Patriots??

 We will all remember January 6, 2021.  That was the day a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building, pushing past the Capitol Police, breaking windows to get into the building.  If you were living under a rock and missed this, you can find details in any major newspaper or online; I followed it on CNN and in the New York Times.  You might prefer the Washington Post, which provides the coverage free.

Donald Trump sat in the West Wing and watch the television coverage as his supporters mobbed and ransacked the Capitol Building, forcing the evacuation of Congress.  I watched the coverage and was amazed that I saw so few firearms among the mob, although one woman was shot and killed.  I gather from CNN that as the situation got worse, his staff begged him to go on television and try to calm the mob, and he refused.

These people think they are patriots; I think they are a mob.  I know Donald Trump is no patriot; his only interest is his own interest, the state of the country means nothing to him, as we can tell by the way he ignores the pandemic death toll.  Unfortunately, Donald Trump is one of the greatest con men since P. T. Barnum, and he has somehow managed to convince these people that everything he says is gospel, and if he says the election was rigged, it must be so.  So the "patriots" mobbed the Capitol building and accomplished - absolutely nothing.

I suspect today's rally was intended to whip up the crowd to where they would do something, anything, to stop the certification of the electoral college vote, in hopes of delaying Biden's inauguration.  It failed.  Congressional leaders have already said they will continue the process tonight.  

It is not patriotism to refuse to accept the outcome of an honest election, just because a liar says it wasn't.  It is not patriotism, when an election has taken place and been certified by every state, to try to overturn the results because you don't like them.  I've voted in a number of elections where I didn't like the results.  I don't care what their t-shirts say, nobody who took part in that mob was a patriot, and I hope any who did actual damage (like, breaking windows) will be arrested and charged.

I have two worries about this.  First, Trump is in office for 2 more weeks, what in God's name will he try now?  Second, all these people will still be around after Joe Biden is inaugurated.

E Pluribus Unum

Out of many, one.  This was the original motto of the United States, and has appeared on the Great Seal since 1792.  Wikipedia says,

"Never codified by law, E pluribus unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States[5] until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H. J. Resolution 396), adopting "In God We Trust" as the official motto.[6]" 

Or, as I would have put it, until the McCarthyites panicked about the godless Commies in the 1950s and replaced it with In God We Trust, to prove that We were different from Them.  But the original motto of this country was, Out of many, one.

We've heard a lot lately about Russian interference with the 2016 election, and potentially with the 2018 midterms.  I've been reading a lot about this, particularly in Clint Watts' excellent book, Messing with the Enemy - Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News.  I recommend it.  It's clear that the Russians did hack the socks off the Democratic National Committee computers in 2016, and stole a whole load of emails.  The purpose of that was to leak the emails, via WikiLeaks, and to make the DNC, and Hillary Clinton, look bad.  It wasn't to directly affect anything the DNC was doing. 

The broader Russian propaganda effort, based on American-developed social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and Google, was not to damage any particular candidate.  It was to cause dissension around all candidates, and around the process itself. The purpose was to turn Americans against each other, and maybe against democracy itself.  Russian agents set up fake accounts on all the platforms, and had both humans and bots creating multiple propaganda posts, aimed at making Americans more angry with each other.  Some of these posts were adapted from existing posts - America has plenty of angry people. The Russians intended to intensify the polarization, and they played both sides of the aisle.  They posted white supremacist rants; and they posted rants which seemed to come from Black Lives Matter; anything to make somebody angry.

You may have read that Facebook just took down a bunch of pages they thought were run by Russian operatives.  The CNN article I linked notes that one of the pages was an organizing site for a "No Unite the Right 2" march planned for Washington.  This appears to have been a genuine rally, planned in opposition to a white supremacist rally (also planned for Washington), and partly supported by Black Lives Matter.  Since Black Lives Matter is a very decentralized organization, it's relatively easy to appear to be speaking for them.  What this means is that Facebook is still learning how to spot the genuine bad actors.  May they learn quickly.  I know from personal experience that it's much easier to create a "fake" account on Facebook than they want to admit. 

