And Again And Again And Again

McCain's campaign touts Obama's association with Bill Ayers: then his endorsement list includes the President of the Annenberg Foundation, the originator of the board where Obama and Ayers sat jointly.

Sarah Palin calls Obama un-American and his associations troubling, and then it turns out the secessionist party where she spoke and to which her husband belongs has a virulently anti-American streak and ties to Iran.

McCain and Palin criticize Obama for talking about US troops causing civilian casualties in Afghanistan when McCain did the same thing with respect to Bosnia.

McCain says you need to speak softly and carry a big stick in foreign affairs and yet he's the guy who sang "Bomb Iran" and called for the annihilation of North Korea and a quick commencement of war with Iraq.

Conservatives get peeved at Obama's correct pronunciation of the word "Pakistan," when... oh geez, where do I begin?

This is getting ridiculous now. It's become a campaign of projection. They criticize Obama while implicitly criticizing themselves. And it's all substance-free, as they have no use for ideas.

[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.

The only thing wrong about that is the notion that the Republican Party was ever a party of ideas in the first place (sorry, Barack, they weren't. They were about hiding behind the fig leaf of "ideas" to promote profit-taking for the rich).

...This is brilliant, by the way.

Said Obama: "I am surprised that, you know, we've been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days, that he wasn't willing to say it to my face. But I guess we've got one last debate. So presumably, if he ends up feeling that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate."

This will make McCain mental, since he can't say it to his face or all the remaining independent support will wither. McCain is boxed in and now he's being called out as a coward. Great strategy.

Palin's Night v. Palin's Reality

Sarah Palin is going to have a great night. Everyone knows that, yes? She'll have a home-field advantage, won't have to answer any questions, and has spoken in front of crowds of this size in the past week. She has personal charisma and everyone in the audience will be rooting for her. The entire night will be defined on her terms, and the media is aching to deem her a success after a turbulent week. The media went out on a limb in focusing on personal issues instead of the very serious allegations lodged against her. She has an easy parry for that, and it'll turn them around.

But there will be a lot left unsaid tonight. For instance, how many times will Palin simply not tell the truth in her speech? Already, we've seen her lie multiple times in her introductory speech.

PALIN (8/29/08): I signed major ethics reforms and I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration. And I've championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we'd build it ourselves [...]

In fact, Palin never “told Congress” a bloomin’ thing about that much-derided bridge or earmark; Congress had removed itself from the matter thirteen months before she took office. But just to establish the fuller record, let’s ask two more obvious questions. When did Palin “champion reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress?” And returning to her alleged defiance of Congress: When did Palin “tell Congress” that “if our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves?”

“If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we'd build it ourselves?” Question: When did Palin say or do something that dimly resembles that? [...]

And no, that isn’t the only howler in Palin’s new stump presentation. In this passage from Friday’s speech, she gives an absurdly bowdlerized account of her vastly heroic work on behalf of Alaska’s tax-payers:

PALIN: Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor I stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically, and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska.

What a champion of the people! But Palin vastly misstates this heroic tale too. Once again, she has basically lied.

What’s wrong with Palin’s account? She makes it sound like “state revenues” soared because “oil and gas prices went up so dramatically.” But this omits a fundamental part of this story; in fact, state revenues soared because Palin and the Alaska legislature raised taxes on the oil companies!

Whether it's the bridge/earmark nonsense, or casting herself as a reformer despite hiring a lobbyist with ties to Jack Abramoff and Ted Stevens while mayor of Wasilla, and taking money from the same interests that have led Stevens to be indicted, or even claiming that she's visited Ireland when she was actually on a refueling stopover for a half-hour, the official story is riddled with lies. And there are likely to be more tonight. And it's unclear whether or not they'll be reported.

Then there's the extremism, which may come out in the speech in oblique ways, but not nearly in ways that would offend or shock the vast majority of what will prove to be a large viewing public. There's the total rejection of women's reproductive rights (including in the cases of rape of incest) and the slashing of funding for the very teen mothers that she now has in her own family. But there's more. The Alaska Independence Party, of which her husband is a former longtime member, and which she courted as recently as 2002, is the Alaska conduit for the Constitution Party, which has as its goal "to restore American jurisprudence to Biblical common-law functions" (that's a direct quote). And Mrs. Palin has her very own pastor problem:

...just two weeks ago, when Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus [...]

Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.

“The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.

Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.

Uh, God damn America?

This is the perspective you won't hear tonight, and there certainly won't be any Democrats in the story the way Republicans were all over the DNC. Unfortunately, this is the night when narratives will be cemented, and the media will make their judgment. I hope the Obama campaign has a way to get out the real record.

If This Were A Prizefight, It'd Be Called.

This is the endgame right here:

The McCain camp today disputed rumors that presumptive vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was ever registered with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party by releasing years of voter registration history . . . but it looks like that doesn't apply to her husband.

This afternoon, the director of Division of Elections in Alaska, Gail Fenumiai, told TPMmuckraker that Todd Palin registered in October 1995 to the Alaska Independence Party, a radical group that advocates for Alaskan secession from the United States.

Besides a short period of a few months in 2000 when he changed his registration to undeclared, Todd Palin remained a registered member of AIP until July 2002 when he registered again as an undeclared voter.

