Late Afternoon/Early Evening Open Thread

Coming Up on Sunday Kos ....

• Hunter will reflect on the Republican National Convention, and on how low the Republican brand has sunk.
• When the likes of Rudy Guiliani and Phyllis Schlafly start crying "sexism," you know you've stepped through the looking glass. Something is deeply disturbing when muckety-mucks of the party that defeated the Equal Rights Amendment, opposed family leave, fought to keep women out of the military, and continues to try to curtail women's reproductive rights now seeks to make political hay as a bastion of feminist enlightenment. Meteor Blades will discuss how one of the worst aspects of overly broad accusations of sexism is how they undermine concerns about real sexism, which still has its talons hooked deeply into our society, from boardroom to blogworld.
• SusanG will explore the deep and bloody history of John McCain's love affair with war, despite his recent protestations at the Republican National Convention that he abhors it.
• Plutonium Page will share her reaction as a first-time convention goer to the creative, quirky and authentic enthusiasm of the Democrats in Denver--and how predictable, dull and scripted the Republican gathering has seemed in comparison.
• brownsox will argue that the selection of Sarah Palin puts the lie now and forever to the myth of Maverick McCain.
• mcjoan looks back to Denver and writes about this election, where it could lead for our future, and what it could mean for the West.

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McCain's Walter Reed Debacle Blowing Up

Talking Points Memo has been on this story from the start. It began with an inquiry into just what the McCain campaign was thinking when they had him stand in front of a giant lime green backdrop for his speech last night...again. Turned out the green[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mydd/~3/6rKV-XD2khI/7608

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When Checking for the McCain Bounce, Look at
STATE Polls

The national tracking polls are already starting to show a modest 2-to-3 point bounce for the Palin/McCain McCain/Palin ticket.  That's a smaller bounce than Obama/Biden got from the Denver convention, but we won't know the full extent of the GOP bounce until Monday once voters have had time to process McCain's speech.

The national trackers will likely show that Palin McCain has pulled even with Obama, or at least gotten the same bounce Obama got.  That will be hardly surprising: after all, if an entire political party gets away with telling lie after lie and pretending it's exactly the opposite of the scum that it is without significant media pushback, it's likely to sway a few votes.
But, of course, elections are not won in the popular vote: they're won in the electoral college.  In the end, the national polls don't matter nearly as much as the state polls.  By that metric, Obama is doing very well:  Pollster.com shows us winning 260 EVs with 99 tossups mostly leaning our way; Nate Silver, meanwhile, has Obama projected to win 310.6 EVs as things currently stand.

Of course, the priority of state polls over national ones is old hat to political junkies like us.  And yet, especially when it comes to 24-hour media cycles, convention bounces and debates, there is a tendency to place special emphasis on national trackers--especially since it can be difficult to get quick daily snapshots of changes within any given state's polling.  This is always something of a mistake (though we don't have much else to go on, so it's what we do).  But looking at national trackers to estimate the McCain bounce from the GOP convention is even more ill-advised than usual.

The Republicans had the opportunity to attempt to use their convention to appeal to moderates and independents.  Getting Western moderates and Hillary voters into McCain's camp was supposed to be one of the biggest draws of the Sarah Palin pick.  Instead, with the exception of some elements of John McCain's speech (in which he still neglected to talk about the issues appealing to moderates), the entire GOP convention was tailored toward motivating their own base.

As Margie Omero says over at Pollster.com:

As we continue to discuss the Palin Effect, more data have emerged.  An ABC News poll released today shows that partisanship, as opposed to gender, is a far greater predictor than of attitudes toward Governor Palin.

Across nearly every dimension, Republicans have rallied behind McCain's VP pick, with Democrats and independents more ambivalent.  A full 80% of Republicans say the pick makes them more confident in McCain, compared to 59% of Democrats feeling less confident (independents are more divided, 44% more confident, 37% less confident).

And charges that the press have treated Palin unfairly resonate with Republicans more than they resonate with women.  More than half (57%) of Republicans say she has been treated unfairly, with less than half as many Democrats (27%) agreeing.  The difference between men (55% treated fairly) and women (46%) is smaller, with women more likely to be undecided than men.

When we ask the ultimate question--how does each candidate's VP pick affect one's vote--we see Palin moving the Republican base, but not others.