Out of Many, One.  In many ways, the various waves of immigration over the last 2 centuries have in fact created a single America out of families whose ancestors originated everywhere else in the world. How many Americans do you know whose ancestors were German?  Russian?  Italian?  Greek?  Mexican?  Chinese?  Japanese? Korean?  Haitian?  Nigerian?  And the descendants all now speak American English and eat American food, and vote in American elections.  But some of these Americans are now challenged by other Americans - "you don't belong here."

We've become extremely polarized, at least partly due to Russian propaganda.  How do we back off of that?  Can we?  E Pluribus Unum is one of those phrases, like the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, which was not totally true even when originally published, but which slowly became more true than it had been over time - a goal or aspiration, rather than a statement of fact.  (See my post, I Miss the America I Thought I Knew.)  In the 2 World Wars, America was pretty united; since then, perhaps less so; it's much easier to be united when you have a clear and present enemy to fear. 

The enemy we should fear right now is Russia and its propaganda.  We need to question extreme social media posts, especially if they appeal to us - not only, "is this true?", but "who is saying this?"  Russia is no longer a Communist state; but it's still an enemy.

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

That was Benjamin Franklin's reported response to a woman who asked him, at the close of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, whether we had a Republic or a Monarchy.  His point was that republics don't just wamble along by themselves - they require constant tending from the citizens to keep them going in the proper direction.

And yet we've quit voting.  We complain constantly (I do, anyway) that there's too much money in politics, and the rich people are buying our government - but we don't vote.  Let's look at my state, California, and the 2014 election.  OK, it's a midterm, nobody turns out for midterms.  Except me.

Every source I look at has slightly different numbers for the 2014 general election, probably depending on when they counted.  So I'm using broadly rounded numbers.

For the 2014 election, California had a population of roughly 38 million.

Of that 38 million, about 63% were eligible to vote, which means over 18 years of age, a U.S. citizen, and not a convicted felon.  63% of 38 million is about 24 million. These numbers come from the U.S. Elections Project's document,  2014 November General Election Turnout Rates

Of the 24 million eligible voters, 73% bothered to register to vote.  We're now down to roughly 18 million people who are actually able to cast a ballot, out of a total 38 million.  That isn't even half of the total population.  Of those 18 million registered voters, 42% bothered to fill out a ballot and turn it in.  That's about 7.5 million people.

In other words,  20% of California's population cast the votes that determined who would be elected and what measures would pass or fail.  The other 80% didn't show up.

There's a lot of discussion out there about the prevalence of dark money in our elections (bad, I agree), and rich people like the Koch brothers trying to buy the government.  But to get elected, you still have to get over 50% of the vote for your particular office; and that means that 7.5 million Californians decided on all the offices and propositions up for election in 2014.  I voted.  Are you happy with the way I voted?  If not, why didn't you vote?

Oh, say some, my vote doesn't matter.  There were 3 California contests in the 2014 midterm that were too close to call, Assembly Districts 16, 17 and 39; at least 2 of those vote counts went on for weeks.  One guy was so convinced he'd won that he went to Washington, D.C. for new representative orientation; while he was gone, the count went the other way and his opponent was elected.  If you voted for one of those candidates, your vote counted, all right.  And if you were a Republican voter in Florida, in the 2000 Presidential election, your vote may have changed the course of history. Think what the first decade of the 21st century might have been like if Al Gore had won. I guarantee, Al Gore would never have invaded Iraq.

I don't know if we've lost our Republic yet.  But we're on the verge of walking away from it, because turning out to vote every couple of years is too much trouble.  If you don't vote because you're working 3 minimum wage jobs and you can't get to the polls, you have my sympathy; but you can sign up for a mail-order ballot and vote that way.  If you don't vote because you don't understand the issues and can't be bothered to read what the candidates say they're up to, you don't have my sympathy. Government "of the people and by the people" means it's our responsibility to read up on these things, to vote as best we understand.

