“Catch-Me-If-you-Can” starring Sarah Palin

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/9/5/113647/1017

Where there’s smoke…..McCain’s Poor Judgment –
“I read a story on ABC News’ website regarding McCain’s pick for VP. It concerns her education history. It seems that, before graduating from college in 1987, the person McCain chose switched colleges more frequently than Cher changes costumes during a concert. Well, maybe not that frequently. Apparently, she switched colleges at least six times in six years. In the fall of 1982, she attended the University of Hawaii at Hilo, but left after just a few weeks because of the constant rain. This is according to the author of “Sarah” by Kaylene Johnson. Strangely, you’d think McCain would have discovered that the Hawaii-Hilo registrar has no record of his VP candidate ever attending. I would think it would have at least thrown up a red flag.
McCain judgment is at question. His choice for VP traveled, with a friend to Honolulu, enrolled at Hawaii Pacific University, but only attended during the fall of 1982. Then, she switched to North Idaho College for the spring and fall of 1983. It seems she didn’t go to school in the spring of 1984, but attended classes at the University of Idaho for fall 1984 and spring 1985. I wonder what happened to their candidate in the spring of 1984…..hmmmm. Again, what does this say about McCain’s vetting process. By McCain’s on admission, the only reason the VP exists is to step into the shoes of the President upon his/her demise.
After a missed spring 1984 session, McCain’s VP choice moved to Palmer, Alaska where she attended Matanuska-Susitna College in the fall 1985. Then, she switched back to the University of Idaho for the spring and fall 1986, and spring 1987 when she graduated. Oddly despite her journalism degree and self-professed curiosity and love of writing, she did not work for the college newspaper or college television station.
Because of privacy laws, none of the colleges are allowed to release her grades, and at least two of the colleges claim McCain’s campaign did not make any sort of inquiries. Her “official” bio only mentions three schools. I believe there could be an “interesting” back story to explain the frequent school changes, missing block of time (spring 1984), omission of half the schools she’s attended, and not practicing her self-professed love of journalism while in school. I think there’s a story here. I believe McCain has a serious problem with judgment considering how important the VP could be under his proposed presidency. I guess we’ll just have to stay tuned.
cont>
According to a biography — “Sarah” by Kaylene Johnson —
Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Palin Changes Colleges 6 Times in 6 Years

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=5728215

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin seems to have switched colleges at least six times in six years, including two stints at the University of Idaho before graduating from there in 1987.
Federal privacy laws prohibit the schools from disclosing her grades, and none of the schools contacted by The Associated Press could say why she transferred. There was no indication any were contacted as part of the background investigation of Palin by presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign.
“Our office was not contacted by anyone,” said Tania Thompson, spokeswoman for the University of Idaho in Moscow.
Palin, the governor of Alaska, was born in Idaho. Her family moved when she was only a few months old to Alaska, where she was raised.
According to a biography — “Sarah” by Kaylene Johnson — Palin and three friends went to the University of Hawaii at Hilo after graduation from high school in Alaska in 1982. But they left after a few weeks because of the constant rain there, the book said.
The registrar at Hawaii-Hilo has no record that she ever enrolled, school officials said Thursday.
Palin, then known as Sarah Louise Heath, and a friend then traveled to Honolulu and enrolled at Hawaii Pacific University, a private, nonsectarian school. She attended only as a freshman during the fall of 1982, school spokeswoman Crystale Lopez said.
She was in the business administration program as a full-time student, Lopez said Thursday.
“We’re trying to track down someone who knew her,” Lopez added.
From Hawaii Pacific, Palin transferred to North Idaho College, a two-year school in Coeur d’Alene, about 30 miles east of Spokane. She attended the college as a general studies major for two semesters, in spring 1983 and fall 1983, spokeswoman Stacy Hudson said.
“We were not able to track down club affiliations or anything,” Hudson said.
The school identified one of her professors but he did not remember her, Hudson said.
Prior to her selection by McCain, the North Idaho College Alumni Association notified Palin in June she would be the recipient of its 2008-2009 Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award.
rom North Idaho College, Palin transferred 70 miles south to the University of Idaho, the state’s flagship institution. She majored in journalism with an emphasis in broadcast news. She attended Idaho, whose mascot is the Vandals, from fall 1984 to spring 1985.
She then returned to Alaska to attend Matanuska-Susitna College in Palmer in fall 1985.
Then she returned to Idaho, for spring 1986, fall 1986 and spring 1987, when she graduated with an associates in journalism, she does not appear to have worked for the college newspaper or campus television station, school officials said. She worked briefly as a sportscaster for KTUU in Anchorage after she graduated college.
The McCain campaign did not have an immediate comment on Palin’s higher education record.
Palin’s biography on her Alaska governor’s website indicates only that she graduated from Idaho in 1987.
A recent profile of her in the school’s alumni magazine, before her selection to run on the GOP ticket, listed only Hawaii Pacific, North Idaho and Idaho as schools she attended. She also explained in the profile that her curiosity and love of writing made journalism a natural choice.
“I was always asking everyone the questions, and I still am today,” Palin told the magazine.
The University of Idaho is taking advantage of Palin’s nomination. A prominent photograph of her is featured on the school’s Web site.

