Sarah Palin and Spiritual Warfare

Ever since she was selected to be the VP nominee at the August, most of us here at Demapples have had a grand old time poking fun of Sarah Palin. I know I have. To be fair, she has been quite an easy target, and I can understand if after a while it seemed like we were piling on. Seeing her say stupid things and wink at America can only be funny for so long before it becomes yesterdays news.

But a recent New York Times article about Ms. Palin's relationship with the Pentecostal Church really caught my attention. And I want to be very careful with this. A person's faith is a very personal thing, and I always try to comment on specific religions only in general terms, so as not to belittle anyone's personal relationship with their god.

That being said, it looks pretty clear that Sarah Palin has had a long relationship with an especially extreme faction of a church that obsesses with battling against demons, witchcraft, and all enemies of Christ. And they like to use tongues.

Normally I would just sit back and chuckle at the idea of people flocking to Alaska because the "end times" are approaching and move on with my day. A politician's church/faith should not be a factor when considering whether or not to vote for them as long as he/she keeps it a non-factor in his/her policies. That's why I'm still voting for Barack Obama despite the apparent lunacy of Jeremiah Wright.

But here's where the Pentecostal Church thing gets a little dicey. The New York Times article explains some disturbing details about her sect:

What is known, however, is that Ms. Palin has had long associations with religious leaders who practice a particularly assertive and urgent brand of Pentecostalism known as “spiritual warfare.”

Its adherents believe that demonic forces can colonize specific geographic areas and individuals, and that “spiritual warriors” must “battle” them to assert God’s control, using prayer and evangelism. The movement’s fixation on demons, its aggressiveness and its leaders’ claims to exalted spiritual authority have troubled even some Pentecostal Christians.

The article then goes on to explain what really troubles me:

Critics say the goal of the spiritual warfare movement is to create a theocracy. Bruce Wilson, a researcher for Talk2Action, a Web site that tracks religious groups, said: “One of the imperatives of the movement is to achieve worldly power, including political control. Then you can more effectively drive out the demons. The ultimate goal is to purify the earth.”

Anytime the word "theocratic" is thrown around, a shiver goes down my back. It's completely unacceptable for a candidate to be associated with a church that encourages its leaders to affect the policy of the state. That's all there is to it. It's wrong. And it's creepy.

So, without further ado, here is a video of an African Pentecostal preacher, famous for driving a witch out of his village in Kenya, praying for Sarah Palin at her church in Wasilla a couple years ago. He is clearly praying for God to help her in her quest to be elected governor. Ugggghhh.

Predictions

Predictions thread! I'll go first.

Obama 338-364 EVs to McCain 174-200 EVs

52% Obama, 45% McCain, 1% Barr, 1% Nader, 1% Other

Senate: 57D, 43R (Warner, Udall, Udall, Shaheen, Hagan, and Merkley). They do not kick Lieberman out of the caucus.

House: Dems +25 from 233-202 to 258-177.

Rabbi Dennis Shulman - upset of the cycle!

Uppity

This shit is just racist.

And so, let me tell you, is all the talk about "small-town values" and "Barack Obama thinks he's special" and everything else they said at that odious, repulsive, sickening Republican convention. It's all just coded Southern Strategy garbage. I come from a small town, and I promise you, our "values" are exactly the same as the values of city people, except maybe we care a little more about corn subsidies and -- well -- there don't happen to be any black people out here. That's what "small town values" means. The whole thing amounts to "Barack Obama, stay out of our house."

Not that you'd know it from the networks. I've been at home this week, relying on CNN and MSNBC for most of my news because our internet is not quite state-of-the-art, and all they ever talk about is goddamn Sarah Palin. Here is a woman who signifies nothing new about anything and serves only to waste airtime we could be spending on unemployment. But: Hockey mom! Pregnant daughter! Moose stew! Who gives a shit? She's there to wink at their racist, fundamentalist base, and nothing else. Yet her religious fanaticisim gets the cutesy treatment normally reserved for puff pieces about bible-thumpers who run foster homes (awww! babies!), and the only person I've seen on TV to even broach the race issue was Katrina Vanden Heuvel from the Nation -- at which point Larry King nervously cut her off.

