There's so much to write about today it's a challenge to decide what to focus on. They are all interesting enough I think I'll depart from form and comment briefly on a few in the same post.
There's the financial news, of course. It's been the worst week in NY Stock Exchange history. The world's central banks are coordinating their efforts now and it looks like the U.S. Government will start buying interests in our banks to keep them afloat. That's a wow. What an absolutely damning indictment of the deregulation philosophy. I do wonder what the Republicans would be saying if a Democratic administration were proposing any such thing. This should provide the impetus necessary for the next congress and administration to put the money munchers in a tight harness.
The Alaska legislature has released its report on Gov. Sarah Palin's "troopergate" problem, finding that though firing the public safety commissioner was legal, that she "abused her authority" and "violated the public trust" to "advance a personal agenda." She's already pre-emptively released a report vindicating herself, and the McCain-Palin campaign will attempt to pass this off as partisan games, but the Alaskan investigation was initiated by a unanimous bipartisan vote. It's not the end of the world for Palin, but it will do some more damage to her among independents. A big part of her initial appeal was the outsider, squeaky clean, insurgent against the establishment image. So a finding that she's been engaging in some of the same kind of personal vendetta politics she challenged about the ins before her can only dim her lustre a bit more in the eyes of independents. Surveys already find she is a net drag on the ticket these days. This won't help.
I believe it also has had an effect on Senator McCain's approach. For the past week the Republican duo has been unmercifully negative against Obama. They have been hammering on his sitting on a schools board with 1960s era radical bomber and current professor William Ayers (along with the President of Northwestern University and the head of the Republican Annenberg Foundation.) Palin has used that at rallies to say Obama has been "palling around with terrorists." This has been coupled with increased reference to his full name "Barack Hussein Obama" along with calling him "not like us," "dangerous" and "unamerican."
These have constituted an obvious effort to conflate Obama with terrorism and revive race as a subliminal issue in the campaign. You can see McCain's provocative language and the response it generated in his followers here. It got so rally attenders were openly shouting "terrorist" and "traitor" when Obama's name was mentioned, and even "kill him!" was screamed at a Palin rally. Neither Republican candidate attempted to rein in this ominous and ugly behavior they had inspired until today, when McCain answered a direct question by saying Obama was a decent man and people did not need to "fear" an Obama presidency. Even still, it is significant that McCain's own crowd booed his comments.
It may be that McCain is having second thoughts on this vicious strategy because he can see for himself it is engendering a hate that may put Obama's life at risk. It may also be that he has determined it isn't working since the polls continue to deteriorate for his ticket. Another factor may be Obama's release of a retaliatory 13-minute documentary on McCain's "Keating Five " scandal and/or the release of the "Troopergate" report on Palin. These may have convinced him he has more to lose than gain if the focus turns to scandal.
That brings up one more matter on my mind tonight. When liberals oppose someone they will say they do not agree. They may go a little farther and say the person is "stupid" for not "getting" what seems so clear to them. They may even go so far as to say the person is a tool of the corporations, or perhaps call him or her a racist, sexist, or homophobe for holding certain views. But you never hear them say the person is a "traitor" against the nation itself for holding an opposing view. Never. Yet that seems common among conservative crowds when they get riled up. I wonder why that is. I'll want to think about that one some more.
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