Moving the base more squarely into McCain's camp will surely drive the national tracking polls upward in his favor.  But it won't necessarily do so in the states John McCain needs to win.  Remember where the Christianist, hyper-conservative anti-Obama base largely lives: Appalachia, the deep South, part of the Midwest and much of the upper Mountain West.  These states are already heavily in the bag for McCain: 15 points in Tennessee; 21 points in Nebraska; an insane 40 points in Utah; 15 points in Louisiana.  The list goes on and on.

This is where the Palin base largely resides.  Yes, there will be shifts in a few of the swing states with evangelical populations (for instance, the entire Focus on the Family crowd in Colorado Springs will be more mobilized now, making Obama's and Udall's roads more difficult there; Ohio could also be a problem given the presence of the religious right there), but by and large McCain's post-convention bump is likely to come from states that are already his.

The Democratic Convention, by constrast, did not throw red meat to its base but rather hit at issues that resonate across the entire electorate.

So when we examine the GOP bounce over the coming days, let us examine closely not what it is, but where it is.  That will be the biggest indicator of the convention's success--or, more likely, lack thereof.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=22847

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Barracuda Nope, Just A Copyright Infringer

Republicans have no Heart, confirmed: Ann and Nancy Wilson are pissed at the Republican Party and have fired off a cease and desist letter to the McCain/Palin campaign.Specifically, the Heart women are upset that the GOP has used their classic “Barracuda” as a theme song for Sarah Palin. TMZ obtained a statement from Heart’s rep, who [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/05/barracuda-nope-just-a-copyright-infringe
r/

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Massive ice sheet breaks loose in Canada

That's OK though because Palin tells us climate change is a non issue. Until the ice hockey rinks in Alaska melt, she's not buying into this half baked theory that is accepted by scientists and the world.

A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.

Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean.

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Problem with Palins Comedic Stump Speech: Already
Stale

One of the reasons why I don’t download comedy albums is that you can only listen to them a couple times before they stop being funny.This is the problem with Palin’s new stump speech in terms of style, not content. It has little content, and once you remove the lies and mistatements, there [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://koulflo.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/problem-with-palins-comedic-stump-speech-
already-stale/

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An Innocent Man's Odyssey and a Good Cop's
Downfall

More than three years ago, TalkLeft asked whether Bruce Lisker, who was convicted of killing his mother, is innocent. Some of the jurors in his trial, having heard about new evidence in his case, were questioning his guilt, as was the prosecutor who tried the case.

Lisker was convicted a quarter of a century ago. Two years ago, a federal magistrate held a hearing, listened to evidence, and produced a 57 page report concluding that Lisker's evidence of actual innocence was so strong that he should be granted an exception to the one year period that inmates have to pursue federal habeas corpus after a state conviction becomes final. The magistrate decided that the evidence against Lisker was so weak that no reasonable jury, hearing all of it, would find Lisker guilty. The strongest evidence against him -- multiple confessions given by the frightened teenager during prolonged interrogations -- had little probative value. [more ...]

[U.S. Magistrate Judge Ralph] Zarefsky dismissed Lisker's various confessions, suggesting they were attempts to minimize his time behind bars. He noted that his admissions were inconsistent and contained little or no details about the crime. Of the scant details that Lisker did offer, he said, some were in conflict with the facts.

This is what Lisker originally told the police on the day of the homicide:

Lisker told police that he found his mother bloody and near death in the entry hall of the home. He said he saw her in that condition from two windows at the rear of the house. Because the front door was locked, he said, he had to break into the house through the kitchen window.

Jurors were told that Lisker could not have seen his mother from the rear of the house and that bloody shoe prints in the house could only have come from Lisker.

Experiments, first done by Times reporters as part of a seven-month investigation into the case, proved that Lisker could have seen his mother from the window, according to testimony by experts from both sides.

Testimony from an LAPD analyst and an FBI expert also undermined the prosecution's contention that only Lisker's shoe prints were found at the scene. A bloody print found in the bathroom of the Lisker house was proved not to have been made by Lisker's shoes, they said. Additionally, that print appeared to match an apparent shoe impression on the victim's head, according to the LAPD analyst.

The prosecution tried to get around the new shoe print evidence by claiming that two LAPD officers might have stepped in the blood, leaving their own shoe impressions at the scene. That explanation seems preposterous, particularly as an explanation of a print found on the victim's head. Magistrate Zarefsky concluded that the officers weren't credible.

The lead detective on the case, Andrew Monsue, made up his mind immediately that Lisker was the likely culprit.

