Palin's Rough Start

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's references to Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro in her second campaign appearance was unexpectedly greeted with boos, jeers, and moans, suggesting that McCain's gambit in attracting disaffected Clinton women supporters might not go over so well as calculated.

Sarah Palin, Hockey Mom

Hard to argue with the Financial Times Gideon Rachman's characterization of John McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, the title says it all: Bold, exciting - but also stupid. McCain staked so much of his campaign on the experience factor - ready to hit the ground running as a commander-in-chief on day one, unlike the inexperienced Barack Obama. But by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate, he has effectively ceded away whatever advantage he might have by picking someone even younger than Obama, less experienced in both in national and international affairs, and more of an unknown entity than Obama, who at least has been vetted through a hard fought, bruising Democratic presidential campaign. It is also an amazing choice for a septuagenarian with several bouts with skin cancer and, if elected, would be the oldest man to assume the presidency.

A Speech We All Can Believe In

Barack Obama's acceptance speech addressed two critical points that had been sorely lacking in the campaign, especially over the last 3 or 4 weeks: policy specifics and sharp criticism of John McCain.

Now, now, let me -- let there be no doubt. The Republican nominee, John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that we owe him our gratitude and our respect.

And next week, we'll also hear about those occasions when he's broken with his party as evidence that he can deliver the change that we need.

But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time.

Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but, really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time?

Thriller

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
George Orwell

Michael Jackson, the self-proclaimed "King Of Pop," turns 50 years old today. Happy birthday, Michael. Coincidentally, he shares the birthday with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Whatever that means, I am not sure, so I'll leave it at that. But one thing is certain: Jackson's seemingly endless talent is rivaled only by his strangeness.

Bill Clinton Rises to the Occasion

Last night it was former president Bill Clinton's turn, following wife Hillary's lead, to put the harsh feelings engendered by a hard-fought Democratic presidential campaign behind him and declare his support for Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. And he didn't disappoint by coming out emphatically in support of the junior senator from Illinois:

I say to you: Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Barack Obama is ready to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States.

Hillary Comes Through

Last night's speech by Hillary Clinton hopefully began the process where the Democratic party will emerge united to do battle against the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. If there was any lingering doubt about Sen. Clinton's support for Barack Obama, her call for acclimation in the nomination of Obama should put it to rest:

“With eyes firmly fixed on the future in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and country, let’s declare together in one voice, right here and right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president.

“I move that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois be selected by this convention by acclamation as the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”

McCain's Get Out of Jail Free Card

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes that John McCain risks overplaying his 5-year stint as a P.O.W. in North Vietnam, often invoking it in instances where its relevance is questionable at best:

His brutal hiatus in the Hanoi Hilton is one of the most stirring narratives ever told on the presidential trail — a trail full of heroic war stories. It created an enormous credit line of good will with the American people. It also allowed McCain, the errant son of the admiral who was the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific during Vietnam — his jailers dubbed McCain the “Crown Prince” — to give himself some credit.

“He has been preoccupied with escaping the shadow of his father and establishing his own image and identity in the eyes of others,” read a psychiatric evaluation in his medical files. “He feels his experiences and performance as a P.O.W. have finally permitted this to happen.”

The ordeal also gave a more sympathetic cast to his carousing. As Robert Timberg wrote in “John McCain: An American Odyssey,” “What is true is that a number of P.O.W.’s, in those first few years after their release, often acted erratically, their lives pockmarked by drastic mood swings and uncharacteristic behavior before achieving a more mellow equilibrium.” Timberg said Hemingway’s line that people were stronger in the broken places was not always right.

So it’s hard to believe that John McCain is now in danger of exceeding his credit limit on the equivalent of an American Express black card. His campaign is cheapening his greatest strength — and making a mockery of his already dubious claim that he’s reticent to talk about his P.O.W. experience — by flashing the P.O.W. card to rebut any criticism, no matter how unrelated. The captivity is already amply displayed in posters and TV advertisements.

Following the Money

Last week Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee announced plans to offer students cash for academic achievement. To be sure, this is a proposal that grows out of desperation. As the story notes, "school officials have used detention, remedial classes, summer school and suspensions to turn around poorly behaved, underachieving middle school students with little results." But whatever its eventual outcome, this pay cash for learning gambit signals the death knell for the apparently quaint and antiquated notion of learning for the sake of learning.

What Obama Needs

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert argues that if Barack Obama wants to win this presidential election, gentility simply won't get it done:

Barack Obama was always a long shot to win the White House. It’s no secret that some portion of the electorate will never vote for him because of his color. But he has made the odds even longer by running a campaign that, since the primaries, has seemed directionless, uninspired and addicted to the empty calories of generalities.

