Old John

Why I'm Voting for Barack Obama on November 4

dlindorff — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:04:31 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Okay, I was going to vote for Ralph Nader this November 4.

It was an easy decision. I live in Pennsylvania, which is now,
according to all the polls, reliably in the Obama column, with the
Democratic candidate holding an insurmountable lead in the polls of 14
percent over Republican John McCain—enough to overcome even the most
devious Republican vote suppression techniques and voting machine
chicanery.

I was going to vote for Nader because I find Obama to be a
seriously flawed candidate. He ran early on an anti-Iraq War platform,
saying not that invading Iraq was wrong legally and morally, but that
it was “the wrong war.” Since then, he has backed away even from saying
he wanted the war ended, opting for a 16-month withdrawal timetable
that would have the killing and dying in that sad land going on longer
than most wars this nation has fought. He has also called for an
escalation of the war in Afghanistan, despite clear evidence that more
troops just will make the situation there worse, and has called for an
expansion of the US military budget, to increase the size of the Army
and Marines, which will only encourage more warmongering, more killing
and more waste of precious resources.

Obama also sold us all out by going along with a bill sought by
President Bush granting immunity to telecom companies that aided and
abetted the illegal and unconstitutional spying on Americans by the
National Security Agency—spying that we now know is massive almost
beyond our imagination, even including the monitoring of private family
conversations of American service personnel in Iraq, of journalists,
and almost certainly of Bush administration political “enemies.” By
backing that obscene bill, Obama has made it almost impossible for
victims of this police-state surveillance campaign to sue and find out
what the Bush/Cheney administration has been up to all these years.

In so many ways, Obama has tacked to the middle or even the right, while spouting soaring but empty rhetoric about “change.”

Meanwhile, everything Ralph Nader says makes perfect sense. He has
consistently called the Iraq and Afghanistan wars the crimes that they
are. He has consistently called for a nationalized health care system,
which every other modern nation has long since proven to be a more
cost-effective and health-effective way to run a medical system than
the failed free-market approach advocated by Obama and the rest of the
Establishment political system. He has correctly denounced the economic
bailout as welfare for the rich and for the corporate criminals who
have been sucking the life out of the US economy for years.

And yet, I think I have to vote of Obama this year.

The reason is partly because I know I would vote for Obama if I
lived in Ohio or Indiana, where the race between McCain and Obama is
too close to call, and so, to vote for Nader when it is simply safe to
do so here in Pennsylvania is really a cop-out.

But even more important, when I see the hate-filled racists and
right-wing yahoos braying at McCain and Palin rallies, when I hear
people calling for Obama to be killed or lynched, and when I see the
rabid hate mail circulating in email inboxes falsely labeling him as a
secret Muslim, a terrorist, a Marxist and a black nationalist, I want
to see the man resoundingly win this election.

But it’s more than that. I also, perhaps against all logic and
experience, admit that I expect something good of an Obama presidency.

Call me naïve, but based upon my own life experience, I keep
thinking that a guy who has worked as a community organizer, a Harvard
Law School grad (and even law journal editor!) who could have named his
price at a Wall Street law firm, but who chose instead to be a
political and community activist, a guy who has relatives who live in
humble surroundings in Kenya, and who spent some of his childhood
actually living in a Third World Asian nation, not to mention a guy who
has surely felt the sting of being called a nigger, has to bring
something new to the White House. Certainly no other president in the
history of the country has come to the office with such a background.

Sure Obama is no leftist candidate. But if he were, he wouldn’t be
heading for an election victory. He wouldn’t even be the Democratic
nominee. He’d be, at best, where Dennis Kucinich is—holding a seat in
Congress where his every progressive effort would be stymied or mocked
by the House leadership.

The unfortunate reality is that the true left in the US is a joke
(many of its purists even mock successful left candidates political
figures like Kucinich, for god’s sake!). Fractured and fractious small
groupings have little or no link to the organized labor
movement—traditionally the bedrock of any successful left political
power. And the labor movement itself is as weak as it has ever been and
keeps growing weaker. The left in the US, such as it is, has even less
connection with the broad mass of the American public, thanks to years
of successful propaganda linking it to Stalin, Mao and Soviet Communism.

I have no illusions about the progressivity of the Democratic
Party. Certainly it has its progressive elected officials who have made
it into office—people like Kucinich, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Russ
Feingold, Rep. Maxine Waters and the like. But clearly, the Democratic
Party has shown itself to be in thrall to the moneyed interests on Wall
Street and in the corporate suites.

