Weekend Laundry List

OK, because I'm a nice person, my first reaction when I read that after McCain's new anti-Obama ad attaches the Fannie Mae CEO to the latter campaign as an advisor, said CEO retorted that he had no such connection, was to wonder while shaking my tired little head: who is feeding McCain his information? I mean, the amount of lies that are coming from the campaign voicebox is staggering. Could it be a strategy? That the masses will absorb the talking points, and when the talking points are exposed as fallacy, it won't really matter? Or is there a staff out there who just keep forgetting to factcheck? I'm surprised that campaign managers and staffers aren't getting fired like clay pigeons.

But then again, reading about McCain's embarrassing blunder on the Spanish-language radio show (which was in English and then translated), one could worry that a combination of hubris, exhaustion, and interventionist reflexes motivated that response. Of course, that's pretty alarming in itself.
Here are the articles I referenced above:
"said CEO retorted"
(note how it was the Post that first linked Obama to Raines. Bad Post! Very very bad!)
"embarrassing blunder"
Talking Points Memo summary of the whole thing.

A couple other pieces I wanted to add:
Obama is not only fighting voter suppression in Michigan (lost your house, lose your vote), but is actually filing a complaint that extends to the GOP tradition of suppressing the votes of various demographics that typically vote dem. (Prof. Farley has a whole section in his blog GOP Disenfranchisement.) Remember the voter card scam from 2004? Wow. Here's the whole complaint.
If you don't remember the voter card 80-pound scam in Ohio, I suggest a lexis-nexis search for Blackwell, 80-pound, 2004.

I heard an interesting take on TrooperGate on the Rachel Maddow show, which really needs a better clip editor, regarding the nature of the trip to DC Monegan was supposedly fired for, and then found this on cbs. It irks, that Palin's advisors are puttin' the raucus on Monegan's traveling to DC, saying that the trip wasn't authorized (it was). Which leads us all, I hope, to ask: what's wrong with seeking federal cash for a program to prevent sexual violence? So that's the real reason, eh, not that he wouldn't fire the trooper. Great PR kids.

Please do check out the facts page of Alaska's domestic abuse and sexual assault stats, available here.
Then check out the Alliance for Reproductive Justice in Alaska, which also features a story on Palin not being the women's candidate (scroll down home page). Thanks to RH Reality Check for the links.

Taking this to the next logical step, it's illuminating to take the following together:
a) as the states' leader in rapes, Alaskan enforcement agencies have jurisdiction over native populations
b) a recent amnesty int'l study reports: "The United States government has created a complex maze of tribal, state and federal jurisdictions that often allows perpetrators to rape with impunity -- and in some cases effectively creates jurisdictional vacuums that encourage assaults.... Due to a complex set of laws, state, rather than federal, agencies provide law enforcement. [Alaska] has sought to restrict tribes from exercising criminal jurisdiction while at the same time failing to provide adequate law enforcement."
c) Palin's rape-kit charging in Wasilla (which would've been illegal observing the Violence Against Women Act)....
That leads a reader like myself to see her policies as not only anti-women but passively oppressive of the native population.

So because Alaska's funding for victims of sexual assault comes from the fed, and state agencies in Alaska enforce the law, does that mean they could get moneys without observing the VAWA? Hmm.

Well, take a breath. How about some uplifting news?

My brother pointed me to FiveThirtyEight today, which has the first report I've seen on the cell phone influence in national polling. And it's hard not to feel better: "Six of the seven [] cellphone-friendly pollsters have had a Democratic (Obama) lean, and in several cases it has been substantial. On average, they had a house effect of Obama +2.8 []. By comparison, the control group had essentially zero house effect [], so this would imply that including a cellphone sample improves Obama's numbers by 2.8 points. (Or, framed more properly, failing to include cellphones hurts Obama's numbers by []2-3 points)." Read the findings here.

Juan Cole's coverage today of the huge Islamabad bombing and the day-to-day in Iraq, is a must-read as usual.

I'm in over my head with the bailouts and the new mysterious expenditures Bush is requesting, but Dean Baker usually helps in this arena.

Because I enjoy reading about McCain being wrong, this one (McCain's Stem Cell Position Contains Scientific Error) was nice to see, and includes my favorite quote so far today: "The vote mentioned in his statement came on the Fetal Farming Act of 2006, signed into law by President Bush. But though the bill was unanimously approved in the House and Senate, its sponsors were criticized for failing to make clear that "fetal farming" doesn't exist."

Did you forget about Iran for a couple days while the economy went down the shitter? Some people didn't. This got an embarrassingly small note in the Boston Metro paper.

Do you have friends who think they might have to pay more taxes under one candidate or another? find out with this awesome widget Ezra Klein linked America to: Will Obama Raise My Taxes?