Luckily the Obama campaign has its head on its shoulders and continues to, you know, campaign in swing states while McCain's people are focused on these political Special Olympics. Fact is this isn't a predominantly rural country anymore -- you don't win Colorado by turning out mountain men, you win it in the Denver-Boulder-Colorado Springs metropolitan area, and Democrats know it. I'd be THRILLED to watch the McCain campaign dig its own grave by playing to the racist base, because that's a 50%+1 strategy to begin with, one that Bush barely scraped by on; with that kind of thinking, just a little demographic shift or an opponent who scrambles the turnout model is enough to send the other guys to a big party in Atlanta -- and you wake up one morning to learn you're stuck in Hazzard County. Which is where the entire Republican Party belongs.

BUT it won't stop the Republicans, and their useful idiots on the network news, from lecturing us about "patriotism" and the "heartland" until everyone sane has finally gone crazy and everyone crazy sounds sane. My God.

Well... that felt good to get off my chest. See you all next week.

Republicans Noonan and Murphy Agree that Palin Pick Sucks

Noted conservatives Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy were caught trashing Palin on a hot mic after a segment on NBC.

Noonan: "The most qualified? No. I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it."

Murphy: "The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical."

Watch for yourselves (it starts to get juicy at 42 sec):

The Republicans might appear to be putting up a unified front for the public, but it's now obvious that at least some of them are as shocked and confounded by this pick as we are.

Sarah Palin: Enemy of Polar Bears

So, like many of you I learned yesterday that John McCain is aiming to put a gun-totin', beauty pageant winnin', hockey mom one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world. After I stopped laughing, I decided to spend my time learning about Ms. Palin, both the good and the bad.

But I didn't have time to comb over some of the lesser-reported parts of her 18-month tenure as a state-elected official. That's why I have a twin brother. Tim emailed me a link that made my jaw drop. I am now sure that McCain will lose the support of all the fans of the Golden Compass, because Palin is a blatant enemy of nature's white-furred warrior, the polar bear.

And why, you may ask, does Ms. Palin want to end the threatened species listing for polar bears? According to the article:

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state's northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

Really? With all the ice melting in the arctic, I would think we would want to do all we can to help save animals that can be as cute and cuddly as this:

The best piece on the Biden choice--

--by far, is Al Giordano's.

Yet the words in that 1988 speech were essentially true, if not original. He was the first Biden to go to college. He did descend from coal miner country. This was a man with the class resentment that comes naturally to being born from below. And as the national media vetting process will disclose in the coming days, after 36 years in the US Senate, he's still one of the poorest US Senators: he never availed himself of the back-door personal enrichment techniques that most of his colleagues - Democrat and Republican - have utilized. Beyond class resentment, he retains a sense of class solidarity. His wife since 1977 never went into Washington lobbying: she remained a public schoolteacher.

Biden has also lived personal tragedies that would have splat most people like watermelons tossed from the sixth floor of a Wilmington tenement: between his first US Senate election in 1972 and being sworn in, his first wife and three small children were in a gruesome car accident. Mrs. Biden and his daughter died, his two boys were wounded, and he became a single father. Biden never quite entered the Washington DC culture so seductive to his peers: commuting from Delaware to DC, always coming home at night.

...I think [Obama and McCain] are going to get along splendidly, and have a lot of infectious fun using John McCain as a punching bag. Apollo Creed has now signed on as coach and sparring partner with Rocky Balboa. Multi-racial class warfare - there's a place for us, somewhere a place for us - now becomes the wedge against the millionaire McCain. ...

Yes, I would have preferred the "three point shot" - that Obama pick a running mate from outside of Washington - but as DC insiders go, it's interesting that Biden chose all these years to refuse to live inside it, or meet with its lobbyists. ... The 2008 election now has its very own "Comeback Kid," and his name ain't Clinton. Oh, yes, I can live with that.

Go read.

"Buy American, Vote Obama"

I like this.

This is the source of the Clark kerfuffle?

