Wow…Palin reminded me last night why I never played hockey, the parents are too vicious. That was one hell of an attack dog speech. She even called her self a dog. She came out swing. If you are any of the following Palin attacked you for not putting country first: Obama, the Obamas, Biden, the media, a democrat, a liberal, a San Franciscian, a Hollywoodian, an East Coaster, a Gay, a Muslim, a Jew, someone who can’t skin a moose, Caption Spock, etc.

I have two thoughts. One, I am not sure being angry and hateful and vengeful towards others is really an effective tactic. What if, God forbid, democrats actually do love their country? What if San Francisco actually loves this country? What if love for country is not really a questionable thing? Beyond being divisive it is insulting. Last night Palin looked like she was going to lead the convention out into the streets with touches and pitch forks laying waste to anyone from St. Paul to Hollywood. At first I thought Country First was a good pitch for, “John McCain, the maverick, who stood up to his party and put country above the elephant.” But he first had to allow 3 days of the party he once fought. I have come to realize ‘country first’ means Obama and all democrats are unpatriotic. Yet again Bush steals McCain’s message.  

The second, thing I would like to point out is that Obama in his convention effectively turned the tables. Obama, and the democrats, effectively learned how to attack the Republican’s. Leading up to the convention day after day McCain would attack Obama’s energy plan, his speeches, his supposed love of arugula (I’m more of and endive man). Obama was constantly on the defensive. Then Obama figured it out and started attacking first. He started putting McCain on the defensive. Then McCain forgot how many houses he owned and then Palin’s family had some babies-mama’s problems. The point is when you listen to the entire Republican convention they have been on the defensive. They are not talking about their policies. And more importantly they are not guiding the debate they are responding to the debate.

The reason this matters is conventions are the best time to gain or pick up ground. If you are on the defensive no matter how nasty Palin’s words were they were still within a narrative shaped by Obama.

I hear that McCain tonight promises to put forward some policies. This would be a good idea because right now they are not playing their own game.

After skipping day 1 of the RNC to watch hurricane Gustav, thankfully, miss New Orleans the RNC’s first two days became one.

Notes about the RNC: The first thing that I noticed was the simplicity of the stage. Especially when it is compared to the flash and glamour of the DNC’s stage. The stage of the RNC is really minimalist and frankly kind of ugly. This is of course either stupid or brilliant. It either feeds their armature at govt image or feeds the image they want to create of the Dems as elitist. My guess is the second.

The script is not really but kind of surprising. McCain hates the culture wars. That is why the Dems in the senate like him. McCain has always been lukewarm about the issue of abortion and frankly doesn’t like talking about it. He isn’t a social conservative but he has no problem voting that to expand his base. Palin is a culture warrior. Since adding her to the ticket we are now back in the culture wars.

Abortion, the gays, religion, blah blah blah lets fight…

With this comes the tactics of Bush and Rove that McCain back in 2000 despised. They will attack Obama’s patriotism and every democrats patriotism…a la ‘country first’. Then they will attack the media for being biased. Now the media is biased in a sense. Fox news is biased, MSNBC is in part biased, and various people on CNN (Glen Beck and Lou Dobbs) are biased. But Wolf Blitzer, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric? Give me a break.

John McCain says the coverage of Palin is sexist and biased. Yes the biased people have taken sides. But McCain claims the non-biased people are now biased. This is crap. They are vetting Palin because that is what reporters do. They did it to Obama…a la Rev Wright…and Palin gets no special treatment.

I leave you with Joe Kline of Time magazines words or McCain’s attacks:

September 3, 2008 2:04

Angry Amateurs

Posted by Joe Klein

The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign’s war against the press. This has been building for some time. Those of us who have criticized the candidate–and especially those of us who enjoyed good relations with McCain in the past–have been subject to off-the-record browbeating and attempted bullying all year. But things have gotten much worse in recent days: there was McCain’s rude, bizarre interview with Time Magazine last week. Yesterday, McCain refused to an interview with Larry King, for God’s sake, because Campbell Brown had been caught in the commission of journalism on CNN the night before, asking McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds what decisions Sarah Palin had made as commander-in-chief of the Alaska national guard. (There was an answer that the unprepared Bounds didn’t have: she had deployed them to fight fires.)

So what’s going on here? Two things. McCain is just plain angry at us. By the evidence presented in the utterly revealing Time interview, he’s ballistic. This is a politician who needs to see himself as the man on the white horse, boldly traversing a muddy field…any intimations that he’s gotten muddied in the process, or has decided to throw mud, are intolerable.

