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A tough one

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A break from election talk and other serious Hallowe’en (sorry, “black and orange day”) preparations. Who’s the best Bond ever? Daniel Craig or Sean Connery? (Roger Moore is out, as far as I’m concerned – never should have been considered.) I’m a big Connery fan…

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Rebecca says: Not so tough for me. Despite a general preference for dark hair and eyes, I find Daniel Craig delightful as Bond. Brosnan at the time seemed very debonair, but next to Craig, his interpretation of 007 seems almost fussy and overly mannered.

Prop 8

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Californians will be voting on Proposition 8, come election day. This confirms that marriage is between a man and a woman, after California’s courts recently struck down Proposition 22–where 60 per cent of Californians affirmed that marriage is between a man and a woman back in 2000. I highlight this because it’s interesting–California is not a conservative state. And yet not eight years ago, they affirmed opposite sex marriage. (Homophobes, all of them? The whole state? I think not.)

Anyway, people like Jennifer Roback Morse have been working hard on this issue. And my colleague and I (for the day job) wrote this a while back. Marriage–it’s complicated–but in the end, that’s good. (ie. It was never so simplistic as to say “hey–what does someone else’s marriage have to do with me?” which seems pretty consistently to be the argument of those in favour of same sex marriage.)

And the special animus reward goes to…Sarah Palin

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Most interesting in this column is the small comparison toward the end between Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi of “the Catholic Church isn’t sure when life begins” fame. (She can, of course, believe whatever she wants, however ill informed. To claim the Catholic Church isn’t sure, however… might leave many a pro-choicer confused: Call back the hounds! They’re ON OUR SIDE!)

The contrast with Nancy Pelosi, another mother of five, is instructive. The first woman Speaker of the House, she holds a position more powerful than the vice-presidency. By all accounts, she is no great thinker and a woman of modest accomplishment. Yet she comes from the ruling class — her father was a congressman, her brother a mayor and her husband fabulously wealthy. She belongs. Governor Palin — a newcomer to political office who married a blue collar man and went to university in Idaho — does not. The difference in how they have been treated is instructive.

Instructive, yes.

Media ADD

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Watching CBC news last night (all paraphrased) on the US election:

“Barack Obama, in an unprecedented move, spent 6 million on a primetime infomercial. (bla bla bla about his campaign.)”

“But the Republican camp hasn’t given up yet. Sarah Palin was in Ohio (interview with some supportive college girls). Republicans are angry with Palin for possibly campaigning for her own candidacy in 2012.”

Based on the CBC, it was as if John McCain didn’t exist.

So who has moved on to 2012–Palin? or the media? (I’m still wondering what Joe Biden is up to.)

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Brigitte shouldn’t be surprised but still: “Republicans” are angry with Palin? Which Republicans? All of them? Ah, er, except for Rush listeners (he’s a pretty enthusiastic fan), a batch of conservative commentators, and even Karl Rove, who wrote this morning that he had “already cast my absentee ballot in Kerr County, Texas — joyfully, enthusiastically marking the straight Republican column.” I’m sure there are McCain aides and supporters who resent Sarah Palin’s popularity. But good grief, isn’t that sort of why they drafted her in the first place? Why can’t the CBC (and most other traditional media outlets) see the grumblers for what they are? Oh, and have they talked about Wendy Button while reporting on the Obama campaign?

Give me a reason, then

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If it’s plain as plain as a clear sky over the prairies that Sarah Palin is completely unqualified for VP–you’d think Danielle Crittenden would include at least one or two reasons in this column. Maybe she ran out of space, since she spent a good 500 words describing her own background. (Which was interesting, don’t get me wrong.)

Not compelling though, on why I’m supposed to think Palin is incompetent.

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Tanya adds: Funny that you’d blog on this, Andrea. I was just watching this clip this morning. The real question that no one seems to be able to answer: “Name the most significant thing Barack Obama has done –” Or, more specifically: “what’s he done other than run for president from the day he graduated from Harvard Law School? ” But Palin, running for VP, is unqualified. Of course.

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Andrea adds: Oh but Tanya–don’t bore Crittenden with thoughts like that! (“The other side doesn’t have experience either!”) For she tells us, “That’s an argument you can make without having graduated from elementary school.”

She may not be part of that snobbish “elite.” She is, with this piece, imitating them rather well, however.

