If John McCain called you a "Super-Trailblazer", You'd Feel.....?
Before we dove into more earthy science news in our last post, we wondered why Palin's handlers had canceled so many of her public appearances. A couple of days later Politico inadvertently answered our query. Apparently an "anonymous aid" to the McCain campaign "stressed" they weren't canceling her appearances, instead: "the finance calendar was planned before Palin was tapped...and it's being adjusted now to fit the nominee."
Unsurprisingly, the somewhat discomfiting explanation doesn't really mesh with history. Just a week or so earlier, McCain campaign officials bragged to reporters around the nation about the amazing reception for Palin's campaign events that kept forcing them to change to larger venues. In an article describing the Obama campaign's "urgency" for funding, the New York Times and other outlets reported that GOP fund-raising was especially successful after Palin's nomination and that "party Officials have also sketched out plans for Ms. Palin to do some 35 fund-raisers over the next two months."
Every time they talked to the press, and they often did, McCain's fundraisers gloated about how popular Palin was and how much money she was going to raise in those 30-35 scheduled appearances, with comments like: "I just think it speaks volumes that she is coming in here. I can tell you, it has generated great excitement. And it has reinvigorated, certainly, the Republican base".
In the spirit of things, GOP organizers upgraded the titles they would award fundraisers who raised another $100,000 or $250,000 to more glorious labels, "Trailblazers" to "Super-Trailblazers", "Innovators" to "Super-Innovators". Lavish words in light of their simple folksy targeting, words, come to think of it, that could more easily be attached to a Google product than to the McCain campaign -- but I digress.
In California, Palin was scheduled to star at an event at the home of software mogul Tom Siebel, "where the asking price for a snapshot of her and a seat at the headtable is $50,000." (Just think, your smiling face with the hot one at the head table. A $50,000 snapshot that you could place under your mounted fixed-eyed, six-point buck's head at the cabin. Who needs "spit parties"? Unanswered -- if you purchased two photo-ops could you be called a "Super-Innovator"?) Alas, Palin canceled.
Scintillating Starlet Strategies
However, Palin did re-appear on the Katy Couric show, according to the short clips released by CBS at carefully timed intervals. You can't say McCain oversold her international experience when he said: "Alaska is right next to Russia; Sarah Palin understands that". Still her re-debut must have been a blow to all her coaches. Canceled, canceled, canceled.
Even if the Couric preview was disappointing, Palin's cancellations still nagged, we haven't been so let-down since the projectionist abruptly stopped The Princess Diaries halfway through the movie. The McCain campaign probably told Sarah that it wasn't personal, and it now seems it wasn't. The campaign also canceled all of Carly Fiorina's upcoming talks, including the one scheduled at Iowa State. She was to speak on: "Tough Choices: Women, Leadership and Power". Now you're sorry. They canceled a Fiorina headlining GOP rally in Florida, canceled her television appearances, rallies and other events -- canceled, canceled, canceled.
As if cancellation were a disease, yesterday McCain himself started canceling -- the Letterman show, his debate, Palin's debate. And to note, since the VP contender and present executive of Alaska previously cued us in to the importance of blinking, we couldn't help noticing that McCain showed a disconcerting blinking pattern when explaining the necessity of the bailout and needing to be in DC.
Canceling seems to be McCain's new endgame. You dash a lot of hopes, so it seems like an odd vote-getting strategy but granted, its a real attention getter. It keeps the-media-on-its-toes too. Try it at home. You'll have to adjust his routine to take into consideration the fact that you're not tailed by paparazzi day in and day out, but if it works, you won't actually have to participate at events anymore. What you need to do is every time you get to a party, don't say anything, just walk out the door and slam it with loud, conversation disrupting force. Then turn around a while later and walk back in, leaving the door open so that everyone is freezing from the draft and begs you to close the door. Cell phones are a great decoy to keep you moving in and out the door as if you had something else more important to tend to. See how now all eyes are trained on you, waiting for your next move? Make everyone else blink -- gotcha. Results guaranteed.