The second thing is more insidious: Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair–sexist (you gotta love it)–personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media–about the substance of Palin’s record as mayor and governor. Sure, there are a few outliers–and the tabloid press–who have fixed on baby stories. That was inevitable….the flip side of the personal stories that the McCain team thought would work to their advantage–Palin’s moose-hunting and wolf-shooting, and her admirable decision to have a Down Syndrome baby. And yes, when we all fix on the same story, whether it’s a hurricane or a little-known politician, a zoo ensues. But the media coverage of the Palin story has been well within the bounds of responsibility. Schmidt is trying to make it seem otherwise, a desperate tactic.

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is “a task from God.” The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

So as the campaigns and the media tries to figure out how to weather hurricane Gustav it looks like the GOP has another storm heading their way.

From Reuters…poor girl…

To rebut rumors, Palin says daughter, 17, pregnant

Mon Sep 1, 2008 12:02pm EDT

By Steve Holland

ST. PAUL (Reuters) - The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.

“We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us,” the Palins’ statement said.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support,” the Palins said.

The Palins asked the news media to respect the young couple’s privacy.

“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media, respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates,” the statement concluded.

MCCAIN KNEW

Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter’s pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.

In the short period since she was announced last Friday, Palin has helped to energize the Republican Party’s conservative base, giving the McCain camp fresh energy going into the campaign for the November 4 election against Democrat Barack Obama.

McCain officials said the news of the daughter’s pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called “mud-slinging and lies” circulating on liberal blog sites.

According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in May to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin’s child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother.

A senior McCain campaign official said the McCain camp was appalled that these rumors had not only been spread around liberal blog sites and partisan Democrats, but also were the subject of heightened interest from mainstream news media.

“The despicable rumors that have been spread by liberal blogs, some even with Barack Obama’s name in them, is a real anchor around the Democratic ticket, pulling them down in the mud in a way that certainly juxtaposes themselves against their ‘campaign of change,’” a senior aide said.

(Editing by Howard Goller)

Palin winning Miss Wasilla qualifying her for the Miss Alaska contest.

Maybe John McCain is a genius and Palin was just what the doctor ordered, but on the surface it seems super dumb to me.

The pick of a completely inexperienced politician from Alaska has certainly changed the tenor of the debate. But not in McCain’s favor. It turned the Media’s focus to his age. A 72 year old man who has battled skin cancer and general oldness could die at any moment. And as the constitution explains this upgrades the VP to the P. So McCain becomes president, his skin cancer returns, he dies, the runner up for Miss Alaska is the next president.

That has been the narrative in the News. Suddenly this election has become a referendum on President Palin. The news has all but killed off McCain. He wanted a game changer and instead he gave us a reason to question his ability to stay alive if president.

So naturally there must be another reason for this. I think it’s a Republican scheme to destroy affirmative action. For the first time in the history a woman was actually selected for a job devoid of any ability simply based on her gender, and the results are horrifying.

I almost don’t want to talk about it, but, of
course, it's news so I am forced to - so is the
dilemma facing the Media. McCain has bucked at
tradition and forced himself into the narrative of the DNC.

It is a tradition that during a party's
convention, the other party remains silent - each
getting their turn. At most press releases from
the opponent are excepted and allowed.

In a kind of Karl Rove style evil brilliance,
McCain has called the media’s bluff. Reminiscent
of "the field of dreams," I suppose it is true
“If you news it the media will come.” So while
Obama got set to accept the nomination, McCain
announced he would release an historic ad during
Obama’s speech, sparking many calls of poor
sportsmanship from the press, McCain fooled them."

Then he has stolen all evening news coverage today by announcing his VP.

He picks Sarah Palin. Who is Sarah Palin? No one
really knows. And that’s the point. She is a
woman; so McCain looks better. And by being a
complete unknown she poses little immediate harm.
McCain has nullified the convention.

I think it's kind of lame and sleazy, but now
that it has happened look for Obama to do the
same. So much for new politics….When you can’t
beat them, scratch their fucking eyes out.

Last night in Denver Colorado The Democratic National Party nominated Barack Obama as their nominee to run for the Presidency of the United States of America.

This makes him the first African American to receive a nomination from one of the two major parties. Regardless of politics, this is truly wonderful. And I would be saying this if it were one of the Republicans. My father called shortly afterwards and he was clearly humbled by the whole situation. He said recalling the race riots in his School’s (Brooklyn College) cafeteria, that it seems unreal to him that in his life this could happen.