That said, there are important things that could happen—and I
stress the word could, not would—if this election were to be won by
Obama and by Democrats in the Congress. One of these things is that
there will be new Supreme Court justices named over the next four
years. Some will inevitably replace some of the aging “liberals” on the
bench (some of whom have not always been so liberal on economic
issues). Some could also replace current conservative justices
(Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, both obese men, don’t
look terribly healthy to me, Justice Kennedy is getting on in years,
and even Chief Justice Roberts, while looking hale, has a problem with
epilepsy or some other ailment that has caused him to collapse in a
frothing fit of unconscious on occasion).

Also important is legislation to make it less of an obstacle course
for workers to win union representation and labor contracts on the job.
A major reason that unions have shrunk from over 30 percent of the
workforce in the 1950s to just 9 percent of the private workforce (and
13 percent of all workplaces, public and private) today, is that labor
law has been whittled away and turned to management’s advantage to such
an extent that it is almost impossible now to win a union election.
Employers who break labor laws suffer no penalty even when found
guilty, and workers who are unfairly fired for union activity can hope,
at best, if they are lucky, to win reinstatement and back pay after
fighting for years. Most just give up.

If a Democratic Congress passed new labor legislation and a
President Obama signed them into law, as he has promised to do, and if
new pro-labor officials were appointed to the national, regional and
local labor relations boards that adjudicate labor issues, we could see
a genuine revival of the labor movement in America with consequences
for workers’ lives, and for the political system that would be far
reaching and profound—and that could even pave the way for a resurgence
of a left/labor political movement.

Finally, with respect to war and militarism, I tend not to take
Obama’s warmongering seriously. Given the man’s background, I am
confident that he is not a militarist by nature. It may be politically
opportunistic for him to try during this campaign to out-tough McCain
on Afghanistan while calling for a wind-down of the war in Iraq, but it
would be a disaster for him to pursue a wider war in Afghanistan after
taking office, ensuring that his presidency, like Bush’s, Lyndon
Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s before him, would be dragged down by an
endless bloody conflict.

A President Obama will have his hands full trying to deal with an
unprecedented financial fiasco, and will want the wars off his plate as
quickly as possible. Maybe I’m being a Pollyanna, but I simply can’t
see a smart guy—and Obama is a smart guy—getting dragged into another
quagmire.

Besides, I have a darker vision, which is that the crisis of global
warming, so long denied by the Bush administration, is going to make
itself felt soon in ways that will be impossible to ignore, and which
will demand a crisis response. Obama, I believe, will be the right
person at the right time, to lead that response.

And that brings me to the final reason I am voting for Obama. As
crazy as John McCain clearly is, with his default setting on war as a
solution for all problems, this sickly and possibly terminally ill old
man has chosen to have a certifiable right-wing, closed-minded, bigoted
and stunningly ignorant religious zealot as his back-up. Sarah Palin,
as vice president, would in all probability end up becoming president
during a McCain first term.

This country and the world simply cannot risk having as the leader
of America an end-of-times believer at this critical moment. It’s not
just the polar bears and the wolves in Alaska who would suffer under a
Palin presidency. It would be all life on earth.
_____________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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McCain Must Release His Full Medical Records

Bob Fertik — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:31:30 -0400

Here's a pretty frightening assessment of McCain's skin cancer from Dr. Daniel Vlock, a former cancer researcher:

"The best case scenario is that he continues to age but effectively is able to perform the duties of the job," said Fratkin. "The worst case scenario is on January 21 2009, he has a seizure at his inauguration and is found to have multiple brain metastases. There is no way to navigate that risk assessment without those records."

2,279 physicians have signed a letter asking McCain for "full, public disclosure of all his medical records". More than 47,000 people have signed the petition. Won't you join them?

Does Anyone Want to Buy a Private Pension Plan? Going Once...

dlindorff — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:17:54 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

That deafening silence you hear coming from the McCain campaign is
straight-talkin’ John touting his plan for privatizing Social
Security...not.

With Wall Street banks falling like dominoes, a hundred billion dollars vanishing overnight, and the Treasury
Department scampering about trying to prop up failing enterprises
from Bear Stearns to Fannie Mae, and with domestic and global equity
and bond markets swooning, Americans are afraid to open those envelopes
that come every quarter telling them the value of their hard-earned
401(k) retirement plans.

