Daily

12 November 2008

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

exploited. As such, corporations must continue to improve security programs, harden their assets and ensure appropriate funding to remain vigilant. This effort must include a comprehensive and ever-evolving strategy to detect, prevent and mitigate all hazards including improvised explosive devices, chemical and biological agents and cyber attacks. A cyber attack aimed at U.S. financial institutions would cause exponentially greater damage in our weakened economic state. Bottom line: corporate America must continue to invest in physical and cyber security to ensure the safety and well-being of employees, assets and customers.

Go For It NOV 12, 2008 10:02PM The New Republic urges Bush-like ambition for the president-elect: The greatest risk for Democrats is not that Obama will try to do too much, but that their terror of failure will lead them to waste an historic opportunity. This is not a Clintonian moment. It is more like the moment Lyndon Johnson inherited in 1965, or the one Franklin Roosevelt faced in 1933—a chance to reshape American government. The Democrats have it in their grasp to master the great problems of public life if they can summon their collective nerve. The only thing they have to fear is fear itself.

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XXIII: Recalling Couric

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

NOV 12, 2008 9:18PM

The Future Of The GOP

Another little gem. Palin complained to Matt Lauer that Katie Couric had crossed a line of condescension in interviewing her:

NOV 12, 2008 9:47PM Listen to Ron Paul:

Palin said she was annoyed by “questions about, well, you know, ‘What do you read up there in Alaska?’ … Because I’m like, what do you mean, what do I read in Alaska? I read the same things that you guys read in New York.”

The Republican Congress never once stood up against the Bush/Rove machine that demanded support for unconstitutional wars, attacks on civil liberties here at home, and an economic policy based on more spending, more debt, and more inflation — while constantly preaching the flawed doctrine that deficits don’t matter as long as taxes aren’t raised.

Here’s the question Couric actually asked: “When it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?”

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

The truth is that Palin has never read anything of any seriousness, and is trying to deflect from her massive ignorance by playing culture war games. She heard about the surge “on the news,” remember?

A Perfect Storm For Terror NOV 12, 2008 9:28PM Scott Louis Weber, a former Senior Counselor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, issues a warning: If ever there was a time to not default to the norm — it’s now. The current state of the economy and the looming government transition creates a highly attractive atmosphere for terrorists. Our Achilles heel is exposed and waiting to be

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

12 November 2008

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

Palin Still Attacks, The MSM Still Punts

The Lehman-GM Connection NOV 12, 2008 8:38PM

NOV 12, 2008 9:04PM James Surowiecki makes the case for bailing out GM: Here she is on Blitzer today: ...one of the big reasons why bailing out the automakers feels necessary is precisely because we let Lehman Brothers fail. Had the financial system stayed reasonably stable, rather than plunging into the chaos we’ve seen in the past six weeks, then one might have been able to make the case that General Motors, with its three-billion-dollar market cap, was not all that important, in either literal or psychological terms, and that the market could easily weather its failure. Today, I think that sounds incredibly implausible to anyone who’s paying attention to the credit and equity markets.

Well, I still am concerned about that association with Bill Ayers. And if anybody still wants to talk about it, I will, because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol. That’s an association that still bothers me. And I think it’s still fair to talk about it.

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

They Planned Prop 8 For Eleven Years

But that’s what they always say.

NOV 12, 2008 8:54PM

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin, XI: “Asking The Girls”, Ctd.

The LDS leadership is busted for targeting gay couples as far back as 1997. There’s a new memo that has come to light from late Mormon president Gordon Hinckley, carefully planning the assault on gay families, hoping to use the Catholic hierarchy as a p.r. front:

NOV 12, 2008 8:27PM

I moved this below the fold because it kept launching automatically.

Amazingly, Palin has now offered a third version - contradicting her first two, which contradicted each other - of how she accepted John McCain’s insane offer to be his vice-presidential nominee. To recap: the first version was to Charlie Gibson, saying she accepted on the spot, unblinkingly. The second version was that she asked permission of the girls, a chronological impossibility. Now we have both the first version and now a new third version in the same propaganda piece broadcast on Fox last night:

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

The Limits Of Petro-State Thinking NOV 12, 2008 8:46PM

PALIN: Just looking right in my eyes and saying, Are you ready for this? Would you like to do this? And I said, I would be honored to run with you. Absolutely. And I thanked him for taking the chance on me also.

Thomas P.M. Barnett responds to Friedman: I am wary of the uni-causal explanation for the Soviet Union’s fall (oil up and then down), because it takes a complex thing and turns it into an all-encompassing, single-point failure answer. So I am equally wary of thinking that lower oil prices afford us that much leverage with Iran. High oil prices alone don’t explain all of Soviet behavior in the 1970s and lower prices don’t explain all of it in the 1980s. It is simply a simplistic 20/20 hindsight that’s been layered on in recent years, in part to give Reagan undue credit for the USSR’s demise.