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeece! The world is laughing and I am crying because there are actual voters who think this pick is a good one! My God, stop the world I want to get off—now!

It’s all in the dulldrums somewhere— geece!

Is this the smoking gun that will do Palin in? ………….Bet not.
How can the media ignore this??? The head of the AIP, Alaska Independence Party verifies she was a member and as governor is sympathetic to their cause. He also talks about how the infiltrate political parties to further their cause. Can we really have her one heartbeat away from the WH? If McCain wins, he should be in fear for his life, she wants 1800 Pennsylvania Avenue as her address, to further the AIP agenda. And they say because Obama does not wear a lapel pin, he is not patriotic. Then they get her for a running mate. This video needs to go viral.

Sorry all it is about 10 minutes long but it nails Palin as being a member a little bit after the 6 minute mark, then goes into their plan…………….

Just an PSA from Palin to the AIP:

My New Job: Inspector

POT SMOKERS GET HIGH ON DUTCH TOBACCO BAN

As it became illegal to light up in bars and restaurants, pot users were told they can still smoke joints in Amsterdam’s cannabis cafes  – as long as they don’t contain tobacco.

Anti-drugs spokesman Gus Van Tiel said: “They’ll be smoking neat cannabis. When we’re trying to reduce the potency of drugs, it is insane.”

Inspectors will patrol the country’s 750 pot coffee shops to ensure people are smoking only pure marijuana.

A government spokesman said: “The law is to protect non-smokers from the effects of tobacco smoke.

“Inspectors can tell if a joint is pure or mixed with tobacco.”

Fascism Is Fun…

…Democracy Is A Drag

B’Man’s Patrot Watch: The Only Candidate That Promises To Prosecute

There is no candidate in the Big Two that will hold their criminal leader responsible for their actions and thievery.

The best candidate running would.

Wake up, Sheeple. Take back America from the criminals!

B’Man’s Sabbath Watch: Alaskan Armageddon

To follow up with Lynda’s post and add B’man’s flair for the insane…

When Is Terrorism NOT Terrorism?

Whenever the Israelis are doing it, apparently. From Jonathon Turley:

Two Israeli Policemen Convicted in Death of Palistinian Teenager

Two Israeli border policemen have been convicted of manslaughter after they kidnapped a Palestinian teenager, 17-year-old Amran Abu Hamadiya, and threw him from a moving jeep. The death came during a day in which Shachar Botbeka, Denis Alhazov, and two other officers terrorized Palestinians in Hebron with tear gas, stun grenades, beatings and abductions.

While the investigation and convictions are a credit to the system, the charge of manslaughter rather than murder and terrorism is difficult to understand. The Court found that these men went on a rampage through the city and had to pry the fingers of the victim from the straps of the car to throw him out. Even if they claim that they did not want to kill him, they took actions clearly designed to cause seriously bodily injury or death.

The other two officers took plea agreements, but all four appear to be engaged in a premeditated act of terrorism against the population. While the two men now face 20 years, the charge is a bit hard to understand in the circumstances.

For the full story, click here.

