October 6th, 2008
Eugene Volokh, of the eponymous Volokh Conspiracy - an excellent, slightly-right-of-center law blog - points out an interesting aspect of last week’s conviction in the O.J. Simpson kidnapping/robbery trial. Now that O.J. has been convicted, of course he will have to be sentenced, and the range of possible sentences runs from 15 years in jail to life. The actual sentence he receives, and his eligibility for parole, depend upon the judge’s discretion moderated by various sentencing factors the judge is allowed or required to take into account.
The question here is what aspects of Simpson’s past may be held as relevant in determining the sentence for his current conviction. Technically, Simpson is a first-time offender - he has never been convicted on any criminal charges. He is also a double murderer, however, as determined by court of law in the civil trial that followed his acquittal on criminal charges in the same case. So, may the court take his prior violent acts into account in sentencing for his recent crime - itself involving weapons and threats of violence - or must it treat him as having a clean slate on the grounds that he was not legally convicted on criminal charges?
(more…)
Categories: Culture, General, Legal Issues, News & Current Events |
No Comments
October 6th, 2008
Fred at slacktivist lays down some serious smack over Gov. Palin’s recent Ayers attacks, and about Palin in general. Go forth and read.
Categories: Politics, Smackdown! |
No Comments
October 6th, 2008
Omaha is becoming a major battleground. As the most urban district of Nebraska, it’s still in play even though the state overall is traditionally red. And Nebraska is one of only two states that split their Electoral College votes by district, so if Obama wins just Omaha, he’ll get one of Nebraska’s five EC votes and cut McCain’s EC advantage there from a five-vote margin to a three-vote margin. It’s important enough that Obama has opened two full-time campaign staff offices in that one district, and Palin showed up there to campaign personally yesterday.
All of which is politics as usual, until you let Sarah Palin open her mouth. Then . . . weird things happen.
Sarah Palin said at a hastily scheduled Sunday night rally in this solidly red state that the decision to come here was hers alone and was not the defensive move by her campaign to lock up Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District that many pundits have suggested.
“The pundits today on TV—one of them was saying, check out the vice president’s schedule, check out where she’s going — she’s going to Nebraska,” Palin said.
“But the pundit was saying the only reason she’d be going there is ‘cause they’re scared, so they gotta go there and shore up votes. And I so wanted to reach into that TV and say no, I’m going to Nebraska because I want to go to Nebraska.”
Nebraska is one of only two states that splits its Electoral College votes, and the Obama campaign is making a serious play for the solidly-Republican 2nd Congressional District, which is represented by Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb. But Palin suggested that the obvious political ramifications had nothing to do with her decision to come here.
“And you can ask — and probably the reporters will ask — the top dogs in our campaign why am I in Nebraska, and it’s truly because I asked to come to the heartland of America today,” she said.
Now . . . what the fuck goes through her head?
First of all, it’s obvious that this is a huge, transparent, stupid, and unnecessary lie. Of course she’s in Omaha to shore up their standing in the polls there. And she should be doing exactly that, by the perfectly ordinary logic of tactical campaigning. Nobody would question her being there.
But for some reason she felt it was necessary to deny that she was campaigning in a battleground district in order to get votes. In fact, she went out of her way to call an unscheduled press conference to announce that she had gone off on a flyer in the last 30 days of the race, against the advice of her own campaign apparatus, for no purposeful reason at all. (And, apparently, she expects us to believe that her campaign managers didn’t want her to campaign in Nebraska, and tried to talk her out of it when she chose to do so.)
Now, nobody in the world believes that. But what’s mind-boggling is that she felt the need to say it. She wants us to think that she’s conducting her vice-presidential campaign like a complete idiot? The idea that she runs her campaign on quirky flights of whim, without regard to any overall strategy or the practical effect of her actions in regard of obtaining her final goals, is supposed to make us like her more as a candidate for the highest offices in the nation?
If in fact she is doing what she says she is doing, she’s an idiot. If, instead, she actually is campaigning in Omaha strategically and for a reason, then she’s a liar. And to top it off, she could have avoided being either of those by just going ahead and campaigning there, without making up some stupid lie about it, like any normal person would have. So I ask again, what goes through that bizarre pea-brain of hers?
And: “I so wanted to reach into that TV”? What could that mean? “I wanted to go on that TV show . . .”? “I wanted to reach that TV audience . . .”? “I wanted to reach beyond the barrier of TV . . .”? Who knows?
When George Bush speaks, you have to guess what his sentences might mean if he actually spoke English. But when Sarah Palin speaks, you have to make up things that her sentences might mean if they meant anything at all.
Step by step, the GOP has incrementally lowered the bar of Presidential-level competency below existing expectations. Again and again they have nominated candidates whose intellectual capacity and coherence of thought would previously have rendered them unqualified by a large margin. Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin: the GOP has become the party of electoral Kallikaks. Three generations of imbeciles is enough.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention: she calls herself the Vice President, now? So, when does the howling about “arrogance” and “the annointed one” begin, as we heard from the right wing when Obama dared to simply use a campaign logo resembling the Presidential Seal? Surely actually declaring yourself to be the officeholder before the election is even held is worth several times as much sarcasm and verbal abuse, right? We can expect to hear it any day now, right? Because the right wing really believes what it says, and campaigns on issues and principles they sincerely care about. Right.
Categories: Culture, Fiasco, General, Legal Issues, Media, News & Current Events, Politics |
4 Comments