No wonder John McCain isn’t touting privatizaton these days.

It’s not just that many of those private 401(k) plans McCain and
his ilk so love for the working stiff were invested in the very
financial institutions that have seen their share values drop to zero,
or in other financial institutions that were themselves heavily
invested in the stocks or debt instruments of the growing list of
failed institutions. It’s that the tottering US financial edifice is
shaking the broader markets, making stocks, bonds, and even giant
insurance companies like AIG look like houses of cards, and a poor bet
for funding one’s dotage.

Paul Krugman, in today’s New York Times, says that the Federal
Reserve Bank and the US Treasury Department, in letting Lehman Bros,
the nation’s fourth largest investment bank, go bankrupt, instead of
doing yet another government bailout, was a kind of financial Russian
roulette. Could Lehman’s collapse lead to a wholesale collapse of Wall
Street and the US banking system, ala 1929-31? Krugman says,
incredibly, that nobody really knows, including Fed Chairman Ben
Bernacke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

That’s not the kind of thing you want to hear when you’ve managed,
over the course of a working life, to save maybe a few hundred grand in
a tax-deferred retirement plan that is all invested in stocks and
bonds. Nor is it very comforting, if you are one of the millions of
Americans who put your money into some kind of insurance annuity,
expecting to get a guaranteed stream of income for life, to hear that
AIG, the largest insurance company and one of the biggest issuers of
such “private pension” programs, is struggling to come up with $40
billion in cash to avoid going belly up itself.

Now fortunately, for nearly all American workers, there is a
backstop: Social Security, which is not invested in any financial
instruments, and which pays out monthly benefits to retired and
disabled workers and their dependents based not upon the whims of the
markets but on the lifetime earnings of the worker in question. Unlike
a 401(k) investment, which is dependent for its size and reliability on
the performance of the financial markets in which its assets are
invested, or an annuity, which is dependent upon the financial survival
and viability of the insurance company which issued it, Social Security
is a program in which the payments of benefits are an obligation of the
federal government, and are paid from a fund of money that has been
paid into by the retiree and her employer in earlier years, by current
workers and their employers who pay a tax on current earnings, and, if
necessary, by supplemental funds allocated by the Congress. Social
Security benefits are adjusted each year for inflation (though since
President Bill Clinton, those adjustments have been reduced because of
a sleight of hand that makes inflation appear to be less than it really
is).

McCain, and Republicans in general, have been pressing for years to
have Social Security privatized, or partially privatized, with at least
some of the money taken from employees and employers for Social
Security invested in financial instruments such as stocks or bonds.
They’ve tried to sell this snake oil to young workers by pointing to
the rising stock market, and claiming ominously that some day, with so
many current workers approaching retirement, Social Security will go
“bankrupt.” Last year, the Bush Administration, which has filled the
Social Security Administration with GOP hacks, actually had notices
sent out to every American worker warning that “unless something is
done,” Social Security might not be there for younger workers when it’s
their turn to retire.

This kind of cynical scare tactic is beneath contempt, and is
designed to weaken support for one of the most significant progressive
legacies of the New Deal. The reality is that as the Baby Boom
generation reaches retirement, starting with the first Boomers who will
hit 65 in 2011, the elderly lobby, already enormously powerful, will
swell to become perhaps the most powerful “special interest” voting
bloc this nation has ever seen. Retired Americans will have the
electoral clout in another 10 years to make Social Security whatever
they want it to be.

They (we really, since at 59 I am part of that generation) will
insure that the government pays us and our fellow retirees a decent
retirement stipend, and we will also insist that reforms be undertaken
to insure that our kids also get secure retirements.

We will do this not by undermining the program, as McCain and other
Republicans have called for, by privatizing all or part Social
Security, but by making sure that every dollar earned by even the
richest of people is taxed, instead of having the social security tax
limited to the first roughly $100,000 of earnings. We will demand that
if more taxes are needed, they be paid by employers, not workers.
Currently employers and employees each pay about 7.5% of wages as a
payroll tax into the Social Security Trust Fund. There is no reason why
that split should be 50/50, though. Employers could pay a bigger share.
(Right wing economists try to argue that any tax paid by an employer
ultimately comes out of the employees’ wages, but this ignores the law
of supply and demand: workers don’t negotiate wages, or accept a job at
a certain pay level, based upon the gross wage being paid, but on what
they will be taking home each payday. Extra taxes paid by an employer
could not be automatically taken out of employee pay. They would have
to come out of corporate profits.)