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Rebecca would like to draw our attention to Michael Novak on Palin, and Palin-bashing:

I wonder if most of the people who are today dissing Sarah Palin, at least among a few conservatives I greatly admire, are more accustomed to debating highly educated liberals. Could it be that they understand the diction of journalism and the academy better than they understand the speech of most of America?”

I think he’s onto something. More than a liberal or conservative echo chamber, I think what’s going on here is the politics-junkie echo chamber. The world of people who spend most of their time thinking about, writing about or practicing politics is fairly small, and as with any group who share an intense but narrow interest, it’s easy to forget that the rest of world thinks and works differently.

That is what I call principle

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Obama/Edwards/Clinton speechwriter Wendy Button on why she’ll be voting McCain. You don’t have to agree with her reasons (I mostly do) or her conclusions. But you’ve got to admire her courage for daring to act according to her principles.

The final straw came the other week when Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (a.k.a Joe the Plumber) asked a question about higher taxes for small businesses. Instead of celebrating his aspirations, they were mocked. He wasn’t “a real plumber,” and “They’re fighting for Joe the Hedge-Fund manager,” and the patronizing, “I’ve got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber.”

Having worked in politics, I know that absolutely none of this is on the level. This back and forth is posturing, a charade, and a political game. These lines are what I refer to as “hooker lines”—a sure thing to get applause and the press to scribble as if they’re reporting meaningful news.

As the nation slouches toward disaster, the level of political discourse is unworthy of this moment in history. We have Republicans raising Ayers and Democrats fostering ageism with “erratic” and jokes about Depends. Sexism. Racism. Ageism and maybe some Socialism have all made their ugly cameos in election 2008. It’s not inspiring. Perhaps this is why I found the initial mocking of Joe so offensive and I realized an old line applied: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.”

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Not only has this party belittled working people in this campaign from Joe the Plumber to the bitter comments, it has also been part of tearing down two female candidates. At first, certain Democrats and the press called Senator Clinton “dishonest.” They went after her cleavage. They said her experience as First Lady consisted of having tea parties. There was no outrage over “Bros before Hoes” or “Iron My Shirt.” Did Senator Clinton make mistakes? Of course. She’s human.

But here we are about a week out and it’s déjà vu all over again. Really, front-page news is how the Republican National Committee paid for Governor Sarah Palin’s wardrobe? Where’s the op-ed about how Obama tucks in his shirt when he plays basketball or how Senator Biden buttons the top button on his golf shirt?

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Governor Palin and I don’t agree on a lot of things, mostly social issues. But I have grown to appreciate the Governor. I was one of those initial skeptics and would laugh at the pictures. Not anymore. When someone takes on a corrupt political machine and a sitting governor, that is not done by someone with a low I.Q. or a moral core made of tissue paper. When someone fights her way to get scholarships and work her way through college even in a jagged line, that shows determination and humility you can’t learn from reading Reinhold Niebuhr. When a mother brings her son with special needs onto the national stage with love, honesty, and pride, that gives hope to families like mine as my older brother lives with a mental disability. And when someone can sit on a stage during the Sarah Palin rap on Saturday Night Live, put her hands in the air and watch someone in a moose costume get shot—that’s a sign of both humor and humanity.

Has she made mistakes? Of course, she’s human too. But the attention paid to her mistakes has been unprecedented compared to Senator Obama’s “57 states” remarks or Senator Biden using a version of the Samuel Johnson quote, “There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus a man’s thoughts.”

There’s a lot more in that piece. I’m sure it took a lot of guts to write; it only takes a few minutes to read. I encourage you to do so.

[h/t five feet of fury]

The courts decided it was objectively true…

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…because it is.

The majority argued that it is objectively true that human life begins at conception, and that the state can force doctors to say so.

If Bush pushed those courts “to the right”–(I don’t happen to think abortion is a left/right issue, but whatever, I’ll go with the New York Times language)–then it’s best to know that the next President can just as easily push them back.

Technical note

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It seems we’re having difficulty displaying the blog properly in Internet Explorer. We will look into it but in the meantime, you can try switching to Firefox or Safari (or Opera; it’s a cute little browser), where the site displays just fine.

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Update: Yay for the PWPL investigative services! Found a bit of rogue code that was causing the problem and removed it. It all looks fine now.

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Andrea adds: PWPL management (read: Andrea) would like to thank PWPL investigative services (read: Brigitte). The investigative services department also takes on a host of other useful interventions, including but certainly not limited to maintaining the sanity of management. For which I am “management” is very grateful.

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Brigitte wonders: Do I get to call Andrea Miss Management?

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