MetaFilter posts tagged with palin and election

We have the facts and we're voting...

dw — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:05:53 -0800

At 12:00am EST, in the Ballot Room of the Balsams Resort in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, the 2008 Presidential Election began.* The vote was 15-6 Obama -- the first time a Democrat has carried the village since 1968. Despite their "first in the nation" status, though, they have only picked the winner 50% of the time. * - Hart's Location, which Obama also won, would beg to differ. Notably, Hart's Location is 3-for-3 in voting for the eventual winner.

You Betcha

digaman — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:41:01 -0800

This f*cking election. A babble tower.

SARAH PALIN'S BAADASSSSS SONG

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:29:26 -0800

PALIN SONG

The Insiders

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:55:04 -0800

Jane Meyer of The New Yorker explains how John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin Jane Meyer offers a fascinating account of the mating ritual performed between Palin and Republican elite in the year leading up to the general election. Excerpts: ``From the start of her political career, Palin has positioned herself as an insurgent intent on dislodging entrenched interests. In 1996, a campaign pamphlet for her first mayoral run—recently obtained by The New Republic—strikes the same note of populist resentment that Palin did at the Convention: “I’m tired of ‘business as usual’ in this town, and of the ‘Good Ol’ Boys’ network that runs the show here.” Yet Palin has routinely turned to members of Washington’s Old Guard for help. After she became the mayor of Wasilla, Palin oversaw the hiring of a law firm to represent the town’s interests in Washington, D.C. The Wasilla account was handled by Steven Silver, a Washington-area lobbyist who had been the chief of staff to Alaska’s long-serving Republican senator Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July on charges of accepting illegal gifts and is now standing trial. (Silver declined to discuss his ties to Palin.) As the Washington Post reported, Silver’s efforts in the capital helped Wasilla, a town of sixty-seven hundred residents, secure twenty-seven million dollars in federal earmarks. During this election season, however, Palin has presented herself as more abstemious, saying, “I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.” ``In February, 2007, Adam Brickley gave himself a mission: he began searching for a running mate for McCain who could halt the momentum of the Democrats. Brickley, a self-described “obsessive” political junkie who recently graduated from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, told me that he began by “randomly searching Wikipedia and election sites for Republican women.”... ``By the spring, the McCain campaign had reportedly sent scouts to Alaska to start vetting Palin as a possible running mate. A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice. ``“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.” Another friend disputed this, characterizing McCain’s mood as one of “understanding resignation.” ''

Elections are fun!

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:49:54 -0800

Welcome to The Sacramento County Republican Party. The official website has removed content calling for Obama to be waterboarded. But it still contains fake quotes supposedly from Obama's memoir. In this political climate, 33% of voters do not identify Obama as Christian, and 8% believe he is Muslim. Yet, the polls predict a landslide, hinted at by early voting. McCain needs something spectacular, and he may be regretting his decision to invoke Bill Ayers in tonight's debate; and perhaps other things.

VP debate highlights in song and dance

MegoSteve — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:08:43 -0800

If you missed the VP debate last night, you might enjoy this video of VP debate highlights in song and dance by Michael Gregory. (Also available: Running From Your Shadow, presidential debate highlights in song and dance.) DLYT

EPIC FAIL: The Astroturf is always greener on the other side.