The timing of the current spreading financial crisis has exposed
McCain’s call for privatization of Social Security as a bad idea
masquerading as reform. Since McCain can be expected to pursue the idea
if elected, it’s just one more reason for American voters to reject his
candidacy.
______________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006
and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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This Country is Nuts!

dlindorff — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:45:20 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Okay, I have to vent here. We all get a little crazy sitting alone
at our keyboards in this business, and it's finally gotten to me.

I know there are serious signs of a complete mental breakdown in the
US, with polls reporting that millions of people are actually excited
at having a low-rent religious fanatic who consistently mispronounces
pundit as "pundint" (shades of Dubya!), pilfers state funds for her
family's personal use, lies about her alleged opposition to Washington
pork, claims the bloody war in Iraq is "God's will," forces her
17-year-old daughter to make a momentary mistake into a lifetime one by
marrying the kid who got her pregnant, and refers to blacks as "sambo"
and to Alaska's indigenous people as "arctic arabs," running for vice
president on the ticket with a man who is a walking medical disaster
waiting to happen.

These are probably the same people who still give the worst
president in the history of the Union a 30 percent approval rating, who
keep watching reality TV shows (perhaps thinking they're real), and who
still think having 180,000 US troops indiscriminately slaughtering
Iraqis, Afghanis and Pakistanis is making the US "safe."

But right now I want to talk about Homeland Security and the US Postal Service, two small examples of domestic insanity.

I tried to mail a book to my father last Saturday for his 86th
birthday. In order to make sure it would get there by Tuesday, I sent
it in one of those flat-rate Priority Mail envelopes--the ones that
promise two-day delivery. It cost me $4.80 (five 90-cent stamps, one
24-cent stamp and two 3-cent stamps). I drop the little package off
after hours into the mail slot in the lobby of my local post office.

Yesterday, my envelope was in my mailbox, though, with a blue
sticker attached headed: "Important Customer Information: We regret
that your mail was not collected or is being returned to you due to
heightened security requirements. All mail that bears postage stamps
and weighs more than 13 ounces MUST be taken by the customer to a
retail service associate at a Post Office."

Okay, so dad won't get his present on his birthday.

I called the local PO to ask what was going on, and was told that
any package over 13 ounces with stamps has to be handed in person to a
counter employee.

"With stamps?" I asked. "What if I had worked at a company and had a
metered stamp put on it and then dropped it in a mailbox or mail slot?"

"Then it would go," I was told. "Because we'd have a meter number to trace who mailed it."

Let's see. The meter would trace the package to whatever big company
I might have worked at, but I don't see how that would help them trace
it to the actual mailer.

Now, what about if I brought my package to the counter? Would it be
opened and checked? No, I was told. I would simply be asked by the
counter clerk whether the package contained any banned substances, like
bodily fluids, liquids or bombs. If I said no, it would be accepted for
mailing. ("I know this sounds silly," the postal worker on the phone
told me, "but I don't make the rules. It's Homeland Security.")

Wow. The Post Office and the Department of Homeland Security are
sure keeping our mail trucks and our airlines safe with this clever
policy.

I mean, we can be sure that those stoopid Ayrabs wouldn't think to
put a metered stamp on the bomb they send through the mails. And that
asking at the counter thing, that would sure catch anyone trying to
slip some deadly substance into the mail stream. The clerks are
probably trained to look for certain kinds of markers of suspicious
behavior--a tic, a shifty look, or some reticence in the answer given.

Right.

So this is what it has come to in America. We're ready to put an
refugee from the "Jerry Springer" show a missed heartbeat away from the
White House, and we keep our mail and our aircraft industry safe from
terrorists by returning (through the mail, mind you!!) packages that
are left in a mailbox if they have postage stamps on them.

Dad, if you're reading this, I'm sorry your present is going to
arrive late. Take it up with Mike Chertoff, the guy who made sure
everyone got out of New Orleans alive when that city was hit by
Hurricane Katrina.

Is this a great country or what?
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

President Sarah Palin?

Bob Fertik — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:00:11 -0400

As we recently noted, John McCain's age is no joke - no matter how many times he goes on late-night TV to joke about it.

And since McCain's father (70) and grandfather (61) both died suddenly of heart attacks, the idea of a Vice President being "one heartbeat away from the Presidency" isn't just a slogan.

