I don't fear for my reading list. I fear that she'll feel comfortable imposing her religious beliefs on the rest of the country in whatever way she can get away with. You guys used to fear what the executive agencies could do under the cloak of darkness.

There's no denying the theme of the modern crusades influencing neoconservative thinking though. Spreading Christianity and all that. I definitely don't believe it was a sole cause (that would be $$$), more like an added "bonus."

*nods* of course

Report: Palin tapped travel allowance at home - Yahoo! News

Aren't most neocons (or at least the founders of the movement) Jews?

Given the logistics of travel regarding distance and locations in Alaska, I'm honestly surprised that it wasn't much higher than the amount they report. The distance between her home and the capital is roughly the same as the distance between Kansas City and Denver. For those keeping score at home, that's a LONG way from home. Also, when compared to the previous administration's expenses, she has cut travel expenses by the governor by 90%. I'm sure you could nitpick here or there, but that's pretty substantial savings for the state.

Yawn.

I think this column on Palin has a lot of merit, considering the perspective is from a Democratic consultant, Kirsten Powers:

YESTERDAY'S Gallup poll had John McCain ahead of Barack Obama by an astonishing 10 points among likely voters. A Washington Post poll had that lead at only two points, but clearly showed a McCain surge - especially among women. This wasn't what Democrats were expecting when they left Denver - yet they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Obama's toughest challenge has always been to connect with working-class swing voters. So attacking the poster child for small-town values, Sarah Palin, was a bad strategy.

No, Obama didn't engage in the mass sneering at Palin - but he did fall into the trap of disrespecting her. When McCain chose her, the Obama campaign's first response was to ridicule the size of her town. Then the candidate himself began referring to her as a "former mayor" when she is in fact a sitting governor.

When she retaliated (justifiably) by mocking his stint as a organizer, the Obama camp was clearly rattled. Obama himself actually began arguing about the importance of community organizing. His supporters amplified this cry - claiming Palin's attack was a racist slur and passing around e-mails titled "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor."

Meanwhile, the rest of the country was probably wondering what being a community organizer has to do with being president.

Lured by the McCain camp, Obama supporters engaged in an argument about who had more overall experience - the top of the Democratic ticket or the bottom of the GOP ticket. This diminished Obama.

Meanwhile, the media lit up in all their cultural-elite splendor.

Alaska? they sneered. It has the population of Las Vegas! Funny how the coastal elite only sneers at red states with small populations. Howard Dean hailed from a blue state with almost the same population as Alaska and was a national phenomenon and front-runner for the presidency. Joe Biden's Delaware has a similarly small population - but no mocking was forthcoming there.

Evangelicals will never vote for a woman who works! they declared. This from people who've likely never met an evangelical in their lives. They could barely contain themselves when they found out Gov. Palin's daughter was pregnant, so sure were they that evangelicals would hang her from the highest tree. When evangelical leaders expressed support, there was a palpable disappointment that Palin or her daughter wasn't branded with a scarlet letter.

They claimed that the Palin announcement was some desperate pick that came out of nowhere. Had they been doing their jobs, or even perusing The Weekly Standard or right-wing blogs, they'd have known that she was on the list.

Since they didn't know anything about her, they started making things up. Anything that fit the caricature of a right-wing hypocrite was thrown up with, seemingly, no fact-checking.

They said she opposes contraception, when she said in a campaign debate that she is pro-contraception. They said she cut funding for pregnant teens, when she provided a massive funding hike.

They accused her of cutting funding for mentally disabled children, when she raised it 175 percent over the former administration. She was said to have been a member of the wacky Alaska Independence Party; The New York Times had to run a retraction.

Like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Palin has been deemed one of the GOP's rising stars. Since it's national reporters job to cover American politics, their ignorance of about her is distressing.

Most Americans think that the media are cheerleading for Obama, so they'll punish him for the reporters' and editors' sins.

So now he is weighted down with more baggage as he works to convince an important voting bloc that he and his party don't hold them in contempt.

The clock is ticking.

HOW OBAMA BLEW IT - New York Post

I'm beyond confused on how Terry Shiavo or the 10 commandments answers my question about how politicans are succesful subverting the constitution for their religion that I don't really know where to start.

Terri's Law was found unconstitutional, and she's dead now.

That judge isn't a politican. I don't see what that has to do with anything.

I don't think you understood my question. I was mocking the implication that a VP might have the ability to ban birth control or ban books, and asked for examples where a politican was successful in doing their own thing despite the consitution. In the examples I got, there were long legal battles, and the courts decided things (not the politicans), which is the idea. I'm certainly aware that politicans have done things that have been found unconstitutional. There's about a billion of examples of that, but thanks for the two.

