Minnesota Politics again

Who’d have thought that I’d talk about Minnesota politics even once on this blog, much less twice? This time, though, my primary focus is Michele Bachmann, a member of the House of Representatives and a total idiot. Representative Bachmann went on Hardball and said that Senator Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, held anti-American views and that they could not be trusted in the Oval Office. Representative Bachmann then went on to say that the media (now she trusts the media??) should thoroughly investigate other members of Congress to determine whether they held anti-American or pro-American attitudes.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_pN2IPAw6E]

Just to give you some context, here are other videos of Representative Bachmann:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wX1UnAtynU]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTdbCbbEr64]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJdRHE3ppj4]

I’m pretty sure that Michele Bachmann didn’t get the memo; you’re supposed to imply that the Obamas, Democrats, and liberals are somehow less patriotic than the McCains, Republicans, and conservatives, but you’re not supposed to come right out and say it. Tsk, tsk, Representative Bachmann.

The world outside my bubble

This presidential election is so dramatic and action-filled that I really haven’t been paying much attention to other races across the country. I mean, it seems like Lautenberg kind of has the Senate race sewn up in New Jersey, so I was content not to know what else was going on around the country. BUT then I woke up and started to be myself again, and decided to familiarize myself with other races that are going on. Two races that caught my interest are taking place in Minnesota and North Carolina. Actor/writer/producer, Air America founder, and impassioned proponent of progressive politics, Al Franken, is running on the Democratic ticket in Minnesota against one-term Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. Right now, polls have Franken leading Colemen 43% to 37%, with Independent candidate Dean Barkley having as much as 19% of the vote. Last month, Coleman was ahead of Franken, so this reversal is interesting indeed. When I read this, I was a little surprised at Franken’s ability to gain traction in Minnesota, but then I remembered that this is the state that elected Jesse Ventura as governor (NTTAWWT). Franken and Coleman’s numbers are rather close, and when you throw in the presence of a third party candidate, this race is definitely one to watch. It’s also interesting to note that Barack Obama has opened up a modest lead over John McCain in Minnesota.

The race in North Carolina is also close; polls show that Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole has 44% of the vote, while Democratic challenger Kay Hagan has 49%. A third party candidate, Libertarian Christopher Cole has support from about 2% of the electorate, but in such a close race, even that small percentage could help decide the outcome of the race. I am fascinated by this race because it is dominated by two accomplished women. I know nothing about Hagan that I did not learn in writing this post, but I have admired Elizabeth Dole for years. She’s a smart, well-educated, interesting woman who is easily the equal of her politically powerful husband. If any woman would do, and Sarah Palin’s collapse under scrutiny would seem to illustrate that this was the case, why couldn’t John McCain have picked someone like her? Or Maine Senator Olympia Snowe? Either one of these women would have helped make a compelling ticket with much more of a fighting chance.

Wait, really?

I haven’t spoken about the Biden – Palin debate that took place the other night, which is a rather glaring omission. This was likely the most-watched political event EVER, and it definitely bears some consideration. I will say this: it probably wasn’t the debate that most people were expecting to see. It wasn’t a train wreck. Sarah Palin’s performance was neither crash-and-burn bad, nor did it reach the levels expected by those who believed that she was lulling Biden into complacency and setting him up for a massive trouncing. This actually bears repeating: it wasn’t a train wreck, but there were signs of a less-than-stellar performance by Palin. She pretty much immediately pitted herself against Biden and moderator Gwen Ifill, so that if and when she did not fully answer their questions, it would appear to be intentional and not due to ignorance. She stuck like glue to her talking points, but did it in such an obvious way (repeating the same MAVERICK! phrases ELITE! a lot WASHINGTON INSIDER!) that she did not come across so much prepared to debate as she did rehearsed to perform.  Biden did a good job of answering the questions put to him without looking like a bully, which is impressive, since he came across that way a bit when he was responding to Obama during the Democratic candidate debate. On the whole, I doubt that either candidate influenced anybody who wasn’t already inclined to be on his or her side. A transcript of the debate can be found here.

Today, I ran across this funny chart a couple of times, and thought I’d share it:

If you’d like to read more from the man who created this flow chart, click here.

Here they go again

In advance of tomorrow’s vice presidential debate, Gwen Ifill, the moderator, is being attacked for a book that she wrote called Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. This book is being published in 2009, and is not available to be read, yet some people have exercised their powers of precognition to determine that she is somehow biased in favor of the Obama-Biden ticket, and cannot possibly be fair. Now, to be honest, it’s not impossible to believe that personal biases or loyalties can influence how one moderates a debate; just ask George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson. I don’t think that anybody who was paying attention has forgotten how awful they were when they moderated a debate between the Democratic candidates earlier this year. They asked stupid questions, soft-balled Clinton (at least Stephanopoulos did), and took almost an hour to get to substantive questions regarding Iraq, Iran, and other issues meaningful to voters.

