This should help the fightback. At this stage, though, the Labour Party would probably need help from her characters to win.

(Or, Palin; A quasi-liveblog)

Oh, but this woman terrifies me:

Sarah Palin gave her first TV interview yesterday. And listen to the language: within the first two minutes, she and McCain are, “on a mission.” That just before a mention of the war. A mission. Where have we heard that before? Missions come from higher powers, and they exist in precious few numbers for the most powerful executive duo on the planet. The electorate would be one, but they’ve not yet granted anyone their support.

Which rather leaves one candidate for Palin’s big boss. I’ll let you guess.

Much of the interview waffles on. Who honestly cares whether Palin thought for an hour or a night before accepting the nomination? But what content there was interested me. She came off spectacularly poorly on foreign policy; faced with a question on whether governing a state close to Russia really qualified as foreign policy experience, Palin just ducked the question and tried to carry on her previous point. She didn’t even try to answer. Surely that just won’t do in a candidacy which tries to attack Obama on the very same point?

The specifics, meanwhile, simply frighten. She pledges to work with foreign nations, for the benefit of all; and next she feels war with Russia might, “perhaps,” be necessary if the Russians prove uncooperative. That’s little more than a desire to control international affairs wrapped in the clothing of diplomatic language. So, on Georgia, business would be as usual - if not worse. On Iraq; the same again. They play that, “Task from God,” clip, and she essentially agrees with herself in less vitriolic terms. She feels nations have a right to, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happinness” - and yet supports Georgia’s right to re-annexe South Ossetia. The Bush Doctrine? Sounds good to her; it just needs better execution. All that went wrong can be put down to, “blunders,” rather than any inherent weakness in the theory.

That sounds rather like the past eight years, doesn’t it? And it rather undermines the other current running through Palin’s script; that she and McCain are candidates of change. What becomes increasingly clear is that Obama won the war of words early on in the campaign. Palin presents herself as a woman who hopes to, “reform,” the, “system,” and bring government, “back on the side of the people.” Someone rather like Obama, in fact. How well that’ll go down given Palin’s repeated overtures to social conservatives and the overt similarities between McCain and Bush’s foreign policies remains to be seen. But it does show the way for Obama; he must present voters a clear choice between himself and McCain, on substantive policy issues. Only by that contrast will the McSame meme take hold, and the cooption of change as a message be stopped.

The pipeline clip, where Palin shows the interviewer an energy project initiated under her, is perhaps the most intelligent element of the interview - on her part. What do you do if you’re accused of inexperience? Show everyone what you’ve done. It isn’t stated, but the very fact that Palin invited the camera crew to Fairbanks indicates that she wants people to know that she is capable of managing major projects. Every second they spend walking around that pipe - and that’s a good three minutes or so - acts, for her, as a rebuke to critics. Never mind that she effectively makes a complete U-turn in that segment, and advocates tearing up a nature reserve for more oil. People remember what they see as much as what they hear - and what they see (Palin hopes) is evidence of competence.

The undertones, meanwhile, seem vaguely conventional. She’s proud of her son for his, “strong, independent,” decision to go to Iraq; a dogwhistle to Republicans, that she has a family and believes in Iraq. God features more than a little; however much she denies that she thinks she knows the word of God, the repeated mention of a, “task,” or a, “mission,” clearly implies she feels some higher being wants a Republican presidency. All that mention of the constitution and Lincoln, meanwhile, her desire to bring the right of, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” to the world serves a similar purpose. It attempts to provide a noble narrative for McCain’s campaign; that of the Founding Fathers, and their ideals.

Does the interview tell us anything about McCain/Palin? Certainly. McCain appears to have had a long term purpose in his selection of Palin; as a direct answer to Obama. Throughout the interview, Palin attempted to coopt Obama’s message of change, without any deviation from Republican party line. She talked a lot about the need for new tactics; but at the same time, she resolutely clung to the Bush Doctrine and dropped conservative buzzwords like the bombs she’d see piling on Tehran. So, the intent looks to be dress McCain’s message of complete policy inertia in the fluffy mask of change which Obama made so popular. And Palin is the young, photogenic face which McCain hopes that message will become convincing.

Perhaps that wolf in sheeps’ clothing pitbull in lipstick metaphor was more approriate than Palin realised.

News from Italy:

The Minister of Justice in Italy has given prosecutors permission to use a Fascist-era law to punish a comedian for mocking the Pope.

Sabina Guzzanti is accused of “offending the honour of the sacred and inviolable person” of Pope Benedict XVI.

The satirist and comedian, during a routine at a rally in Rome in July, condemned the Vatican‘s interference in issues such as gay rights.

“Within twenty years the Pope will be where he ought to be, in Hell, tormented by great big poofter devils — and very active ones, not passive ones,” she said.

So, that’s censorship, racism and troops on the streets of Rome. Mussolini would be proud. The Catholic Church, as in the 1930s, is perhaps the only force strong enough to challenge the government in Italy. Berlusconi knows this well enough to enforce laws designed to appease the Vatican without actively diverting from his own purposes; social authoritarianism already forms part of his platform. When the government and its most active public critic share a desire, the very concept of opposition fails.

And so Italy suffers.

