Make Palin a Verb!

In a surprise move today, representatives from Al Qaeda met with Congressional leaders to request a $10 billion dollar bailout package. The meeting, at an undisclosed location, came amid reports that the terrorist organisation responsible for the 911 attacks was struggling financially as a result of the global economic crisis.

“We’re broke, basically,” says Farouk al-Hassan, spokesman for the group. “Terrorism is expensive at the best of times, but when even legitimate lines of credit start to dry up, it’s very difficult to get decent prices on Stinger missiles and Nikes packed with Semtex.”

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The problem, many GOP pundits are claiming, is that the McCain/Palin ticket was too liberal. Salon.com’s Gary Kamiya lays the argument out in a great article that can be found here. The idea that McCain lost because he was not sufficiently conservative does not help explain the significant GOP losses in the House, Senate and gubernatorial races this year or in 2006. Nonetheless, that is the argument that is being made. Citing a poll that shows 69 percent of Republicans support Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh says, “So all of you wizards of smart on our side, all of you intellectualoids who think that Palin was a drag, the party loves Sarah Palin.” But, as always, hyperbole isn’t a solution to the GOP’s problem. The GOP faces two complicated hurdles:

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I proudly voted for Obama and, given the opportunity, I will likely do it again in 4 years.  How could I throw in with people whose preferred method of campaigning is to spend all of their time beating down instead of building up?  The constant drumbeat message from the McCain campaign was about what was wrong with Obama - how he and his followers were the evil “Them” out to ruin “Us”.  All I heard from the Obama people were the possibilities we could achieve together as Americans. One organization prepared for elections by buying sticks and using them liberally to beat down dissent. The other group readied by finding ways to hear all of our voices, no matter what they had to say.  In this light, the choice, regardless of how I feel about the actual issues, was obvious. I could choose division or unity, destruction or inspiration. I could look at my neighbor as an adversary or I could see him as my neighbor who was in the same position as I am even if he doesn’t agree with me on what solutions to try.

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I’m cribbing liberally from Steven Greene’s blog (Fully Myelinated), but thought it worth mentioning that the effect of the economy on the election has been overstated — particularly by Republican pundits. The trend among many GOP talking heads (and others) over the past day or two has been that John McCain lost this election because of the economy and President Bush’s unpopularity. While the economy certainly played a major role, focusing on it as the primary factor in McCain’s loss gives the GOP campaign a free pass on its many strategic errors and does not give the Obama campaign enough credit. A breakdown of the issue can be found at the Monkey Cage blog, which shows that Obama’s numbers took off before the Wall Street meltdown — and did not get a significant boost from the crisis. A good reminder to take all of the post-election analysis with a healthy degree of skepticism (or “cum grano salis” as my old teacher Susy Hatchett would say).

-Ship

This clip from Fox News must be seen to be believed (how can the governor of any state not know that Africa is a continent?). Ponderous. I imagine we will be getting truckloads more of this in the coming days [ed: Your first morning delivery of McCain-Palin infighting is here from the NYT]:

Update: Here is another video of Cameron on O’Reilly:

Cameron restates a lot of the same claims as he does in the previous video. I think that the best thing to come out in this video (@ 5:25) is that Randy Scheunemann was fired because he didn’t like people Nailin’ Palin. LOL!!

UPDATE: These charges are from a “small bitter type of person”. Funny, most of the small people I’ve tasted have been quite tasty. Someone must have prepared this one wrong or maybe it grazed on too many dandelions.

The CNN and MSNBC maps are below

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Early in the race, before the primaries, I thought that maybe the Republicans were trying to lose the election and Congress. The reasoning for my prediction was that the last eight years have put this country into such a hole that it will definitely take more than four years to recover; most Americans have a short attention span and no patience; therefore, the Republican party will use the fact that the Democrats have not fixed all of the problems against them in the next midterm and presidential elections.

John McCain taking an early lead in the primary season was perfect for this.
His more centrist view and “straight talk” made him popular, but he wasn’t a perfect match for the party’s conservative social values, and the neoconservatives did not like him. With McCain, the nominee would be someone who would not win in 2008 - but in 2012 a new neocon will be put before America with the tag line “We tried it their way”.

