Press Unfair to Sarah Palin?

Sarah Palin says she didn't know Katie Couric would be so mean. And when she was, her handlers still made her answer more questions!

Before she was tapped, Sarah said Hillary should have expected tough coverage.

Palin: "When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism or, you know, maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, man, that doesn’t do us any good. Women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country. I don’t think it’s, it bodes well for her -- a statement like that."

Voting and Taxes are Unpatriotic? If you are a Republican running for office

Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

NYTimes Thomas Friedman says: I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

Next thing you know, she'll say voting is unpatriotic!

"I may not answer the question the way you or the mainstream media want me to..."

Gwen Ifill is no debate moderator. The conditions of a debate are that debators agree to answer the questions posed. If they want to answer other questions, they can pay the media, or lock out the people asking pesky questions, or call on hand selected or planted "reporters." Sarah Palin was allowed to use the debate as her own commercial. Ifill never interrupted, never steered her back to the question, never called her on her evasions. Nevertheless, Palin never exceeded anything but the lowest expectations. In poll after poll, even on Fox and Drudge, Joe Biden wins. A CBS News/Knowledge Networks Poll found that 46 percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate thought Biden won, with 21 percent siding with Palin. A CNN poll found respondents judging Biden the winner by a margin of 51 percent to 36 percent but calling Palin more likable by 54 percent to Biden's 36 percent.

NYT: Senator Biden did well, avoiding one of his own infamous gaffes, while showing a clear grasp of the big picture and the details. He left Ms. Palin way behind on most issues, especially foreign policy and national security, where she just seemed lost. It was in those moments that her lack of experience — two terms as mayor of a tiny Anchorage suburb and less than two years as governor — was most painfully evident.

Joe Biden had a command of the facts and the stage, chiding Ifill but not Palin. That way he avoids ridiculous charges that asking a woman to understand the federal government that she wants to lead would be sexist. Joe did strike a blow for equal rights when he mentioned his own parental role:

Look, I understand what it's like to be a single parent. When my wife and daughter died and my two sons were gravely injured, I understand what it's like as a parent to wonder what it's like if your kid's going to make it.

I understand what it's like to sit around the kitchen table with a father who says, "I've got to leave, champ, because there's no jobs here. I got to head down to Wilmington. And when we get enough money, honey, we'll bring you down."

I understand what it's like. I'm much better off than almost all Americans now. I get a good salary with the United States Senate. I live in a beautiful house that's my total investment that I have. So I -- I am much better off now. But the notion that somehow, because I'm a man, I don't know what it's like to raise two kids alone, I don't know what it's like to have a child you're not sure is going to -- is going to make it -- I understand.

I understand, as well as, with all due respect, the governor or anybody else, what it's like for those people sitting around that kitchen table. And guess what? They're looking for help. They're looking for help. They're not looking for more of the same.

Lee Atwater, Willie Horton and John McCain

John McCain's fans - rich people who know that McCain's tax plan (but not Obama's) will raise middle-class taxes to pay for the rich - are hiding their real interests behind a race-baiting ad by the Swiftboaters who brought you Willie Horton.

I hope they know what they are doing. Lee Atwater was punished for this wickedness with a brain tumor.

A dying Atwater said: "It is very important to me that I let you know that out of everything that has happened in my career, one of the low points remains the so-called 'jumper cable' episode," adding, "my illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything."[11]

McCain Palin lies coming too fast to count: Lipstick, Rape and McCain

As McCain/Paliin continues his phoney outrage on "Lipstick on a pig."

Meanwhile, few press outlets add substance behind the reports of phoney outrage, and McCain/Palin get free advertising and a free pass to run out the elction clock - more time when they don't have to talk about Iraq.

McCain's treatment of women is filled with abhorrent behavior and heinous language. After he called his wife a trollup and a c*nt, he used the same phrase of "lipstick on a pig" to describe Hillary.

In an appearance before the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington D.C., McCain supposedly asked the crowd if they had heard "the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die?"
The punch line: "When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"

This man is trying to convince disillusioned Hillary voters that he cares about women, while pandering to the worst fears in some voters. The ape also gives the joke a racist aspect.

