Beating a Dead Horse *updated*

Dear Andrew Sullivan,

You don't like Sarah Palin. We got it. She lost the election. Enough already.

Thanks,

Dyre42

*Update*

It looks like at least one other reader agrees with me.

Palin Cleared in Trooper "Scandal"

Good of them to get this out of the way prior to the elections...

From the AP:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin violated no ethics laws when she fired her public safety commissioner, the state personnel board concluded in a report released Monday. "There is no probable cause to believe that the governor, or any other state official, violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in connection with these matters," the report says.

"Gov. Palin is pleased that the independent investigator for the Personnel Board has concluded that she acted properly in the reassignment of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan," her attorney, Thomas Van Flein, said in a statement.

Admittedly I don't care for Palin but even given my bias I could see where if the trooper in question was as unstable as claimed then I could see where Palin may have thought she was justified in trying to get rid of him. To me the question was did she abuse her power in the quest of that goal? Apparently the answer is no. Despite that odds are Palin will be packing her bags and going back to Alaska tomorrow night and probably face a tough bid for reelection in 2010. Now that the ethics investigation is over she's clear for the 2012 primaries. I have a strong feeling we haven't seen the last of by a longshot.

If You're Going to Lie

At least lie well enough to respect the intelligence of the person(s) you're lying to.

From ABC's The Blotter:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fought to protest atrocities in Sudan by dropping assets tied to the country's brutal regime from the state's multi-billion-dollar investment fund, she claimed during Thursday's vice presidential debate.

Not quite, according to a review of the public record and according to the recollections of a legislator and others who pushed a measure to divest Alaskan holdings in Sudan-linked investments.

"The [Palin] administration killed our bill," said Alaska state representative Les Gara, D-Anchorage. Gara and state Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, co-sponsored a resolution early this year to force the Alaska Permanent Fund a $40 billion investment fund, a portion of whose dividends are distributed annually to state residents to divest millions of dollars in holdings tied to the Sudanese government.

...

In Thursday's debate, Palin said she had advocated the state divest from Sudan. "When I and others in the legislature found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars," Palin said.

But a search of news clips and transcripts from the first three months of this year did not turn up an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns about Alaska's investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover, Palin's administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its opposition in a public hearing on the measure.

"The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination," testified Brian Andrews, Palin's deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature.

...

The Alaska Permanent Fund currently holds $22 million in Sudan-linked investments, according to the non-profit Sudan Divestment Task Force. Divestment advocates say the fund does not need an act of the state legislature to divest itself of those holdings.

I'm not going to go all Andrew Sullivan here but considering that my own hard core red state of Texas saw fit to divest itself of any Sudanese investments the Palin administration's decision to passively support genocide is morally negligent at best. The fact that she stood in front of the nation and lied about says volumes about her to me. Given the number of red states that have divested the number of conservative and/or evangelical groups that have stood up in opposition to the travesty in Darfur how can Palin justify continuing to indirectly finance genocide? Let alone lie about it?

If evil prevails when good people do nothing then what happens when good people try to profit from evil's actions?

Thanks to Screaming at the TV for linking to this post

Biden's Best Bet

As I have mentioned before Biden should focus on the issues and refrain from attacking Palin so he doesn't risk coming off like a bully. Andrew Halco who ran against Palin for governor and debated Palin a dozen times lays out the other stumbling block for Biden. If Palin has her way the denate will be about personality rather than policy:

Palin is a master of the nonanswer. She can turn a 60-second response to a query about her specific solutions to healthcare challenges into a folksy story about how she's met people on the campaign trail who face healthcare challenges. All without uttering a word about her public-policy solutions to healthcare challenges.
...
And when she does answer the actual question asked, she has a canny ability to connect with the audience on a personal level. For example, asked to name a major issue that had been ignored during the campaign, I discussed the health of local communities, Mr. Knowles talked about affordable healthcare, and Palin talked about the need to protect hunting and fishing rights.

I don't think Biden can beat Palin in a popularity contest. He's somehow going to have to either force Palin to stick to the issues or find a way to repeatedly politely point out that Palin isn't actually answering the questions. Given his gaffe prone nature and his temperment he may not be up to that particular task.

I Take Exception

To Fred Thompson's last comment in this video...



I believe that distinction belongs to Teddy Roosevelt.