Talk About Following ‘Special Interests’…

How religion guides Palin
By Manya A. Brachear | Chicago Tribune reporter  September 6, 2008

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin promised to lead the nation with a “servant’s heart,” evangelical Christians immediately recognized her as one of their own. Whether before an audience of ministry students or on a national stage at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, the 44-year-old Palin speaks fluently about her faith, striking chords with phrases that evoke Christian virtue. Palin has called on people to pray for the cooperation necessary to build a natural gas pipeline across Alaska, labeled the U.S. mission in Iraq a “task that is from God” and argued that students should be taught the creation account from Genesis in public schools.

In a race where both presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, have tried to court religious voting blocs, Palin’s introduction to the Republican ticket adds another dimension. Just as McCain’s politics are largely shaped by his experience as a prisoner of war and Obama’s by his embrace of his racial identity, Palin’s approach has been shaped by her relationship with God. Palin sees her government work as paling in comparison to a greater mission.

“I can do my job there in developing our natural resources and doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our troopers have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded,” she said in June to ministry students at her former church. “But really, all of that stuff doesn’t do any good if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with God.”

Palin found palatable– Historically a key constituency for the GOP, conservative Christian voters had been uneasy about McCain, doubting his commitment to fighting abortion. For them, the choice of Palin as his running mate removes doubt, as they know Palin’s position on the issue is sealed by her faith.

Palin was baptized as an infant in the Roman Catholic church, but she would spend nearly three decades in the Assemblies of God church, the nation’s largest Pentecostal denomination and the church of former U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft.

She now eschews the denominational label, choosing to attend independent churches in Alaska and calling herself a generic Christian when asked. But she remains connected to the Assemblies of God, addressing pastors’ conferences and ministry students.

Many of Palin’s beliefs mirror those of evangelical Christians. But Pentecostals occupy a distinct subset of evangelical Christianity. They believe they can be “baptized in the Holy Spirit” just as Jesus Christ’s apostles were in the New Testament’s Book of Acts. Gifts of the spirit include speaking in tongues, prophesy and faith healing.

The churches she has attended also embrace dispensation, a theological system that emphasizes man’s dominion over the earth and the end times—theology that could potentially shape a believer’s environmental and foreign policies.

“When she talks about using up our non-renewable resources, drilling on the North Slope and building the pipeline, it’s almost with glee because in a sense it doesn’t matter,” said Nancy Hardesty, a professor of religion at Clemson University in South Carolina. “All her brand of Christians may be gone before those things run out. It tends to lessen a long-term view.”

Rev. Tim McGraw, Palin’s pastor when she became mayor of Wasilla, said believers look to Israel for signs of the coming end times and where they are in God’s plan. That would undoubtedly influence Palin’s approach to foreign policy, McGraw said.

“I believe Sarah would not live in a fragmented world,” he said. “The idea that Sarah would take this huge influence of the worldview that really only the Bible and the relationship with Jesus opens up … and suddenly marginalize it and put it over on the shelf somewhere and live apart from it—that would be entirely inconsistent.”

From Idaho to Alaska
Palin’s spiritual narrative began in Idaho, where she was baptized. The family moved to Alaska when she was 2 months old, and several years later Palin’s mother began taking her four children to Wasilla Assembly of God.

“They had a hunger for knowing the Lord and finding out more about him,” church founder Rev. Paul Riley said this week.

According to a brief biography of Palin published in April, she began to feel as she matured that the messages from the pulpit were intended for her. When she prayed, she felt connected and fed by a power beyond herself.

“She couldn’t remember a time when God wasn’t real in her life,” wrote Kaylene Johnson, author of “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down.”

At 12, Palin was baptized by immersion in water during a summer family camp, along with her mother and siblings. Riley said her public testimony and drive to encourage others to do God’s will set her apart at a young age.

“That’s where we noticed the first indication of leadership,” said the pastor, who delivered the invocation at Palin’s inauguration.

From that moment on, according to her biography, her faith grew. In high school, she led basketball and track teams in prayer and to church when they traveled. She signed yearbooks with Bible verses, taking her own motto from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances.”

Riley’s successor, McGraw, said Palin gradually became more committed to church attendance once she started a family and entered politics. When she became mayor of Wasilla she scheduled regular appointments with the pastor, who counseled her through the transition and prayed with her privately.

