Palin’s Advice to Tina Fey

Watch your back, Tina Fey.

Gov. Sarah Palin kicked off a rally in Ohio this afternoon with a feisty shot at Ms. Fey, who has played Ms. Palin with dead-on accuracy on “Saturday Night Live” for the last two months.

Ms. Palin had just taken the stage after Gretchen Wilson, the country singer, who sang “Redneck Woman” to warm up the crowd.

“Speaking of great performances, did anyone catch John McCain on ‘SNL’ last night?” Ms. Palin said, drawing cheers.

“A little advice to Tina Fey,” Ms. Palin said. “I want to make sure she’s holding on to that Sarah outfit. Because she’s gonna need it in the next four years.”

It turns out Ms. Palin missed the full experience of watching Mr. McCain on “Saturday Night Live.” She boarded her charter plane at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, just on time to watch the show, an aide said, but the audio on her television wasn’t working.

-JULIE BOSMAN, NY Times

Quote of the Day

"We're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

-- Gov. Sarah Palin, quoted by the New Yorker, a few weeks before she was nominated for vice president.

Sarah Palin Is A "Whack Job"

The divisions in the McCain-Palin campaign continue to widen with one senior McCain aide telling Mike Allen that Gov. Sarah Palin is "a whack job."

Meanwhile, George Stephanopoulos said this about the "demoralized" McCain campaign on ABC News this morning: "Palin is going to be the most vivid chapter of the McCain campaign's post-mortem... Those loyal to McCain believe they have been unfairly blamed for over-handling Palin. They say they did the best they could with what they got."

- Political Wire

Countdown: McCain in the Membrane Oct. 27, 2008

Quote of the Day

"Thank God she's not going to have to be president from day one."

-- Sen. Joe Lieberman, quoted by the Stamford Advocate, when asked if Gov. Sarah Palin is ready to be president. He went on to say, "McCain's going to be alive and well."

October 24, 2008

Palin: 'I Don't Know' If Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists

The buffoonish nature of Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy has mostly been a disaster for the McCain-Palin campaign, but it is has delivered at least one benefit: her foibles have helped obscure the true nature of her right-wing extremism.

But now, Sarah Palin's self-destructive behavior is threatening to expose even that. In an interview broadcast yesterday on NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams asked Palin whether she felt abortion clinic bombers were terrorists. Amazingly, she said that she didn't know :

"I don’t know if you’re going to use the word ‘terrorist’ there,"



What makes it so incredible is that Sarah Palin was responding to one of the easiest questions that has been posed during this entire campaign. Her answer should have been simple: of course they are terrorists.

Instead, Palin balked, saying that while bombings were unacceptable, she didn't know if they were acts of terrorism.

-Jed L Daily Kos.

President Bush on SNL Last Night

President Bush (A.K.A. Will Ferrell) made a suprise appearence on last night's special election coverage edition of Saturday Night Live. It was extremely funny and if you missed it, watch it here.

$150,000 IN CLOTHES SENATOR McCAIN?

The Republican Party has spent $150,000 in upmarket designer stores on dressing Sarah Palin for the part of vice-president. During September, more than $75,000 was spent in a single shopping spree at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, and another $9,500 at Macy's in the same city - scene of the Republican party convention where John McCain introduced Ms Palin as his running mate.

Countdown's Keith Olbermann had a special commentary about this last night

McCain: Palin ‘Most Qualified’ VP Nominee in Recent Memory

Sen. John McCain gave a remarkable interview with radio personality Don Imus this morning, and the principle topic of discussion was Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Palin Only Visits "Pro-America" States

According to the Washington Post, Gov. Sarah Palin "made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the 'pro-America' areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one. No word on which states she views as unpatriotic."

She also said she no longer watches the news.

Said Palin: "But yeah, sometimes you do get depressed watching what it is that they're reporting and the spin and some of the distortion of what our message is and what we stand for. Sometimes that, that gets draining."

- Political Wire

Florida Republicans cast blame as McCain trails in polls

The Miami Herald - John McCain's plunging poll numbers in Florida have top Republicans second-guessing and starting to distance themselves from the campaign.

