Palau – Page 67 – Prog Gold

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, washed the t-shirt 23 times, threw the t-shirt in the ragbag, now I'm polishing furniture with it.

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Frog-Boiling Their Way To Victory

Published on September 9, 2008

Arrgh, the Palin, it just goes on and on. Just when you think there couldn’t be anything worse…

The latest? Charging rape victims for the rape testing kits used in investigating the crime.

RNC operatives are adamant they thoroughly and comprehensively vetted this candidate and that they know all the skeletons in her closet. If that’s true (though Republicans and McCain aren’t known for their veracity) it leads one to the inescapable conclusion that revelations already known to the McCain press team are being deliberately drip-fed to the blogosphere to keep them distracted and to wear the public capacity for shock down. It’s war by attrition. Each new story lowers the bar; a pregnant teen daughter? Ho hum. So last week. Lies? Stale news. Racism? So what? Eventually they’ll expose Palin as a kitten-torturing suicide bomber and by that point the media response will be a shrug and articles on Obama’s kids’ hair.

Whilst I love all this stuff and I share emptywheel of Firedoglake’s outrage at the latest story –

Count me in among those who think that this is easily the single most disgusting thing I have seen since the 1600 Crew allowed Abu Gonzales to run the Justice Department. The village idiot of Wasilla could run up debts in excess of $20 million dollars during her tenure, but providing law enforcement (a government service) on a pay-as-you-go basis under the guise of “protect and serve” for women who have been raped hits a new low even among republicans who are law-enforcement junkies willing to toss a DFH in jail for a bad haircut.

What I actually want to know right now is what fresh hell Bush, Cheney and the rump of the neocons are wreaking while the media old and new are otherwise occupied salivating over the latest Palin outrage.

I’m also wondering what on earth the Democrats and Obama’s advisers are up to. Call this a campaign? It’s all very well putting out high-minded response videos but currently the Republicans are controlling the horizontal and the vertical.

“If Team Obama don’t pull their collective fingers out they’re going to lose this thing”, think some Democrats:

Colour Me Shocked – Yet Hardly Surprised

Published on September 8, 2008

If what’s being reported is true, Sarah Palin is apparently a vicious racist as well as the class cow. But then, did I really ever think she’d be anything else?

From the LA Progressive [Via The Poor Man] comes this heartwarming story of everyday gubernatorial bigotry:

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Read whole thing

Well, there it is, racism in the raw out and on the table. Wherever do the campaigns go from here?

UPDATE:

An Alaskan anti-Palinist casts doubt on the allegations.

Read both and make your own mind up.

Greeks Bearing Gifts

Published on September 8, 2008

Some citizens of Greece aren’t just going suck it up while soaring inflation starts to hit:

Greek “Robin Hoods” raid stores to fight high prices

Greek anarchists stormed a supermarket on Thursday and handed out food for free in the latest of a wave of raids provoked by soaring consumer prices.

About 20 unarmed people, mostly wearing black hoods, carried out the midday robbery in the northern city of Thesaaloniki, police said.

Local media have labelled the raiders “Robin Hoods” following previous raids.

They take only packets of pasta, rice and cartons of milk which they drop in the middle of the street for people to collect, a police official said.

“They have never stolen money or hurt anyone. They ask people to remain calm but use ambush tactics, jumping over cash desks,” he said.

[Just an aside on how the editorial voice can potentially distort a story: how do Reuters know these people are ‘anarchists’, not just tapped-out supermarket customers or a gang of generous common thieves with a sense of humour? And what do they mean by ‘anarchist’ exactly? Small ‘a’ anarchists or big ‘A’, Black Bloc, agents provocateur type Anarchists?]

Thanks For That. I Think.

Published on September 8, 2008

I will grudgingly admit that Sarah ‘Get your zygotes out for the lads’ Palin has done at least one good service for women – she’s made women in glasses publicly sexy, albeit in a weirdly fetishistic, libertarianism-gone-mad sort of a way. “All the better to look down my gunsights at you, my sweet…”

Clothes and accessories are of course political signifiers in a media age and in an election year no candidate’s clothing is chosen without consideration of what it says to the viewers. To wit: ABC News while Hillary was still a contender, with “A Look Back At Hillary’s Year In Pantsuits.” Now that the nation’s eyes are on Palin, it’s all “Are Palin’s Glasses the New Pantsuit?”

