Palin v Biden debate

[Harlowe]

Embar,

We've had eight years to watch what happens when an incurious know-nothing with massive and unwarranted confidence and an ideology to push is put in charge, and Palin makes the Bush of 2000 look like a saint and an elder statesman. We've watched McCain and Palin run a completely shameless and dishonorable campaign up to this point, and all accounts are that they are just getting started. We've seen how Obama and McCain react in a crisis.

McCain and Palin aren't just reckless twits, they are totally unfit to hold high office. And you call for balance? Please. Don't make me laugh.

This. Absolutely.

Embar, my view of Palin is no different then a plethora of actual Conservatives out there (Andrew Sullivan, Stephen Bainbridge, George Will, Kathleen Parker, David Frum, Senator Chuck Hagel, former Senator Lincoln Chafee, Charles Krauthammer...). Many of them have even said she should drop from the ticket. I'm not going to humor folksy nonsense when there is this much at stake. She's an opportunistic twit.

After 8 years of absolute horseshit, when I see chuckleheads trying to finesse their way into the White House, I'm going to be pissed as hell. Lovable goofs don't belong establishing our relationship with other world leaders, lovable goofs shouldn't be making decisions about our country, our armed forces nor our lives. Lovable goofs are mascots not the starting line-up.

[Harlowe]

But guess what? Since hard-on's for Palin is on your mind, Hustler is coming to the rescue.

They are in pre-production for an election year release!

"Nailin-Palin"
http://www.tmz.com/2008/10/03/nailin-palin/

According to HUSTLER, “Nailin’ Paylin” is a “naughty adventure to the wild side of that sexy Alaska governor,” featuring “girl-on-girl lovin’,” “nailing the Russians, who come knocking on her back-door,” and a younger Palin getting seduced by her college creationist professor who “will explain a ‘big bang’ theory even she can’t deny!” Also included: a three-way hardcore sex scene starring Palin/Paylin, Hillary Clinton, and Condoleeza Rice.

[Harlowe]

Here is another example of Palin lying YET AGAIN and why the majority of the people paying attention, feel McCain's campaign - as a whole - has been desperate and sleazy.

"We see America as the greatest force for good in this world," Palin said at a fund-raising event in Colorado, adding, "Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Palin cited an article in Saturday's New York Times about Obama's relationship with Ayers, now 63. But that article concluded that "the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.' "

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/04/ ... index.html

[Lurker]

I didn't think McCain and Palin could get sleazier than the sex education ad but this just might. Absolutely disgusting. It's not going to work this year. Thirty more days of this crap and McCain can slink back to the Senate and Palin can vanish from public view.

[Lurker]

One person in this picture still has a soul. *hint: it's not McCain

markmckinnonmccain.jpg

That's Mark McKinnon, who back in February announced that he'd step down as a McCain advisor if Obama was the Democratic nominee.

McKinnon said, "I've met Barack Obama. I've read his book. I like him a great deal. I disagree with him on very fundamental issues... I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama. It would be uncomfortable for me and I think it would be bad for the McCain campaign."

[Ddrak]

McCain's not going to gain votes with that type of idiocy this time around - it links him back to the '04 campaign and makes the Dem position that he's no different to Bush a lot stronger. It seems like they've decided that they're unpopular enough that they may as well through as much mud as they can and see what sticks. When you're at least 130 electoral votes down in the predictions, with Texas, Mississippi and Georgia polling as "weakly GOP" then you haven't got much to lose.

Dd

[Arkaron]

I really wanted to give Palin a fair shot. I really, really did.

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] 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. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

Yes, because God knows it's not on Earth if you teach K-12 or as an adjunct.

I realize Obama and Biden have made some gaffes, and I even disagree with them on some issues, but if wanting somebody well-read to lead the free world is elitist, fine. I will take my elitism.