Skygazer — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:07:09 -0800

Rusty Shackleford over at right-wing anti-Muslim jihad blog The Jawa Report has posted that the Obama campaign, in an effort to portray Sarah Palin a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, is engaged in a smear campaign through the use of viral video and astroturf techniques on You Tube. Shackleford claims the narrator of the smear video has worked previously on ads put out by the Obama campaign. And that “This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with [Obama campaign manager] David Axelrod's PR firm, which has a history of engaging in "phony grassroots efforts.” Shackleford also posits that the haste with which the individual who posted the video on You Tube, “eswinner,” or Ethan S. Winner, an executive for the public relations firm Winner & Assoc., removed the video proves an Obama campaign cover up in the works and that Winner & Assoc. were most likely paid by Axelrod to execute an Astroturf smear campaign against Sarah Palin. Axelrod's PR firm had a brief relationship with Winner & Assoc. from a Detroit Mayor's initiative they worked in separate capacities in 1996. Winner and Assoc, work predominately for big oil and utility companies, but also handle political campaigns and initiatives throught a subsidiary: Winner & Mandabach. Shackleford, although he presents the piece as having a high probability of being correct, admits, as his legal team advises him to, that much of it is "conjecture" and "speculation," Yet in his eagerness to expose Obama as a lowdown Chicago style political operator, he fails to discover, until he reads it here, that there is, indeed, an individual with a suspicious and compelling tie to the Winner & Assoc. public relations firm. That person is Sen. John McCain. In 2002 John McCain worked for Winner & Mandabach, a subsidiary of Winner & Assoc., to convince the people of Arizona to vote “YES” on proposition 202. One of three competing Indian gaming initiatives supported by the 17 Tribes coalition of Arizona. The 17 tribes hired Winner & Mandabach to see to it that there proposition was the one that would become law. McCain was brought in by Winner & Mandabach as a third-party player to lend his name and support to ads and mailings. The proposition was opposed by Arizona Christian groups and denied the state of Arizona $300 million dollars in annual taxes annually or imposing greater oversight and regulation. What compensation was made available to McCain for his services? “While candidates, PACs and party committees are held accountable for political funds, Indian tribes file nothing. … Disclosure only comes from those who file reports indicating they received donations from a tribe. … [T]here is no way to double check the accuracy of the reports.” McCain was twice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, in 1995–1997 and 2005–2007. (On a side note for those who know of him, Prop 202 was also supported by human rights violator and denier of constitutional rights Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (Previously on Metafilter.)

Palin, pancakes, and the straight talk express

madamjujujive — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:32:30 -0800

Have the wheels come off the straight talk express? At least one sleeping giant woke up today: the NYT finally gives Sarah Palin a thorough vetting and the results aren't pretty. The McCain campaign's aggressive - and many say dishonest - tactics in promoting Palin may have sparked the beginnings of a media backlash. Camp McCain's reaction: We don't care and intend to stay on offense. And about that offense, they will soon have some help: Group With Swift Boat Alumni Readies Ads Attacking Obama. How low will things go? At this week's Values Voters Summit, 'Obama Waffles' with racial stereotypes were all the rage.

“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” –Ben Okri

iamkimiam — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:08:55 -0800

"Political content aside, the discussion provided a lovely example of how a term from literary theory has established itself in American political discourse." via Language Log

"We may expect the following. Language will be carefully crafted. Advertisements will focus on personal narratives. The campaign will employ “attack” advertisements that emotionally sway voters. Policy will be sketchy with vague descriptions that emotionally satisfy Americans while offering scant details. The emphasis will be on creating narratives that resonate with the values, beliefs, and identities of prospective voters."
– Literary Gulag, on Lakoff, Nunberg, Westen, and the narrative of the 2008 presidential election. "Party operatives have complained, again and again, about the absence of a compelling narrative. Stanley Greenberg, Democratic pollster, has credited Republicans with a “narrative that motivated their voters.” Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, has called for a “new narrative.” Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?, has acknowledged that Republicans have “captured the narrative of social class.” Robert Reich has stated that Republican success in “the art of political narrative” has “exiled Democrats from politics itself.” Or as James Carville, lead strategist for the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign has noted, “They produce a narrative, we produce a litany” (14), For more than thirty years, Nunberg contends, Republicans have diverted class resentments rooted in economic inequalities to debating “values,” thereby ensuring that moral issues become part of the “core vocabulary of American political discourse” (15-16)." And of course, what post would be complete without a Wikipedia link about this new word for the old story.

Sarah Palin as McCain's running-mate

HaloMan — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:52:01 -0800

Fox, the BBC and CNN have all revealed that Republican US presidential candidate John McCain has picked Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate on his 72nd birthday on the eve of the start of Republican National Convention. Despite being wildly popular in Alaska, Palin has recently been involved in an investigation over whether she dismissed a public safety commissioner because he refused to dismiss her former brother-in-law.