So, it’s not impossible to believe that a debate moderator can be too much for one side or the other. But it seems insulting to insinuate that, because she is a known supporter of Democratic politics, Gwen Ifill won’t be able to attain the level of fairness and bipartisanship required of a good moderator. Maybe the questions about Ifill are warranted and come from people who are genuinely concerned about witnessing a fair debate. But maybe not.

Let’s give a moment of though to what else could possible be fueling these speculations about Ifill’s fitness as moderator. Could it be fear? A lot of the furor over this issue has been raised by Republicans and others on the right. Perhaps concern about Sarah Palin’s prospects in a debate has also contributed to questions about Ifill’s commitment to a fair debate. Let’s face it: during her interview with Katie Couric, Vice Presidential nominee Palin did not shine. In one of the most difficult exchanges to watch, she demonstrated that she did not understand the causes of the current economic collapse, and could therefore offer no cogent or even coherent answer regarding what the country’s next steps should be. Maybe it was nerves, or maybe the slowing dawning realization that she’s totally unfit for the job she’s in the running for, but Governor Palin’s miserable performance definitely did not win over anybody who wasn’t already aligned with her.

Actually, pretty much every televised appearance by Sarah Palin that has followed her energizing, successful, nasty, and entirely scripted coming out party at the Republican National Convention, has shown her to be completely out of her depth. Like the current president, she has shown herself not to be a convincing, confident extemporaneous speaker. Like him, she also seems to have trouble grasping the details and nuances of issues of great national and global import.

Unless her peformances during the month of September were part of a carefully-orchestrated Machiavellian strategy to sharply lower expectations and lull Joe Biden into a false sense of security, she is in big trouble tomorrow. And what better way to negate unflattering day-after assessments in the press than by deflecting attention onto the moderator, before the debate even begins! If Ifill asks tough questions that Palin cannot answer intelligently, then this will be used as proof of Ifill’s supposed biases, and she will be called a bully. If the bruhaha makes Ifill ask easier questions that Palin can answer in a way that makes her seem more aware than she has in any of her recent appearances, then the right will be able to say, “Look! We told you that she know what she was talking about.”

I would love to be excited to see a woman excel on a national stage at such a high level in politics, but nothing I’ve seen so far has convinced me that Sarah Palin is going to be that woman.

Can he run? No he can’t. Why? Because he’s just a comedian!

I love Stephen Colbert, but I almost never watch his show. In much the same way, I love comic books but almost never read them. Now, my two ignored loves are joining forces for a partership I am almost guaranteed to miss! Spider-Man editor-in-chief Joe Quesada was on Colbert’s show in January and came out with the news that, in the Spider-Man universe, Colbert is still in the running for president. If only! Stephen Colbert will appear in the October 15 edition of Spider-Man.

Too touchy?

I don’t consider myself easily offended. I make and laugh at jokes about women, black people, New Jerseyans, Americans, Christians, liberals, and a host of other groups to which I belong. And I do believe that non-black people can talk about, or disagree with, black people without automatically being considered racist. So why did it bother me so much today when a white coworker used the word “uppity” to describe an annoying black patron?

I’ve been thinking about it for the last couple of hours, and I think I’m bothered because the word uppity has such a troubling history. When I hear it, I think of a person whose behavior is somehow above what could reasonably be expected from one of his or her station. I don’t know if this is a definition that would be used by that any significant portion of the non-black population when defining uppity, but it’s probably what a lot of black people think when they hear it. This word has been the subject of recent press, after Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican Congressman from Georgia, used it to describe Barack and Michelle Obama, then claimed to be ignorant of any racial connotations to the word. He’s from Georgia. Even if that’s not what he meant when he said the word, I find it unlikely that he could have spent the past 58 years in Georgia without somehow knowing that this word might have had a racist connotation. His explanation that he thought they were elitist and snobbish also makes no sense. They’re pretty high up on the freaking totem pole, buddy. Certainly higher than you. How do you expect them to behave? Also, I’m really love it if I Westmoreland could answer this question: what about a duly elected senator who won his party’s vote to be their Presidential candidate could be considered too elite? Don’t we want our leaders to belong to a relatively high class in society? Who should be of a higher class than those who aspire to lead our nation? And if that higher class does exist, why aren’t they running things?

So this patron was annoying, but in the same way that scores of other patrons are annoying many times throughout the day. She didn’t seem to look down on us, she just didn’t really care that what she wanted didn’t conform to library rules. She was over the whole rules thing, but she never acted as though she was above us. I get along just fine with my coworker and I’ve never thought for a second that he might have a problem with me due to my race, but things like this always make me uneasy.