And the candidate himself has seemed flat. No fire. No passion.

Herbert's colleague Charles M. Blow makes a similar point, focusing on how Obama allowed the McCain campaign to exploit the energy issue so effectively that it cut into Obama's lead in the polls.

Lately, you’ve demonstrated an unsettling penchant for overly nuanced statements that meander into the cerebral. Earth to Barack: to Main Street America, nuance equals confusion. You don’t have to dumb it down, but you do have to sum it up.

Lowering the Drinking Age

I basically agree with the college presidents: the drinking age should be lowered to 18. If drinking is brought out into the open, there's a much greater opportunity to control it in a manner that will diminish binge drinking and other forms of abuse. And as a general matter, it is hard to tell an 18-year-old that he or she is old enough to serve in the military or to cast a vote in an election but not old enough to drink an alcoholic beverage.

Overlooked Principle

With all the discussion about pastor Rick Warren's interviews of Barack Obama and John McCain about religious faith and spiritual belief dominated by the respective candidates contrasting responses, Kathleen Parker raises the fundamental principle, pretty much overlooked:

Both Obama and McCain gave "good" answers, but that's not the point. They shouldn't have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him," or that McCain feels that he is "saved and forgiven"?

What does that mean, anyway? What does it prove? Nothing except that these men are willing to say whatever they must -- and what most Americans personally feel is no one's business -- to win the highest office.

Warren tried to defuse criticism about staging the interviews in his church by saying that though "we" believe in the separation of church and state, "we" don't believe in the separation of faith and politics. Faith, he said, "is just a worldview, and everybody has some kind of worldview. It's important to know what they are."

Presumably "we" refers to Warren's church of fellow evangelicals. And while, yes, everybody has some kind of worldview, it shouldn't be necessary in a pluralistic nation of secular laws to publicly define that view in Christian code.

Musharraf Exits

Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf resigned after nine years in office, a move largely precipitated by the opposition's attempt to impeach him. George W. Bush once called Musharraf "one of the world's most committed partners in the war against terrorism and extremism", an estimation only exceeded in fatuousness by Bush famously saying that he looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and gazed upon his soul. And despite Bush's fulsome praise, Musharraf never quite lived up to the hype: within Pakistan's borders, the Taliban is reconstituted and Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawari, and al-Qaeda continue to avoid capture.

Obama Vows to Fight Back

Barack Obama has suddenly realized that he can ill-afford to let Republican attacks on his character go unanswered but must respond swiftly and emphatically. Otherwise he will find himself but the latest incarnation of pathetically weak Democratic presidential nominees with no taste for battle. The question is, does this realization signal a sufficient shift in strategy to undo the harm inflicted by the McCain over the last two or three weeks?

Cokie Roberts on Obama's Exotica

From her days with National Public Radio and ABC News, Cokie Roberts has consistently been one of the most uninteresting and conventional commentators of the inside the Beltway variety extant. But her recent musings on Obama vacationing in "exotic" Hawaii suggests that I seriously underestimated her as well. Cokie is also incredibly stupid.

Jerry Wexler 1917-2008

Jerry Wexler, the legendary music producer and one of the creative forces behind Atlantic Records, is dead at 91.

Chad Johnson's Delusion

Chad Johnson claims he can beat Olympic champion Michael Phelps in swimming. Chad Johnson is a moron.

McCain Misfires

While condemning Russia's military move against Georgia in the province of South Ossetia, Republican Senator John McCain managed to mangle the pronunciation of Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvilli, three times. The pundits claim that with Obama vacationing in Hawaii this week, now is the time to look presidential. But seriously, how presidential can he be if he cannot pronounce a foreign leader's name, despite reading from prepared text? Or perhaps he's more like Bush in ways we didn't fully comprehend.

Isaac Hayes 1942-2008

Isaac Hayes, 65, singer, songwriter and composer, died Sunday afternoon in Memphis, Tennessee.

Lee Young 1914-2008

The jazz drummer and music producer Lee Young, 94, brother of tenor saxophonist Lester Young, died at his Los Angeles home.

Bernie Mac 1957-2008

Comedian and actor Bernie Mac, 50, died early Satruday morning in a Chicago area hospital from complications due to pneumonia.

Victoria Osteen's Tantrum

Victoria Osteen, wife of evangelical minister Joel Osteen, apparently does not invoke the question What would Jesus do? [WWJD] as a guidepost in her interpersonal relations.