“She was very conscientious about applying the worldview of what she was discovering in Christ to her day-to-day life,” McGraw said. “But I think she did it with and does it with what the Bible calls wisdom—in other words practicality, not religious craziness.”

As chief executive of Alaska, she signed a proclamation marking Christian Heritage Week as an occasion to remind Alaskans of the role Christianity has played in the state’s history. Palin also argued that public school students should engage in a “healthy debate” between evolution and creationism.

Attending a pastors conference as governor, she told Riley and other Assemblies of God clergy that Alaska had been dedicated to the Lord—”and I know the Lord is not going to take it back.”

[THE ORIGINAL VIDEO THAT STARTED IT ALL. Bristol Palin was out of sight for the last five months of her mom Sarah Palin's reported pregnancy, and no one in the Guv's circle saw signs of pregnancy. Some pictorial evidence, and four month old articles from the Fairbanks Newsminer raise serious questions]

CONTINUED!

Republican vice presidential hopeful’s church promotes prayer to make gays straight
By RACHEL D’ORO | Associated Press Writer
September 6, 2008
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) _ Gov. Sarah Palin’s church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer.

“You’ll be encouraged by the power of God’s love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality,” according to the insert in the bulletin of the Wasilla Bible Church, where Palin has prayed for about six years.

Palin’s conservative Christian views have energized that part of the GOP electorate, which was lukewarm to John McCain’s candidacy before he named her as his vice presidential choice. She is staunchly anti-abortion, opposing exceptions for rape and incest, and opposes gay marriage and spousal rights for gay couples.

Focus on the Family, a national Christian fundamentalist organization, is conducting the “Love Won Out” Conference in Anchorage, about 30 miles from Wasilla.

Palin, campaigning with McCain in the Midwest on Friday, has not publicly expressed a view on the so-called “pray away the gay” movement. Larry Kroon, senior pastor at Palin’s church, was not available to discuss the matter Friday, said a church worker who declined to give her name.

Gay activists in Alaska said Palin has not worked actively against their interests, but early in her administration she supported a bill to overrule a court decision to block state benefits for gay partners of public employees. At the time, less than one-half of 1 percent of state employees had applied for the benefits, which were ordered by a 2005 ruling by the Alaska Supreme Court.

Palin reversed her position and vetoed the bill after the state attorney general said it was unconstitutional. But her reluctant support didn’t win fans among Alaska’s gay population, said Scott Turner, a gay activist in Anchorage.

“Less than 1 percent of state employees would even apply for benefits, so why make a big deal out of such a small number?” he said.

“I think gay Republicans are going to run away” if Palin supports efforts like the prayers to convert gays, said Wayne Besen, founder of the New York-based Truth Wins Out, a gay rights advocacy group. Besen called on Palin to publicly express her views now that she’s a vice presidential nominee.

“People are looking at Sarah Palin as someone who might feasibly be in the White House,” he said.

War games, exercises?? naw– It’s War games.

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7602530.stm

Venezuela plans Russia navy visit
Venezuela says it plans to hold joint naval exercises in its territorial waters with Russian forces in November.
A senior Venezuelan naval officer said four Russian ships would take part in the exercises, which would also involve Venezuelan aircraft and submarines.
Correspondents say the move is likely to raise concern in the US, whose relations with Russia have been soured by Moscow’s recent conflict in Georgia.
Washington already has rocky relations with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.
In July, he called for a strategic alliance with Russia to protect Venezuela from the US.
Caracas and Moscow agreed to extend bilateral co-operation on energy, with three Russian energy companies to be allowed to operate in Venezuela.
Regional first
On Saturday, Venezuela’s Rear Admiral Salbatore Cammarata Bastidas said four Russian ships and 1,000 Russian troops would take part in exercises in Venezuelan territorial waters from 10 to 14 November.
“This is of great importance because it is the first time it is being done (in the Americas),” he said in a statement quoted by the AFP news agency and local media.
President Chavez supported Russia’s intervention in Georgia last month and has accused Washington of being scared of Moscow’s “new world potential”.
Earlier, US Vice-President Dick Cheney launched a furious attack on Russia over the recent conflict in the Caucasus.
Mr Cheney described Moscow’s actions against Georgia as an affront to civilised standards and said it was reverting back to old Soviet tactics of intimidation and the use of brute force.
He added that Russia was also seeking to use its energy resources as a weapon.