For the first time in more than a decade, Florida Republicans are considering the almost unthinkable: Their presidential nominee could lose the state.

The economy, an unpopular president, a strong opponent, and the inability of John McCain to reverse poll numbers despite repeatedly revising his strategy has top state Republicans looking for someone to blame.

''There are a lot of folks who have never been in a foxhole before and are clearly nervous,'' said Brian Ballard, a major McCain fundraiser. ``There is some finger-pointing going on a little bit too soon.''

Even Gov. Charlie Crist, who helped deliver Florida for McCain during the primary, said he will be spending more time minding the state's weak economy than campaigning for the Arizona senator in the final weeks before Election Day.

''When I have time to help, I'll try to do that,'' Crist said last week, after he flew around the state with McCain running mate Sarah Palin. Saturday, he skipped a McCain football rally and instead went to Disney World.....

Philadelphia Flyers fans boo ‘hockey mom’ Palin.

Watch Sarah Palin get booed in Philadelphia before the Flyers’ hockey game.
The AP reports it as “a mixture of boos and cheers.”
Who said Philly fans have no class ?

Palin Gets Kinky?

A little humour to start the weekend with -

David Brooks: Sarah Palin " Represents A Fatal Cancer To The Republican Party"

David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a "fatal cancer to the Republican party" but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as "the two best candidates we've had in a long time."

In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine's redesign, Brooks decried Palin's anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
Brooks praised Palin's natural political talent, but said she is "absolutely not" ready to be president or vice president. He explained, "The more I follow politicians, the more I think experience matters, the ability to have a template of things in your mind that you can refer to on the spot, because believe me, once in office there's no time to think or make decisions."

The New York Times columnist also said that the "great virtue" of Palin's counterpart, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, is that he is anything but a "yes man."

"[Biden] can't not say what he thinks," Brooks remarked. "There's no internal monitor, and for Barack Obama, that's tremendously important to have a vice president who will be that way. Our current president doesn't have anybody like that."

Brooks also spent time praising Obama's intellect and skills in social perception, telling two stories of his interactions with Obama that left him "dazzled":...

Read the rest of what David Brooks had to say about Sarah Palin HERE

Is SNL making a joke of McCain/Palin?

Has Saturday Night Live defined John McCain and Sarah Palin with caricatures that will overshadow their actual identities?

Women and Sarah Palin

The National Organization for Women has endorsed the Obamba-Biden ticket for just the reasons listed below. They usually do not endorse, but in this case they believed it was absolutely necessary to take a stand. if you agree, pass it on:

Friends, We are writing to you because of the fury and dread we have felt since the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republican Party. We believe that this terrible? decision has surpassed mere partisanship, and that it is a dangerous farce on the part of a pandering and rudderless Presidential candidate that has a real possibility of becoming fact.

Perhaps like us, as American women, you share the fear of what Ms. Palin and her professed beliefs and proven record could lead to forourselves and for our present or future daughters. To date, she is against sex education, birth control, the pro-choice platform, environmental protection, alternative energy development, freedom of speech, gun control, the separation of church and state,and polar bears. To say nothing of her complete lack of real preparation to become the second-(and possibly first)-most-powerful person on the planet.

We want to clarify that we are not against Sarah Palin as a woman, a mother, or, for that matter, a parent of a pregnant teenager, but solely as a rash, incompetent, and altogether devastating choice for Vice President. Ms. Palin's political views are in every way a slap in the face to the accomplishments that our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers so fiercely fought for, and from which we've so demonstrably benefited. First and foremost, Ms. Palin does not represent us. She does not demonstrate or uphold our interests as American women. It is presumed that the inclusion of a woman on the Republican ticket could win over women voters. We want to disagree, publicly.

If you agree that Palin is an irresponsible, even dangerous, choice for VP, please consider participating in this drive. Gentlemen, send this to the women you know and care for. I know it's tough to understand the way this choice is impacting women, but I have never seen so many women so outraged, angry and distraught in my entire life. We'd like our voices heard.

