin of:
• executive experience (however brief);
• youth and energy to balance McCain's age;
• first-hand knowledge of the importance of developing more domestic energy production;
• two—count 'em, two—X chromosomes.
Happy Friday, Barack. Hope you enjoyed yourself last night.
P.S. CalTech Girl informs me that Palin's nickname is "Barracuda." (And, yes: that's from her days as a hockey player.)
UPDATE: Morrissey has a great analysis over at Hot Air, which you must read at once. Money quote:
First, though, let’s assess the risk. Palin has served less than two years as Governor of Alaska, which tends to eat into the experience message on which McCain has relied thus far. At 44, she’s younger than Barack Obama by three years. She has served as a mayor and as the Ethics Commissioner on the state board regulating oil and naturalk gas, for a total of eight years political experience before her election as governor. That’s also less than Obama has, with seven years in the Illinois legislature and three in the US Senate.However, the nature of the experience couldn’t be more different. Palin spent her entire political career crusading against the political machine that rules Alaska — which exists in her own Republican party. She blew the whistle on the state GOP chair, who had abused his power on the same commission to conduct party business. Obama, in contrast, talked a great deal about reform in Chicago but never challenged the party machine, preferring to take an easy ride as a protegé of Richard Daley instead.
Palin has no formal foreign-policy experience, which puts her at a disadvantage to Joe Biden. However, in nineteen months as governor, she certainly has had more practical experience in diplomacy than Biden or Obama have ever seen. She runs the only American state bordered only by two foreign countries, one of which has increasingly grown hostile to the US again, Russia.
And let’s face it — Team Obama can hardly attack Palin for a lack of foreign-policy experience. Obama has none at all, and neither Obama or Biden have any executive experience. Palin has almost over seven years of executive experience.
Politically, this puts Obama in a very tough position. The Democrats had prepared to launch a full assault on McCainÂ’s running mate, but having Palin as a target creates one large headache. If they go after her like they went after Hillary Clinton, Obama risks alienating women all over again. If they donÂ’t go after her like they went after Hillary, he risks alienating Hillary supporters, who will see this as a sign of disrespect for Hillary.
So. We're bothering to hold the election this fall . . . why?
UPDATE 2: While the female side of the rightosphere exchanges high-fives, James Joyner seems underwhelmed:
WeÂ’ll see what the reaction turns out to be. IÂ’m certainly not the target audience. But McCainÂ’s first big decision is, in my mind, a truly awful one. Obama went traditional but steady in Biden. It wasnÂ’t a bold pick but it was one that butressed his claim that he has judgment even though he lacks experience. McCain has done the opposite here.
Joyner's usually dead-on right about this kind of thing. He happens to be wrong this time. I love Joyner: he's the guy who got me to accept McCain as our nominee, and why that choice wasn't the compromise I initially felt it to be, given McCain's real, heartfelt commitment to the War on Terror, which is the major challenge of our age.
Brilliant guy. Doesn't "get" it yet. But he will.
UPDATE 3: The announcement is being made right now; I'm listening live.
UPDATE 4: The Wall Street Journal:
A native of Idaho who grew up in Alaska hunting and fishing, Gov. Palin gained a reputation for political purity early on. In 2004, she resigned as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission over ethical grounds. Among her concerns: That Mr. Murkowski had appointed Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, to a seat on her commission while Mr. Ruedrich got to keep his partisan post. Mr. Ruedrich ended up resigning from the body after Gov. Palin, among others, disclosed he was conducting Republican business in his state job. Mr. Ruedrich said he had, and agreed to pay a $12,000 state fine."Someone has to take a stand and change some things," Gov. Palin said in an interview in June in her office in downtown Anchorage, which is adorned with Alaskan knick knacks including the skin of a brown bear killed by her father.
In 2006, when she was running to unseat Mr. Murkowski, Gov. Palin says she got a call from Ben Stevens, then president of the Republican-run Alaska Senate and son of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, the powerful Alaska Republican. "He told me, 'You're not just running against Murkowski. You're running against me, my dad, the whole state Republican party'," Gov. Palin says.
