The Alaska Disasta

From an anti-Palin rally in Anchorage, that apparently drew huge crowds (hats off to Fiona for finding it):


Here's some text describing the event:

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage . The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn't honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn't happen here.

So, if you've been doing the math. Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin's rally that got all the national media coverage!

War with Spain?

What the hell is this, 1898? Maybe McCain is old enough to remember war with Spain, but the rest of us sure don't.

In this interview, he refuses to say if he would meet with Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero. He does say he will meet with friends, and won't meet with those who wish the U.S. harm, but won't say which category Zapatero is in.

If you read Spanish, check it out here

Here's the things I can think of: Zapatero is the guy who pulled Spain out of the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq, he wants amnesty for illegal immigrants, and he's a leader of the Spanish Socialist party.

And McCain doesn't know if he would meet with him or not? America can't afford to lose any more natural friends, this guy will be an utter disaster as president. But then again, what do you expect from a Republican at this point?

Another journalist steals my line!

This time it's Maureen Dowd, talking about Carly Fiorina's flub yesterday:

Carly Fiorina, the woman John McCain sent out to defend Sarah Palin and rip anyone who calls her a tabula rasa on foreign policy and the economy, admitted Tuesday that Palin was not capable of running Hewlett-Packard.

That’s pretty damning coming from Fiorina, who also was not capable of running Hewlett-Packard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/opinion/17dowd.html?hp

If I were on South Park...

A friend of mine makes good South Park caricatures. I asked her to do one of me, and this is what I got.


I kind of like it, although I'm not sure I typically look so disheveled and grumpy.

The real problem: Pakistan

Now, if I were to tell you that there was a conservative Islamic country with nuclear weapons who was harboring Osama Bin Laden and who has standing order to shoot at American military aircraft, you would probably think that was a problem, right?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080916/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan

Why are we in Iraq when we should be killing Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists in Northern Pakistan? I'm not a hawk, but hell, if we are going to kill people, let's kill the right people.

UPDATE: How funny, Christopher Hitchens is writing about this now, and he stole my headline!

http://www.slate.com/id/2200134/?from=rss

Here's something most liberals don't get: Barack Obama is not a peacenik just because he wants out of Iraq. He wants to go fight a war somewhere else, namely, on the Afghan/Pakistan border, and within Pakistan if he has to. People should really understand this, it is the core difference between McCain and Obama in foreign policy. McCain has no real plan for what to do in Iraq or Afghanistan other than "keep the status quo". Obama wants to divest from Iraq and double down in Afghanistan. Both plans have their risks, obviously.

Another thing people don't get. Unlike in the US, civilian control of the military in Pakistan is not a foregone conclusion. There is no elected commander in chief, even if Pakistan is a "democracy", because the military does not recognize an obligation to defer to civilian leaders. So, you have the odd situation where the civilian leadership might want to allow the US to operate in Waziristan, at the same time that Pakistani army spokesmen are saying they will shoot down US aircraft that try.

My prediction is that if things escalate along the border, a military coup in Pakistan is a matter of when, not if.

the little exchange that couldn't

Well, as much as the Dow tried to only give up a modest amount today, in the end, it was bad. This morning I'd noticed that the world markets gave up between 4-5% overnight, and while the Dow tried to hold at around -250 or -350, it ended up closing down 504, which is minus 4.42%

Ouch. This week will get uglier, various banks are reporting earnings.

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/wei.html

To clarify, the loss today was bad (6th worse ever in total points), it's not too bad, in the sense that it doesn't make the top 20 list of all time losses on a % basis. The dotcom bubble burst had worse days. First day of trading post September 11th was worse. It's not all bad...

http://www.mdleasing.com/djia-losses.htm

On this day in history...

In 1835 Charles Darwin arrived in the Galápagos Islands and was inspired to describe his theory of evolution that Sarah Palin doesn't believe in.

a different kind of logic

Christopher Hayes put up a post back in 2004 when campaigning for Kerry about what it takes to convince an undecided voter about anything. Lesson learned: you can't really reason with them.

http://www.chrishayes.org/articles/decision-makers/

Which makes me think to a certain degree, if people are going to make idiotic uninformed choices about their votes, why not just let people buy votes? Free markets always work, right? At least it would be somewhat more predictable, the candidate with the most money raised would win, and since money equals speech, according to Mitch McConnell and campaign finance nut jobs, then why not let money equal votes?

Yes I'm being sarcastic. But the reality television show election I'm watching at the moment is somewhat blowing my mind.

melting

Overseas stock markets are off between 4-5% this morning. Which if it happened here, would likely be the biggest one day drop in Wall St. history. Monday is going to be ugly.

Yet another thing that I can blame on Mr. Bush/Greenspan (lax regulation, over-borrowing, low interest rates for too long,etc).

But fear not, I'm sure Sarah Palin knows how to fix things, right?