Sliming Palin
Summary below from FactCheck.org. Details here
We've been flooded for the past few days with queries about dubious Internet postings and mass e-mail messages making claims about McCain's running mate, Gov. Palin. We find that many are completely false, or misleading.
* Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn't cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years.
* She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has said Palin asked a "What if?" question, but the librarian continued in her job through most of Palin's first term.
* She was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that wants Alaskans to vote on whether they wish to secede from the United States. She's been registered as a Republican since May 1982.
* Palin never endorsed or supported Pat Buchanan for president. She once wore a Buchanan button as a "courtesy" when he visited Wasilla, but shortly afterward she was appointed to co-chair of the campaign of Steve Forbes in the state.
* Palin has not pushed for teaching creationism in Alaska's schools. She has said that students should be allowed to "debate both sides" of the evolution question, but she also said creationism "doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."
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LOL: Palin Not Only in the Left's Heads, She Now Haunts Their Dreams
Pretty soon they'll all be having night terrors as they watch their man Obama go down in flames. Really, it's hard to believe how ridiculous these people are. You might think this is satire, but the guy is serious. Who else but a liberal nutjob would even dare publish something so absurd?
"I rarely remember my dreams, but for the past week, GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been haunting me. Night after night, she appears in my dreams, always as a scolding, ominous figure.
When I mentioned my Palin dreams to Slate colleagues, they volunteered their own. One Obama-supporting colleague dreamed she had urged her young son to kill Palin with a string bean. Another dreamed she was at a fashion show and Palin served her creme fruche on little scooped corn chips. A third says, "In the Sarah Palin dream I keep having, she has superhuman powers but is not really a person at all. In fact, she is more like the weather with glasses and an up-do, pushing clouds around and pitching lightning bolts."
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ELSEWHERE
Mike Volkin [mikevolkin@gmail.com] has produced a book called "The Accomplishments of Barack Obama", it has a table of contents and a foreword, and the rest of the book is blank. Check out the website. Mike put the book on his coffee table and had a party last weekend and says everyone thought it was hilarious. He is donating $1 of every book sold to charity.
Liberals Want to Neuter Your Cars. Yglesias: "As you've probably noticed, there's just about nowhere in the United States where you're allowed to drive faster than 80 miles per hour. And yet cars can drive much faster than this. And of course the reason you're not allowed to go super-fast is that it isn't safe. A large proportion of car accidents are related to people driving too quickly. Thus, via Ezra Klein comes Kent Sepkowitz's suggestion that we design cars so as to make it impossible for them to drive over, say, 75 miles per hour. This seems reasonably sensible to me."
Sarah Knows the media: "Sarah Palin has gotten some rough treatment from the media since John McCain announced his vice presidential pick. In her speech last week, she gave a little jab back at "all those reporters and commentators." That won't likely win her many new admirers in the Washington press corps. But Rasmussen has a new poll out that suggests that piling on Mrs. Palin may do more to harm the media's own image than hers. According to Rasmussen, fully 68% of voters believe that "most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win." And -- no surprise -- 49% of those surveyed believe reporters are backing Barack Obama, while just 14% think the media is in the tank for Sen. McCain. Meanwhile, 51% of those surveyed thought the press was "trying to hurt" Mrs. Palin with its coverage. Perhaps most troubling for the press corps, though, was this finding: "55% said media bias is a bigger problem for the electoral process than large campaign donations."
British PM triggers row with John McCain: "Gordon Brown has triggered a potential row with John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, after apparently backing Barack Obama - breaking convention not to get involved in foreign elections. The Prime Minister heaped praise on Mr Obama and the Democrats in a magazine article, saying they were "generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times." Dealing with economic problems is the crucial battleground in the US elections and Mr Brown's comments were interpreted as backing the Democrat candidate. It sparked a flurry of activity among The Prime Minister's office and the British Embassy in Washington were last night involved in an embarrassing behind-the-scenes operation to try and limit the fallout from the incident. They were alerted after the highly influential Drudge Report website picked up the story, sparking a flurry of comment and analysis from election watchers in the US. Well-placed sources claimed that Mr Brown may not have read the article written in his name by a "junior Labour official".
Major companies fleeing Green/Left Britain: "Already struggling with an economy on the brink of recession and a record budget deficit, Britain's government is facing another problem: how to stop an exodus of British companies fleeing the local tax regime. In the past week alone, three British companies have announced plans to move their head office abroad before the end of the year, unhappy about a lack of clarity about future tax rules and eager to cut their tax bill. Henderson Group, an asset management firm, and engineering company Charter plan to move to Ireland. Regus Group, the office space provider, is leaving for Luxembourg and at least two more companies, advertising agency WPP Group and insurer Brit Insurance, said they might follow. The moves provoked hefty discussions among lawmakers and business representatives about the competitiveness of Britain's corporate tax system. The moves also came at the worst time for the government, which is already expected to lose billions of pounds in tax revenue from financial services companies burdened with losses from the credit crunch".