A rather startling piece by Matthew Yglesias. In it he explains how support for Palin is completely ideologically sound for Robert Kagan as neo-conservatives hold that knowledge of the issues under discussion may be detrimental to leaders making foreign policy decisions.

Unfortunately this reminds me eerily of the “Zombie Politics” currently practiced by the Conservative Party. In Britain what could perhaps be best described as a hybrid tactic (a mixture of Neo-Conservatism and its forefather One Nation Conservatism, with the jingoism of both downplayed, re-tuned and un-emphasised) has been used to great effect: no precision is required, instead the right noises are made simply (so vague to as to be possible to perform from behind a muzzle, through a gag) and the word “values” is tossed around like lettuce with salad.

Of course this is brilliant politics but leads to terrible policy. The effects of a Conservative government are highly unpredictable but presumably disastrous, while any Palin administration (a disconcertingly likely prospect given the age of her ticket-header) would be even more so.

But perhaps two years will be enough for Cameron to polish his policies and two weeks enough for Palin to confound Kagan by cramming. Given that the former has still not worked out the logical break in proposing securing more rape convictions through increasing the sentence for those who are convicted for rape and the latter is whispered to be receiving lessons from one Joe Lieberman we can safely conclude that the odds of ignorance reigning are worth betting on.

From an anti-Caroline Lucas leafleteer outside the Conference door:

And before you simply dismiss David Icke (whom the Green Party “establishment” likes to demonise), please consider that in doing so you’d be refuting the findings of modern Quantum Physics and a mass of political and historical evidence, plus the collective knowledge and wisdom of the indigenous peoples around the world who have oral traditions going back thousands of years.

Indeed. We cannot keep everyone happy, it seems…

EDIT: You may note from the above that I’m at the Green Party conference this weekend. Blogging may therefore be sporadic; I will, however, be making unusually regular use of Twitter.

My immediate reaction to this monstrosity of televisual farce was:

1. What the fuck this?
2. What the fuck is this?
3. What the fuck is this?

I can honestly say that nothing has horrified me so much since our new mayor was declared. I’m aware that if you have cute children you have political capital and Barack Obama has certainly not been entirely averse to spending it, but after tonight Palin must surely be forced to declare herself a bankrupt. Perhaps a good deal of the blame lies on the head of the choreographers and cameramen who decided it apt to have a Downs afflicted infant passed around, from father to seven year old and onwards.

To accompany this nauseatingly exploitative spectacle (her daughter obviously had no idea what to do with the camera shoved in her face, and contented herself with coating her younger brother’s head with saliva and sticking her finger in her eye, which would be fine under most conditions but in this context presented something of an incongruous non sequiter) was Palin introducing them all in a fashion which felt as if it lasted for a week, followed by a barrage of hackneyed nonsense, shards of barbed wit and every weary, faded buzz-word that her script-writer (a former author of George W. Bush’s words, and it showed) which had the whole room enraptured.

Yes, there was a whole room full of people lapping the stuff up like hungry rats. The sight of a room full of Republicans has quite honestly disturbed me, with it hardly surprising me that the spectacle aided Barack raising $8 million (however much that is worth, now) in a single day. I knew that people like that existed, but there there was something about the sight of so many wrong-minded people crammed into a room together braying and clapping and shouting “Drill, Drill!” oh so eagerly that made me recoil and want to wretch.

If you want a more measured view then see here and here. Mudflats, of course, has some excellent words to say. A tad less rational but as fun in a different fashion.

Enough of this. Words can not outline the atrocity. See for yourselves and scar your own eyes so I can cease being forced to re-live the trauma:

The BNP is using its internal youth movement to develop an armed wing.

By the time they’ve finished we’ll be begging for David Cameron to be in power.

Shocking news as anarchist activists near the Republican National Convention are mass arrested in a raid that was seemingly over nothing. Glenn Greenwald has coverage here and the group victim to the raids is giving updates here.

The story is startlingly similar to this event, where the Italian did their best to stamp out peaceful protest. Its also worth, once again, urging you to watch this and see how the police here in Britain treat those that protest.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that police force’s across the parts of the world that really have no excuse have taken to attempting to smash people organising peaceful towards a political end instead of doing their goddamn job of making sure that nobody gets hurt. What redress we can have for this tendency is uncertain, but for the time being we should at least watch. Perhaps even protest…

As if evidence were needed for that “McSame” meme:

That photo was taken three years ago today; just after Hurricane Katrina hit. They both look very concerned, don’t they?

(Hat-tip: Think Progress)

Even better than I had anticipated. As you’d expect for one of Stalin’s greatest critics he receives an immensely lengthy diatribe, most peculiarly aimed at a book written to help students studying the text for school.

At one stage it quotes the inimitable, Mugabe-loving Lalkar:

Having read anti-communist trash such as Animal Farm, they feel sufficiently well-equipped to become experts on the former USSR and to pontificate about the degeneration of the ideals of the Russian Revolution from every platform, and through every medium provided to them courtesy of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

and the article basically rants for thousands and thousands of words in a quite straightforward fashion. The total evasion of Orwell’s main complaints, (deliberate?) misunderstanding of the central message and premise of Animal Farm and constant attempts to proclaim Orwell a Trotskyite are all pretty pleasing.