Dude… where’s my car song???

Rollin’ on Empty

In the World of Rock Music, Songs About Cars Have Lost Their Way
Dude, where’s my car song?
While you were electronically adjusting your side-view mirrors or being guided by GPS or reading the external temperature gauge or something, a curious thing happened in rock: The car-song trend sputtered and lurched and finally went kaput.
According to the diagnostics, those revving automobile engines — the inspiration for countless rock-and-roll songs, from the Cadillac-Ford race of Chuck Berry’s classic “Maybellene” to Bruce Springsteen’s rhapsody about “a ‘69 Chevy with a 396/Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor” in “Racing in the Street” — have gone silent

Audio Samples>

409 littleolelady maybelline racinrhestreet rocket88

“They ain’t writin’ car songs no more,” laments Paul Grushkin, author of “Rockin’ Down the Highway: The Cars and People That Made Rock Roll.”
“They ran their course; they did their thing,” says Brian Wilson, co-author of some of rock’s greatest car songs, both for Jan & Dean (“Dead Man’s Curve,” “Drag City”) and his own group, the Beach Boys, who released enough automotive-themed tunes in the 1960s to fill their own gas-’n'-go compilation. Among them: “409,” which celebrated Chevrolet’s new 409-cubic-inch V-8 engine and opened with a vroom vroom.
Never mind that it was apparently a Chevy 348 making all that noise; gearheads were geeked, especially with Mike Love singing about “my four-speed dual quad posi-traction 409″ as if he’d just emerged from under the car with grease all over his face.
As a genre, rock-and-roll fetishized cars and celebrated car culture from the get-go. Indeed, the ongoing debate over the starting point of rock music usually includes Ike Turner’s fuzzed-out 1951 chart-topper, “Rocket 88,” a paean to the Oldsmobile 88 on which Jackie Brenston (whose name was on the single instead of Turner’s) sang of a “V-8 motor and this modern design/My convertible top and the gals don’t mind.”
A caravan of car songs followed, spanning decades, makes and models, and filling more than a few summer soundtracks, not to mention road-trip mixes.
Today, there are still automotive references in popular music, particularly in hip-hop. But they’re usually brief mentions that often aren’t about cars at all; instead, they’re sexual metaphors (“Girl you look just like my cars; I wanna wax it,” R. Kelly sings) or status signifiers (“I deserve to do these numbers/The kid that made that deserves that Maybach,” Kanye West raps).
The few later-model car songs that have been released by brand-name artists aren’t actually car songs at all, as with Audioslave’s “Getaway Car,” a 2002 album track about escaping a relationship, or Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” a 1988 hit about a cycle of poverty and substance abuse.
Or they are about cars but aren’t paeans: In Cake’s “Stickshifts and Safetybelts,” from 1996, John McCrea is annoyed with his vehicle, rather than in love with it, because its design seems to be conspiring against him and his female companion. Particularly those bucket seats. “When we’re driving in the car,” he sings, “it makes my baby seem so far.”
In country music, when Craig Morgan isn’t singing about his combine harvester, trucks are the vehicle of choice, often used to represent something like a companion — a motorized horse. So much for the song-length homage to hot rods and luxury cars and the like.
Even as Hollywood continues to churn out movies about cars (“Death Race,” “Talladega Nights,” “Cars,” the upcoming “Fast and the Furious” sequel), the trend in rock-and-roll has gone the way of the Oldsmobile and the in-dash eight-track.
* * *
There were songs in the pre-rock era, of course, such as “Cadillac Boogie” by Jimmy Liggins, along with automotive references by the likes of Hank Williams. But they exploded when the new idiom arrived, with songwriters romanticizing their rides and all that they represented.
Back before cars became utilitarian things — Point A-to-Point B conveyances with computerized everythings powered by $4-a-gallon gas — they were objects of lust, symbols of liberation and power, the center of the youth movement’s sexual universe in post-World War II America. (What happens in the back seat stays in the back seat!)
Cars and rock-and-roll defined youth culture, screaming power and freedom and individuality. Cars were celebrated in cinema and on TV, but they were most at home in rock-and-roll.
Loud music and loud machines in which young people listened to that loud music: Of course the twain would meet.