I plan to keep voting as long as I can fill in a ballot; I haven't missed an election since I first voted in 1968.  Voting is my voice in our government, and I want my voice heard, however faintly.  Your vote is your voice.  Use it.

Secret Money

I've had it.  I've read one too many articles about the millions of dollars in anonymous money pouring into California to defeat Proposition 30, a proposition that will only affect Californians.  I still don't understand who crowned Molly Munger queen of California and told her to spend millions of dollars on more ballot box budgeting that would defund everything except the schools, but at least we know who she is and what her stake is.

This mess is only partly caused by the Supreme Court, although God knows without them we wouldn't have had the absurd statement that "money" equals "free speech."  I'm not even going to bother to deconstruct that, it's stupid on the face of it.  Money equals money, period; and corporations, no matter what Antonin Scalia thinks, are not people.

I haven't got a citation for this, but if I recall correctly, the Citizens United decision actually included a statement that Congress should encourage disclosure of campaign contributions to support transparency.  Congress has not done this, at least partly because the Senate Republicans filibustered an effort last July, when the DISCLOSE act, which I supported, died in committee.  Before you blame the Republicans entirely, it also means that the Senate Democrats didn't have whatever it took (persuasiveness, courage, moral force, I don't know) to gather 60 votes to override the Republican filibuster.

Neither side, of course, wants campaign finance disclosure, because they are making millions (or is it billions yet?) off anonymous donations through "social welfare" organizations.  Social welfare, my eye and Betty's pet sow.  A "social welfare organization" is one that helps people who need help.  These groups - we all know their names, if not who they are - pay people to lie to defeat measures that they object to.  Look their ads up on Politifact and see if I'm wrong.

So what can we do?  We the citizens of the United States, being mostly not stinking rich, have only one weapon left against this.  We have our individual votes.  Let your congressperson know that you expect him/her to pass the DISCLOSE Act or something equivalent.  Given Citizens United, we probably can't stop the flow of money. But we must require the donors to admit who they are.  And any congressbeing that doesn't devote its ultimate efforts to forcing disclosure of the donor's name for campaign contributions over $10,000 (which was the DISCLOSE limit) should not expect to get your vote, ever again.  For anything.

We have to tell them this.  We have to remind them of it regularly.  And we have to act on it at the next election.  If we don't get campaign finance donor disclosure by the 2014 elections, we should vote against every incumbent in Congress - especially every Republican incumbent, most of whom seem to be crazy as bedbugs anyway.

And we should all also ask ourselves the question that bugs me every time I think about this:  why are these donors so afraid to tell us who they are?  What are they hiding?  What do they not want us to know?

I was raised to believe that if you said something, and meant it, you put your name behind it.  It is true that I blog under a pen name, but it isn't all that damn hard to find out who I am; and I'm only spending speech, not money.  The people behind these "social welfare organizations" are in the process of stealing our country for their personal gain.  Disclosure of who they are is the only weapon we have left.  Tell your Representative and your Senators.  And VOTE.

Anonymous Money

The 2012 election may be decided by anonymous money.  Since the disastrous Citizens United case, a SCOTUS decision that ranks with the Dred Scott decision in its sheer wrongness, anyone can give any amount of money to any candidate or political organization, and not have to say who they are or why they want to donate.

Here is the Court's chain of reasoning as I understand it:

Money in politics is a form of speech, since it can be used to buy advertising.

Since the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, any restriction on money spent in politics is unconstitutional.

The obvious implication to everyone except the Justices is that the election, and the Presidency, is now up for grabs by the people with the deepest pockets.

I suppose if we must have money-driven politics, we must; but why does it have to be anonymous?  As a matter of fact, the Justices argued that it shouldn't be anonymous; but existing law lets nonprofit 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations hide their donor lists, and they do hide them.  Two questions disturb me about this situation:

Why do these donors wish to be anonymous?

Why is the Republican Party so anxious to help them remain anonymous?  (The DISCLOSE Act of 2012 has no Republican sponsors.)