Apparently this quote is what has disqualified Wesley Clark from consideration as Vice President: " I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

Oh heavens! How dare Clark criticize McCain, question his military qualifications? It's a pretty tough criticism, but I think all the indignity is ridiculous, because it's a true statemen.

I like FiveThirtyEight.com's argument for Wes Clark:

A month ago, picking Wesley Clark would have seemed like a fairly safe choice -- someone who allows you to check the "foreign policy" and "liked by Clinton supporters" boxes. It might have seemed, in other words, like a pander. But because of the Face the Nation dust-up, all of the sudden it would send a very different message. It would say: we're going to stand our ground, we're not going to be so worried about being politically correct, and we're taking it right to you. Isn't that a fairly optimal message for Obama to send out given the present narrative?

McCain can only get so much mileage out of Clark's straight-ahead attacks on his military qualifications, and Clark is an effective spokesman, as he's proven again and again on cable.

Here's an example:

Visit ObamaClark.com if you'd like to sign the petition.

Exclusive Interview: Obama Responds to Jesse Jackson!!!

This just in! Check out the official response of the Obama campaign to the remarks of Jesse Jackson Sr.

Excellent!

Actually, in all seriousness, I agree with the conventional wisdom that this was a good thing for Obama.
Shocker: White people generally don't like Jesse Jackson...
Other shocker: the enemy of my enemy is my friend!
Conclusion: if Jesse is attacking Obama, I must agree with Obama.

Focusing the debate

Boy is this new DNC web ad a good one:

Though I've always believed that the way to win this election is primarily through pocketbook issues, it's also important that we tie Iraq -- which, as we saw in 2006, is a proven vote-mover -- to the debate. This spot reinforces the already-developing perception, on both foreign policy and economic issues (please DO go read those links, btw), that McCain actually has no idea what he's doing and is just making stuff up as he goes along. Which is a GREAT frame for us, both because it makes the McCain=Bush argument that much easier, and because it works against the "experience... trustworthy... integrity" argument that the GOP will undoubtedly make. More like this, please.

UPDATE (Saturday, 11 AM): As if on cue.

"Obama" is to "Change" as "McCain" is to... "Old"?

Remember the hype about McCain being too old? You know what I'm talking about: that site of everything younger than him (the six pack, the xerox machine, 5 out of 9 supreme court justices, your mom, etc); a whole lot of articles (including a few by our own); and, of course, blogs like this one.

It's working.

In an AP poll, widely circulated through the horse-race pundits this past Monday, voters reportedly associated McCain with "old" more than any other adjective (19%). With Obama, the top associated word was "change" or "outsider" (20%). That's right: for once, the left got its messaging right. This former Clinton supporter is a big fan of the Obama messaging engine just about right now.

But the poll has its depressing moments as well. Three percent of respondents linked Obama first and foremost with "Muslim." Five percent chose "unlikeable." Twelve percent cite his youth or lack of experience, and nine percent describe him as dishonest. I can't decide if I'm happy or not that (only?) six percent mentioned "his race" in their first association, because I'm pretty sure no one gave the answer "his race" in those words, exactly. So which one did they choose?

I'll finish off with a return to the theme (that axiom of Messaging 101): McCain is old. He’s so old that he has reached the second stage of possible deaths. This isn’t just incredulity, and it definitely is not “ageism” in the way racism and religious intolerance afflicts people who answered “his race” to the Obama question. It might be if age didn't matter—if McCain were still healthy, or if age had given him wisdom. He is not, and it hasn’t.

Age matters, because McCain is so old—and ailing—that he had to take out life insurance in case he died mid-campaign. He’s so old—and incompetent—that he leaves that whole newfangled computer thing to his millionaire second wife. He’s so old—and forgetful—that even he admitted that he was, eight years ago.

And that's how we need to frame ’08, people: “Change” vs. “That Old Guy.” Don’t let them forget it.

McCain Can't Use a Computer. Game Over.

Focus about a third of the way in:

Seriously?

I'm sorry, but if you intend to lead our economy in the 21st century, a prerequisite must be competence with a computer. Good lord.

I guess it comes with the territory of being older than the ballpoint pen and the polio vaccine.