Congress has the power to declare war (and they did authorize this one), but the president has even broader powers as commander-in-chief.

Flasch and JPhillips... y'all are coming off as a little shrill here.

First of all, regarding Palin and the library, here's what factcheck.org has to say:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2...ing_palin.html

There's a LOT more background at factcheck.org, including the fact that the woman making these claims says that Palin has "hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah’s attempt at censorship."

As for the travel, it's true that she was reimbursed for travel expenses. But also from the Washington Post:

Heavens to Betsy! This post at the Corner is worth reading as well:

The Corner on National Review Online

Great article Vic.

Obama and his supporters blowing this election is both hillarious and sad.

I wonder if Obama was so stingy as a Senator as Palin was as a governor? Did he fly coach? Somehow I can't picture that.

An editorial named How Obama Blew It,(but about the media's mishandling of Palin?) The article's name isn't even original. This is like the 3rd or 4th article I've read stating how Obama has blown the election. He blew it not taking public funds, he blew it not picking Hillary, he blew it not denouncing Wright soon enough, he blew it not picking Hillary, he blew it not going hard enough at McCain, and now he blew it over something he has no control over? Give me break. Hilarious.

So how do you think he's blowing it?

He's clearly blowing it right? Thousands of screaming superfans everywhere, media support, a message of "change", huge party support, one of the greatest speakers in memory, a 72-year old broken down opponent of a damaged brand who stumbles his words, the lowest approval ratings ever for the current president of the opposing party.

You think he should be happy to be tied or worse in the polls?

Democrats can't and won't win over the undecideds by looking down on them.

As long as he manages to blow it, I'm content to wait until afterward to fully dissect it. And I (somewhat rhetorically) wonder how much money will be made by other people doing just that?

Agreed. This is the kind of petty horseshit that is going to make the democrats lose the election. You aren't going to win the character vote. You have to win on the issues.

No, I don't believe he's blowing it. The race has been tight and will continue to be close. Yes he should be happy. Gotta go pick up my wife from work, though talk to you in a bit.

The moment he chose Biden that campaign stalled. Such a terrible choice.

that's it, im throwing in with the conservatives. i look down on people who look down on people.

by nominating justices...

If there's a potential supreme court justice out there that would help carry out the "scary" religious agenda of McCain/Plain and also get through Senate confirmation (no matter party what party controls) I'd love to hear about him

And just to sum up the two big fears about Palin as I understand them.

1. She's against birth control. I googled this and didn't find any reference to it except on liberal blogs. And even those didn't clarifty whether she personally didn't believe in birth control, or if she was in favor of a federal ban, or if she would only appoint a Supreme Court Justice that would overrule Griswold (or how she's have access to a time machine to find one).

2. She "tried to ban books", which is a total lie all over this thread, all we know is that she asked about how books could be removed from a public library. Nobody seems to know what books, or even if the conversation got that far.

And part of a vote for McCain is a vote for more conservative judges, but the implication that these judges will set off a revolution of book and birth control banning is nothing more than desperate fear-mongering.

Scalia, Thomas, Alito, etc. If McCain gets in, he will no doubt be going after justices in this mold. If he doesn't the conservatives who are gushing ove rPalin will be livid.


Are you kidding? Conservative justices would love to overrule Griswold. There's at least 3 votes on the court for doing that right now (Scalia, Thomas, Alito), and Roberts might be a 4th.


The conversation never got that far because the public response to firing the librarian was so negative that she didn't go through with it.

I'm enjoying these new "smoking guns" on Palin that come out each day. Half are shown untrue, others are shown to be blown way out of proportion and maybe 1-2 have any kind of remote staying power (troopergate is probably the closest here). But, even for those 1-2 real issues that come out, the public has been so saturated with debunked crap on Palin that most probably don't even treat troopergate any different than the independent party garbage or the "her daughter's the real mom to her son" crud.

To me, the media is at the boy who cried wolf stage with Palin. Even if a real wolf came out tomorrow, the loss of credibility by the blogs/media after all these crazy charges would almost completely soften the impact. At this point, the democrats should just lay off her and focus on Obama-McCain. This is one thing the republicans have been smart on. There's plenty of red meat on Biden but the right hasn't touched it. The last thing they want to do is take the pressure off Obama right now.

Now, as I said earlier, if I am McCain I am sending Palin out to do interviews and secretly fanning the flames on all these anti-Palin stories. Check out some of the Rasmussen numbers:


Later in the same poll it says

Rasmussen Reports™: The most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a presidential election.

