Sarah Palin's conduct has gone far past the bounds of decency, and far past even the most dangerous efforts of any previous candidate for such high office. This is an inexcusable, unforgivable, and unacceptable transgression and my belief is that she should be removed from consideration for the office of Vice President for her dangerous, unethical and unamerican display of irresponsibility.Don't worry - she will be, in a little less than a week.
Asked whether Palin was suggesting that Obama favors economic policies similar to those of Communist countries, Palin’s traveling press secretary Tracey Schmitt wrote in an email message, “No she said what she said.”Damned if I can find the link right now, but sometime in the last week someone linked to news video of McCain in which a reporter asks him whether he thinks Obama is a socialist. He said something like "of course not, but..." and then launched into a critique of Obama's policies. The upshot is that neither McCain or Palin is going to knowingly say "Obama is a socialist" or "Obama is a terrorist" on record. And you won't see it reported that they did, because they didn't. What you will see is "Palin hints that Obama is a socialist" or "Palin connects Obama to terrorist in speech" because that is factually accurate.
Though the speech was mostly a recitation of energy-policy proposals that Sen. John McCain has been offering for months — nuclear power, limited offshore drilling, “clean coal” — Palin’s flourishes made the speech hers. The line, “Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas” could be said by either the top or the bottom of the ticket. But, “God has so richly blessed our land with the supplies that we need”? You would pretty much have to write God into a McCain speech to get him to say it. Palin adds it on her own.posted by birdherder at 12:53 PM on October 29, 2008
It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery.... You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably. This is such a great opportunity you have here to actually get politicians off of their marketing and strategy.I agree with many of you that the media feels less monolithically rightist than it did four years ago, yet I hasten to point out that they haven't actually improved. They've supplied some new stances to host the talking heads, but they're still doing what Stewart objected to - still allowing politicians to determine the reportage with their daily messages and short clips, still unable, for the most part, to present an informed and independent evaluation of those messages with reference to history, policy, and reality. Which is exactly the kind of thing that would be needed to put Palin and McCain's evocations of terrorism and socialism in perspective as the extreme tactics that they are.
What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?— Lincoln.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."—Mencken.
I admit. I find her cute and attractive, but deep inside.....I know she sheds her skin at night.
Zambrano: ... (that's what liberalism is- it's a fair and balanced opinion of things).Wait, what?
John McCain is NOT closing Obama's margin as quickly as he needs to (if indeed he is closing it at all). This appears to be a 6- or 7- point race right now ... that's where we have it, that's where RCP has it, that where Pollster.com has it. In order to beat Barack Obama, John McCain will need to gain at least one point per day between now and the election. Our model does think that McCain has pared about a point off Obama's margin -- but it has taken him a week to do so. Now, McCain needs to gain six more points in six more days. And he needs to do so with no real ground game, no real advertsing budget, and no one particularly strong message. Not easy.Not easy, no, but McCain sure is trying.
Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin accused the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday of protecting Barack Obama by withholding a videotape of the Democrat attending a 2003 party for a Palestinian-American professor and critic of Israel. The paper said it had written about the event in April and would not release the tape because of a promise to the source who provided it.I guess this means we can expect the "terrorist" drum will continue to be hammered upon, that the hate rhetoric will continue. This is really all they have left. They've lost this race on every other issue, and have only incitation to fall back on.
McCain and Palin called Rashid Khalidi a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, a characterization Khalidi has denied in the past. Both candidates said guests at the party made critical comments about Israel.
Khalidi is a professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University and a longtime friend of Obama's. Khalidi has publicly criticized Israel, but he and Obama have both said they hold very different opinions on Israeli issues.
"Among other things, Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism rather than the victim," Palin said at a rally in Ohio. "What we don't know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he professes to support."
"If there was a tape of John McCain in a neo-Nazi outfit, I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different," McCain said in an interview with Hispanic radio stations.
In a story published in April, the Times said Obama spoke out at the event on the need for common ground on the Israel-Palestinian issue. Obama has said during the campaign that his commitment to Israel's security is "nonnegotiable."
In 1993, McCain became chairman of the International Republican Institute. He still chairs that respected organization.Source, which includes several good links, including a PDF to the referenced tax returns.
That same year, Khalidi helped found the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, self-described as “an independent academic research and policy analysis institution” created to meet “the need for active Palestinian scholarship on issues related to Palestine.”[...]
Khalidi was on the board of trustees through 1999.
According to tax returns, the McCain-chaired IRI funded the organization Khalidi founded and served on to the tune of $448,873 in 1998 [...] as first reported by Seth Couter Walls at HuffPo.
The IRI continued to give money to the CPRS after Khalidi left the group as well.
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posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:18 AM on October 29, 2008 [23 favorites]