What is most amazing to me is that it almost doesn’t matter. It wasn’t until a few hours later, when I was falling a sleep, that I remembered his race.  There only two people left who can be president, and one of them is black. Yet, we are still a racist country (look no further then Eric Shive’s article in the Cornell Review’s current issue).

I suppose that despite our failings, we should find hope in what happened last night no matter where on the political spectrum we find ourselves.  We are after all moving forward.

Why must we be forced to watch a horse race? When you think about what this term implies you realize how off base our news coverage is. We frankly should not even care about polls. News stations should not even report polls. Why do news stations report polls? Do the polls actually have any bearing on how we vote?

A poll tells us nothing about Obama or McCain. I have watched hours of political news over the summer and learned nothing important. I know some many irrelevant things now. I know the trend of polls in Ohio, the names of the camping managers, and the internal predictions of each act on the polls. But I still haven’t learned one damn specific detail about how either of these guys is going to do anything they say they will.

I must take that back. Last week I read an op-ed by Obama’s economic advisor in the Wall Street Journal. So I actually know what the effect of Obama’s tax policy would be on me. But this information was not repeated once on network news.

It is day two of the democratic convention and it has been a bust. It was a bizarre mix of the inability to read Teleprompters, electronic feeds breaking down, and misguided speeches promising warm and fuzz notions of sugar plumbs and fairies dancing in my head.

Government affects our lives. But unless the political parties explain to us the effect of their policies on us we have nothing else to vote on except personality, patriotism, and sadly race.

What is worse then this unspecific bull crap emanating from the convention is the media coverage. If the democrats can’t tell us what effect they will have on our lives it is up to the media to tell us. That is their job. They are supposed to investigate for those of us who do not have time. They are our short cut, our heuristic, our in sight into the sprawling beast we call government.

Watching the convention has been like watching to opening ceremony of the Olympics. The news does little more then point the cameras at famous people and talk lucidly about grudges between people. MSNBC, which has been the lightning rod for criticism this year, isn’t even covering the convention. They only televise a few of the speeches otherwise its just a bunch of talking heads raging at each other focusing on highfalutin issues that tell use nothing about what the candidates intend on doing. Though I am sure MSNBC would argue that they aim for a more educated and decided audience. Both Fox and CNN should be commended for at least showing more speeches but again they go little to explain what this means for us. Frankly Fox probably does this best, although in a very biased way.

The democrats have not even had the chance to go on message because the media has only been covering the disappointment of the Clinton’s, the effect of the Clinton’s, the anger of the Clinton’s. The Clinton’s aren’t running for president. The policy difference between Obama and McCain should be what drives former Clinton’s supporter’s decision of who to vote for. But if they are never exposed to coverage of policy differences they are left up the creak without a paddle. So is the falling of cable news a slave to profit.

I hope Clinton’s speech last night will shut up the media. The election is far too important for us to be wasting time on personal feuds. The media has a job to do and they need to stop reporting on high school style psychodrama and starting telling us what effect an Obama or a McCain presidency will actually have on our lives. I like most America’s would like to vote on the issues and so far the convention has made it clear that the democrats have not intentions of telling us what effect they would have on us so we must turn to the press. The media owes it to this country to forget the horse race and do their damn job.

The rolling out of a VP is a lot like the announcement of a company’s quarterly earnings. In both cases the media flips out and makes a huge deal of it. Average people merely make a mental note and move on. This observation applies to much of the media’s coverage of the election. It is the obvious result of 24 hour news. There are simply more hours in the day than hours of news.

Every hour and half hour the networks must have headlines. But, it might take three hours for the news to be made. The result: at the top of the hour the breaking news was that Obama had left the gym to head home as Biden was still sitting in his home. That is not news. There is very little drama to be had. We would have been better off with 5 hours of coverage of the situation between Georgia and Russia than five hours of waiting for Biden to leave the house.

Oh, and yes, it is Biden. The media was all a scoff with what this means. Does it show Obama is weak on Foreign Policy? Did Obama give up on Change? Is Biden an attack Dog? While it does mean all of this and more, I find truth in McCain’s estimation that the VP has two jobs: to cast tie breaking votes in the senate and to check in daily as to the health of the president.

My point is that the coverage was downright over the top. The networks’ contrasting styles of covering the whole ordeal were interesting and say much about how the media approaches this race. I think Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics.com put it best, when he said the media reports on the bubble of Washington and talks about the average people like they are stupid. This was eye opening because I realized I find myself doing this. When I watch cable news it is largely a cerebral exercise in assessing the effect of each move on the “average American.” This is dumb of me! The average American has a visceral and gut reaction to a politician’s actions, but they also apply a large degree of reason.

