Two weeks

There are 60 days left in the presidential campaign. Governor and vice-presidential candidate Palin will not be available for press questions for two weeks as they "brief" her on McCain policies. That's kinda weird. But at the same time, Senator McCain's campaign team is working to get the 'Troopergate' investigation either whitewashed or shut down, which one could argue makes that a lot less weird; if they succeed, then they won't have to answer questions. Andrew Sullivan notes that apparently Senator McCain has learned one more thing from Chief Executive Bush: how to obstruct justice. (Not that they haven't taken a few notes from the Democratic Congress, either.) Glenn Greenwald has commentary on the propagandistic nature of this exercise here, and the ways in which the political media will continue to fail to do its job.

But I wonder whether what they're really doing is briefing her on something else entirely.

A few days ago, Andrew Sullivan linked to this pair of YouTube videos showing Sarah Palin speaking at her old church a few weeks ago, where in everything, and I mean everything, is Jesus and The Will of God. I've talked before about what Focus on the Family, et al, describe as the "Biblical worldview," a rejection of "material," or fact-and-evidenced based, reason in favour of the "Word of God," whether that be their particular version of Biblical literalism or a literal inner voice taken to be that of Jesus, and how it's a central tenant that this system much be applied to everything - not just faith, but "history, law, politics, science," and so on. In that mindset, when the world - when the data, the evidence - and this "Word of God" collide, it's data and the world that are wrong and must be discarded.

This presentation at her church strikes me as indicating a personal endorsement and acceptance of that idea. I'm familiar enough with the rhetoric and the language of the evangelical fundamentalist movement to make that my working assumption - at least, until convinced otherwise - and her forays into library censorship, creationism in schools, and so forth fail to provide reassurance she might not. Her references to the use of prophecy as a guide to decision-making don't help either, because while she's speaking to theologists at a church and one could cry context, she's speaking to them about politics, making the context political. She's talking about God's Will in building a pipeline, how Alaskan government can't work if the hearts of the people of Alaska aren't "right with God," and so on. I don't know about you, but I'm extremely uncomfortable with intuition in the form of divine prophecy being used on engineering projects.

And I suspect that this is why the fundamentalist leadership is so overjoyed; I think they've come to this conclusion. I think they think she truly is one of them. And I don't like that, not one bit. Millions of fundamentalists will like it quite a lot, and are - hence her huge spike impact on McCain's fundraising, mentioned previously - but I sure don't.

So I wonder whether, in addition to getting her up to speed on things like foreign policy and McCain positions and talking points and so on, if they aren't reminding her of the important virtues of running as what the movement used to call a "stealth" candidate, insofar as that's still possible for her. I have no idea if that's the reality; this part is pure speculation. But two weeks is an awfully long time to be secluded away after being nominated for Vice-President. Obviously, they think they have a lot of work to do. I just wish I knew what work that was.

eta: Talk2action has a post with a set of Dominionist bloggers who want to see McCain/Palin elected, followed by McCain's immediate salvation and death, including calls for prayers for such an outcome. So the Dominionists are certainly onboard.

bits forgotten in the rumble

Both before and during the Republican National Convention, there were many pre-emptive police raids (includes links to video) against various groups planning to film or protest the RNC. This is an example of one of the pre-emptive raids, this one against a group planning to video protests. (Followup here and here.) The Federal government spent a lot of time engaged in massive domestic spying beforehand, planting agents in various protest groups, before detaining dozens of potential protestors before the convention. Various journalists were also arrested and charged with "conspiracy to commit riot" (includes video), including several people including Nichole Salazar and Amy Goodman at Democracy Now, an Associated Press photographer, and reporting intern for Utne Reader. For fun, you can also watch this protestor standing on a street with a flower getting teargassed right in the face.

Meanwhile, on the way out, the Bush administration is continuing to work to institutionalise its theories about unlimited executive power, most significantly, its ability to detain anyone indefinitely, more domestic spying powers such as that used against protest groups above, and so on.

Separately, and in case you missed it, the US launched a military attack into Pakistani territory back on the 2nd.