McCain eventually flew to Washington, where apparently he sat on the sidelines during the meetings and said very little, then reported that he was there. See? Walk-in. Do nothing. Walk-out. Precisely the executive skills America needs.
How to Bail Out
Really, I didn't want to write about all this. I wish I could follow this game with anything but lurid fixation. I wish it were a joke, or a light movie that I could walk out of when I pleased. In my airy flick, Fiorina, Palin and McCain would be going around a bend in the back of the Straight Talk Express, talking about all they have in common and enjoying a glass of Chardonnay together, getting pedicures, when the ladies would convince John that he too needs to take some time off. None of it would really matter because would be a light movie. So I'd walk out. But the actual unfolding real-life scenario is tense, filled with suspense and innuendo. It feels ominous as if it could all end badly.
Why am I so fixated? For the past couple of decades we have desperately needed responsible, wise, smart, resourceful council and leaders in government. There are many excellent, dedicated public servants. But the louder voice heard from government and the media that represents it is that of a tremendously spoiled, petulant 13 year old. Now, as the headlines scream that the whole edifice is crumbling, the GOP has the gall to suggest to us a VP leadership solution that's 180 degrees opposite of what's needed, someone who presents herself as so vapid and un-informed, so incapable of putting a sentence together or formulating a cogent response, yet such a smart-ass. (Not to be uncharitable, but Palin's not my stage-struck friend trying to get over a phobia at Toastmasters, nor is she running for student council here.)
The GOP suggestion their VP pick even approaches a solution completely insults any remaining dignity of America. Palin makes me squirm because she's will be representing the US to the world. Yet at the same time the cynical choice is perfect, as it represents the apex of an ignorant, manipulative, self-indulgent leadership that's increasingly excused, if not celebrated. How can this even begin to create a better vision for the country? [That's my bi-partisan opinion.]
Squaring the Circle
And that's not even touching Palin's talking points on the $700 billion dollar bailout. As the FT explained it a couple of days ago in "Bernanke logic reveals route to square a virtuous circle":
"the US government would fix the problem of procyclicality embedded in the mark-to-market accounting regime by the back door. It would use its purchases to establish new prices to which banks would mark their portfolios - prices based on expected cash flow rather than the prices private sector buyers would be willing to pay."
Supply, demand, you ask? Please don't garble on. Instead, we trust congress, a cadre of millionaires. We trust they won't sympathize too much with previous heads of banks who ran up debts with investors money and are now down on bended knee praying for their way of life to continue. And of course the de-regulators bay in the background for further concessions based on their own unique interpretations of research.
Personally, we hope that the government can negotiate down the "firesale price" and properly assess the "hold-to-maturity price", as its called. For now, the tentative bailout agreement is now apparently in disarray following the John McCain's little walkabout.
After their initial stunned silence at the news of the $700 million dollar proposal, it looked like the Democrat Party was staging a new episode of "They're Not Going To Get Away With This", but we harbor doubts about their gumption to negotiate any course they articulate. In examples from oil drilling, to military spending, to vetting Supreme Court appointees, to investigating the mushroom clouds of the Iraq War, the Democrats talk big then whimper submissively in the end, signing exactly what they vehemently said they opposed (but of course with all the right rhetoric).
Watching the Democratic Party in action can be like watching the occasional little league player who's assigned to right field. A ball's hit at them, they hike up their pants, scrunch up their face with can-do determination, run, run, run, plant their little legs, assure everybody "I got it", then the ball sails off past them, hits the wall and finally emerges from the flurry of mitts and dust. Meanwhile, the third base coach for the other team is circling his arm with rotator-cuff straining enthusiasm, yelling "go on home" to the hectic base-runners and the crowd covers their eyes.
Next, when the next player comes up, the bat cracks and another ball flies towards right field, the loyal fans will of course squint out in between their crossed fingers, as if imagining a time when their fielder might actually field the ball. Perhaps the Democrats will make it work. Or is all the fumbling around in the dust simply a populist charade?
Less ephemeral, but speaking of large numbers, scientists reporting in Science about rocks they found in Quebec that are 4.28 billion years old. Said one of the authors to the New York Times, "early earth looked pretty much like modern earth".
