Palin Anti-Semitism

I have been waiting for this shoe to start to drop (oh no, is mentioning shoes sexist?): but we have the first evidence of Palin's being an anti-Semite. Her quote about people in small towns comes from a writer so anti-Semitic that the John Birch Society fired him. He believed that Eastern European Jews were inherently Communist. So we know that Palin was reading extensively in his works. I thought something like this would turn up -- we killed her Lord, you know.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Palins_source.html?showall

De Je Vou All over Again

How many times have we come out of our Convention sure of victory and then watched as the Republicans in starting in their Convention and then in weeks after the steal our country from us. After watching them manipulate cultural symbols at their convention, white working class America seems to say to itself -- "at least they know enough to lie to us about things we care about in terms we can understand."

Finally, I worry that Marogolis is going to be this year's Shrum -- how can he take the Obama campaign and make boring ads?

A Winning Coalition vs. A Governing Coaliton

Hinted at in the coverage of the Obama campaign but never made explicit is that they appear to have made the transition from trying to put together a winning coalition to putting together a governing coalition. A winning coalition strategy, perfected by Rove, is trying to put together 50%+1 votes in states with 271 electoral votes. With that strategy you essentially are able to win with 26% of the assuming they are exactly in the right places. It also means you focus like a laser beam on a few of the swing states and ignore the rest of the country.

The downside of the strategy is that it provides neither a mandate supported by the majority of the country nor a basis of power to then govern the country.

What Obama is doing is putting together a governing coalition. It has not only meant expanding the number of states in play and putting states in play through party building and registering voters -- but putting resources into states like Texas. Although Obama will never win Texas, taking a few state legislative seats will give the Democrats control of the legislature and redistricting. That means more Representatives voting on Obama's legislation in 2010. Also Members who's election Obama helped will have some reason for loyalty and sticking with him on tough votes. That is building a governing coalition.

But now comes the worry time for that strategy. It was implemented at a time when Obama's campaign thought it would be able to drown the McCain campaign with $. Now it is clear the Republicans have given up on the House and Senate and are putting everything into the Presidential. Although Obama should still be able to outspend McCain it is not going to be the blow out in spending it had looked like a few months ago. So our breaths are held.

Does Anyone Know the Books She Wanted to Ban

The Post of the books Sarah Palin wanted to ban turns out to be a list of the most popular books to ban (or would that be the least popular?). But clearly from the visceral reaction to seeing the books, if we could find out what she wanted to ban so much she fired the librarian, it would be helpful. I can't feel too bad about the fact it is circulating, it is a teaspoon to ocean of "Obama is a Muslim" emails.

The Books Sarah Palin Wanted to Ban

Below is a paragraph from this week's Time magazine article on Sarah Palin:

"[Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving "full support" to the mayor."

Mary Ellen Baker resigned from her library director job in 1999.

Here is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. As many of you will notice it is a hit parade for book burners.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen KingCatch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald DahlScary
Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth


Too bad it leaves out the Wizard of Oz -- wanting to ban that ended the candidacy of a Republican VA LT. Gov candidate.