Britain: Mothers 'should be paid to stay home with their children': "Mothers should receive financial help of up to $12,000 a year to stay at home and care for their babies and toddlers, according to a report which says that nurseries fail to provide the one-to-one adult interaction children need. Too many parents of babies and toddlers are being forced back to work by financial pressure and government policy when they would prefer to stay at home during their offspring's earliest years, according to the research by a think-tank chaired by the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. Many of society's problems, such as knife and gun crime among teenagers, alcohol and drug abuse and poor mental health can be traced back to parental neglect when children were very young, said the Centre for Social Justice. Its recommendation was based on "compelling" research in psychology and neuroscience"
For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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1 comment:
The last two weeks have been some of the most absurd that I have ever seen in politics. Win or lose, Republicans should be completely ashamed of themselves for stooping this low, and Americans are going to need to take a good, hard, long look in the mirror if we swear in President McCain in January. I’ve got five major bones to pick.
FIRST: Alleged “media bias.” This charge gets my blood boiling, because I know so many middle of the road voters believe it since Republicans shove it down our throats on a daily basis. Republicans allege that the mainstream media unfairly jumped all over Sarah Palin in the wake of the news that her daughter was pregnant. I challenge you to find me one example of the media doing anything but reporting the fact that Palin’s daughter was pregnant. The only implication I saw in any main stream news source were that this suggested that maybe Palin was not vetted thoroughly (which, in the days afterwards, became clear was in fact the case) and that she does not have a lot of experience in government (which is fair, and the same questions have certainly been raised about Obama). There was nothing despicable about this. Yes, some bloggers on the left speculated as to whether or not Trig was Palin’s son, or if he had actually been born to Bristol. But bloggers on the left no more constitute main stream media than do bloggers on the right who suggest that “the true Obama hand signal” is a “commie circle jerk.” Bloggers on both sides say stupid things, but only Republicans will attribute the comments of leftist bloggers to the mainstream media in order to discredit news sources striving to present fair information which, honestly, doesn’t look that great for the Republican party given the state of the country today.
Secondly, if anything, it’s MCCAIN who has benefitted from imbalanced media coverage. The media have been handling McCain with kid gloves for months now, precisely because the Republican party has them running scared with its allegations of bias. The most recent study of media coverage finds that Obama does indeed get covered more than McCain (likely as a result of his being a “sexier” candidate in terms of his youth and broad appeal – I’m sorry but a 200,000 person rally in Germany is news, a 500 person town hall in New Hampshire is not), but that the breakdown of positive/negative coverage for the two candidates is 72% negative, 28% positive for Obama versus 57% positive, 43% negative for McCain. Reporters are simply not taking McCain to task. Just a few weeks ago, Sarah Palin sat in church and listened to a sermon that argued that terrorist attacks in Jerusalem are divine retribution against the Jews for killing rather than worshipping Jesus. What?! Where is the media on that? We’ll get weeks and weeks of play about Jeremiah Wright, but not a peep about this?
SECOND: The choice of Sarah Palin. Absolutely brilliant from a political standpoint. She accomplishes everything McCain needed a running mate to accomplish and more: youth, appeal to potentially angry Hillary voters, appeal to the Christian right, lack of a long pro-Bush record. And the execution was brilliant – it was completely out of nowhere the day after Obama’s convention speech, and was a legitimate jaw-dropper. You couldn’t write stuff as good as this – this election is turning out more twisty and interesting than the last season of the West Wing. That aside, given John McCain’s age and four bouts with cancer, the choice of a governor of less than two years who not long ago was making her mark on her neighborhood PTA as next in line for the presidency is shockingly irresponsible. Now Republicans are very good at what they do – they have gone on the attack against people who question Palin’s lack of experience and tried to turn her experience into a weapon. This should absolutely not stand. I’ve always had a problem with the country’s recent distaste for senators in favor of governors because governors get very little experience dealing with national issues. I guarantee that in Sarah Palin’s short time in any office, she has never had to address: federal income tax policy, national health care, costs/benefits of free trade, or anything remotely related to foreign policy (aside from the laughable claim that she is experienced due to Alaska’s proximity to Russia – maybe the governor of Hawaii should start telling us how to deal with the rise of China). There is nothing to suggest that this woman has given much thought to or is prepared to deal with issues of national import. Sure, Obama is not the most experienced candidate for the job. But give me a guy with a degree in politics who has been working on social issues for decades, has spent time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and clearly has nuanced and well thought-out views on pretty much everything (whether or not you agree with me) over a neophyte hockey mom who can effectively drop one-liners at a convention. I do think that the left and the media underestimated Sarah Palin – she’s tough and charming, and is not going to get easily worn down by the pressures of running for national office. She is stronger candidate than 90% of the people we saw run for President this year. Unfortunately, being a good campaigner will not save her from being way out of her league if she ever has to assume the presidency. Anybody who tells you she is prepared for the job is delusional.
