A Video Collection of John McCain’s Lies

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Palin Under Attack For Treatment of Animals

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Sarah Palin is under criticism for what is being described as brutal forms of hunting animals. The Defenders Action Fund has produced the above commercial. Their web site is also critical of John McCain’s environmental record. Pamela Anderson has also criticized Palin, blurting out, “I can’t stand her. She can suck it” while speaking out against abuse of animals.

Pamela Anderson’s criticism of Palin follows Matt Damon’s criticism of McCain’s choice of Palin as being “like a really bad Disney movie.” With her record of cruelty to animals, I cannot help but wonder if this is what these stars are really warning us about:

Todd Palin Subpoened In Troopergate Investigation

The Anchorage Daily News reports that Todd Palin has been subpoenaed in the abuse of powers investigation being conducted regarding Sarah Palin in the Troopergate scandal.

Posted in Sarah Palin, Scandals. Tags: . 6 Comments »

Palin’s Next “Challenge” is Sean Hannity

I guess that the relatively softball interview with Charlie Gibson has been too much for Sarah Palin. Ben Smith reports that  “The first Palin cable interview is with Sean Hannity, Fox says, as she heads back to a zone of relative safety.” TV Newser reports the interview will take place on Tuesday  and will be aired in two parts on Hannity & Colmes on Tuesday and Wednesday at 9:00 p.m.

Most likely Hannity will help prop up Palin and will avoid asking any questions which reveal her limited understanding of national and international issues. There is hope that something of interest could come out of this. Maybe, when speaking with someone on the far right to a far right audience, Palin will let down her guard and say something which she might otherwise not want

McCain Flip Flops on Whether Mayor or Governor Is Qualified on National Security

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Sam Stein has posted the above video which shows how John McCain has now flip-flopped on his view of whether a mayor or governor makes one qualified on national security. During a Republican debate in October 2007, McCain said:

“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,” the Senator declared. “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.”

Stein compared Sarah Palin’s experience to that of the two Republicans McCain was directing his comments towards:

Fast-forward nearly a year, and the argument McCain made back then is being used against his vice presidential pick today. Only Sarah Palin held the post of mayor of Wasilla for less time than Rudy Giuliani headed New York City. And her gubernatorial stint in Alaska is shorter than that of Mitt Romney’s in Massachusetts.

Palin’s Limited Interest in Foreign Policy

Besides showing limited knowledge of foreign policy in her interview with Charles Gibson, The Washington Post reveals that she made a major gaffe during the deployment ceremony for her son. Palin repeated the claims tying the war in Iraq to 9/11 which even the Bush administration has backed away from:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would “defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

“America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before September 11, 2001,” she said at the deployment ceremony, which drew hundreds of military families who walked from their homes on the sprawling post to the airstrip where the service was held.

James Fallows discusses in length the significance of Palin not being aware of the meaning of the Bush Doctrine showing how this indicates that “she evidently has not been interested enough even to follow the news of foreign affairs during the Bush era.” Of course this insight is nothing new. Palin previously revealed this in interviews when she was asked about the Iraq war.

Well, maybe Sarah Palin thought the surge was great, or maybe she didn’t. It’s hard to tell what, if anything, Palin thinks or thought about the surge of troops in Iraq, or the decision to invade Iraq in the first place, for that matter. A clip search doesn’t show any substantive comments from Palin about Iraq during her short term as governor of Alaska, in 2007 or 2008, or at any point prior to that. That includes instances when she was specifically asked about the war.

In an interview with Alaska Business Monthly shortly after she took office in 2007, Palin was asked about the upcoming surge. She said she hadn’t thought about it. “I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq,” she said. “I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe.”

Seven months into the surge, she still either had not formed any opinion on the surge or the war or just wasn’t sharing. “I’m not here to judge the idea of withdrawing, or the timeline,” she said in a teleconference interview with reporters during a July 2007 visit with Alaska National Guard troops stationed in Kuwait. “I’m not going to judge even the surge. I’m here to find out what Alaskans need of me as their governor.”

While McCain has enjoyed a bump in the polls from picking Palin, it will ultimately be difficult for him to explain why he chose someone with so little interest in foreign policy to be a heartbeat away from the presidency during a war he feels is extremely important.

Sarah Palin Flip-Flops on Climate Change

When the announcement of John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin was made there were concerns that she was a firm member of the flat-earth contingent of the Republican Party, with Palin being on record for both supporting the teaching of creationism in public schools and for denying the scientific consensus on climate change. Sarah Palin has no beliefs which are so firm that she is not willing to change them to echo those of John McCain, which at least is an improvement on global warming.

During her interview with Charles Gibson Palin 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.

Actually she has expressed disbelief in this. In an interview with Newsmax on August 28, 2008 Palin said:

A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

In an interview with a Fairbanks newspaper last year she said:

I’m not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.

Narrative of Campaign Changes to McCain’s Dishonesty

John McCain managed to briefly take control of the narrative of the campaign by naming Sarah Palin as his running mate along with attacking Obama with a string of dishonest attacks. The campaign might have become too overconfident by its initial success with this tactic and failed to recall how a similar strategy destroyed Hillary Clinton’s campaign. As McCain’s attacks have become increasingly absurd and increasingly dishonest, the narrative of the campaign might be switching to an examination of McCain’s tactics, which might also allow Obama to defeat McCain in the same manner that he defeated Clinton.

Another example of this can be seen in an AP story which will appear in many newspapers Friday morning:

The “Straight Talk Express” has detoured into doublespeak.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a self-proclaimed tell-it-like-it-is maverick, keeps saying his running mate, Sarah Palin, killed the federally funded Bridge to Nowhere when, in fact, she pulled her support only after the project became a political embarrassment. He accuses Democrat Barack Obama of calling Palin a pig, which did not happen. He says Obama would raise nearly everyone’s taxes, when independent groups say 80 percent of families would get tax cuts instead.

Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain’s skirting of facts has stood out this week. It has infuriated and flustered Obama’s campaign, and campaign pros are watching to see how much voters disregard news reports noting factual holes in the claims.

McCain’s persistence in pushing dubious claims is all the more notable because many political insiders consider him one of the greatest living victims of underhanded campaigning. Locked in a tight race with George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, McCain was rocked in South Carolina by a whisper campaign claiming he had fathered an illegitimate black child and was mentally unstable.

Shaken by the experience, McCain denounced less-than-truthful campaigning. Vowing to live up to his “straight talk” motto, he apologized for his reluctance to criticize the flying of the Confederate flag at South Carolina’s state Capitol in a bid for votes. When the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacked the military record of Democrat and fellow Navy officer John Kerry in 2004, McCain called the ads “dishonest and dishonorable.”

Now, top aides to McCain include Steve Schmidt, who has close ties to Karl Rove, Bush’s premier political adviser in 2000.

Politicians usually modify or drop claims when a string of newspaper and TV news accounts concludes they are untrue or greatly exaggerated. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, conceded she had not come under sniper fire in Bosnia after a batch of debunking articles subjected her to scorn during her primary contest against Obama.

But McCain and his running mate Palin, the Alaska governor, were defiant this week in the face of similar reports. Day after day she said she had told Congress “no thanks” to the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, a rural Alaska project that was abandoned when critics challenged its costs and usefulness. For nearly a week, major news outlets had documented that Palin supported the bridge when running for governor in 2006, noting that she turned against it only after it became an object of ridicule in Alaska and a symbol of Congress’s out-of-control earmarking.

The McCain-Palin campaign made at least three other aggressive claims this week that omitted key details or made dubious assumptions to criticize Obama. It equated lawmakers’ requests for money for special projects with corruption, even though Palin has sought nearly $200 million in such “earmarks” this year.

It produced an Internet ad implying that Obama had called Palin a pig when he used a familiar phrase, which McCain also has used, about putting “lipstick on a pig” to try to make a bad situation look better. McCain supporters said Obama was slyly alluding to Palin’s description of herself as a pit bull in lipstick, but there was nothing in his remarks to support the claim. Obama accused the GOP campaign of “lies and phony outrage.”

The article provides further information on McCain’s dishonest campaign and on how Obama has responded, suggesting that those who have been writing him off this week have been severely underestimating Obama’s abilities. Even the response from the McCain later in the article is not very  helpful to them:

Dan Schnur, a former McCain aide who now teaches politics at the University of Southern California, said McCain and Obama learned they must stretch the truth “when staying on the high road didn’t work out to their benefit.”

McCain, he said, “tried it his way. He had a poverty tour and nobody covered it. He had a national service tour, and everybody made fun of it. He proposed these joint town halls” with Obama, “and nothing come of it. Through the spring and early summer, that approach didn’t work. You can’t blame him for taking a step back and reassessing.”

In other words, McCain was losing when talking about the issues and therefore felt justified in turning to lies when behind. That hardly speaks well for his integrity as it shows he is willing to say or do anything to get elected.

Media Getting Mad At McCain’s Dishonest Tactics

John McCain has long been a creation of the media. The media created the myth that McCain is a maverick, and a moderate who is different from Bush. Just as the media created teh myth of John McCain, the media might wind up destroying that myth now that McCain has repeatedly crossed the line. Moderate journalists such as Joe Klein who were neutral, or who might have even leaned towards McCain, are now critical of him. The latest is Howard Kurtz:

The media are getting mad.

Whether it’s the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches.

Maybe it’s a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated (not that there’s anything new about that).

News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it’s the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes “age-appropriate” programs) or Palin’s repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).

The McCain camp has already accused the MSM of trying to “destroy” the governor of Alaska. So any challenge to her record or her veracity can now be cast as the product of an oh-so-unfair press. Which, needless to say, doesn’t exactly please reporters, and makes the whole hanging-with-McCain-on-the-Straight-Talk era seem 100 years ago.

As for the sudden insistence that Palin is a delicate flower who must be shielded from harsh rhetoric, take this example. Joe Biden, asked if Palin as VP would be a step forward for women, said: “Look, I think the issue is: What does Sarah Palin think? What does she believe? I assume she thinks and agrees with the same policies that George Bush and John McCain think. And that’s obviously a backward step for women.”

A typical political shot? Not according to the RNC, which said the “arrogant” remarks are “better suited for the backrooms of his old boys’ club,” while Palin is trying to break “the highest glass ceiling.”

Of course, she wasn’t picked because she is a woman, was she? And I’m sure if Hillary was the nominee, the RNC would be extremely respectful of her attempt to shatter an even higher glass ceiling.

The lipstick imbroglio is evidence that the Drudge/Fox/New York Post axis can drive just about any story into mainstream land. Does anyone seriously believe that Barack Obama was calling Sarah Palin a pig? What about the fact that McCain has used “lipstick on a pig” before? What about the book by that title by former McCain aide Torie Clarke? Never mind: get the cable bookers to line up women on opposite sides of the lipstick divide and let them claw at each other!

Obama to Appear on Saturday Night Live

Barack Obama will be appearing on Saturday Night Live this weekend, with the details of his role not yet decided.

Beyond Obama’s appearance, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the return of SNL. I’m hoping that they come up with skits showing Sarah Palin which capture the abdurdity of her being on a national ticket and that this helps to get the American people to look at the situation in a different light.