Palin probe has parallels to 2000 recount fight By DAVID ESPO WASHINGTON (AP) — This time, there are no hanging chads. Yet the Republicans' drive to derail an abuse of power investigation against Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential candidate, reflects the same determination and many of the same methods employed in shutting down the 2000 presidential recount in Florida. Now, as then, the playbook includes lawsuits, the exercise of power by sympathetic state officials, and appeals to the court of public opinion — all in an operation directed by out-of-state Republicans. "Hold me accountable," Palin said when the Republican-controlled legislature launched the investigation in mid-August. Now John McCain's running mate, she declines to cooperate. She calls the investigation tainted, her husband won't honor a subpoena to testify, and Republican lawmakers are in court with a pair of lawsuits challenging the legitimacy of the probe. Republican lawyers, researchers and public relations specialists have been dispatched to Alaska. The Anchorage lawyer originally hired by the state to represent Palin is no longer paid by taxpayers and instead is part of the McCain-Palin campaign's legal team.

#1 reason: McCain confused Spain with some lefty country in Latin America and now has to pretend he was snubbing PM of Spain on purpose

You don’t lose virginity that easily Preedy use whatever you’re comfortable with.

Originally posted by Geel_jire: "No candidate could run a major company " says the woman who ran HP into the ground and got a 42 M severance package ... i think her ego got the best of her. LOOL especially on the same day her former employer announces layoff of 25,000 employees.

Dear M. Taranto, Your WSJ article - on a short leach - implying that both Senators Reid and Biden voted for the Gramm Leach Billey Act and that Sen. McCain was absent is totally false. Reid and Biden voted against, and McCain was present and voted for it. See the vote summary on the passage of that bill here. Coming from the WSJ, this is unacceptable. Check your facts before publishing these kinds of colossal errors and misrepresenting candidates’ record. Sincerely,

^^LOOL she even has that Minnesotan accent ala fmr gov Ventura

SNL: Hillary and Sarah

Making A Story 'stick' By Steve Benen (Political Animal) MAKING A STORY 'STICK'.... CNN had a segment this morning about Sarah Palin lying on her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, but instead of delving into the McCain campaign's apparent inability to tell the truth, CNN's John Roberts asked why Barack Obama is having trouble making the truth "stick." It was an unusually inane question, which Paul Begala handled very, very well. quote: "Because the press won't do its job, John..... It is the media's job when a politician flat out lies like she's doing on this bridge to nowhere so call her on it. Or this matter of earmarks where she's attacking Barack Obama for having earmarks, when she was the mayor of little Wasilla, Alaska, 6,000 people, she hired a lobbyist who was connected to Jack Abramoff, who is a criminal, and they brought home $27 million in earmarks. She carried so much pork home she got trichinosis. But we in the media are letting her tell lies about her record." At that point, Roberts did what CNN tends to do -- turn to a Republican to offer a competing side to the truth. In this case, Alex Castellanos said the media should be "a little gentle" with Sarah Palin's obviously false claims. "The amazing thing about Sarah Palin is when she became governor she actually stood up and said no" to federal pork, he said. So, again, Begala tried to set the record straight. "That's just not true. You know, John, the facts matter. There's lots of things that are debatable who is more qualified or less experienced or more this or more passionate, whatever. It is a fact that she campaigned and supported that bridge to nowhere. It is a fact that she hired lobbyists to get earmarks. It is a fact that as governor she lobbies for earmarks. Her state is essentially a welfare state taking money from the federal government." Roberts wrapped up the segment, concluding, "We still have 56 days to talk about this back and forth." But therein lies the point. The nation doesn't need 56 days of "back and forth." We don't need 56 seconds of "back and forth." There's an objective truth here, and CNN, as a neutral, independent news source, is supposed to tell viewers what the facts are. But CNN can't do that, because reality has a well known liberal bias. If Roberts conceded that Begala was telling the truth about demonstrable facts, then he'd be "taking sides." For a media figure to acknowledge that a candidate for national office is lying shamelessly would be wholly unacceptable -- it would break with the "balance" between competing arguments. The viewer at home hears one side, then the other. Who's right? That's not CNN's problem. If viewers wants to hear an argument, they can turn to CNN. If viewers wants to know which side of the argument is right, they can look elsewhere. Which is precisely why candidates for national office feel comfortable lying shamelessly in the first place. And which is why the candidate telling the truth can't get the story to "stick." CBSNEWS

It was a very sad sad day that changed American politics and priorities forever.

Blizzard of Lies By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: September 11, 2008 Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere? These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies. Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security. But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again. Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.” Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere. So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction. Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators. And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on. Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty. They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.” Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that. One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years. But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern. I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary. I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts. And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country? What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

^^ You shouldn't hate the non-existent black Russians By all means carry on guys with the maryooley bashing!

