Why not the joker?
Via Wonkette and from points outward on the intertubes....
Best. Parody. Evah.
Ouch... This is going to leave a mark at the checkout counter...:
Stop me if you've heard this one from CNN.com...
CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Palin’s transparency proposal already exists in D.C. � - Blogs from CNN.com: "CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (CNN) – Sarah Palin likes to tell voters around the country about how she “put the government checkbook online” in Alaska. On Thursday, Palin suggested she would take that same proposal to Washington.
Salon.com has a very good and scary article on Sarah Palin's husband.
From The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan:
"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism. I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time,' - Senator John McCain, October, 2007."
Yahoo! News Brings us more in the ongoing trainwreck that is the Palin campaign. It seems that she just can't open her mouth without outright lying. This time she is lying about HER OWN STATEMENTS from just last year. And what's more, she has just dared the press to tell her when she said the things she said!
"Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that," Palin told ABC News in an interview broadcast Thursday and Friday.
I quote in it's beautiful entirety:
So depressing. I have been looking for anything that might be a political story that has anything to do with another candidate that Sarah Palin. I have not been able to find it. So it looks like I will just take a break from the political reporting today and hang back. Misters Obama and McCain might get an article in here somewhere but it looks like the entire focus of the national press corps is on Palin. I have officially had enough of her. I await McCain and Obama stories to get back into the fray.
This is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. As many of you will notice it is a hit parade for book burners.
"Friday may be the start of New York's Fashion Week, but couture has been in the Minnesota convention hall all week.
It kicked off on Monday with Cindy McCain and First Lady Laura Bush in Oscar de la Renta.
Vanity Fair editors estimated that McCain's fierce saffron shirt dress with the popped collar, diamond earrings, four-strand pearl necklace, white Chanel watch and strappy shoes totaled up to $313,100."
Shorter Andrew Sullivan: Here We Go...
Ben Smith at Politico.com brings us this diatribe against Palin:
've received some 50 copies of a long e-mail from a woman named Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla, and it may be the most potent attack on Sarah Palin out there, bouncing around the Internet at the viral speed of an Obama-Muslim rumor.
The Anchorage Daily News confirms its authenticity and describes her as a "stay-at-home mom, letter-to-the-editor writer and longtime watcher of [Mat-Su] Valley politics" who has been deluged with e-mail as she become's Palin's leading local critic.
She says she clashed with Palin over her 1996 "attempt at censorship," a reported suggested to ban books at a local library, which Palin later said wasn't a serious proposal.
The letter mostly contains undisputed facts, and while it's occasionally positive — "she's smart" — it offers a bit of an alternate, and mostly hostile, history to the campaign biography.
During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.
Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative". During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn't even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers involved!
TheHill.com has this great nugget where Rep Westmorland calls Obama "Uppity."
Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.
"Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity," Westmoreland said.
Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”
Hit this You Tube link to see what the McCain Campaign thinks about americans learning anything about Their VP pick.
The RNC has a problem with diversity. There isn't any.
The Jed Report has this great bit that Howard Fineman said after the McCain speech last night. It seems that Palin is not going to be campaigning with McCain this week after all. Lets look in:
Howard Fineman reports a top McCain adviser tells him that Palin is going to be taking a "timeout" from the campaign trail through the middle of next week. According to Fineman, Palin will use the time to "begin the education of Sarah Palin." Apparently, the excuse will be that she needs to attend to personal business, including seeing her son off to Iraq.
Fineman says they want to make sure she understands John McCain's positions on issues and the issues she is going to need to deal with as a vice presidential candidate. Most notably, she won't be doing any substantial media interviews until she returns to the trail, which could be at least as late as next Wednesday.
In the WAPO story "All About Sarah" :
"Having grown up in New England, I'm an ice hockey fan. Back in the early to mid-70s, teams had players called goons. The Boston Bruins' goon was Derek Sanderson. The goon, with no appreciable offensive skills, had only one job, and it was this - to pick a fight with the opponent's best player and have both end up in the penalty box, thereby giving the losing team a chance to win. When the goon came out, the crowd went wild.
Sarah Palin is the GOP's goon. No substance whatsoever, and engaged for no other reason than to win at any cost.
Posted by: Bob B | September 5, 2008 12:47 AM"
So I had to ask if this was appropriate behavior.., I know the whole thing screams "NO!" but there is actually a more deep thought here. Is it OK according to the laws of the USA and, more to the point the Flag Code of the USA to wear...THAT?
A great article from my local paper the Seattle Times:
"But earmarks have never been a dirty word in Alaska, a huge state dotted with small communities that have enormous dollar needs for sewers, roads and other projects.
Instead, earmarks — pet projects that members of Congress fund but that no federal agency has requested — have become a mainstay of political life here, and one that Palin embraced from early on in her career as a mayor of Wasilla to the governor's mansion in Juneau.
Just this year, she sent to Sen. Ted. Stevens, R-Alaska, a proposal for 31 earmarks totaling $197 million — more, per person, than any other state.
Her presidential running mate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., does not sponsor earmarks, calling the practice of doling out favors, often with scant oversight, 'disgraceful.'"
In the article "Mayor Palin: A Rough Record" - TIME has this quote:
"Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. 'She asked the library how she could go about banning books,' he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. 'The librarian was aghast.' That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving 'full support' to the mayor."
Jake Tapper at ABC News has this about the McCain Campaign:
"Former officials of Sen. John McCain's 2000 campaign expressed shock and disbelief Monday to learn than the GOP presidential nominee had hired South Carolina political consultant Tucker Eskew.
Eskew, along with Warren Tompkins and Neal Rhodes, were key members of then-Gov. George W. Bush's South Carolina team during the 2000 primaries. McCain and his team long held Bush, Tompkins, Rhodes and Eskew responsible for the various smears against McCain and his family in the Palmetto state during that contentious contest."
The Anchorage Daily News has this nugget from the attorney representing (at the taxpayers expense) the Governor of Alaska in the troopergate case:
"'Our concern is that Hollis French turns into Ken Starr and uses public money to pursue a political vendetta rather than truly pursue an honest inquiry into an alleged ethics issue,' Van Flein said in an interview."
CBS News has this little piece:
"Republican John McCain, whose running mate disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, has opposed proposals to spend federal money on teen-pregnancy prevention programs and voted to require poor teen mothers to stay in school or lose their benefits."
Now ABC News has more in the continuing saga of Palin.
French says the investigation will also seek to learn how the Governor's office obtained confidential information from her ex-brother-in-law's personnel file.
"If she was involved, it would be a violation of state law," said French.
WaPo gets into the act:
As mayor of Wasilla, however, Palin oversaw the hiring of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, an Anchorage-based law firm with close ties to Alaska's most senior Republicans: Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July on charges of accepting illegal gifts. The Wasilla account was handled by the former chief of staff to Stevens, Steven W. Silver, who is a partner in the firm.
...
Palin and the Wasilla City Council increased Silver's fee from $24,000 to $36,000 a year by 2001, Senate records show.
Soon after, the city benefited from additional earmarks: $500,000 for a mental health center, $500,000 for the purchase of federal land and $450,000 to rehabilitate an agricultural processing facility. Then there was the $15 million rail project, intended to connect Wasilla with the town of Girdwood, where Stevens has a house.
The Washington trip is now an annual event for Wasilla officials.
From that same NYTimes.com article::
"With time running out — and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable — he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain’s list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months.
“They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,” said a Republican close to the campaign. “This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.”
NYTimes.com:
"Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin."