Disgraceful, how they keep tearing into The Best Veep Choice Ever.

Political considerations always enter into the selection of the vice presidential nominee, as they should. But no politician would ever publicly express the intent to allow political considerations to dictate the selection of a running mate who is unqualified to serve as president. In fact, McCain publicly stated that fitness for the presidency would be his primary consideration in selecting a running mate. Indeed, all presidential candidates say this. That’s because we would seriously question the fitness for the presidency of any candidate who did not say it.

In sum, we expect presidential candidates to consider politics when selecting a running mate, but not to the point of selecting one who is unqualified to serve as president. Only in the extreme case where the presidential candidate cannot win except by running with an unqualified running mate should we be other than disappointed by the nomination of such a running mate.

It can be argued that McCain was in this position. But some argue instead (or alternatively) that Sarah Palin’s credentials are adequate. These arguments are mostly laughable. We are told that she was a courageous whistle-blower. But whistling-blowing isn’t evidence of leadership skill, administrative ability, or familiarity with vital policy issues. We are told that Palin challenged an incumbent governor and called him out for his corruption. But mounting an insurgent’s campaign for governor isn’t evidence of fitness for the presidency either. We are told that she is responsible for her state’s national guard and visited its troops in Iraq. How this amounts to foreign policy or national security experience, or otherwise qualifies Palin for national office, is unclear.

What’s clear is that if Democrats made these sorts of arguments on behalf of a candidate for national office, conservative commentators would excoriate them for it.

Another crazed leftie. Only it’s not – it’s one of the most conservative (and often bat-shit crazy) blogs out there. They’re to be commended for having the courage (for once) to speak the truth in the face of their party’s drunken celebration of…well, we don’t know what. But they sure seem higher than a kite. The source of that link also has his own article on the topic that’s worth a glance:

What we have learned about John McCain from his selection of Sarah Palin is that he is as impulsive and reckless a decision-maker as George W. Bush. We know this not because of what we have learned about this Pentecostalist populist since she exploded on the scene last Friday morning (and God knows we have learned more than we ever wanted). We know it because of how McCain made the decision…

McCain picked someone he had only met once before. I repeat: he picked someone he had only met once before. His vetting chief sat Palin down for a face-to-face interview the Wednesday before last. It’s very hard to overstate how nutty and irresponsible this is.

Would any corporate chieftain pick a number two on those grounds and not be dismissed by his board for recklessness?

Finally, The Best Veep Choice Ever proved her savvy today in a discussion of the Fannie/Freddie bailout.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” The companies, as McClatchy reported, “aren’t taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization.”

Well, I’m sure her heart was in the right place even if she kind of messed up on the facts.

Meanwhile, I’ve noticed a remarkable trend, a truly classic meme fostered by the NRO/Malkin crowd to immediately claim that any criticism of The Best Veep Choice Ever is bullying, or sexist, or cowardly or hateful or unhinged.

Look, it’s not about leftists and nutty accusations. It’s just about who she is, what she has said and what she has done. We have the right to know this about our next president, the person in whose hands we are entrusting the fate of the earth. For all Obama’s shortcomings, discussed here multiple times, we all knew his name when he started campaigning, we had all read about him, heard him speak, seen the criticisms and the praise. He had a very long vetting process, living always in the public eye since his extraordinary speech at the 2004 DNC. With The Best Veep Choice Ever, on the other hand… Well, let me put it like this: I am willing to bet my entire vast fortune that when literally every one of you heard Sarah Palin was McCain’s choice, your first thought was, “Sarah who?” And that kind of says it all. Now, if the answer to that question had included a dazzling resume of actual achievements and successes, we might have grounds to argue that McCain wasn’t either clinically insane monumentally cynical when he nominated her. Unfortunately, that resume is less than nothing.

Let’s give the final word to our arch-ultra-mega-conservative friend at Powerline linked above, someone I never would have thought I’d ever link to here.

It’s true, of course, that no governor really obtains meaningful national security or foreign policy experience. (Many Senators don’t get much of it either, though by voting on these issues they at least enable us to test their judgment). But governors who have served for an extended period of time obtain important executive administrative experience that is directly relevant to serving as president. It’s very difficult to find someone with both extensive executive experience and a background in foreign policy/national security. People like the current vice president don’t grow on trees. But we expect one or the other from a nominee for president. Palin lacks both.

That’s why those who defend Palin’s qualifications typically end up moving to more defensible terrain — the argument that her credentials compare favorably to Obama’s. This may constitute an additional reason to vote for McCain, but it’s not a defense of McCain’s selection of Palin.