I mean, just talk about — that was the epitome of being the maverick, somebody bold, somebody thinking outside of the box, not going with, no doubt, what a lot of the — more of the conventional wisdom would have dictated, you know, go get somebody who’s already on the national scene and perhaps it would be a safer type of pick. No. He was going to do what he believed was the right thing to do with his pick. And you know, I saw that in his eyes and I

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

12 November 2008

respected that. And I said, Absolutely. You are the perfect running mate. I would love to run with you. It was great...

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

VAN SUSTEREN: Todd wasn’t with you. Did you call Todd then?

NOV 12, 2008 8:04PM

Silver Starbursts A reader writes:

PALIN: Well, before I said yes. That was Senator McCain’s recommendation. He says, Why don’t you call your husband and find out, you know, if he’s good with this also. I called Todd, and Todd, too, was no hesitation. He was like, Absolutely. This will be good. Yes, do this. And just good confirmation that, of course, we were to say yes.

God, you’re totally crushing on Nate Silver too. I’m glad to see I’m not alone. It’s a little bit of geek chic, I guess. I particularly love him for how awkward he can be in interviews—the nervous peal of laughter when he can’t match the emotional beats of the host, and then the borderline asbergian intensity when he starts wonking away. Man, I could watch Nate wonk it all night long.

Notice how he story changes within the same interview. She says that she said yes immediately and then says, when prompted, that she called her husband first. The second version of the story - “”It was a time of asking the girls to vote on it, anyway. And they voted unanimously, yes,” - is now down the black hole of magical realism that sustains her mind. What you realize is that the actual truth matters not a whit. She has no real memory; she has what she invents from minute to minute in her head for instant effect. She’s pathological.

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

They Blew It NOV 12, 2008 8:03PM There is much to praise in this piece by PJ O’Rouke. A taste:

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

The left has no idea what’s going on in the financial crisis. And I honor their confusion. Jim Jerk down the road from me, with all the cars up on blocks in his front yard, falls behind in his mortgage payments, and the economy of Iceland implodes. I’m missing a few pieces of this puzzle myself.

The Gay Awakening, Ctd. NOV 12, 2008 8:25PM Rauch sees it too: The civil-rights model tried to separate marriage from the political process, because we didn’t have nearly enough straight support to win. That left our opponents with the political field to themselves while we busied ourselves in the courts. Not any more. We now have enough straight allies to win, long-term, in the political arena.

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

Getting Your Epiphanies Where You Can Find Them

To judge from the protests, that’s where we’ll be going. Goodbye Thurgood Marshall, hello Martin Luther King. Goodbye Lambda Legal, hello ACT-UP. Sure, more love, less anger than in the AIDS days. But the protests, provided they are peaceful and don’t turn hateful or anti-religious, point the way forward.

NOV 12, 2008 7:37PM “Next Wednesday is a new dawn for the bendy cucumber and the amusingly shaped carrot,” - European Commission agriculture spokesman Michael Mann on a new relaxation of EU produce regulations. (Hat tip: FP)

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

12 November 2008

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

Dallas, Texas, 8 am.

Uh-Oh NOV 12, 2008 7:30PM THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN Krugman is giddy:

Let Them Die?, Ctd.

Max Baucus — Max Baucus! — is leading the charge on a health care plan that, at least at first read, is more like Hillary Clinton’s than Barack Obama’s; that is, it looks like an attempt at full universality. (The word I hear, by the way, is that Obama’s opposition to mandates was tactical politics, not conviction — so he may well be prepared to do the right thing now that the election is won.)

NOV 12, 2008 6:39PM Ezra Klein points me to an old article by Obama on the auto industry. It may be as good an indicator of his future policies as anything: ...every automobile the government purchases — starting right now — should be a flexible-fuel vehicle. When it becomes possible in the coming years, we should also mandate that every government car is the type of hybrid that you can plug in to an outlet and recharge.

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN More broadly, we should then ensure that, within a decade, every new car sold in America can run on flexible fuel. We can advance this goal by offering manufacturers a $100 tax credit for every flexible-fuel tank they install before the decade is up.

Big Cars, Big Auto NOV 12, 2008 7:15PM Megan defends Detroit’s higher-ups on one count: Management has made a lot of mistakes. But making big cars wasn’t one of them. That’s because they couldn’t profitably make small cars in the United States. And the reason they couldn’t is that their labor costs were too high. All in, Detroit was paying about $30 more an hour than other companies to make cars. At that kind of differential, you have to concentrate on large cars with big profit margins, not economy cars where consumers fight to save $15 on the headlight bezels.