He knew that Lisker did not get along with his mother and had a history of drug abuse.

Monsue arrested Lisker that day and focused his efforts on proving his theory correct rather than conducting an impartial investigation.

Zarefsky was also critical of Monsue. Specifically, he found that the detective inexplicably dismissed another "likely suspect" who lied about his whereabouts at the time of the murder, admitted being in a knife fight on the day of the crime and acknowledged going to the victim's house and talking to her the day before the slaying. That suspect, Michael Ryan, who had a long history of violence, later killed himself. Phone records from the Lisker home show that a call was made minutes before the murder. The number matched that of Ryan's mother, except for the last digit and the area code, which wasn't dialed.

"The evidence here suggests no reason why Ryan should have been considered 'cleared,' " Zarefsky wrote.

Zarefsky concluded that the case against Lisker had been "effectively dismantled." Months later, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips upheld Zarefsky's recommendation, but that victory completed only the first stage of Lisker's battle. He would be allowed to proceed with his habeas petition despite the missed deadline, but he still had to prove that his conviction resulted from a constitutional violation.

Lisker alleged that his lawyer violated his Sixth Amendment right to be represented effectively. He also alleged that a jailhouse informant who testified that Lisker admitted the crime "was actually working on behalf of police and had fabricated the confession." Lisker ran into another procedural hurdle when the court ruled that he had to present those constitutional claims to a state court before he could have them heard in federal court.

Another year passed as Lisker attempted to get his case heard in a California court. Late in 2007, the California Supreme Court ruled that Lisker had missed his chance to prove his innocence by bringing the claim too late. Lisker headed back to federal court after receiving that ruling, where his case is still pending.

All of this is background to today's story. Five years ago, before the new court proceedings began, Lisker complained to the LAPD that he had been framed by Monsue. In the course of investigating Lisker's complaint, Jim Gavin, a lieutenant in the LAPD internal affairs department, discovered the bloody shoe prints that did not match Lisker's shoes. The conscientious cop took that evidence to his boss, Mike Williams, who told him to stop investigating. Williams promised to take the new evidence to the district attorney's office but never did.

Not wanting to be part of a cover up that would keep an innocent man in prison, Gavin gave the information to Lisker's lawyers and to the Los Angeles Times. For that, Gavin paid a price.

After articles mentioning his role in the case appeared in The Times, Gavin said he was charged with official misconduct for leaking confidential information, threatened with a criminal charge, transferred out of internal affairs against his will and slighted in his annual performance evaluation. He said his wife, an LAPD sergeant, was also transferred against her will, given a new work schedule and harassed by co-workers and superiors.

Williams, on the other hand, was promoted.

Gavin has sued LAPD for retaliation. His trial started last week and will probably go the jury next week.

Meanwhile, Lisker remains behind bars, his fate uncertain.

(Details and quotations about Lisker's case are drawn from LA Times articles that are archived at Lisker's website.)

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Meanwhile, In the Races Down the Ticket

Pollsters and pundits are feverishly trying to discern whether McCain's choice of VP helps his campaign get in gear after a sluggish summer. The bigger story, IMHO, is not its effect on the presidential race, but the downticket races for US House seats[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://firedoglake.com/2008/09/05/meanwhile-in-the-races-down-the-ticket/

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Friday Night at 8: Sacred

I've done a lot of blogging this week, about Hurricane Gustav, about New Orleans, about Haiti.It's Friday night, and I'd like to write about something that doesn't have so much to do with current events and politics.Although I am no longer an observant[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/384606107/showDiary.do

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CNBC host praises Palin for ‘putting a
skirt on’: ‘I want her laying next to me in bed.’

Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC’s Big Idea, praised Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as the “new creation” of the “feminist ideal” yesterday on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “Women want to be her, men want to mate with her. It’s as simple as that,” he said, adding that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) failed because “she didn’t put a skirt on!”:

DEUTSCH: There is the new creation that the feminist woman has not figured out in 40 years of the feminist ideal that men can take in a woman in power and women can celebrate a woman in power. Hillary Clinton didn’t figure it out. She didn’t put a skirt on! […]

She [Palin] talked about energy. Didn’t matter! Today everybody’s running in circles — we want to have her over for dinner. I trust her. I want her watching my kids. I want her laying next to me in bed. That’s the way people vote.

Watch it:
video details and more

Host Erin Burnett suggested Deutsch could use “a four-letter acronym beginning with M and ending with F.” (HT: Jezebel)

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