Consider the first issue:  why do the donors wish to be anonymous?  I feel very deeply that if you're going to put money behind a candidate or a cause, you should put your name on it.  (Yes, I blog under a pen name; but I don't have any money on the line here, and it isn't that hard to figure out who I am.)

This bothered me in the whole Proposition 8 campaign in California about gay marriage: the opponents were willing to spend huge sums to defeat the measure, and yet they fight bitterly to hide their donor lists.  The opponents of Prop. 8 claimed to fear physical retaliation from gay rights supporters; do the Republican super-PAC donors fear crowds of angry Democrats, with pitchforks and torches? 

What do these donors, the ones donating to the super-PACs, fear?  I have to conclude that they fear the publicity that would be associated with donating money to this or that super-PAC. They want to accomplish a political end but they don't want their fellow citizens to know.  This way lies the end of the American Republic; this way lies dictatorship.  And we won't even know who the dictator is.

On the other question:  Is the Republican Party so anxious to block the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 because it doesn't want its general constituents to know who are the major donors to whom it will owe allegiance if elected?  Fits right in with the donors' reluctance, doesn't it?

If you aren't willing to put your name on your political actions, doesn't that say that there's something wrong with them?

I have just become a citizen co-sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, which is supported by (among many others) the League of Women Voters.  I urge all of you to consider supporting this act, and to tell your representatives in Congress to pass it.

Sold Down the River

The team that brought you the 2000 presidential election has just presented the American people with another juicy gift.  The U.S. Supreme Court, moved substantially to the right by George W. Bush's appointment of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, has just declared unconstitional almost every campaign finance law that restricts corporate contributions to elections.  Oh, and union contributions.  They still can't donate directly to candidates; but there are now no limits on the amount of money they can pour into advertising during an election.  Your state has local restrictions on corporate contributions?  Also unconstitutional.  The McCain-Feingold Act?  History.

Kiss American democracy goodbye, folks.  This is the end of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  It has just been replaced by the Golden Rule - the guys who have the gold, make the rules.  Ordinary citizens can't possibly match the financial clout of corporations and corporate unions.

Do I seem just a little cynical about the good wishes of corporations and unions?  Well, I can't speak for unions, but I spent 38 years working for corporate America, and I never saw a single public-spirited action that the companies didn't think would contribute directly to their bottom line.  Corporate contributions to elections will focus on improving corporate profits, the public be damned.  A classic example:  the banking industry thought that the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented banks from trading securities, was keeping them from making all the money they could possibly make.  They poured money into the Congressional campaigns of people who agreed with them.  Ten years ago, Glass-Steagall was repealed, and banks could own brokerages and trade securities.  I don't need to remind you what came out of that.

Do the citizens have any recourse here?  We can't afford to buy our own Congressman; the corporations have already bid the price up way too high.  Our only option is information.  Fortunately the laws that require disclosure of campaign contributions still stand.  As long as they do, we must ensure that we know where the corporate money goes.  If somebody's campaign was specifically supported by campaign ads from Glutco, Inc., we must make sure that candidate is identified as "the candidate from Glutco."  Knowledge is power; it seems to be the only power we have left.

In 1787, as he left the Constitutional Convention, somebody is said to have asked Benjamin Franklin, "What have we got, a Republic or a Monarchy?"  Franklin reputedly replied, "A Republic - if you can keep it."  Can we keep it?

President Obama

Tuesday morning is my weekly shift stacking groceries at the Food Bank warehouse, so yesterday morning at 7:40 I hit the freeway. I thought it was appropriate, given Obama's emphasis on service, to show up and stack groceries as usual. I found a bin of green apples and the usual conveyor belt arrangement, and with a half-dozen other volunteers, set out to bag apples. Virtue was rewarded, though - at about 8:45 the volunteer coordinator stuck his head in the door and said, "Come on in - they're going to swear him in in about 3 minutes!"

We all trooped into a big conference room, where they had live television coverage projected onto a screen. We saw Rick Warren's invocation, Aretha Franklin's solo, and on through the inaugural address - no internet delays either. (Let's hear it for 20th century technology!) Then we all went back and bagged more apples.