Big kudos to him for telling the truth, and to myself for having the tolerance to read his post through and then link to it despite the pain of linking to a site that once referred to our boy president as a man “approaching genius.” (Same blog, different blogger.)

Anyway, expect to hear this chorus again and again: to point out St. Sarah’s deficiencies and mistakes and outright incompetence is snide, elitist, nasty, cruel and desperate. It’s not. These things merit discussion, and it is beyond all belief that we are willing to sequester away the person who may be our next president because we are afraid she may not be ready to communicate with the press. Virtually unprecedented. She could be your president in three months. I admire the candidate’s intelligence, speaking ability, charisma and her having the strength of conviction to give birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. They are noble qualities, but not nearly enough to entrust to her the keys to mankind’s destiny.

Meaning, I am on vacation (though it hardly seems that way at the moment) and would prefer we keep this blog Palin-free for the next 24 hours so I can think about cheerier things, like the CCP. Can we try to do that? I know it’s Saturday and threads tend to be slow on the weekend, but just in case you have something to say, here’s a soapbox.

Protests in two Chinese cities

The Chinese government is reported to have sent thousands of soldiers and police to quell unrest in the central province of Hunan. Up to 10,000 people took to the streets in Jishou to demand money back from an allegedly fraudulent fundraising firm, a Hong Kong-based rights group said. In another protest in the eastern port of Ningbo, 10,000 workers clashed with police, the group added. Social unrest is common in China, but rarely on this scale.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said that, in both protests, violent clashes erupted between angry crowds and local authorities. In Jishou 50 people were injured in rioting, and police arrested 20 people, the group said. According to Xinhua news agency, the protesters blocked roads and trains to demand that the government take action after a fundraising company “failed to pay them back as promised”. The Jishou government admitted in a statement that armed police were drafted in to disperse the crowds, but did not mention if anyone was hurt.

In the second incident, thousands of migrant workers confronted police in Ningbo to protest about the injury of a man in a local factory. The protests are the latest in a series of confrontations over social issues in China – many of which stem from grievances over alleged corruption and local authorities’ abuse of power. In June, thousands of people rioted in Guizhou province over claims that police had covered up the rape and murder of a girl.

The Chinese government doesn’t deploy soldiers lightly to deal with social unrest. There’s also a Washington Post article that discusses the events in Jishou in more depth.

Tens of thousands of angry protesters, many of whom lost their life savings in illegal investment schemes run by legitimate real estate and mining companies, clashed with police this week in Hunan province, residents and news agencies reported Friday. Crowds in Jishou city blocked traffic and trains Wednesday and Thursday and gathered in front of government offices demanding the return of their money…..

Since 2004, high-return investment schemes have been a popular way for real estate and mining companies and even local associations of private businesses to raise money. Typically, they offer investors returns of 3 to 10 percent a month, as compared with bank account interest rates of about 5 percent a year. The funds collapse when investors panic and demand their money back en masse.

“Over 90 percent of the people in Jishou have participated in these programs,” said a Jishou shopkeeper who gave his surname as Luo and said he invested $11,428 in Sanguan Real Estate Co. for a return of 5 percent, or $571 each month. “Before the Olympic Games, some government officials already told me to get my money out quickly, otherwise I’d be in trouble.” But Luo believed he could afford to risk the money and now can’t get his money back.

Luo said other victims included laid-off workers investing their pensions and farmers who had sold their land to developers and therefore had no other way to earn a living. Some elderly residents even sold their coffins to participate, residents said. The chairman of the board of one real estate company, Fuda, was a well-known local entrepreneur and a member of the local political consultative congress, according to the Sing Tao Web site. Nearly 40 companies raised about $1 billion this way, but beginning in July, when some companies had difficulty repaying, people began to panic.

This week, demonstrators began arriving at Jishou railroad station about 10 p.m. Wednesday, a receptionist at a hotel near the station said. From nearly midnight until 8 p.m. Thursday, “there were no trains coming in or out because of the protest,” the woman said, declining to give her name.

An electrician at another hotel near the train station gave his surname as Mo and said he had invested $7,142 in April, comprising his life savings, his family’s savings and $1,428 borrowed from friends. He was promised an interest rate of 6 percent a month. “I don’t know what to do now,” Mo added. “Although the government mobilized soldiers and stopped the protest, people will not remain silent. They will continue to fight for their rights.”

These events go to show that China remains an economically divided country with the middle and upper classes doing well – those below subject to far more risk in trying to make a living and not having any practical way of seeking redress.

As an aside, I find it somewhat ironic that many Chinese have complained about the foreign media reporting of the Olympics, given that if this had kicked off then it could have seriously damaged the Games’ reputation even more than some of those controversies did. In some respects they should count their blessings that things unfolded as they did.