THIRD: The ad about kindergarten sex education. I was floored when I watched it. I’ve seen negative attacks before, but this seriously crossed a line. At the end of the ad, John McCain approves a message which charges that Barack Obama supported “comprehensive sex education” for kindergarteners, and implied that he thought children should learn about sex before they learned how to read. Apart from being an outright lie (the legislation in question, for anyone reading, called for “age-appropriate” sex education for K-12 students, not “comprehensive,” and suggested that younger children should be warned about what constitutes inappropriate touching or behavior towards them on behalf of adults), it’s one of the lowest attacks I’ve ever seen launched – targeting those with children to try and make them believe that Barack Obama wants them to learn about sex at age six in order to get them scared of him. The McCain campaign should pull the ad and apologize, and the main stream media that everyone is so incensed about should REPORT that this insane ad was approved and aired by the McCain campaign, and rebut its charges.
FOURTH: Republicans as the party of “change.” I came into this election season expecting that the Republican message would change to adjust for the fact that it has had 8 disastrous years in power. Shockingly, with the exception of John McCain’s speech at the end of the Republican Convention, all the speakers stuck to the same playbook: 9/11 and the cultural divide. They did this all while attempting to empathize with Americans about how badly things are going in the country. Are you kidding me? You rattle off all the things that are going wrong in America today, then you ask for four more years in power? That is hubris on a scale I’ve never seen. Not only that, but they are attempting to blame someone other than themselves for this mess! Mitt Romney said that the problems America is faced with today are the result of 8 years of listening to the eastern liberal elite! Are you kidding me? G-Dub for 8 years and the GOP for 6 were anything but in the pocket of the eastern liberal elite. A new McCain ad attacks Obama for his liberal positions, calling them “more of the same.” More of the same what?! Newsflash: Republicans have been in charge of the country since January 2001. Any problems the country is facing today happened on their watch, not Democrats’ or east coast liberal elites. And as for John McCain as a change agent – there was a time when I might have bought this. But now, name me one major issue on which he is out of step with President Bush! You can’t! John McCain is trying to have it both ways – he is running on his maverick image that was partially reflective of reality until about 2002, while slowly rejecting any disagreements he may have had with the Republican establishment in order to curry their favor and hoping that voters won’t notice. And they’re not noticing – McCain is still viewed as a maverick, even though on most issues that he was supposedly courageous on – immigration, tax cuts, Roe v. Wade, the influence of the religious right, campaign finance, torture – yep, that’s all of them, and he has reversed course on every one to be more in step with the Republican base. A good take on this is by Andrew Sullivan, a conservative blogger who has become disillusioned with the GOP but was open to supporting McCain until recently - http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/mccains-integri.html (yes, I know he has also been cheering on Barack Obama, but that was for the Democratic nomination – he made clear once he knew that it was an Obama-McCain that he was undecided between the two, he simply preferred Obama to the other Democrats).
FIFTH: The American people can and must do better. Take everything either campaign says with a grain of salt and go examine a real news source, like Politico or a major newspaper and see what they say. The destructive and distortionary McCain message is getting hammered home too easily, and that’s our own fault for letting the McCain campaign form our opinions through false outrage and silly jokes instead of forming them ourselves by gathering information. “Barack Obama is all rhetoric” – he speaks about policy proposals all the time, and you can find lots of fleshed out ideas on his website. Second, we need to do a double take on Sarah Palin and re-evaluate our love affair with her. Americans are once again falling into the trap of voting for a leader because “they’re just like me.” Do you think you’re qualified and ready to be president? George Bush won two elections because Americans couldn’t bring themselves to vote against a guy who they would like to have a beer with, and look where that got us. Just because someone is a working mother who likes to hunt does not mean she is the person who should be a heartbeat away from being commander in chief of this country. “Being like me” has got to be done away with as a metric by which we evaluate our candidates for the presidency.
That’s all for now. I’m sure that I’ve convinced nobody, since I’ll be discounted as another “lefty with Obama-mania,” but facts are facts, and the fact is that Republicans are so good at running presidential campaigns that they have extremely effectively distracted us from what should have been a contest about whether or not the country is going in the right direction and which candidate is more likely to change that course.
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