She is married, figuratively speaking, to Tim McVeigh. The AIP is linked to militia movements and has as their goal secession from the United States.

At some point the McCain camp will get their butts up to Wasilla and discover this. They can call it a smear all they want, but understand: when Sarah Palin was the mayor of a small town, her husband was a member of a party that advocated secession.

Most of the focus so far has been on babygate:



But it's the radicalism that's going to get her. Here's why the theocrats are agog over the pick:

Speaking before the Pentecostal church, Palin painted the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God," she exhorted the congregants. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

Religion, however, was not strictly a thread in Palin's foreign policy. It was part of her energy proposals as well. Just prior to discussing Iraq, Alaska's governor asked the audience to pray for another matter -- a $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wanted built in the state. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.

And there's video.

They're already starting to hide her away.

Wow. Epic FAIL.

UPDATE: None dare call it treason... except New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone!

In a message to Congress on July 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln said about attempts by the Southern States to secede that, "the States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this they can only do so against law and by revolution."

Allowing the potential Vice President of the United States, next in line to the presidency of our republic, to be someone that believes states have a legal right to secede from our union would be akin to allowing a member of the Parti Québécois to become Prime Minister of Canada or a Scottish National Party member to become Prime Minster of the United Kingdom.

While it may sound alarmist and overly dramatic, as someone who has sworn an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic," I find it extremely troubling that the country Ms. Palin would presume to lead as next in line to the Presidency, apparently wasn't good enough for her to be a part of. It is this, more than anything else, which speaks to her lack of qualification to be Vice President of the United States.

FAIL

When your campaign now has to argue that your Vice Presidential nominee was, in fact, always a Republican, you've lost the debate. You've lost everything. And more so if you're arguing with this lady:

For her part, Ms. Clark -- a self-employed gold miner who wants Alaska to become an independent nation -- says that the McCain campaign pushback that Pain was never part of the AIP is "hooey."

"This is like a cat covering up crap in its litter box," she says.

Sharks Patrol These Waters

When I last left the Internet for a delightful Labor Day barbecue, the questioned raised about Sarah Palin were merely the stuff of blog comment sections and the like. It took what ought to be a private occurrence of the Governor's 17 year-old daughter's pregnancy, but the traditional media has now caught on that this pick is exceedingly strange, and that the only people who knew less about her than the American public were John McCain's Vice Presidential vetting team.

Greg Sargent has a great rundown.

* The news that Palin once backed the Bridge to Nowhere went national.

* It emerged that Palin has links to the bizarro Alaska Independence Party, which harbors the goal of seceding from the union that McCain and Palin seek to lead.

* The news broke that as governor, Palin relied on an earmark system she now opposes. Taken along with the Bridge to Nowhere stuff, this threatens to undercut her reformist image, something that was key to her selection as McCain's Veep candidate.

* The news broke that Palin's 17-year-old daughter became pregnant out of wedlock at a time when the conservative base had finally started rallying behind McCain's candidacy.

* Barely moments after McCain advisers put out word that McCain had known of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, the Anchorage Daily News revealed that Palin's own spokesperson hadn't known about it only two days ago.

* A senior McCain adviser at the Republican convention was forced into the rather embarrassing position of arguing that McCain had known about the pregnancy "last week" -- without saying what day last week he knew about it.

* It came out that Republican lawyers are up in Alaska vetting Palin -- now, more than 72 hours after it was announced that she'd been picked.

* Palin lawyered up in relation to the trooper-gate probe in Alaska -- a move that ensures far more serious attention to the story from the major news orgs.

There's actually more. The lawyer she hired in the trooper-gate probe - which is being paid for by state taxpayers - asked for all documents from the investigator, a discovery request which may make sense in a grand jury but not in an independent legislative investigation. ABC is on the case of the Alaska Independence Party, which is kind of a big deal - a secessionist group which possibly has ties to separatist militias. The earmark story has gone national - turns out that as mayor she had a personal lobbyist that secured around $27 million in federal earmarks. There are at least 10 McCain operatives up in Anchorage at this point, and didn't get there until THURSDAY, the day before the choice was announced. And major media is asking the forbidden questions:

While there was no sign that her formal nomination this week was in jeopardy, the questions swirling around Ms. Palin on the first day of the Republican National Convention, already disrupted by Hurricane Gustav, brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Ms. Palin to question Mr. McCain’s judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions.

...and...

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina said that he had heard no discussion about removing Ms. Palin from the ticket. In fact, he said, he thought her daughter’s pregnancy would not hurt her with voters.

What's notable is that the media is asking the question of if she'll be removed from the ticket. It's not a far reach to go from if to when. When the traditional media smells blood in the water, ideology goes out the window. Check out Campbell Brown, married to Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor Campbell Brown, eviscerating a McCain spokesman.



Focus groups are weighing in with, shall we say, concern, and what's more, major media is reporting on them. And the secessionist party thing is so hot to handle that McCain's camp is not commenting on it. They tried to dump a lot of this news on the Labor Day holiday with a major hurricane hitting land and it didn't work. They are completely off message, the revamped convention (which already lost a day's worth of attacking Obama) is at a crossroads, and the questions from the talking heads will be all about Palin.

I actually hope he keeps her on the ticket at this point, this is too entertaining...