Spending on the Homeland...

Have you ever asked yourself this question, "How can we always manage to come up with money to wage war, but can never find money to educate children, or provide health care?" I know I've asked this question quite a few times over the course of my life, and having never received an answer, I can only presume it is because war is always eminently important and the other things are not. The thing is though, we don't/didn't really have the money for war, but we thought it was important enough that if we had to borrow it, so be it. It occurred to me today that amongst all the Republican and Media grandstanding surrounding the stimulus bill, we're finally elevating some of the "others" to a level of importance that they haven't been at for years. Infrastructure, police, firefighters, health care, education, these things are all needed, and right now they are all REALLY needed. I don't know if this package is the answer to our nation's economic crisis, but if we are "wasting" money, at least it's on the homeland this time.

Reaction to Palin's Speech

Congrats! A potential vice president of the United States can read a teleprompter. There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm surrounding this revelation after Palin’s speech. This was apparently all Sarah Palin needed to do to prove she was ready for the vice presidency. The hypocrisy of this moment, as a friend of mine pointed out on his blog, before the speech, was striking:

“A quick note on tonight’s Palin speech: beware of the hypocrisy of Republicans on this. They claim that Obama only gives a good speech, but you’ll hear them say that Palin has proven her substance after tonight’s speech. It'll be a good speech, but, again, we need more than that.”

Some have commented that this speech was on par with the Obama speech of 2004. I have to laugh at this, because for one the speech that Sarah Palin read was clearly written by someone for her, packed with about 30 minutes of lines pulled straight out of the McCain commercials we’ve seen for the past month. Obama’s speech was written by him, and then tweaked by others. Palin’s was a speech predicated on division, while Obama’s was a salvo for unity. For all the energy put into the conservative base by the Palin pick, I can only imagine that her speech tonight did the same for the liberal base.

The speech didn’t do anything for me. I had several issues with the actual substance, or lack thereof. I found the initial introduction of her family, and constant brandishing of a 4 month old baby with downs syndrome like a trophy a little hard to take after the outcries from the republicans over the past few days insisting that the media leave the family alone. Also, I found it a bit disconcerting that she was able to lie so well, about her record and Obama’s record, during her first appearance on the national stage.

The thing that irked me the most were the attacks on Obama, and community organizing. She ridiculed, and mocked Obama’s time spent as a community organizer by saying that being mayor was the same thing, accept she had actual responsibility. The funny thing about this is that she never actually outlined that responsibility. But, more to the point, mocking someone’s job is never a good thing. Community organizing in the sense that Obama did it is rather unique. However, on a broad scale, I’d venture to say there are a lot of moms and dads out there who have done some level of “organizing” in their own communities who might not take so kindly to having their service disparaged. Random question. Aren’t union leaders kind of like community organizers? Maybe I’m wrong about that. While the snarky line went over well in the hall, I see this as an opening for the Obama campaign to exploit in a good way. But for all the attacking of Obama, her inability to actually deal with her own substance was very telling.

This was the “prosperity” night of the convention. One would think we would have heard a bit more about her and John McCain’s economic roadmap for America, outside of “Drill baby, Drill!”

At the end of the night I’m still left with not really knowing anything of importance as it regards Sarah Palin’s views and experience on national security, the economy, health care, and a litany of other issues that the people she claims to be apart of worry about everyday. They wrote the speech, and she stepped up and delivered it. Good Job. We’ll see over the few remaining weeks before the election whether she can take it as good as she gave it on this night.

The Power of Repetition

This post by Ezra Klein hits on something that really bothered me during the primary season, and eventually caused me to stop watching political news shows momentarily. A good surrogate would not be doing his or her job if they didn't stick to the campaign line and repeatedly push their version of the facts. It's what they do. They are there to create the narrative most favorable to them. However, it seems to me that the job of a journalist/reporter is to challenge their assertions when not rooted in fact, and not to simply provide an outlet for the spin of the campaigns. This frustrated me to no end throughout the primaries, as Chris Matthews was the only one I saw who would repeatedly push the surrogates on their talking points, but even he relented after a point. Klein has it right, repetition is key. It doesn't mean anything if in the first minute of the interview Matthews tells you your full of it, but acquiesces thereafter to the lies. Once it stops getting questioned, it starts to become fact, no matter how untrue it is.