“The whole obsession of cars in rock music was a reflection of teenage culture,” says Bob Merlis, a music publicist and automotive journalist who curated two “Cars and Guitars” exhibits for the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. “The car was a very exotic thing that gave the teenager a place of his own, or her own. It’s where you’d go to escape your parents. . . . It was a refuge from square culture and repressive attitudes. It was your own universe where you could have your own social life.”
To Dean Torrance, cars represented freedom and creative expression. But, he says now, he and Jan Berry weren’t thinking about cars quite so deeply in the 1960s, when their group, Jan & Dean, had success with several automotive-themed songs, including “Little Old Lady From Pasadena,” a Berry song (co-written by Don Altfeld and Roger Christian) about a Super-Stock Dodge that tore up the quiet streets of Pasadena, Calif.
“It was just the only other thing we knew anything about,” Torrance says from his Orange County home. “We started out writing about boy-girl situations and our surfboards. There had to be something else to write about. What else did we know anything about? Cars!”
Cars, especially the American ones, were romanticized, celebrated as shining objects of desire, with their metal-flake paint, red-line tires, sexy lines and all that horsepower. Hubba , hubba.
They were good for getting girls, but also desirable “girls” themselves: In “SS 396″ by Paul Revere and the Raiders, the car of the title is referred to as “she.”
In the early 1960s, Brian Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys were infatuated with cars — along with girls and surfing — and they turned their obsession into a minor industry, with hits including “Little Deuce Coupe” (about a lightning-fast 1932 Ford) and “Shut Down” (detailing a drag race between a Super Stock 1962 Dodge Dart and a 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray). If Chuck Berry was behind the wheel of the bandwagon, then Wilson was riding shotgun, with his frequent lyrical collaborator, the AM-radio disc jockey Roger Christian, in the back.
But Wilson gave up the seat years ago. In a telephone interview, he says he can’t remember the last time he came up with a song about automobiles.
“I was always fascinated by cars,” he says. “They made me think of the competitiveness of life. I still like cars, but I don’t write about them anymore.”
Do you blame him?
Personal cars circa 2008 tend to be impersonal, ubiquitous and inherently uninteresting weapons of mass environmental destruction. (Your mileage may vary.)
Don’t bother looking under the hood; you won’t find a muse. There’s nothing particularly exotic about driving anymore. The new-culture smell is long gone.
“There’s not as much focus on car culture these days,” says Merlis, the automotive writer and music publicist whose clients include the noted gearheads and occasional car-song singers in ZZ Top. (His cars include three Studebakers.) “People need cars, they drive them, but they [complain] about putting gas in them. They’re so anonymous. The romance is gone.
“What’s still there is mostly nostalgic: ‘Remember that ‘57 T-Bird blah blah blah.’ Younger people don’t relate to that.”
Says “Rockin’ Down the Highway” author Grushkin: “It’s still the American prerogative to sing about your car. The problem is, most of the songs about cars were written a while ago. So we’re singing about something that now is not your primary vehicle. And with gas being so expensive now, you’re not even taking that car — probably American, hopefully a convertible — out for a joy ride on a regular basis. It’s expensive even to drive down to the Trader Joe’s.”
And besides, writing car-centric songs right now: kind of silly, says Nils Lofgren, whose old band Grin paid tribute to a “Heavy Chevy” on its 1972 album, “All Out.”
“Cars used to be romantic, but nothing’s as romantic as it used to be, because there’s so much serious stuff going down,” says Lofgren, who has performed with Neil Young (a car buff who never really did car songs) and Springsteen (a car buff who did). “With the ominous destruction of mankind, we’re all a little distracted.”
Which isn’t to say that car culture has disappeared. NASCAR is one of America’s most popular spectator sports, and people are still pimping their rides, on MTV and elsewhere.
But it’s more of a series of subcultures now: classic hot rods, tricked-out low riders, souped-up Japanese imports that have never held much lyrical appeal in Western pop. Car culture is no longer a part of the mass culture.
And yet Grushkin says the relationship between music and cars is as evident as ever, if only for this reason: “Music still sounds great in a car. People will always be driving down the highway, listening to their tunes, beating on the dashboard. . . . It doesn’t matter if you’re listening to a Wilco song that mentions a car in passing, a rap song, a Brandi Carlile song that was used in a GM commercial or Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Pink Cadillac.’ The beat goes on.”