If John McCain and Sarah Palin win in November, the odds of "President Sarah Palin" are very high - 1 in 3, according to actuarial tables. Isn't that a terrifying thought?

Thanks to George Bush and Dick Cheney, America is facing profound problems on every front: two hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and two cold wars with Russia and Iran; mortgage and dollar meltdowns; and an energy/environmental crisis.

Amidst these and many other crises, why did McCain choose Sarah Palin? For one reason: she opposes abortion in all cases, even for rape and incest or to save the life of the woman.

She has no other qualifications. Until two years ago, she was the mayor of a small town and left behind a budget disaster. As governor, she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law, and she has lied about it ever since.

Palin's adamant opposition to abortion made her "fully qualified" to be President in the eyes of the "Taliban wing" of the Republican Party, led by James Dobson and Rush Limbaugh. And that was good enough for John McCain.

In 2000, John McCain famously denounced Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance." But the religious right got even by smearing him in South Carolina and making George Bush the Republican nominee. So now he's on his hands and knees begging for their forgiveness and support.

Everyone who has not been brainwashed by the Religious Right should be horrified by McCain's choice - and do everything in their power to elect Barack Obama.

Update 1: When McCain introduced her to the nation, she lied about opposing the infamous "bridge to nowhere." She ran for Governor in 2006 as a supporter of the bridge, and still supported it when Congress cancelled it.

Update 2: McCain calls Palin his "partner and soulmate" even though he only met her once before choosing her.

Update 3: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were in comedy heaven.

Update 4: Is Palin more in synch with Cindy Sheehan than with John McCain?

“I’m a mom, and my son is going to get deployed in September, and we better have a real clear plan for this war. And it better not have to do with oil and dependence on foreign energy.”

Update 5: Palin's presumed appeal to evangelicals might not be so strong after all because they believe God ordained woman's place to the home, not the workplace - let alone the White House:

The home, the family, the raising of children--it is the zenith of human accomplishment. It's a full-time job, requiring full-time attention if it's to encompass all God intended. [...]

The message is "women can have it all"...and it is a lie, because they can't.

The message is "men and women should have equal access to the same roles". The reality is, that's not how God created HIS universe to run. He created them male and female, and yes, by their very biological design, nature screams at our dull senses "YOU ARE DIFFERENT"! Created for different purposes, created to compliment one another in their life work.

Update 6: On the other side of the mommy wars, working moms view Palin's selection as an insult:

I found Palin's selection, and her calculated shout-out to unhappy Clinton supporters, insulting. In that sense, Palin's selection seems less like Quayle and more like Clarence Thomas for the Supeme Court. "She's exactly who I need," McCain said -- but the notion that Palin, like Thomas, is the best-qualified for the job is ludicrous.

Clinton's candidacy was attractive to me because it was not premised on gender. "I am very proud to be making history running as a woman for president of the United States, but I'm not running because I am a woman," she said. "I'm running because I think I am the most qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running in January 2009."

Update 7: JedReport caught McCain staring at Palin's bod and fingering his ring while his face twitched. Was I right when I said McCain chose his third wife?

John McCain Picks His Third Wife

Bob Fertik — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:20:59 -0400

It's a cliche that the Vice President is "one heartbeat away" from the most powerful job in the world.

But in John McCain's case, it's more than a cliche: both his father (70) and grandfather (61) died suddenly of heart attacks.

So who did McCain choose to be "one heartbeat away"?

The 44-year-old first-term governor of the second smallest state who is embroiled in a corruption scandal and has no experience in Washington, in military affairs, or in foreign policy. What on earth was McCain thinking?

1. She's not a Mormon. Sorry Mitt, but the GOP's Southern Baptist and evangelical base just wasn't that into you.

2. She's not a Jew. Sorry Joe, but the GOP Country Club still has its standards.

3. She's not a white male. Sorry Tim, but this just isn't the year of the Average White Man.

4. She's not old. Sorry Kay Bailey, but you're no longer hot. (Kay Bailey just told CNN, "I really don't know that much about her." Meow!)

Sarah Palin once competed for Miss Alaska, so she's definitely hot. But she has no qualifications to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency while the U.S. is fighting two wars and on the brink of two more.

Did McCain choose a Vice President of the United States - or his third wife?

No wonder Cindy keeps all the money and houses in her name. She's a lot smarter than the rest of the Republicans, who made the mistake of their lives in "marrying" John McCain. She knows that a man who ditched his first wife for a pretty young woman would do the same thing again - in a heartbeat.