So, in reality, it wasn't just the naming of Palin that's helped McCain. It's the fact that people feel she's been unfairly treated by the media that's helping McCain and giving her sympathy. So, if I'm McCain, let's keep that up ;)

so you'd be cool if Troopergate turns out to be true in that she did do something wrong, because it'd be hidden by all the static. so spun you are that you'd be happy that the truth (if found that she acting unethically) would be 'hidden'.

If its true its true and you should be pissed too instead of pushing your angle. God, when will you strive for the truth in things?

she tried to fire the librarian, hello?!

you should be pissed at lies from both sides!!

I don't think it's right that she did that, either. But, I don't get it - who's perfect these days - I'll vote for him/her in a heartbeat.

vote for Ezekial Brewman! :)

He's a real as any of the politicians, anyway.

Okay, let's take this at face value. If we have learned *anything* at all from a thread like this one, it's that lots and lots of people on both sides have convenient filters that simply work to translate any news item into reinforcement for what they have already decided. If it's bad news about the guy they hate, it's true and very important. If it's bad news about the guy they already like, then it's suspect and probably irrelevant. We already see how this works.

So, it seems one person in four says that hearing news items saying that Sarah Palin did something untoward... and that makes them more likely to vote for her. Don't we honestly have to think that we're just seeing more of the same here, and that this is just the instinctive reaction from people who have already decided to vote for the GOP ticket and are just expressing their reactions in much the same way that the predictable back-and-forth occurs here? "I'm for her. Somebody said something mean about her? I'm even MORE for her now!" Same thing on both sides... I don't think this is a surprise that it would show up in a poll.

When he's running against a nominee of a Party whose President has an approval rating in the 30s... that's horrid to be this tight and even behind. He can't be happy at that.

This. I'm so tired of the Democrats' obsession with "winning the right way." This is American politics, it's dirty, you must do anything and everything you can to win, no matter how cynical or untrue.

If the Republicans can spin the media asking questions about Sarah Palin to the Obama campaign attacking her, or flat-out lie about how their tax plan will affect middle class Americans and Palin's "opposition" to the Bridge to Nowhere, then there's no reason for the Democrats to try and keep it classy.

Interesting article about Obama's efforts to steal an electoral vote in Nebraska. Could become key if the election stays close.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080909/...ska_split_vote

The Dems aren't doing themselves any favors in this election. Sure, Obama has a funny name and he's black. Ok, so what? People can think of lots of good reasons not to vote for him that have nothing to do with that. Even voting against their own economic interests. John Kerry and Al Gore both lost to the current regime and those guys didn't grow up anywhere near Indonesia.

The Dems needs to stop bitching, stop whining, stop trying to play a game that they are NOT cut out for. They need to get in the trenches and start fighting.

It'll be astounding and hilarious if they manage to blow this. Because they won't even be able to blame St. Barack. Sure, he's made missteps and gaffes and sure, folks who'd never vote for him think he's an empty suit.

But the issue is, the folks who purport to support him are turning off otherwise fair minded folks who might be induced to pull the lever for him in November.

They're preaching to the choir when they need to be caroling door to door.

I don't think the alarm is ringing and I still don't believe that Team Barack made it this far to lose to John Freakin' McCain, but...if you've seen The Devil's Advocate, surely the fact that he's sold his soul for infamy has to count for something.

But I fear that the screaming left will be feigning anger for so long that they'll lose on a TKO in November and be left wondering what happened.

Not that I'm massively opposed. McCain's health care plan will probably raise wages if it were fully passed through and it's likely to prevent tax increases, even as spending runs rampant and the bureaucracy continues to bloat.

Obama's coattails ought to provide a filibuster proof majority for the Dems in the Senate tho. Adding to the hilarity of Washington gridlock.

Then Obama can go on the lecture circuit, write a few books and continue to hit the college circuit forever, McCain can turn Washington into a reality show for 4 years and as it goes, it goes.

It doesn't sound like he can win there but great idea to try.

And this, Flasch, is why you'll never convince me that religion and morality has no place in politics.

Obama's whole campaign was launched on the idea that Big Fo is wrong.. that we have to change politics because it's changed us... and not for the better. That's why he enjoyed such popularity. Somewhere along the way, however, it turned from a campaign based around an ideal to a campaign based around an idol.

What Big Fo is saying is that at some point folks become desperate (and that's what this is... desperation) enough that selling out their principles and ideals is acceptable in order to win. Now, there may be circumstances in which that's true, but I don't think it's good for the country to say that party comes before principle.

On a lighter note, I'm going to send a case of 5 Hour Energy to the folks at factcheck.org. I have a feeling their going to be working overtime for the next two months.