The younger Mr. Stevens did not return calls for comment. He opted not to seek re-election after his was one of six legislative offices raided by federal agents in 2006. Four other state legislators have been sent to prison or are awaiting prosecution in the case, which has focused on bribery and other influence by oilfield contractor VECO Corp., whose chairman and a top lieutenant have pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges. Sen. Stevens, who handily won the Republican primary this week to face re-election in November, was indicted in the case and has pleaded not guilty.
In office, Gov. Palin -- whose husband, Todd, works as an oilfield worker and fisherman -- has set an earthier style than her predecessors. For one thing, she sold the private jet Mr. Murkowski used to get around Alaska, relying instead on commercial airlines and her family's Jetta and a state-issued black Suburban. "I love to drive," she says. She also waved off a security escort, driving herself to and from work every day from the Anchorage suburb of Wasilla, about 45 miles away.
I don't know if I mentioned that I'm a bit stoked about this babe.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
07:42 AM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 1052 words, total size 7 kb.
Stole it from AllahP.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
01:41 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 14 words, total size 1 kb.
August 28, 2008
Governor Jindal, in the Wall Street Journal, explaining how he and his team turned Louisiana around:
Three years ago today, Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans and southeast Louisiana. A few weeks later, Hurricane Rita hit southwest Louisiana, completely demolishing some of our coastal communities. These terrible storms destroyed thousands of small businesses, displaced hundreds of thousands of residents, killed over a thousand people, and caused tens of billions of dollars in property damage.At the time, many experts predicted Louisiana's economy would never be the same. That's true, though not the way the experts thought: It's getting better.
These storms forced us to rethink our aspirations as a state. We are not just rebuilding the failed institutions of the past -- we are rebuilding smarter.
We streamlined our state recovery processes, cutting red tape, and are pushing federal recovery dollars to local governments to rebuild critical infrastructure, all without forfeiting transparency and accountability. And we continue to focus on helping our hardest-hit communities complete their recovery efforts.
We also moved quickly to increase Louisiana's overall economic competitiveness. Shortly after my inauguration in January, we worked with the state legislature to adopt the strongest governmental ethics laws in the country. Next we eliminated unorthodox business taxes. We also adopted a comprehensive workforce-development reform plan to improve the effectiveness of our community and technical colleges, provide turnkey workforce solutions to expanding and relocating businesses, and ensure that our workforce programs are driven by real business needs.
For the first time in our history, Louisiana has become a hotbed for education innovation. In New Orleans, state and local education leaders are working with national nonprofits and foundations to implement a variety of promising reform efforts, including charter schools and school choice for disadvantaged kids.
While we need to retain and grow our traditional industries, the state also needs to diversify our economy through new, high-growth sectors.
Louisiana is now among the top three states in the country for film productions. We are seeking to match that success in the digital media sector . . .
We are becoming a national leader in the coming global nuclear-energy resurgence, as well. On Tuesday, The Shaw Group and Westinghouse announced that they chose Louisiana for the first manufacturing facility in the U.S. focused on building modular components for new and modified nuclear reactors.
Louisiana is attracting significant investment in mature industry sectors . . . . Edison Chouest Offshore, one of the world's most technologically advanced offshore vessel service companies, recently announced plans to construct a 1,000-job shipyard in Port of Terrebonne, in south Louisiana.
We also have implemented conservative fiscal management practices. For example, a state hiring freeze saved $39 million and led to the elimination of nearly 1,000 state jobs. I vetoed 258 line items in the recently passed state budget, which is more than double the number of vetoes in the past 12 budgets combined. And we ended our state's long-held habit of using one-time revenues to cover recurring expenditures. These efforts helped us to implement the largest personal income tax cut in state history, while freeing up new funds to invest in higher education, transportation, research, health care and coastal restoration.
Thanks in large part to these reforms and our aggressive efforts to attract new business investment, our economy today is strong. Compared to the nation as a whole, Louisiana's economy is growing substantially faster, and our state has considerably lower unemployment levels.
The rest of the country is starting to take notice. Citing strong fiscal management, three major credit-rating agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch -- recently upgraded Louisiana's bond ratings. The Center for Public Integrity noted that Louisiana's new governmental ethics laws regarding legislative disclosure will increase our ranking to first in the country, from 44th. For the first time, U.S. News & World Report ranked LSU in the top tier of its list of America's Best Colleges. And Forbes magazine increased its growth-prospects ranking for Louisiana to 17th from 45th.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
08:44 PM
| Comments (4)
| Add Comment
Post contains 720 words, total size 5 kb.