Let me tell you, seeing Aretha Franklin really made me feel old! Unfairly, I'm sure, it also tickled my funnybone. I read a comic strip called Curtis in the Sunday paper, which is about an urban black family with 2 small boys, and Curtis, the older son, regularly makes fun of the older church ladies and their elaborate Sunday hats. I'm afraid, when I saw Aretha and her hat, I immediately though of Curtis. I don't know, maybe Aretha wouldn't mind.

Everybody is deconstructing the inaugural address today, but here are the parts that impressed me:

He talked about our great history, and invoked us all as part of it, to carry it on. I don't recall George Bush ever invoking American history, I suspect because he never read about it.

"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." Ya-HOO! Damn right we do. Now deliver on that, Mr. President. Also deliver on your promise to "do our business in the light of day" - the Bush administration's insistence on classifying everything always made me wonder what they were trying to hide.

"We will restore science to its rightful place." It's embarrassing to have a president who doesn't believe in evolution; you keep wondering if he thinks the earth is flat.

He included "nonbelievers" in the people who make up the American nation. (If only he'd managed to restrain Rick Warren from sailing off into Jesus-land - until he went there, he'd given a very good, broad ecumenical prayer that even I could agree with. But when he invoked Jesus, he locked out everybody but the Christians.)

"We will not apologize for our way of life." THANK you!

I could go on, but I've got to get back to work - I have some volunteer stuff to do today, and I have to do my Pilates. (After all, our new pres works out 45 minutes a day, 6 days a week - I hope he can keep that up now he's in office; he'll need the stamina!)

Welcome aboard, President Obama.

The First Black President

And when can we stop using the Jim Crow definitions of "African-American"??

Barack Obama is "black" only under the 19th century definition that "one drop" of "black blood" makes you black. I regularly drink tea that's darker than his skin color.

It is now legitimate to list yourself on the census as "mixed race", and that's what he is, and that's what a lot of people in California are. They aren't all mixed with white, either - I've known African/Japanese, and Hispanic/Chinese, and California has a whole lot of other couples of various backgrounds who have decided that the special person they wanted to marry was from a different ethnic background and didn't have the same color skin they had. My husband works with a guy in the Albuquerque office of his firm whose last name is Hispanic - and whose mother was Japanese. All these people are American.

Can we all just be Americans, please, and start worrying about the real problems?? (Yeah, I know this is hopeless.)

Election Day Wandering

It's 10:50 AM in Oakland, and I'm sitting in Spasso Cafe on College Avenue. In addition to Election Day, this is also House Cleaners Day, and I usually take the opportunity to walk down to the avenue and hang out. I stopped in at my polling place to say hi, even though I voted last week; and they gave me an "I voted" sticker, so I look politically correct.

The lady in the Chimes drugstore agreed with me that she's nervous about the election.

The gift shop called Heartfelt had a chalk board out front that said, "VOTE! Then step back, take a deep breath, and relax - it's a nice day!" (And it is.)

The elderly street guy, with the beard down to his belt buckle, swung his fist and said, "Landslide! Mandate!" and I said, "Damn straight it better be."

In front of Cole's Coffee, a man blowing across a coffee cup into the ear of a baby in a belly pack (mom, wearing the pack, was on the phone) asked me where my polling station was; he had an absentee ballot to drop off. I told him mine was pretty far away; he thought he'd seen one closer.

Waiting to cross the street, I stood next to 2 youngish guys, also wearing "I voted" stickers. We discussed where we'd watch election returns, and agreed we were all going to have to find a new hobby tomorrow.

Everybody's waiting for the shoe to drop.

Election Day

It's 9:10 AM on Election Day in California. I voted a week ago, so I'm just observing things today. I live about a block from my polling station in the music room of the local elementary school, so about 15 minutes ago I stepped out the front door to see if I could see a line at the polls. I couldn't see a line, but I did see a steady line of people coming back from the polls: early election day voters. It's a beautiful sunny morning, crisp and clean after a big rain storm, and everybody looked cheerful.