The Mavrick

Really Joe! You’re supposed to be attacking the other guy right? Oh, That Joe! (No. 9 in a Series) - Wherein Jill Biden and John McCain Dance Drunkenly on a Tabletop in Greece September 05, 2008 5:23 PM Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., likes to tell crowds that he and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are friends. In a packed gymnasium at Maple Point Middle School in Langhorne, Pa., this afternoon, before a receptive crowd, Biden explained just how close they are. "John McCain is my friend," said the loquacious Blue Hen. "I admire John McCain. I know of no man or woman I have ever met that has more personal courage than John McCain. We have been friends for over 33 years. We have traveled together. When John was Navy liaison he staffed me for three or four years everywhere I traveled in the world. "Jill and John are good friends," Biden said, referring to his wife Dr. Jill Biden, who had just introduced him. "Matter of fact there’s a best-selling book written about us called The Nightingale's Song about John and some of his graduating class from Annapolis that references Jill and John in the book as good buddies. "She doesn’t like the reference,'" Biden added, "but John, John’s a great guy. John was staffing me in Greece. I was meeting with the Prime Minister Papandreou and we were supposed to go to this fancy dinner and Jill said 'Do we have to go to this dinner?' And John said, 'No, no, no I know this great place for dinner.' "And there was a place literally down on the docks, where Zorba lived I think, and so I had to go to the fancy thing and I come back down and I find it, and we’re wandering through these alleys on the dock -- you’re gonna get very angry at this Jill -- but I walk around the corner and there’s these cement tables like down at the shore you know, the cement base ,the cement table, and I walk in and Jill and John are standing up on the table drinking ouzo dancing with one another, and I’m thinking, 'I’ve never trusted John since then, Jillie.' "But he’s a great guy," Biden said, "and if John called me today and said 'Joe -,' like when they went after John McCain, when Bush went after him in South Carolina with the scurrilous comments they made about his character, I called him and said, 'John, where do you want me? I’m an Al Gore man but where do you want me? I will show up anywhere in America to testify to the kind of man you are.' And he is a good man, he is a good man." -- Jake Tapper and Matt Jaffe ABC

Aww! The little girl was sooo cute licking her fingers and damping down her brother’s hair. But I was surprised the 7 yr old was holding the baby – WTF

---"Watch out, Mr. Bush! With the exception of economic policy and energy policy and social issues and tax policy and foreign policy and Supreme Court appointments, we're coming in there to shake things up!"

^^LOL she has as much class as pit pull with a lipstick but Sen. Obama had a great come back line for the Comminity Organizing jabs he took on Wed. Q. How is community organizing relevant for the presidency? Obama: This is very curious. They havent talked about the fact that I was a civil rights lawyer, or taught constitutional law, my work in the state legislature, or US Senate, they focused on this 3 years where i worked as a community organizer, right out of college. As if im make the leap from 2-3 years out of college to the presidency. I would argue that doing work in the community, try and create jobs, rejuvenate the communities that have fallen on hard times, bring people together, setup job training programs in areas that have been hard hit where the steel plants have closed. That's relevant only in understanding where im coming from, who I believe in, who I am fighting for and why I'm in this race. The question I have for them is Why would that kind of work be ridiculous? WHO ARE THEY FIGHTING FOR? (emphasis mine) What are they advocating for? Do they think that the lives of those folks struggling each and every day, that working with to try and improve their lives is somehow not relevant to the presidency. I think that is part of the problem, that they are out of touch and dont get it because they havent spent much time working on behalf of those folks.

^^ Yeah he was great too bad not too many people saw since the cable networks didn't carry it live. Everyone should watch it on CSPAN no self important talking heads ruining it for you By the way your governor was good too, did you see his speech?

I didn't catch Hillary's speech but it must've been good since all the punditries are having hard time parsing her words for any hint of disingenuousness. The highlight for me was Denis Kucinich - He served up red meat taking the Bush administration to task with his Wake Up America speech. “If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold,” Kucinich said. “World records for violations of national and international laws … we can't afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America. “The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing. Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. “This administration can tap our phones. They can't tap our creative spirit,” he said. “They can open our mail. They can't open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. They skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green. “Wake up, America! This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems." “Up with health care for all,” he said. “Up with education for all. Up with homeownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden!”

^^The good thing is DNA is widely available now – so good time to check if you have other African blood maybe

^ LOL @ soor tasting like cardboard. it's right up there with cambulo for me, don’t even like to see it. Afur for me involves sambus, sambus and more sambus by the time I am done eating my sambuus I am too full for anything else

Mitt Romney is one big phony and does not come close to Sen. Biden, who is very well vested in both domestic and foreign policy and is a great debater. Actually it would be interesting if Sen. McCain chooses Romney because than the VP debates will overshadow the candidate. As you know both Obama and McCain do not do as well as they should when it comes to debates. PS I am getting tired of hearing about Hillary and her supporters seems like they took over the convention. :mad:

I loved Ted Kennedy's speech the most - also Michelle and Sen. Obama's sister were great. The speaker of the house should stop speaking ..really!

This in response to Ron Fournier's latest hit job on senator Obama. Dear Mr. Oreskes and Ms. Carroll: I am deeply concerned by the lack of objectivity demonstrated in today's AP article by Ron Fournier concerning the announcement of Sen. Joseph Biden as Sen. Obama's running mate. Speculating on a candidate's level of confidence is beyond the knowledge of a reporter unless there is actual evidence on the record. This kind of writing belongs in an opinion piece: "The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn't beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack." If the "candidate of change" says he's looking for a VP with whom he can discuss and disagree on issues, then Biden fits the bill. I am additionally concerned by Fournier's ties to the McCain camp, namely that he seriously considered working for McCain back in 2006. He is well within his right to do so, but to let him cover the presidential race deprives AP readers of a trustworthy source for dispassionate analysis of the race. I hope you will work to address this issue before the AP's reputation and value in news is further compromised.