Bush's clone wears a skirt Pt.II

Bush's clone wears a skirt

Countdown's Keith Olbermann aired a video compilation showing the similarity in rhetoric between George W. Bush in 2000 and Sarah Palin in 2008.  Olbermann reported that “the people around [Palin] — the top-level campaign staffers crafting her message of change and reform — are almost all from the inner-circle of the same Bush campaigns and administration from which she offers that change.” He concluded, “Small surprise then that even in the very act of claiming her background, her experience qualify her to offer us that change from Bush, she does so sounding almost exactly like Bush.”

Debate Wrap-up

Biden Won, Because He Made Forceful Case Against McCain.

Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo wraps up last nights debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin pretty well and I agree with him. 

"Many people will analyze this debate by asking whether Sarah Palin outdid her previous disastrous interview performances, and hence proved she just might have the mettle to be a Vice President, after all.

But a better way to decide who "won" tonight is this: Which Veep candidate most forcefully made the case against the opposing presidential candidate?

By that standard, the winner by that measure was unquestionably Joe Biden. He made a far stronger case against John McCain than Sarah Palin did against Barack Obama. It wasn't even close.

Tellingly, Biden was the first to target the other ticket's presidential candidate, laying into McCain over his "fundamentals of the economy" gaffe, a core contrast point for the Obama campaign. That immediately forced Palin to go on the defensive -- in the context of a discussion of the presidential candidates -- which she did with the silly argument that McCain's "fundamentals" line was a reference to American workers.

Biden also drew a devastatingly sharp contrast between Obama and McCain on Iraq. While Biden admittedly wasn't at his best at times during the first half, when the debate drifted onto foreign policy turf, Biden clearly found his footing, and then some. He stared right into the camera as he made the case as clearly as you could ask for.

"We're spending $10 billion a month while the Iraqis have an $80 billion surplus. Barack says it's time for them to spend their own money," he said. "This is a fundamental difference between us: We will end this war. For John McCain, there is no end in sight to end this war. Fundamental difference: We will end this war." And Biden hit a very strong riff on how McCain's foreign policies are indistinguishable from those of George W. Bush.

To be clear, Palin did outperform in many ways tonight, and did clear a basic competence bar. She was far more in command of the material than she has been in her catastrophic interviews. And there's no reason to doubt the reports we're hearing about relief and even elation in Republican and conservative circles.

It's also true that Palin did get in some blows on Obama, hitting him somewhat effectively over his willingness to meet with foreign leaders and blasting him for waving the "white flag of surrender" in Iraq.

But here's the key: Even on those issues where Palin did score with base-pleasing hits on Obama or Biden, the unshakable reality underlying all this is that public opinion agrees with the Obama-Biden view on the core questions discussed tonight. And Biden seemed to proceed from a firm understanding of this point, articulating a big-picture contrast between Obama and McCain on the economy and on foreign policy with gusto and intensity.

That will prove far more consequential than whatever narrow success Palin had in outdoing previous expectations, and in proving her own baseline competence. And as a result -- this being a race between two would be presidents, after all -- the public will give this debate to Biden by sizable margins."

My thoughts on the Biden/Palin debate

After watching tonight's Vice-Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin I have to say that I think it was a toss up with a possible slight edge to Biden.

I feel that Gov. Palin scored points for her folksiness and head strong, full speed ahead approach to the debate, while Joe Biden did a great job attacking John McCain and pointing out the differences between the two Presidential candidates.

Palin looked nervous to me at first but settled in and found her comfort zone at around the 25minute mark. Biden on the other hand started off slower and seemed like he didn't want to come off as to arrogant or pushy. Joe Biden played it cool on a number of occasion when Sarah Palin zinged him.

As the debate went on however, Biden's knowledge and expertise on foreign affairs had really shown through.

Under the circumstances, PBS's Gwen Ifell did a credible job of moderating this debate. After all of the talk about her forth coming book about Barack Obama, she must have felt a need to tone down her questioning. Seldom if ever did she ask a follow-up question and she addressed both candidates to answer the same gotcha types of questions.