Tag Archives: New York Times

More Doubts on Palin

Politics, ,

Both the New York Times Editorial Board and columnist Bob Herbert share many voters’ concerns about the qualifications of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be Vice President.

The Editorial Board:

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

Herbert:

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.

I think Herbert’s lede sums up why the media is actually doing its job for once in probing Palin’s beliefs and qualifications. If the Republicans are good at anything, it’s not blinking as they pull off the big con. The slight of hand involved here is just too egregious to be overlooked, though.

Drill Baby Drill

Politics, , , ,

From the New York Times: a sex, bribes, collusion and drugs scandal at the governmental department responsible for collecting money from oil companies:

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

You have to read the whole story to get a full grasp of the piggishness, but one character who stood out was Gregory Smith, a director of the Denver office of the Minerals Management Service. As the Times details:

The report said that from April 2002 to June 2003, Mr. Smith improperly used his position with the royalty program to help a technical services firm seek deals with the same oil and gas companies. The services firm paid Mr. Smith more than $30,000 for asking the oil companies to hire it, the report said.

Mr. Smith requested and received approval to take on the outside work, but the report says he misled the office into thinking he would be performing technical consulting, rather than marketing the firm to companies with which he also conducted official business

The report accuses Mr. Smith of improperly accepting gifts from the oil and gas industry, of engaging in sex with two subordinates, and of using cocaine that he purchased from his secretary or her boyfriend several times a year between 2002 and 2005. He sometimes asked for the drugs and received them in his office during work hours, the report alleges.

The report also says that Mr. Smith lied to investigators about these and other incidents, and that he urged the two women subordinates to mislead the investigators as well.

But don’t worry–it’s not like he’ll face any repercussions for his actions.

[Smith and another worker] retired during the investigation, rendering them safe from any administrative punishment, and the Justice Department has declined to prosecute them on the charges suggested by the inspector general.

Putting Out The Unwelcome Mat

Well Worth Reading, , , ,

Blanche DuBois would have a tough time (well, an even tougher time) in modern America, as kindness to strangers doesn’t seem to be much of a motivating factor for anyone anymore. As the New York Times reports, an Italian man coming to the United States to visit his girlfriend received the common Customs response of being treated like a criminal for no reason:

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Continue reading Putting Out The Unwelcome Mat →

Al Jaffee Profile in the New York Times

Humor, ,

Old fans of Mad magazine will be happy to see a profile of long-time artist Al Jaffee in the New York Times. Jaffee is best known for the fold-ins that have graced the inner back page of every issue of Mad since 1964; his long-running “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” feature is also a Mad staple.

At 87, Jaffee still draws each of the fold-ins by hand, using careful planning to account for the transformation in the eventual crease. As the article states,

Mr. Jaffee does have a computer, but its main benefit, he said, has been to make the typographic tricks in the fold-in easier to create. He doesn’t draw with it, which leads to another surprise: the master of the fold-in never actually folds.

“I’m working on a hard, flat board,” he said. “I cannot fold it. That’s why my planning has to be so correct.”

“The computer would make it so much simpler,” he added. “But I think I’m going to remain a dinosaur.”

His fans are numerous, and they include Steven Colbert, who is quoted. “‘I have a vast Mad collection, but they’re not collector-worthy,’ Mr. Colbert said in a telephone interview — too heavily folded. ‘Perhaps I should have bought two.'”

I still have a later-vintage collection sitting at my mom’s house, but they should be in better shape than Colbert’s. I could never bring myself to fold them.