I'm not knocking Palin's education. I don't care where candidates went to school as we currently have a president and VP who attended Yale and U of Wyoming, respectively. Karl Rove went to several universities but didn't complete his degree. Rumsfeld went to Princeton. Rice went to Notre Dame and has a ph.d that isn't one some university gave to her for speaking at commencement. Colin Powell has an MBA from George Washington U, and has made remarks about having a "C average" (like it matters, if people want to masturbate to exam scores and GPA, feel free) as an undergrad, but you don't hear many people calling General Powell a dumbass the way they refer to nearly everyone else in the Bush administration largely because Powell doesn't run around spewing bullshit the way Palin does. I cannot even conceive of any other well respected, ranking Republican making the kinds of statements that Palin did at the debate. Every time she opens her mouth, she sets women back five years.

If McCain wanted a woman, Olympia Snowe is vastly more qualified than Palin to make a run at VP with McCain. Maybe she's got something they vetted out in her past, but most likely it's because she's less hot, pro-choice, supports stem cell research, and remembers that as awesome as Joe Sixpack's small-town values are, they also include fairly dark streaks, like beating gay people to death against fences.

Picking Palin isn't about taxes or terrorism or anything else that Fallakin continues to invoke, it was about regaining an irrational, evangelized base that would have stayed home without this batshit loon on the ticket and that would have killed dozens of other races the GOP needs to win this election. The debate does a great deal to suggest this is the case.

[Harlowe]

I left out the last part of her "palling with terrorists" speech.

At a rally today in California, Gov. Sarah Palin offered up a rather jarring argument for supporting the Republican ticket. "There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women," the Alaska Governor said, claiming she was quoting former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

The statement came after Palin had recounted a "providential" moment she experienced on Saturday: "I'm reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, ok? The quote of the day... It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State [crowd boos] and UN ambassador. ... Now she said it, I didn't. She said, 'There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women.'"

Actually, Albright didn't say that. The real quote is, "There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't help other women."

It's embarrassing to have this woman on a presidential ticket. I agree whole-heartedly with Arkaron and this poster below I'm quoting, there were so many better, more qualified choices that I would have been proud to see (even if I didn't agree entirely with their politics) on a ticket. Palin doesn't advance us, she sets us back and not in a small way.

Really any woman who considers herself a conservative or identifies with the Republican party should be embarrassed by Sarah Palin. Seriously, this is the female face of the party. The debate was a joke, setting the bar so low that as long as she didn't drool all over herself it's considered a victory. That is what Republican women should be proud of? Her winking and talking "folksy", you betcha goshdarnit, that's the way the party wants to represent itself to the country and the world?

The fact that so many other qualified women in the party, like Olympia Snowe (whom I admire greatly), Kay Baily Hutchinson, Christie Todd Whitman (my former governor) are able to communicate and connect with the American people, were passed over for this disaster of a candidate, is greatly disheartening to me as a young woman. Say what you want about Hillary Clinton, but she didn't ask to be treated differently. She was able to take on the big boys and even throw some elbows, too. I just can't believe this is the example that the Republicans want to set for the future and for young women especially.

[Ddrak]

The statement came after Palin had recounted a "providential" moment she experienced on Saturday: "I'm reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, ok? The quote of the day... It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State [crowd boos] and UN ambassador. ... Now she said it, I didn't. She said, 'There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women.'"

She said WHAT? That's a certified recipe to turn anyone who's not already committed to vote for you into a vote against you. It's quite literally as bad as (for example) if Obama had said "mah niggas got a duty to vote for a brotha".

She's a political nightmare. After that, the GOP needs to lock her up in a room somewhere and keep her the hell away from the voters.

Dd

[Ddrak]

...and I think SNL pretty much nailed it:

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/ ... en/727421/
[edited to official clip seeing youtube went down]

"Marriage is between two unwilling teenagers" is pure genius.

Dd

[Harlowe]

God, that was hilarious, the Biden part was great too! Tina Fey did an amazing job as usual. =)

More comments about her debate performance.

A reader chimes in:

I just want to ask: can anyone, anyone, imagine Condoleeza Rice or Margaret Thatcher or even Hillary Clinton for God's sake, winking at the nation and/or being coquettish in any national format?

Yeah. Just checking.