Palin: Email Hack Attack

By now you have no doubt been made aware that Gov. Sarah Palin's personal email account was account hacked. But what you may not have heard is how it was done. So here are the gory details of how exactly her email account was hacked:

1. The perpetrator logged into the proxy server Ctunnel.com to cover his tracks.
2. Then he went to yahoo.com clicked the "Forgot your password?" link
3. Once Yahoo asked the security questions he then Googled the answers

That's all it took. The full story is posted over at Wired including the panic that the "hacker" went into after he realized how stupid his actions were (for doing it and for not covering his tracks better) It is however worth noting that someone from the message boards he posted to did go into the account reset the password and then emailed Palin's office about the "attack".
By now its patently obvious that anyone with enough will could have broken into Palin's email account at any time. Additionally since Yahoo doesn't actually encrypt your mail session only the login page (same goes for AOL, Hotmail, and Gmail*) her account could have hacked at anytime by anyone with the right skills.

The irony is that it was her attempt to get around public accountability that led to her emails, family photos, and daughters phone number being spread on the web. If she had done the right thing and not tried to escape being accounatble to her electorate and used the vastly more secure email system that being governor afforded her this would have never happened in this fashion. Ultimately by trying to eschew accountability she jeopardized information security. Take from that what you will.

Now as for securing your email account first beef up your password, then make the answers to your security questions harder there some good tips on doing both here. Then consider using a password manager to securely store your new and improved passwords that way all of your passwords are instantly available by using one master password. A list of the most popular password managers is available here.

*If you are a gmail user (like myself) you can 128 bit encrypt your entire mail session by logging into your account, clicking on settings (located in the top right hand corner), scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click the circle next to "always use https", then click save changes and your done.

Beating a Dead Horse

It looks like I'm not the only person who thinks that Andrew Sullivan's attacks on Sarah Palin have gone overboard. Over at The Debatable Land occasional Daily Dish stand in Alex Massie thinks so too.

Personally I think his "vetting" of Palin has become so weird and harsh that I'm starting to wonder if she didn't fly from Alaska to Sullivan's house batter his door down with a frozen moose carcass and then proceed to personally pee in his Wheaties.

Sullivan had the following to say in his defense...

All I am doing is exposing as many facts and arguments about this Manchurian candidate that I can find. I am committed to putting the truth out there, especially when it debunks my assumptions and have done so promptly on the sole occasion when some clear evidence rebutted a question I was raising. I am airing all sides of the issues. But I will not relent until we have a better idea of who this person is. And I offer no apologies or regrets for persistence.

If you really think you now know all you need to know about her, read someone else.

Sliming Sarah

I think its important for bloggers to lay their biases out in the open.
Particularly if one happens to be a moderate/centrist/independent.
Moderates are supposed to be more objective than their more partisan counterparts. Having said that here's my latest bias. I don't like Sarah Palin. Not one bit. And I don't have a good reason for it. Literally as soon as she came onto my radar the alarms started going off. The last time that happened during a presidential race was in 2000 when W declared his candidacy. So I'm going to trust my instincts about her but for the purposes of this blog try to be as objective as possible.

Having said that I do think that the feeding frenzy the media and blogtopia has gotten in over Sarah Palin has reached unprecedented levels. Certain actions of hers have been misrepresented and then in turn presented as the truth repeatedly
by both liberal and moderate bloggers. In particular the book banning inquiry and subsequent firing of the questioned librarian has been woefully misconstrued. The latest blogger of note to propagate that myth (and others) is Juan Cole over at Salon. His recent post, "What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick" presents several half truths as fact. So below are a list of his assertions contrasted with what FactCheck.org has to say on the same matter.

Cole:

while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin inquired of the local librarian how to go about banning books that some of her constituents thought contained inappropriate language. She tried to fire the librarian for defying her

Fact Check:

Palin never asked that books be banned; the librarian continued to serve in that position; no books were actually banned; and many of the books on the list that Palin supposedly wanted to censor weren't even in print at the time, proving that the list is a fabrication.

It's true that Palin did raise the issue with Mary Ellen Emmons, Wasilla's librarian, on at least two occasions.
...
Palin never asked that books be banned; the librarian continued to serve in that position; no books were actually banned
...
Moreover, although Palin fired Emmons as part of a "loyalty" purge, she rehired Emmons the next day, and Emmons remained at her job for two-and-a-half more years. Actually, Palin initially requested Emmons' resignation in October 1996, four days before the public discussion of censorship. That was at the same time she requested that all four of Wasilla's department heads resign.

Cole:

Palin argued when running for governor that creationism should be taught in public schools, at taxpayers' expense, alongside real science.

Fact Check:

On Aug. 29, the Boston Globe reported that Palin was open to teaching creationism in public schools. That's true. She supports teaching creationism alongside evolution, though she has not actively pursued such a policy as governor.

