(no subject)

Political stuff that drives me crazy: When the people on "my" side lie. I'm not even sure whether to link to this -- it's a widely linked blog post on the "Palin doesn't speak for us" rally in Anchorage (which is totally awesome, by the way, and I wish I could have gone) that contains a piece of ridiculous, brain-breaking hyperbole that's just ... not just factually inaccurate, but a total lie. (It claims that the anti-Palin rally was the biggest rally ever in the history of the state. Uh, even using their own numbers -- 1500 people -- as cited in the same post, it's not even the biggest rally in the last WEEK -- the pro-Palin rally on the same day drew 1500 people, and the numbers I've seen bandied around for the Fairbanks one on Wednesday is 2-3000. It was a fantastically big rally for being grassroots-organized on short notice, but the only thing that's accomplished by exaggerating about it is to give ammo to the "liberals are lying liars that lie!" crowd.)

And while I'm being all political...

This guy makes some damn good points about white privilege. Regardless of how I feel about the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden tickets, and how the media's been treating Sarah Palin (and about Tim Wise as well *cough*) ... if you flip it around and postulate a black candidate with Palin's particular set of qualifications and disadvantages (unwed teenage daughter, shaky collegiate history, gun-toting future son-in-law, strongly religious and belongs to a politically-charged church), and consider how such a candidate would be viewed by the American mainstream -- makes kind of a contrast, doesn't it?