Palin's new chorus of critics: conservative pundits

The narrative of the presidential campaign the past two weeks has frankly been rather predictable. There's just one trend that's truly new and noteworthy here -- a developing groundswell of criticism of John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate from an altogether unexpected source: conservative pundits. George Will, David Brooks, David Frum and perhaps most notably, early Palin supporter Kathleen Parker (see at right) have all expressed serious concerns in recent days about Palin's fitness to serve. Parker, who previously hailed McCain's "keen judgment" on selecting Palin is now actively calling for her to resign from the ticket "for your country." To quote from Parker's column of this morning, "Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League."

Understanding the financial meltdown

The symptoms of the current financial meltdown are everywhere; what are harder to locate and explain in plain language are the root causes. That's why this column by Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post struck me as being tremendously valuable in the straightforward and practical approach it takes to explaining the current financial mess. In a nutshell, America has been living the "I want it all and I want it now" binge-buying consumerist dream for the past decade, and now the party's over and the bills have come due. The folks with the biggest financial hangovers today are the ones who, when things began to slow down, "doubled down" on their debt rather than cutting back on spending -- and their ranks range from individual households to international financial giants.

This too shall pass, of course, but there are a couple of important lessons in here for those in the younger generation who are trying to understand what all this means.

One is that the financial markets, those avatars of pure and rational capitalism, rarely behave rationally. Rather, the markets run on a mob mentality that can veer from "irrational exuberance" to suicidal gloom in a matter of hours. And when they do, the only rational actor standing between them and self-immolation is (cue Darth Vader theme music) the federal government. Yes, sometimes government regulation is not just necessary, but essential.

Another equally important lesson is that everything in the economy is cyclical. There never has been and never will be such a thing as an economic expansion that goes on forever -- only a group of reckless people in every cycle who are willing to bet that this time it will. Make your own judgments and don't follow the crowd -- it's a good lesson for both economics and life.

Lies, damned lies, and the people who tell them

While the talking heads continue to buzz away in their endless spin cycle of manufactured hype, there appears to be at least one journalist in America -- the often-irascible Paul Krugman, seen at right -- willing to get right to the heart of the matter and tell it like it is. To wit: the McCain-Palin campaign lies. Again, and again, and again.

Of course, so does the management of the San Francisco Giants, which keeps mouthing the words "youth movement" while continuing to sacrifice the rookies' playing time on the altar of should-never-have-been-signed retreads like Dave Roberts. But they're in the entertainment business, not the deciding-the-fate-of-the-world business.

Giants go young, win big

In other news, the San Francisco Giants finally, on September 7, seem convincingly committed to a youth movement, fielding a starting lineup yesterday that consisted of eight players with less than two years' major league experience, and Randy Winn. End result? The Giants' first 10-run inning in over three years, and a resounding win. Yes, the defense and bullpen and even the baserunning was a little shaky at times, but here, at last, is a team that's exciting to watch...

The Sarah Palin pick: Republican women react

Never mind winning over Democratic and Independent women who disagree with Sarah Palin on key issues like choice and the environment and evolution vs. creationism, can the McCain-Palin ticket even hold onto Republican women? Apparently not UPI correspondent and longtime Republican pundit Georgie Anne Geyer, who in her column today describes the Palin pick as "the choice of a vice president whose inexperience is a slap in the face to serious Americans" and bemoans her personal view that "the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan is falling apart before our eyes."

The Sarah Palin pick: focus group

Without intending to, I seem to have convened a focus group. This occurred simply because a good friend of mine is in fact the spot-on demographic for the Sarah Palin pick -- a woman who grew up in a rural community as a lifelong Republican until the party's rightward tilt repelled her, whereupon she went independent. Now she's a suburban soccer mom / working woman, fiscal conservative, potential Hillary Clinton voter and student of both parties whose voting patterns can be quite unpredictable. So how did this perfectly targeted swing voter react to Palin's big-splash speech at the Republican National Convention last night?

And I quote: "Is this the best they could do for a female Republican candidate? She reminds me of a high school cheerleader making snotty comments at a slumber party. Smug, self-righteous and just plain obnoxious. I can't stand her."

Gee, tell us how you really feel...

Personally, I could only manage to watch a few minutes of the convention here and there. I just find the whole "anyone who disagrees with us must not love America" tone of the event too nauseating and offensive to tolerate. I love America and I disagree. Get over it.

The Sarah Palin pick: adding insult to injury

Well, Republican presidential nominee John McCain certainly reclaimed his "maverick" status with his pick of virtually unknown Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. It's probably one of the kinder things people in the Republican party have been calling him after his selection of a person who almost no one outside of McCain himself seems to believe was his best available choice.

Watching McCain try to defend his pick might be comical -- "Alaska is our largest state" (unless you count the 46 others with a larger population) -- if it wasn't so frightening. Here is a person whose career highlight up until 18 months ago was serving two terms as mayor of an Alaskan town of 7,000 people. The only 3:00 am phone calls she's used to getting are demands for better snowplow coverage.

What's truly stunning -- and so very telling -- about this pick, though, is that McCain actually seems to think it was clever. He actually appears to believe that putting the arch-conservative Palin on the ticket will pull in droves of disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters despite the fact that Palin's record on every significant issue facing our country today -- war, the economy, the environment, civil rights -- is either non-existent or diametrically opposed to that of Hillary Clinton. The underlying assumption here is that the only factor that really mattered to all of those Hillary voters, the only reason they all supported her so passionately for so long, was her gender.

It's hard to imagine a more insulting set of assumptions being made about a group of supposedly intelligent and independent-minded voters. Leave it to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show to distill these assumptions to their rawest essence, i.e. "Sarah Palin may be the ideological opposite of Hillary Clinton, but she's her gynecological twin..." (Warning: link contains the usual irrevent language and razor-sharp humor.)