For example, the gas tax. It simply won’t work. It’s a fine idea, but you won’t find an economist who isn’t employed by an oil company who thinks it will work. The average American gets this. Just like the average American understands that drilling won’t solve all our problems. But the media talks about whether or not this will stick with Bob in Kansas.

I take offense because not only should Americans be treated like they aren’t dumb but it’s the media’s job to report when politicians lie. If the gas tax won’t work, CNN should be explaining this, not in a partisan way but in a factual way. There is a difference between fair and balanced. Balanced is not always fair. If 90% of people are against issue A, but you give 50% of your air time to the other 10%, that is wrong. So is silencing the minority. But it’s the media’s job to report reality, and they fail to do it.

So CNN and MSNBC were largely spending their time in a Washington bubble. They were talking on a Macro level about emotions instead of facts or people’s gut reactions. Fox, on the other hand, was only talking about emotions. I am not sure who the newscaster, I was watching, was but whoever he was, he should get a raise. He spent most of his time watching Biden’s door, as the world waited for Biden to leave the house, complaining about how he had to cover Biden instead of playing Bocce and eating Italian sausage with his family. At least he was honest that it was boring. But he also spent much of his time talking about how expensive Biden’s house must be and how this neutralizes McCain’s gaffe about not knowing how many houses he owns. This type of coverage focuses on shaping people’s emotional reactions towards a political point. It makes Micro logic trump Macro logic. It tells people to think only emotionally, just like the other networks tell us only to think logically. We need both.

Basically, we get too much news coverage. The coverage never focuses on facts. Fox is too emotional. The rest of the news is too cerebral. And I also wish that I had played bocce instead of watching Biden’s door for 3 hours.

Well folks…I doubt anyone will be tuning into Kitsch until the school years gets started…but I’m a sucker…

Our blogs have been silent all summer. I have been compelled many times to add a story (Most notably about my new favorite Fox News show “Porked: Earmarks for Profit’). The media has done a piss poor job and I probley could have called them out. Frankly I was suffering from election over load. I personally could not deal with it any more. Obama and McCain are running poor campaigns. And the media is doing a bad job covering it. It is all…BORING..

But with the Dem VP coming in just a few hours and the conventions starting. I am bound not to be board and I should get my blogging juices back. But to transition back into things here is the best article I have seen all summer:

D.C. bartenders favor Democrats as patrons

Re-posted from ABC New York Local 7 news:

NEW YORK — New York Gov. David Paterson is granting a full and unconditional pardon to rapper Ricky “Slick Rick” Walters for the attempted murders of two men in 1991.

The unconditional pardon for a 1991 attempted murder conviction aims to halt efforts to deport Walters to the United Kingdom, the country he left as a child.

The eye patch-wearing star behind the ’80s rap classic “La-Di-Da-Di” served more the five years in prison after shooting his cousin and another man. Both survived.

The Democratic governor says Walters, 43, is now a rap artist and landlord in the Bronx who has not had any other criminal problems since his release from prison in 1997 and has volunteered at youth outreach programs to counsel against violence.

“My family and I are eternally thankful to Governor Paterson, my attorneys Michael Krinsky and Craig Kaplan at Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman and to all of the people who have supported me throughout the past seventeen years,” Walters said in a prepared statement issued through a publicist.

“This has been a long and difficult road and I am happy for this to be settled once and for all,” Walters said. “I look forward to enjoying this time with my family and friends and to continue leading an honest and productive life.”

In announcing the decision, Paterson noted Walters’ commitment to helping young people.

“Mr. Walters has fully served the sentence imposed upon him for his convictions, had an exemplary disciplinary record while in prison and on parole, and has been living without incident in the community for more than 10 years,” Paterson said. “I urge federal immigration officials to once again grant Mr. Walters relief from deportation, so that he is not separated from his many family members who are United States citizens, including his two teenage children.”

Although he had completed probation requirements in the attempted murder case and resumed his musical career, he was arrested again in June 2002. Immigrant agents stopped him after returning to Miami from a weeklong Caribbean cruise where he was a featured performer.

The arrest was on a 1997 warrant. After spending more than a year in jail, a federal judge eventually ruled in October 2003 that the Bureau of Immigration Appeals denied Walters due process when it issued the warrant.

The London-born Walters became a top emcee, working with such hip-hop luminaries as Russell Simmons, Doug E. Fresh and artists at Def Jam Records.

In 2006, Walters told The Associated Press he was simply going to keep working and play out his appeals.

“If you were in my shoes, how would you look at life?” he said then. “You’d ride life out, too. Anger would just make life not enjoyable, you know what I mean?”