Other News Bits

Well, I went on a bit about the economy today, and that IS the big news, but here are some other news bits you might want to browse…

Biden, McCain’s colleague in the senate for more than two decades, says he hasn’t seen anything that suggests McCain’s policies will be a departure from those of the Bush Administration.

So, does that make Biden an insider unprepared to change too? I don’t think so. First elected at age 29, Biden lost his wife and toddler daughter in a car crash before he was even sworn in to his office, and has since commuted EVERY DAY between Delaware and DC by train so he could be home for his surviving boys (3 & 4 at the time of the crash) as much as possible.

As Obama said when he tapped him to be VP—Biden has spent years changing Washington but it has done little to change him.



Also, this weekend, the New York Times published one of the first in-depth analyses of Palin’s governing style and how her “reformer” images maps onto her policies and practices once in office. The piece opens:

“WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal. So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency. Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages” …and goes on from there…