Year: 2008

Matt Taibbi: Palin Speech Was ‘Like Watching Gidget Address the Reichstag’

Jon Ponder

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:
She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, “five children later” is “still my guy.”

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.

Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV -and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party’s fortunes around faster.

And:

But watching Palin’s speech, I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker – and immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be the innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. It was a virtuoso performance. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, “five children later” is “still my guy.” It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Palin: “Let’s Not Talk About the Past” Unless It’s Obama’s

Trish

During her debate with Sen. Joseph Biden, Gov. Sarah Palin took an interesting stance: she claimed that any mention of Sen. John McCain’s record, particularly of supporting the Bush administration, was off topic, since the debate should be about the future.

Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.

Since then, both she and the McCain campaign seem to have had a change of heart. All they want to talk about is the past. More specifically, doggone it, their twisted, out of context version of Sen. Barack Obama’s past.

  • John McCain’s campaign released a new ad Monday that targets year-old comments from Barack Obama about the conflict in Afghanistan, calling them flat out “dishonorable.”
    Palin: “Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.”

    …The ad refers to an answer Obama gave at an August 2007 town hall meeting with New Hampshire voters, during which the Illinois senator was asked whether he had plans to shift U.S. troops out of Iraq to other terrorist hotspots like Afghanistan.

    “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there,” Obama said of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

    Those comments were immediately seized by GOP critics. The Republican National Committee sent out a press release shortly after the remarks calling them “offensive,” and demanding he apologize. The McCain campaign has also highlighted the comments several times this campaign season. An AP Fact Check later reported Western forces had been killing civilians at a higher rate than insurgents.

    • […]

Poll: Palin Pushed Undecideds to Obama

Buck Banks

Sarah Palin’s performance in the vice presidential debate did have an affect on undecided voters — just not the one the McCain campaign had expected or hoped for. The McClatchy/Ipsos poll found:

If they had to vote immediately after watching the debate between Republican Palin and the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, 52 percent of the 456 undecided voters who were surveyed would vote the Obama/Biden ticket, the poll found.

It also found that Palin’s performance in the debate did nothing to clinch undecided votes for her running mate, Arizona Sen. John McCain. Before the debate, those same undecided voters were leaning 56 percent to 44 percent for McCain. The day after the debate, the numbers tilted 52 percent to 48 percent for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Keating Economics Exposes McCain’s Role in Deregulation

Trish

This is the Obama mini-documentary about the Keating Five scandal, also available at KeatingEconomics.com.

The film is 13 minutes, and my first reaction was, “Couldn’t you make it shorter?” but as usual, the Obama folks are smarter than me. I think the 13-minute length will create its own novelty, and I know the subject deserves two hours on the networks (fat chance) so what the heck.

If you aren’t up to speed on what happened when McCain improperly pressured to deregulate the financial services industry back then, surely you know what the results of his efforts are today. When you consider how much damage this guy has done just being a senator, you have to shudder about what kind of messes he could get us into as president.

McCain Seven Months Ago: We ‘Don’t Need Any Impugning of Character, Integrity’ in Campaign

Jon Ponder

In March 2008, John McCain said:
“Throughout his life John McCain has held himself to the highest standards and he will continue to run a respectful campaign based on the issues.”
— McCain campaign manager Rick Davis in March

I can’t prevent or control rhetoric that people use — that are members of my party. But I have been very, very clear that we need a respectful campaign and the American people want it. We certainly don’t need any impugning of character, integrity or anything else in this campaign. So I again urge Republicans and anybody else, to just — let’s show respect and make Americans proud of this campaign … frankly, it will enhance our chance of winning if people say, “look, those people are running a respectful campaign.”

McCain was reacting to spurious attacks launched by his supporters against Barack Obama, including one from Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King, who said Islamic terrorists would be “dancing in the street” if Obama were elected.

McCain’s statement came days after his campaign manager, Rick Davis, sent out a memo calling on supporters to “follow John’s lead and run a respectful campaign focused on the issues.” Davis also wrote:

Overheated rhetoric and personal attacks on our opponents distract from the big differences between John McCain’s vision for the future of our nation and the Democrats. This campaign is about John McCain: his vision, leadership, experience, courage, service to his country and ability to lead as commander in chief from day one. Throughout his life John McCain has held himself to the highest standards and he will continue to run a respectful campaign based on the issues. We expect that all supporters, surrogates and staff will hold themselves to similarly high standards when they are representing the campaign.

The noble maverickistic John McCain — if he ever existed — has apparently now been supplanted by a snarky, snarling double-talking misinformer, who will do or say anything to get elected.

Sourcing: Quotes from McCain and Davis can be found on the Fox News website.

AP Calls Palin ‘Palling with Terrorists’ Attack ‘Racially Tinged’ – Obama Lobs Counter-Attack with Keating 5 Documentary

Jon Ponder

Over the weekend, GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin, the self-described attack dog in lipstick, began what she and McCain have referred to as “taking the gloves off” — which is apparently Republican-speak for “telling even bigger lies” — with an attack on Barack Obama’s superficial association with 1960s radical, William Ayers:
Obama was only eight years old when Ayers used violence to protest the war in Iraq, but when John McCain entangled himself in the Keating Five scandal he was 58.

“Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

The Associated Press, which got a lot of press over the summer for the promotion of Ron Fournier, an apparent fellow traveler with Karl Rove, to head its DC bureau, released an analysis written by Douglass K. Daniel on Sunday that suggested that the Palin attack was “unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.” Daniel’s rationale goes like this:

Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?

In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.

Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.

Sean Hannity has been beating this tired drum for months. There simply is no “there” there. (We published an overview of Obama’s dealings with Ayers in March.) Obama said this about Ayers in a Democratic debate:

[…]

Sykes: Don’t Blame Gays for Your Marriage Being Effed Up

Trish

Florida has a ridiculous proposition on its ballot this November, amending our state constitution to bar gay marriage. Since gay marriage is already illegal by statute in the Sunshine State, one might wonder about the purpose of introducing a constitutional amendment. Most people surmise that the initiative was intended to turn out the base, a previously no-fail tactic to manipulate support from the far right and ensure an enthusiastic wingnut presence at the polls on election day.

Wanda Sykes cuts to the chase on gay marriage: “Government shouldn’t be involved in this because it’s very simple. If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage, then don’t marry someone of the same sex.”

What can we add to that? Just a warning that this video gets a little graphic at the very end.

H/T to Jacksonville Confidential