I'll assume you accidentally pulled a debunking for a chain email that I never referenced. Palin certainly inquired about banning books, I don't think anyone really is denying that, she certainly hasn't. No, she didn't actually get any books banned, but the inquiry and the threat to fire the librarian needs to be addressed by Palin.

As to your later point about cynicism, who's campaign manger said this election isn't about issues?

It's hard to change the game if you lose the election.

He's already changed his mind on some other things like the effectiveness of the surge, saying he would wait to push his tax cuts/raises through with the economy as it is, defended then denounced Rev. Wright, he's accepted public funding, etc. I don't really see 527s as any better or worse. Obama has shown that in important situations that he will bow to pragmatism even if it means going against what he had previously believed to be correct and/or said publicly.

I told you guys back in the primary season that North Carolina wouldn't be in play this fall, and I got some disagreement. I don't expect Obama to spend much time or money there now.

The link that Cam provided yields there statements...

"Actually, Palin never asked that books be banned"
"The librarian never claimed that Palin threatened outright to fire her for refusing to ban books."

...so I'm not sure what you were saying there.

Obviously, I don't know what occurred during that conversation, so I'm not implying she did or didn't want to ban books, but based on factcheck.org, it sounds like the questions were simply "what if's" that an employer would ask an employee. Like if I were to ask on of my subordinates, "What would you do if I said you couldn't code this in Visual Studio?"...it's not me saying they can't use Visual Studio ever again...I just want to know how they would approach the situation.

Then again, maybe Palin is a fascist...I dunno.

Ohhh... so you'll regain your ideals and principles AFTER your candidate wins. With an attitude like that, I think you're ready to be a candidate yourself!

I'm sure McCain will be redenouncing the agents of intolerance if he's elected.

If it's not too late to run I can just copy Obama's "change" mantra like McCain has.

edit: Also I've never claimed to be as idealistic with regards to politics and elections as Obama has...

And that's one of the places things get into tricky ground I think.

Not picking on you or your comment at all, I just want to take a notion & run with it a bit and this snippet provides a good lead in for that.

At some point neither party is perfect. Short of having myself named benevolent dictator for live I'm going to find myself in disagreement on some behavior with a person/party no matter who is holding an office. So at what point do you end up throwing the baby out with the bath water? What I'm getting at is that, even if there's an occasional trick dirtier than I would care for personally, there's still situations where my values are more in synch with the person who played it than I am with their opposition.

Fighting dirty doesn't rub me (or most voters IMO) nearly the wrong way so much as other disagreements I have with the opposition. And when you know the ethically bankrupt folks on the other side (regardless of which side you're on) are going to fight dirty whether you do or not ... well, it really doesn't seem much wonder to me that this sort of thing gets largely ignored.
And I think that's pretty reasonable, since the only other viable alternative is not to vote at all.

This is why the reason for Carville's famous riddle (off the top of my head, so it may be somewhat paraphrased): "What do you call the candidate that relies on the youth vote? The loser."

Because candidates are more pragmatic, so the idealistic youth voters feel their change candidate abandoned his message for votes (ie, "politics as usual").

Josh Marshall calls it the Bitch Slap Theory of electoral politics. The public wants to know you're a fighter and complaining about being slapped doesn't win elections. Part of the appeal for the Republicans has been that people can expect them to be tough bastards if need be. The Democrats can't win until they prove the same thing.

Which is why I thought Hillary Clinton would have been the better choice for the Dems. For all of her faults, there is no doubt she's a fighter.

I find all this "Hillary would have been a better choice" talk to be mostly revisionist thinking. I was a Hillary supporter during the early primaries, switched to Obama before the GA primary. All I heard during those early primaries was a bunch of talk about her high negatives, and now people think she would have been a dynamite VP pick?

High negatives, but all you needed was Kerry + Ohio.

yes. she has bigger balls than Bill and Obama

Which we still might get. Or maybe not Ohio, but some other combination. The experience issue would have been really problematic for Obama if he had selected Hillary. There's also the possibility that Obama selected Biden based on ability rather than politics.

I do think the eulogy is being written a little prematurely for the Obama campaign.

I can't believe some of you are ignorantly suggesting that we'll have more of Roberts, Alito, etc. if McCain is elected. Is that the latest scare tactics? That's why we will have a Democratic Senate, not a Republican Senate and is why we need a split Senate/Executive. If we don't, it'll be no different than 2001-2007 and that's bad.

I don't know Buc, but while you're calling me ignorant, why don't you tell me what party was in charge when Scalia and Thomas were both confirmed?

Also, could you please describe what kind of shitstorm will happen among the religious right if Stevens steps down, making the Roe split 4-4, and McCain fails to deliver on a justice they want?