If you haven't voted yet, get off your butt. This is the biggest election in my lifetime and probably yours - what are you waiting for??

Stop the Hate

I'm quoting my fellow blogger, D.B. Echo (at Another Monkey). It's getting really scary. I've already commented about Sarah Palin's apparent pleasure when people at her rallies scream, "Kill him!"

I got another example yesterday. I have a friend who lives in a suburb of San Francisco and has an Obama/Biden sticker on her car. The other day, she said "a couple of guys" made "ugly remarks" at her as she drove past them. Then she stopped at a light, and a well-dressed, prosperous-looking woman in a prosperous-looking car stopped next to her, rolled down the window and screamed, "Traitor!"

When did it become treason to disagree with someone? When did it become treason to want to change the government? This is what the Republican tactics of the last eight years have brought us to - they've been telling us, ever since 9/11, that anyone who disagrees with them is unpatriotic and possibly treasonous, and we must support them so we'll be "safe."

Do you all feel "safe" now? Is that why tens of thousands of people turn out to see Barack Obama and cheer for him, because they feel "safe"? I certainly don't feel safe if my neighbors feel they can scream insults at me because they disagree with me.

And the conservative commentators hammer this home on Fox News daily - Limbaugh. Hannity. O'Reilly. Coulter. In any organization, the tone comes from the top; and the top of this organization tells us that dissent is treason. The whirring sound you hear is Thomas Jefferson, spinning in his grave.

I don't claim they're treasonous (although they'd say I am). I say they're wrong; but what's really distressing is that they're so rude. Those who disagree are not merely wrong, they have to be insulted, and assailed as stupid and treasonous. And the conservatives lie - the oft-repeated McCain claim that Obama sponsored legislation authorizing giving sex education to kindergartners is a barefaced lie, repeatedly debunked by www.factcheck.org; and yet McCain keeps saying it, and claims it's true. This is Orwellian.

When did we lose civil discourse? When did it become impossible to discuss certain issues without falling back on slogans and insults? I have to admit my generation, the Baby Boomers, carry some blame for this. We were the ones who screamed slogans at rallies and labeled anybody we disagreed with as "pigs." So, we had something to do with the demise of civil discourse. But we weren't alone.

The most important question about civil discourse is not who stopped it. It's - how do we get it back?? I hate this. I hate conflict and screaming. But if I don't scream back, I'm leaving the field to the liars.

Poetry on NPR

You never quite know what you'll hear when you tune in to NPR. I tuned into All Things Considered on Tuesday night on the way to the gym (after spending $70 to get my car radio working again - blown fuse - this is the week everything breaks), and found myself listening to a discussion of the election with a group of people from a job training center in St. Louis. And at the end of the section, there was a remark that brought tears to my eyes.

Checking the web site for the transcript, I just realized I didn't even hear all of it, but here is the whole thing, which was sent as a text message to the training instructor:

"Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked, so Obama could run. Obama is running so our children can fly."

'Nuff said.

Strategy and Tactics

Driving home today, I listened to Talk of the Nation, on which Bill Kristol urged John McCain to fire his campaign staff because it isn't working. Apart from the fact that I want McCain's campaign to fail, I was interested in one remark Kristol made. Loosely paraphrased, he said that McCain had some good ideas (choosing Palin as VP, suspending his campaign to go to Washington to create a miracle for the bailout), but they weren't followed up. They're all tactical, said Kristol; there's no strategic thinking.

No strategic thinking. Isn't that an interesting suggestion? McCain isn't a strategist; he's a tactician. Think about his military career - he flew ground-attack aircraft off carriers. You need tactics in that role; other people take care of strategy. McCain retired from the Navy in 1981 (after 23 years), as a captain, and went into politics, where issues of strategy versus tactics are somewhat diluted. A Navy captain is the equivalent of an Army or Air Force colonel, which I'd argue is the lowest possible command level at which you need to begin to think strategically. Below that level you're dealing with much more day-to-day stuff: tactics and logistics. McCain reached captain; then he retired.