Too Funny Not to Share

I wanted to share a video that I first saw on Jezebel, because it is just that hilarious.

Good news!

Yay! A judge announced that Imam Mohammad Qatanani, a local Muslim cleric, will be allowed to stay in the United States. Imam Qatanani had been charged with having ties to Hamas, and failing to disclose a related prior conviction in Israel. Some of the evidence presented included a signed confession from Mr. Qatanani, obtained after he’d been detained and tortured in Israel for three months. The confession was in Hebrew, a language he does not speak. He did not realize that he’d been convicted during his detention, and therefore did not report it when he applied to be a United States citizen.

According to Judge Alberto Riefkohl, the case presented by the Department of Homeland Security lacked evidence and credibility. I’ve been following this case, and I’m glad that it has such a happy ending. Imam Qatanani is beloved not only in the Islamic community, but has also been supported by many non-Muslims; rabbis, pastors, lawmakers, FBI agents, and other concerned citizens in the Paterson area were vocal in their support of Mr. Qatanani, and they, too, shared in the joy of learning that he will not be deported from the United States.

I don’t understand how our government can condone and participate in actions like this. Not only do we have Guantanamo Bay, which is more of a disgrace every day, we also allow people to be taken to other nations specifically for torture, and accept from other nations information received by people who are mistreated, if not the victims of outright torture. Every day, in addition to the possibility of death, our troops face being kidnapped, tortured, and forced to give false confessions in hostile nations. We view this with the utmost condemnation, as well we should. So how can we believe that this is okay when the person being tortured is not American (by birth, at least)?

I’m glad that Imam Qatanani’s story has a happy ending, and that after all the physical, emotional, and legal hurdles, he can go back to focusing on his family and his work in the community. I’m just sad that this goes on at all, and that there are probably people in this situation with fewer resources or supporters, whose stories don’t end as happily.

Then they came for the librarians

I don’t normally end up laughing in actual amusement when I read editorials in the New York Times. Mostly, I’m laughing in disbelief, like “Did s/he really just say that?” So I was pretty shocked today to find what Gail Collins had to say to be both salient and amusing. The salience was already the icing on the cake, so the amusement factor was wholly unexpected, yet appreciated. Here’s the column.

Apparently, my nausea last night meant that I missed the part where Palin bragged about threatening to fire the town librarian for refusing to censor books. Sorry, but even if the rest of your speech didn’t make me feel ill, I would never have cheered at the thought of using mayoral power to threaten a librarian. It’s not the job of librarians to censor books. If you’re concerned with your children’s reading habits, or what they may be exposed to, visit the library with them and talk about what you do or do not want them to read. This is another part of parenting. I think enough people have piled onto Palin’s parental fitness with not nearly enough evidence, so I don’t say that expecting the library to do this is bad parenting. I will, however, say that it is passing off important family decisions that people probably should not expect strangers to make for them.

What ever happened to kindness?

I am not the world’s most enthusiastic Obama supporter, but enough of my positions are close to his that I feel comfortable voting for him. I don’t feel like the Republican party addresses my concerns, but I’v never actively hated them, or regarded them with the ridicule that I see in a lot of my Democrat peers. I understand that 2008 is an election year, and people will do what they feel necessary to try to get elected. STILL I was disgusted by both Rudy Guiliani and Sarah Palin’s speeches. Guiliani has no hope of getting elected to a higher office than the one he’s already held, so it didn’t hurt him to give a nasty, unsubtle, totally negative speech about the Democratic candidates. He has nothing to lose and it bought him a little goodwill from people who six months ago wouldn’t have spit on him if he was on fire.

But I was totally unprepared for how nasty Palin’s speech was. She’s been raked over the coals by a lot of people in the last week, but the Democratic ticket did not participate in the very public rehashing of all of her family’s business. They didn’t condemn either her or her daughter, and didn’t question Palin’s decision to stay in the presidential race. So why would Palin give such a dirty speech, and take cheap shot after cheap shot at Obama? The qualifications and half-truths were bad enough, but outright lies about death taxes and clean coal really make me wonder why the Republican powers that be would think it necessary to craft and deliver this speech. It definitely played to the rabid base in the convention hall, but I can’t imagine it going over well with moderates. And for somebody who considers herself a strong and committed Christian, I really wonder how such a dirty attack could be considered in any way Christ-like. In terms of delivery, she totally nailed her speech. In terms of content, Ms. Palin did little to solidify her own party’s positions on issues and gave the kind of light-on-actual-information speech that Republicans often accuse Obama of giving.