THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† It’s A Topsy-Turvy Campaign: A panel of 44 men and women armed with dials numbered 0 (most negative) to 100 (most positive) assembled by CBS to watch the veep debate at its TV City research facility in Las Vegas yielded an unexpected finding: Biden did better than Palin when he talked about the war, but the tables were turned when Palin talked about the bailout, reports Media Daily News. The average score for any specific issue was 44; Biden hit 76 on the war, Palin hit 69 on the bailout. Conventional wisdom gives Dems the edge on the economy and Repubs the edge on national security, but with this group it was the other way around.
Here’s more proof that it’s a topsy-turvy campaign: Biden and Palin’s principals were battling each other over mortgage relief on the campaign trail. One of them said this: The plan “punishes taxpayers, rewards banks, and won't solve our housing crisis” and would “guarantee that American taxpayers lose by handing over $300 billion to underwrite the kind of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street that got us into this mess.” The other countered with this: “"The dream of owning a home should not be crushed under the weight of a bad mortgage. The moment requires that the government act - and as president I intend to act quickly, and decisively.”
Which was which? The one who sounded like a laissez-faire Repub was Barack Obama. The one who sounded like Obama during the primaries was John McCain.
To read other posts in this series, click here, here (second item), here and here (second item).
† The Media Love Obama, But He Doesn’t Love Them Back: Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz writes: “The single constant in the eternal election remains the media, whose activist role no one will seriously dispute. To point out the prevailing (with honorable exceptions) double standard of reporting so favorable to Mr. Obama by now feels superfluous - much like talking about the weather.” And what does the media get for their slavish devotion? A smelly campaign plane and clueless campaign staffers who undermine reporters trying to make deadline, complains CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds:
The Obama aides who deal with the national reporters on the campaign plane are often overwhelmed, overworked and un-informed about where, when, why or how the candidate is moving about. …
The national headquarters in Chicago airily dismisses complaints from journalists wondering why a schedule cannot be printed up or at least e-mailed in time to make coverage plans.
Nor is there much sympathy for those of us who report for a newscast that airs in the early evening hours. …
The McCain folks are more helpful and generally friendly. The schedules are printed on actual books you can hold in your hand, read, and then plan accordingly. The press aides are more knowledgeable and useful to us in the news media. The events are designed with a better eye, and for the simple needs of the press corps. When he is available, John McCain is friendly and loquacious. Obama holds news conferences, but seldom banters with the reporters who've been following him for thousands of miles around the country. Go figure.
The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama's, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated.
† Is Kozinski The Victim Of A Vendetta?: 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s nemsis, Cyrus Sanai, filed an 80-page complaint against him alleging that he illegally disabling court software in 2001 that was intended to detect improper staff Internet downloads of movies and music, reports The National Law Journal. The incident was reviewed by the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the U.S., with no finding of judicial misconduct on Kozinski’s part. This is not the first time the Beverly Hills, CA, attorney has filed a formal complaint against Kozinski – or other federal judges he has tangled with. In July 2005, Sanai was sanctioned for what U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly termed an “indescribable abuse of the legal process” that was “outrageous, disrespectful and in bad faith.”
† Death Row Inmate: I’m Too Fat To Execute: The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati and the OH Supreme Court rejected the claim of death row inmate Richard Cooey, 41, that he was too roly-poly to execute via lethal injection, clearing the way for his sentence to be carried out on October 14th for the rapes and murders of two University of Akron students in 1986. Cooey, who is 5’ 7” tall and weighs 267 pounds, blamed prison food for his obesity, and claimed that his veins were not easily accessible so he would be subjected to unnecessary pain during his execution.
† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Another Cockamamie Lib Idea Fails The Real World Test): A 14-year-old girl from IA who was abandoned at a hospital in Omaha, NE, under that state’s ill-conceived safe haven law is back at home with the grandparents who are raising her, reports The Associated Press. The grandparents, who dropped the girl off at Creighton University Medical Center on Tuesday, cited a “supervision issue,” but had a change of heart and took her back. The IA Department of Human Services plans to monitor the family.
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