McCain's Attack Ad

The McCain campaign attack ad on Barack Obama comparing him to celebrity airheads Britney Spears and Paris Hilton is stupid. But having said that, I am not surprised that it has proved effective as evidenced by most polls that show McCain eating into Obama's lead. One should never underestimate the intelligence, attention span, or discriminating taste of the typical American voter.

OJ, Obama, and the Race Card

Political analyst Tom Porter, who blogs intermittently at pansfricanviews.blogspot.com, was the first to mention to me the similarity in wording between McCain campaign manager Rick Davis's claim of Obama playing the race card and former O.J. Simpson lawyer Robert Shapiro's post-mortem on the Simpson verdict. Davis said: "Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong." Shapiro told interviewer Barbara Walters that "not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck." Pure coincidence? Perhaps. But on the theory that hardly anything in a political campaign passes without forethought or calculation, Davis' remarks are facially suspect.

All in the Family

Congresswoman Carolyn Kilpatrick's hysterical defense of her beleaguered son Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's legal predicaments underscores the enduring bond between mother and son. But it also indicates how mentally unhinged the mother has become under the weight of her son's legal difficulties and her own hotly contested primary campaign.

The Raised Fists

Dave Zinn poses the question why the image of the raised fists of sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics continues to resonate forty years later. Zinn writes,

There's another reason why the image of raised, black-gloved fists has retained its power. Smith and Carlos sacrificed fame and fortune for a larger cause -- civil rights. As Carlos told me in 2003: "A lot of the [black] athletes thought that winning [Olympic] medals would supersede or protect them from racism. But even if you won a medal, it ain't going to save your momma [from the effects of racism]. It ain't going to save your sister..."

Carlos' view resonates because we still live in a world where racism exists. If Hurricane Katrina taught us nothing else, it's that for every Barack Obama and Condoleezza Rice, there are many communities, including in L.A., where the combination of poverty and racism weigh down black Americans.

It also resonates because Smith and Carlos used the ubiquitous platform of sports to make their stand. Today, sports is a global trillion-dollar business that, thanks to cable television, the Internet and corporate sponsorship, is vastly more influential than four decades ago. Yet the idea that today's athletes would use their hyper-exalted-brought-to-you-by-Nike platform to speak out against injustice seems almost unthinkable. Athletes Etan Thomas of the NBA and Scott Fujita of the NFL have spoken out on war, poverty and racism in the U.S. Some platinum-plated stars on the U.S. Olympic basketball team -- notably Kobe Bryant and LeBron James -- have raised concerns about China's connection to the genocide in Darfur.

The question is whether any Olympic athlete will match the audacity of Smith and Carlos in the 2008 Games. On Friday, the possible appearance of Tibet's flag would again remind us that the world of sports isn't immune to the politics of protest.

McCain's Unforgivable Lie

There is an interesting profile of John McCain in the Washington Post that portrays the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as a complex politician defined by emotion and ambition. McCain has gotten a lot of mileage for his maverick ways and unaccustomed honesty and candor. But the defining moment for me, the reason why I could never vote for him, was his stance in the South Carolina primary of 2000. " The flag symbolized both slavery and the South's secession from the country I love, and should be lowered forever from the staff atop South Carolina's capitol. I had promised to tell the truth no matter what. When I broke it, I had not just been dishonest, I had been a coward, and I had severed my own interests from my country's. That was what made the lie unforgivable." Yes, that lie is still unforgivable.

Playing the Race Card

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, on the McCain campaign's charges of Obama playing the race card, writes, "it’s frustrating to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades." Indeed, the Republican Party has come to power by its cynical use of race since the days of Richard Milhous Nixon's Southern Strategy. Apparently old habits are difficult to abandon.

Mr. Magoo

I thought the McCain campaign had lost it when it began running attack ads blaming Barack Obama for higher prices at the pump. But the latest ad suggesting Obama is so lacking in substance as to be comparable to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton is downright silly. Democratic Party strategist Donna Brazille dismisses the ad, claiming that Americans are able to separate the substantive from the superficial. I hope she's correct but history tells me that this is a standard move from the Republican Party playbook that has been quite successful in past elections.

And since celebrities have now been introduced into the campaign, how about John McCain's uncanny resemblance to Mr. Magoo? Apologies to Mr. Magoo.

Monica Goodling, Loyal Public Servant

Monica Goodling is the Bush Justice Department aide who zealously sought to cultivate a cadre of "prosecutors and immigration judges who espoused conservative priorities and Christian lifestyle choices." This according to a report by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility that found that "Goodling and others had broken civil service laws, run afoul of department policy and engaged in 'misconduct,' a finding that could expose them to further scrutiny and sanctions." Among the more fascinating questions posed by Goodling to job applicants: "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?"

What indeed.