He also is quoted as making cruel fun of lovely Chelsea Clinton; we all had an awkward teen phase. Hers was painfully public, made more painful by the adolescent cruelty of John McCain:

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

Truth? Factcheck.org gives McCain terrible marks for "Straight Talk," including his lies about Factcheck!

Sarah Palin supported the Bridge to NoWhere - and lied about it

Are you wondering whether Sarah Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska?

WAPO says Palin is lying:" Palin did at one time support the Bridge to Nowhere, and the $223 million earmarked for the project was sent to Alaska. Some of it was used for other state projects, about $40 million was used to build an access road to the now-scrapped bridge project and $73 million is sitting in an account, awaiting some other proposal to link the tiny towns of Ketchikan and Gravina, according to the Alaska Department of Transportation."

Palin and McCain are resurrecting a strategy from the Karl Rove script that accused McCain's middle school daughter of being a bastard child from a liaison with a black prostitute to win the South Carolina primary in 2000. "We have created a system where there is not a lot of shame in stretching the truth," said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

USAToday has uncovered quotes from 2006 when Sarah Palin was still Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge, and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative,” Palin said in August
2006, according to the Ketchikan Daily News.

The Anchorage Daily News quoted her in October 2006 as saying she would continue state funding for the bridge. “The window is now, while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist,” she said.

Asked why she supported the bridge, Palin’s communications director Bill McAlister said, “It was never at the top of her priority list, and in fact the project isn’t necessarily dead … there’s still the potential for improved ferry service or even a bridge of a less costly design.”

Wasilla, which in 2007 had 9,780 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, hired a lobbyist in 2000, public records show, paying him about $36,000 per year. In 2001, Palin was quoted in a local newspaper crediting Silver with helping secure federal funding for Wasilla.

Community Organizers bristling at Palin's False and Insulting Remarks

After all, Jesus was a Community Organizer. Pontius Pilot was a governor.

The Catholic community who sponsored his work responded this way:

Catholic Democrats is expressing surprise and shock that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's acceptance speech tonight mocked her opponent's work in the 1980s for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. She belittled Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer in Catholic parishes on the South Side of Chicago, work he undertook instead of pursuing a lucrative career on Wall Street. In her acceptance speech, Ms. Palin said, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." Community organizing is at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching to end poverty and promote social justice.

As for the South Side of Chicago - not many people felt safe walking with Barack there, much less living there. But no matter where you are from, check out PaulVA who has a list of Community Organizers that made your life better. Other community organizers are fighting back.

McCain says Washington is broken. Does he say WHY?

Political Cartoonist Matt Davies says Republicans broke it. He hit the nail on the head.

(click here to view)

Matt Davies Journal News Sep 5, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Is Sarah Palin more like Dick Cheney or more like Clarence Thomas?

A week ago, Sarah Palin didn't know what the Vice President does. "What exactly is it that the VP does every day?" Now she is asking for your vote.

Meanwhile, Palin's past has some disturbing parallels to Dick Cheney's.

* A scapegoating, firing, and influence peddling story that reminds us of the the Jim Wilson/Scooter Libby scandal.

* Oil company shill and global warming deny-er.

Alaskans call her appointment "A Bridge to Nowhere."

On the other hand, is she more like Clarence Thomas: a neophyte with no trail of experience to support her or to critcize, with no intellectual heft to bring to the table. An opportunistic choice consistent with John McCain's strategy of selling out his maverick credentials to the administration that accused his own adopted daughter of being a bastard from a liaison McCain supposedly had with an African American prostitute. McCain did not stand up to Karl Rove's slur of his own elementary-school age daughter, just so he could be President. McCain chose a running mate who, like Clarence Thomas, Joe Biden couldn't criticize without being portrayed as a bully.

I hope Biden unleashes all his fury at this Barbie politician and he should have all Feminist support behind him. With just a few months as governor under her belt, Palin is no Hillary.

In the meantime, even Associated Press confuses this ticket with Dick Cheney.

Why do Oil Speculators beg for our Money?

In 2007, Exxon/Mobil earned $1,300 a second.

For the second quarter of 2008, Exxon Mobil reported record quarterly earnings of $11.97 billion on total revenues of $138 billion.

That 2Q 2008 profit works out to $1,485.55 a second.