Congratulations, base. Governor Palin, your time will come.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
04:24 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.
Please discuss.
UPDATE:
I'm glad they can't revoke your soul for tryin'--watch Bobbie flub a line, here:
Posted by: Attila Girl at
01:40 PM
| Comments (3)
| Add Comment
Post contains 36 words, total size 1 kb.
Via AllahP, who points out that if Obama attacks McCain tonight, he may well look "ungracious." If he's smart, he'd editing his speech a bit, as we speak.
There is a sort of warmth to McCain that one cannot deny, despite his temper, and his inability—at times—to suffer fools.
I don't see a note on this memo, however, that John McCain approved it. I'm sure he never saw it.
Anyway, it's a clever move.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
01:30 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 76 words, total size 1 kb.
From Stratfor's Political Diary (subscription only; here's the money quote):
The Russians are getting increasingly bolder in their actions against the West, taking full advantage of the fact that NATO can do little to seriously undermine Russia’s moves in the Caucasus. But Russia is not invincible — especially when it comes to Russian defenses against the West in the Black Sea.The Black Sea is absolutely critical to Russian defense. Though NATO does not currently have the capability to project power through land forces against Russia, it does have the naval assets to give the Russians pause. Already, nine Western warships (including U.S., Polish, Spanish, Turkish, and token Bulgarian and Romanian vessels) have made their way into the Black Sea in the name of humanitarian aid for Georgia. Russia is accusing the West of building up a NATO strike group in this body of water with which to threaten Russia’s hold on the Caucasus, and perhaps beyond.
The Russians simply cannot allow an increased NATO presence in this particular body of water to remain unanswered. The Black Sea is an important buffer for what is a direct line to the Russian underbelly, the Ukrainian plains and the land bridge that extends between the Black and Caspian Seas. Russia is well-aware of its weaknesses when it comes to defending this crucial frontier. The Black Sea, and the Aegean beyond it, essentially comprises a NATO lake. Controlled by Turkey through the Dardanelles, the Turkish and U.S. naval presence combined could easily overwhelm the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The last thing Moscow wants is a U.S. naval strike force in the Black Sea threatening MoscowÂ’s control of the Caucasus, crucial for its logistical and supply links to Russian troops in Georgia.
And so, the Russian response is already beginning to take effect. The Black Sea Navy flagship “Moskva” sailed from Sevastopol today, and the Russians are likely to deploy more of their current — albeit limited — naval assets out of the Crimean Peninsula. Such moves are only likely to give NATO forces more cause to beef up their naval presence in the Black Sea, further contributing to the Kremlin’s sense of insecurity.
At that point, the next logical step for the Russians is to start spending some of their three quarters of a trillion dollars in reserves on covert operations that would force the United States to split its attention. It was not too long ago that the Russian intelligence powerhouse excelled in starting up fires in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East to keep the West preoccupied. In the Cold War days, the Russian FSB and KGB were neck-deep in backing groups like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Red Brigades in Italy and the Palestine Liberation Organization across the Middle East. Names and ideologies have since shifted, but it is not beyond the Russian FSB to spread its tentacles once again into certain areas of the world where it can poke and prod the West.
This type of tit-for-tat escalation defined the Cold War. Now that the Black Sea has come into play, we are now just a few short steps from having this fracas in the Caucasus fully revive those Cold War tensions. Russia may have been looking for a relatively risk-free option to confront the United States with the war in Georgia. But now that we are seeing hints of a NATO naval build-up in the Black Sea, the Russians may be getting more than they asked for.
h/t: St9, who points out that we want to watch Germany's reaction particularly closely, and that Russia itself is not without splinter groups that could lead to a partitioning. A country with an antiquated military, he remarks, shouldn't bank too hard on a temporary petro-superiority.
I'm off to look for hybrid sedans to replace my husband's car with, after which I'll be installing a windfarm on the roof of my condo, and converting the cruiser to run on algae-derived ethanol. It's going to be a busy day.
Posted by: Attila Girl at
01:19 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 686 words, total size 4 kb.
218 queries taking 0.1615 seconds, 523 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