Time to detox from nearly two years of pressure. I should be back online in a day or two. In the meantime, here is the quote of the day from Joe Klein, not usually my favorite pundit:

[McCain adviser] Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair–sexist (you gotta love it)–personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the fact the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media–about the substance of Palin’s record as mayor and governor. Sure, there are a few outliers–and the tabloid press–who have fixed on baby stories. That was inevitable….the flip side of the personal stories that the McCain team thought would work to their advantage–Palin’s moose-hunting and wolf-shooting, and her admirable decision to have a Down Syndrome baby. And yes, when we all fix on the same story, whether it’s a hurricane or a little-known politician, a zoo ensues. But the media coverage of the Palin story has been well within the bounds of responsibility. Schmidt is trying to make it seem otherwise, a desperate tactic.

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is “a task from God.” The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

No matter what we say now about Palin, the right will reflexively brand it as sexist and cruel and evil. Anyway, I just want to ask them: of all the possible people to be president of the United States – which McCain’s veep may well become – is Sarah Palin the best and most qualified? If someone has to step into McCain’s shoes on Day 2, is Palin the one in whose hands we most want to put the fate of the world? The one to stand up to Putin and Hu and Mugabe? Is Palin The One?

Disaster, I say. Total disaster. See you all soon.

There are situations where the venality of local officials transcends the usual debate over political systems and makes me despair not for any particular locality or government, but for human nature in general. This is just such a case.

From The Christian Science Monitor:

“When Fang Zhaojuan began organizing her neighbors here to impeach village leaders whom she suspected of corruption, she had no idea that the challenge would lead her first to the hospital and then to jail.

She was following the law, after all, and had launched legal petitions signed by a large majority of villagers. They believed they had been cheated of proper compensation when their village council had sold land for industrial development to the government of a nearby township.

Mrs. Fang, her family, and colleagues on a recall committee, however, found themselves plunged into a violent political drama. This, they say, has shown residents of the hamlet just how narrow the boundaries remain for their democratic rights. It has also, they add, hardened their resolve to enforce them.

Huiguan, a nondescript cluster of brick houses outside the port of Tianjin, is like tens of thousands of other Chinese villages, on the verge of being swallowed up by a fast-expanding city. Its farmland has all but disappeared under new factories, and under circumstances that Fang, a 43-year-old widow, found suspicious.

“She never expected this,” says her sister, Fang Zhaohui, displaying photographs of Fang’s bruised and bloody body taken in the hospital six weeks ago, after thugs had broken into her home and beaten her. “She never expected it would be so difficult and that the government would be so black.”  

Keep in mind that Mrs. Fang was not trying to introduce some radical new Western concept she picked up while perusing The Federalist Papers, she was attempting to avail herself of rights already enshrined in Chinese law.   As Peter Ford said in his audio commentary, Chinese leaders may dislike talk of democracy, but they are interested in establishing rule of law.  Sadly, predictably, the efforts of Mrs. Fang and her fellow citizens brought out the worst in the thugs and goons who run her local parish, anxious to preserve their power in the face of organized, legitimate opposition.

I know a little about the back story to this article. These villagers were well aware that talking to the Monitor would get them in trouble, several have been arrested since being interviewed, but they had the guts to stand up to the Man Purse Brigade and the local bully boys and say: “Enough.”  

You want to talk about courage?

——

Cross posted at Jottings from the Granite Studio

Who cares? I really don’t. All families have their issues. This news does not reflect badly on Palin as a mother or as a person, and the dems would be wise to listen to Obama, who has told them this topic is “off limits.”

No, it doesn’t tell us much about Palin (I already know more than I need to conclude she is a disastrous choice, in the Harriet Miers tradition) but it does raise questions about McCain – about the process he used to vet Palin, and about his tendency to make hot-headed, emotional, on-the-fly decisions. He’s my state’s senator, remember, and I know several people who work with McCain. His temper and his impetuousness are real issues.

Is this the kind of decision-maker America wants in the White House? Is this truly the very best McCain could come up with for the person who will step into his shoes should something happen to him? Not even McCain’s spin doctors can justify the choice. Please head over to this post and watch the video. No way out; there’s no way the question the reporter asks can be answered. Watch the poor spokesperson squirm and slither. The GOP has dug themselves in deep this time. Let them implode on their own; they don’t need our help.

The only way we can ruin it is by attacking Palin and her daughter, who simply don’t deserve it. It would only backfire.

Over the past few days my admiration of and respect for Obama has grown a hundred-fold. From his galvanizing speech last week to his sensitive handling of the Palin pregnancy shocker, he’s demonstrated he has the qualities of a true leader. Obama for president.