Hopefully the American people will have the good sense not to make the same mistake as the Republicans.

Update 1: As Kos writes, McCain is slavishly pandering to the Huckabee/Dobson wing of the Republican Party.

We already know she is virulently anti-choice. But did you know she is a creationist?

The volatile issue of teaching creation science in public schools popped up in the Alaska governor's race this week when Republican Sarah Palin said she thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state's public classrooms. Palin was answering a question from the moderator near the conclusion of Wednesday night's televised debate on KAKM Channel 7 when she said, "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information.

Two years ago, Palin was part-time mayor of a village of 7,000. Today, she's supposedly ready to step in to run this country in the eventuality that Sen. McCentury can no longer perform those duties? Right. This was a sop to the Right, which was unwilling to accept a pro-choice Republican on the ticket, and a pathetic and hilariously desperate effort to grab the 17 holdout PUMAs (who are fake Democrats already willing to vote for McCain anyway).

Did Karl Rove pwn McCain by manufacturing the fake PUMA controversy?

Update 2: If McCain loses Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan, who does he have left?

Joe Scarborough: "I can't imagine a woman that's been a governor for a year and a half, but to debate Joe Biden on Georgia, a re-emerging Russia, an emerging China and India, on the Middle East, my God, how does she do that?"
Pat Buchanan: "Biggest political gamble I believe just about in American political history...that is not hyberbole. I can think of no choice of VP that approaches this."

Update 3: Josh Marshall summarizes Palin's own Troopergate:

Her brother-in-law is a state trooper who is in the midst of an ugly custody battle with her sister. And she's accused of getting the state police to fire him. Recently she was forced to admit that one of her aides had done this, though she insists she didn't know.

Update 4: If Obama is a secret Muslim in the fevered minds of rightwingers, is Sarah a secret Socialist?

She’s been very “nanny-state” in some of her dealings in Alaska, especially a failed attempt to keep a big Alaskan state-owned dairy open after it became hopelessly uncompetitive and her insistence on raising the State’s share of oil revenues as a form of windfall tax then passing it on to citizens in windfall payments. Now, where have I heard that idea recently?

Update 5: Just one month ago, she had no idea what the VP even does (video here), and her only interest in the job was helping Alaskans:

“As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question.”

Update 6: The first two days of the Democratic convention were dominated by the GOP talking point that Hillary's supporters were bitter over Obama's victory and subsequent refusal to choose her as VP. So will that story dominate the first two days of the Republican convention?

the Palin pick left bruised feelings among the short-list contenders who were not picked -- and infuriated some Republican officials who privately said McCain had gone out on a limb, unnecessarily, without laying the groundwork for such an unknown. Two senior Republican officials close to Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty said they had both been rudely strung along and now "feel manipulated."

"They now know that they were used as decoys, well after McCain had decided not to pick them," one Republican involved in the process said.

Update 7: Nice email from Florida Democratic Party chair Karen Thurman:

Heartbeat from the Presidency

John McCain rolled the dice with his VP pick today - in an attempt to woo women voters.
But we cannot gamble with women's lives.

Don't let your friends, family and co-workers be fooled: Alaskan Sarah Palin is a dangerous right-winger who lacks the judgment to lead.

In 2000, Palin endorsed Pat Buchanan for President. Yes, that Pat Buchanan.

In 2006, Palin ran for Alaska Governor on a message of change - and then turned out to be just another corrupt Alaska politician who's now under investigation in her own state.

She's no Hillary Clinton. She's Dan Quayle in a dress.

Women voters who care about equal rights, choice, family and other issues, will not see a partner in Palin.

She is lockstep with Bush and McCain on issues important to women. Every one of them. That's scary.

The corrupt trio of Ted Stevens, Don Young, and Lisa Murkowski all raised campaign money for Palin.

John McCain claimed that Barack Obama lacked experience. Then he picked a VP who has just 20 months at the helm of a state with a population smaller than the city of Jacksonville, and zero foreign policy experience. Palin would be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Barack Obama is ready to lead. Last night he showed us what the next American President will look like. He and Joe Biden will deliver change we need.

I especially like the Pat Buchanan part - Florida voters remember his accidental but devastating role in the 2000 stolen election all too well.

Update 8: Will Paulin really appeal to evangelical moms? desmoinesdem has serious doubts:

I am not convinced these rank and file members of the religious right will celebrate Palin's selection. They believe women should be homemakers who homeschool their children, and they think feminism and the trend toward working outside the home is undermining "Biblical womanhood."