When Rules of the Game Change–

So What Is Fair Game With Sarah Palin? Look at the Rules Hillary Clinton Had to Play By.
Washington Post

Watching Gov. Sarah Palin explode onto the national scene over the last week got me thinking back to a cold evening earlier this year, just before the New Hampshire primary. I was half-listening to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton speak at an auditorium when a strange noise interrupted the event: two young men shouting, in muffled voices, “Iron my shirt!”
At first, Clinton seemed as taken aback as the rest of the audience, unsure of what was going on. Then she saw the yellow “Iron My Shirt!” sign one of the young men held, figured out what was being shouted and brushed the interruption aside. “Ah, the remnants of sexism, alive and well,” she said, then continued with her remarks. When security officers removed the young men from the audience, I joined several other reporters in following them outside to find out who the hecklers were and what had motivated them to make such a spectacle.
Little did we know that the bizarre incident was a precursor of what was to come — of the debate over sexism, feminism and the role of women in public life that would emerge as one of the defining aspects of the 2008 campaign. My fellow reporters and I never really did resolve the mystery of the “iron my shirt” episode; the two young men refused to give us their names and offered strangely vague reasons for being there. But we were put on notice that night: Gender politics was going to be a part of this race in ways that no one could foresee. After following Clinton on the campaign trail for more than two years, I have been watching the Palin story with some wariness — especially the conservative charges that the treatment she’s received has been overwhelmingly sexist. With each new development, I keep wondering: What if?
What if, back in the 1990s, Clinton had announced the pregnancy of an unmarried, teenaged daughter? Would the Republicans have declared it an off-limits family matter and declined to judge her, or would it have turned into a national scandal that hurt her chances as she decided to pursue her own career in elected office?
What if, instead of the GOP’s new vice presidential candidate, Clinton had been the one to run for national office without any international experience to speak of? (After all, Clinton’s rivals diminished the relevance of her eight years as first lady, saying they counted for little on her résumé.)
And what if Clinton had rejected questions about her record by calling such lines of questioning sexist? What if she had refused to name any national security decisions she had made, as a spokesman for Sen. John McCain did on Palin’s behalf last week, on the grounds that the question was unfair?
What if, simply, the roles had been reversed?
Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s former communications director, said he is confident that the Republicans “would have attempted to destroy her” if she were in Palin’s shoes — as, in fact, some Republicans tried to do to Clinton throughout the 1990s, and were preparing to do again if she had won the Democratic nomination this year.
At the same time, Wolfson said, Republican attempts “to defend Palin from sexism lost a fair amount of credibility when Carly Fiorina refused to acknowledge that her party had ever been sexist toward Hillary Clinton.” (Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief turned McCain economic adviser, told a “hear-me-roar” press conference with other Republican women Wednesday that Republicans were not responsible for any mistreatment of Clinton.) I have had my share of major disagreements with Wolfson over the last few years, but on this one, he is probably right.
It may seem a pretty pointless exercise — envisioning the “would haves” if Clinton and Palin had somehow swapped roles, parties and lives. But it is a useful tool as a reporter, a way of contemplating what is fair game now by comparing it with what was fair game then. Even the issue of “Would you ask a man the same question” (raised so indignantly last week by senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani) falls slightly short, simply because there are so few templates for female candidates running for higher office — and the ones who have, including Clinton, Palin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have tried to use their roles as mothers and women as part of the overall package in ways that men do not.
That is not to say that every awkward detail of Palin’s personal life is an acceptable target — or that Democrats, reporters and bloggers ought to pursue Palin in all of the aggressive ways that Clinton has been grilled for most of her political life. It is also not to suggest that Clinton always openly answered questions about her own record or did not manipulate her femininity to her advantage when it suited her political needs.
And the sort of media-bashing that thrilled the GOP faithful last week may not play as well with the independents McCain hopes to win over. In an overnight ABC News poll taken before McCain’s speech Thursday, 50 percent of respondents said that the media has treated Palin fairly, while 40 percent said it had not — and among those who faulted the coverage, more saw political bias as the root cause than blamed sexism.