Dirty Tricks on Joe Biden

We've already seen the attack machine start on Joe Biden, bringing up charges that he committed plagarism when he described his childhood using facts from Neil Kinnick. He had mentioned Kinnick in previous speeches, but this one time he used the first person ("I") and did not credit Kinnick.

Biden had brain aneurysms at the time.

See the Biden story on YouTube.

First Wives Club: John and Carol McCain

How much do you know about Carol McCain, the wife of John McCain before Cindy? She now lives in Virginia Beach.

"[T]here is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator's presidential campaign. Had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain's first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.

It took Britian's Daily Mail to cover the story, while the conglomorates who own mainstream media push aside the story like McCain pushed aside his wife.

"My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25," Carol said, apparently benevolently.

"In 1979 while still married to Carol he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage.

Carol and her children were devastated. It was a complete surprise,' says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide.

Salon summed it up: "McCain's strategy worked perfectly: After chasing Cindy Hensley [and her Anheuser-Busch fortune] around the country for six months, he closed the deal late in the year, had a divorce by February and was married to Hensley shortly thereafter. Bingo! McCain was a candidate for Congress by early 1982, his coffers full, his home in the proper Arizona district purchased."

The Daily Mail story inspired Salon, Gawker, US Veteran Dispatch, even the Drudge Report covered the story this week.

Scott McClellan: “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed.”

From AP:

In a shocking turnabout, the press secretary most known for defending President Bush on Iraq, Katrina and a host of other controversial issues produced a memoir damning of his old boss on nearly every level — from too much secrecy to a less-than-honest selling of the war to a lack of personal candor and an unwillingness to admit mistakes.

In the first major insider account of the Bush White House, one-time spokesman Scott McClellan calls the operation "insular, secretive and combative" and says it veered irretrievably off course as a result.

Is the money McClellan received to write a book more inspiring of truth than the money he took masquerading as a public servant? Now that there are over 4000 American military casualties in Iraq, McClellan makes it clear he made his own “decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed.”

Stem Cell research and cures 20 years behind: millions suffer

Stem cell research relied on a few donations from fertility clinics that would otherwise be incinerated. Couples undergoing in vitro fertilization have an option when their treatment is finished to donate their embryos to other couples, and many do. But some just can't face the prospect of a genetic child of their own "out there," and yet still want to help others, for example, by making a contribution to cures.

Since Reagan stopped federal funding for stem cell research in 1987, scientists in the US were prohibited even from using the microscope in a lab that received a Federal grant to view stem cells. They had to waste time and money to create duplicate labs while patients died. Their colleagues left to research outside the US, slowing collaborations, while patients died. Research in countries like South Korea with weaker oversight infrastructure produced work frought with fraud while patients died.

While patients and their families suffered for 20 years, political opportunists conjured harangues and tales of woe, of embryos created merely for destruction.

Denying the existence of the same American ingenuity,
encouraged by government funding, that invented the Internet, built a trans-Continental railroad, and salvaged our environment from pollution, financed how to make penicillin, vaccines and other "wonder drugs" widely available, they somehow got away with draping themselves in the American flag.

Now scientists can make stem cells from skin. These cells can't yet do everything that stem cells can do, but the discovery is a breakthrough. Now that we are 20 years behind studying and understanding how these cells behave, grow, and contribute to curing terrible diseases.

Rick Weiss: The big next step is to find better ways of turning on the right genes to get cells to become embryonic -- ways that don't involve retroviruses. Many scientists are talking about using "small molecules" that can get to a cell's DNA and affect which genes are turned on or off. Also important: What other gene combinations can accomplish that (the two teams used four genes each, but two are different between them and other combinations with other genes may work, too). The thinking right now is that different genes in different doses might result in stem cells that have slightly different potentials to become different kinds of tissues. Then of course there will be years of safety testing, first in animals, then in people. And then, at least, some efforts to treat diseases. Meanwhile they will be used by many scientists to study diseases in lab dishes.

From WaPo editorial:

Congress should continue to consider legislation easing restrictions on the use of discarded embryos for research. After all, this breakthrough could not have been possible without research on embryonic stem cells. The potential gains from this science are so great that all avenues should be pursued until the new technology is proven.