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Sarah Palin recently stated that media criticism of her negative campaign tactics makes her fear for the country’s First Amendment rights. You would think that the governor of the largest state in the Union would be well-versed enough in the United States Constitution to understand that this criticism is the exact speech the First Amendment is meant to protect. Blogger Brian Butler is right on the money, when he says that Palin has the Constitutional understanding of a third grader. As I stated above, I don’t agree with the political tack that this country has taken over the last eight years, but I don’t think these decisions are irreversible. However, I think it would be disastrous for the populace to allow the election of a Vice President who would try to implement policy without even a basic understanding of the fundamentals on which our democracy is based.

John McCain chose Sarah Palin because she would bring back the conservative social agenda wing of the Republican Party that had previously abandoned him. I do not agree with her views, but that does not make her unqualified for consideration as the Vice President (only unpalatable with my worldview). Additionally, Sarah Palin is not unqualified for the national stage because of her lack of experience. Sarah Palin is dangerously unqualified to be one step from the Presidency because of her complete ignorance of our constitutional democracy and her obvious inability to logically reason.

Because of the selection of Sarah Palin, I can’t envision the past McCain who seemed to at least stand up for his convictions about what he felt was truly best for the country. All I am left with is the bitter taste of divisive politics that has put pandering to a political base above sound national policies. I wish John McCain a long career as a Senator who can bring together bipartisan coalitions (we need more of them). However, the thought of a politician with as little intellectual rigor as Sarah Palin in the White House makes me wonder how the conservative movement has gotten so far off base.

ABC News reports that the Palin campaign did not extend an invitation to Penn State president Graham B. Spanier for Tuesday’s closed event.

Then (campaign aide Russ) Bermel allegedly stated, “He’s a big Democrat. Why would he want to meet Palin?”

Um, I don’t know Russ, maybe because he runs the university and would like to meet with personalities visiting his campus?

What I don’t understand is why would the campaign hold a closed, invitation only, campaign stop at the largest university in Pennsylvania? The McCain/Palin campaign has stressed many times how they need to win Pennsylvania to win the White House. Do they win by only preaching to the converted?

ION: I am going to try to make it to the Palin rally on Saturday, should be good for a laugh.

The Talking Points Memo put up this video of excerpts from this past Sunday’s talk shows. It makes me giggle.

John McCain says that stories of Sarah going rogue are “baloney” that “Sarah and I could not be working more closely together, We’re on the same team. A couple of mavericks aren’t going to agree on everything.” in this Christian Science Monitor article.

But, the best part of the story is this cartoon:

by Jake Turcotte

Maybe I need to Photoshop Palin as Bluto to go with the picture I did of John.

Alaska’s largest newspaper made its presidential endorsement yesterday and it is supporting Obama/Biden.

I just wish that the statement:

“Since his early acknowledgement that economic policy is not his strong suit, Sen. McCain has stumbled and fumbled badly in dealing with the accelerating crisis as it emerged.”

was shortened to:

Since his early acknowledgment that economic policy is not his strong suit, Sen. McCain has palined badly in dealing with the accelerating crisis as it emerged.

See how nicely that reads.

The Oval Office is a “bummer free zone”.

A CBS/NYT poll released today shows that Sarah’s ratings just keep tumbling.

Despite the initial splash and favorable reaction to her acceptance speech at the Republican convention, she hasn’t worn well with voters. Her favorable rating in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll stands at just 31 percent, nine points below her unfavorable rating. Polls universally show that majorities of voters don’t believe she’s “qualified” to be president, should that become necessary. Many say they don’t even believe she’s prepared to be vice president.

From this article.

If the polls are to be believed, things are not looking too for Sarah and John on Nov 4th.

The Pew Research Center poll, Washington Post/ABC poll and the earlier NBC/WSJ poll all have numbers similar to the CBS/NYT. Good thing there is the Fox News poll to set the record straight.

As a matter of fact, the only poll that actually shows a close race is the AP Poll.

And it looks like McCain might skip his own party on election night.

Aside from all of the hullabaloo surrounding Sarah’s $150k designer rags, (McCain said she needed clothes) there really hasn’t been too much coming out about Sarah or palining today.

Here are a couple of updates.

Chuck Todd from NBC thinks that Sarah and John don’t like each other much.