Cole:

The GOP vice-presidential pick holds that abortion should be illegal, even in cases of rape, incest or severe birth defects, making an exception only if the life of the mother is in danger. She calls abortion an "atrocity" and pledges to reshape the judiciary to fight it. Ironically, Palin's views on the matter are to the right of those in the Muslim country of Tunisia,
...
Palin's stance is even stricter than that of the Parliament of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In 2005, the legislature in Tehran attempted to amend the country's antiabortion statute to permit an abortion up to four months in case of a birth defect. The conservative clerical Guardianship Council, which functions as a sort of theocratic senate, however, rejected the change. Iran's law on abortion is therefore virtually identical to the one that Palin would like to see imposed on American women
...
Saudi Arabia's restrictive law on abortion likewise disallows it in the case or rape or incest, or of fetal impairment, which is also Gov. Palin's position.

Fact Check:

*crickets chirp*

(OK, he's right on that count.)

There are real issues that Palin can be taken to task on like fiscal responsibility, accepting earmarks while claiming to be a reformer, CCing her husband on all executive level emails. In fact if you'd like to see a conservative do a fine job of it check out the blog Eunomia over at American Conservative magazine. He smartly points out her faults without ever once propagating a single falsehood. Ultimately that is what separates vetting from sliming. We need more of the former and less of the latter. I may not like Palin but that doesn't mean I don't want her to be treated unfairly.

However at the rate mistruths are being propagated about she may eventually catch up with Obama on the slimed scale. And given how heated things get during presidential election that might be about as fair as blogtopia can manage.

Thanks to Northloop Neighborhoods for linking to this post.

Unintended Consequences

Looks like Palin is a cash cow.

The only problem is that its Obama who is reaping the rewards...

Obama's coffers have been filling since Sarah Palin attacked him repeatedly in St. Paul last night.

An Obama aide confirms Drudge's report that Obama has raised about $8 million from more than 130,000 donors and is on pace to raise $10 million by the time McCain reaches the stage tonight.

Palin Bikini Pictures

Looks like somebody whipped one up since none seem to exist online. The original is here and the photoshopped one is here.

Don't you just love what passes for political discourse during an election year?

H/T Polimom

The Palin Drone

In case you haven't noticed the coverage of McCain's veep pick has all but dominated the news cycle over the holiday weekend. And if the MSM's coverage has been excessive then the political blogosphere's coverage has been to the saturation point. One benefit of this flood of coverage has been that much was made known about Palin in a very short period of time. Unfortunately both the MSM and and many in blogtopia went beyond sifting Palin's past and also put her family under a microscope. That's a line that shouldn't be crossed. The result has been days of ad hominem attacks on both Palin and her family, rank condescension by the MSM, and a stream of vitriol on the left that is normally reserved only for W himself. In fact the treatment of her family became so bad that even Obama tried to reign it in.

A side effect of this has been that the base has circled the wagons around Palin and by extension McCain. Additionally I think the nonstop coverage of McCain's decision to make Palin his second forced many independents to reevaluate their position on a McCain presidency. How that pans out remains to be seen although early polling suggests Palin polls more positively received amongst men than women. I've seen many question the judgement of McCain in picking Palin. I myself said it was risky. Its obvious that he needed someone socially conservative enough to get that demographic behind him. I said earlier that she was a risky choice. But I can't help but wonder if McCain's campaign suspected that this would happen. By that I mean that by picking Palin they would bring out the worst that the left has to offer and therefore give them just enough rope to hang themselves.

We'll have to wait for the post convention polls to see if that proves to be true.

Thanks to The Big Stick for linking to this post.

At Least Its Not Romney

That was my original thought when I heard Palin was announced as VP. Having given it a little more thought though I have to say that McCain's decision is a calculated risk. McCain had to know that this would generate more buzz than Biden being tapped for veep would ever get. Additionally during an election that is about change it allows him to have a a running mate that doesn't promote the GOP old white guy stereotype. To some degree Palin's views will help assuage part of the GOP base. It could also greatly influence the outcome of the VP debates.

Because Biden repeatedly ripping Romney (or Jindal or Pawlenty) a new one would have the equivalent of political bloodsport if he does the same thing to Palin he'll just appear to be a bully. That means Biden will have to walk a fine line and that's not something he's particularly good at.

On the other hand he chose an inexperienced governor of a sparsely populated state. But if she's as personable and as smart as I hear, campaigns well, and can keep Biden off balance she might be given a pass. After all America seems to have a fascination with fresh faces this election season.

Plus she's not Romney.

Thanks to Shortwoman for linking to this post.