Musing : Confusing : Deluding

A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence:

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

That must’ve been a lot of fun to pull off, but the fact that they got away with it to such a large extent is a little frightening. Which news do we believe is true, and which do we believe is a hoax yet to be revealed?

It’s louder than a drunken weekend night here. Hordes of people running around the campus screaming and yelling “OBAMAAAAAAA!” It feels like we’re part of a revolution.

This is what we have to worry about in the US:

Almost always [in his map predictions], Mr. Downs, 53, ends with Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead, which should please this confirmed liberal and profound Obama fan. But just as often he feels worried.

“Look, I have this sense of impending doom; we’ve had a couple of elections stolen already,” Mr. Downs said. “The only thing worse than losing is to think that you’re going to win and then lose.”

He considers that prospect and mutters, almost involuntarily, “Oh, God.”

And this is what they have to worry about in Pakistan:

On a rainy Friday evening in early August, six Taliban fighters attacked a police post in a village in Buner, a quiet farming valley just outside Pakistan’s lawless tribal region.

The militants tied up eight policemen and lay them on the floor, and according to local accounts, the youngest member of the gang, a 14-year-old, shot the captives on orders from his boss. The fighters stole uniforms and weapons and fled into the mountains.

Almost instantly, the people of Buner, armed with rifles, daggers and pistols, formed a posse, and after five days they cornered and killed their quarry. A video made on a cellphone showed the six militants lying in the dirt, blood oozing from their wounds.

That is such a different level of problem. Why do we get so worked up here? No lives are at stake. I mean, in a indirect way, because of policies, but not like that. We talk about our country being on the wrong track, or economically disintegrating, or whatever. We have food and warmth. Most of us have a home. We’re safe in our beds.

We have no right to complain.

A poster in Appel Commons. I put my vote under Putin. He’s (supposedly) no longer on the Russian throne, a situation I doubt he likes, so he’ll probably manage to get elected here one way or another.

Rage rising on the McCain campaign trail:

“I’m mad. I’m really mad. And what’s going to surprise you, it’s not the economy. It’s the socialists taking over our country,” another man said.

Hahahaaaa! Okay then, if that’s this guy’s top priority over the economy and the war and stuff…

Skype security flub leads to discovery of Chinese monitoring:

[...] China not only monitors and logs text chat, but also targets specific users for further monitoring.

[...] “The captured messages contain specific keywords relating to sensitive political topics such as Taiwan independence, the Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Communist Party of China,” reads the report [by ONI Asia and the Information Welfare Monitor].

[...] If you’re the type who regularly talks about unapproved topics on Skype, you may be flagged for further monitoring of everything you say.

[...] Villeneuve notes that Skype is neither transparent nor forthcoming about the exact nature of its compliance with Chinese authorities, a disturbing trend among US-based Internet companies conducting business in China.

Yikes.

(via macuyiko)

Poor Sarah, as a contrast to my previous post:

I saw this feeling in Palin — in a flash, on that blue couch, catty-corner to Kissinger, as her eyes pleaded for clemency from the camera. I’ll bet you anything that her admirers — the ones whose hearts really and truly swell with a sense of kinship to her — see or sense it in her, too. They know she can’t possibly do it all — the kids, the special-needs baby, the big job, the big conversations with foreign leaders. And neither could they.

[...]

Frankly, I’ve come to think, post-Kissinger, post-Katie-Couric, that Palin’s nomination isn’t just an insult to the women (and men) of America. It’s an act of cruelty toward her as well.

I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately, so Warner’s analysis really rings true to me. Which is the entire point of the article, I suppose.

Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes:

[...] when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she [Palin] appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

[...]

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

That’s just from the first page of a five-page article. It’s ridiculous. Please, American Public, realize what kind of politician this woman is.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A huge truck bomb exploded at the entrance to the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday evening, killing at least 40 people and wounding more than 150, the police said.

The blast, one of the worst acts of terrorism in Pakistan’s history, went off just a few hundred yards from the prime minister’s house, where all the leaders of government were dining after the president’s address to Parliament.

(New York Times)