Those of us who are a bit nerdy or who are lucky enough to live with a geek already know about glasses being incredibly sexy, thanks very much. But this plain glass in frames thing (which Palin didn’t start btw, it was those bloody engineer-cap wearing, soul-patched hipster wannabes that litter up the place) is pissing me off. I didn’t used to mind being described as geeky. Girl geekdom was an online bulwark against the superficial consumerist tat that passes for women’s print media.

Now I loathe it.The trend mill has already ground up, consumed and discarded most of our stuff (here’s looking at you, Boing Boing) – now the fashionistas want to steal the last advantage of the geek girl over the highlighted, Ugg-booted, orange skinned airhead?

Bastards.

But thankfully fashion is fickle and hipness temporary; this too shall pass. The craze isn’t going to last long. The ‘Sexy Sarah Palin’. and ‘Geek Girl’ joke outfits are already in the stores for Hallow’e’en

Hah! Instant death to hipness. And the upside of glasses reverting to squaredom so fast is that the craze for Palin herself is likely to burn itself out with equal speed, now that the media have actually started fact-checking her lying ass.

Meanwhile we, the actually ocularly challenged women of the world, will continue to look over our sexy glasses at you while you speculate about what naughty ideas we’re having with that misty, faraway look in our eyes.*

[*”Potatoes or pasta?”, since you asked. But you go on with your fantasy if it gets you through the day.]

A Little Light Linky Linky

Published on September 8, 2008

Sometimes shocking, spectacularly sharp and stunningly beautiful images from photographer Danny Ghitis‘ photoblog of both US party conventions, Fear and Loathing 2008 :

…

The McClatchy newspaper group answers the US media’s big exam question – “ Is John McCain’s vicious hairtrigger temper a potential danger to the nation and the world? Discuss, with examples.”

[…]

There’s a lengthy list of similar outbursts through the years: McCain pushing a woman in a wheelchair, trying to get an Arizona Republican aide fired from three different jobs, berating a young GOP activist on the night of his own 1986 Senate election and many more.

[…]

Cochran recalled earlier this summer that he saw McCain manhandle a Sandinista official during a 1987 diplomatic mission in Nicaragua.

Cochran told the Biloxi Sun-Herald that McCain was talking, and, “I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever.” More…

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Jay Rayner is a bit of an arse. If when a tiny neighbourhood Szechuan restaurant in a newly-trendy area asks a national newspaper columnist not to give them a review for fear of being overwhelmed by foodies, is it ethical for the columnist to say so in his column – thus writing about them anyway and potentially ruining their business?
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A most illuminating post and ensuing comment thread at Obsidian Wings, on why some politicians’ lies are so much worse than others… *cough* Sarah “Boy, you people are dumb as mooses” Palin, and the burden that puts on the average voter. Hilzoy:

When politicians lie — and here I mean not just putting the best spin on things, but out and out lying — they might as well walk up to each and every one of us and say: Hello! I have no respect for the value of your time! You might have other things to do — work, playing with your kids, taking a long hike in the mountains, whatever — but I don’t care. I’m going to put you in a position where you’re going to have to research everything I say, or else just give up on your civic duty. You don’t get to assume that my words are, if not exactly true, at least somewhere in the general vicinity of the truth, and decide whether or not to vote for me. If you want to be an informed citizen, you’ll have to become obsessive, like hilzoy.

…

Via Avedon Carol: “British citizens could be convicted in their absence by foreign courts for traffic, credit card or other criminal offences under plans approved in principle by the European Parliament.”

The worst of it is that it’s not even shocking anymore.

…

Please, please, please, Flying Rodent, just do it.

OTOH if Nick Cohen’s looking for anyone to follow him about Britain squirting him with a water pistol filled with lukewarm urine, I’d do that gratis…

I’ll even cover costs: I’ve can spare 50 pence at least. For Cohen I’d even go to a whole pound.

UPDATE:

If the Flying Rodent needs any more motivation…. Aaronovitch Watch:

Noted

New Wikipedia user Ncohen2 appears to have some quite strong views about the Nick Cohen/Johann Hari dispute, as well as some information about the circumstances under which Nick left the New Statesman which I didn’t think was previously public. I wonder who this user might be? I hope we see more. (thanks to an anonymous commenter below)