As my friend Tom Daschle details in this report, millions of people driving flexible-fuel vehicles don’t even know it. The auto companies shouldn’t get CAFE credit for making these cars if they don’t let buyers know about them, so the entire auto industry should follow GM’s lead and put a yellow gas cap on all flexible fuel vehicles, and notify consumers in writing as well. But owning the companies or telling them how to run their businesses is not the way to do it. This is a real test for Obama: is he a market-friendly pragmatist or a knee-jerk socialist?

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

The View From Your Window

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

NOV 12, 2008 6:58PM

The Insurgents Write In NOV 12, 2008 6:23PM Evan Kohlmann quotes key passages from a message to Obama by the Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance.

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

12 November 2008

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

professionals has far too much sway in the GOP and conservative circles. This was Bill Kristol’s achievement.

Why Palin Still Matters NOV 12, 2008 5:49PM

It was a final product of the now-exhausted strategy of fomenting fundamentalist resentment to elect politicians dedicated to the defense of Israel and the extension of American military hegemony in every corner of the globe. Palin was the reductio ad absurdum of this mindset: a mannequin candidate, easily controlled ideologically, deployed to fool and corral the resentful and the frightened, removed from serious scrutiny and sold on propaganda networks like a food product. This deluded and delusional woman still doesn’t understand what happened to her; still has no self-awareness; and has never been forced to accept her obvious limitations. She cannot keep even the most trivial story straight; she repeats untruths with a ferocity and calm that is reserved only to the clinically unhinged; she has the educational level of a high school drop-out; and regards ignorance as some kind of achievement. It is excruciating to watch her - but more excruciating to watch those who feel obliged to defend her.

Some readers think my continuing attempt to expose all the lies and flim-flam and bizarre behavior of Sarah Palin is now moot. She’s history - they argue. Move on. I think she probably is history. Even Bill Kristol and his minions in the McCain-Palin campaign may not be able to resuscitate her political viability now. But even if she is history, she is history that matters.

Her candidacy, in short, was indefensible. It remains indefensible. Until the mainstream media, the GOP establishment, and the conservative intelligentsia acknowledge the depth of their error, this blog will keep demanding basic accountability. My point is not to persecute or hound some random person. I wish I had never heard of Sarah Palin. I wish this nightmare had never happened. I wish totally innocent by-standers, like Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston and Heather Bruce and Trig Palin, had not had their lives disrupted by this circus. It’s distressing to everyone, which is why most journalists left many aspects of this charade alone. But Palin is claiming vindication, is on every cable show, is at the National Governors Association Conference, and is touted as a future leader of the GOP. There comes a point at which you have to simply call a time out and insist that this farce cease and some basic accountability and transparency be restored to the process. Since no one else seems willing to do so, the Dish will stay on the case. So where are those medical records anyway?

Let’s be real in a way the national media seems incapable of: this person should never have been placed on a national ticket in a mature democracy. She was incapable of running a town in Alaska competently. The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish - is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the twoterm presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural “identity”. Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again. And we have to find a way to prevent this from recurring.

(Photo: Jewel Samad/Getty.)

THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

It happened because John McCain is an incompetent and a cynic and reckless beyond measure. To have picked someone he’d only met once before, without any serious vetting procedure, revealed McCain as an utterly unserious character, a man whose devotion to the shallowest form of political gamesmanship trumped concern for his country’s or his party’s interest. We need a full accounting of the vetting process: who was responsible for this act of political malpractice? How could a veep not be vetted in any serious way? Why was she not asked to withdraw as soon as the facts of her massive ignorance and delusional psyche were revealed?

Stonewall 4.0? NOV 12, 2008 5:35PM

The Palin nightmare also happened because a tiny faction of political

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR YOU

12 November 2008

Rex Wockner is amazed by the viral, web-based grass roots organizing in the wake of the passage of Prop 8: Maybe Stonewall was Activism 1.0, ACT UP was Activism 2.0, the failed corporate activism of HRC and No On Prop 8 was Activism 3.0, and now we are witnessing Activism 4.0 being born. It’s virtually impossible to know you’re experiencing history in the making when you’re right in the middle of it. But our present generation with their SMS texting and their Twittering (aka “tweeting”) and their Facebooking are mad as hell over this, and it’s lookin’ to me like they’re not going to take it anymore. I sense the power could be shifting, from the suit-and-tie professional activists with their offices, their access, their press releases and their catered receptions, to the grassroots. D-Day is this Saturday, when a day of protest is being scheduled across the country.

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