McCain and Palin sure don’t look too happy with each other in this photo.

Cincinnati, OH. Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2008. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Ron Howard reunited with a couple of his old co-stars to make a video.

And I posted another McCain robocall, this one is from Tom Ridge.

It seems that having a palining pitbull (with or without lipstick) on the campaign trail is actually hurting John McCain. If the results of this WSJ/NBC poll are to be believed.

This CNN report states “Sarah Palin is getting getting the rock star treatment, drawing much bigger crowds than her running mate, Sen. John McCain.” whereas, this report in the Miami Herald states “The crowd, which did not fill the 8,500-capacity Security Service Field…” in Colorado Springs yesterday.

In all fairness, it was cloudy, cold and rainy yesterday in Colorado Springs, but if Sarah is drawing more than John and she can’t even get 8500 people to show up at an event how can they complete with this?

Sarah and I agree on one thing, we don’t like robotic telemarketing calls

I’ve been able to get some copies of the calls from around the web. I tried to clean the quality up a little and I am linking to them for you to download, remix, whatever.

Obama Opposes Saving Babies
Obama Worked Closely With A Terrorist
Civil Rights For Terrorists

If you do a remix, post it in the comments.

the original source for these files was tpmtv, however I got them from links elsewhere.

update:
Barack Obama referenced Palin’s comments about the robocalls at a campaign stop in Tampa today.

“It’s getting so bad that even Sen. McCain’s running mate denounced his tactics last night,” Obama said to a crowd at Steinbrenner Field. “And you know, you really have to work hard to violate Governor Palin’s standards on negative campaigning. You gotta work hard.”

ED: a new robocall Tom Ridge

On Saturday October, 18th CBN news’ David Brody did an interview with our favorite Governor. He asked some great questions like: Who would win in a one on one basketball game between Sarah and Barack Obama?

The videos were posted cbn.com this morning.

CBN is one of my favorite conservative websites, I really like the pancakes.

Below are the most telling questions and answers:
Sarah thinks that saying that Barack is palling around with terrorists is OK.

She really palins at the end of this one.

Sarah thinks that Barack’s stance on abortion is “extreme”.

On this one the commentator implies with his question that Obama is somehow less Christian.

Sarah thinks that there should be a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

BTW, I put Pat’s pancake recipe here (pdf) so you don’t have to register at CBN to download it.

Over the last eight years my views have become slightly more centrist, but my political affiliations have becomes vastly more independent. Basically, I am fed up with politics as usual, and I can’t stand the Karl Rove form of political lambasting we have seen in the last three Presidential campaign. (Just mentioning Karl Rove style politics and Presidential in the same sentence seems contradictory to me.) So, this brings me to the subject of this post.

If you have been listening to NPR lately or watched the Al Jazeera video post below, you may have gotten the feeling that there is an underlying current of mistrust, misinformation and racism in some of the opposition to Obama. Rather than talk about issues, Palin and McCain (or at least various elements of the Republican Party) have tried to implant the notion in America’s head that Obama has leanings toward Muslim terrorists.

But don’t believe me, judge for yourself…

In August the Snohomish Washington Republican Party sold $3 bills with Obama on them wrapped in a Muslim headdress. Furthering the misinformation campaign that Obama is a Muslim. He is not and has never been.

Over the last several weeks Palin has been spreading the word that Obama has been “palling around with terrorists”. He has not. He chaired the board for a non-partisan committee to study education policy with a professor of education from the University of Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago. (Yes, Bill Ayers was a Weatherman decades before Obama knew him.)

This month a San Bernardino County Republican Women’s group sent out a mailer with Obama on food stamps surrounded by watermelon, ribs and fried chicken.

You think that John McCain would feel different about using these tactics after being railroaded by them in the 2000 South Carolina primaries. I applaud McCain for taking the microphone away from his supporters that try to espouse the racist rhetoric to his face. However, until he reins in his lipsticked pitbull, it just means that either he tacitly supports the strategy of falsely smearing Obama’s character or has no control over his own campaign. Either way I am disgusted and do not believe that McCain has any intention to separate himself from the Republican party machinery.

(P.S. Please visit FactCheck.org on a regular basis to get an independent view on this country’s pertinent issues and where the candidates really stand on them.)