No matter how enthusiastically the Republican pundits welcome Palin, I suspect that many social conservatives will feel she should be at home, taking care of her special-needs infant and schooling her older children.

Very interesting...

Update 9: Even rightwing bloggers are appalled:

Jonah Goldberg: "She may not be ready for primetime. The heartbeat-from-the-presidency issue is a real one."
Ramesh Ponnuru: "Inexperience. Palin has been governor for about two minutes. Thanks to McCain’s decision, Palin could be commander-in-chief next year. That may strike people as a reckless choice; it strikes me that way. And McCain's age raised the stakes on this issue."
Katherine Jean Lopez: "As much as I loathe Obama-Biden, I can't in good conscience vote for a McCain-Palin ticket. Palin has absolutely no experience in foreign affairs. Considering both McCain's advanced age and the state of the world today, it is essential that the veep be exceedingly qualified to assume the office of president. I simply don't have any confidence in Palin's ability to deal effectively with Iran, Russia, China, etc. I certainly will not cast a vote for Obama-Biden, but nor will I vote for McCain-Palin. Looks like I'll either sit this one out or vote for Bob Barr. Why, o, why, didn't McCain listen to Rove and just pick Romney?"

Update 10: Only the Piety Pimps who run religious right fundraising scams are happy:

Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council and James Dobson's political hatchet man: "Senator McCain made an outstanding pick from the choices that were on the table. Sarah Palin clearly addresses the issues so many conservatives are concerned about. It balances out the ticket. She's also really a checkmate for the Democratic Party because folks who were looking to make history for Barack Obama can make history by voting for John McCain in seeing the first woman elected to the vice-presidency. It was a very strategic move by John McCain."
Mat Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel: "Absolutely brilliant choice. John McCain could not have chosen a better vice-presidential nominee that Gov. Palin. She is attractive, articulate, conservative, pro-family, pro-life, and pro-marriage. John McCain hit this one out of the ballpark."

Young Barack v. Old John

Bob Fertik — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:24:33 -0400

Tremayne compiled very interesting data on Presidential age. There have been 4 Presidents younger than Obama, and they were pretty good:

Obama would take office when he is about 47.5 years old which is only about 7 years less than average. Here are the Presidents that were younger than Obama (alternatively, they had less life experience):

Theodore Roosevelt, 42

John Kennedy, 43

Bill Clinton, 46

Ulysses S. Grant, 46

Of course McCain would be the oldest first-term President at 72, and the five next oldest Presidents were pretty bad:

On the other end of the spectrum is Ronald Reagan who was elected at 69. Most experts agree he was showing signs of Altzheimers while still in office. Outside of Reagan, there have only been 4 other Presidents who took office within TEN years of McCain's current age (72 tomorrow):

William Henry Harrison, 68

Zachary Taylor, 64

James Buchanan, 65

George HW Bush, 64

Quite a distinguished crew there. Two who died not long into office and another routinely on the list of worst presidents. Somewhere in here is the makings of a good response to the age charge.

John McCain is 72 Years Young

Bob Fertik — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:29:16 -0400

Today John McCain is 72 years young.

Who can forget how he celebrated his 69th in Arizona - while New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were drowning?

Mother Nature hasn't forgotten, and she's sending Hurricane Gustav back to the Gulf Coast the day Bush is scheduled to speak in St. Paul to nominate John McCain as his successor.

Is John McCain's Age Just a Joke?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:39:34 -0400

Is John McCain's age just a joke? FOX's Neil Cavuto thinks so, but do you?

Ronald Reagan, who was a year younger than McCain would be when sworn in, developed Alzheimer's while in office. McCain has had a few "senior moments," including his recent statement that the "League of Nations" needs to deal with Iran. (The League of Nations was disbanded in 1946 when John McCain was 10.)

And McCain's brain has taken a number of heavy blows, both physical and psychological. According to Dr. Kirk James Murphy, a V.A. physician who has long experience treating veterans with PTSD,

Sen McCain's life history indicates that his brain is at greater than average risk of dysfunction and impairment in the following areas:
- capacity to learn, recall, and reason with complex new information
- judgement and impulse control
- capacity to devote sustained attention.

Many of McCain's contemporaries feel the Presidency is far too demanding a job for someone their age.

Given these facts, isn't McCain's age more than just a joke?