This campaign is the most important operation of McCain's career, and he isn't thinking strategically. Why should we assume that he'll start thinking strategically if we elect him President? And what would be the implications of a President of the United States who is driven entirely by tactical considerations? I wasn't going to vote for him for a number of reasons, some making more sense than others; but frankly, this one seems to me to be quite potent.

Is Sarah Qualified??

I got an email link from a friend that I'm reposting here (with some of the capital letters toned down):

Subject: PBS Sarah Palin poll

PBS has an online poll posted asking if Sarah Palin is qualified. Apparently the repulican party platform knew about this in advance and are flooding the voting with YES votes.

The poll will be reported on PBS and picked up by mainstream media. It can influence undecided voters in swing states.

The email, of course, urged me to vote on the poll, and send email to all my Democrat voting friends. I've sent it to a few, but I'm also posting it here; here is the link to the PBS poll:

http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

When I voted on it, the poll was running dead even at 49% to 49% - quia absurdum est.

Shame on You

Shame on you, Sarah Palin. For shame. You stand up in front of a crowd, rouse them up with lies about Barack Obama (yes, they're lies), and when the crowd yells, "Kill him!" - you smile. You encourage them.

This is disgraceful. You claim to be a Christian - this is unChristian. This is what Adolf Hitler did when he encouraged his goons to attack the Jews, before Kristallnacht. Nobody has been hurt yet because of your rabble-rousing - but that's no thanks to you.

And shame on you, John McCain, for allowing your campaign to act like this. Who's in charge, you or she? You weren't ignoring threats of violence from your crowds before she joined you; you weren't hearing threats of violence from your crowds before she joined you. You tried to calm things down the other day; I read about it. You need to try harder.

The Republican Ticket

Like the rest of the world, I was startled - is that the right word? - when John McCain announced his choice for VP. Since then, in an attempt to figure out what was going on, I've been reading everything I can find in the infamous "mainstream media" about Gov. Palin. I'm trying to be as objective as possible, to counterbalance my visceral reaction to her. In short, the lady creeps me out, probably because she's diametrically opposed to me on virtually every position.

I've deliberately avoided the Internet riffs floating around on her, with one exception: the "Letter from Wasilla," attributed to one Anne Kilkenny - largely because the thing was signed, and showed internal evidence that the author was trying to be fair-minded. Snopes.com considers that letter authentic; much of what I say about her here comes either from that letter or from the New York Times.

I've concluded that Gov. Palin is the affirmative action candidate. She is where she is because she's female, and for no other major reason. To prove this to yourself, just invert the situation. You have the one-term governor of a large but thinly populated state, with no national or international experience or (apparently) interest; with a public record of hiring cronies and family members; a gun supporter, a disbeliever in global warming, a born-again evangelical creationist and right-to-life supporter, with 5 children, one of whom has Down's syndrome, and another of whom is pregnant at the age of 17. And this hypothetical governor is male.

Would this person be anywhere near the vice presidency? He wouldn't even be on the backup list. But she's in the catbird seat.

McCain apparently picked her himself, bypassing the usual vetting process. The New York Times ran a major article suggesting that no one in the Alaska Republican Party - for that matter, no one in the national party - was contacted about the governor before the announcement. It's a very interesting read; apparently McCain simply leaped to the conclusion that this woman could save his campaign and offered her the job on the spot, in place of two or three male candidates with real records of competence.

Consider this as an example of McCain's decision making under stress. Is this really the man you want running this country??

Also consider what this implies about McCain's opinion of American voting women. He thinks we'll vote for his ticket because his number two has ovaries instead of balls. The level of contempt for the people he expects to vote for him leaves me gobsmacked. It is an insult. If I were a Republican woman, I'd be furious. If I were a moderate Republican woman, I'd be practically radioactive.

Gov. Palin has one attribute that is usually required to attain high office: ambition. Is that enough??