Still, in her first week on the national stage, Palin and her surrogates have brandished the sexism charge more unabashedly than Clinton has over the course of two very public decades. And Palin has not yet even faced serious questioning in person, in an interview or in a one-on-one debate. If Clinton’s message was that she was a survivor — that she had been vetted and tested, her viewpoints scrutinized, with all of her personal problems known to the country — Palin’s has so far been that she has, by virtue of being nominated, already passed every test that Clinton took. Palin’s mantra, it seems, is that women no longer need to surpass men in their achievements and qualifications in order to win; they simply need to object when the question of their preparedness is raised.
And that makes me wonder: What would Clinton say to that?
Clinton has been surprisingly quiet in the days since Palin was nominated. She issued a bland statement the day McCain announced his surprise pick: “We should all be proud of Governor Sarah Palin’s historic nomination, and I congratulate her and Senator McCain. While their policies would take America in the wrong direction, Governor Palin will add an important new voice to the debate.” Last Thursday, Clinton put out just her second statement about Palin, saying she wanted to “slightly amend” one of her best zingers in Denver: “No way, no how, no McCain-Palin.” And while Clinton is scheduled to stump in central Florida Monday on Sen. Barack Obama’s behalf, the trip is not, according to people in both Democrats’ camps, designed as a direct response to the debut of the second female vice presidential nominee in U.S. history.
It doesn’t exactly add up to a resounding attack, especially during the heat of the campaign. Former Clinton advisers offer various explanations: She would only energize the Republican base if she criticized Palin; she doesn’t want to diminish her own stature by attacking McCain’s rookie understudy rather than McCain himself; she is not on the ticket, so why should she intervene? Still, the result is a strange silence from the woman who, until just two weeks ago, had arguably the most powerful female voice in American politics.
Palin, on the other hand, has invoked Clinton several times, welcoming the senator’s voters to her own effort to shatter the glass ceiling that Clinton “put 18 million cracks in.” And yet America’s two most famous female politicians were not always so simpatico. As recently as the primary season, Palin said that she was sorry she could not vote for Clinton (presumably because she was a registered Republican) but added that she regretted Clinton’s “whining” about sexist treatment toward the end of her 2008 bid. “When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism, or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, ‘Man, that doesn’t do us any good, women in politics, or women in general, trying to progress in this country,’ ” Palin said.
“I think that’s reality, and I think it’s a given, I think people can just accept that she is going to be under that sharper microscope,” Palin went on. “So be it. I mean, work harder, prove yourself to an even greater degree that you’re capable, that you’re going to be the best candidate. . . .”
One senior Clinton adviser I talked to this past week called it understandable that the Alaska governor felt that way — until she got into the white-hot glare herself. Another said that it is probably easier for Palin to take on the role of vice presidential nominee, and to push back against the questions that truly are offensive, because the path has been paved for the last several years by Clinton.
In some respects, the Clinton loyalists are sympathetic toward Palin and about the hardships she will face in largely uncharted territory as a woman running for national office. They lived through the excruciating moments of unfairness that Clinton endured during the campaign — MSNBC’s Chris Matthews’s saying that Clinton won her Senate seat only because of her husband’s infidelity is one particular favorite — and some are still smarting from Obama’s decision to tap Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. That may very well not have been a sexist choice, but from a certain angle, it could be seen to have carried a tinge of old-boy networking — the kind that Palin said in her acceptance speech she had busted up in Alaska.
Which is why so many Clinton loyalists believe — and I believe they really believe it — that Palin could help McCain draw some voters from the Clinton base. The GOP may have its work cut out for it here: According to the ABC poll, 47 percent of women view Palin favorably. (She does better among men, who are more apt to be Republicans; 54 percent of men viewed her positively.) Still, the fact that a spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid used the word “shrill” to describe Palin’s speech on Wednesday night only made Clinton’s camp more convinced that the hockey mom from Wasilla really could win some women over. And that is why Palin’s emergence has given the increasingly tight 2008 campaign a kind of symmetry that the “Iron My Shirt” boys, whoever they were, could never have imagined.