Youtube Today: Sex Before Reading

New McCain attack ad:

And the truth? The bill Obama supported read:

"Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV."

Not that this simply adds fairly innocuous material to existing sex-ed classes. The wording does specify K-12, but that doesn't mean he wants kindergarteners sex-ed.
Of course, this is obvious, but McCain is betting on the electorate's stupidity and his base's self-delusion, and judging by the random Youtube smears I've run in to, it seems to be working.

Sarah Palin, Part II: How will she affect the election?

I've got a disorganized mess of points, so I'll do this as a bulleted list:

• She's energized the base - social conservatives love her. These people would vote McCain anyway, but now they're donating money and spreading the message, which will have a noticable effect. She also, however, has energized the Democratic base - the prospect of her a heartbeat away is so worrying that it's lead to a flood of effort and donations from the other side.
• Women: She is one. However, her stances, especially no abortion, will probably not lead to any long-term gains in this demographic. 538 has an interesting analysis of this, suggesting that Palin might do well among white mothers, but overall I don't see her having a major impact. If she does, McCain will win the election. Disaffected Hillary Clinton voters should not be voting for her - although some undoubtebly will -, and Obama should by trying to use Clinton as much as he can to attack Palin.
  
• McCain's age: McCain is quite old, and if he dies Sarah Palin will take over. Other than her obvious inexperience, I think that even many McCain supporters - the centrists and the libertarians - would not like to see Palin become president, just based on her political views. The hawks may like her attitude, but she has absolutely no foreign policy experience.

Sarah Palin was a very risky choice to make, but I think it was probably the best decision McCain could make. None of his other choices stood out, and with Palin he has got a lot of coverage and attention, energised and brough in the base, including the Christian Right, who were having doubts, and overshadowed Obama's pick. He knows that this will either win him the election or backfire horribly, and he felt that his alternative was marching steadily along and losing the election by a small margin. Her big weakness, inexperience, is hard for the Democrats to attack without somewhat exposing their own candidate's suppossed lack of experience, and her youth - and possibly her gender - may make it harder for Biden to effectively attack her without seeming elitist. And remember - the Republicans won the last two elections, and in both of them succeeded in tarring their opponent as an elitist.
Coming back to Earth however, although I am worried about the possibility of Palin, I think the pick will backfire. She in horribly inexperienced, from a small isolated state, and doesn't seem to have been properly vetted.
Then again, look what happened in 1988. (Dan Quayle!)

People Not to Vote For: #2 - Sarah Palin

The other rising young star of the Republican party, Sarah Palin, is, if possible, even worse then Bobby Jindal. I'll spend a paragraph explaining why I don't like her, and then turn to a more objective analysis of the effects her vice-presidential nomination might have on the campaign.
Reasons not to vote for a presidential ticket including Sarah Palin:

1. Inexperience. Far more than Obama. First term governer of a fairly small (in population) and isolated state, and before than mayor of a city of less than 10,000 residents. The first time she ever left the country was in 2007. When asked a few months ago about the vice-presidency, she said that before she could answer someone would have to tell her what a vice-president actually does.
   
2. She believes in abstinence-only sex education, believing that anything else encourages teenagers to have sex. She has a 17-year old daughter who is pregnant (Update:It's all okay now, since she's marrying the guy. Look, he even tattood her name on his finger! It must be true love), yet still thinks that this is a good idea.
3. On the issues: A 'real' conservative, she's against abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, supports the teaching of intelligent design, etc.
   
4. Character. This is a purely personal judgment, but still. The event that sticks in my head is when her most recent child was born, the one who has Downs'. Her waters broke while she was in Texas on a speaking engagement, but instead of going to a hospital, she took her commercial flight to anchorage, and then drove a few hours to a different city to go to the hospital there. Total time taken: about 8 hours. And then she named him 'Trig'.

Youtube Today: Shameless Republican Exploitation of 9/11 (Again)

Keith Olbermann was demoted from his role as political co-anchor at MSNBC, due to his supposed liberal bias. The straw that broke the camel's back - his reaction to this video, which was played (and broadcast on MSNBC) at last weeks Republican National Convention. If you haven't clicked the link yet, click and watch the video and the reaction. If you still haven't clicked: The video basically claims that Iran has been engaged in a war with the United States for decades, and directly implies that Iran was responsible for 9/11. This is all narrated over shots of Iranian militants intersperced with graphic 9/11 footage.
Choice quotes (emphasis mine):

"The first attack occurred in Iran."

"This enemy, sworn to our destruction, has been at war with us for decades. This we now know."

"It is a war we never chose to fight, and for too long we've looked the other way. But the enemy is wrong; this is a war America will win. We'll have a president who knows how."

I honestly don't know how the RNC gets away with this. How much self-delusion must an intellegent person commit to overlook this and continue to support it and the people behind it? I can even understand people as accepting this coming from far-right talk show hosts, but not from the party itself.

If you can find any redeeming value in that video clip, please comment.