“Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager and the person at the point of the vice presidential process, said there was no abrupt change of course in the final hours. Nor, he said, was Palin selected without having gone through the full vetting process that was done for other finalists. That process included reviews of financial and other personal data, an FBI background check and considerable discussion among the handful of McCain advisers involved in the deliberations.

“Nobody was vetted less or more than anyone in the final stages, and John had access to all that information and made the decision,” Davis said. “It’s really not much more complicated than that.” “

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..77_pf.html

funniest thing, i started asking some of those same questions yesterday, but no having legal expertise, decided i was in over my head.

but it also occurred to me that the timing was interesting. first he gives her advice which, i agree, looks like it well could have been interpreted to mean ‘this is how you avoid getting into trouble.’ it also, to my untrained eye, looked like it was specifically addressing how she should manage this notion that claiming executive privilege had precedent with bush, and so might fly?

then the bates decision comes down, and shea has to rethink. by then, palin is not about to shift gears.

but the fbi is a weird monkey wrench in the works. you’re likely right about exposing her, though i noticed that the articles about this made a point of referring to him as ‘informal’, for what that’s worth.

the ONLY thing i can think of is that palin knew she was being considered for veep, and the fbi was asking for documentation on this stuff. that still doesn’t make sense, though, because she essentially ignored the guy.

none of it makes sense, on so many dimensions.

It doesn’t matter if the audience is men or women, black or white or brown or yellow, old or young, or Republican/Democrat – that segment is a Deal Breaker for Rational People – it scares people and makes them feel insecure.

It will take five days, or so, of steady blitzing with 30-second ads during high-traffic times, but the rational people in Corporate America, Law Enforcement and the Military, especially, will not have Confidence in her seat-of-the-pants leadership.

Thankfully for US, she’s blessed with the ability to scare any Rational person – and it will color people’s interpretation of every other answer she gives as an ‘authority’ when she’s clearly Faking It to Make It, with an Attitude.

Loose Canon is an Understatement.

for reasons i will not divulge, i suspect it will come to that, again the repugs will sue, but they will use a different argument, so the supremes won’t have to reverse themselves.

or, go visit http://www.electoral-vote.com; yesterday he had a tutorial on what would happen if there is an electoral tie. it’s not encouraging.

i said i’d leave the country if bush won, both in 2000 and 2004, and here i am, still. but now the picture is so much bleaker. they’ve gained so much power, and made much of it ‘legal’, and are doing so much damage everywhere, we’ll be in so much deeper trouble. everyone will really hate us.

i stayed (as if i had a choice, really) on the premise that righting the ship takes many strong hands. it’s seemed like we’ve sprung so many leaks at this point, how can we avoid going under?

Now, the important realization here is that there actually is such a thing as righteous persecution. I wouldn’t have agreed with that statement prior to knowing the circumstances surrounding Sarah Palin. It’s a dangerous line to walk. You wouldn’t want to say that all classic evils of society have a little ying in their yang (like, “that’s some righteous genocide ya got there, bubba”); but persecution of mean girls might just be that exception that proves the rule.