The damage John McCain's baldfaced sexism and Sarah Palin's cocktail waitress act have done to American feminism has yet to be fully assessed. Palin has actually forced me to realize that, however much I despise Hillary Clinton, I have never doubted her professionalism and capacity to fight and win on her own terms in a male-dominated world by meeting and exceeding the standards of any male counterpart. (It was not her fault she ran against the political genius of his generation.) I cannot even imagine her winking and flirting on stage, although the New Hampshire tears were a bit of a stunt.

Thatcher remains the standard. She was not above using feminine wiles in charming individuals; but in public, in debate, in the Commons, she beat men at their own game, using nothing but knowledge, forensics, expertise, argument and courage.

From Thatcher to Palin is not a slide downwards for conservative women. It's a free-fall. And McCain did it.

[Harlowe]

As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we've really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance.

......

[Lurker]

That's from Palins interview with Fox News (at around 6:45 min).

And screw you, Harlowe, for making me look that up and watch it.

[Harlowe]

Sorry I was so flabbergasted listening to that storm of nonsense, albeit, fucking scary nonsense, I just had to post it with a shock face immediately.

Their camp is a desperate laugh a minute, John McCain's brother who they have attending rallies...
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hby_ ... gD93KDFPO0

McCain's brother says N. Va. 'Communist country'

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER – 3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain's brother made an apparent joke at a campaign rally this weekend that might not play well in parts of newly competitive Virginia.

Joe McCain, speaking at an event in support of his brother, called two Democratic-leaning areas in Northern Virginia "communist country," according to a report on The Washington Post's Web site.

"I've lived here for at least 10 years and before that about every third duty I was in either Arlington or Alexandria, up in communist country," Joe McCain said at an event in Loudon County, Va.

Joe McCain then apologized, but the remark drew laughter at the event, according to the report.

Virginia has long been a Republican stronghold in presidential elections, but Democrat Barack Obama is running even or ahead of McCain in recent state polls. Obama is being helped by fast-growing communities in the Washington, D.C., suburbs of Northern Virginia, which tend to vote more Democratic than other parts of the state.

One of those areas is Arlington, Va., where John McCain owns a condominium.

"This was Joe McCain's unsuccessful attempt at humor," said McCain campaign spokeswoman Gail Gitcho. "John McCain and Sarah Palin are committed to winning the support of voters in Northern Virginia and understand the region's importance to victory statewide."

Could they be any more divisive and moronic? I don't think so.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

...and I think SNL pretty much nailed it:

"Marriage is between two unwilling teenagers" is pure genius.

"And for those of you out there playing drinking games: MAVERICK"

[Harlowe]

Yeah, wasn't it "for all you Joe Sixpacks"? lol

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Yeah, wasn't it "for all you Joe Sixpacks"? lol

Probably. I saw it last night, and it looks like youtube took the link down. Either way, Tina Fey is amazing and I thought Queen Latifah was a nice touch.

[Harlowe]

The statement came after Palin had recounted a "providential" moment she experienced on Saturday: "I'm reading on my Starbucks mocha cup, ok? The quote of the day... It was Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State [crowd boos] and UN ambassador. ... Now she said it, I didn't. She said, 'There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women.'"

She said WHAT? That's a certified recipe to turn anyone who's not already committed to vote for you into a vote against you. It's quite literally as bad as (for example) if Obama had said "mah niggas got a duty to vote for a brotha".

She's a political nightmare. After that, the GOP needs to lock her up in a room somewhere and keep her the hell away from the voters.

Dd

Albright wasn't happy with the misquote:

"Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics. This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women. The truth is, if you care about the status of women in our society and in our troubled economy, the best choice by far is Obama-Biden."

[Harlowe]

Ifill on Meet the Press: Palin blew me off

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 7#27034267

On "Meet the Press" Sunday morning, vice presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill said Palin "more than ignored" some of her questions -- she "blew me off." She added that Palin decided to "give a stump speech" instead of a debate, and that there's "little a moderator can do" to stop that.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Ifill was wrong on the second part of that quote. A moderator can do a lot to channel the debate. But Ifill had to take a soft stance because of her conflicts of interest, perceived or otherwise.

A totally neutral moderator could have held Palin's feet to the fire. Too bad Ifill wanted some face time instead of an unhindered debate.