Re: Palin and the Yahoo e-mail

To me, use of e-mail with ads for travel agents at the bottom of the page shows a lack of professionalism. Same thing with:
- routinely cc'ing her hubbo
- bringing the baby to work
- hiring her high school friends
-calling her audience "guys and gals"

As for McCain, Elizabeth Drew, author of Citizen McCain has an opinion piece in today's Politico. Quick Quote:

OK I misunderstood a tidbit about Palin's email hack yesterday because I assumed the hack was performed "anonymously."

This is actually not accurate. The hack was performed by "Anonymous," the amorphous group that has also waged a harassment campaign against the Church of Scientology.

That to me says a lot. This is activist-motivated. Instead of just some haxxor in Russia tinkering around and gleefully reading Sarah Palin's private email, this was done as an act of defiance to make a point--I *suspect* it was to say that government officials should not hide their backroom dealings under the veil of personal email.

Can we say....

????

The trouble with amorphous groups like Anonymous or Al Qaeda is that just about anyone can do just about anything and say "Yup. We are members of <** insert group name here **>" and there is really no way, even for other members of the group, to categorical say yes or no to their involvment. .

From what little I have seen this could just as easily be some Thetan looking to give Anon a black eye.

And I don't think it gives them a black eye at all. There's a loophole in the law, and it's up to the Citizenry to expose it until the law closes it.

It's disgraceful for government personnel to attempt to go around the laws directed at them for the protection of the citizenry. Why is Sarah Palin not burned as a witch, much less put forth as a candidate on "Honorable" John's ticket? She's a crook, and I can't believe more of a big deal isn't being made of her trying to hide her official emails in violation of the spirit of the law.

McCain's chief of staff has been outed.

Maybe Palin's church can "cure" him, eh? If ever we we really needed a vomiting smilie, this would be it.

On a replay of Mark and Brian's radio show this morning, they were discussing the impending financial doom. They said that the guy who is responsible for the deregulation of banking (those controls that were set up after The Great Depression to avoid this sort of mess) that caused this financial crisis is now McCain's financial advisor - pretty much guaranteeing more gloom and doom if he's elected.

True?

So many people have been involved in so many things that can be blamed for our current situation that everybody will be able to easily filter out completely contradictory lists of people to blame.

However, they were probably talking about Phil Gramm, who has certainly be in the middle of banking deregulation efforts for the last 30 years including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a Depression era bit of regulation that put up walls between banks, investment houses, and insurance companies.

A strong argument could be made that it was the removal of this wall that allowed these three sub-sectors to get so intertwined that a 3% foreclosure rate brought them all to their knees.

That said, while Gramm was a driving force, it was passed on a bipartisan basis (75% plus in favor in both houses) and then signed by Bill Clinton.

There is no point in going about the game of trying to place blame on one party or another. This is truly a bipartisan mess if there ever was one. For every point one side makes about such and such advisor or such and such vote, the other side can match it item for item in reference to the other side.

And they are all probably accurate.

And let's not forget the lovely Mrs. Phil, Dr. Wendy Lee Gramm, former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Reagan and Bush and former member of the board of Enron.

To a voter like me, the Gramms' close relationship to McCain is one of McCain's most loserlicious moves. Of course, McCain has written off voters like me and with good reason.